I've been thinking about the topic of introducing what I think is good beer to my friends for a long time, however it's very relevant at the time of writing since there have recently been a slew of articles with insider and outsider perceptions of what craft beer looks like and what it's like to get into. The actual points of view range from "Why does beer have to be so fancy, what have you guys done?" to "Craft beer has too many snobs, we need to chill" to a recent article that "Craft beer's obsession with extreme beers is giving craft beer culture a bad rep". But the point is that it's interesting, it's generating discussions which could get people into beer. Advertising and beerfests and brunches and all that, I don't think, get people into beer. Other people who genuinely like beer are what get people into beer.
But specifically I wanted to address some points I had about what seems to have been a pretty contentious style recently: The American IPA.
IPA stands for India Pale Ale, the history of it has a few origin stories, and some conflicting marketing and research complicating things. From what I've heard a great book that straightens the whole mess out is "IPA!" by Mitch Steele. However, I haven't had a chance to read it. Mitch's presentation at last year's NHC was very good though. I don't want to get too historic but basically the strength of the IPA as a style is dependent on the strength of your regions hop plants, and America has done some crazy things with hops between great growing conditions and breeding programs. It was a great way we could call beers "ours", by using our fresh great new American hops that smelled like pine trees and oranges and mangoes (and onions and cat pee depending who you ask). I don't know specifically what the IPA was like in pre-prohibition America but I know that post-prohibition we basically made American Lager and copied a few UK styles (like the IPA). But the IPA of the time wasn't what people wanted. It had morphed into a lower ABV, maltier, more subtle thing and lager was easier to drink. So as Lager became The American beer other beers fell to the wayside, and eventually we hit rock bottom in 1980.
When the US craft brewing scene began to resurrect itself it effectively did it with the Pale Ale and the IPA. A lot of people credit Sierra Nevada with beginning the resurgence, though I've also heard some of the credit go to Anchor Steam. It obviously appealed to a lot of people and now IPA is the most popular style of beer in the country. With that popularity comes a lot of breweries hoping to make themselves a reputation on a flagship IPA. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it flops, but the net result is a lot of creative people doing whatever they can think of the make their mark on IPA. I love the variety and a lot of it is regional which harkens back to a pre-modern notion of styles as beer brewed to the tastes and strengths of a particular region. But where I take issue is that the significant buzz around a single style like this has a tendency to obscure other, just as worthy, beers.
If you follow the larger online beer discussion the most extreme beers continually dominate the conversation. Which is fine since to a degree we're all beer nerds trying to find the next must-have, but when you picture yourself on the outside looking in it's a very different picture.
We're in a position now where craft beer is a big deal. Newcomers are hearing about craft beer and trying to find a good inroad. This is an huge contrast to when I got into beer 7-8 years ago when an "amazing" beer section was 3 shelves in the back of the store. I got into beer by spending a ton of money on beer I knew nothing about, and it was a really expensive way to learn about my tastes and styles. But I was young, just turned 21 and had my first real job so I was Capital-S Stupid with my money. I still spend a ton of money on beer, but I know what I'm getting into now. There are a lot of people who are looking at craft beer who are way smarter than I was and they won't do that, they're the people who want to look around the clubhouse a little and tour the gym before they decide if they want to join. And our club looks like a bunch of folks swimming around in a giant pile of green, sticky, hop cones.
The majority of our internal conversation is over hoppier beers. Specifically a very certain type of IPA, the majority of which is produced on the West Coast of the country. Where can I find Pliny the Elder, Pliny the Younger is about to be tapped. Green Flash puts hops in the beer 8 times. This bar is using a randall (a device which is used to force pressurized carbonated beer through a chamber of hops or other herbs/spices on the way to the glass for the freshest flavor)! I'll never claim that's all there is, because there's also a lot of discussion about new beers, seasonals (especially summer), oaked stuff, wild & sour beers, etc. And that's fine, but from the outside looking in you'd get a very skewed picture.
Further complicating the issue is beer rating sites, beer blogs and people's top 10 beer lists. If you, as a novice, wanting to see what's good you might look at a list of someone who seems to know what they're talking about. Odds are you will find extreme IPAs and Double IPAs. I'm not going to say that this is incorrect by any stretch but there's an element of hype that pushes these highly rated beers even higher on community sites (though personal lists may be more even-handed). Someone with context seeking out these beers because they're rated so highly could have a rough surprise.
While I do agree that the insane hype surrounding the Double IPA is not
warranted, I'm not going to say we should stop talking about it so we
don't turn people off. Just maybe stop talking about it so loudly so it
doesn't look like we're saying it's the best beer in all creation.
Put another way: We in beer have a tendency to think of "beer" as it stands in the public consciousness as pale and bland, while craft beer is flavor. We tend to want to impress other people with the great flavors we have in craft beer and so try to trot out what we think our best flavors are, and a lot of people really like IPAs. But we forget that variety and quality is what makes craft beer something we enjoy, not always amazing and unique flavors. So we bungle the attempt at putting our best foot forward by putting our favorite beer forward, and that's not always the best approach.
So since this post thus far has been mostly reiteration, what do I think is the right way to go about this? Friendly guidance. People need to know that craft beer is about quality and variety, they need to be able to figure out ways to relate the flavors present in that variety to things they already know. Everyone knows that wine is made of grapes, but people have less of an idea of the variety of grains you can make beer out of. When people are interested in our beer we can't be absolute with them since it's all about taste. My favorite beer probably isn't yours. We cannot say "This IPA is AMAZING" to someone who doesn't have the context to understand IPA in the realm of beer, we have to know what flavors they might like and then can point out great beers in those styles. We also need to do away with misconceptions like hoppy == bitter and dark == heavy. But telling people they are wrong isn't going to work. If you're drinking with someone and they say they don't want your dry Irish stout because dark beers are too heavy, offer them a contrast like a black IPA that is generally crisp and refreshing with a touch of roastiness or something lighter colored that they might be more receptive to but still shares some flavors with stout like a scotch ale or an Irish red.
In short, beer is about dialog and for once people outside of craft beer are starting that dialog. We have a great chance not to blow it by setting aside our personal favorites and using our knowledge to find the beer for them.
Drink on!
And, Cheers!
--PXA
(p.s. my favorite beer is Trappist Rochefort #8)
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Dead Space 3 demo, Addendum
I just realized I forgot to make one major point which was the parts based crafting system. They've touted the hell out of it and it's not as confusing as I was worried it would be. It's generally pretty sensible and is just customizable enough to be unique and cool. I'm sure it will be a bit more daunting in practice when they don't front load you with a lot of resources but it makes a lot more sense than the blue print/store system from earlier games. I had always wondered in that situation 1) Why they would even sell vital supplies like health, air, guns, ammo, armor on a ship like the Ishimura and 2) What's to prevent Isaac, with his engineering prowess, from hacking the freaking things to give him free shit? Needing a certain part removes these because now you're not buying what you need from a store, you're really building it and improvising a weapon using parts and a work-bench. It's kindof cool.
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
The Dead Space 3 demo
I know I'm a bit late to the game but I finally got a chance to play the Dead Space 3 demo on Xbox. Most of this post is going to be mentions of things I noticed while playing. Some items will be discussed at more detail, but not all.
The first thing I notice is the interesting change in menu style. Previous Dead Space installments used a menu style evocative of a RIG-style computer interface with a nebulous background of shifting tones and shapes. 3's menu panels are on large cross-sectional slices of what appears to be a necromorph or some other organic thing frozen in a block of ice. I suppose if I were trying to read into it I'd draw a parallel between the more concrete and grounded menu system with the terrestrial basis of the game. Dead Space 1 was entirely in space except for the last level and so far Dead Space 2 has been all in space as well (You can follow that playthrough on youtube). Either way, it's got a lot of motion and is very cool to watch although I can see possibly being annoyed at the length of some of the animations.
Immediately after the menus I noticed the focus on music. The previous Dead Space installments used music as a background element, and they were very effective with it. The menu is subtle and unnerving but very much ambient, it's tense in the battle scenes and generally serves purpose...but I couldn't hum you the Dead Space theme. This new game puts the music front and center with a discernible theme in the menu, however it sounds like a poor man's Batman theme (Nolan era films, possibly including Arkham games). Not that it's bad since it's a great theme and other recent movie themes have lifted from it somewhat and it's possible it lifted its inspiration from something I can't recall, it's just very reminiscent and I couldn't stop noticing it.
Onto the actual gameplay, the game begins with Isaac pulling a Luke in the Wampa cave. Apparently he somehow ended up upside down when his ship crashed following Dead Space 2. Isaac is either the unluckiest or the LUCKIEST S.O.B. ever. He keeps running into these Necromorph outbreaks and somehow surviving them. Deciding he's the unluckiest, he assumes that if he survived everyone else is probably safe and begins to look for them.
I don't know that I can take full credit for this as I already saw Chris of gamertagged notice that Isaac shields his face with his hand while wearing his face-shielding helmet in the snow storm.
The early game in general is a lot more linear that previous installments, I barely felt like activating the beacon. The outdoor texture is quite well done and they have an interesting looking snow effect for when you're walking, though I do hope they make it look less lumpy for the final release. The footprints look good. It's a nice way to conceal the borders of the level, but I think in some spots they go overboard. There are a few spots where you can see the path really well, then take a few steps forward and now the snow is everywhere and you can't see more than 3 feet. It's not time based because it doesn't go away until you back up.
The physics system for loose objects on the ground has been upgraded, though still seems a little rough. This game involves the standard "Isaac stomp all boxes on the ground to receive goodies" mechanic, but the boxes are a bit more jiggly than they used to be. Stomping can sometimes just move the box. Also, the engine is so picky that when Isaac raises his foot to do said stomp, it can result in kicking the box like a soccer ball. At one point Isaac just straight up punted a box off the side of a cliff because of this. It was actually really funny.
The quicktime events the game uses are interesting. I had to do the opening one where you climb through the falling vehicle cab 3 times because I was having a hard time figuring out if the panicked and flashing buttons meant to tap, hold, or spam. The arrow for which direction to push the joy stick is hard to pick out until you realize what it means and the constant flashing is confusing. It turns out you HOLD the joystick even though it's flashing and spam the buttons because it's flashing.
The snowy terrain leads to some interesting potential where enemies literally pop up through the snow, but since this is Dead Space I have the sense they're going to beat the gimmick like a red headed step-child. The enemies are more charred looking and smaller than enemies in previous Dead Space games. They're all wearing snowsuits and from what I remember don't have many extra limbs. Some enemies will break in half causing 3 huge tentacles to spew from their waist. I'm not sure if this is because of a specific kill type or enemy type since there's a lot less differentiation...or the demo primary included this enemy type with a few variations. There are also pure human enemies due to the planet magically being a Unitology stronghold or something. There are some humans who are neutral to you and another faction that wants you dead. Also the necromorphs.
Initially the game invited a lot of comparison to John Carpenter's The Thing, and I kindof wanted to think it too, especially when I first ran into the co-op character but I can't see it happening. The Thing is all about slow tension and paranoia, a sense of isolation. With as much action as the series involves at this point I don't think they could pull it off. First off, Carver is the other player character. They simply couldn't have the character betray Isaac or be implied to be an enemy which removes the paranoia that could result from not knowing if your friend was really on your side. Sure they can do this with some of the other characters, but we're kindof used to that twist by this point in the series...it's happened in every game so far. Also, there are so many necromorphs, and random human allies and enemies that show up and fight you or shout and die by a scripted event that I don't feel isolated at all as Isaac. I feel like Doomguy. It's finally gotten to the point where I am no longer even pretending to cautiously move down a hallway. I am Isaac-Fucking-Clarke with advanced degrees in engineering YOUR ASS TO BE KICKED!!!!!!RAAARGH!!!!1oneshift
I'll still have to decide if the game is worth buying initially. I kindof want to play it on Let's Drink to Gaming, but I don't know if it's worth it. EA's doing a lot of stupid stuff around the game that I don't want to support so I may wait a few months until it goes on sale. Another option would be buying it and immediately marathoning the whole thing in a single sitting live on twitch.tv. That's sort of outlandish and would probably take 12 hours or more given the times on howlongtobeat.com for Dead Space 1 and 2. Maybe I'll ask twitter to see if there's interest in it.
Anyway, that's what I thought of while playing the demo. Take from it what you will.
The first thing I notice is the interesting change in menu style. Previous Dead Space installments used a menu style evocative of a RIG-style computer interface with a nebulous background of shifting tones and shapes. 3's menu panels are on large cross-sectional slices of what appears to be a necromorph or some other organic thing frozen in a block of ice. I suppose if I were trying to read into it I'd draw a parallel between the more concrete and grounded menu system with the terrestrial basis of the game. Dead Space 1 was entirely in space except for the last level and so far Dead Space 2 has been all in space as well (You can follow that playthrough on youtube). Either way, it's got a lot of motion and is very cool to watch although I can see possibly being annoyed at the length of some of the animations.
Immediately after the menus I noticed the focus on music. The previous Dead Space installments used music as a background element, and they were very effective with it. The menu is subtle and unnerving but very much ambient, it's tense in the battle scenes and generally serves purpose...but I couldn't hum you the Dead Space theme. This new game puts the music front and center with a discernible theme in the menu, however it sounds like a poor man's Batman theme (Nolan era films, possibly including Arkham games). Not that it's bad since it's a great theme and other recent movie themes have lifted from it somewhat and it's possible it lifted its inspiration from something I can't recall, it's just very reminiscent and I couldn't stop noticing it.
Onto the actual gameplay, the game begins with Isaac pulling a Luke in the Wampa cave. Apparently he somehow ended up upside down when his ship crashed following Dead Space 2. Isaac is either the unluckiest or the LUCKIEST S.O.B. ever. He keeps running into these Necromorph outbreaks and somehow surviving them. Deciding he's the unluckiest, he assumes that if he survived everyone else is probably safe and begins to look for them.
I don't know that I can take full credit for this as I already saw Chris of gamertagged notice that Isaac shields his face with his hand while wearing his face-shielding helmet in the snow storm.
The early game in general is a lot more linear that previous installments, I barely felt like activating the beacon. The outdoor texture is quite well done and they have an interesting looking snow effect for when you're walking, though I do hope they make it look less lumpy for the final release. The footprints look good. It's a nice way to conceal the borders of the level, but I think in some spots they go overboard. There are a few spots where you can see the path really well, then take a few steps forward and now the snow is everywhere and you can't see more than 3 feet. It's not time based because it doesn't go away until you back up.
The physics system for loose objects on the ground has been upgraded, though still seems a little rough. This game involves the standard "Isaac stomp all boxes on the ground to receive goodies" mechanic, but the boxes are a bit more jiggly than they used to be. Stomping can sometimes just move the box. Also, the engine is so picky that when Isaac raises his foot to do said stomp, it can result in kicking the box like a soccer ball. At one point Isaac just straight up punted a box off the side of a cliff because of this. It was actually really funny.
The quicktime events the game uses are interesting. I had to do the opening one where you climb through the falling vehicle cab 3 times because I was having a hard time figuring out if the panicked and flashing buttons meant to tap, hold, or spam. The arrow for which direction to push the joy stick is hard to pick out until you realize what it means and the constant flashing is confusing. It turns out you HOLD the joystick even though it's flashing and spam the buttons because it's flashing.
The snowy terrain leads to some interesting potential where enemies literally pop up through the snow, but since this is Dead Space I have the sense they're going to beat the gimmick like a red headed step-child. The enemies are more charred looking and smaller than enemies in previous Dead Space games. They're all wearing snowsuits and from what I remember don't have many extra limbs. Some enemies will break in half causing 3 huge tentacles to spew from their waist. I'm not sure if this is because of a specific kill type or enemy type since there's a lot less differentiation...or the demo primary included this enemy type with a few variations. There are also pure human enemies due to the planet magically being a Unitology stronghold or something. There are some humans who are neutral to you and another faction that wants you dead. Also the necromorphs.
Initially the game invited a lot of comparison to John Carpenter's The Thing, and I kindof wanted to think it too, especially when I first ran into the co-op character but I can't see it happening. The Thing is all about slow tension and paranoia, a sense of isolation. With as much action as the series involves at this point I don't think they could pull it off. First off, Carver is the other player character. They simply couldn't have the character betray Isaac or be implied to be an enemy which removes the paranoia that could result from not knowing if your friend was really on your side. Sure they can do this with some of the other characters, but we're kindof used to that twist by this point in the series...it's happened in every game so far. Also, there are so many necromorphs, and random human allies and enemies that show up and fight you or shout and die by a scripted event that I don't feel isolated at all as Isaac. I feel like Doomguy. It's finally gotten to the point where I am no longer even pretending to cautiously move down a hallway. I am Isaac-Fucking-Clarke with advanced degrees in engineering YOUR ASS TO BE KICKED!!!!!!RAAARGH!!!!1oneshift
I'll still have to decide if the game is worth buying initially. I kindof want to play it on Let's Drink to Gaming, but I don't know if it's worth it. EA's doing a lot of stupid stuff around the game that I don't want to support so I may wait a few months until it goes on sale. Another option would be buying it and immediately marathoning the whole thing in a single sitting live on twitch.tv. That's sort of outlandish and would probably take 12 hours or more given the times on howlongtobeat.com for Dead Space 1 and 2. Maybe I'll ask twitter to see if there's interest in it.
Anyway, that's what I thought of while playing the demo. Take from it what you will.
Saturday, January 19, 2013
A foray into video recording and editing
I'm fully aware it's been a very long while since I discussed anything technical on this site, and that makes me feel a little sad as that was the original point. I had been somewhat hindered by the fact that there was very little I was doing outside of work that seemed interesting, and a lot of what I was doing in work was too difficult to make generic enough to not get me in trouble. However, since I had started doing YouTube Let's Play videos (as mentioned previously) I've got something that's pretty interesting and somewhat technical, so here we are.
Let's Drink to Gaming is a Let's Play show with themed cocktails. I wanted this to be a little more interesting than just playing a game and narrating what's going on, so I decided that I would play with a rotating cast of guest hosts over the internet. This leads to a somewhat interesting challenge of broadcasting the game video to the other person while simultaneously recording it. It also raised the question of how to record multiple audio sources, and broadcast multiple sources. I needed to hear and record their voice, they needed to hear me and the game.
I did some wandering around Google and tried: XSplit, FFSplit, Fraps, Taksi, Bandicam, and I think "GameCam"? Eventually I settled on Dxtory. It's paid software but it has a lot of features that were really important in my situation that only really XSplit also mirrored, and since XSplit uses a subscription pay model Dxtory is technically cheaper. The most important features Dxtory has are:
Streaming via DirectShow is the way most webcams work, so since Dxtory can do that, I have a lot of options for video conferencing or streaming software. I tried Skype first since it's super-easy, but the video quality is awful. Skype uses 640x480 streams. We've been trying to get RTSP with VLC working for some time can't quite get it over the internet. I have a sneaking suspicion Verizon may be blocking RTSP. I had also briefly toyed with the idea of using a game streaming site like Twitch and maybe making the channel private, if that's possible, but the lag on my stream was unbelievable. I just recently found out this was because one of the utilities which came with my motherboard, a bandwidth prioritization utility, was devoting almost all my network resources to a Synergy server. So maybe this is an option again. I should also revisit the VLC tests in case bandwidth was an issue.
Audio mixing for the live feed was still unanswered. This market is unfortunately less varied and most of it is paid software. I tried without success using PulseAudio for windows, Jack for windows. Eventually I bought Virtual Audio Cable. VAC lets you create virtual audio devices on your PC and also arbitrarily route real and virtual devices. This has been really important when we've played non-co-op games and had my girlfriend in the room with me. I can use VAC to combine both of our microphones, and the game audio into a single device and make Teamspeak use that as its microphone while not affecting my ability to record all 3 of those sources alone.
So once I recorded everything I end up with a few gigs of x264 encoded AVI files with separate audio streams. All the post-production work is done in Linux. The software for windows I bought to record and stream was pretty cheap, and they were the only programs I saw with the featuresets I wanted. Video editing software, however, is really freaking expensive. I tried some free programs for windows, but they were all terrible. Nothing could even match the feature set of of Adobe Premier Elements or Windows Movie Maker. So I went to Linux where there were at least a few programs for me to choose from: Cinelerra, KDEnlive, and OpenShot.
I made my first video in Cinelerra but it was clunky, old looking, unstable, and couldn't export quickly or easily. I wound up rendering the audio separately, and the video into a ludicrously large MOV, 80 gigs or something, then muxing the two together and reencoding on the command line. Since then I've been using KDEnlive and it is much much better. It still crashes and it has some clunkiness around certain tasks or filters. I'd love some project templates and previewing animated title cards has some problems. Also, it had this super-strange audio glitch that made creating the clip show utter madness. I may try OpenShot soon, since it looks really good but I have nothing on it now.
I have a shell script that invokes ffmpeg to extract all the audio streams from the video file so I can work with them in Audacity. Audacity seems like the go-to cross platform audio program, so I use that to import all the tracks, then run noise removal and run a pre-amp on anyone who seems too quiet. Then I basically listen to the entire project covering up bits of keyboard noise or other unwanted sounds and if anyone talked over anyone else, bring out whoever said something better.
Anyway, that's the basic setup:
VAC to setup the audio so everyone can hear what they need.
Dxtory to record all the audio to independent data streams and output video in a usable format.
Google Hangouts to stream video to the remote commentators.
Audacity to clean and mix the audio into a single track.
KDEnlive to put everything together into the final video.
Yeah, this is long winded, but at least I'm talking about software again. Maybe I'll post the bash script next time I boot linux to do some work.
Let's Drink to Gaming is a Let's Play show with themed cocktails. I wanted this to be a little more interesting than just playing a game and narrating what's going on, so I decided that I would play with a rotating cast of guest hosts over the internet. This leads to a somewhat interesting challenge of broadcasting the game video to the other person while simultaneously recording it. It also raised the question of how to record multiple audio sources, and broadcast multiple sources. I needed to hear and record their voice, they needed to hear me and the game.
I did some wandering around Google and tried: XSplit, FFSplit, Fraps, Taksi, Bandicam, and I think "GameCam"? Eventually I settled on Dxtory. It's paid software but it has a lot of features that were really important in my situation that only really XSplit also mirrored, and since XSplit uses a subscription pay model Dxtory is technically cheaper. The most important features Dxtory has are:
- The ability to record an arbitrary number of audio streams.
- The ability to stream the video it's recording to several DirectShow contexts.
Streaming via DirectShow is the way most webcams work, so since Dxtory can do that, I have a lot of options for video conferencing or streaming software. I tried Skype first since it's super-easy, but the video quality is awful. Skype uses 640x480 streams. We've been trying to get RTSP with VLC working for some time can't quite get it over the internet. I have a sneaking suspicion Verizon may be blocking RTSP. I had also briefly toyed with the idea of using a game streaming site like Twitch and maybe making the channel private, if that's possible, but the lag on my stream was unbelievable. I just recently found out this was because one of the utilities which came with my motherboard, a bandwidth prioritization utility, was devoting almost all my network resources to a Synergy server. So maybe this is an option again. I should also revisit the VLC tests in case bandwidth was an issue.
Audio mixing for the live feed was still unanswered. This market is unfortunately less varied and most of it is paid software. I tried without success using PulseAudio for windows, Jack for windows. Eventually I bought Virtual Audio Cable. VAC lets you create virtual audio devices on your PC and also arbitrarily route real and virtual devices. This has been really important when we've played non-co-op games and had my girlfriend in the room with me. I can use VAC to combine both of our microphones, and the game audio into a single device and make Teamspeak use that as its microphone while not affecting my ability to record all 3 of those sources alone.
So once I recorded everything I end up with a few gigs of x264 encoded AVI files with separate audio streams. All the post-production work is done in Linux. The software for windows I bought to record and stream was pretty cheap, and they were the only programs I saw with the featuresets I wanted. Video editing software, however, is really freaking expensive. I tried some free programs for windows, but they were all terrible. Nothing could even match the feature set of of Adobe Premier Elements or Windows Movie Maker. So I went to Linux where there were at least a few programs for me to choose from: Cinelerra, KDEnlive, and OpenShot.
I made my first video in Cinelerra but it was clunky, old looking, unstable, and couldn't export quickly or easily. I wound up rendering the audio separately, and the video into a ludicrously large MOV, 80 gigs or something, then muxing the two together and reencoding on the command line. Since then I've been using KDEnlive and it is much much better. It still crashes and it has some clunkiness around certain tasks or filters. I'd love some project templates and previewing animated title cards has some problems. Also, it had this super-strange audio glitch that made creating the clip show utter madness. I may try OpenShot soon, since it looks really good but I have nothing on it now.
I have a shell script that invokes ffmpeg to extract all the audio streams from the video file so I can work with them in Audacity. Audacity seems like the go-to cross platform audio program, so I use that to import all the tracks, then run noise removal and run a pre-amp on anyone who seems too quiet. Then I basically listen to the entire project covering up bits of keyboard noise or other unwanted sounds and if anyone talked over anyone else, bring out whoever said something better.
Anyway, that's the basic setup:
VAC to setup the audio so everyone can hear what they need.
Dxtory to record all the audio to independent data streams and output video in a usable format.
Google Hangouts to stream video to the remote commentators.
Audacity to clean and mix the audio into a single track.
KDEnlive to put everything together into the final video.
Yeah, this is long winded, but at least I'm talking about software again. Maybe I'll post the bash script next time I boot linux to do some work.
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
2013, Hello, how are you?
I had originally intended to write this around Christmas time to explain the radio silence on the site, but the holidays just get so incredibly busy I just couldn't find the time. So it's pretty late on New Year's Day and I figure I can write this pretty quickly.
2012 was a helluva year, it was the year I started trying to be a lot more regularly active on this site, writing the articles on Bro-horror and the video game articles about SCP-087 and Self-extension and the horror of Discovery. Also, a ton of movies.
The House at the end of the Street was probably the most disappointing movie I'd seen. I really ripped into it, and that may not have been fair but if I had seen this movie on Netflix instant I would have wandered off or found something else to watch.
I didn't write a full post about it, but The Woman in Black impressed the hell out of me. It was a bit of a comedy of errors trying to watch it, but on the 2nd attempt we got all the way through it and it was a great old-school horror movie. It had a lot of Thing-In-The-Background, Weird-Shape-In-The-Storm styles of scares. Almost no jump scares and false scares used well. I wasn't making nearly as many "Oh look it's Harry Potter" jokes as I was expecting, since the acting was actually not half-bad. I'm planning on getting this on DVD/Blu-Ray.
In other news I also went to the National Homebrewer's Convention this year. It was a wonderful experience, and also very educational. The 2013 Convention is going to be in Philly, and as usual you need an American Homebrewer's Association membership. If you brew ANYTHING, vinegar, kombucha, beer, wine, sake, etc. you should get an AHA membership. It's not expensive and they are doing good things for homebrewer's across the country.
Also in beer I made the official change to all-grain brewing and started kegging my homebrew. Kegging is much more satisfying than bottling, it's a worthwhile switch. In 2013 I'm switching from a braid filter to a false bottom. I recently re-attempted the Chocolate Orange Stout, but won't get to try that until 2013 as well. I'm also anticipating some sours beginning this year.
2012 also saw me traveling much more than I ever have before. As mentioned the NHC was in Seattle, so I had to fly there. I also went to Florida twice, once in February to visit my folks on vacation and then again in October for Halloween Horror Nights in Universal Studios. It was an incredible collection of haunted houses. The whole thing teemed of some very annoying people, but with a speed pass it was possible to see everything. All the haunted houses followed the same basic formula, which really good in some haunts and not so well in others but it was all really professional quality. I can only imagine the show will get better in 2013, though I'll probably get a multi-night pass and spread the visit out a bit.
However, one of the main reasons I haven't been writing as much is that I started a Youtube Channel. Currently the only show is is "Let's Drink to Gaming", which is a Let's Play-style show with themed cocktails. Check it out, the edges are still rough but the quality is improving. There are a few more things in planning, so stay tuned. It'll hopefully be interesting.
Anyway, that's some stuff that's been going on. Now I need to start getting used to writing 2013 on my checks.
--Phil
2012 was a helluva year, it was the year I started trying to be a lot more regularly active on this site, writing the articles on Bro-horror and the video game articles about SCP-087 and Self-extension and the horror of Discovery. Also, a ton of movies.
The House at the end of the Street was probably the most disappointing movie I'd seen. I really ripped into it, and that may not have been fair but if I had seen this movie on Netflix instant I would have wandered off or found something else to watch.
I didn't write a full post about it, but The Woman in Black impressed the hell out of me. It was a bit of a comedy of errors trying to watch it, but on the 2nd attempt we got all the way through it and it was a great old-school horror movie. It had a lot of Thing-In-The-Background, Weird-Shape-In-The-Storm styles of scares. Almost no jump scares and false scares used well. I wasn't making nearly as many "Oh look it's Harry Potter" jokes as I was expecting, since the acting was actually not half-bad. I'm planning on getting this on DVD/Blu-Ray.
In other news I also went to the National Homebrewer's Convention this year. It was a wonderful experience, and also very educational. The 2013 Convention is going to be in Philly, and as usual you need an American Homebrewer's Association membership. If you brew ANYTHING, vinegar, kombucha, beer, wine, sake, etc. you should get an AHA membership. It's not expensive and they are doing good things for homebrewer's across the country.
Also in beer I made the official change to all-grain brewing and started kegging my homebrew. Kegging is much more satisfying than bottling, it's a worthwhile switch. In 2013 I'm switching from a braid filter to a false bottom. I recently re-attempted the Chocolate Orange Stout, but won't get to try that until 2013 as well. I'm also anticipating some sours beginning this year.
2012 also saw me traveling much more than I ever have before. As mentioned the NHC was in Seattle, so I had to fly there. I also went to Florida twice, once in February to visit my folks on vacation and then again in October for Halloween Horror Nights in Universal Studios. It was an incredible collection of haunted houses. The whole thing teemed of some very annoying people, but with a speed pass it was possible to see everything. All the haunted houses followed the same basic formula, which really good in some haunts and not so well in others but it was all really professional quality. I can only imagine the show will get better in 2013, though I'll probably get a multi-night pass and spread the visit out a bit.
However, one of the main reasons I haven't been writing as much is that I started a Youtube Channel. Currently the only show is is "Let's Drink to Gaming", which is a Let's Play-style show with themed cocktails. Check it out, the edges are still rough but the quality is improving. There are a few more things in planning, so stay tuned. It'll hopefully be interesting.
Anyway, that's some stuff that's been going on. Now I need to start getting used to writing 2013 on my checks.
--Phil
Friday, October 19, 2012
October Horror 2012: V/H/S
V/H/S is a recently released found footage horror anthology with segments written and directed by: David Bruckner, Ti West, Glenn McQuaid, Joe Swanberg, the directing team Radio Silence. The framing story was written and directed by Adam Wingard. Again, expect spoilers, but I'll try to spoiler tag the juiciest bits.
The framing story is titled "Tape 56" and centers around a group of professional hoodlums who tape themselves committing various crimes like destroying lights and windows at an empty building or tearing off a woman's shirt and filming her boobs. I think one of them was also taping himself having sex with his girlfriend but the other activities are taped over it. They get hired by an unknown person to break into an empty house and steal a specific VHS tape. Each other story is a tape found in the collection at the house.
Amateur Night
This segment is about 3 guys who've purchased a set of eyeglass with a hidden camera in the frames with the intention of filming themselves having sex with women they bring to their hotel room from nearby clubs. Most of the short is filled with the lead guy being an absolute jackass and all 3 of them getting really really drunk. Eventually they get back to their room with 2 girls, one of which looks a little weird and only ever says "I like you" to the cameraman. The lead guy tries stripping one of the girls, but she passes out and his friends convince him not to have sex with her while she's unconscious. So he decides to have sex with the weird looking girl while she constantly reaches for the cameraman trying to involve him. He's too wasted from all the drinking and drugs so he goes to the bathroom while the 3rd friend strips naked and tries to initiate the threesome. While in the bathroom the girl goes crazy and starts ripping into the leader. The cameraman and the naked 3rd wheel try to escape but she kills nudie during the chase. The cameraman's hand is injured and the girl is revealed to be a succubus. She still likes the cameraman and tries to seduce him, but he's too afraid to get it up. In a rage, she sprouts wings and flies away with him. This short was a bit weak, I thought, because the 3 guys were absolute assholes. Unlikable in every way.
Second Honeymoon
The next short, directed by Ti West, is the only short that doesn't involve a supernatural element. The segment follows a hipster couple as they travel out west for their honeymoon. There's a forshadowing fortune telling scene and an implication of a creepy character being introduced off camera. While the couple sleeps on their first night, an unknown person sneaks into the room and wanders around with the camera. They pull the covers off the wife and stroke her skin with a switchblade, then empties the husband's wallet, drops his toothbrush in the toilet and leaves. This builds a lot of mistrust as the husband accuses the wife of stealing the money. They have some stilted moments and then enjoy some time at a canyon. The person sneaks into the room again, this time stabbing the husband in the neck. The film cuts shortly then returns to a short shot of the wife and an unknown woman making out in the mirror, before she asks the new girl if she erased the camera. I like Ti West and this short is pretty tense and decent. However, it really feels like nothing happened because of Ti's signature snail-like pacing. He also didn't have enough time to give his characters the depth he normally does. Good show, but it stumbles.
Tuesday the 17th
This obvious play on Friday the 13th was directed by Glenn McQuaid who also directed I Sell the Dead. The story centers around a group of friends who travel to a cabin in the woods to do the typical things. There are some nicely creepy flashes of mutilated bodies in the footage while they tour the woods. Out of freaking nowhere the "nice girl" starts talking about horrible things that happened. The typical initial kills, sex offers, reveal of understanding are kindof awkward because of the tight timeframe. The killer is actually kindof cool, he's like the love-child of Jason and Slenderman. A supernatural slasher who uses knives but can only be seen as heavy distortions on camera. Despite the awkward bits, I enjoyed this part as well.
The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger
This story happens entirely in webcam chats between a girl who inexplicably flashes her boobs and her boyfriend who is away at medical school. Emily is showing off her new apartment but is complaining about strange things that go bump in the night. Despite not believing her, the boyfriend eventually sees odd things happen on her webcam behind her. Eventually she comes up with a plan to use him to guide her through her apartment with her eyes closed so she can try to talk to the spirit-children we've been seeing without being scared. A few moments later she does see the children, and they attack her knocking her unconscious. The boyfriend miraculously enters the apartment just a few seconds later and flips Emily over while the ghost kids watch. He makes an incision in her back and removes a small alien-looking fetus thing. He asks the ghosts how many more of those he'll have to remove from her before they stop growing back, then punches her in the face and breaks her arm. The camera cuts to them on webcam again with her arm in a cast, telling her boyfriend about how a doctor diagnosed her with mild schizophrenia which explained the children she saw and why she ran in front of a car without remembering. They hang up the webcam and after a short moment we see another girl on webcam with the same boyfriend. She also flashes her boobs inexplicably. This is probably my favorite short of the movie. It's a little mind-bending and the scares are delivered wonderfully.
10/31/98
The final short is 4 guys who go to a Halloween party at someone's house only to find it empty. Undeterred they wander around the house in costume looking for people or beer. There are a few brief flashes of some sort of ghostly figure, but nothing that the characters react to. Eventually they make it to the attic where a few hicks are trying to either exorcise or assault a woman in a nightgown. The friends flee and make it to the door before deciding they can't not doing anything and run upstairs to save the girl. During this bit all sorts of crazy things manifest in the house: stacked chairs, crows, projectile vases, etc. The group makes it out with the girl and into car. They drive away and make it a decent distance before a strange fog envelopes the car. The girl vanishes and appears outside of the car. The poor bros have rescued a demon or demon-possessed girl. This short is bananas, but really fun to watch.
We now return to the framing story, which has randomly flashed in between the shorts. During the story a supposedly deceased man in a chair had vanished from the chair. He's undead or something and has been picking off the other criminals, and finally chases down the leader of the group.
This is a really good movie. Some of the shorts are a little awkward, but the concept is decent and there are some standouts in Second Honeymoon, Sick Emily Thing etc, and 10/31/98.
More anthologies coming up: Trick 'R Treat
The framing story is titled "Tape 56" and centers around a group of professional hoodlums who tape themselves committing various crimes like destroying lights and windows at an empty building or tearing off a woman's shirt and filming her boobs. I think one of them was also taping himself having sex with his girlfriend but the other activities are taped over it. They get hired by an unknown person to break into an empty house and steal a specific VHS tape. Each other story is a tape found in the collection at the house.
Amateur Night
This segment is about 3 guys who've purchased a set of eyeglass with a hidden camera in the frames with the intention of filming themselves having sex with women they bring to their hotel room from nearby clubs. Most of the short is filled with the lead guy being an absolute jackass and all 3 of them getting really really drunk. Eventually they get back to their room with 2 girls, one of which looks a little weird and only ever says "I like you" to the cameraman. The lead guy tries stripping one of the girls, but she passes out and his friends convince him not to have sex with her while she's unconscious. So he decides to have sex with the weird looking girl while she constantly reaches for the cameraman trying to involve him. He's too wasted from all the drinking and drugs so he goes to the bathroom while the 3rd friend strips naked and tries to initiate the threesome. While in the bathroom the girl goes crazy and starts ripping into the leader. The cameraman and the naked 3rd wheel try to escape but she kills nudie during the chase. The cameraman's hand is injured and the girl is revealed to be a succubus. She still likes the cameraman and tries to seduce him, but he's too afraid to get it up. In a rage, she sprouts wings and flies away with him. This short was a bit weak, I thought, because the 3 guys were absolute assholes. Unlikable in every way.
Second Honeymoon
The next short, directed by Ti West, is the only short that doesn't involve a supernatural element. The segment follows a hipster couple as they travel out west for their honeymoon. There's a forshadowing fortune telling scene and an implication of a creepy character being introduced off camera. While the couple sleeps on their first night, an unknown person sneaks into the room and wanders around with the camera. They pull the covers off the wife and stroke her skin with a switchblade, then empties the husband's wallet, drops his toothbrush in the toilet and leaves. This builds a lot of mistrust as the husband accuses the wife of stealing the money. They have some stilted moments and then enjoy some time at a canyon. The person sneaks into the room again, this time stabbing the husband in the neck. The film cuts shortly then returns to a short shot of the wife and an unknown woman making out in the mirror, before she asks the new girl if she erased the camera. I like Ti West and this short is pretty tense and decent. However, it really feels like nothing happened because of Ti's signature snail-like pacing. He also didn't have enough time to give his characters the depth he normally does. Good show, but it stumbles.
Tuesday the 17th
This obvious play on Friday the 13th was directed by Glenn McQuaid who also directed I Sell the Dead. The story centers around a group of friends who travel to a cabin in the woods to do the typical things. There are some nicely creepy flashes of mutilated bodies in the footage while they tour the woods. Out of freaking nowhere the "nice girl" starts talking about horrible things that happened. The typical initial kills, sex offers, reveal of understanding are kindof awkward because of the tight timeframe. The killer is actually kindof cool, he's like the love-child of Jason and Slenderman. A supernatural slasher who uses knives but can only be seen as heavy distortions on camera. Despite the awkward bits, I enjoyed this part as well.
The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger
This story happens entirely in webcam chats between a girl who inexplicably flashes her boobs and her boyfriend who is away at medical school. Emily is showing off her new apartment but is complaining about strange things that go bump in the night. Despite not believing her, the boyfriend eventually sees odd things happen on her webcam behind her. Eventually she comes up with a plan to use him to guide her through her apartment with her eyes closed so she can try to talk to the spirit-children we've been seeing without being scared. A few moments later she does see the children, and they attack her knocking her unconscious. The boyfriend miraculously enters the apartment just a few seconds later and flips Emily over while the ghost kids watch. He makes an incision in her back and removes a small alien-looking fetus thing. He asks the ghosts how many more of those he'll have to remove from her before they stop growing back, then punches her in the face and breaks her arm. The camera cuts to them on webcam again with her arm in a cast, telling her boyfriend about how a doctor diagnosed her with mild schizophrenia which explained the children she saw and why she ran in front of a car without remembering. They hang up the webcam and after a short moment we see another girl on webcam with the same boyfriend. She also flashes her boobs inexplicably. This is probably my favorite short of the movie. It's a little mind-bending and the scares are delivered wonderfully.
10/31/98
The final short is 4 guys who go to a Halloween party at someone's house only to find it empty. Undeterred they wander around the house in costume looking for people or beer. There are a few brief flashes of some sort of ghostly figure, but nothing that the characters react to. Eventually they make it to the attic where a few hicks are trying to either exorcise or assault a woman in a nightgown. The friends flee and make it to the door before deciding they can't not doing anything and run upstairs to save the girl. During this bit all sorts of crazy things manifest in the house: stacked chairs, crows, projectile vases, etc. The group makes it out with the girl and into car. They drive away and make it a decent distance before a strange fog envelopes the car. The girl vanishes and appears outside of the car. The poor bros have rescued a demon or demon-possessed girl. This short is bananas, but really fun to watch.
We now return to the framing story, which has randomly flashed in between the shorts. During the story a supposedly deceased man in a chair had vanished from the chair. He's undead or something and has been picking off the other criminals, and finally chases down the leader of the group.
This is a really good movie. Some of the shorts are a little awkward, but the concept is decent and there are some standouts in Second Honeymoon, Sick Emily Thing etc, and 10/31/98.
More anthologies coming up: Trick 'R Treat
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
October Horror 2012: Snoop Dogg's Hood of Horror
I was not expecting much here, but this movie is actually surprisingly well put together. Yeah, some of the acting is hammy, but it's good with its mythology and its stories have a good central theme. The production is definitely passable.
The movie starts with a short animated sequence in which Devon, voiced by Snoop Dogg, is involved in a gang shootout during which his sister is shot and killed. It's a strong possibility he fired the shot that killed her. A demon named Liore offers him the chance to save his sister's life by killing himself and giving his soul to Liore. In exchange, Liore also makes Devon a Hound of Hell: a pimp demon with the ability to offer people the choice to damn themselves or save their souls. Snoop now appears in person and gives a short tour of hell, involving a puking midget demon.
Crossed Out
A tagger named Posie is haunted by the gang-related deaths of her parents. After interfering with two thugs trying to make unwanted advances on a girl, she spars verbally with the leader then sprays him in the face and runs away. She's abducted by a mysterious hobo played by Danny Trejo who drugs her and gives her a totally bitchin' skeletal tattoo on her arm. This tattoo gives her the power to kill by tagging over people's names. After crossing out the tag of the thug who chased her the other day, she overhears news of his untimely death and realizes she was the cause. Drunk on power, she begins crossing out the tags of his entire band of thugs. There's a short montage while she gleefully takes out a swarm of low level street scum. However, after a time she begins tagging her own name and Danny appears to tell her she abused her power instead of using it to break the cycle of violence in the city. He strips the tattoo from her and raises some of the recently deceased gang members from the dead. They kill her, spraying her brains along a wall. The spatter is later revealed as a beautiful painting of flowers and Snoop reappears to admire the mural with Danny before taking Posie's soul.
The Scumlord
This story concerns a bigoted white trash Texan named Tex and his trophy wife. Tex's father ran a retirement house for 4 black war veterans whom he had served with, where he treated them with respect and friendship. The elder Tex included a provision in his will that his son would have to live with the vets for one year so that they could teach him honor and respect before getting his inheritance. After moving in, Tex and his wife harass and defraud the elderly veterans, led by Ernie Hudson, with the intention that they'll move out leaving him the property to flip and resell at a profit. Unwilling to report Tex to the VA since they'll be split up, they comply with his demands. Eventually the money he's stolen from the vets causes them to begin starving and become unable to afford their medications. When Tex eventually kills the friendly maid/cook, the veterans decide it's their duty to retaliate. Hudson beats Tex to death while the wife dies in a freak accident. The veterans inherit the elder Tex's fortune and the wife's yap-yap dog, so they celebrate. Snoop reappears and informs them that he's their new landlord before he drags off Tex's soul while the puking midget hauls off the wife.
Rapsody Askew
The final story is about a rapper, SOD, who begs God for a chance to spread His word if God just helps him gain fame. Immediately outside of the church he meets Quon, who had just broken a window with a ball, and they instantly become partners. Flash forward and the rapper is cleaning house at an awards show following the tragic shooting death of Quon. During an after party he's trapped by a mysterious woman played by Lin Shaye who removes the door to the room. She then begins to replay his life for him, culminating in the death of his friend. A zombiefied Quon then enters the room carrying another tape, showing another perspective on the crime revealing SOD was wearing a bulletproof vest and had orchestrated the assassination with the help of his bodyguard. Quon was constantly trying to keep SOD's ego in check and keep him from ruining his career or his life with senseless crime and hard drugs. Even turning down a solo career to keep the team together. The bodyguard appears as a hysteric SOD tries to tell him Quon is in the room, but he doesn't see Quon. After the bodyguard reiterates his crime, the deceased MC then grabs two knives and shoves them into his eyes. As SOD picks up the knives and tries to attack the undead Quon with them, two girls open the door and see SOD standing over the dead body. The woman offers him a choice: stay in the room, go to prison for murder or leave the room and go out in a blaze of glory. SOD grabs the bodyguard's gun and commits suicide by cop. Snoop then appears and takes his soul to hell along with the two Texans and Posie.
I actually really liked this movie. It's pretty dark and gruesome, with decent effects, but there's a light-hearted swagger lent to it by the tone of the framing story and some of the writing during each story's climax. Posie's story is probably the weakest because of its timeframe. Rapsody Askew is probably the best. Scumlord is decent but the characterization of Tex and his wife is beyond caricature. I understand it's done for a reason, but it's so over-the-top you have no sympathy for them at all while Posie and SOD felt more like real people done in by their own flaws.
Anyway, anthologies continues with: Campfire Tales.
The movie starts with a short animated sequence in which Devon, voiced by Snoop Dogg, is involved in a gang shootout during which his sister is shot and killed. It's a strong possibility he fired the shot that killed her. A demon named Liore offers him the chance to save his sister's life by killing himself and giving his soul to Liore. In exchange, Liore also makes Devon a Hound of Hell: a pimp demon with the ability to offer people the choice to damn themselves or save their souls. Snoop now appears in person and gives a short tour of hell, involving a puking midget demon.
Crossed Out
A tagger named Posie is haunted by the gang-related deaths of her parents. After interfering with two thugs trying to make unwanted advances on a girl, she spars verbally with the leader then sprays him in the face and runs away. She's abducted by a mysterious hobo played by Danny Trejo who drugs her and gives her a totally bitchin' skeletal tattoo on her arm. This tattoo gives her the power to kill by tagging over people's names. After crossing out the tag of the thug who chased her the other day, she overhears news of his untimely death and realizes she was the cause. Drunk on power, she begins crossing out the tags of his entire band of thugs. There's a short montage while she gleefully takes out a swarm of low level street scum. However, after a time she begins tagging her own name and Danny appears to tell her she abused her power instead of using it to break the cycle of violence in the city. He strips the tattoo from her and raises some of the recently deceased gang members from the dead. They kill her, spraying her brains along a wall. The spatter is later revealed as a beautiful painting of flowers and Snoop reappears to admire the mural with Danny before taking Posie's soul.
The Scumlord
This story concerns a bigoted white trash Texan named Tex and his trophy wife. Tex's father ran a retirement house for 4 black war veterans whom he had served with, where he treated them with respect and friendship. The elder Tex included a provision in his will that his son would have to live with the vets for one year so that they could teach him honor and respect before getting his inheritance. After moving in, Tex and his wife harass and defraud the elderly veterans, led by Ernie Hudson, with the intention that they'll move out leaving him the property to flip and resell at a profit. Unwilling to report Tex to the VA since they'll be split up, they comply with his demands. Eventually the money he's stolen from the vets causes them to begin starving and become unable to afford their medications. When Tex eventually kills the friendly maid/cook, the veterans decide it's their duty to retaliate. Hudson beats Tex to death while the wife dies in a freak accident. The veterans inherit the elder Tex's fortune and the wife's yap-yap dog, so they celebrate. Snoop reappears and informs them that he's their new landlord before he drags off Tex's soul while the puking midget hauls off the wife.
Rapsody Askew
The final story is about a rapper, SOD, who begs God for a chance to spread His word if God just helps him gain fame. Immediately outside of the church he meets Quon, who had just broken a window with a ball, and they instantly become partners. Flash forward and the rapper is cleaning house at an awards show following the tragic shooting death of Quon. During an after party he's trapped by a mysterious woman played by Lin Shaye who removes the door to the room. She then begins to replay his life for him, culminating in the death of his friend. A zombiefied Quon then enters the room carrying another tape, showing another perspective on the crime revealing SOD was wearing a bulletproof vest and had orchestrated the assassination with the help of his bodyguard. Quon was constantly trying to keep SOD's ego in check and keep him from ruining his career or his life with senseless crime and hard drugs. Even turning down a solo career to keep the team together. The bodyguard appears as a hysteric SOD tries to tell him Quon is in the room, but he doesn't see Quon. After the bodyguard reiterates his crime, the deceased MC then grabs two knives and shoves them into his eyes. As SOD picks up the knives and tries to attack the undead Quon with them, two girls open the door and see SOD standing over the dead body. The woman offers him a choice: stay in the room, go to prison for murder or leave the room and go out in a blaze of glory. SOD grabs the bodyguard's gun and commits suicide by cop. Snoop then appears and takes his soul to hell along with the two Texans and Posie.
I actually really liked this movie. It's pretty dark and gruesome, with decent effects, but there's a light-hearted swagger lent to it by the tone of the framing story and some of the writing during each story's climax. Posie's story is probably the weakest because of its timeframe. Rapsody Askew is probably the best. Scumlord is decent but the characterization of Tex and his wife is beyond caricature. I understand it's done for a reason, but it's so over-the-top you have no sympathy for them at all while Posie and SOD felt more like real people done in by their own flaws.
Anyway, anthologies continues with: Campfire Tales.
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