Bourne Again

I was home sick from work today, so that means that I had the whole day free for blogging, but on the other hand I was home sick from work so I wasn't exactly jumping up and down to do anything even moderately creative, and forming cohesive sentences was just not an option. Given that there's nothing holding me to this silly Blaugust thing but my own compulsive behaviour, I was planning on just skipping the day and waiting to see if anyone noticed, but as the clock approaches 11pm on the 26th of August with just 5 days left in the challenge my brain slipped into stubborn mode and refused to be beaten, so here we are, looking for a blog topic that I could smash something out about with short notice.

So I did what I always do in such situations and go looking for handy prompts, and stumble across Shaun's prompts from earlier in the week. What's my job like? Well I didn't go today so I really couldn't comment. What do I do when I can't think of a topic? I go looking for helpful prompts, thanks for that. What Simpsons references have I discovered lately? Honestly its been so long since I've watched yellow humans walking around I don't think I even remember any Simpsons references, or the ones that I do are from Naruto Abridged. So, that was a dead end...

Next, I head over to the Blaugust anook group that I've been neglecting this last few weeks as I've struggled to find time, and I notice that one of my fellow Blaugustines has been reviewing films every day this month. Now that's something I could do! Heck, I've even seen some films lately. I could do that. Man, I even went to cinema and saw something on a big screen for once! With popcorn and everything! Ok, topic selected, let's do get some popcorn and get this post on the road.

I went to see Jason Bourne, the next edition to the never-ending action franchise with a couple of mates, as it seemed like the sort of film that Mrs. Owl was unlikely to resent me seeing without her (we're still waiting for Finding Dory, is that still on?). I was slightly concerned that since I'd seen the first three films maybe once each and the fourth one not at all that I'd miss some of the nuance of what I'd kind of expected would be a classy action flick with a little bit of a brain. I needn't have been worried, as the necessary back story was quickly gone through, viz. Jason Bourne is still in hiding from the CIA, who are kind of scared of him. That's it. When a former agent hacks their files (conveniently labelled 'Black Ops' so that the audience can be sure), it's a race between Bourne and the CIA to get their hands on them. With as many implausible chase scenes and disposable faceless agents as possible.

I remember Matt Damon saying back in 2007 (thanks Wikipedia) that he had no plans to make another Bourne film, as he'd "ridden that horse as far as he could", and I can't help wish that he'd stayed out of the saddle. It's not to say that Damon gives a poor performance here, but the overarching plot is bland, made up of a bunch of generic set-pieces connected by increasingly inplausible and poorly-explained segues; and the technology, supposedly the bit where Bourne films really excel, was just laughable.

The attempts to make it politically relevant by talking about government surveillance and individual rights, particularly in the realm of social media, were promising. Given that I saw this one on the weekend of the ill-fated Australian census and the resulting social media cascade I would have been receptive to some interesting points on either side of the issue, but none were forthcoming, sadly that sub-plot was only introduced to be shoved aside as if by an armed assailant in a crowded hotel.

It was a fine film for a generic action blockbuster, but with the Bourne name behind it (and maybe with the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia) I was expecting a spy film, and those two things are really quite different beasts. Once again my judgement was hampered by having faulty expectations going in. I think I actually quite enjoyed it for what it was, but what is there to so about an action film except that it has action in it? I guess it's just not my genre, give me a John le Carre film with most twists and turns than the Italian country town it's set in, and we'll talk.

This film is perfectly made for where it will eventually end up (and where I recommend you bother seeing it), running in the Saturday night movie slot on Channel Seven every couple of years between seasons of James Bond. It's a fine thriller, with fights and tense moments galore, but it was perfectly forgettable, which is exactly what you want in a film you're going to see again next time it's on TV.

Blaugust Writing Prompts
1) What's your favourite cerebral movie?
2) How do you ignore your preconceptions and enjoy things on their merits?
3) Got a good recipe for something hearty, maybe with chicken?

Blaugust 26/31: Wednesday Quiz - Kill A Breadbox?

It's day 26 of 31. It's time for the final push for Blaugust 2015.

Citizen! Why haven't you voted on the ties, yet?

For anyone struggling with Blaugust fatigue, I heartily recommend throwing a quiz out there. A quiz is can be pretty easy to write, allows you to explore fun ideas, and be as clever (or not) as you feel like being. This week I had a quiz all written, but then I saw a fun idea over on Murf's page and decided just steal his idea wholesale instead. If you're not a keen gamer type, I have to apologise, as this got a little...specialised, but just sit back and revel in the strangeness of what's coming to you and I'm sure you'll still have fun.

One other things that I liked was that Murf used an embedded google form instead of having people respond in the comments. I guess that's the sort of thing that you need to do just for administrative reasons if you have readership like Murf's instead of having a lone reader called Gladys like I do, but it seemed like it would solve the problem of accidentally (or deliberately, I guess) seeing other people's answers. Would you be more interested if I moved to such a system for the quizzes, or would you prefer sticking with the current system, which has its own charms?

On to the main feature...

Video Game / Literature Mashup Quiz

Anyway, this week I require you to provide mash-ups of a the titles of works of literature and video games based of their descriptions they would bear if such bastard children were spawned in some kind of hideous cloning machine. For example: 'In this Australian arcade game considered the most important fighter of all time, two very different families move into the same house and must battle each other and the four mysterious "Grand Masters" for supremacy' might describe 'Cloudstreet Fighter II'. As always, points shall be awarded for creative or amusing but incorrect answers as well as the intended ones.

1) Leo "Blizzard" Tolstoy's biggest and most famous game pits five families of humans against French-speaking orcs during the 1812 invasion of Azeroth.

2) In a departure from the usual format of the series, this title for the Game Boy featured the protagonist falling through a rabbit hole into a strange world populated by flying stone heads, aliens, Cheshire cats and exploding Koopa shells.

3) This Louisa May Alcott platformer explores the romantic lives of four sackgirl sisters, with a focus on the production and sharing of user-created levels (mostly in a US civil war setting) through the Playstation Network.

4) In this free-to-play MMO game created by the benevolent rule of The World State, tanks are built specifically to fulfil certain combat roles, and the lower tier units are made deliberately inferior. All tanks are separated from their factories immediately after production, and immediately destroyed once they've given 60 years of service.

5) The first-ever graphical MPORG [citation needed], this Bioware RPG was set in the world of Middle-Eastern and Arabic folk tales inspired many other games, including Pokemon and Disney's Aladdin, and retained much of its popularity until AOL pulled the plug in 1997.

6) One of only three legitimate reasons to own a Gameboy Advance to Gamecube link cable, this Orwellian classic pits a team of players against the forces of Big Brother, dictator of Hyrule. Playing with the maximum number of players requires a LOT of broadband adapters.

7) Another Orwell classic, this dystopian farming simulator was the most popular social media game for a long time. Players plant crops and raise animals until those same animals rise up against them with the slogan "all animals are equal, but some animals pay more to play than others".

8) Supposed to be the killer app for the Xbox One, this Edgar Allen Poe short first-person shooter game features a family of gravity-defying hypochondriacs whose battle-tank exoskeletons are regularly destroyed due to a series of self-fulfilling prophecies. Depending you you talk to, it's either a masterpiece or "a bit too weird, really".

9) Named for a roman à clef inside a roman à clef (à clefception?), this Margaret Atwood open-world stealth title won the Booker Prize for Best Action Game in 2000. Through the course of the story, the protagonist interweaves memories of both her own past love affair and the lives of her ancestors, members of the ancient sect of Hashshashin.

10) Yann Martel shot to fame with this Man Booker winning first-person shooter. Most of the story involves a physicist fighting aliens while trapped in a small boat with a Bengal Tiger. It's better than it sounds.

Video Game / Movie Mashup Quiz

I didn't feeling like stopping, so here's some movies too:

11) Once the highest-grossing game ever made, this Francis Ford Coppola masterpiece chronicles the transformation of Kratos from Spartan warrior into a ruthless Mafia boss (though the word never occurs in the script) according to a fine family tradition.

12) There are many games based on the classic Alexandre Dumas tale, but I've always been fond of the version that features Douglas Fairbanks as Link. Nominally a sequel, the story features an older, wiser Link and his quest to rescue Epona, the true King of France, from the clutches of the evil Louis XIV the Skull King. The mechanics require the use of a number of disguises that provide transformations giving the protagonist wide-ranging powers.

13) Distributed on a huge 24-megabit cartridge, a first for the SNES, this classic side-scroller follows Samus Aran as she attempts to eat nothing but fast food for a period of 30 days. In a thrilling finale, having experienced mood swings, sexual dysfunction and fat accumulation on her liver, an 11-kg heavier Samus faces and defeats the 'Mother McBrain'

14) Subtitled How I learned to stop worrying and love the pill. After a mad Surgeon-General prescribes the wide-spread carpet bombing of pharmaceuticals for the treatment of all known viruses, this puzzle game portrays the attempts of the President of the Italy and his advisors to prevent the development of a potentially civilisation-ending drug-resistant superbug.

15) Widely considered the greatest videogame ever made, this Orson Welles simulation game was originally published in the heady days of the Commodore 64. The player attempts to build up the city of Xanadu and supporting infrastructure and defend it from natural disasters. And monsters. And Rosebuds.

16) Orson Welles again, this time as the compulsive self-medicating. pulp-fiction writing hero of the archetypical game noir. Notable for its soundtrack and atmospheric graphics, the most famous scene depicts the hero being chased by ghosts on the iconic Vienna ferris wheel.

17) Licensed games are never a sure thing, and musicals are more likely to flop than make any money, so the success of this flight simulator set in a Paris nightclub must have been a great relief to LucasArts and the developer, Factor 5. The voice acting talents of Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor, as well as a host of secret and unlockable craft including the Naboo Starfighter, may have been a significant factor in the game's enormous popularity

18) In this FPS-RPG first released in 2000, a nanotechnologically augmented Antonio Salieri tells the story of his rivalry with, and plot to kill, fellow composer Mozart for his part in a plan to infect humanity with a deadly virus contracted through hearing his Requiem in D minor. In the end it turns out that Mozart was an AI all along, or something, I don't know, I haven't even played the game.

19) Features Charlie Chaplin in his famed "007" role on the Klodike minefields, this game remains an icon of the silent game era, with a number of scenes such as the "roll dance" and the "Trevelyan reveal" admired and paid homage to this day. Some people say that Pitch Perfect Dark is the definitive Nintendo 64 first-person shooter, but they are sadly misguided individuals.

20) In this 2D co-operative beat-em-up by Hayao Miyazaki first released for Xbox 360 in 2008, up to four players act as knights attempting to rescue four princesses who have been abducted and transformed into 90-year old women by an evil magic user. It's a Miyazaki game, so of course there's a happy ending.

Some clever person should totally make up some screenshots of these.

Last Week's Quiz Answers

And finally, we reach the bit where we award prizes for people's efforts last week.

1) Christopher Monck's butcher won the day. Bad luck, chaps.

2) Pope Benedict X, opposing Pope Nicholas II was not the real deal. There were three Avignon anti-popes ( Benedict XIII, XIV(i) and XIV(ii) after the Roman restoration, but there were legitimate Benedicts of those numbers too, so the answer we wanted was 15!

3) Monks was Oliver's evil half-brother.

4) There have been 13 Dalai Lamas prior to this one. As far as I know, there are no Anti Lamas.

5) Diablo III has a Barbarian. Because one character class always hails from the frigid Northlands.

6) Rafiki is supposed to be a mandrill, though I'll accept baboon, as the canon is in disagreement on that point. He may be a baboon that just looks like a mandrill.

7) Smashmouth played a strictly inferior version of I'm a Believer.

8) The Monk Islands are in the Southern Ocean, just off Antarctica, and are disputed by the UK and Argentina. A little misdirection on the behalf of the quizmaster there, I'm afraid. The South Orkneys are like New South Wales.

9) I was looking for Jainism. Vaishnavism is a fancy name for the Hari Krishnas, though, so I'll award half points for that.

10) The fellow in question is Tony Shalhoub.

11) Monachus are, as John correctly surmised, Monk Seals.

So, this winner once again is John, with 4.5 points again! Can anyone unseat our returning champion this week? Can I finally learn to make the quizzes easier? Tune in next Wednesday to find out.

The Wednesday Quiz: Bus Stop

The Wednesday Quiz, pop quiz of the ages, refuses to be put on a bus!

Name these eight movies (or a subset thereof) featuring these buses to win points for your team.
No googling, references, or putting your cursor over the pictures and reading the urls ;)