Post Pseudo-House-Warming

[handslive]

Books:

• Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett. I honestly thought I'd read this one, but no. That was pretty funny (as usual).
• Hostage by Robert Crais. Another totally gripping, believable story. Wow. He does such a good job writing about heroic characters with real world flaws, fuck ups, and scars. I don't know how well he does for the crooks, but it feels believable. And he just doesn't let up. Amazing. I think all the action takes place in under 24 hours. Maybe in under 12 hours. And the excerpt from the next novel looks like another Elvis Cole story. Excellent! :-) Now I can't wait.

Music:

• Nothing new. I'm in a rut and even Scarlet Cape is not pulling me out. I'm playing a bit, but not practicing if you know what I mean.

Movies:

• Swordfish. Not bad. Sort of anonymous. They got the computer stuff wrong again, as usual. Erk. I swear they're doing the same thing with these movies that they do with Star Trek. "And then [tech]." "But couldn't we [tech]?" I feel like someone should write up a sample for these people. You could do worse than to go to GIAC and look at their Incident Handling practicals. Here are real world cases and some of them aren't badly written either. But no. Instead we get people talking about firewalls and encryption as though one depended on the other or as though they were interchangeable. Sorry. Personal rant.
• Conspiracy Theory. I watched this on cable the other night. I'd seen most of it before when we rented it a couple of years ago, but I think I slept through the last quarter or so. The first half or so was nearly brilliant. Gibson is such a believable psycho. If anything the character should have been even a little darker or more on the edge so we'd feel appropriately uncomfortable when he's coming on to Roberts. We need to feel his compulsion in a much less wholesome way to make it less clear who the bad guy is until much later. As it is, there's no doubt from the very beginning of the movie. I think that's mostly a problem with the way the character is portrayed and filmed, rather than with the script. He's a little too clean and well kept, a little too wholesome overall. But look at what he's doing during the film and he's not a safe guy to be around really.

Games:

• Serious Sam. Finished it on 'Easy'. (I had to go with Easy. The game was kicking my butt.) I'm working my way very slowly through it on 'Normal'. And the whole thing with the secrets is driving me nuts.
• Baldur's Gate II. Made a little more progress, but there's some serious destruction to deal with further into the sewers. I'm starting to wonder if I should have rolled up a character from scratch. I think I would have started at a higher level (maybe a good thing).

TV:

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Season 2. Picked up the packaged DVD set. Need to get Season 1, too. I'm sort of sorry I wasn't following this.

Comments

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

"Conspiracy Theory" was one of those films I was desperate to see when I first heard about it, and then it turned out to be rather different from what I'd imagined. I NEVER expected her to get involved with him, for one thing. That was a bit of a cop-out, far as I'm concerned. And I agree with you about how he should have been portrayed. I liked it, but I don't think I'd see it again.

-J