This may or may not be my last day in Iowa for a little while. Originally I was set to leave on Monday, but my dad's been talking for at least a week about a snowstorm that's supposed to hit come then. So we're probably going to be leaving tomorrow instead. That's perfectly fine by me. I've been in kind of a weird situation over the last few days; I don't have a car when my family's away for the day, so I've been under psuedo house arrest. The ability to actually do things on my own would be nice.
As you might've noticed, lately I've been opting out of posting longish critical analyses of films and video games. That's because I'm so entrenched in that stuff when I'm at school that to go on about it here gets a little exhausting. Hence posts that've been a little more personal in nature.
That being said – some notes about media I've been watching/playing lately:
- Just watched The Social Network with my sister and her boyfriend. Good stuff. I'm a sucker for dialogue driven films. I'm more than aware that certain liberties were taken with the story, which is okay by me, as long as audiences are aware that they're not seeing events as they actually occurred. Props to Justin Timberlake; his performance was pretty phenomenal.
- I've been playing around with the Mac App Store and been pretty pleased with it all. Some features are still missing, but I don't doubt that they'll be filled in over time. Most of my purchases have been games, among them And Yet It Moves, which is a very clever platformer. It doesn't take a lot of time to finish it, but it's still a lot of fun. I've also finally started on Braid, one of the first "indie" games that got a lot of attention from the mainstream gaming press. That attention was well deserved. Very impressive game mechanics, some interesting themes being explored in the story, beautiful art, beautiful soundtrack. The game's made me have more than a few BioShock moments – moments where I realize that video games are capable of doing far more in terms of emotional and aesthetic experience than we give them credit for.
- A friend raved to me about Adventure Time, which has been my media equivalent of candy for the past few days. It's temporarily nourishing, but by no means something one ought to have a lot of in one sitting. I remember seeing the short that spawned the series a year or two ago and thinking that it was a really well done parody of kids TV. Now I'm starting to realize that it's not a parody – it's the real deal. I'm not sure whether that's unreassuring, hilarious, or both. (I feel like this one deserves some expansion in a future post; perhaps when I finish the series.)
- Finally finished Atlas Shrugged. All I'll say is that I only just now realized how apropos it was that I started reading it while waiting for an Amtrak train that was three hours late.
And now it's time to start packing.