HYPERTEXT WONDERLAND

After writing my recent review of Pierrot Le Fou , I wanted to share another part of the film I greatly enjoyed: the soundtrack. The second track (as featured above) features a bunch of screeching violins, reminding me a lot of Bernard Herrman's legendary score to  Psycho . There's also a couple of musical interludes in the middle sung by the film's lead actress Anna Karina. There's also a very good penultimate track called  Twist - the kind of thing that just makes you want to twist and shout and bop and stuff. It's a curious mix of highbrow and lowbrow material, which reflects the film perfectly. I should also mention that it's all composed by Antoine Duhamel , a French composer who later worked with Godard on my favourite film of his,  Week End . //

Have you ever considered what it's like to be an astronaut floating around in outer space? I admit I haven't thought about it much but that's because I'm a filthy ground person. Or, maybe I should say I hadn't  because after playing a little Twine game called  Lightyear   I'm starting to reassess things. Lightyear is a game about living alone in outer space. It's also about nostalgia for home, chronic loneliness and a mysterious signal coming from the further reaches of the galaxy. Suffice to say, I'd rather not explain what the game is about because it's only fifteen minutes long, but for a text-game it's hugely atmosphere. So much so that it bagged its designer, Jim Bruges , a BAFTA nomination. Though I'm still new to Twine games, it's definitely one of the better ones I've played. I'd recommend it if you've got any interest in either astronauts or interactive fiction. Now excuse me while I head back to my home plan...

If you were a Japanese studio president who'd just watched a film about a hitman with a sexual obsession for boiled rice, would you call it ‘incomprehensible’ and proceed to fire its director? If you said yes then you might want to check your passport because you could infact be Kyusaku Hori, former head of Nikkatsu, who did this to Seijun Suzuki following the release of Branded To Kill . The plot follows ace gun-shot Goro Haneda, the number three ranked hitman in Japan. One day a butterfly flies in front of his rifle making him miss one of his prime targets. It causes a descent into personal turmoil, inviting rival assassins to emerge from the darkness to put poor Goro out of his misery. The film isn't best described, it's best experienced. It features themes including sexual attraction for the smell of boiled rice; a masochistic femme fatale with an obsession for butterflies; a neurotic rival figure who invites himself to live with Goro; lots of jazzy music; an...

One thing I try to avoid doing too much is going against general consensus. Over the years, I've learned that disagreeing with the popular voice tends to lead to the impression of being an edgy dude and while it might be true, it's not really a description I'd like to stick with me. With Santo Campo's latest game Firewatch , however, I'm afraid I'll have to straddle the line. This is because while the game received a lot of good reviews, I found the game's story to be too short to make the impact it felt it wanted to. While it deserves credit for telling a mature story, the major issue is that it tries to tell too deep a story in too short a space of time. The experience leaves a weakened taste, a lot like a teabag not left to embroil in balmy water for long enough. If you haven't played Firewatch, then let's recap. The game tells the story of Henry and Delilah: two volunteer fire lookouts operating in the Wyoming wilderness during the heat o...