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Gareth von Kallenbach (980 KP) rated Last Flag Flying (2017) in Movies
Jul 11, 2019
The true cost of war goes beyond the numbers of the dead and wounded that we see in textbooks, lectures, and in news reports. Each number represents a person who either perished or was injured. We overlook the extended impact that this loss of life or experience has on their families and friends. Even more, we often overlook the lasting impact that warfare has on the men and women exposed to it.
In Last Flag Flying Steve Carell (The Office, 40-Year-Old Virgin), Brian Cranston (Breaking Bad), and Laurence Fishburne (The Matrix) play veterans who reunite thirty years after serving together in Vietnam to bury one of their sons who has been killed in Iraq. Doc (Steve Carell) tracks down his friends in order to find some closure as to events they faced in their past and to find some sanity and clarity in the death of his son.
The film brings home the horror of war and demonstrates how men and women, out of a sense of duty, find themselves in the same situation as previous generations as they left home to serve their nation. The film is uncomfortable, with good reason, as it makes audiences reflect on the meaning of sacrifice, duty, and honor. The three characters offer the film the opportunity to demonstrate the contrast between youth and experience. It demonstrates how people can have the same experiences but are changed by it to varying degrees. Nothing is uniform about how they adapt to their experiences or in how they cope with the horrors they witnessed.
Last Flag Flying offers a much-needed, sobering perspective about war and how the experiences of war never quite leave those who survived. Carell, Cranston, and Fishburne offer up performances that demonstrate the power of friendship and brotherhood that forms for those who serve together. For those who served and those who haven’t, the film offers audiences the ability to gain a greater understanding of what life is like for those men and women once they take off the uniform.
In Last Flag Flying Steve Carell (The Office, 40-Year-Old Virgin), Brian Cranston (Breaking Bad), and Laurence Fishburne (The Matrix) play veterans who reunite thirty years after serving together in Vietnam to bury one of their sons who has been killed in Iraq. Doc (Steve Carell) tracks down his friends in order to find some closure as to events they faced in their past and to find some sanity and clarity in the death of his son.
The film brings home the horror of war and demonstrates how men and women, out of a sense of duty, find themselves in the same situation as previous generations as they left home to serve their nation. The film is uncomfortable, with good reason, as it makes audiences reflect on the meaning of sacrifice, duty, and honor. The three characters offer the film the opportunity to demonstrate the contrast between youth and experience. It demonstrates how people can have the same experiences but are changed by it to varying degrees. Nothing is uniform about how they adapt to their experiences or in how they cope with the horrors they witnessed.
Last Flag Flying offers a much-needed, sobering perspective about war and how the experiences of war never quite leave those who survived. Carell, Cranston, and Fishburne offer up performances that demonstrate the power of friendship and brotherhood that forms for those who serve together. For those who served and those who haven’t, the film offers audiences the ability to gain a greater understanding of what life is like for those men and women once they take off the uniform.
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Gareth von Kallenbach (980 KP) rated Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War in Video Games
Nov 21, 2020
Treyarch returns to Call of Duty with Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and updates the franchise while staying true to what has made it such a massive success.
Unlike Black Ops IIII, Cold War features a campaign and it is one that offers players side missions, alternate in-mission objectives, dialogue options, and differing endings.
Set in the 80s but jumping in time to Vietnam and other timeline events; the player is cast as an operative named Bell. Players have the option to customize their character in terms of name, gender, backstory and such but it does not play much into the game as “Bell” is what players are known by.
From Eastern Europe, to Vietnam, Cuba, and other locales, the game includes 80s technology and music as players must stop a Soviet General named Perseus from unleashing a Nuclear onslaught.
As fans of the series can guess; players will undertake various missions using combat, stealth, infiltration, elimination, recovery, and more to save the day. There are all sorts of weapons for players to select from ranging from Western to Eastern and allows players to experience a variety of options from sniping, run and gun, and even a Bow.
Vehicles also play a part of the game but they are more heavily featured in the multiplayer portion of the game.
The game does offer variations on the ending based on a player’s choice of completing side missions and choices they make along the way and the game also offers players the chance to grab enemies and use them as a shield in taking on enemy fire. This is one option I would love to see appear in multiplay.
The graphics are solid and some of the landscapes from jungle to frozen tundra really stand out as I was playing on an EVGA 2700 GTX card. The game was also considerably more stable than Modern Warfare was at launch as I did not encounter any issues with my gameplay.
At first I thought the campaign was short but I later realized I had become so engrossed in it that I mistakenly thought so. The levels do offer some real treats which I would love to discuss but do not want to spoil.
Multiplay is the bread and butter of the series as it is what drives the popularity of the series along as players will spend countless hours leveling up, customizing, and playing the various maps and modes as new content arrives until the release of the next game in the series.
Some have complained that the maps are a bit sparse and uninspired but I have enjoyed my time in the multiplayer and enjoy the fact that I can now select only the modes I wish to play for Quickplay to avoid being placed in a mode I do not wish to play.
The Co-Op Mode I enjoyed so much in Modern Warfare is gone this time around in favor of a Zombie mode and while it does not shake things up much from the prior Zombie offerings; it does offer plenty of entertainment and I look forward to seeing more content in the future.
There is an Assault mode where players can use vehicles ranging from Tanks, Snowmobiles, Jet Skis, Gun Boats and more which adds to the fun as ramming your ride into a landing area which an explosive attached is great fun.
The only issue I had with the game was with Warzone as attempting to launch it took me to desktop and out of the game so hopefully this will be smoothed out soon as new updates are already out for the game and next week will see the return of the popular Nuketown map which now is updated to 1984.
In the end Black Ops Cold War does not reinvent the franchise but rather gives players more of what they have come to expect with a few new wrinkles to the mix.
4 stars out of 5
Unlike Black Ops IIII, Cold War features a campaign and it is one that offers players side missions, alternate in-mission objectives, dialogue options, and differing endings.
Set in the 80s but jumping in time to Vietnam and other timeline events; the player is cast as an operative named Bell. Players have the option to customize their character in terms of name, gender, backstory and such but it does not play much into the game as “Bell” is what players are known by.
From Eastern Europe, to Vietnam, Cuba, and other locales, the game includes 80s technology and music as players must stop a Soviet General named Perseus from unleashing a Nuclear onslaught.
As fans of the series can guess; players will undertake various missions using combat, stealth, infiltration, elimination, recovery, and more to save the day. There are all sorts of weapons for players to select from ranging from Western to Eastern and allows players to experience a variety of options from sniping, run and gun, and even a Bow.
Vehicles also play a part of the game but they are more heavily featured in the multiplayer portion of the game.
The game does offer variations on the ending based on a player’s choice of completing side missions and choices they make along the way and the game also offers players the chance to grab enemies and use them as a shield in taking on enemy fire. This is one option I would love to see appear in multiplay.
The graphics are solid and some of the landscapes from jungle to frozen tundra really stand out as I was playing on an EVGA 2700 GTX card. The game was also considerably more stable than Modern Warfare was at launch as I did not encounter any issues with my gameplay.
At first I thought the campaign was short but I later realized I had become so engrossed in it that I mistakenly thought so. The levels do offer some real treats which I would love to discuss but do not want to spoil.
Multiplay is the bread and butter of the series as it is what drives the popularity of the series along as players will spend countless hours leveling up, customizing, and playing the various maps and modes as new content arrives until the release of the next game in the series.
Some have complained that the maps are a bit sparse and uninspired but I have enjoyed my time in the multiplayer and enjoy the fact that I can now select only the modes I wish to play for Quickplay to avoid being placed in a mode I do not wish to play.
The Co-Op Mode I enjoyed so much in Modern Warfare is gone this time around in favor of a Zombie mode and while it does not shake things up much from the prior Zombie offerings; it does offer plenty of entertainment and I look forward to seeing more content in the future.
There is an Assault mode where players can use vehicles ranging from Tanks, Snowmobiles, Jet Skis, Gun Boats and more which adds to the fun as ramming your ride into a landing area which an explosive attached is great fun.
The only issue I had with the game was with Warzone as attempting to launch it took me to desktop and out of the game so hopefully this will be smoothed out soon as new updates are already out for the game and next week will see the return of the popular Nuketown map which now is updated to 1984.
In the end Black Ops Cold War does not reinvent the franchise but rather gives players more of what they have come to expect with a few new wrinkles to the mix.
4 stars out of 5
Goddess in the Stacks (553 KP) rated Forest of a Thousand Lanterns in Books
Jan 11, 2018
A fun blend of Fairy Tales and Asian mythology.
You know I love my Fairy Tales! Especially re-imagining the villains. Forest of a Thousand Lanterns is an Asian take on the evil queen from Snow White. The author is a Vietnamese American, and this is her debut novel. She has quite skillfully woven a new origin story for the wicked stepmother in a fantasy land heavily influenced by East Asian mythology and culture. I don't know enough about the individual countries' mythologies to tell you if the influences come specifically from Vietnam, or more generically from the area. I know that their beliefs can vary pretty wildly by locale.
That said, this is another superb debut novel. I'm eager to read the sequel - it's billed as "A Rise of the Empress novel" so I'm sure there will be one or more. Xifeng is a pretty complex character - she is somewhat single-minded in what she wants, but conflicted in what to do to get it. (It being the position of Empress.) I was intrigued by who was chosen to fill the roles of the traditional tale; Xifeng, of course, would be the wicked stepmother. The Fool is Xifeng's version of Snow White, and Xifeng thought for some time that she knew who The Fool was. The reader, of course, knows the Fool must be Snow White, and so not the people who Xifeng suspected. The one that surprised me was the identity of The Huntsman. I won't spoil anything - but he was unexpected.
There's also more going on than just the Snow White plot. There are gods and goddesses and spirits and an underlying war. I am quite eager to see how those play out.
There is a slow spot in the middle - I set the book down for a couple of days before picking it up again, and that's always a sign I'm not as absorbed in the book as I could be. But I did pick it up again and read straight through to the end, so it's not too bad!
If you like Fairy Tales and Asian mythology, this is definitely a neat blend of the two. I really liked it.
You can find all my reviews at http://goddessinthestacks.wordpress.com
That said, this is another superb debut novel. I'm eager to read the sequel - it's billed as "A Rise of the Empress novel" so I'm sure there will be one or more. Xifeng is a pretty complex character - she is somewhat single-minded in what she wants, but conflicted in what to do to get it. (It being the position of Empress.) I was intrigued by who was chosen to fill the roles of the traditional tale; Xifeng, of course, would be the wicked stepmother. The Fool is Xifeng's version of Snow White, and Xifeng thought for some time that she knew who The Fool was. The reader, of course, knows the Fool must be Snow White, and so not the people who Xifeng suspected. The one that surprised me was the identity of The Huntsman. I won't spoil anything - but he was unexpected.
There's also more going on than just the Snow White plot. There are gods and goddesses and spirits and an underlying war. I am quite eager to see how those play out.
There is a slow spot in the middle - I set the book down for a couple of days before picking it up again, and that's always a sign I'm not as absorbed in the book as I could be. But I did pick it up again and read straight through to the end, so it's not too bad!
If you like Fairy Tales and Asian mythology, this is definitely a neat blend of the two. I really liked it.
You can find all my reviews at http://goddessinthestacks.wordpress.com