Platypus of Truth

The visually stunning film "Moulin Rouge" was released at the turn of this past century and was set exactly one-hundred years prior.  I was in college at the time of its release and I remember "Moulin Rouge" taking the film majors by storm.  Like the oily Ziedler, it had them all exclaiming "Spectacular! Spectacular!"  Ten years  and a decade of advance in visual effects later, I was curious to see how the film has held up.  Upon viewing it again, "Moulin Rouge" is still the singular sensational cinematic event it was when it first hit the screen. After being visually blown away and rather embarrassed by all the pseudo-Victorian naughtiness I had forgotten about (PG-13?  Really?  PG 13?!?) I had to sit down and ask what made this eclectic musical and cinematic collage work?  After all, all the costumes are period perfect, but the music is a hodge-podge of contemporary rock songs with a nod to Rodgers and Hammerstein and a few shots at Walt Di...

We spent the weekend in Arkansas with friends one of whom is an old sage in the matter of video games and pen and paper RPGs.  Like Gandalf and Bombadill, much of the weekend (when not attending religious services or playing Dominion) was spent in having a good long talk about the state of the field.  I don't get to do this often, and it was a real treat. During the course of our long jaw, my friend introduced me to two games that have made a splash over the last few years: Dragon Age and BioShock.  Though one takes place in a Tolkienesque lost age and the other in a 1950s dystopia, there was a common thread that impressed me: the emphasis on the power of choice in determining who we are.  The oft repeated refrain of Bioshock is "we make our choices but, in the end, they make us."  Dragon Age offers multiple choices to the player at various points in the game which dramatically affect the path the story takes and its eventual outcome.  Furthermore, thes...

For those interested in my idiosyncratic gloss of Tennyson's "The Passing of Arthur," here are all the links in their proper order: Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V Part VI Part VII Part VIII

I think I played my first D&D game when I was twelve.  The first Final Fantasy must have come out when I was about that age as well.  Safe to say, I've done a lot of dungeon crawls in my time.  College brought new experiences including the wonderful world of White Wolf's Exalted .  Once you've tried free-wheeling through the almost limitless world of the Realm, it's hard to go back into the narrow confines of the dungeon even if there is a dragon at the end. The point of all this is that I stumbled across an announcement that Blizzard is going to be releasing Diablo III sometime in the near future (with Blizzard this could mean next decade.  They are the southern Italians of the video game world.).  Now I've seen a lot of Diablo , never played it, and it's always intrigued me.  As far as I understand it, it's just a series of really artful dungeon crawls.  Yeah, there's some bit of an above-ground world, but most of that seems to be a pre...

I love Starcraft.  Not Diablo.  Not Warcraft.  Starcraft. One of the things I liked most about the original Starcraft was the map editor.  Not only could you enjoy the imagined world of the Korprulu sector, you could actually take a hand in expanding it yourself!  Fifteen years (or so) later, the first installment of Starcraft II is finally here with a vastly expanded editor. The vastly expanded Starcraft II editor can be a bear for an old dinosaur like me with little to no experience in the strange world of modding (did I even spell it right?).  The maze of buttons and menus is enough to make you give up after 14 or 15 hours of wrangling with the thing.  Sure, there are walk-throughs online, but they all presuppose some basic knowledge and facility with this sort of thing.  Creaking joints and cramped mental worlds aside, however, there is a compelling reason for an old fossil to be excited. Like so much of our modern world, the video games...

   Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedivere: 'Ah! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go? As Arthur prepares to leave this world for Avilion, Bedivere rightly asks what his role will be now that his king is gone.  Though this is a moment of defeat and not one of triumph, we should still see parallels with the disciples and Christ.  In this case, Bedivere is asking the departing Christ figure for a commission.  We may see his question as equivalent with the disciples’ questions before Jesus’ ascension: “Will you at this time restore the kingdom” and “What about him (ie. what will John’s fate be?).”  If Bedivere is having doubts at this point, the apostolic witness records that some of them continued to doubt even as the gathered to watch the resurrected Christ ascend. Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes? For now I see the true old times are dead, When every morning brought a noble chance, And every chance brought out a noble knight. Such times ...