The Wishlist

I’ve updated “the Wishlist” and put it as a permalink under the “useful infos” bar to the right.

Quote of the Day

It’s been a long time since I posted a quote, so here’s an interesting one to chew on:

From tikasa on the SOE boards:

… all you neeed for a top end raid guild is 1 talented, highly intelligent person and 23 sheep that do what they are told and log on all the time ( motivated or bored? ).   1 person to figure out the strats and make sure that they are known.  1 person to make sure all know the gear they are required to get… 1 person to tell peeps what order to mash buttons in… 1 person to show you how to set up so you know when to mash and when to auto.. 1 person to figure out what the devs forgot to fix that gives an edge.

Beautiful

This picture sums up everything that is awesome about ASOIAF.

Look closely.

Missdoomcookie Brings the Everfrost Update to Light!

Finally!

It’s about darn time!

This should help players from STRUGGLING so much through the 40-50 range (I mean you can only run Steamfont so many times before you just want to hang yourself).

Here’s what the Cookie had to say:

A quick summary of the major changes you will see:

Roughly 50 new quests centralized in four new hubs (with a few sprinkled throughout the zone), as well as two Everfrost only collection quests.

Mobs have been re-leveled and re-tiered to provide pockets of heroic content but enable solo players to move through the zone.

There is now a tunnel that connects Bitterwind Trench and Hollowfrost grove.

New items throughout.

The changes are currently on Test and planned for LU48.

You can submit your thoughts and feedback HERE.

Joy!  EF is one of the most visually stunning zones in the game, and it’s way past time that newer players got to experience it at the same level as the Faydwer and Kunark zones!

We can hope LS is on the way!

Another Movie Post

Sorry guys, I just don’t have much to say on the EQ2 front, lately.

But I do have a hilarious quote from a great movie.

“These are the best years of our lives.  Or so they told us.  Personally?  I hated high school.  And I hated all of you.  And I hope you rot in hell.  Thank you.”

As delivered by the valedictorian in Imaginary Heroes.

Check it out.  Fantastic movie.  Dark comedy … equal parts serious and funny.

Deftones

From Abe on July 30:

Hey all, we’re almost finished tracking our record up here at The Spot and we’ll head up to Terry’s studio in Seattle next month to add the final touches and begin mixing. We’re all excited about how this record is taking shape, and can’t wait to share it with all of you! In the meantime, we want to let our friends in the Phoenix area know that we’ll be headlining KUPD’s End of Summer Scorcher Sept 20th in Peoria, AZ with our good friends Alice In Chains. Tickets go on sale this Saturday, AUG 2nd at all local AZ Club Tattoo locations. They’ll also be available online beginning Monday, AUG 4th via Tickets.com. Check it out at KUPD.com.

-Abe

WOOT!

The making of a Batman.

What I am currently watching :

8.5.08

Velvet Goldmine, American Psycho, Harsh Times — or, the making of a Batman.

I first saw American Psycho when I was in college.  I had read the book during my Junior year, and when the movie came out, I went and saw it.  I wasn’t sure what to expect; the book had been so over the top in its violence that I literally found myself afraid to pick it up at times.  If the movie was half as graphic as the book, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to watch it.  Of course, the film is nowhere near as graphic as the novel, although still quite visceral at moments.  There is something truly frightening in Bateman’s character, and it’s to Christian Bale’s credit that he played it so well.  I had no idea who Christian Bale was, at that time.  For years after I would generally forget who he was, except that he had played Patrick Bateman (and played him damn well).  So this past weekend I decided to rent the film again – 10 years later, I thought, maybe I would gain some additional insight.  I admit, with the recent hype surrounding Batman, my curiosity was two-fold — I really wanted to see the different sides of Christian Bale, as an actor.  There are certain parts I can appreciate more, now, and certain parts that still seem just as incoherent.  I can very much appreciate the technical fine touches of the actual filming; certain nuances like the music that was chosen to accompany various scenes, and the underlying criticisms leveled at commercialism and consumerism.  The story is more eerily prophetic since it was written in a pre-9/11 New York, so to watch it with that in mind adds a new level of potency to its message.  The character of Patrick Bateman is still as sociopathic and dissociative as ever; the book painted him as utterly heartless, the film adds in a shade of pity.

My second excursion into Bale roles was with the movie Harsh Times.  I admit, this one, I could not finish watching.  It isn’t that I found it particularly bad as a film, but it’s one of those films where, the problems it presents to the viewer are so hopeless and so fatalistic that you don’t NEED to finish watching it, because the conflict is resolved before the film has played out.  You know how the movie ends before it’s ended, because the main character is a man so utterly screwed up that the ending could be no other way.  Like his role in American Psycho, here in Harsh Times, Bale plays a sociopath.  The difference is that while Bateman was a biological psychotic, the character in Harsh Times is so as a result of post-war traumatic stress syndrome.  I’ve had experience with this disorder (in others), and maybe part of the reason I couldn’t find the heart to watch the whole film was because, at a certain point, it was just hitting too close to home and bringing up too many memories of times I would rather forget.  I can only recommend this as an exercise in watching something for the sake of studying film, little more.  What IS truly amazing, however, is that if you watch this and then compare Bale’s performance to his performance as Patrick Bateman, you really start to see how good actors are true chameleons.

Finally, I watched Velvet Goldmine.  One of my female friends told me about this film years ago, and I never bothered to hunt down a copy and watch it.  I’m not sure how to describe it, other than to say there there is a lot of sexual ambiguity, rock stars in drag.  It’s Ziggy Stardust.  It’s all about glam and therefore it comes across as almost un-aware of its own pretension, at times.  It’s decadent.  But that’s what the era was all about — and that seeming ignorance of what it presents is why it’s such a great film about the British glam rock era.  Anyway, Ewan McGregor (I really had to forget that I ever saw him in Star Wars in order to watch this film and fully appreciate his acting) plays someone at the forefront of the grunge movement.  This movie is set in the 70’s and 80’s, but they were taking a clear shot at idealizing his character as someone who might have turned into Kurt Cobain.  Couple that with Jonothan Rhys Myers character, who is straight out David Bowie — right down to the short cropped dyed hair, heavy makeup, tight outfits with glitter and feathers.  They even give him a stage name – Maxwell Demon.  So these two meet up and the gist of the plot is that they destroy one another through their attempt to create art and change the face of rock and roll.  One of them succeeds and ultimately ends up commercially successful, and the other fades into oblivion..  I think there is a line that sums it up: “A true artist performs and gives up none of himself.”  In the background, Christian Bale (can you tell I’m doing my research?) is a closeted homosexual teen, and later a grown journalist, who is trying to track down the vanished Brian Slade.

And this is where, putting it into the context of, okay, this is the same guy who plays Batman in 2008, this is the same guy who played a war vet in Harsh Times, the same guy who played an 80’s yuppie sociopath in American Psycho … now he’s playing a closeted teen / grown journalist in a film about glam rock ?  Finally, I begin to understand why he IS such a good Batman.  You really need to play 3 roles to be an effective Batman: Bruce Wayne as he is, Bruce Wayne as he pretends to be, and Batman the alter-ego.  If I had been the casting director and had seen Bale in the movies above … hell, I would have cast him, too.  In a second.

Needless to say.  I think we will be seeing a LOT more of Christian Bale.  A lot.  For a long time.  I can hope he chooses roles as diverse as he has, so far.  Those kinds of actors are too rare.