Author jasonmorrison

read The Road by Cormac McCarthy

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mccarthy-road-797341I loved this book, which is an odd thing for me to say, given that I usually don’t like stories without a plot, which this is.

The Road is a post apocalyptic tale about a man and his son as they travel to the coast in the midst of a deepening nuclear winter.  That’s it.  End of story.  I mean literally that’s the entirety of the novel.  They follow this unnamed road to the coast in the hopes that it will be easier to find food there and that they can follow it south, thinking it will lead them to a warmer climate. The story doesn’t even start with the cause of the disaster, you only get a little taste of it in a flashback, instead we begin following the man and his boy about ten years after the event that has killed the world.  Sorry if I spoiled it for you, but trust me, even knowing what it’s all about the book is worth reading.

Cormac McCarthy has a minimalist writing style that some people don’t like and to be honest, I found it mildly annoying in No Country for Old Men and sometimes confusing in Blood Meridian. In The Road however I felt it not only worked well, but fit perfectly with the subject and themes of the novel. The author doesn’t like quotation marks to denote dialog, and he uses commas as if they were more precious than Californium. It works here though. The world is dying, the sky is a constant grey cloud through which the sun cannot completely penetrate. The plants are all dead, there are no wild animals, few people and Cormacs sparse use of punctuation accentuates this bleakness.

What made the biggest impact on me was the way the characters of The Man and The Boy (the author never does name them) interact with each other and the few people they meet. In a world where resources are scarce, survival is the main priority and The Man does everything he can to keep himself and his son alive, but at the same time, he’s trying to raise his son to be a good person and instill in him the values he had been taught. That brings them into conflict often. He teaches his boy that we are the good guys, stealing is wrong… but when you’re starving? More importantly, when your CHILD is slowly dying of starvation? We help people… but when you have next to nothing yourself and you come upon an old blind man who has even less? Those are the moments that stick out for me, you can tell the boy is aching to do the “right thing” as he has been taught, but the man who taught him these things is willing to ignore morality to keep them alive. That’s what makes this book for me.  It’s not about a grand quest, it’s just about two people struggling to stay alive and stay “human”.

watched Pontypool

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It’s a tradition for me that once the kids stop showing up for candy, the decorations are put away and the lights are turned off, I watch scary movies while eating nachos with a dip made of cream cheese, salsa and cheddar. Okay, as traditions go it’s not the most imaginative, but I like it.

pontypoolThere are a lot of zombie movies out there but Pontypool is different. No guns, no machetes, axes, swords or chainsaws. The gore is minimal and most of the violence happens in the viewers imagination.

I first heard about the movie from an article on films that take place in only one room, this one is set in a small town radio station in the basement of an old church. Since everything happens in just this one location it really places the viewer in the shoes of the main characters. We, like them, can’t see what is going on in the world. The reports about the outbreaks of violence are something we only hear via the calls from the stations traffic corespondent and interviews with the police. The atmosphere builds as we try and build a picture of what’s happening in the world outside of the station.

I liked Pontypool, it’s a refreshing take on the Zombie genre, even going a different route with the method of infection (which I won’t spoil) and I loved the emphasis on suspense over brutality, but it wasn’t perfect. I think it would have benefitted from a few more script revisions. Instead of building the clues to the mystery into the conversations with people on the outside, they rely on an info dump in the third act from a character who literally comes out of nowhere. In addition, their version of the zombies themselves is a cool idea, but really high concept. It probably works great written, but is difficult to try and convey on screen.

Overall, the acting is great and it’s a movie worth watching, but I also would not mind watching a re-make that tweeks things a little to allow the viewer to figure things out and maybe fleshes out the infection better so that it makes more sense when you discuss it after the movie is over.

joined the Illuminati in The Secret World

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TSW_Final_Poster_RGB-378x600The Secret World is an urban fantasy MMO that Funcom, the makers of  Age of Conan and Anarchy Online, released out two years ago.  When it first came out, it had a subscription fee which has since been removed.  The game is now pay once and play forever, the mandatory subscription has been replaced with an optional “membership” that gives you extras you can read about here.  Also, they periodically release new downloadable content to buy.  I got it off Steam when they had a deal on for the basic game and first five DLC for only $20.

I love urban fantasy.  Jim Butcher is currently my favorite author, and I still tune in to watch Supernatural every week.  I signed up to be in the beta and took the personality test they e-mailed me four years ago, but for some reason I didn’t get the game when it was released.  It may have been because I was playing Star Wars: The Old Republic and don’t play more than one MMO at a time, but I think it may have been more because I just didn’t know it had been released.  Maybe I was asleep or just too pre-occupied at the time, but I don’t remember seeing anyone talking about this game at all and I probably still wouldn’t know it was out, had I not seen the special price pop up on Steam.  Which is too bad, because I really like this game, and I hope more people discover it.

A lot of the MMOs I’ve played in the past have been very similar.  They looked different, some had a Fantasy base,  some were Sci-fi and a couple were all about super heroes but, at their core, you pick a class,  you  do missions to gain experience for leveling and unlocking new abilities specific to your class.  The Secret World does away with classes and levels.   As you gain experience you earn skill points and ability points which are spent improving your chosen weapon and picking the abilities you want to use.  You pick the weapon combinations you wish to use and what skills you want.  There is a progression, you need to pick lower ranked skills to get to the next ones up, but you are not locked into a weapon once you pick it, if you find you don’t like fist weapons anymore and want to try blood magic, just start adding points there.  The only caveat is that you can only use active abilities from a weapon you currently have equipped, but you can equip two weapons at once and swap weapons any time you are out of combat.  Passive abilities can be used from any weapon without needing that weapon to be equipped.  There are over 500 skills to choose, giving you an amazing range of choice with which to customize your character.  Often have been the times I was playing a game as one class and wished I could use a skill or two from anothers tree.  That isn’t a problem here.

Secret-world-factions-839x600When you create your character you choose your name, appearance and faction.  There used to be a quiz you could do which would suggest the best faction for you, but I can’t find it anywhere (edit: found it!), just these videos that show the philosophies of each group. Your faction will be your team for PvP, but there are no benefits to joining one over the other.  The style of dialog for the quest givers is different and so are the story missions, but that’s about the only real difference, so take a look at the videos and pick the team that  fits your personality, or try ’em all.  There are only three, and you get three character slots, so give each a shot and see what you think.

Speaking of quests, The Secret World doesn’t really break the mold, but they add some improvements and polish it up real nice.  Most MMOs have the typical “Go kill X quantity of monster type Y” or the fetch and carry quests, and this game is no exception, but they add some new quest types that are a refreshing change.  There are covert missions, where the goal is not to be seen and my favorite, the Investigation missions.  We’re all used to going to the NPC with the exclamation mark on their head, getting the quest and following the marker on our mini-map to where we are supposed to be.  The action missions are like that, but the investigation missions give a cryptic clue, and that’s it.  It’s up to you to decode the meaning and figure out where you are to go and what to do.  Sometimes you need to reference things in the real world to solve the puzzle.  They can be maddeningly tough, but oh so satisfying when you figure them out.  They also did a good job of making obtaining the quests a little more interesting.  All the big quests are delivered via animated cutscenes, which isn’t new but sure beats a window full of text, the dialog is well written and the voice acting better than what you usually get in a video game, but even on the little ones, your objectives are often received through a picture of a note, a flyer on the ground or a plaque on the wall.  It’s not a big thing, but it breaks up the monotony of boxes of text.

I’m still in the first big zone, I haven’t tried PvP or any of the missions that require a party, but I am REALLY enjoying The Secret World.  The character customizability and quests that make you think are things I’ve wanted in a game for a long time and am kicking myself for not getting into this one sooner.

 

 

started watching Penny Dreadful

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Penny-Dreadful-cast-photo-HQ-penny-dreadful-36910119-3600-2446It’s Downton Abbey with monsters, blood and vertical sex!  Okay, I’ve never watched Downton Abbey, so it’s probably nothing like it, but it does take place in England.  It’s actually a lot more like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, taking 1800s literary characters and populating the story with them.

“Which girl is Penny?” my wife asked while we were watching the 2nd episode.  Showtimes new series actually gets its name from the cheap pulp publications,  characterised by violent adventure and crime, that were popular with the working class and poor of 19th century Britain.  The tone is dark and has a deeply suspenseful mood.  The pacing is slow, but never feels like it drags, there is an atmosphere to this show that made me feel like it should be Halloween outside my door.

The acting is exemplary.  Timothy Dalton, Eva Green, Josh Hartnett, Harry Treadaway, hell even the corpses do a great job here.  The controlled rage that emanates off Daltons Malcolm, while Vanessa is possessed and accusing him of leaving his son to die, can almost be felt through the TV screen.

I don’t know how long John Logan has been working on this series, but it looks to me that this first season is well planned out.  They don’t give you everything right away,  but do a slow build so that you are eager for the next episode to reveal things a little at a time.  What’s the relationship between Vanessa and Malcolm?  What did Chandler do that he had to flee America?  Where is Mina?  Is she a vampire now,  is she dead?

My only trouble with Penny Dreadful so far is the accents.  Well, not so much the accents, it’s the mumbling and the accents combined.  I watch Coronation Street religiously, and grew up with a grandfather whos first language was Gaelic, not English, so I have no trouble with accents, but Billie Piper mumbles most of her lines making about half of what she says incomprehensible to me.  I’m looking forward to the rest of the episodes, and glad that Showtime has already renewed it for a 10 episode 2nd season.

went to see Disneys Maleficent

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Maleficent_posterThis was a Disney fairy tale, done live instead of animated and minus the musical numbers.
I liked it, I didn’t love it.  I’ll be clear,  it was a fun movie,  Angelina Jolie gave a wonderful performance,  the action scenes were well done,  there were great comedy beats,  and tear jerking scenes, I think I just wasn’t the intended audience for it.  My wife and grandson both loved it, so they must be the people Disney is aiming for.

With Maleficent, Disney attempted to do what Gregory Maguire did with the Wicked Witch of the West.  Take a character who was the central evil in a story, but about whom we knew very little, and turn the narrative around to make them a misrepresented hero.  I think they succeeded.  I think Linda Wolverton improved greatly on the original story, but  again I don’t think I’m Charles Perraults target audience either.

If I gave out stars or thumbs up, I’d give this movie some, it was a fun afternoon, and at no time did I feel like it dragged.

got a subscription to Marvel Unlimited

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Netflix for comic books! Geek heaven!

I love comic books. I started collecting them when I was in grade 8, about a thousand years ago, but stopped when Marvel turned Illyana Rasputin back into a child, also the price of the books I was buying had more than doubled from when I started.

Several years ago Marvel comics started a subscription service where you could pay a monthly fee to have access to all the comics they had digitized. It was an interesting deal, but I don’t like reading books, even comic books, on a PC monitor. Continue reading “got a subscription to Marvel Unlimited” →

made cauliflower cheese soup

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A few years ago I was at the ROM and had lunch in their cafeteria. There wasn’t much there, but they had a cauliflower and cheddar soup. I’m not a huge fan of cauliflower, but I like the broccoli cheddar soup at Quiznos, and I so decided to give this one a try. I really liked it, and thought I’d try making my own at home. It turned out well and is pretty popular around here.

  • 1 medium Cauliflower
  • 4 cup Chicken stock
  • 1/4 cup Chopped onion
  • 2 Cloves of garlic
  • 1/4 cup Butter or margarine
  • 1/4 cup All-purpose flour
  • 2 cup Milk
  • 1/2 teaspoon Salt
  • 1/8 teaspoon Pepper (white if you don’t want to see black flecks)
  • 1 teaspoon paprika
  • 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground chili powder
  • 1 1/2 cup Grated medium Cheddar cheese

Cut the cauliflower into chunks. Use the trunk too, there is a lot of cauliflower flavor in there and when it’s cooked it’ll get pretty tender.

Roughly chop the onion and garlic.

Put the vegetables and garlic in a pot and add the chicken stock. Bring to a gentle boil and cook until the cauliflower is tender enough that you can push a knife into the thick parts easily.

Take it off the stove and let it cool for while but do not drain, 30 minutes should do.

Place the cauliflower, onions, garlic and stock in a blender and let it go until it gets to the texture you prefer, some like a smooth purée, others might like it a little chunky.

In a pot (either the one you just used or a new one, I don’t care you’re the one doing the dishes) melt the butter on medium heat, then add the flower and whisk until it is smooth. You want to cook gently to cook out the flower taste, but you don’t want it to change colour.

Add in the milk slowly, whisking well to avoid forming any lumps.

Then pour in the cauliflower mixture, and season with the salt, pepper and spices. Adjust to chili levels to your preference.

Bring it to a simmer, as the temperature rises the flour/butter mixture (called a roux) will thicken the soup.

Melt in your cheese (I used cheddar, but feel free to experiment with others) and cook until it is the thickness you like.

 

Enjoy!

 

Ps. It’s nice topped with croutons.

 

 

started watching Secret War

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Nothing to do with the Marvel Comics event of the same name, this is a documentary series about espionage and covert operations during the second world war. Stories of missions done by groups like the SOE, SIG and Double X.

The history is incredible. I’ve only watched six episodes so far, but each and every one could easily be turned into a feature film.

Tales like that of the SIG, a group of German speaking jewish volunteers who undertook missions of sabotage disguised as German soldiers. Their missions had everything you’d see in a Hollywood blockbuster. A small group of underdogs on an impossible mission, betrayal and sacrifice.

The story of Dusko Popov, a double agent who tried to warn the FBI about an attack on Pearl Harbour only to have Hoover himself threaten to have him arrested under Mann Act if he didn’t leave the US. A man Ian Flemming was once assigned to keep an eye on, and who may have been the inspiration for Casino Royale.

Then there are operations Grouse and Gunnerside, efforts by the SOE to delay the Nazis from developing the atomic bomb.

Monty Woodhouse, who helped provide weapons and resources to Greek guerillas, only to have those same people turn around, once the Germans were driven out, and try to pull off a Communist coup that led to three years of civil war.

The tales are gripping and fantastic, but utterly factual. I highly recommend this to any history buff or fan of spy stories, hell, even if you aren’t, these are stories worth hearing. I don’t know where or if it is airing on TV, I’m watching it on Netflix, so you may be able to get it on DVD.

 

Watched Cloud Atlas

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It’s not a movie, it’s a time machine. I don’t say this because Cloud Atlas is actually six stories in one that spans past, present and future, but because the movie started at 1:05, I blinked and then it was 4:00. The Wachowskis do such an amazing job of weaving the tales in and out like a tapestry, you hardly notice the time go by.

The film as a whole is about breaking out of the roles that society imposes on us. It’s about the patterns that humans seem to repeat, of those with power taking from those without, in order to grow their power. It’s also about love.

Like many of their previous movies, Cloud Atlas is very dense in dialog and rich in imagery. Each time period is distinctly portrayed in costuming, set design and dialect. Instead of telling the six parts one at a time, the filmmakers mix and match shifting from one to the other, like a well choreographed dance routine. It’s hard to describe the masterful job they’ve done here. You never get bored or distracted, even in a movie this long. I could easily have watched each story line as a separate movie. Especially the one in Neo-Seoul. I love Ridley Scott, but after this weekend, I desperately want Larry and Lana to do the Blade Runner sequel.

I don’t think anyone needs to be told that with a cast which includes no less than three Academy Award winners (Tom Hanks, Halley Berry and Jim Broadbent) the acting is superb. Every character is unique, wholely fleshed out and three dimensional, despite cast members each needing to play 3, 4, 5 and sometimes 6 different parts. Special mention needs to be given to Jim Sturgess. The man is a chameleon. He inhabits each person he plays so wholely you scarcely recognize it’s the same person playing them all.

I think with future viewings I’ll find even more layers, and when it is released on Bluray I will certainly make room for it on my shelf with the Matrix movies, Assassins and V for Vendetta (not Speed Racer though, sorry, everyone makes a mistake once in a while)

I have not read the book upon which the movie was based, but after I hit post on this blog entry, I’m heading to the Kobo store to see if it is available in e-book format.

 

Watched Woman in Black

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That, Possession, that is how you do a scary movie. I know it’s a little late, Halloween was two nights ago, but it’s tough to watch a scary movie when underage monsters are knocking at your door. Glad we finally got around to watching this though.

it’s a period movie, I don’t recall seeing a date anywhere, but it seems to be set during whichever time period steam locomotives were popular, automobiles were scarce and people still sent telegraphs.

The movie has a slow build, lots and lots of quiet scenes with no dialog, but incredible atmosphere that really sucks you in. It’s a mystery that doesn’t give everything away right at the start, but unfolds slowly. You learn what’s going on at the same pace as the protagonist.

I have to give special kudos to Daniel Radcliffe. He quickly makes you forget about the boy wizard and portrays a very believeable and sympathetic character. I think this is someone who can survive being a child actor and have a long future acting.

It’s been a long time since I saw a really good ghost story, most of the horrors these days are serial killers or torture porn, this was like a trip through a really great haunted house.