Category: Film

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“We are the spark, that will light the fire that will burn the First Order down.”

Posted on By Wil

We went to The Last Jedi at the Chinese theater last night. It’s the first time I’ve been to the Chinese since Pulp Fiction or 12 Monkeys, and I feel no pressing urge to go back any time soon. That area of Hollywood is just gross and crowded, like someone took the worst aspects of Times Square in the 70s and now, put them together, and concentrated them into two awful blocks.

But I digress before I even begin, because of course I do.

I loved The Last Jedi. It’s a little long, it has some humor that felt a little out of place to me, and some of the edits were a little jarring, but I am willing to overlook those flaws because it was just a really fun Star Wars experience. I felt like, if I were a kid today, this movie would be my Star Wars, it would the one I would still be talking about in forty years, the way the original Star Wars (that I refuse to call ‘episode whatever’) is for me today.

You may need a second to parse that, because I did and I wrote it so go ahead. I’ll wait.

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5 things I want you to know

Posted on By Wil

Here are five things I want you to know:

  1. My friends, Kumail and Emily, wrote and produced a movie called The Big Sick. It’s about how they met and fell in love, and it’s wonderful. It’s a great date movie. It’s funny, it’s heartwarming without being saccharine, and it’s a true story! It’s a little indie movie, but it’s holding its own against big summer blockbusters, which is awesome. I want everyone to see it because it’s a great film (it should absolutely be considered during the award-o-rama season), but also because the way the studios work, it’ll only stay in theaters if it continues to outperform expectations. So please go see it, and tell your friends about it. (Those of you who are old enough to remember the early MeFi days will know where I got my linking style.)
  2. Yesterday morning, Anne woke me up twenty minutes before my alarm did, because she needed me to hear the noise our air conditioner was making. It couldn’t have waited until I was ready to wake up, when I was starting to come out of my deep sleep cycle, because it was making a noise similar to putting a handful of ball bearings and some broken glass into a blender. It turns out that the motor blew out during the hottest three days of the year so far, because I am a fucking idiot who forgot to change the ten dollar air filter (in my defense, we did the math on the calendar and realized that Anne was in emergency surgery when I should have been changing it, so I may have gotten the reminder from my task list a whole second before I dismissed it forever). It was so hot in our house, things in our pantry were melting. I’m grateful that we had eighteen hundred dollars in a sock just for such an occasion, and by the time the sun had done its worst, it was repaired. So consider this your reminder to go look at your air filter and change it, if necessary.
  3. I played games for the first time in months yesterday. My group was dealt a TPK when the last two members moved away in January, and I haven’t had anyone to play with. At first, I was happy to take the break, because gaming has been my job for the last four years. But as time went by, I became acutely aware of how significant gaming is to my life, my joy, and my reason for being. Tabletop is complicated for me, (and, honestly, Board Game Subreddit: maybe it just isn’t the right snow for you and you don’t need to rage at me about every single episode we do) and while I’m grateful as hell for everything it’s done to promote the hobby, the way Legendary has handled the fourth season and the relentless shitting on it and me by random internet strangers has taken its toll. I’d been so consumed by the things that made the show a bummer this season, and I’d been unable to play games for the sake of playing games for so long, I completely lost sight of how much I love gaming, how proud I am of our show, and the good it has done not just for my life, but for the thousands of other people who have shared their stories with me. So when we played Lords of Waterdeep and Splendor yesterday, it was like coming out of a fog of sadness for the first time in at least half a year.
  4. I’ve been listening to a lot of Bob Marley recently, and just this morning I came across a record I didn’t know about: Dreams of Freedom (Ambient Translation of Bob Marley in Dub). If you enjoyed the ambient tracks or the dub reggae I played on Radio Free Burrito, you have got to check out this record. It’s beautiful.
  5. Speaking of RFB, I had an episode about 3/4 finished two weeks ago, but I really just hated it so I sent it to the land of wind and ghosts. I know that I’m overdue to release a new show, but I didn’t appreciate just how challenging it is to do a weekly podcast that isn’t about current events, or features interviews. I feel like I have to go to this mental box to find stuff to talk about, and recently it’s been empty and sad (HEY JUST LIKE ME HA HA THAT IS A JOKE AND NOT REAL AT ALL EVERYTHING IS FINE I AM FINE HA HA HA). So rather than force something that I think is shitty garbage that sucks, I’ve just been waiting until I have something worthwhile to make.

So that’s five things I want you to know on this lovely Sunday that’s way too fucking hot. What do you want me to know?

EDIT OH SHIT I FORGOT I WANTED YOU TO KNOW THIS ALSO BUT SIX THINGS I WANT YOU TO KNOW IS WEIRD TITLE SO I’M NOT CHANGING IT: I am honored to be a guest on this week’s Lovett or Leave It podcast.

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stuff and things and another thing

Posted on By Wil

I’m nearly finished with Ravenswood, and just about ready to give it to my editor for his Red Pen of Doom. Before I jump back into the short story that became a novella that is dangerously close to being a novel, I’m going to reward myself with a couple of fun non-writing projects. One of them is building and configuring (and hopefully playing) my PiCade kit. The other is just an idea, but I think it’s doable: I have a 7″ Android tablet that I don’t use very often, because the battery on it is crap. But I have this idea to keep it plugged in all the time, and use it to display a scrolling news ticker, the current weather, and my security camera feeds. It’ll live on my desk. Does anyone know if there’s an existing Linux or Android project that does that sort of thing? I don’t have the knowledge or ability at the moment to put all that together on my own, but I think I could learn, given enough time.

I’ll be on the pre-game show tonight, before the Kings vs. Bruins, on Fox Sports West, around 7:15pm, if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

My friend, Robyn, is an amazing woman. She made a video this morning that I want to signal boost.

Anne and I are way late to the party, but we saw What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? the other night, and it made me want to rewatchWho’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Sunset Boulevard. I’ve mostly been watching genre films (SF, Horror, Anime) and I realized this week that Classic Amazing Hollywood Studio Pictures is also a genre that I need to watch more of. I’m also on Team Bette Davis Forever, now.

I finished Dune. As I hoped, it affected me much more deeply and significantly than it did when I was 12 and didn’t have the ability to fully appreciate it. I kinda want to dive straight into Messiah, but I’m going to read Neil’s new book, first, and then maybe I’ll finally read Fall of Hyperion.

 

 

 

blog Photo Credit Tony Case on Flickr

I think it’s time for a reboot check-in

Posted on By Wil

I had decided that I wasn’t going to do these after a year, but since I’m still committed to the changes I made a little over a year ago, and I need to post something today, to keep the chain unbroken, I’m going to check in and see how I’m doing. I haven’t actually thought about these things until now, so when I give myself a grade today, it’ll be an honest grade, based on where I am right now.

If this is your first time hearing about the reboot, here’s what you need to know:

Just about one year ago, I took an honest look at myself and I didn’t like what I saw. I needed to reset a lot of habits, make some significant changes to the way I approached just about everything in my life, and keep working at it, even when it was hard.

I can’t even believe that it’s already been a year, and that it’s only been a year, because time feels like that when you’re 44, I guess.

Here are the things I decided to address:

  • Drink less beer.
  • Read more (and Reddit does not count as reading).
  • Write more.
  • Watch more movies.
  • Get better sleep.
  • Eat better food.
  • Exercise more.

Every month, I wrote a post that looked into each of those things I decided to change, and examined how I was doing with them. That was a helpful part of the exercise, because it made me look at myself and my choices honestly and fearlessly. At times, it motivated me to work harder, and at other times it encouraged me by making me realize that I was doing better than I thought.

This time around, since I haven’t done a public check-in since October, I’m going to give myself two grades on each point. One will be the overall since last time, and one will be for January. Here we go.

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