jgmcquarrie

The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past

What’s The Game? A Link To The Past.

How Much Did You Know About It Before Playing? 100% of nothing. I’ve been ~~corrupted~~ persuaded to play these by my fella. They are something that have been a huge part of his life and he wanted to share them with me. I’ve been meaning to get into gaming in some kind of form again for simply ages. I always loved playing video games when I was a teenager (Elite, the best game ever, was a favourite, which nicely dates me) but come university it fell away never to re-emerge. Since this was a good chance to get back into it, and also share something important with the love of my life, here I am gaming again.

Introduction

Don’t worry, it’s short!

I’m completely new to the Zelda series and a compelte, utter, and irreducable noob when it comes to gaming. Alight, not quite, but most of my experience has been with FPS (Quake, just to show my age, Call of Duty 2, that sort of thing) and nothing really along the lines of Zelda since the ZX Spectrum was A Thing. This is a series that, beyond the fact that it exists and has a dedicated following, I know absolutely nothing about. Not the background, not the lore, not the production, not even the age of the series.

So now, thanks to my fella, I’m playing Zelda games. On the Switch, if that’s relevant. I’ll write them up as I go through them, though how much detail I go into remains to be seen.

Anyway, first up, A Link To The Past!

Stop Making Sense

What’s The Movie? The 1984 Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense.

What’s It All About, JG? Watching a band at the absolute pinnacle of their abilities perform what is arguably the greatest concert film ever put together. Capturing the band towards the end of 1983, promoting the Speaking In Tongues album and just before they tilted over into the full-on pop of Little Creatures, Stop Making Sense highlights the band’s back catalogue but changed, warped, adjusted, and generally rearranged for the film. It was shot at the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles over four nights, the final result being a blend of footage from different nights. The whole of Stop Making Sense was conceived of from the word go as a concert that would be filmed, and David Byrne serves as artistic director, pulling the whole project together. It’s directed by Jonathan Demme in his first outing behind the camera, not that you’d know it from looking at the – frankly amazing – footage. Why cover a 1984 film now? Well, because it’s been re-released back into the cinema in a glorious 4K IMAX restoration to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the original release.

Barbie

What’s the Movie? Barbie

What’s It All About, JG? Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) lives a perfect life in Barbieland with lots of other different Barbies and Kens. One day she has strange, rather existential thoughts about dying and her world slowly moves away from its perfect state as she becomes more human. To correct this, she visits Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon) who advises her to go to The Real World and figure out who’s playing with her and fix the problem. Travelling to the real work (well, LA) with Ken (Ryan Gosling), Barbie is shocked to discover that men run the world, feminism hasn’t been solved and that the girl she thought was playing with her, Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), in fact hates her. Turns out it was the girl’s Mum, Gloria, (America Ferrera) that loved playing with the doll and, after escaping from Mattel, they all return to Barbieland. However, Ken has learned about the patriarchy and tries to overthrow the rule of the various Barbies by having men – men! – take control. With guile, cunning and intelligence, the various Barbies defeat the men and “our” Barbie chooses to leave the perfection of Barbieland behind for the real world and becomes human.

Friends II

Right, it’s Major Update time!

*jaunty guitar, corny lyrics, frivolous fountain frolicking*

So, I am now up to Episode 15, The One Where Ross and Rachel Take a Break. I have intentionally stopped on the cliffhanger and I don’t yet know how it resolves (so please, no spoilers for the next couple of days at least – actually if you could avoid spoilers except for the very most general ones, that would very much be appreciated. Talk back, not forwards!).

Friends

A first-time watch-through from a series I have somehow entirely bypassed.

So here’s the thing. Despite being very much A 90s Person, and having now reached the grand old age of half a century, I have, or rather until recently had, never seen an episode of Friends.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

A cracking adventure for Indy’s final outing?

What’s The Movie? Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

What’s It All About? The film kicks off with a digitally de-aged Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford, as if you need to be told) going through a typical punching-Nazis adventure/backstory towards the end of World War II. After shenanigans, he ends up retrieving the titular Dial of Destiny (or Archimedes Dial or Antikythera) which he leaves with fellow adventurer (sort of) Basil Shaw (Toby Jones). We then move to the present where Jones is old, divorcing Marion, retiring from teaching, and very much alone. But that can’t be it, so in waltzes Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Action Hero) to spice things up. She’s his Goddaughter and child of Basil Shaw, who was driven mad by his obsession with the Dial. Indy took it back off him to spare him his obsession but, rather than destroying it as he promised, hid it. Helena persuades him to reveal its continued existence so she can nick it and sell it.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves

What’s The Movie? Dungeons and Dragons: Honour Among Thieves

What’s It All About, JG? Testing my patience. However, for the record, roguish and presumably-charming Edgin Darvis (Chris Pine) and the subtly-named barbarian Holga Kilgore (Michelle Rodriguez), escape from prison to try and resurrect his dead wife and reconnect with his estranged daughter, Kira (an insufferably brattish Chloe Coleman). In the absence of her jailed father and her dead mother, she’s fallen under the “care and protection” of Forge Fitzwilliam (an equally insufferable Hugh Grant) who has some plan about getting rich or something but it’s really difficult to give a shit. A Red Wizard was responsible for Edgin and Kilgore’s arrest so must be perfunctorily defeated by the end of the movie. Edgin puts together a motley band consisting of Kilgore, half-arsed sorcerer Simon Aumar (Justice Smith), tiefling druid Doric (Sophia Lillis), and paladin Xenk Yendar (Regé-Jean Page). The rest of the movie is basically a heist as they first try and get the Tablet of Reawakening to bring back Edgin’s missus, then rescue his daughter from Forge’s nefarious clutches. In the end, there’s a far-from-spectacular battle, Forge is defeated but escapes to fight another day, and the Tablet is used to save Kilgore, fatally wounded in the “climactic” battle with the Red Wizard, rather than the absent wife.

Forever

What’s the Show? Forever (2018)

What’s It All About, JG? Well, that’s a tricky one. Actually, it’s not all that tricky but this is definitely a show that benefits from knowing as little as possible about it going in and then allowing yourself to be surprised by it. It is, though, a lightly comic drama about relationships and what happens to them, though again saying more is straying into spoiler territory. Spoilers definitely wouldn’t ruin the show (and I’m normally fine with casting spoilers about aplenty) yet at the same time there’s definitely a pleasure to be had from seeing a show start going in one particular direction and then seeing what it develops into. But this isn’t getting us anywhere, so let’s get the basics out of the way.

Knock At The Cabin

Can M Night Shyamalan knock this one out of the park? No. No he cannot.

What’s The Movie? Knock At The Cabin

What’s It All About, JG? A gay couple, Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge), and their daughter Wen (Kristin Cui) are vacationing at an isolated cabin somewhere in the woods. Wen is approached by Leonard (Dave Bautista) while out collecting grasshoppers. Turns out Leonard and three of his cohorts believe the world is about to end in a religious apocalypse and the only thing that can prevent it is one member of the family killing another. They must decide who should die and they have to do the deed – suicide won’t cut it. So who will die, the gay guy, the other gay guy, or the young girl? And are the four cultists/zealots right in what they say about the end of the world? They believe so fervently that every time the family refuses to murder each other, the zealots kill one of their number while a terrible natural disaster occurs. Eventually, one member of the family does indeed kill another as the evidence for an Actual Apocalypse adds up. Is it real? Anyway, the world is saved but only after all four cultists are dead. Was it all just in their heads? Na.