Tag Archives: review

Review: Source Code and a WoW Rant

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Review: Source Code:

So I recently rented the sci-fi time travel thriller, Source Code. I’d heard a lot of good things about it, but it didn’t quite live up to expectations.

Now, don’t get me wrong. This was a good movie. But it wasn’t as good as it could have been.

Source Code follows a soldier–Coulter Stevens, ably played by Jake Gyllenhaal–who mysteriously awakens in a time machine, where he is forced to repeatedly take over the life of a man who died in a train bombing. His mission is to discover the bomber’s identity before he can strike again, which is complicated by his becoming attached to Christine–a women who also died on the train–and the obvious stress of repeatedly dying in the explosion.

The movie does stumble out of the gate with the pseudo science behind the time machine, which is so ridiculous it makes me pine for Star Trek technobabble. Basically, the idea as I understand it is that you can plug someone’s brain into a dead guy’s brain and thus create a magic time portal to an alternate universe.

The other main issue with this movie is that it is not nearly as long as it should have been. This is a very complex and intriguing story, and cramming it into 90 minutes made it feel quite rushed. I didn’t feel as much regret over Christine’s inevitable and repeated deaths or as much of the pain of Coulter living through that horror again and again as I should have.

But I’m being more harsh than the movie deserves. This is a very good premise, and there are some pretty good twists. The acting is good all around. The ending is a little too neat and tidy for my tastes, but also very enjoyable in some ways–I can’t be more specific without getting into major spoiler territory.

One surprise pleasure of the movie is the interactions between Coulter and Goodwin, the woman operating his time machine. Goodwin begins the movie as a very cold and mechanical-seeming character, but as time goes on and she bears witness to more of Coulter’s trials–well, you’ll see. It’s an interesting progression.

When you get down to it, Source Code is a good movie; it’s just that it could have been a brilliant movie with a few small tweaks.

Overall rating: 7.9/10

Rant:

I originally intended to devote this entry entirely to my Source Code review and my graphics, but my recent trials in World of Warcraft have required me to vent.

There seems to be something about leading a raid that robs people of all humanity and decency. I’ve always known this, but lately, the problem seems to be getting worse.

Half the time when you whisp someone who posts a looking for more message in Trade, they just ignore you. I can’t comprehend the immense rudeness that allows people to do this–on the rare occasions I’m a raid leader or assist, I respond to every single whisper I get–but that’s not the worst of it.

A few nights ago, someone asked for a ranged DPS for Cho’gall. I asked if a rogue would be acceptable–probably a stupid question, granted, but all they have to do is say no. But apparently this was a grievous insult on my part, because the raid leader only responded to call me a troll.

Then today I spotted someone LFM for a Nefarian raid. Lately I’ve been having trouble with people who say “LFM” when they mean “LFG,” so I asked how many people he already had–not a step I normally bother with, but I was short for time and didn’t want to wait on finding eight more people. But I guess this is a no no, since he got snippy and refused to tell me. I let my anger get the better of me and made a somewhat snide comment in Trade about how he would get more people for his raid if he answered questions, and proceeded to get insults heaped on me from many more players. My ignore list, once seldom touched, is growing quite large as of late.

Ignored, badgered, and insulted. This is why I will never join a raiding guild. I enjoy raiding, but the culture it creates is abysmal–second only to PvPers in awfulness.

Retro Review: Black Company

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Retro Review: Black Company:

The Black Company is series of twisted fantasy novels by author Glen Cook, and it’s one of the most unique reads I’ve ever had–which is both a positive and a negative.

The Black Company books follow, not surprisingly, the Black Company, Last of the Free Companies of Khatovar,* the baddest, roughest, toughest, meanest mercenary company around.

*(A fact they are very proud of, despite the fact that they’ve been around so long they no longer have any idea what Khatovar is or what happened to the other Free Companies.)

On paper (no pun intended), the Black Company books are very ordinary. Blah blah ancient evil returns, blah blah last stand against the darkness. The universe is extremely traditional, right down to wizards jealously guarding their true names lest they lose their powers.

What’s unique is the execution. When the evil Ten Who Were Taken escape from their eternal prison, the Black Company is hired by them. When the last stand against the darkness comes, the Black Company is there to help crush the last hope of freedom.

Needless to say, it takes some getting used to. These are very, very dark books, and it can be difficult to identify with the protagonists when the best among them are just not participating in the rape and torture going on all around them–they’re not trying to stop it.

What saves these books is the writing. They’re all written in first person perspective; whose perspective that is varies a bit from book to book (to the author’s credit, each character has a unique voice, and it’s fairly easy to distinguish between them), but most of the time, it’s Croaker, the Black Company’s physician/chronicler. Supposedly, the books are his chronicles of the Company–the Black Company’s devotion to its history borders on the religious.

These books are worth reading just for Croaker’s dry wit and profound cynicism. The most horrible atrocities are just oddly amusing when told through his wry voice. I really have to give Glen Cook credit for the quality of the writing here. It does not feel like you’re reading something written by Glen Cook; it feels like you’re reading a book by Croaker. And Croaker’s about as close to a good person as you will ever see in the Company, so that helps.

It’s also worth noting that the Company is not on the side of the bad guys for the entire series–it’s really just the first few books. Whether or not they ever really qualify as the good guys is arguable, but at the very least, they wind up as the lesser of two evils.

One other thing I need to mention about these books is the Black Company’s two wizards, Goblin and One-Eye. Simply put, they are made of awesome.

Each is described as “older and uglier than sin,” which is an interesting coincidence, since sin is their favourite pastime. One-Eye is a tiny, wiry witch doctor from some primeval jungle in the ass end of nowhere, and is known for his hideous appearance, his eye patch, his association with every black market in every settlement everywhere, and for being the owner of the oldest, ugliest, filthiest hat in existence. Oh, and did I mention he’s the Company dentist?

Goblin is fat and squeaky, and just as steeped in criminality as his cohort. Both spend the vast majority of their time trying to make the other’s life miserable with an endless spree of magical pranks and jokes–such as making each other vomit hundreds of spiders. The only thing more hilarious than their endless brawling is how incredibly blase about it the rest of the Company is.

For the sake of expedience, I’ve been reviewing this series as one homogenous block, but it’s really not at all. This is a very long series that covers several different story arcs. It varies in tone, content, and quality by quite a bit. All I can say is that if you average it out, it’s pretty good. It’s also worth noting that the overall trend in Black Company’s quality is upward–it gets better the farther into it you get. You need to have a somewhat strong stomach, but if you’re in the market for something a little different, I highly recommend this series.

Overall rating: 8/10

These days, the books are usually sold in four omnibuses (the books are both small and numerous, so it makes sense), and my Amazon Affiliate is no exception. For the record, the proper reading order is “Chronicles of the Black Company,” “The Books of the South,” “The Return of the Black Company,” and “The Many Deaths of the Black Company.”