LinksAwakening

Link’s Awakening

My last full game review dropped over a month ago, and it's high time for another. The game in question probably isn't a surprise, since I've been telegraphing it for a while now. I've just finished my decades-delayed first playthrough, so this post will be written while the experience is…
October 26, 202130 Comments
Falling Down

Falling Down

I don't like to use the word "God" because it' overused in the United States ... it's been politicized and has become an attack--like if you don't believe in Jesus, you're not one of us! -Falling Down director Joel Schumacher Bar none, the movie that readers ask me to review…
October 18, 202121 Comments
The Game

The Game

From time to time I like to revisit movies from around Culture Ground Zero. Since Western pop culture is now fully in the grip of a fanatical cult bent on memory holing the past, it's beneficial to look back on what we've lost. One of the most tragic casualties of…
October 4, 20213 Comments
Escape from LA

Escape from LA

In the early 21st century, an American presidential candidate wins a highly unorthodox election by leveraging a national disaster. As the front man for an extreme moralizing movement, he oversees the implementation of sweeping neo-puritanical directives to enforce his sect's moral vision nationwide. Federal law enforcement is tasked with prosecuting…
September 27, 202110 Comments
Shadow Hearts

Shadow Hearts

Victory may have defeated JRPGs, but video games represent the one segment of pop culture that survived Ground Zero. At least for a decade or so. Today, the corporatization of vidya has made up for lost time with a vengeance. Consider the outright disappearance of the entire video game midlist.…
September 20, 20214 Comments
Combat XSeed Cover

Giant Punchy Mechs

Friend of the blog Joseph Moore recently reviewed Combat Frame XSeed at Yard Sale of the Mind. This is a fun book. Jumps right in with dramatic escapes, last-second rescues, and battles to the death, with moral questions about exactly how far one is justified to go in war. The…
August 9, 202115 Comments
Master and Commander

Master and Commander

As Hollywood progressively loses touch with its audience, finding a genuinely entertaining, non-propagandizing movie made after 1997 is a rare treasure indeed. One such overlooked gem graced theaters in 2003 to critical acclaim but disappointing box office. Yet it remains a sterling exemplar of its genre and even has wisdom…
July 26, 202124 Comments
checklist

Fun Has a New Enemy

Author JD Cowan gives his informed take on the latest desecration of The Shadow from James Patterson's brand sweatshop. Anyone who has read an OldPub book in the last decade certainly has warning bells going off in their head, and for very good reason. All you need is the above…
May 21, 2021

Mann Hunt

An FBI agent racing against time to catch a grisly serial killer before he strikes again seeks help from an even more cunning and brutal killer who plays mind games with his interviewer from behind bars. This adaptation of a Thomas Harris best seller took a bit to gain traction…
May 20, 2021

Money Isn’t Real

"Money isn't real." That's the advice Fred Jung, played by Ray Liotta, gives his son George in the 2001 crime drama biopic Blow. Though more workmanlike than visionary in its execution and more of a noteworthy mid list film than a classic, Blow has an abundance of wisdom to share about…
May 20, 2021