Friday, October 29, 2021
Wednesday, October 27, 2021
Sunday, October 24, 2021
Fatal Rust
The last thing you think will happen is getting killed by a prop gun. Mishaps do happen on sets of films and shows. A stunt gone wrong. Pyrotechnics, driving, you name it. Gun related things will mostly be tragic. There's a movie being made called Rust. It stars Alec Baldwin and he is a focal point of attention for this. Firing a prop gun in rehearsal, it has killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injured the writer/director Joel Souza. The incident has made its rounds on LA Times, Vanity Fair, and so many other sites.
This is obviously a police matter. Some want homicide charges on Baldwin. I can see two reasons. One is a political aspect given how much of a liberal he is. I don't think he's that malicious. But the second reasons and more reasonable is that he is a piece of garbage. I can't think of anything positive in his personal life over the last 20 years. I don't see charges sticking to him. If they do, I can't imagine a lengthy sentence by any stretch. Unless there's instance of him being foolish, he wasn't doing anything on purpose.
A lot of questions I think will go into the prop department. Stories from The Sun and LA Times mentioning gun misfires on set. Now there's speculation on the assistant director, Dave Halls. In a sad fate of irony, Halls worked on the sequel to The Crow, which I'm willing to believe is the first thing coming to many people's minds when Baldwin fired. In 1993, Brandon Lee was killed by a prop gun as he was shooting a scene for The Crow. Imagine if an incident occurred on the sequel. This brings to question safety in general.
Someone's getting in trouble. Halls seems like a suspect in terms of negligence as well as whoever is in charge of props. Multiple incidents occurring and with death happening, this should automatically raise red flags. There's stories reported of the crew walking away not too long before the gun was fired because of working conditions. This is a problem with Hollywood unfortunately. I'm going to assume it's beyond just safety with props. New Mexico is not the most ideal place to shoot at certain points of the year because of dry heat. The southwest of the United States in general, too.
The IATSE (International Association Theatrical Stage Employees) was ready to strike until reaching a deal about a week ago, demanding better improvements of working on set. Better working conditions, hours, everything. Hutchins' death will reinforce why they almost went on strike. This is going to look really bad for the industry. Rust should be canned for now. Not until things are vastly improved for safety and better conditions. It's going to be investigated for a while. Don't hold your breath on justice being served, no matter who is in line to be charged.
Friday, October 22, 2021
Thursday, October 21, 2021
Monday, October 18, 2021
Jamie Costa: Extreme Good Impression
Last week was an interesting one. I've never heard of Jamie Costa. He's a comedian and does a lot of things. But what he did blew up in such a huge way that people were very impressed. He put on his YouTube channel a five minute clip of doing the late Robin Williams. The scene is set on March 5, 1982, on the Paramount set. As gets ready for his show, Mork and Mindy, co-star Pam Dawber gets his attention to tell him that John Belushi passed away. After hearing that, Williams has a had time thinking it didn't happen and isn't in the full energetic mode.
I think what I got out of it is that Costa's voice is near identical to Williams. That's how impressive it is. Scary impressive as if he was that young 30 year old (Costa actually is around 30 or 31) trying to take the world by storm and have these raw emotions and disbelief. No music is used. The actress playing Dawber did a good job as well. It's wowing enough to be a viral hit and many want to see a biopic of Williams. I think it'd be nice to see, but I think a documentary would work better. And I would also mention that there's probably some dark stuff in his life that I'm not sure many know about.
Stories have been said on that day in 82 that Belushi, Williams, and even Robert De Nero had cocaine together the night Belushi died. I wouldn't be surprised if the death gave Williams reason to get clean and stay clean for roughly 20 years or so. People have also been sending the clip to his daughter, Zelda. Obviously, she does not want to see it. I don't blame her. A lot don't realize the amount of depression he had and I can't imagine she would want to see someone doing a depressed version of her father finding out another comedian like him died. The fact that even the LA Times brought this up and many news websites that aren't geek centered speaks dividends.
I think there's a place and time to do a Robin Williams biopic. I'm not sure this is the best time and I'm not sure also on whether the stuff in his life is worth putting on the big screen. I believe a documentary about comedians that have suffered a lot would be better suited. Whatever the case, the impression from Costa was really good. Give it at least one watch. But do understand the real Robin Williams before clamoring for a biopic.
Friday, October 15, 2021
Wednesday, October 13, 2021
Monday, October 11, 2021
GTA Trilogy Remaster
There was news back in the summer about the PlayStation 2 Grand Theft Auto games getting a remaster. While III, Vice City, and San Andreas are still excellent games, some aspects could have been finely tuned to be better. The news is confirmed that they are getting a re-release this year. Downside is that the original versions are getting delisted on PS3, PS4, and Xbox 360. The same is going to happen for the HD San Andreas game on 360. At the time of this blog on a Monday night, they probably have be taken off the digital stores already. If not, this week.
These are coming out on everything. Xbox One, Xbox Series, PS4, PS5, PC, iOS, Android, and the Switch. The fact that Nintendo is getting these is a huge surprise. Only their handhelds had GTA games with ports of the first two and two original releases. Rockstar has shown some support with Manhunt 2, Table Tennis and Bully on the Wii and L.A. Noire on Switch. Having GTA is a benchmark for the developer. From all assumptions, these will play roughly the same, but have better visuals. I have a feeling it will get cleaned up quite a bit to retain their looks but utilize the hardware of everything.
As far as delisting goes, I'm not sure if this is going to be permanent or not. I wouldn't think so, but weird things do happen in gaming. With the PC, you can find copies of them. You can also find copies for the PS2 and original Xbox. These were mega sellers. Millions upon millions, especially on PS2. Very common and going for 10 to 25 dollars. Maybe more if people are trying to popularize theme even more. There is that talk of game preservation, but the discs are not inaccessible. GTA is in a strange spot and I don't have an easy answer on how to solve the issue of digital stuff being taken away.
These should do decently and the price will hover around 40 to 60 dollars. You're getting 200 plus hours worth of content with these three games. I'll have to wait and see how it fares and see some gameplay to see if it's worth getting. For now, it's a decent way of celebrating 20 years since GTA III released and changed how games could be played.
Friday, October 8, 2021
Thursday, October 7, 2021
PS3/Vita Payment
I see a lot of complaining right now on this. A little shortsighted given it is three weeks away from the intended date, but not anything out of the ordinary. Sony is winding down on their PlayStation Store for PlayStation 3 and Vita. They will be open until whenever they deem is necessary to shut it down. By when, I don't know. They are looking at October 27th as the day they don't accept credit cards, debit cards, and PayPal payments.
This isn't new by any stretch of the imagination. Ending certain form of payments started with stuff such as the Wii, Nintendo DS, and PSP. To expect console storefronts to function forever is impossible. The PC, I can't comment. Yet, I see this uproar. I wouldn't be surprised if it's people that want to make the PlayStation brand look awful. Nintendo and Microsoft are going to do the same thing. Whenever the 360 finishes up in terms of its online, there will be upset people. Credit and debit cards won't be usable on the 3DS and Wii U after mid January 2022 in Japan. Anywhere, I don't know. And those systems had decent lifespans, but not as long as PS3.
Certainly, the announcement of the store shutdowns earlier in the year have people on edge despite the decision to keep the PS3 and Vita ones open. There are parts of the world where a credit card is necessary when it regards to buying specific games with specific ratings according to a GameSpot article. These console manufacturers can't risk their old infrastructures taking hits if they were to be hacked. There are also computer games that no longer have multiplayer due to their infrastructures.
PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 have a lot of digital games that will be lost unless there is someone that dedicated to preserving them. I hope someone has done that for the Wii, DS, and PSP, too. Because once PS4 and Xbox One are finished them along with the Wii U and handhelds are going to need major preservation immediately. We're talking thousands of titles digitally that could be lost. My ending point is to not make Sony out as the only bad guy. A lot has to be done to make sure a number of games can be played. Doesn't matter if the game is good or bad, having access to the full library is what will be important for the future.
Wednesday, October 6, 2021
Monday, October 4, 2021
Revitalizing PlayStation 3
I have been a lot more appreciative of the PlayStation brand as a whole for the last ten years despite my first experience with it being in late 1997. With PS3, it was something my family got into in 2012 and had on and off spans of playing it until early October of 2016. Prior to that, the last time I really was playing it was that April and gaming also took a backseat somewhat that summer. I played some stuff like Blasto and the original Zelda, but nothing too substantial. Getting back into PS3 revitalized an interest in playing it and playing games a lot more.
The game that kicked it off for me was Ducktales Remastered. I bought it that summer and didn't get into until the start of October. I don't know what drove me to play it, but I did and blew through it within a couple of days, beating it on every difficulty, unlocking everything as well. Immediately after that, I revisited Back to the Future, the last game I really played on there that April. Went back and got the rest of the trophies I missed out on. Definitely felt good to get back into the system.
I played the original Uncharted a very tiny bit when my family got the PS3, but at this point with revisiting, played through it all. Got every treasure and every trophy. The hardest difficulty was not anything to take lightly. In between that was Madden 13, Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing, and Wolfenstein 2009, either starting with getting trophies or cleaning up a little bit on ones I missed. Not too long before completing the trophy list for Uncharted, I got back into Jetpack Joyride, a fun phone type game that can be rather addictive and played on my own profile Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12. One of the last games I played that month was Splatterhouse 2010 and got back into that during that October and November.
During this time, I would flip flop between both PS3 and Xbox 360 up until I bought my PlayStation 4 in June 2017. I also found myself getting back into doing YouTube at the very end of 2016 and doing videos on a consistent basis in 2017. Without this revitalization, I don't know how much more gaming I would have done or stuck to older hardware. PlayStation 3 may not be the best system out there of all time, but getting back into it will hold a special place for me for the rest of my life.
Friday, October 1, 2021
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