The Endless Wars: The Descent

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20091221

Alright, alright

And, I'm back. The semester is wrapped up, I get to take a few weeks and focus on work & projects, I get to soak up college basketball, I get mock the BCS for a few more weeks, I get to work on the new book a bit, and I get to launch a new gaming blog with Tony!

Click on the link, read up, and please help us start building our base! Those of you who followed the podcast will know what to expect, and for everyone else, it's going to be a repository for our random opinions, reviews, commentaries, and all gaming-related crap we're known to squeeze out, but in handy literary form! The podcast is going on, and will be returning this weekend, when we start our 'Best of the Decade' and 'Best of 2009!' Go over to the new blog, read our entries, and help us pick our top ten of the decade!

Otherwise, I saw Avatar and Julie & Julia over the weekend, and really enjoyed both.

I took in the 3D Avatar experience, and MAN, was it an experience. Everything about that film just works, and my only complaint about it was about the medium itself, which is the limited scope of film (as opposed to a game or television series.) I had some minor gripes ('unobtanium?'), but it was the most I've enjoyed a theatrical experience in a long time.

What's great about the 3D is that it's subtle. It's immediately noticeable, no doubt, but instead of being distracting and a pure gimmick, it really brings the film to life in an amazing and seamless way. There are moments that I can't imagine quite work in 2D, plus the 3D really helps bring a sense of HUGENESS to the film.

Avatar is a truly great film, and one that easily tops anything else James Cameron has accomplished to this date, and that is saying a hell of a lot. Aliens, Terminator, Terminator 2, & the Abyss rank among my favorite films, and this film feels like the next step in that progression.

Julie & Julia is a really interesting film about author Julie Powell and the famous chef Julia Child, and intertwines their respective rises to fame. It's directed by Nora Ephron, and really flows much better than I'd expected two separate time lines would. To see how Powell draws from Child's evolution to inform her own evolution was very cool, especially from a writer's perspective. It was very interesting for me, personally, to get perspective on someone who'd tried to be a writer but had given up, and then let themselves get pulled back in. Plus, I'm a closet cook, so the film was nearly pornographic (for me, who LOVES food) in some parts.

At first glance, it's a chick flick, but it's a good film for anyone who's chosen the generic life in favor of the dream life.

Otherwise, it's nice to finally chill for a little bit. I got a little overwhelmed with a lot of things going on this past Saturday, and had to just let myself implode and pare things down a bit. I'm not normally like that, but I sometimes forget how much pressure I put on myself to not fuck up everything in my life. Granted, the pressure is there for a reason.

What's tough is that I cut myself off from much of my social life this semester to really focus on things, and now I feel like I've been a shit friend, but there's also this phenomenon in which my wife works whenever I'm not at work, so I never see her, so I want to see her when she is around, but that's also the only time I can go out, since I'm home alone with my son all the other times. Thus, I'm still a shitty friend.

So, yeah, enough bitching and moaning.

All I wanna do this break is work, write, and record. It makes me chuckle that I think of 'only work' as 'vacation.' I also wanna not be exhausted all the time.

I am also keenly anticipating the acquisition of my Nook on Friday.

Anyway...
 - don't forget to comment on the 'Best of the Decade' posts over @ Untitled Gaming
 - don't forget that we're podcasting this weekend!
 - what do you got going on this week?
 - what's tops on your Xmas wish list?

-Blaine