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Author: eeknight

I’ve got a fever, and the only prescription is more Andor

I’ve got a fever, and the only prescription is more Andor

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“Doctor, I’m at my wit’s end with my husband. He’s – changed. It’s like I’m in one of those paranoid movies.”

“I must repeat, madame, lie back. Take a deep breath. Tell me about it as if you are speaking to a trusted friend.”

“Well, it’s this show. Andor. It’s a Star Wars thing. My husband watches it every week. He’s anxious all Monday and Tuesday about it lately.”

“Ah yes. Tony Gilroy is the showrunner I believe.”

“I think so. At first it was just little things. So easy to dismiss. He’d be looking through his old Star Wars books, these sort of technical manuals, and when I asked him about it he said he was trying to figure out if the ship in ‘Kassa’ was an old BTL-B with the engine housing still on or something like that. He asked our son if any NERF guns looked like Cassian’s blaster.”

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Andor: The Birth of a Rebellion

Andor: The Birth of a Rebellion

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Episode 1: The Spoils of Empire

It is a time of growing oppression. Ordinary people, without the heft of a famous name or the gifts of the midi-chlorians and a Jedi guardian, must make a choice: Join the GALACTIC EMPIRE and accept a comfortable life of regimentation, obedience to orders, and acceptance of the official line or — something else.

Young CASSIAN ANDOR, an unknown scion of lost cargo cult on a half-forgotten world, has chosen something else. A life on the fringe, in the shadows, leaving as few traces of himself as possible and carefully watching each step. His search for his sister continues on the leased planets of PREOX-MORANA CORPORATE ZONE.

During his investigation, matters go awry. The hunter becomes the hunted. Now one man, increasingly caught in a web of what might be called “imperial entanglements” faces a choice, both for himself and his lost sister, that will alter the future of an entire galaxy . . .

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KNIGHT AT THE MOVIES: RED DUST (1932)

KNIGHT AT THE MOVIES: RED DUST (1932)

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I took a break from my depressing Noirvember playlist last weekend and watched Red Dust (1932) one of the scandalous movies that led to the Hayes Code. I remember it being mentioned in “A Confederacy of Dunces” in that Ignatius Jacques Reilly claims that his parents went to the pictures one night, saw Red Dust, then went home and conceived him.

Clark Gable, in peak SILF* form, runs a rubber plantation in SE Asia. Two women come up the river in a boat and into his life: Jean Harlow, a prostitute looking for a place to hide out from police trouble in Saigon, and Mary Astor, a good young bride with a good young husband Gable has employed to survey for an expansion. Everyone involved gets hot and bothered. And drenched. Clark Gable gets a wet shirt scene that rivals the classic Pride and Prejudice Colin Firth plunge.

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Knight at the Movies: SIEGE (1983), or SELF DEFENSE or possibly NIGHT WARRIORS

Knight at the Movies: SIEGE (1983), or SELF DEFENSE or possibly NIGHT WARRIORS

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You ever watch one of the long video game cutscenes that passes for movies these days and think “I kinda miss old, raw-looking films, like early Romero and Carpenter. Something that had teeth. Heart. Balls. They don’t make ’em like that anymore.”

Whether they do or don’t make them like that anymore is another blog post, but a good way to go back and get that early Romero vibe is to seek out overlooked titles from the era. One of those is the Canuxploitation shocker Siege (1983) (released in the USA as Self Defense and sometimes Night Warriors). Thanks to Severin Films, this lost thriller is now available to today’s Blu-ray audience and streaming through sites like Amazon.

Now I’ve seen this movie labeled online as pastiche/homage/ripoff of John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13. YMMV, but to me this is the work of a couple of filmmakers (Paul Donovan and Maura O’Connell of DEFCON-4 fame, most memorable for its excellent poster) who love Assault and want to make something like it, but improve on its weaknesses. They gave the attackers faces, names, and characters, cutting down the numbers to a handful, and made the defenders more vulnerable by putting them in two-story apartment quad, rather than a fortress-like police station. But I get ahead of myself.

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Stories of Isolation and Lonely Death: The Dead Astronaut by Playboy Science Fiction

Stories of Isolation and Lonely Death: The Dead Astronaut by Playboy Science Fiction

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The Dead Astronaut (Playboy Press, 1971). Cover by Pompeo Posar

Last summer I came across an intriguing aside on the SF anthology The Dead Astronaut by Playboy Press (1971). I can’t remember the name of the blogger who had re-cracked it, but the person noted that with everyone locked down and socially distanced, these decades-old stories of isolation and lonely death, mostly written between Sputnik and the Apollo landing, felt newly relevant. I agree.

While I admit I don’t have the knowledge base of some of the vintage SF reviewers here, I did like the stories enough highlight the collection and offer a quick review in case others wanted to experience the unintentional “prophetic” element of science fiction, as the editorial introduction labels it.

The collection’s introduction is signed simply “The Editors” but according to The Science Fiction Encyclopedia Ray Russell (1924-1999) edited it, offering a tidbit about each author and a story note or two in his brief introduction.

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Yaphet Kotto and Parker

Yaphet Kotto and Parker

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I know I’m a broken record about how Alien is, IMO, the greatest ensemble of character actors in the history of SF in movies. Today seems like a good day to say it again.

One of the many things I learned from the huge “Making of Alien” book is that the actors made their characters. They were thinly sketched in the screenplay. You knew that Kane volunteered to go out exploring and wanted to be lowered on the line to see where the hole led, but it was up to the actors to figure out who these people were. Sigourney Weaver wanted Ripley to be prickly, officious, and disliked by pretty much everyone (except the cat), as she poked around in areas outside her official responsibilities. Harry Dean Stanton had Brett follow Parker around and say “right” all the time (in the original screenplay he just backed Parker up at key moments, saying “yeah” in agreement). Ian Holm decided Ash would do every line and make every move like he was on a job interview. Skerritt was driving Ridley Scott nuts by talking so quietly, but then on screen in the rushes Scott saw that it was working and he was clearly in charge.

Yaphet Kotto walked through the sets and knew how he had to play Parker: “Parker was going to be bigger than life. I thought Parker had to be, because one look at Ridley’s sets–I said this character is going to get lost in this and so he’s got to be big. Bombastic and big.”

Ridley also ordered Kotto to ignore Sigourney Weaver as much as possible, make her feel the nervous, inexperienced outsider to the team, or needle her a little. He wouldn’t eat lunch with her, he’d take the makeup chair as far as her from possible. . . even though he liked her from when they first met and felt a little sorry for her as the newbie with a bunch of people who’d been in big roles for years.

Ridley Scott was a collaborator with his actors. He told them the goals of the scene and let the actors work out who would be standing nervously, who would be slumped with their feet up, stuff like that, then Ridley worked out the lighting. They altered their lines, added busyness with their hands. I think that’s the reason Yaphet Kotto is more Parker in everyone’s memory than his other roles, he had the room to make full use of his gifts.

Board Game Review: The Captain Is Dead

Board Game Review: The Captain Is Dead

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The-Captain-is-Dead-board-game-review (1)Anyone else feel like we’re living in a Golden Age of board games? Or have I just been playing more because of COVID? We’re spoiled. Gone are the days of cutting out your own cardboard counters and coloring in your own dice with a crayon.

What, none of you ever played Metagaming MicroGames? They were pretty great. I think Sticks and Stones was the first time I experienced a point-buy mechanic.

But enough GenX 80s nostalgia.

The latest in my personal quarantine parade of top-notch-in-every-respect board games is The Captain Is Dead from The Game Crafters (J.T. Smith and Joe Price) and AEG. I tried this game, originally developed on Kickstarter, with the kids the other night. Everyone had a raucous and exciting time. It’s one of those games you end up thinking about after the box is closed and put away. As a matter of fact, the kids are still talking about it two days later. It’s designed for 2-7 players, though after a couple sessions it seems to me there would be no effective difference if you wanted to solo play handling 2-7 crew yourself; no mechanics would need to be changed.

The premise is that you’re in a starship and have just suffered a massive, Wrath of Khan-style surprise attack from aliens out for a bit of the old ultra-violence. Multiple systems are down. Aliens are teleporting in to occupy the ship. The crew may be afflicted with strange disorders. But worst of all, the Captain is gone, crisped without so much as a “Kiss me, Hardy.”

You could say this game beings in medias res.

And if you don’t play tight and co-oppy, it’ll end there too.

You maneuver surviving officers and crewmen around the ship trying to restore function, with the overriding goal being getting the jump drive repaired so you can get the heck out of Dodge. And that’s the first of the many wonderful elements to this game, there are 18 characters to choose from, ranging from a fleet admiral down to a janitor (color-coded according to their role in the starship’s sub-systems, because cost-saving 60s TV production measures live on through the ages like military specs), each with unique abilities that I believe would combine to make this game highly replayable. There’s even an ensign, if for some reason you want the rest of your co-opers to constantly yell “Shut up, Wesley!” at you.

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Knight At The Movies: Ice Cold In Alex (1958)

Knight At The Movies: Ice Cold In Alex (1958)

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Ice Cold In Alex poster

Every time I tell Brit friends I’m a big fan of the “stiff upper lip” British war films of the 50s like Sink the Bismark and The Dam Busters they always, *always* want to talk about Ice Cold In Alex. I had to confess that I’d never seen it. For some reason it was simply unavailable over here.

Having rectified that today, thanks to Amazon Prime, I can see why. I was riveted.

It’s the story of a group of UK medical officers assigned to pull out of Tobruk and retreat to Alexandria as Rommel makes his last, fateful drive to history at El Alamein. But for a war film, there isn’t really even a battle, this is more of a “man vs. nature” movie of four people — and one tough ambulance that’s the real star of the film (an Austin K2 ambulance lovingly referred to as “Katy,” who you end up rooting for much like the motorboat in “The African Queen”) — against the desert. If “Katy” didn’t inspire Werner Herzog in Fitzcarraldo I’ll eat both of my dad’s old sun hats, the big ones my mom sent me.

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Artifacts: SixMoreVodka’s First Rules Expansion for Degenesis

Artifacts: SixMoreVodka’s First Rules Expansion for Degenesis

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degenesis-artifacts-coverDegenesis, SixMoreVodka’s post-apocalyptic, Europe-and-North Africa-centered tabletop RPG, released its first rules expansion last month. Called Artifacts and featuring the new Degenesis black-and-gold look, it’s the first gaming supplement I’ve ever owned with gilt-edged pages.

But that’s SMV for you, a company “founded by artists and run by artists.”

As I said in my initial review of the game, you can look at Degenesis as an expensive art book which comes with a free game, or an expensive game book with the most lavish art design in the history of the format. So you can convince yourself that even at USD 60 you’re getting a great deal, FedEx shipping from Berlin included, using many of the same mental gymnastics car enthusiasts might when signing for a new BMW.

Degenesis is already a complete game. But one of the 4chan descriptions of it is “90% fluff and 10% crunch.” While I don’t think that’s near accurate – I’d put it at 70/30 — Artifacts adds plenty of crunch. It gives additional rules to build, motivate, and describe your avatar and player group. There are enhancements to your campaign and a good deal of new technology for the players to use and fight over and a bunch of imaginative new rules for clawing advantage out of the much-altered Earth. And of course there’s first-rate art.

Here’s a quick overview of the game enhancements. Artifacts is divided into twelve parts, and I’ll spend the rest of this review providing thumbnails of the contents.

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Corporate Dystopia, Androids, Cults, Science, and even Archaeology: Alien: The Roleplaying Game by Free League

Corporate Dystopia, Androids, Cults, Science, and even Archaeology: Alien: The Roleplaying Game by Free League

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Alien The Roleplaying Game banner-small

“You don’t beat this thing, Ripley. You can’t. All you can do is refuse to engage. You’ve got to wipe out every trace. Destroy any clue. Stop its infection from spreading. Make sure there’s no chance of the human race ever making contact with it again. Because the moment it makes contact, it’s won.”
―Marlow (from Alien: Isolation)

Sweden’s Fria Ligan has been running up the score in the tabletop role-playing game industry lately with titles like Tales From the Loop and Forbidden Lands. So when I heard they had finessed a license to an RPG set in the Alien universe, I ran down Grandmaster Games in Oak Park and told Charlie to get me EVERYTHING in my best Gary Oldman voice.

The only absolutely necessary items you need to enjoy the game is the Alien: The Roleplaying Game core rulebook, a couple handfulls of assorted six-sided dice, and an ordinary deck of cards. The game itself is simple to understand yet is role-play heavy enough that seasoned gamers will enjoy it. I’ll go a step beyond and say this would be an excellent game for introducing someone who has never played a tabletop roleplaying game to the hobby.

The world is familiar. There are tons of reference points to explain game mechanics like panic (“you know when Lambert just froze up in terror?”) or a character sustaining enough damage that they are broken (“like after Cpl. Hicks got the acid splashed on him…”). You just need six-sided dice of two colors (or two different sizes) and the usual paper and pencils. The mechanics are simple: take your skill at doing something and add the controlling attribute for that skill and roll a number of six sided dice equal to the total. If you get a six, congrats, you succeeded.

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