Golden Ticket

Posted on October 6, 2020 by Eric

It has become part of the American culture. The Gene Wilder version of Willy Wonka tumbling into our living room as he shows up to give the winners of the golden ticket a tour of his legendary chocolate factory. The contest was simply to purchase a chocolate bar and see if there was a golden ticket inside. Easy. Winner of each ticket gets in, but then only the purest, most well behaved of the children invited to the tour lasts until the end without being ejected in some way for poor behavior. At the end, Charlie learns that it has all been a test and he will inherit the chocolate factory. Very much a “rags to riches” sort of theme that resonates with most Americans.

While that story can give a warm, fuzzy feeling that’s only if you don’t look too closely.

I bring this up because there was a news story (here) about somebody (claiming to be the founder of the Jelly Belly candy company) declaring that he has hidden golden tickets in various places around the US and the ultimate winner will get a candy factory. Not joking – that’s his contest.

There are issues with this.

First and one might think, most importantly, the Jelly Belly company has been forced to come out and explain that this person is not, in fact affiliated with their company and has not been since around 1980 (four decades ago). So this person running this contest is essentially using the name of a famous candy to drum up business for his contest. It’s misdirection and marketing BS right from the start. A flourish to get attention without the substance it claims.

The contest itself is less than clear on the main page. It’s not actually for kids the way the story was. You’re required to be 18 or older to participate. You’ve got to pay a $50 entry fee up front. There’s a series of steps after the entry fee that lead to a treasure hunt that might mean you can be one of the finalists…

but that’s only if enough people sign up. IF they don’t sell enough tickets they bag the whole thing. Yes, it’s in the terms and conditions part.

You’re required to be able to connect to the internet and have a valid e-mail address. It seems like a little thing these days, but to some it’s really not. We’ve seen the disparity between those that have solid internet and those that don’t pretty clearly since the start of the pandemic.

So is there a factory? Sure. The building, the machines and the land with no guarantee of actual value. It does NOT include things like the customer list, the ingredients, the recipe or formulations for the actual candy. You know, little stuff. It doesn’t cover the taxes either. It sounds like an extremely one sided business deal that’s going to unload some weak or undervalued property on somebody else.

This contest is a symbol of what I think is at the core of issues in America today. It’s run by somebody that wants things to be “like they used to be” without any concept of just how out of whack that all sounds today. It shows a distinct lack of clarity about all the criticism that was brought against the original story. This is a shadow of a contest that was designed to keep the money and power in certain hands and not others. There are small barriers that a lot of people “in the right group” wouldn’t even notice. There’s this thought that a magic ticket will solve your problem in some way. That’s not how problems get solved. Problems get solved with work, ingenuity and consistency.

Don’t go looking for the easy way out. This has the look of a trap to me. Another ‘get rich quick’ kind of scenario that really won’t end well.

I’ll be interested to see if any candy comes from this.

Battle Ground

Posted on October 5, 2020 by Eric

Battle Ground by Jim Butcher

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I let this one stew for a day or two before I posted it.

View all my reviews

I brought this review over here because I like to do that when I’m down on a work that I’ve read. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – it’s hard to get into the published world. It takes a lot of work. Then, after all that work, it is out there in the world where people will judge it.

Three stars is the best I can do for this… and that’s strength of writing over time.

I always try to be positive about whatever review I’m writing. I try, but I am also honest about how I feel when I read these books. I am a fan too. I had some feelings about this one… and as you may have guessed they were not all positive.

Massive spoilers ahead. Do not read more if you don’t want to know.

I picked up this book on the Tuesday when it was released. I had read the first three chapters when they were released on line, so working and all the day to day things that got in the way of my reading only slowed me down a little. I finished the book by Thursday night, just after dinner. It was a typical reading speed for me when I read a Dresden Files book.

Positive stuff: if you want a master class on how to ramp the power and stakes of your story up over time, this series is it. The growth of both of those things has been steady, clear and understandable over all the novels. This is apocalyptic stuff (small ‘a’) and it hasn’t happened until book seventeen. It’s fantastic. The steady change over time is a great way to keep things fresh and the feel of the characters genuine for the long haul. The comparison that jumped to my mind immediately was the Monster Hunter series from Larry Correia. It’s a ton of fun and there are clear cut good guys and bad guys. The hero of the story saves the entire world in book one. Where do you go from there? What can you do in book two to make the stakes feel real? Dresden stops a drug dealer in book one and solves a murder case, but somehow it still feels like saving the world. I can only hope to emulate this in my own work.

The rest: Some of the speed of my finish was because I skimmed a few of the battle scenes. This book is a war novel. There is a war and there are eight times I can think of that the author used the same description. I get it. These are beyond human size / comprehension monsters and you pop and squish and go all Jackson Pollack when they catch you. There was a lot of that and I think there could have been less of it. I say that as somebody who writes military science fiction stories too – it’s not that I dislike the battle scenes, I don’t. They’re the core of this book. There’s a huge amount of fighting. The last book was the set up punches, this book was the right cross to the jaw. Sometimes the imagination is better than a description. Consider that a quibble.

Most of the time when I finish one of these novels I’m hungry for more. This time, not so much. I’m disappointed and angry. My excitement for the rest of the story is diminished.

Getting booted from the White Council. Not something I saw coming. Long ago (and may books earlier in the series) I predicted that Harry would become the Merlin. Shows you how well predictions tend to work out. The problem with getting booted is that is breaks the rules that have been set up in the series. IF they really thought that Harry broke rule #1 and used magic specifically against humans the penalty was always immediate execution, right? I mean Morgan and the sword thing just doesn’t matter anymore? Harry is not only guilty of this, but he’s got a track record of doing this in the past… and the council just says, “careful or next time we’ll get really angry…”. They’re a toothless bureaucracy at best if this is how it stands. Worst case is that the author has let the rules of his own world bend / break. I doubt this, but it’s something I noticed. I expect that this is a set up for something that happens in the next set of books, but it was a jarring bit of world building that seemed out of place. Sure I can justify it, but I shouldn’t be thinking about it.

I’ve been a fan of the author for a long time. He’s gone and landed himself in the same category as Joss Whedon now. Some will consider that high praise, but I don’t. Wash died, but it was the end of the series and the Dresden files is not over. And what did Butcher do?

He fucking shot Murph.

NO NO NO NO. NO.

From an intellectual point of view I understand. It’s war. War IS death, destruction and chaos. It is not pretty or organized nor does it make any sense at all. People die all the time in just as sad a manner. Not from some heroic action, but from the panic and terror of others.

I get it.

I hate it.

I know enough about myself at this point to understand that I tend to prefer classic heroics and happy endings. IF I want gritty, senseless death I’ll watch the fucking news. This is NOT why I come to these books. I don’t want gritty reality, I want escapism. This book took that away. Yes, it’s a world where there are supernatural forces at work. Murph will likely come back in much the same way that Valeria did in the 1982 Conan movie. She will be a glittering warrior that will save Harry from beyond at some point – but it’s not the same. There’s just too much of this kind of crap in the world and I don’t want it in my fiction too.

Disappointed and not enthusiastic for more just now.

Necrenomi… notebook

Posted on September 30, 2020 by Eric

Klaatu, Varada… neck tie.

Army of Darkness still makes me laugh. Faking the words of the ceremony was hilarious. “OK then. That’s it… I said the words, I did!”.

There’s a very small YouTube channel out there called ‘Worlds of Waynecraft”. I stumbled onto the page when I was wandering through videos one day and discovered this fun looking craft. Make YOUR notebook look like the Necronomicon. It’s really a lot easier than I thought it might have been.

I started off by drawing the rough face outline onto the cover of the blank notebook I was setting up.

Once the lines were in place where I liked them it was time for the hot glue.

I used two or three layers over each line to give some emphasis to where the main portion of the face would be. I forgot to photograph the next bit. Essentially mix up a half and half water and glue wash ( I used regular old school glue) and tap layers of tissue paper over the entire page. Don’t worry about being neat – you’re looking for wrinkles.

Once I was happy with the look I had to let it dry. It took forever… and I’m not patient. As soon as it was even close to dry enough, I took a slightly thinned layer of black acrylic paint over the whole thing.

Once that dried (OMG FOREVER) I mixed up some brown, red and flesh color to paint over the black. I could be pretty loose with the whole thing because if any of the black showed through it wouldn’t be a big deal.

Let it dry again, then dry brushed a light tan / fleshy mix over the high points and the wrinkles. Once that was dry, a light black wash to get some shadows back in the eyes and other places. I am actually pretty happy with the results.

Taking some words from an inspirational friend of mine, “Despite everything, create.”

Spell Effects

Posted on September 27, 2020 by Eric

I have a lot of actual work to do. I have 2 deadlines for edits that I need to hand in and some website work I need to do to get my site here cleaned up a little. Add a couple of professional touches that I am missing. I just wasn’t feeling it today. As happens so very frequently of late, I couldn’t sleep. My body is still in rebellion about something with aches, pains, and lots of other unpleasantries. So when I finished my second cup of coffee this morning I decided that some crafting was in order. Take on a small project, finish something and see if that would help.

My project of choice today was creating area of effect / spell effects for my D&D game. I picked a handful of spells and set about trying to make them in a form that we can just drop on my shiny new dungeon tiles next time we get to play.

Sculpting things with hot glue is an art form. It takes practice. I gathered up the stuff I needed and laid things out. The spells I decided to create for were web, Evard’s black tentacles, entangle, flaming sphere and wall of fire. I’d seen a video talking about how to go about making most of these before and they felt like things I could handle.

I hadn’t seen the wall of fire before. I’d seen a magic circle spell effect. The concept was the same and, as luck would have it I found this old, flat computer disk case in the bits box. I figured I’d pull it in half and each half would be it’s own wall. I popped on some safety glasses and went after the one side with my craft snippers. Safety glasses were a very good idea, trying to snip parts out of brittle plastic… not so much. After completely destroying one half of the box I decided that minimal changes to the other side was the way to go. I liked the fact that is has a square edge that will help it stand without some kind of crazy extra base addition.

I also had this thought about the flaming sphere. I was going to use a miniature base and start with a clear pony bead. I also planned to sprinkle a little bit of glitter into the glue as it was cooling. I figure that each of these things is a magic spell effect and a little glitter wouldn’t hurt. I thought I could start with a little bit of glue in the center of the base, pop the bead on there then start working my “sphere” outward from there. As it turns out, gravity was not my friend here. It made everything droopy and very non-sphere like. I changed tactics. I laid out a flat set of flames on the parchment paper and decided to curl that around the round mini base. The effect would be less “sphere” but it would still give the idea. I went with it.

Forged ahead and started laying out the squares for the area effect things like web, tentacles and entangle. Normally parchment paper is really great for not sticking to the hot glue. This time for some reason, when I laid out my squares the paper just would not let go of the glue. I did what I could and pulled them all apart once they were dry. Moving from piece to piece while waiting for things to dry was a big help. This is a definite bonus to multitasking.

I gave a little bit extra to each of my squares. Some of it worked, some of it really didn’t. I used glow in the dark paint under the entangle spell. I added a little green glitter in with the flocking. I tried to get one or two extra bits of vine to stick and stay. The glow works where you can see it, if it’s dark enough. The flocking doesn’t look as great as I want it to and the vines just keep flopping off no matter what glue I use. I spray finished the whole thing and I’m just going to hope for the best. I added a little webbing from our Halloween decorations to my area effect for the web spell. I only painted the tentacles… and they seem to have turned out the best.

Painting the wall of flame and the flaming sphere worked out pretty well I think – and the wet palette actually is a super cool way to handle paints. I now understand why so many folks talk it up. I needed to take a break in the middle of these projects and when I got back all the pain was just as if I hadn’t left at all. I’ll be looking to the wet palette from now on.

I probably need to resize my wet palette

I struggled with various parts of each of these projects. The biggest issue I have still, is patience. I’m working very hard at getting better with this. Paint needs time to dry. Glue needs time to dry. Hot glue needs time to dry of you’ll burn your damn finger… again. Sometimes the effect you think will be great doesn’t work out that way. It’s a learning process. I’m looking forward to doing a lot more learning on these sorts of projects moving forward.

Here are some of the finished looks:

Entangle, magically wrapping you in nature

Web, tangled up and waiting for a spider

Another Attack of Opportunity!

Posted on September 25, 2020 by Eric

I am delighted to share another video where I get to chat with Jon about D&D. This time we’re covering the top 5 novels that are fuel for your imagination – inspiring to your game. It was a fun conversation. I really look forward to our next chance to chat.

IF you don’t have the 50 minutes or so to watch, or if you’re at all interested I have put the notes I made up before we shot the video below here:

Top 5 fantasy books to read for inspiration (and why…)

I thought this was a great subject for a lot of reasons. First and foremost, reading anything is important. The further you reach, the greater the inspiration you’ll achieve. Reading a fantasy novel is what got me started along the path toward playing D&D.

Reading fantasy is a great way to pick up ideas, stretch your characters, expand your game world, learn new things about the real world AND sharing what you’ve read with others is a great way to connect with friends. There’s a lot of good that comes from digging into a book.

Why five? Because if we didn’t put a limit on this, the list would be boundless. There are hundreds of fantasy titles out there. You absolutely can find something you want to read. It will definitely help your game, but we don’t want to turn this into a book-cast.

This was not an easy list to compile. Not for lack of choices, but the shear number of things to pick through!

I’m going to eliminate 2 series right off the bat.

First – The Hobbit (and by association the LOTR trilogy). This is a tried and true “go to” for fantasy. It’s the starting point for so much that I don’t know how to take a fresh look at it. IF by some chance you’ve never read any Tolkien, it’s the basis for a huge amount of what we’re talking about.

Second – I’m not going to pander here. Any novel by our esteemed host is great inspiration for fantasy AND I absolutely recommend Blood and Iron for a setting that is not a traditional pseudo medieval fantasy look. I just think that “advertising” wasn’t necessarily the right way to go.

So – top 5 to read for inspiration – and why!

#1 – Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed. (DAW books, 2012)

This is a great book. Above and beyond that, the inspiration part is in the use of a non-traditional hero character, a middle-eastern background, a murder mystery AND considerations of religion (like we talked about in our last visit).

If you’re doing an adventure involving genies, shifting sands, flying carpets, anything along those lines this is a book you need to get!

#2 – The Misenchanted Sword by Lawrence Watt Evans (DEL REY 1985)

Empires at war. Wizards, warriors, miscast spells and curses. IF you want to see the sort of variety you can have with some of the traditional characters in a D&D setting this is a great one. This is great if you want to teach your players to be careful what they ask for!

#3 – Thieves World edited by Robert Asprin (ACE 1978)

Adventures featuring a party of sneaks, rouges, assassins and other double dealing sorts can be a huge amount of fun. The thieves’ world series is shared world. It’s the same setting with shared characters over a series of short stories. There is a lot to be gleaned from these pages AND there are stories by some of the fantasy greats in there (Poul Anderson, Joe Haldeman, Robert Asprin…)

#4 – His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik (DEL REY 2006)

Dragons as weapons. Aerial combat. Navy ships. Kingdoms at war. This series really gives a lot of reasons to love it. Yes, it is outside the “traditional” swords and horses time frame. I don’t like to have pistols or cannons or modern weaponry mixed with my D&D campaign, but this book has a lot to get the creative juices flowing. Absolutely worth the read, even if you’re not using it for D&D.

#5 – The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson (TOR 2010)

Massive, immersive, epic fantasy. Knights, wars, magic and myths all mixed together in a fat, meaty book. Ballpark 1200 pages. This has rich, detailed views into a fantasy world that any gamer or game master should be reading (and there’s a lot to read!) Sanderson’s style is easy to read and the pages really melt away – do not let the size of the book intimidate you!

Tiling

Posted on September 21, 2020 by Eric

When I was a kid playing Dungeons & Dragons there weren’t many options when looking for parts to enhance your game. The hobby was relatively new and the market was just ramping up. You may be thinking, “here we go, another things were better back in the day statement”. Not so. I’m actually stunned, amazed and really happy about where things are for D&D and associated parts of the hobby right now.

Some lucky few of us as kids were able to work for or add to the Christmas list official D&D miniatures. I’ve managed to hang on to those, but I no longer have any of the other things we used to supplement our game. One of the things we used to do was carve up any corrugated cardboard we could lay out hands on and cut them up into various combinations of squares. These flat ’tiles’ became what we used to represent the fabled 10′ x 10′ stone corridor that has become synonymous with classic dungeon crawls. I clearly remember the shoe box of cardboard I had filled with various combinations of corridor or room that could be laid out to show the ‘surroundings’ of the miniatures we were using. The imagination assistance worked really well.

Fast forward to today. There are multiple companies out there now selling every sort of miniature pieces or parts for dungeon masters to layout and confound players with. The pure art of these pieces really is exceptional.

An example of a professional modular set.

It is also expensive. Paying the artists is important, but frequently WAY out of budget range.

Happily, the internet has also provided a way to connect with other people that are just as excited about creating these worlds as I am. There are literally thousands of folks out there coming up with new and imaginative ways to use various bits and pieces from around the house to create these worlds on a budget. I started posting a little while back about my journey back into this, and I’ve gone back to the very basics.

I made up some dungeon tiles.

It’s a very beginner level project. I saw a fellow crafter post something wondering about being proud of simple things, like these beginner projects. One of the most challenging things I’ve found about digging back into this hobby is learning to be patient and go through the various steps toward learning and experience. You don’t get to be a pro on day one. Stack up the lessons… and the dungeon tiles.

I started off with 1/2” extruded polystyrene insulation board (XPS) and carved up a bunch of shapes that would be my new set of tiles. I did all of this with a metal carpenters square, a pen and a box cutter. No high end, out of the budget stuff here. After carving all those bits up, I understand why crafters go after hot wire cutters and other expensive tools. This was labor intensive. I found that even on my best cuts, I wasn’t necessarily square or plumb. I forged ahead. These were meant to be faux stone after all. Anything carved by hand would have imperfections and odd edges.

Once all the parts were cut, I laid out a 1” x 1” grid on all the tiles. This is the size of a large number of standard miniature bases and provides a convenient method for estimating distances at scale. I also added in a number of imperfections using the ball point pen. The idea was to gouge the foam. This would allow paint to get into the cracks and show the variations when painted. When I was painting I discovered that I probably needed to apply more pressure when creating my textures and adding cracks. I don’t think I went deep enough in many cases, so the paint mostly filled some of the cracks I made. As a YouTube crafter I follow said, “Crack to taste”. I did. I’ll do better next time.

Once all the parts were set it was time to paint. It’s been a long time since I attempted to judge how much paint I might need in order to cover various miniature parts. I managed not to waste too much in my multiple coats. Black was first. I watered down a little bit of straight up black craft paint and covered them all. This would show up as deeper shadows whenever the rest of the paint was applied and didn’t seep down into all the cracks. Just had to wait for it to dry.

Once that was dry, it was on to a gray coat. This gray was applied pretty heavily. I was afraid that I had over done it when I finished with the gray. Some of the cracks had filled in. It was hard to see the texture. I wasn’t super happy, but I was this far along, I just needed to keep rolling. And wait for it to dry… again.

I thought it was too heavy, or too dark… or too… something.

Next up was a dry brush over the high points. I misjudged the amount of paint a couple of times and my brush was not nearly as ‘dry’ as it was supposed to be. I used some paper towel and dabbed the excess back off when I could. I mixed a light (dolphin) gray along with a color called blue stoneware. It gave things a bit of a blueish tint, but that’s OK. It was what I was going for.

The black crisscross pattern is actually the shadow of the window screen

Just had to wait for things to dry… again.

Once that bit was done, it was on to the wash. Back to black, but super watered down. I forgot to add in any sort of green or brown to add a feel of “grime” to this part, but I was just happy to be moving on. Looking back, I might have wanted to give each step a little more thought. As I said above, nobody’s a pro on day one.

As things turned out, I’m a lot happier with them after all the steps were finished. So now it’s just a matter of sealing things up with a glue wash and stacking these up. Ready for my next gaming session! I’m calling this a success and I’m already looking forward to making more stuff.

Have you made anything lately?

Liars

Posted on September 20, 2020 by Eric

Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I would not have picked this book up if it were not a book club pick. I am glad that I read it. It was an interesting mix of urban fantasy and mystery novel, with a bent toward noir. A non-magic private investigator is called in to figure out the murder of a staff member at a prestigious school for wizards.

It’s a good idea. The characters are a mix of adults and students. It is unlike another, well known wizarding school in that the students aren’t the ones solving the mystery. The students don’t outwit the adults. They don’t “luck” into clues and dash about like a Scooby-Doo cartoon (in one door and out another). There is a real feel of grit in here ~ thus the “noir” part. Kids use their gifts to do the sort of things that kids do – love notes, graffiti, pranks… and it adds to the mix.

Ivy is the main character / non-magical investigator. She makes a lot of bad choices. I would have been on board with her… until. I’m not going to spoil any parts of the plot here in the review, but there’s a singular time in the story that I can point to when I was “bumped away” from this character. Up to that point I was fine, after that I was just disappointed. What it does is show a very real and believable character, so I understand that it’s my own desire to read characters that are somehow slightly more heroic than ordinary folks that caused me to dislike her.

This is also a murder mystery. I don’t read enough of the mystery genre to have figured this one out early on in the book, but there were many clues. There were also a fair number of red herrings along the way – some of which I totally went for, so that part was well done.

In all, I’m glad I read it but I don’t suspect I’d be rushing back for more.

View all my reviews

Something I didn’t add to my review over on Goodreads is any commentary about the cover art. Since this was a book club choice I was also aware of imagery in the text. I frequently look for scenes that inspire a look or a view that would make great art. I usually attempt to use that inspiration to create a piece of art that relates to the book that we can use for the cover of our fanzine. This book had very, very little in the way of imagery. There was maybe one scene that could have been used and it was a little bit of a spoiler for the story. I stayed away. I think that lack of image, the dull visual if you will that was a part of making the story less appealing to me than it could have been. I like watching the “movie” of the story in my head while I read and this book just didn’t have as much to offer there as a number of other things we’ve read did.

You Should Be Watching

Posted on September 18, 2020 by Eric

This article was originally published in Watch The Skies fanzine – September 2020

I gave sincere consideration to putting the Netflix movie Project Power in here this month. It seemed like pandering to me. Diversity is extremely important. Representation in science fiction, fantasy and comic book based stories matters. Project Power is a great science fiction action movie – go watch it – but it’s not what I’m going to emphasize today. Today we talk about the Spanish movie Unknown Origins.

Unknown Origins is the story of a detective who must find a serial killer. The serial killer is recreating comic book origin stories as his murder scenes. The detective’s best hope in cracking the case comes from the nerdy comic book loving son of a fellow officer. It’s part buddy cop film and part love letter to comics and cosplay. As the story unfolds we get to dig deeper in to the lives and relationships that drive each of the people involved in this case while trying to solve the mystery.

This movie has a lot of very fun moments in it. I’m not going to give any specific examples as I don’t want to give any of the best lines away – and there are a couple of very good lines in there. It’s not a long movie, clocking in just around an hour and a half, but it packs a lot of stuff into a very short time. The creators have a few bits that land in the area of stereotype, but then they knock the edges off of them and give a few touching moments in the film. It definitely has a viewpoint that could be called ‘defensive’ as far as comics and cosplay goes.

The mystery itself is very, very well written. I thought I had it all figured out and was completely wrong. I had used some of the clues laid out in the movie, but I didn’t pick the right ones. I asked my wife to tell me her theory as soon as she thought she had it figured out. She used a different set of clues that were laid out in the background and came up with an incorrect answer as well. I have seen at least one other review out there that said they’d figured out the mystery right away, essentially as soon as they saw that one character. Perhaps I need to watch more mysteries, but to me it was refreshing to have a mystery that kept us guessing right up to the big reveal.

I recommend watching this movie in the original Spanish with subtitles. I watched the trailer with English dub and it just lost something in the translation. I also recommend hanging around until the very end. There’s a post credits scene, just as there is with any good comic book film!

Dunes

Posted on September 14, 2020 by Eric

No, I’m not going to the beach. No, I’m not going to the desert either. I really don’t like that kind of heat and I definitely don’t like that much sand. I’ve been to the desert before. I don’t like it. “It’s a dry heat…” is the common refrain. Yes, so is my oven. I don’t want to climb in there either.

This is about the latest film adaptation of Dune for the big screen.

I know that many folks won’t remember so I’m going to start off with pair of links. Around five years ago I found this film that was all about the version of Dune that never got made. I wrote up a bit about it, but have since reconsidered certain aspects of my stance on that film. It is worth knowing the story of the first attempt to get this movie made because a lot of other films rose from the ashes of that attempt. I posted it here.

Second, I wrote about how loaded 1984 was in terms of movies. I was fourteen that year and it was absolutely the sweet spot for movies for me. There were easily a dozen movies that have had a lasting cultural impact. We’ve got access to a huge number of these films still and a number of the franchises are still going. I wrote it up here, and on that list was a little film called Dune. And they’re making it again.

So, here we are in 2020 (the year of suck) and there’s another version of the movie being made. I get it, Dune is a huge, sweeping story with lots of space (see what I did there, space… ok, I’ll stop) for story telling and interpretation. There is at least one, perhaps two generations of people that have not seen the 1984 adaptation and that’s a lot of money to leave out there. Computer graphics have rocketed forward (… I… I clearly can’t help myself) and give a huge number of options that were certainly not available when the earlier film was made. There are reasons why somebody would want to make another version of Dune.

This relates to another conversation that I’ve had off and on with other fans as well. When you come to something, either film or book, in your life’s journey really matters. I’m not going to attempt to argue for never recreating a film nor will I argue against mining the same thing over again. There are a handful of instances where the version of something I really like is actually a remake of something much older that I didn’t know existed. I don’t like the original as much as the remake version that was the first one I saw, “my” version. It happens.

I wish they’d spend the money on something new. Yes, I know there are all those fans that haven’t seen the old one in a theater. I’m not sure banking on those fans to go to the theater is such safe money these days. It seems like those days of red carpet premieres might be gone for good. Who knows?

I showed the trailer for the new movie to my daughter and one of her friends. I wanted the opinion of young fans. My daughter was aware of the older version (though she told me that she definitely didn’t ‘hang around’ while I was watching it) and her friend had never seen nor heard of the story at all. My wife watched along with us, then I asked for opinions.

“Well, they’ve got money. They’ve got some very famous actors in there.”

“It’s so dark. Why can’t we see any of what’s going on. It needs to be brighter.”

and lastly, from my wife, “I’ll have to see what they do with it. I like the old one, but it wasn’t nearly what the book was. I should pick that one up again and see what in my memory is the book and what has crept in there from the movie”.

I explained to the kids that they’d had money for the old one too. They seemed impressed that that “old guy” from that super old band The Police had been in the movie too. They didn’t really recognize any of the other folks, but they got the idea. Then I ran the video that I’m going to link below. The reactions amounted to, “OK, we see what you’re saying”.

My biggest issue with a remake is just that – it’s going back and using the same recipe. It’s going to have to work extra hard to be fresh and worthy. Things like how horribly dark all the movies are these days (a fad I hope) aren’t substantial changes and are decidedly not good. It’s not just my ‘old eyes’ either. One of the kids asked why she couldn’t see anything on the screen. that kind of dark just doesn’t help the aesthetic at all. It’s a desert planet – the sunlight might make it, I don’t know, super bright? Just a thought.

I was happy to find that somebody had made a video cut using bits of the old movie version and putting them up side by side with the new version. This film person has a host of side by side cuts like that posted to his channel. I think looking at the side by side will show in terms far better than I am able to string together by way of text what bothers me about remakes. Not only have I seen it, but there are in fact parts of the “update” that are not necessarily better. Check it out for yourself and see what I mean:

What do you think? See the new one? Stick with the old one? Watch them both and compare them at length?

Attack of Opportunity

Posted on September 12, 2020 by Eric

Because so many of you have heard me lament all the free time I have on my hands (Ha!) I went and got into something else.

My buddy Jon has a YouTube channel and produces a show about Dungeons and Dragons called “Attacks of Opportunity”. Guess who he was kind enough to allow to be a guest on the show?

That’s right – I’m stepping out of my comfort zone and speaking very publicly about my lifetime hobby. I’m a gamer and have been for a long time. Dungeons and Dragons has been my game of choice as long as I can remember. I even remember talking my grandfather into playing at some point when I was a kid. I had passion.

Turns out, I still have that passion it has just been tempered over the years.

I’m really glad that I got the chance to be part of the production. It was a tough subject to start with (as mentioned in the video) but it was one that frequently needs attention. I have a lot of ideas on stuff to talk about when it comes to gaming and D&D particularly. I’m hoping to have a chance to be part of the channel again.

Here’s the video:

What sort of topic would you like to talk about? Is there a question that’s been hanging around out there that you wanted somebody to address? I’d like to hear it!

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