Films I watched in 2023 - Part 4

Concluding the series of short reviews of films from 2023 (see Part 3).

In the Mouth of Madness (1994)

Very good. Cosmic horror on a mass scale, navigated using one character desperately clinging to a sense of normalcy in the face of much evidence to the contrary.

Devil's Rain (1975)

A dull attempt at horror. The title credits with backgrounds taken from Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights accompanied with dissonant music was the highlight.

Promising Young Woman (2020)

I was really hyped up for this film based on the trailers, and then COVID happened and the release kept getting delayed, and I never ended up watching it. I was afraid that it would disappoint me, but instead it absolutely lived up to and surpassed my expectations. Brilliant throughout. Least supernatural and most thrilling and unsettling film I've watched in years.

Renfield (2023)

Fun action-horror with nice callbacks to past Draculas, and plenty of opportunities for Nicolas Cage to chew the scenery.

And that's that for 2023!

The Two Cases of the Sun Bather's Diary

As a follow-up to my general discussion of the various forms of Perry Mason and his colleagues and foes in various forms of media, I've recently finished Erle Stanley Gardner's the 1955 novel The Case of the Sun Bather's Diary, which got me to rewatching Season 1, Episode 17 of the 1957 Perry Mason series, which adapts this same novel, and a direct comparison could be illuminating. Obviously this post will have spoilers for both.

A few Perries Mason

WARNING: The following post contains some general outline and character spoilers for the Perry Mason television series, specifically the first two seasons of the 1957 CBS series, and all of the 2020 HBO series, as well as serious spoilers for the first, 1933 novel, The Case of the Velvet Claws (see bibliography). I also refer to an important scene in the 2002 film Minority Report.

Films I watched in 2023 - Part 3

Continuing the series of short reviews of films from 2023 (see Part 2).

Horror Express (1972)

Okay as a schlocky Hammer Horror-esque vehicle for Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, but unlike the statement in Reddit which enticed me to give this a try, in no way comparable to The Thing (1982), although the premise is similar.

Signal Dark (2020)

A short film available on Youtube. A fun bit of Lovecraftian horror, effective use of 15 minutes.

The Graduate (1967)

Made me think of Luis Buñuel, possibly because of the psycho-sexual content and surrealism. Also a reminder of popular films who weren't afraid of using film as a medium, whether it is expressive camera use, stylized editing, or specific choices of sound or lack thereof to provide weight to a scene.

The Stuff (1985)

A very 80s film. A lot more honest about right-wing militias than what you see today.

The Endless (2017)

Works on several layers. The supernatural reality-bending used as a tool to investigate memory and the sense of belongings. Very powerful.

Resolution (2012)

Aside from the obvious shared universe, one can see the seeds for The Endless here, albeit far more focused. Not sure whether I regret not watching this one first.

Commando (1985)

As ridiculous and quotable as I remembered. Very self-aware.

Dark August (1976)

Very effective supernatural psychological horror, with some attention to detail when it comes to occult practices.

The Beast Must Die (1974)

I have a certain sympathy to werewolf films that are not taken up by the World of Darknessification of their mythology - see, for example, the to me very effective An American Werewolf in London (1981). Includes an example of how ubiquitous surveillance might make you more paranoid while not really protecting you when it counts, a timely critique.

Curve (2017)

Another short available on Youtube. Very unsettling.

Night of the Demons (1988)

An Evil Dead knockoff with even more obnoxious teenagers.

Apocalypse City at A Weekend with Good Friends

This weekend (starting Thursday night my time) was the usually biannual A Weekend with Good Friends, an online convention on the Good Friends of Jackson Elias Discord. I've played in a few of these before, and now, for the first time, I ran my own game. It was the second run of my Apocalypse City concept, and it was also very enjoyable for me, as well as for the players. They found the concept compelling, even though they wished they could play more of the playbooks.

One thing I noticed happening this time is that I was able to use an interstitial break to work on fleshing out some threats based on NPCs coming from one of the players' resources. This made some dynamics a lot easier to work with, and is closer to Vincent Baker's suggestion of breaking the game down into three sub-sessions, although I wasn't able to get there. I also had to have an actual conversation about the Special Moves, explaining what I think they are meant to do, and why to me it felt like it's better to not dwell on them for a convention game. I tried allowing for enough experience points to provide opportunities for advancement, but that didn't pan out.

In terms of prep, I decided to let the players decide whether and what kind of gang or group they were, and as for the pre-existing threats, I took a bit of inspiration from my trip to Van Cortlandt and other urban parks, as well as some folk horror when characterizing the denizens of what I called Rural Experience Park.

Like the first time I ran this, it all ended in total war between the group of PCs and another gang, which they were able to eliminate. This time they were even able to make another gang join them up without killing them all, which was nice. But the park was set on fire, and would probably in the fiction be completely ruined at this point. I don't know why exactly that is. Did I make the starting situation too violent? Did I make the opposition too easily suppressed through combat? Did I not go hard enough to make non-violent alternatives more appealing? Or maybe I should run this with more playbooks that add NPCs tied to the players, or play those much more seriously when they do come up?

It could also be that, as I said in the previous post, a lot of the potential for the game is lost when it's run as a con game. Maybe it just needs the investment from the players to actually have a whole session creating characters, playing "a day in the life" for them, and then letting the MC build a compelling threat map at leisure.

Nevertheless, the affirmation that this is a premise whose appeal I can communicate to others through play made me very happy. Even if I don't go farther into this retro-futuristic 80s urban apocalypse, I hope this gave me the confidence to put more of my setting ideas out there as games for people to enjoy.

My journey after The Warriors through Van Cortlandt Park

I previously wrote of how I found inspiration in the film The Warriors (1979) for a variation on Apocalypse World's implied setting that I felt more comfortable running with. I have since read the book that the film is loosely based on, also called The Warriors, published in 1965. I will probably not take too much out of the book - it is powerful, and more raw, but also full of content that I would be uncomfortable playing with, and I am glad did not make it into the movie other than through implication.

I was, however, impressed with the further details about the journey itself, from the confab in Van Cortlandt Park, in the Bronx, back to the gang's home turf in Coney Island. So when, towards the end of my visit to New York City (where I visited MoMA, and did other things besides), I ended up with most of a day to myself, I decided to have my own pilgrimage after The Warriors.

Originally, I planned to simply take the subway up to Van Cortlandt, look around a little, see some landmarks from the film, then take the subway all the way back to Coney Island, then head back to take my bus. However, I realized that this would mean spending most of the day on the subway, with little else to show for it. So instead I decided to spend a little bit more time in the Bronx, and possibly take a detour to Queens to make use of my complimentary MoMA PS1 ticket, and then return to Midtown Manhattan to catch my bus. That is not what happened.

Instead, once I got to Van Cortlandt Park, a short search online showed me that the scene at the start of the movie was actually filmed in Riverside Park in Manhattan. Having already arrived at my destination, I decided I would walk around a bit to get a better idea of the feel of large forested wilderness sliced through by motorways that comes out in the beginning of the book.

So I walked, and walked, and saw some wildlife, and took some pictures, and continued to walk, and had to double back because you could not cross through the public golf course (first in the nation!), and then went down a path that I hoped would eventually let me cross over to a different path down, to continue with my plans.

A long while later, I found the first meaningful map I had seen in the entire park, referring to South County Trail. "South County", I asked myself? Using the GPS-powered map on my phone, I confirmed my suspicions - I had managed to exit NYC and enter Yonkers, a city familiar to anyone who had ever had to fill out a New York state tax return, or used the train through Westchester County, the County of which I was in the Southern Trail. The first way out that wasn't back was into Yonkers.

I started seeking a local restaurant that looked inviting online, when I realized that time was pressing, especially considering how far I was from my starting point now. So I took a loop through Yonkers, climbed one of its famous seven hills, and found another entrance into Van Cortlandt. This led into a bit of a maze of paths, again unmapped, which, with the help of my trusty phone, I followed back towards the subway station, and then down to Midtown, where I had to rush around to eat a late lunch and then to make it to my bus, out of breath, but otherwise on time.

While this wasn't physically too similar to the journey in either version of The Warriors, I unexpectedly found myself emotionally close to this feeling of being suddenly removed and disconnected from my "home", in this case, the area of the bus station from which I had to go back to my actual home Upstate, and rushing back there through parts unknown.

These types of accidental experiences are the ones I treasure most. You can't entirely plan them. You can put yourself in a starting situation, and open yourself catching them as they come. In life, in travel, in role-playing games.

Modern art and computer graphics

Last weekend I spent a long time at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan, most of it covering their 5th floor galleries, holding their "Collection 1880s-1940s". Now that I've been in computer graphics for a while, I feel like I get a bit more of an appreciation for what many of the artists were doing, particularly the abstract ones.

Piet Mondrian's works (like this, this, or this), which used to look like a bunch of rectangles, now seem like representations of spatial hierarchies that you would see in computer graphics, like quadtrees or bounding volume hierarchies. Joaquín Torres-García's work here is a bit like a three-dimensional version of this concept, and Irene Rice Pereira's work here is like the visualization of a more elaborate one.

I've always enjoyed Vasily Kandinsky's work, but now pieces like this, this, and this, forming complicated pictures out of simple elements, have me thinking of how real graphical scenes are composed for rendering.

Even Pablo Picasso, that I've always struggled with, has made more sense to me, and I could finally internalize an interpretation I read somewhere, that he was trying to capture a single scene or moving person from multiple perspectives or at multiple times.

I wonder what other art is out there for which I can find a new understanding.