Calum Grace
@calumgrace
Player, writer, designer, muck-abouter, lesser duke of hell. and patreon.com/calumgrace
I will say, there's something in the atmosphere of extended camp scenes like the ones you find in movies like this, that I'm always chasing in ttrpgs. My kingdom for a group who are 200% bought-in on a massive hex crawl.
Wednesday night movie: THE BLACK ROSE (1950) - enjoying the '50s technicolor approach to medievalisms, girding my loins for some horrendous yellow face
that or I just write the damn pulp novella that has her as the main character
a budding amateur occult detective, haunted by her past, ready for her first case (once I can figure out a nice light-weight way of doing this that doesn't involve constantly alt-tabbing to various pdfs)
running the first proper session of my Pathfinder 2e homebrew campaign tonight. Tentatively titled "Chains of Empire" it's set slap-bang in the middle of some juicy Golarion metaplot action, namely the war between Cheliax and Andoran, but I'm going full sandbox with it so who knows what'll happen
all of this pontificating about man-as-machine, genes-as-code, etc. is lining up nicely with my getting back to reading through Erik Davis's TechGnosis
mash-up old-school fantasy monsters and RACE WITH THE DEVIL and you've probably got a general idea what's going on here. Get in car chases with vampires, gun fights at a gas station with a creature from your favourite OSR zine, that kinda thing.
designing a very brash dumb game about driving cars and shooting monsters
found out that Sheila Atim is playing Akasha in The Vampire Lestat show, which fucking rocks!? Remember seeing her crop up as the possibly-supernatural Northampton crime lord John Conqueror in Alan Moore's THE SHOW and loving her presence
rewatched TENET tonight and I've made a critical realisation: this isn't Nolan's Bond film, or at least it's not just that; it's his *Metal Gear Solid* film
getting back to properly playing The Phantom Pain, partly as a way to get inspiration for my tactical infiltration/extraction ttrpg, partly because the story of a broken man being further hollowed-out by the overwhelming forces of fully-militarized capitalism feels extremely relevant right now
made some art of my current character in our Pathfinder 2e Curtain Call campaign. She's been brought over from the end of our Season of Ghosts campaign and has some truly ludicrous movement tech going on
I know I often say that films rock, but this film does indeed 100% rock end-to-end. Hunter Schafer is incredible and Dan Stevens has the time of his life. Morphs and evolves nightmare-like through strange, fun, mutant vistas. Big Michele Soavi energy with this one.
Just finished 007 First Light, savouring it like the finely prepared meal it is. Hits the exact Bond notes it needs to, impeccable game flow, stylish as hell. IOI did it, the mad bastards
I have a problem and its name is "frivolous sci-fi world-building in aid of a high tech level Traveller campaign I may never run"
also I somehow only just realised that Jessica Harper (of SUSPIRIA and PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE!) plays Anne Lively!
Do these guys over-apply this cinematographic aesthetic to all of their movies? Perhaps. Does this particular application of it as a heightened neo-noir futurist fantasia completely whip ass? Incontrovertibly.
cold take people clown on the blown-out highlights and silvery sheen but we should absolutely be shooting more stuff like Spielberg and Kaminski shot MINORITY REPORT, it rules so much
I bring it up a lot, especially since I'm currently playing 007 First Light, but Umberto Eco touches on something alongside this in his essay "Narrative Structure in Ian Fleming"; part of what makes Fleming's pulp writing extremely effective is his almost baroque specificity in describing violence
me watching Bablyon 5 on the side while I work is extremely dangerous because I keep having to physically wrestle myself away from reaching over to peruse the Traveller rulebook, notions of a potential campaign once more worming their way into my mind...
it would be very funny to me specifically if it turned out Sadie Sink was playing like, I dunno, Firestar for instance. If you're gonna pick a red-headed lady from the X-Men who has a history with Spider-Man, that'd be a good bet!