Small Talk: The Merry Critic

[Clinton R. Nixon]

I've always wanted to post a list of books, movies, and music that I've experienced recently and wanted to recommend to others. So - here it is, annotated with game notes:

Great books

Ambrose Bierce and the Queen of Spades by Oakley Hall: Awesome mystery novel about Ambrose Bierce and a serial killer in late-1800's San Francisco. Strangely, a great resource for a California-based Dust Devils game. (Incidentally, anything Oakley Hall writes is great for Dust Devils. Many of his other books are set more in the southwest wilderness.)

Lamb by Christopher Moore: The gospel of Jesus Christ written by his pal Levi, who is called Biff. Really, it's amazingly good and funny, and Catch from Moore's Practical Demonkeeping, the resource for a humorous Sorcerer game, makes a guest appearance. And Jesus learns kung fu. And still, it doesn't seem disrespectful at all.

Rockin' music

Rise Above: I'm not going to spout political beliefs, but this benefit album for the West Memphis Three is great, being all Black Flag covers performed by Henry Rollins, Exene Cervanka, Iggy Pop, Chuck D, and more. I'd use this as a soundtrack for my Starchildren game, which would be much, much more punk than the book presents.

Young Criminals' Starvation League by Bobby Bare, Jr.: A heart-breakingly beautiful country-rock album. "Flat-Chested Girl From Maynardville" is one of the saddest, funniest songs ever written, and the whole album feels like Bare's crying and giggling at the same time. (Ron - I really recommend this to you. Not even knowing what you might listen to, I think the themes of this album would be something you'd thoroughly enjoy.)

Movies that don't suck

The Price of Milk - A modern-day New Zealand love story/fairy-tale. The main character's (Eomer from Lord of the Rings, incidentally) sells his cows for a blanket because she thinks they don't fight enough and have no passion, and more surreal weirdness moves from there. It's happy, weird, and would make a decent Trollbabe scenario, strangely.

I'll probably think of more later and post 'em, but feel free to return some recommendations in here.

[ethan_greer]

The Tragically Hip is a really good rock band from Canada.  Check out their 2000 (I think) release, Music @ Work.  Phenomenal.

Picnic At Hanging Rock - A freaky movie about a private school field trip gone wrong.  Haunting use of music.  Takes place in Australia in 1900 or thereabouts.

[Matt Wilson]

Cool idea!

Books

Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenbach
The author takes a year to work minimum wage jobs around the country and see just how hard it is to survive. Interesting stories of the people she meets and her general experiences.

If Chins Could Kill - the autobiography of Bruce Campbell
As goofy as you might expect. Campbell's not a great writer, but he has some interesting stories to tell. The making of Evil Dead is pretty damn interesting.

Movies

My Wife is an Actress
French comedy about a regular guy who tries to deal with the fact that his wife is acting in a romantic movie with a hunky co-star.

[John Harper]

Books

Declare by Tim Powers.
WWII spies, the cold war, and the fall of the Soviet Union all told through a very scary paranormal looking-glass that would make Ken Hite proud. This, like all of Powers work, moves along at a brisk pace and is impossible to put down. And even though the book itself is lots of fun, it's worth it just to get to the appendix where you find out all the stuff that Powers didn't make up. Yikes.

A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel by Tom Phillips.
"I took a forgotten Victorian novel found by chance. I plundered, mined, and undermined its text to make it yield the ghosts of other possible stories, scenes, poems, erotic incidents and surrealist catastrophes which seemed to lurk within its wall of words."
http://www.humument.com

Movies

Far From Heaven
Julianne friggin' Moore, people. Her performance in this movie is astounding. Todd Haynes magically recreates the 1950's Hollywood studio style so he can shake it until the loose bits fall off. This film is bleak, unkind, honest, lovely, and sad -- and it's the best film of 2002 in my opinion.

Versus
Yakuza zombies and immortal swordsmen. Also, guns. If Sam Raimi had been born 10 years later, and as a Japanese, and totally wacked out on goofballs, this is what Evil Dead would have been.

Music

Reckless Burning, Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter
A local Seattle group that understands that country music died with Hank Williams. Slow, soulful, and full of deep darkness, Jesse Sykes is bewitching. The CD has limited distribution, but your friendly neighborhood independent music seller can order it for you.

Spend the Night, The Donnas
Rawk. Baby.

[Mike Holmes]

I'm reading "A Beautiful Mind". It's a strict biography of Nash's life, and I'm of course fascinated by his work on Game Theory.

Mike

[Jared A. Sorensen]

New Music: SYL by Strapping Young Lad. Devin Townsend's manic, violent, angry musical project returns. I'm eagerly anticipating "Accelerated Evolution" from his other project, The Devin Townsend Band.

New Books: I got Interface by Stephen Bury (nee Neal Stephenson...already read it once back in the day but gave it to an...ack...ex-GF. At least she was hot). Also: Pattern Recognition by William Gibson and The Big U by Neal Stephenson. Just read The Getaway Man by Andre Vachss and it blew my socks off it was so good.

Movie-wise, I just saw Wild Zero and it was real weird-like.

[Enoch]

Music: Therion has some pretty awesome rock/ochrestral/middle-eastern time music that just owns all.

Movies: I recommend Dreamcatcher.  It may look cheesey, but I really liked it.

Anime:
Saikano: REALLY sad series.  Probably the most depressing one I've seen.  Though I have yet to watch Grave of the Fire Flies.
Wolf's Rain:  The setting is so cool.

-Joshua

[wyrdlyng]

Cool Comics

1. I just finished reading 10 volumes of Storm Riders and seriously recommend any of the Kung Fu titles being put out by Comics One. Take classic Kung Fu movies and crank them to 11. Any fan of over the top martial arts can't go wrong with these books.

Gaming notes: Pure martial arts inspiration. The Storm Riders title in particular is an excellent example of what an Exalted campaign should be, down to the individual forms of madness fighters possess.


2. I also finished reading the 5 megavolumes of Eagle: The Making of An Asian-American President, a fictionalized version of the 2000 American presidential campaign. It's an amazing piece of work which manages to capture American politics and government perfectly especially since it was written by someone from Japan. The saddest part is that the candidate is someone I would support in an instant if he existed but sadly he never would be allowed to even run if he did exist.

Gaming notes: Want to know how to make politics interesting for a campaign? Read these books. If you can't find something in them to use then I'll be damned surprises.

[szilard]

Movies
Six-String Samurai. I must always recommend this. In a post-apocalyptic America, Buddy travels to Vegas with his six-string and katana in order to become King, since Elvis has died. Death hunts him on the way.

A double-feature night of SSS and A Boy and His Dog followed by a session of octaNe would rock.

Books
I'll nominate Stephen Bury's other novel, Cobweb. Set in the months before the (first) Gulf War... I read this a couple months ago. It was eerie. If I ever get around to running Sorcerer, I'll probably crib the relationship map from this book.

Stuart