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The Emily Clay Blogs

Your TV, book, movie recommendations

At some point in my high school years I got really, really tired of commercial interruptions and I gave up on TV. My viewing declined to a few hours a year. As a result I saw some of the original Star Treks but I never became a Trekkie, and these days what I know of TV programs I know mostly by hearsay or DVD collection.

Movies, on the other hand, I have watched regularly for years and years. Those I know well. The movies I find most memorable, and worth watching more than once, are comedies. I'm a great fan of Mel Brooks and Mike Meyers, they know the story structure so well they make great fun of it. Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, and Austin Powers are hard to stop laughing at. A surprise favorite is Kung Fu Hustle. I love the mix of traditional slapstick comedy and special effects enhanced violence that is just as comedic. Another surprise favorite is the first two Matrix's. The first time I saw The Matrix I was turned off by the "human batteries" explanation for why there was a matrix, that was just too silly. But when I was teaching in Korea I saw it again and I found the rest of the story was a lot better. The second Matrix, Matrix Reloaded, also had a neat story. The third one was inconsistent and silly. (here is a Technofiction review of the trilogy)

For more specifics about specific books and movies, here are my Technofiction Reviews.

I was a board game player before computer games, and I transitioned into them quickly and easily. When they first came out for personal computers in the 1980's I was fascinated with the variety and inventiveness. But in the 1990's they become cursed with monotonousness -- they followed movies into monotony. The fact that Bloomberbuster 10 has better graphics and audio than Bloomberbuster 9 leaves me yawning. I want to see new stories, new games, new challenges. These days I rotate between just two, Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim, and I do so just to rest my mind.

 

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