Matthew Supert

Last week we were having a conversation at work about the "heaviest" movies we have seen. These are the sort of movies that I felt were emotionally draining. Perhaps they were movies that were fantastic or perhaps they were mediocre, but you just don't ever want to see them again because they leave you emotionally exhausted. You walk out of a matinee on a sunny afternoon and you can't help but feeling depressed. Warning, there may be spoilers here. 

1. District 9

District 9 is the movie I immediately think of whenever we talk about a movie like this. I was left just completely exhausted and depressed at the end of this movie. It's whole critique on apartheid really hits home with the portrayal of the aliens and the shear brutality upon the refugees and the camp really hit home for me. I had never seen a movie portray the sadness and hopelessness quite like District 9. 

2. We Were Soldiers

It is probably impossible to create a list like this and not include a Vietnam movie in here. There are several excellent and striking Vietnam movies out there, and I wouldn't classify this as the "best" Vietnam movie, but this is the one that stuck with me the most. The cinematography work on the ground really showcased the mayhem that was all around the U.S. soldiers and their landing zone. Watching Mel Gibson's character breaking down and crying at the end was the pivotal, emotional upheaval that put this movie over the top. As a viewer you really get a sense of the weight that his character bears with all of the soldiers who served and died under him. 

3. American Beauty

I chose American Beauty because of the solemnness it leaves you with at the end. This film doesn't quite have the sadness, that some of the others due, despite the tragic ending. Instead it almost felt like a "release" of sorts. Almost as if our main character finally got out of the mundane world. 

4. The Green Mile

If there is going to be a straight up tear jerker in this list, it has to be "The Green Mile". Michael Clarke Duncan puts on an amazing performance playing a death row inmate who I think personifies a sort of messiah type character. The relationships that are developed between his character and all of the guards during the film really turn the final execution scene into a very personal and heart wrenching final moments. 

5. Hotel Rwanda

A movie you have to watch once but don't ever want to watch again. What makes this movie so impactful is knowing that it all actually happened. The defining scene that is etched into my mind is when Don Cheadle's character has to drive down a road strewn with dead bodies. He is forced to drive over those bodies and the movie shows the physical and emotional impact of each bump in the truck as he has to drive over those bodies. 

This weekend Megan and I happened to swing by the local thrift shop just to see what they had for records. We actually scored nicely, especially with the Bing Crosby Merry Christmas album (sadly not an original though). Not everything was the hit we thought it was though.

Apparently you have to look a bit closer sometimes as to what is actually in that record sleeve. For example I found Tchaikovsky Concerto No. 1 in the bin. I pulled out the record and gave it a quick look over. The center label did indeed say Tchaikovsky on it, but what I didn't notice at the time is that it said Tchaikovsky Serenade in C Major. Whoops!!!!! But, there was a plus out of this. On side B is a recording of Barber's Adagio for Strings. Also in that pile was a shellac 78 RPM copy of Rhapsody in Blue. Unfortunately, I cannot play that album and it appears to be incomplete. The shellac record though is thick and heavy. I honestly thought it was made out of metal when I first held it. 

Some other nice finds in there though are a 1966 Best of Benny Goodman album, the Bing Crosby I mentioned above and this 1958 record called "Port Of Suez - Exotic Music Of The Middle East". How could we not buy it for the curiosity? We haven't listened to the album yet so perhaps this evening. 

This past Saturday Megan and I had the opportunity to go out and see the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Symphony Hall downtown. I never had the opportunity to go see the CSO before. They performed Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 2 and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 1. Both were quite fantastic. There really is something special about seeing a performance like that live. And more, the Symphony Hall is such an intimate performance center. Our seats had us dead center on the main floor and we couldn't have been more than forty feet away from the Orchestra. 

It was also a wonderful opportunity to get dressed up, which many people don't do too often anymore. Megan received two compliments on her dress within minutes of sitting down for dinner. Speaking of dinner, we ate at Tesori which is located in the symphony building. A nice restaurant that isn't too fancy or expensive. Excellent drinks too. 

We had a fantastic time at the symphony and in short we need to make it a regular thing. It was way too fun. 

I don't normally play games on my iPad or iPhone beyond something simple to pass the time while waiting in line. I have always preferred to play games on dedicated gaming devices. Over the Christmas holiday though I downloaded SimCity BuildIt for my iPad. I also made the mistake of introducing my wife to this game. 

SimCity was one of those games that always stuck with me when I was a kid. SimCity 2000 in particular was this perfect mix of resource management and expenditure. The new game, Buildit, which is available on the iPad, takes a lot of its ques from last year's maligned SimCity for the PC. Where that game seemed to fail with gamers the model seems to hit really well on the iPad. Perhaps it is because of the F2P model or the sort of stripped back interface, but this game (which is free) pretty much hits the nail on the head IMO. It nails all of the resource management of the previous games and has the model fit surprisingly well for the sort of "Farmville" model of resource distribution. 

In the original Simcity games your resource restrictions were largely constrained by your tax income. Here that resource constraint is spread out among different building materials. Yes, these have a time factor put onto them, but when you look back at the older games, they really aren't that different from the original concept. Back on those old PC games you were sitting, waiting, gnawing at your fingers waiting for that next chunk of money to come in. The satisfaction and anticipation is all there in this game and I am surprised to say that EA has handled the P2P aspect rather well. I haven't felt the need to buy anything to further my city, which in some ways is too bad. I personally have no qualms about putting in a few dollars to support games I like, but I wish I could put in some money into something besides getting in game cash to speed up builds. Something like a unique tile set of high end buildings would be totally reasonable for me. 

One thing that has really surprised me though is the level of detail going on. Most recently I had to build a hospital for my city and I had several abandoned buildings because of it. After I built the hospital, small ambulances drove out from that hospital and then went to my abandoned buildings. Upon returning to the hospital those buildings began to fill up with people again and my population rose. That was a surprising detail that I thought was really well crafted. I had another similar instance once when I had a building that didn't have garbage service, so you could see bags of garbage being thrown out of the windows into a pile on the side of the building with seagulls circling overhead. 

A surprisingly well crafted game for what it is. 

People seem to keep asking me what my goals are for 2015. I guess I don't really have any specific goals laid out for this coming year, but after thinking about it for a while I think i do have a couple of objectives I want to achieve. 

• Write more
• Make more music

That's it. Two hobbies I enjoy that I didn't do enough of last year. 

This past year was not a super successful one with respect to writing music. I spent a good part of this past year trying to rebuild my hardware setup and thinking about what I wanted to do with my music. I swapped out my Yamaha AN200 for a Waldorf Blofeld and have been pretty happy with that decision. For most of the year I had been writing with only three pieces of kit. 

My Korg EA-1 has been in my line up for as long as I can remember but at the beginning of 2014 I couldn't quite find the sound I wanted out of it. I spent months doing research and trying out other synth boxes to see what could fill that void. I looked at the Dave Smith Evolver and Mopho. I looked at the new Korg Electribes and even the Waldorf Pulse II. In the end though I ended up putting the EA-1 back into my lineup. The EA-1 isn't exactly a powerhouse synth. The engine is simple and fairly sterile sounding and the box only has a lowpass filter on it, but it has always done a pretty good job at basslines and some arp'd leads. The easy and intuitive interface though is really what keeps it around. It is clean and simple with no menus to dive through. All of the parameters can be easily accessed on the front panel and I couldn't find another box that allowed for the timbrality so easily. 

So back it went into the lineup and I decided to pickup a Tech 21 Flyrig 5 guitar pedal to supplement its sound. The combo has worked out surprisingly well and the Flyrig 5 gives the EA-1 that little bit of grit and character that it sometimes needs. The Flyrig also has a buttery smooth sounding delay on it, which I think when partnered with the EA-1's own internal delay can result in some really facintating effects down the road. The EA-1 ended up having a nice place in my most recent song, Lowered Fog and I feel it is going to continue to sit in my line up for years to come.  

I have felt energized the past couple of months and in part that has been to a Facebook Group called the Groovebox Society. So here's hoping to a much more productive music year. 

Video games, video games, video games. 

Fall and early winter is that time of year when all of the blockbuster games come out. There have been some decent games that have come out this fall, but I feel that 2014 overall has been a bit of a lackluster year for gaming. I definitely have played less games this past year, and I am not entirely sure if it is due to the selection of games out or if it has to do with my available time. 

I put a lot of time in at the end of the summer and through the early part of this fall playing Pikmin 3. That game is quite good, but it had one of the most frustrating ending levels I have ever played in any game. I seriously almost did not make it through that game simply due to the ending. 

Just prior to Thanksgiving I also took advantage of a sale over at target and picked up three games; Sunset Overdrive, Shadow of Morodr and Bayonetta 2. 

I had a lot of fun playing Sunset Overdrive. It was a great looking game that had that goofy, over the top mayhem that is reminiscent of the first Crackdown. I beat the single player mode, but I hope to put in a little bit more time playing the multiplayer and getting all of the collectibles. There is a good, mindless sort of fun about the game that really hits well. 

I also started playing Bayonetta 2 over the past couple of weeks. I enjoyed the first game, but this second one really nails the over the top Japanese aesthetic and action along with overt sexuality, subtle and not so subtle puns and crazy fight sequences. The game is fast, smooth and really does look quite gorgeous. For anyone who thinks the Wii U doesn't have games, they really need to look at the releases for 2014 that Nintendo has put out. It really is a stellar system right now. 

Finally I started playing Shadow of Mordor just a couple of weeks ago. That game is straight up an Assassin's Creed clone, right down to the map. I have only put in a few hours so far, but I can't say I am hooked. People online seem to really love this game and many have it as their game of the year. The nemesis system, with the orcs is cool, but the game has not captured me. The opening couple of hours are difficult since the tutorials are almost non-existent. What little information it does put across the screen for you disappears too quickly. The text in the game is also incredibly small and if you are sitting any more than four feet from your TV you simply cannot read it. 

I hear it gets better and I am planning on still playing it. I sort of found myself this weekend though falling back into a game that has to be my game of the year if simply for the hours I have put into it. Titanfall. 

I have played over eighty hours of that game since its release last March. A took a break for a few months as if burned itself out, but Microsoft had it on sale for $12 over the Thanksgiving holiday. I booted it up again this weekend and it is as fun as ever. I am probably going to see myself playing that for another few weeks over the holiday break as well. 

As you know, over the past couple of months I have been slowly increasing my record collection. The purchase and setup of a record player in my house has been a sort of cathartic and enjoyable experience. It seems that there is a definite upswing for record sales purchases as of late. 

While records themselves represent a paltry 6 million in total sales, their increase over this past year has showed a definitely trend upwards. I have noticed just this past weekend while shopping, that the local Urban Outfitters, very prominently features records in the front of its store now. 

While a lot of this may be a bit "hipster" for these sales, there is certainly a level of satisfaction that you get when buying a record. Don't get me wrong, I still prefer mp3's for most use cases. For me they sound good and their convenience far outweighs anything else, but having a physical product in your hand or at your doorstop is something that I haven't felt in a long time. I remember back in high school going to Best Buy or the big Virgin Music on Michigan Avenue to buy a CD. Walking out of that store with a physical thing that I would tear the cellophane off of was exciting. Liner notes and those inner booklets were always something I looked forward to with CD's. 

That whole physicality has been lost with digital music. When was the last time someone cared about the design of the booklet in a digital album beyond the cover? Yes, this is a bit of nostalgia funk, but at the same time there is something special about having to deliberately hold the album, look at the track listing and then sit down and listen to it. It all just makes me want to get more albums. 

Woot. I am proud to say that I once again completed Nanowrimo again this year. I actually finished on Friday, the 29th with a total of 50,053 words. I had a big day typing on Friday, a bit over 7,000 words since I got no writing in on the 27th or 28th. 

Most of that day was productive with some really good text put down, but I have to admit that the last 2,000 words or so was just a garbled mess as I tried to hit my word count. Now of course comes to the all important part of going back and editing and in some cases, completely rewriting the stories. I never finished my editing on last year's project, so it is time I get back into doing that. 

I am planning to have a much more productive time with my writing over this winter and planning out my editing in a much more controlled fashion. At this point, I think I am going to take a break from Apath and Spice and head back over to last year's novel to keep working on that. 

Well, we are getting down to the wire here. Just about a week left for Nano. The past week was a fairly difficult one and was more of me just sort of spilling words onto he page opposed to an actual story coming out. I literally had three or four story progressions occurring on a single idea before I was finally able to sort of solidify it into some comprehensible. That mash of ideas though is still just sitting in the document file as a complete mess. 

I started another segment over the weekend, which I like the idea of, but haven't figured out a way to fully flesh out. I was going to have my main character just walk through the city and just describe and characterize the city itself, exploring some of the different neighborhoods and locations. I want to keep it simple, nothing dangerous or violent happening to him. I got a good way in, but eventually hit a brick wall. It is an idea I like, but need to figure out a way to make more interesting. 

I started last night my revenge tale, which should be good for pumping out some words. I am sitting at 38,844 words as of yesterday, so I think I am in pretty good shape. It is going to probably be a good push though through this weekend.