Balzac: A Life of Passion

Last night we watched Balzac: A Life of Passion starring Gerard Depardieu as 19th Century author Honore de Balzac. Turned out this wasn’t a movie but a 2-part mini-series which, I assume, originally broadcast on French television. As such it was about 3 hours long. Now for someone as flighty as me, 3 hours of sub-titles can be quite a challenge, but I found myself completely captivated.

The film is aptly titled in that it was more or less a straight-forward biography. Balzac was a driven writer but in many ways his life was rather uneventful. He wrote, he loved, he died. He was a schemer whose schemes invariably fell apart, and we see this aspect of him, portrayed in a bittersweetly amusing way.

But my point is, if you’re looking for action and adventure, this isn’t the place to find it. But from the point of view of trying to understand who this man was, and what the times were like when he lived, its wonderful. I was particularly struck by the age of many of the characters. At the start, Balzac has a mistress much older than he is. And by then end both he and the woman he loves have aged quite a bit. Obviously the film was based on real events so they couldn’t very well make Balzac and Eve 20-year-old lovers, but still it was refreshing to see a story in which people over the age of 30 still fall in love and desire one another.

One of Balzac’s life-long friends was Victor Hugo (played here by Gert Voss) and I was intrigued by him as well. Also we get the briefest sketches of Eve Hanska and I’d love to learn more about her. We get these intriguing glimpses of a curious blend of devout religious beliefs and an almost pagan superstitionism. I want to know more!

The sets and costumes were wonderful. The sets weren’t really lavish, but rather than show huge swathes of Europe in the early-mid 1800’s they focused on a limited number of locales but did them very well. But the clothes did seem lavish and, to my layman’s eyes, quite authentic.

I must be honest and admit that I’d never heard of Honore de Balzac before seeing the film. Now I’m quite interested in him, and intend to pick up a biography written not too long ago, as well as a few of his books. I’m finding these films about authors (saw Henry and June not too long ago) to be quite inspiring.

A Short Biography of Balzac

EyeToy Groove

I picked up EyeToy Groove the other day and just gave it a brief workout. Looks like it’ll be fun. It’s pretty much what you probably expect: DDR played with your arms and body.

I like DDR but I don’t think my downstairs neighbors like it much, so this’ll be a nice change when I just feel like jumping around looking silly now and then. It certainly doesn’t give the cardio workout that DDR does, but after not too long my arms were in fact tired.

The only real negative I see so far is that the songs take a long time to load and there’s a lot of Yes/No menu questions between them, which really breaks up the rthym. And other little dumb featurs are missed, like it asks for your name to put in the high score list….every time you make a high score. It should just default to the last name that you entered, y’know? So little kinda polish things weaken it a bit.

I’ll have to drag a kidlet down and play some multiplayer and see how that goes.

Still, its pretty much what I expected, and I’m content. Really looking forward to the second generation EyeToy stuff, though, like that hoverboard game!

Onimusha 3: Demon Siege

I finally fired this up last night, with Carmina (a dedicated Onimusha fan…I guess the male lead is easy on her eyes 🙂 ) watching on. It was late and we basically just get started, but already I’m hooked. Hell, the intro movie was worth $40 to me. It was stunning. The in-game graphics are really good too. Gameplay hasn’t changed much, but that’s fine with me. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

The voice acting is still kind of weak, sadly, with the exception of Jean Reno, who delivers all his lines in French, so its hard for me to say if he does a good job or not, but it lends an authentic feel to the game and I’m glad they went that route.

The technology that lets them map real actor’s onto 3D models is really astounding. I mean, in the CGI scenes, its sometimes hard to tell this isn’t a real actor. And in game they look really good, too. Very authentic.

Looking forward to spending more time with this one.

God of War

Been a while since I added anything to the gaming watchlist, but I’m starting to look beyond World of Warcraft for gaming entertainment for the first time in ages.

God of War is an upcoming (way upcoming…a 2005 release planed) PS2 game that brings kind of a new twist to platforming. Its much darker than most platformers, for one thing, and it also lets the player choose a fighting style on the fly. You can play it as a straightfoward fighting platformer, or lean more towards being a magic user (ranged attacks) or you can take almost a puzzle-based approach to the fighting, sort of like the combat in Gladius.

Well, its still a long way off but here’re a couple of preview to whet your appetite:
God of War E3 Preview from Gamespy
God of War ‘Hands On’ E3 preview from IGN

Guest Post on Cyrano

Carmina and I saw Cyrano de Bergerac (a few posts down) together, and afterwards we talked about it a bit, and then later she sent me this email. Seemed worth sharing with the world. 🙂

—–
I was thinking about Cyrano de Bergerac tonight, and about Roxane, and
about how I called her a ditz during the movie. The book I was reading
today, Embroiderer’s Story, traced the history of the British
embroidery tradition from the time of Elizabeth I through the 20th
century, and related the relationship of the craft to the state of
women’s lives in all those periods. (There -IS- a point to this, I
swear. It’s just going to take me a bit of work to explain to you how
it’s all related!)
Continue reading “Guest Post on Cyrano”

Giving blood

I donated blood today, for the first time in my life. It was such a non-event that I feel guilty for all the blood drives I’ve skipped. I’d heard all the tales of feeling faint and weak after and all that, but I didn’t feel a thing, except a little bored while the bag filled up.

From now on I’ll be doing it every time they have a blood drive at work. You get free juice and cookies, and a nice half-hour break out of your work day. What’s not to like about that!!? 🙂

Seriously, somewhere, sometime, some stranger will be helped out by this donation.

So what the hell? I guess I did a good thing. Go figure.

Scallops

When I was a boy in the fall I got to watch a process that never failed to fascinate me.

There was an old building in the back of my grandparents lot. The boards were grey with age, twisted and warped so you could see ribbons of daylight from inside.

There was a huge flat table in there, anachronistic in that it was made of steel or something. And rows of shelving for storage.
Continue reading “Scallops”

Will Wright Wisdom

When asked in an interview in OPM, “Do you have any advice for aspiring game designers?” Wright answered:

Expose yourself to ideas, subjects, and design approaches from outside the games industry. There’s a world of useful stuff out there for you to discover, and by pulling from outside sources, you’ll contribute to broadening games rather than inbreeding them.

Substitute just about anything for ‘gaming’ in this and it still sounds like good advice to me.