Dredd Sniper

Hello and welcome to a new week, complete with a brand new installment of Eccentric Spheres.

Today I'm in the mood for reviews, so to start off, I'll complete my review on Sniper Elite 3.

Having now completed the game, I'm still very satisfied. There's nothing in the last two missions that would make me change anything I said two weeks ago.

The last levels are just as good as the six previous, but I want to bring up three things that did bother me a bit. First off, in one level you get tons of re-spawns even if you carefully clear out the entire area like I did. It would have been nice if they arrived as reinforcements instead of just appearing out of thin air.

Secondly, there is a pretty bad cliché towards the end, not game breaking in any way, but totally cringe worthy.

And finally I witnessed enemy soldiers blissfully patrolling an area that was under heavy machine gun fire. They just calmly walked around while being shot to pieces. Saved me some ammo I guess.

These three tiny things are my only real complaints in Sniper Elite 3, so over all, I'm both pleased and impressed. So pleased I've already started a new run through on higher difficulty.

Next up, we're go from games to film. The other day I watched Dredd (2012) with Karl Urban in the title role.

Now I've never been a huge Judge Dredd fan, but I've read some of the comics and liked them well enough. Back in the nineties I watched Sylvester Stallone take on the same role in Judge Dredd (1995), and although I liked the beginning of that movie, they quickly wrecked the whole thing by removing Dredd's helmet. It's a thing in the comics that you never see Dredd without his helmet. So I was apprehensive about watching the new attempt. In fact, I wouldn't have bothered, except I saw a glowing review of it, and decided it sounded good enough. And you know what? It's actually pretty awesome.

Sure it's lacking some of the comic book flair the 95 film had, and Karl Urban’s chin is sub par compared to Stallone’s, but in every other way, Dredd (2012) was an enormous improvement.

It looks great, the actors are very good and the plot feels like an actual Judge Dredd story, compared to the 95 version that went completely off the rails. The pacing felt excellent, and at no time did it get boring. Seeing Judge Dredd mentor a young inexperienced Judge Anderson was a real treat. Anderson, while on the subject, was particularly well written. Going from a determined but rattled rookie to someone who just wants to get the job done right, made for a good female protagonist. In essence, her gender was almost irrelevant for the story. It could have worked just as well with a man, but Anderson is female and that's that. There were no romantic sub-plots, no “I can't because I'm a girl” moments, nothing like that.

In fact, even if you're not a Dredd fan, but you like action/ sci-fi, this is probably a good movie for you.

Well there you have it. So until I see you again, have a great week!

Steampunk

Stoke the boiler and raise the pressure, because today we're talking Steampunk.

In case you're not familiar with the genre, it's a blend of Fantasy and Sci-Fi with occasional horror elements thrown in for good measure. Most often, it's set in the 19^th century, in either Victorian England or the Wild West, but there are plenty of exceptions.

As far as I know, there are no rules stating that Steampunk has to be set in our world, albeit an alternative version thereof, but it seems to be rarer for Steampunk to be set in original worlds.

Like it's sister, Cyberpunk, the most important elements in Steampunk seem to be a dystopian world, amazing technology and people finding their place amidst it all. Unlike Cyberpunk however, in Steampunk more power equals greater size. The concept of miniaturization is rare in these worlds. Then add goggles, brass gears, top hats and corsets and you get a fun and evocative genre.

Steampunk has two cousins, Dieselpunk (1930's to 1950's style technology) and Clockpunk (Renaissance) that can be so similar as to make the three almost indistinguishable, but they are without a doubt separate.

The reason for today's post, is that I started reading this genre again, and I started with Shelley Adina's charming Lady of Devices.

Lady of Devices was a fun read. It's humorous and innocent, and felt altogether too short, even though it clocks in at 258 pages. So far it seems there are six books in the series, but since I've not read them I won't comment further. The story takes place on a very personal level, with the main character Claire Trevelyan in constant focus. If you're looking for an easy to read intro to Steampunk, this is a good alternative.

I followed up Lady of Devices with Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan. This book is not just Steampunk but also Biopunk. In essence it's World War I, with Germany and her allies in war-walkers and other mechanical vehicles against Britain and her allies and their bio engineered war machines. I loved the contrast, and Westerfeld's sheer ingenuity and inventiveness is amazing. It's no wonder this book is number two on Goodreads list of best Steampunk novels. My one complaint is that the war itself, the catalyst for the events as it may be, is fairly marginal. A great read in any case.

Currently I'm on Cherie Priest's Boneshaker. I haven't gotten very far, but I'm already hooked. Grime, mystery, zombies and airships. What's not to love? Priest writes with great style and seems to have a good grip on her characters. Final verdict pending, but so far very good!

That's all for today, so put on your goggles, charge our lightning gun and I'll see you next week. Have a great one!

Sniper Elite 3

A few days ago I was delighted to discover that Steam had Sniper Elite 3 (SE3) on a 70% discount. Being a huge fan of Sniper Elite v2, I had wanted this game since it's release. Naturally I snatched it up immediately. Although I haven't quite finished it yet, I feel comfortable talking about it. Mind you, this is not really a “proper” review, just an impression based on having played six missions out of eight.

My first reaction when I heard that SE3 is set in North Africa was “why?”. Then I quickly realized the genius of it. The African part of WWII is pretty underrepresented in gaming. And since SE1 and 2 are firmly placed in the European theater, this brings a welcome change of scenery.

And what a scenery it is. Lush oases, and cliffs worn down by millennia of wind and sun baked sand, create a gorgeous backdrop for the intense mayhem this game provides.

The night time levels are equally atmospheric with the added pleasure of hearing the jackals baying and howling in the distance as you're sneaking up on an unsuspecting guard.

The game play is solid, much like the earlier iterations of the franchise. Basically my one complaint is that large parts of the game seems to be designed for stealth play with silent take-downs instead of, you know, sniping. Like the title suggests. But it's really a miniscule complaint to be honest. You don't have to be all sneaky if you don't want to. But if you do go in loud and proud, you'd better be prepared to handle a complete bullet storm. There are lots of enemies in each level and they can reduce you to a bloody mess in seconds if they get the drop on you. The AI is competent enough to make you careful, and they have no qualms about flanking you. But sometimes it's just so satisfying to take up an elevated position and rain bloody death on you enemies.

In several places you have to fight vehicles, from half-tracks to tanks, and it can be a truly heart pounding experience to sneak up on a tank that can kill you in one shot. Like wise enemy snipers are well hidden and I for one really enjoy a good sniper fight.

So, if you liked Sniper Elite v2 or you're just looking for a fun action filled game, you can certainly do worse than Sniper Elite 3. In fact, if you like shooters, you probably want to check this out.

That's it for me for this week, check in again next Monday for more Eccentric Spheres. Until then, have a great week!

Good, Bad and Horrible pt. 2

Hello and welcome back to another session of Eccentric Spheres.

Today we're continuing our dark journey in the land of horror cuisine. No use in going on about it, so here are this weeks entries.

Our entrée is Sinister (2012)

Though headed by none less than Ethan Hawke, this is a pretty standard horror film. It has a slightly different angle on things, which is nice, but you can figure the whole thing out half way through if you pay attention. This film brings nothing new to the table, but it does it's thing pretty well. No actual complaints, but it's not a film I'd watch twice.

You can certainly do worse than Sinister.

The main course on our ghoulish menu is The Final (2010).

What we have here is a revenge horror. That's nothing new in itself, but it has guts (no pun intended) and it dares to go where it needs to. My biggest gripe is that since the victims sort of deserve what they're getting, the “Oh my God, I have to rescue them before it's too late” scenes become pretty confusing for the viewer. The Final has gotten people really talking, which is nice, and I certainly did enjoy it.

Well worth watching, but only with lowered expectations.

For dessert this evening, we have I Sell the Dead (2008)

If you like macabre humor and the Victorian era, this is a must see. The hilarious tale of a pair of 19^th century grave robbers had me from the first scene, and I was really sad that it ended so soon. It may be only 85 minutes, but every one of those minutes was gold. Great actors, marvelous scenery and interesting and funny plot twists makes this a really good movie. We even get to enjoy Angus Scrimm, the Tall Man from the Phantasm series, in a small role.

Really worth watching!

If you're still hungry, I have to recommend this wonderful three part documentary about horror films by Mark Gatiss. It's passionate, informative and has some great interviews with horror legends from both sides of the camera. A real treat for fans of the genre.

I hope you are satisfied with today's feast, and that you will come back.

Until next week, take it easy.

Good, Bad and Horrible pt.1

Some time ago I decided to become more active in watching horror movies again. I've been slacking lately, and figured it was past due to take in some new scares.

But where to begin? Studios are pumping out tons of new films every year. Luckily there are lots of list on IMDB that catalog peoples favorites. So, I headed over there and made myself a list of films that sounded interesting.

Now, there are a few problems with horror movies. First off, they almost always have lousy ratings whether they are good or not. That's because they tend to be rated like regular films, not genre specific horror. That can easily bring the score down, which in turn makes it difficult to tell the good from the awful.

Secondly, everyone's tastes are different, which became very clear to me with this project. A movie I hated got lots of praise (Absentia), while one that I loved (Session 9) was frowned upon.

Thirdly, synopses often lie, at least by omission, while posters can be extremely misleading. This makes it truly difficult to judge before hand if a movie is for you. The only option is to take the plunge, and plunge I did.

What follows it the first of a series of posts about this journey of mine into horror I haven't seen before. I'm not looking to review these films as such, just write up a short opinion on each, with a watch it / don't watch it attached. For more information, follow the IMDB links.

Here we go!

First up is Alyce a.k.a. Alyce Kills (2011).

This movie is pretty surreal at times, and it feels like the director tried a bit too hard to be artistic. But at least he tried! All in all it was entertaining, I had no problem sitting through it. The acting was adequate, and the gory effects likewise.

I'd say it's worth watching on a slow night.

Next is Livid (2011).

At first I was a bit confused as to where this film was going, but at least it knew. This is a very surreal film, with some gorgeous visuals, at least when you can see them, since many scenes are quite dark. In many ways it's one of the most Silent Hill like movies I've seen outside that franchise. I really liked Livid, but be advised that it's in french, so if that's not your cup of tea, stay away.

A dark fairytale nightmare well worth it for horror fans.

We continue with Absentia (2011).

This is one bad movie. Disjointed, choppy and full of unnecessary scenes. It seems to me that creator Mike Flanagan had all the tools but failed to build something with it. He was so aware that to show the monster is to loose the tension, that we never really see anything. What's supposed to be a shocking moment near the end, is practically impossible to even make out. The acting is wooden and the soundtrack is awful. At several points it makes it hard to hear what the characters are saying. To top it off, Absentia is brimming with cliches. What little there is to enjoy, is overshadowed and drowned by a script better suited for a drama.

Avoid this film.

The final entry this time, is Session 9 (2001).

Here we have good actors engaged in an interesting psychological journey. I truly enjoyed this film on several levels. It's not only bursting with atmosphere, but it keeps up the pace extremely well. It gives you plenty of clues but cleverly uses some of those clues as red herrings. If you watch with only one eye you'll most likely lose the point. Not the greatest ending but at least Session 9 avoids most mental hospital cliches.

Well worth watching!

So there we have it. More movie opinions next time! Until then, have a great week.

La Maupin

It's been a while since we've looked at history here on Eccentric Spheres, so today we'll be looking back at an amazing person that history has almost forgotten.

Traditionally the realm of sword fighting has been a male dominated area. Men fight duels, men go to war, while women stay home, take care of the children and generally stay feminine.

But the other day I learned of the existence of one remarkable exception, a woman called Julie d'Aubigny also known as Mademoiselle Maupin or la Maupin, 1673-1707.

La Maupin was the daughter of Gaston d'Aubigny the secretary of Louis de Lorraine-Guise, comte d'Armagnac. It was her father job, amongst other things to train courtly pages, and he took the opportunity to train his daughter at the same time. This included lessons in dancing, drawing, reading and fencing. Yup, that's right, she learned to fence despite being a girl very early on, and this while dressed as a boy no less.

When she was fourteen, she had an affair with her fathers employer, the Count, and he in turn married her off to Sieur de Maupin of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Shortly there after her new husband moved to the south of France for his job, but she elected to stay in Paris. It seems that even this early in her life no one told her what to do.

Sometime in 1687, La Maupin started a relationship with an assistant fencing master called Sérannes. He quickly became a wanted wanted man for killing a man in an illegal duel, and the adventurous couple ran away to Marseille. The lovers made their way by giving fencing exhibitions and singing. It was also La Maupin's habit to dress as a man during all this, though she didn't hide the fact that she was a woman. Perhaps it was to uncomfortable to fence in a dress. I don't know, I have never tried.

Once in Marseille she joined an opera company run by Pierre Gaultier, and shortly thereafter she dumped Sérannes for being boring.

Her next great adventure happened when she started a love affair with a young woman. After three months the girls parents locked her away in a convent in Avignon. Not that something as small as that could ever stop La Maupin. She entered the convent as a postulant, i.e. a person who wants to try out convent life before taking holy orders.

Once in the convent, La Maupin stole the body of a dead nun, put the corpse in her girlfriends bed, and set the whole thing on fire. Then they fled.

Their affair lasted three months after that, which is a shame since La Maupin was tried as a man in absentia and convicted of kidnapping, body snatching, arson and failure to appear in court. The sentence was death by fire. Ah, the flames of passion...

At this time, La Maupin traveled and sang. She hooked up with an older singer who tutored her until he pretty much drank himself to death, whereupon she returned to Paris.

Once there, she (dressed as a man) fought a duel over an insult with Louis-Joseph d'Albert Luynes, son of the Duke of Luynes. Despite the duel, which she won when she skewered his shoulder, they became lovers and life long friends.

When her new lover had to return to his regiment, she took up with a singer again, but her previous sentence hung over her. She wanted to join the Paris Opera, but she wasn't too keen on being burned alive. So she contacted her old friend and lover, the comte d'Armagnac, who got the king to grant her a full pardon.

In 1690, after her current lover had gained admittance to the coveted Paris Opera, she finally got her wish and performed with great success, first as a soprano but later as contralto. She became very popular, and the Marquis de Dangeau called her “the most beautiful voice in the world”.

It was at this time she became know as Mademoiselle de Maupin, as opera singers were styled thus whether they were married or not.

This part of her life was quite stormy. She beat up a rude and abusive singer and attempted suicide when she was rejected by a prospective lover, but the high point came when she while dressed as a man kissed a young girl at a society ball. This led her to be challenged to no less than three duels, all of which she won. But this led to trouble with the law again, as the King had forbidden duels in Paris.

Once again she fled, this time to Brussels, where she for a time became the mistress of Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria. She truly had a knack for making friends in high places.

After singing at the Brussels Opera, she returned to Paris, to again become a star. But trouble followed her when she beat up her landlord.

Despite this, she starred in several highly praised operas until she fell in love and started a torrid romance with Madame la Marquise de Florensac.

With the untimely death of the Marquise, La Maupin's heart finally broke. She retired from the opera and joined a convent (for real this time). She ultimately died in 1707, only 33 years old.

No one knows where she is buried.

I cannot say for sure if La Maupin's story has been embellished with time, but I find her story to be pretty extraordinary. She did what she felt she wanted, flaunted the rules of the day and led a life of romance and tragedy. An amazing woman by any standard.

Until next week, don't fight any illegal duels!

Hitler's Furies

Recently I finished Wendy Lower's book, Hitler's Furies: Women in the NaziKilling Fields (2014).

As the title suggests, this book examines the role of women in the Holocaust, and it does a pretty decent job of it. There is an important clue in the title though: killing fields. The book doesn't touch upon the role of women in the concentration camps, save for a passing mention.

Instead Lower shines a light on the massacres in the east, most notably in the Ukraine. Also, the book stays clear of the more famous monsters like Ilse Koch, which is fine. Much has already been written about them, and this is a more general look at the subject.

We get to follow the lives of a few select women, how they came to be in the Ukraine during WWII and what they did there. Being a book about the Holocaust it naturally focuses on the atrocities the Nazis committed in the east, and we are told the story of a few women who were willing participants in killing Jews. It's worth noting that these murderesses went east mostly with their husbands, most of whom were in the SS. A few of the women who worked in the administration system and became lovers to Nazi killers, also joined in. It seems no women went east expressly to kill. There were no women in the Einsatzgruppen.

We also follow a few women who, though brought up in Nazi Germany, traveled to the front as nurses and did not commit atrocities. I'm not sure why the author decided to include these stories, except perhaps to illustrate that not all German women who traveled east participated in the killings. In my opinion these anecdotes don't really contribute all that much to the book. Sure they witnessed some of the horrors, but we already know that they happened anyway. They are well written, but fairly uninteresting. If this had been a work of fiction, they might have been more valid. You decide.

Another aspect of Hitler's Furies analyses how being a part of the Nazi system affected women in general. On one hand Germany at the time was extremely conservative. Women were expected to go from dutiful daughters to respectable mothers and hausfraus. But with so many men in the army, SS and SA, the system had a desperate need of workers. And they were not shy about employing women. This created a mass of women who were independent both socially as well as economically. Perhaps more so than in the rest of Europe at the time.

To my great surprise, I found out that there were even high ranking female inspectors in the Gestapo. In all my time studying the Third Reich I have never come across this. Sadly the book leaves this part pretty much unexplored. I suppose this is due to the lack of solid evidence left behind, but it's a shame none the less.

Finally we follow the aftermath, and the ultimate fates of these killing women. Or rather lack of fates. Very few women were ever punished for their crimes. Naturally they downplayed their participation as much as possible, but interestingly enough, the allied investigators and prosecutors were unwilling to believe that women could do such things. Yes, a few were executed, mostly in East Germany, but the majority got away with it.

Final verdict? Definitely worth reading. I was a bit disappointed, mostly because I expected more. Perhaps it would be fair to say that Hitler's Furies could have been a bit more hard hitting. I get the feeling that the author didn't want to wallow in the horror and sheer vileness of the subject matter, but in pulling back lost something vital. The book becomes somewhat clinical, and being an objective observer which is what the author should be, the book lacks passion. Historical works shouldn't take sides and they mustn't preach, but the tone is a bit dull.

I don't know how to say it better. If the subject matter is of interest to you, by all means read it.

Until we see each other again, have a great week!