They are making a movie out of the game Battleship. To use one of my famous phrases here, I shit you not. I had already heard about the Monopoly movie which makes sense in the vaguest sense possibly. I mean Atlantic City, railroads, in depth discussions of the status of the Electric Company (Easy Reader to the rescue!), throw in an iron and a thimble and you have the makings of a plot. Here you just would have two navies shooting at each other. You know what that is called? Every war movie about the Pacific. You don’t need to tie it to a children’s game.
Personally, I want a movie based on either Connect Four or Mouse Trap. Connect Four because it would probably turn into one of the most avant things ever made. I want some pretentious European guy getting to the deeper meaning of four in a row and “pretty sneaky sis.” And Mouse Trap because, well, was there a cooler game out there when you were a kid. A little CGI and you have the next Pixar movie right there. I’m amazed that this hasn’t been greenlit yet.
And yes, I fear for what will become of my Voltron movie. I’m betting it will turn into Transformers with lions instead of cars. They’ll never get the deeper meaning, the symbolism behind the colors, or the importance of Princess Allura. I should just drive to Hollywood right now and fix things.
It is amazing how unoriginal Hollywood is right now. I was listening to some people discuss whether Inception (a movie I really want to see) is a sign of a change since it is based on, gasp, an original idea that requires thought to fully understand. And the answer was, no, not really. It will always be easier to make a movie like The A-Team. Just saying “There is going to be an A-Team movie” tells you everything you need to know about the movie: there will be explosions, special effects, a vague reference to Mr.T and at the end of 90 minutes you will be satisfied in the sense that it wasn’t a painful 90 minutes. It was just kind of there. You don’t need an advertising budget or a script or even actors for those films. You probably could just show 90 minutes of explosions and everyone would go home happy.
I’ve toyed with writing a movie script at some point in my life. Since I always view my never ending first novel as a movie in my head maybe it would be easier if I just wrote it as one. If I lived in LA I probably would do it. But while I wonder if I ever could write a novel that was good enough to be published I know for certain that my movie would never be made because it would simply be too good. Who would ever want to watch something about people struggling with their lives?
Showing posts with label Board Games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Board Games. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Packing up the board games
Here is a sense of the way my life works. I went to play trivia tonight and guess what the answer to one of the questions was? Stratego. This is precisely why I blog. I write about so many inane topics that by the time I play in a weekly trivia game I have written about every possible thing that could conceivably be an answer. Came in fourth tonight as a team of one. Pretty impressive but I could still do better.
I also still walk to trivia like I did in Kansas City. I like walking as it a) gives me the illogical notion that going to a bar counts as exercise and b) means that I do not have to worry about what takes place in the bar because I am walking home. However, instead of the five minute walk to Record Bar it is now a fifteen minute walk and doing so in a cold rain is quite annoying. I’m still vaguely drenched.
Ok, on to the board game front (which I’ll wrap up here due to it being too late to surf the net for action figure images. I’ll do that tomorrow.) I did exclude Monopoly and I’m not entirely sure why other than it is such an iconic game that it makes it difficult to discuss Mr. Moneybags in any logical sense. First off, the game begins with the fight over who gets to be the race car. This can turn violent as while settling for the horse or the cannon is acceptable absolutely no one wants to end up with the thimble. That has to be the dumbest playing piece in the history of mankind.
Second of all, much like in Risk, Monopoly requires social interaction and deal making for a game to be successful. This is an inherent flaw in my point of view as I prefer to not have to speak during a game, preferring to just utilize statistical analysis and game theory to dictate my actions. I mean, playing a game and being forced to talk to my family? What the hell? Also, by nature the game can last forever as players can just keep circling the board, collecting $200 and doing nothing. At least in Risk you get to envision laying waste to places like Irtusk.
Switching games, I actually remember playing Pay Day as a kid and really enjoyed it. It was really difficult as an eight year old to get your head around the concept of rent payments and life as a low level wage slave. I checked Wikipedia and your monthly pay in that game was $325 a month. That has to be one crappy apartment you are living in. Hell, even at a $3 an hour minimum wage you aren’t pulling in 40 hours a week. No wonder you had a “Sell your plasma for the free cookie” card.
There was one more game I wanted to list but after thirty minutes on Wiki and racking my brain all day I still can’t remember the name. If any of my siblings read this (or if anyone else knows) please post it in the comments. It was a game in the same format as Guess Who except that instead of vague pictures of children it was pictures of adults with various occupations. Each player chose a card representing who you are and the other players asked “Does your person have glasses?” and you could only answer yes or no. So from that point it was process of elimination.
The reason I remember this game so clearly is because of two cards. If you held one card “The Sycophant” (not the name but close enough) no matter what another player asked you would always answer “yes”. My favorite character was “The Liar” who would always lie about whatever question was asked. Playing as, or against, The Liar made the game incredibly challenging. Yes, the fact that I was enjoying logic puzzles at age 9 does say a lot about me.
Tomorrow: Action Figures! They’re not dolls, damnit, they’re action figures.
I also still walk to trivia like I did in Kansas City. I like walking as it a) gives me the illogical notion that going to a bar counts as exercise and b) means that I do not have to worry about what takes place in the bar because I am walking home. However, instead of the five minute walk to Record Bar it is now a fifteen minute walk and doing so in a cold rain is quite annoying. I’m still vaguely drenched.
Ok, on to the board game front (which I’ll wrap up here due to it being too late to surf the net for action figure images. I’ll do that tomorrow.) I did exclude Monopoly and I’m not entirely sure why other than it is such an iconic game that it makes it difficult to discuss Mr. Moneybags in any logical sense. First off, the game begins with the fight over who gets to be the race car. This can turn violent as while settling for the horse or the cannon is acceptable absolutely no one wants to end up with the thimble. That has to be the dumbest playing piece in the history of mankind.
Second of all, much like in Risk, Monopoly requires social interaction and deal making for a game to be successful. This is an inherent flaw in my point of view as I prefer to not have to speak during a game, preferring to just utilize statistical analysis and game theory to dictate my actions. I mean, playing a game and being forced to talk to my family? What the hell? Also, by nature the game can last forever as players can just keep circling the board, collecting $200 and doing nothing. At least in Risk you get to envision laying waste to places like Irtusk.
Switching games, I actually remember playing Pay Day as a kid and really enjoyed it. It was really difficult as an eight year old to get your head around the concept of rent payments and life as a low level wage slave. I checked Wikipedia and your monthly pay in that game was $325 a month. That has to be one crappy apartment you are living in. Hell, even at a $3 an hour minimum wage you aren’t pulling in 40 hours a week. No wonder you had a “Sell your plasma for the free cookie” card.
There was one more game I wanted to list but after thirty minutes on Wiki and racking my brain all day I still can’t remember the name. If any of my siblings read this (or if anyone else knows) please post it in the comments. It was a game in the same format as Guess Who except that instead of vague pictures of children it was pictures of adults with various occupations. Each player chose a card representing who you are and the other players asked “Does your person have glasses?” and you could only answer yes or no. So from that point it was process of elimination.
The reason I remember this game so clearly is because of two cards. If you held one card “The Sycophant” (not the name but close enough) no matter what another player asked you would always answer “yes”. My favorite character was “The Liar” who would always lie about whatever question was asked. Playing as, or against, The Liar made the game incredibly challenging. Yes, the fact that I was enjoying logic puzzles at age 9 does say a lot about me.
Tomorrow: Action Figures! They’re not dolls, damnit, they’re action figures.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Holiday Memories: The Board Games
Given that it is the holidays and all I thought that it would be fun this week to look back at some of the favorite toys and games from my youth. I’ll be doing this on and off all week so who knows what you are going to get. To start, I’ll look at some of my favorite board games. Keep in mind that I am the fourth of five children in a highly competitive family. The only rule was if you cheat you better not get caught especially if you are proven to be cheating through the use of a mathematical proof. On to the games.
Clue: The classic game to find out who killed Mr. Boddy has a number of aspects that absolutely no one bothers to discuss. To start with the entire premise of the game is that you are locked in a house with a murderer and you go around trying to solve the crime as opposed to grabbing the revolver and barricading yourself in the conservatory with Yvette the French Maid. Secondly, on those occasions where you discover that you yourself are the murderer there is a whole host of quandaries that are avoided as you senselessly confess to the crime. Like “Why did I just spend the past half hour trying to figure out something I already knew?” and “Why don’t I now escape through the open conservatory window?” and “Why don’t I just framed Mrs. White, who no one wants to be anyway?” However, this game does provide for the wonderful moment of accusing your sister of murder. For those wondering, I was always Colonel Mustard though as an adult I’ve realized that Professor Plum is the coolest. Also, this game becomes infinitely better if someone in the family can do a Tim Curry impression.
Risk: The game that can never be won. I ended up buying a version of the game for my Commodore 64 just so I could finally win one and even that took me a month to accomplish. I was probably an adult before I realized that when other people play they do things like form alliances and work together. In our family it was every person for themselves with no niceties involved, especially for whoever had Ukraine. I did invent the “Falkland Islands Rule” in which Great Britain can attack Argentina. I was nine when I made this rule. That explains pretty much everything you ever need to know about me.
Mousetrap: If there is one game that I wanted as a kid but did not have it was Mousetrap. I don’t know what it was about, whether it was interesting or not, or if I would have lost a piece the second time I played it and thus made it completely worthless but man, I so wanted to build the thing. I still do, come to think of it.
Trouble: The only reason anyone ever played Trouble was for the little pop up bubble dice roller thingy. In fact, they probably could have saved a lot on manufacturing costs by just making that and selling it for fifteen bucks a pop.
The Game of Life: Easily my favorite game growing up. It teaches you so much about the importance of getting a good education and buying insurance. It is interesting in that while theoretically you could institute same sex marriage in the game (by assuming that all children are adopted and that everyone lives in Connecticut) it is impossible to go through life as a bachelor. So apparently my life is in violation of the rules of the game. Really this game had everything you could hope for as a kid. Cars, a spinning wheel, little hills to climb, people to place in the cars and the ability to swindle money when the banker wasn’t looking.
Trivial Pursuit: No surprise about having this game on the list. I believe that in all our years of playing the game the team of my mom and myself lost only once. She covered all the entertainment and literature questions and I covered sports, science and geography (we split on history). Also, this was great in that it created huge arguments over rule interpretations, definitions of questions, and whether or not we should let my younger brother answer questions from the children’s version or not. For some reason the children’s version had a surprising number of questions about the Mister T board game. Twenty plus years later and I still remember that.
Stratego: This game was like the counterargument to Risk where instead of conquering the world you were trying to win a battle. Why you were doing so with Napoleon’s army is another mystery for the ages. Just for once I wanted to have a tank on the battlefield. This game is essentially Capture the Flag with bombs thus allowing you to go into such strategic moves as placing one bomb behind another or the famous “switch your pieces while your brother isn’t looking” gambit.
Any board games that I missed? What other favorites are out there?
Clue: The classic game to find out who killed Mr. Boddy has a number of aspects that absolutely no one bothers to discuss. To start with the entire premise of the game is that you are locked in a house with a murderer and you go around trying to solve the crime as opposed to grabbing the revolver and barricading yourself in the conservatory with Yvette the French Maid. Secondly, on those occasions where you discover that you yourself are the murderer there is a whole host of quandaries that are avoided as you senselessly confess to the crime. Like “Why did I just spend the past half hour trying to figure out something I already knew?” and “Why don’t I now escape through the open conservatory window?” and “Why don’t I just framed Mrs. White, who no one wants to be anyway?” However, this game does provide for the wonderful moment of accusing your sister of murder. For those wondering, I was always Colonel Mustard though as an adult I’ve realized that Professor Plum is the coolest. Also, this game becomes infinitely better if someone in the family can do a Tim Curry impression.
Risk: The game that can never be won. I ended up buying a version of the game for my Commodore 64 just so I could finally win one and even that took me a month to accomplish. I was probably an adult before I realized that when other people play they do things like form alliances and work together. In our family it was every person for themselves with no niceties involved, especially for whoever had Ukraine. I did invent the “Falkland Islands Rule” in which Great Britain can attack Argentina. I was nine when I made this rule. That explains pretty much everything you ever need to know about me.
Mousetrap: If there is one game that I wanted as a kid but did not have it was Mousetrap. I don’t know what it was about, whether it was interesting or not, or if I would have lost a piece the second time I played it and thus made it completely worthless but man, I so wanted to build the thing. I still do, come to think of it.
Trouble: The only reason anyone ever played Trouble was for the little pop up bubble dice roller thingy. In fact, they probably could have saved a lot on manufacturing costs by just making that and selling it for fifteen bucks a pop.
The Game of Life: Easily my favorite game growing up. It teaches you so much about the importance of getting a good education and buying insurance. It is interesting in that while theoretically you could institute same sex marriage in the game (by assuming that all children are adopted and that everyone lives in Connecticut) it is impossible to go through life as a bachelor. So apparently my life is in violation of the rules of the game. Really this game had everything you could hope for as a kid. Cars, a spinning wheel, little hills to climb, people to place in the cars and the ability to swindle money when the banker wasn’t looking.
Trivial Pursuit: No surprise about having this game on the list. I believe that in all our years of playing the game the team of my mom and myself lost only once. She covered all the entertainment and literature questions and I covered sports, science and geography (we split on history). Also, this was great in that it created huge arguments over rule interpretations, definitions of questions, and whether or not we should let my younger brother answer questions from the children’s version or not. For some reason the children’s version had a surprising number of questions about the Mister T board game. Twenty plus years later and I still remember that.
Stratego: This game was like the counterargument to Risk where instead of conquering the world you were trying to win a battle. Why you were doing so with Napoleon’s army is another mystery for the ages. Just for once I wanted to have a tank on the battlefield. This game is essentially Capture the Flag with bombs thus allowing you to go into such strategic moves as placing one bomb behind another or the famous “switch your pieces while your brother isn’t looking” gambit.
Any board games that I missed? What other favorites are out there?
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