"Accomplishments"
In theaters: Die Hard starring Santa Claus? Violent Night actually does seem born out of all those boring debates about whether or not Die Hard is a Christmas movie. Die Hard isn't overt enough? What if John McClane is the real Santa Claus (David Harbour, cool), the bad guy calls himself Mr. Scrooge (John Leguizamo, cool), and all the kill gags are Christmas or at least winter-related? NOW is it a Christmas movie?! Let's throw in Beverly D'Angelo, the mom from Christmas Vacation, into the mix to make sure. But of course, it's also a dark comedy with lots of gory mayhem and Santa getting drunk as Christmas becomes more and more commercial and less and less about the spirit of giving. It's amusing if sometimes low-reaching, and the gags and use of "Christmas magic" often clever. I always tend to give a movie bonus points if it's using real snow, and Manitoba here provides a real chilly situation - even the blood freezes and coagulates before you can finish the shot, yeah, that's Manitoba all right! So if you thought The Christmas Chronicles was fun but lacked edge...
At home: Given that it's a holiday staple in Central Europe and that it does seem to start around Christmas time based on baking and decorations, I thought Three Wishes for Cinderella would lean into that more. Instead, we get wintry spectacle and a different take on what the West considers the proper details of the fairy tale. Which is enough to recommend this Czech classic, holiday season or not. Libuše Šafránková is enchanting in the lead and her Cinderella has more agency than most retellings would have it, a lot more sass, and big non-binary energy (the prince too, for that matter). Lots of animals, which would seem great for kids, but there's a hunting sequence that does end with the death of one, so sensitive families beware. What I found most interesting in this version is how much time we spend with Cinderella's future in-laws. Some Cinderella stories tell us more about her circumstances, family, even village, but the royals are more often neglected. It's not important to the story, but having them react to their son falling in love, etc. adds some comedy and humanity to the fantasy. But ultimately, this is a film about hats. Watch and tell me different.
2008: Tim Minchin's show So F*****g Rock. I saw Ready for This first and it came out in... 2009? Ok, like, sure, the two shows have a couple songs in common (staged entirely differently), but that would be normal for such a musical comedy act. You wouldn't expect (indeed, WANT) your favorite band not to play anything from older albums in a purely music show, would you? But wow, both shows are just as good, have a similar flow, even structure, to the point where I thought, "oh, is this the same bit as in Ready for This?" and then it went in a completely different direction. All that to say this is peak Minchin, when it seems he was the most creative and just exploding with ideas. The show also got me thinking about his stage persona, because on the one hand, his musical numbers need incredible precision, but on the other, his stand-up is all fidgeting and nervous. So is that second element just as precise and calculated? The way he opens and closes parentheses makes me think yes. It's pretty incredible to watch. And the man knows how to close out a show. Just as in his 2009 show, the encore had me weeping. So good.
At the top of his show with the Heritage Orchestra, Live at the Royal Albert Hall, Tim Minchin warns us that arena spaces kill comedy, which isn't going to affect us watching in on a TV screen so much, but it does affect the artist. Tim is perhaps even more discombobulated in his talking bits than he normally is, and intimate piano moments become large-scale productions with both an orchestra and a band supporting such well-loved hits as Prejudice, Rock and Roll Nerd and Dark Side. It's interesting to see these pieces (and new ones too, obviously) reorchestrated for the larger group of musicians, but I don't feel it's generally as strong a performance as the one-man shows are. While I liked the show very much, it may come down to when I saw what and when. Had this been my first Tim Minchin show, it would have completely blown my mind, but he reuses so many pieces that it comes across as a greatest hits compilation. There's nothing wrong with that, but I don't get the same thrill from it.
RPGs: This week, we finished Torg Eternity's Day One - one-off introductory adventures set on the first day of the multi-cosm invasion of Earth - with its gothic horror setting, Orrorsh (in India). On the one hand, I did want to create a spooky and desperate atmosphere (I made sundown tokens as a ticking clock, for example), but I also felt it was my last chance to teach the players about stellae (the totems that act as border points for the World Laws of each Cosm). One was included in the adventure, but a "back-up" that, while it had its own guardian, was not maintaining the Cosm in the area. So at the risk of sacrificing the hopeless horror of Orrorsh, I set it up so that if they managed to uproot the stela (it's not a given that they would even try), Core Earth would be reestablished, and while it wouldn't stop the forces of evil from attacking that night, it would make things a lot easier (the lycanthrope doesn't transform, the devil bats are just a nuisance, and the big bad can disconnect - and did). This was all preface to having a conversation about how the High Lords maintain their realms and the dangers of uprooting stelae before refilling the population with possibility energy (which wasn't an issue on the "Night of Screams"). And I also wanted the players to feel that in my game, they did have agency, and the game world isn't necessarily on the track predetermined by the publishers. The map can and will change based on their decisions and actions. But I had my horror fun already with Pan-Pacifica, which DID play as a desperate, failed attempt to escape Tokyo. This could have been a repeat, but the players took the bait and did well. But they also referenced the meme about "The Gamemaster wants to run a horror game, but the dice have other ideas" - a lot! - as the villains kept fumbling and not just failing, but looking stupid doing it. The Drama Deck kept spitting out cards that served the heroes and nerfed the villains too (maybe I should have stacked the deck a bit, which the GM CAN do). Oh well. The teachable moment is that there's a big difference between Orrorsh and Core Earth, and a clear demarcation between those two Cosms in the game. There was before they uprooted the stela where they jumped at every shadow, and after, where they had hope and became action heroes. From Halloween to Buffy is how I'd put it.
Best bits: The uprooting was quite fun. The intense minibus driver decides to ram the stella with his vehicle (its name was "Sarita"), triggering the uprooting mechanic and the necessary Reality rolls, even as its guardian, an undead tiger, takes swipes at it. When I think of uprooting, I imagine characters pulling at the thing, or maybe in a circle meditating until it magically happens, but this was a lot more fun.
If this week seems a bit light, it's because I was then sucked into preparations for the ACTUAL Torg campaign - building characters, setting up adventure seeds, prepping maps and virtual tabletop tokens, research, etc. I devoted much of my off-work time to that. And I've got the upper back pain to prove it. A couple of characters have started to gel - a Realm Running prodigy descended from one of GURPS Shiftworld's PCs, but more shockingly, that campaign's villain; a Core Earther who ran from the Tharkold invasion into the arms of the Cyperpapacy where he was outfitted with cyberware - I'll say more when the group is actually assembled.
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