“Backrooms” horror or “liminal spaces” horror is my kinda horror. Essentially it taps into that fear of being lost in an in between space. A hotel corridor. An office. A service corridor in a mall. A space that exists purely to serve as a conduit between spaces. You’re not supposed to spend that much time there. And why the Hell would you want to?
An extrapolation of a true story. Woman Of The Hour shows what women had to put up with in the 70’s in their personal and professional lives. We watch women being objectified, patronised, bullied, ignored, threatened and even attacked.
Sadly something that still hasn’t changed much today.
Never has a Shōnen anime given me such feels! I think I’ve shed tears about 10 times this season alone when it comes to emotions, duty, respect, friendship and other such feelings. It’s a great anime with a wonderful cast of characters.
Also, just listen to this absolute banger from AURORA for the S2 intro tune 🤘
For a long time now I’ve had an extremely convoluted method of backing up my iCloud Photos by manually extracting files and then uploading them to an external drive and some cloud storage. Fiddly, awkward and generally not great.
I hate doing it. So you know what that means. I don’t do it as routinely as I should.
Which for something as important as photos of my family… is not great.
Lot’s of people don’t realise is that iCloud is not a backup. it’s just your files offloaded to the cloud. Sure it’s sorta on your computer and in the cloud, but really there’s still just one copy. Especially if you offload storage. It’s subject to outages, corruption and accidental deletion just like any other file on your computer.
“Two is one, one is none”
- Navy Seals or something apparently… I dunno but it’s a good quote
I’ve never read any Anne Rice. I should get around to that some day. I’ve only really been exposed to Rice’s work via 1994’s Interview With The Vampire movie. But I do love some vampire’s and modern fantasy.
After hearing about this via the great retro computing YouTube channel “This Does Not Compute”, I could not rush to Amazon fast enough to grab a “Maclock” of my very own.
It’s a simple alarm clock based off a classic Mac, but the quality of the mould used on this thing punches way above its weight. For £20 shipped directly from China via Amazon, I can’t really fault how this looks.
Daily Drivers is a series I’ve thought about writing where I introduce some of my most used and loved gadgets, accessories and useful gizmos. Here’s the first in this series.
Sometimes, you’ll see an item and just immediately see how useful it’d be to own. I felt that way a few years ago as soon as I saw the Nedrelow Magic Sleeve system talked about online.
It’s such a simple but clever idea. Just a well made Marino wool felt case, BUT with the addition of magnets all around the edge under the material to seal the case. This allows it to open and close easily with no rough edges from zips on show.
Made by Scott Nedrelow in Los Angeles, it’s a small business that uses sustainable ethically sourced materials. These products are understated, elegant and using premium materials that feel fabulous to touch.
I bought this particular case in July 2021 and it’s still going strong 4 years later.
I used to like Star Wars. As I get older however it has lost a lot of appeal. The new trilogy didn’t hit for me, and the TV shows, cartoons and games have been pretty saturated. 1 So why’d you buy this game then Davey?!?! 🤔
It’s interesting how different people react to different types of horror. I’m fine with that slow creeping dread of films like Nosferatu, The Shining, Longlegs etc. But I’m not great with pure gore. I just Can’t. My wife is my polar opposite. Being a nurse, she finds movie portrayals of gore unmoving. Creepy though? she just can’t do it. Funny how people are different that way. 1
Ah, I love the Mafia games. I have a long history with the mafia franchise and it’s truly one of my favourite things. What a great concept for games!
You don’t actually get that many gritty, historic gangster games vs your typical gruff soldier dudes and fantasy tropes. I think that was a big part of what interested me as a young 20-something when the first Mafia game was released on PC. I loved how grounded it felt.
These games are known for their detailed historical settings. Grand cutscenes and plots, with realistic gunplay and driving elements on top.
Of course, comparisons to the Grand Theft Auto series were bound to happen. But with its focus on realism, and the fact that whilst the games are staged in an explorable city, it wasn’t really an open world in the way GTA is, they’re really very different things. These are focused. Considered experiences.
25 years later, the series continues, having changed both publishers and developers over the years.
We love a good murder mystery in this house. From Poirot to Columbo, midsummer murders and beyond 1. It’s a comfortable, well-trodden path for a TV programme to tread; however, for a good writer, that just gives them a solid foundation to play with and break the expectations.
We were really impressed and excited with the twists that Bookish puts on the genre. There may be things I mention considered very light spoilers, but for those who want to go in 100% cold, I shall leave a gap before I detail those bits of the plot so you’ve got a chance to bail.
Set in London, 1946 shortly after the conclusion of WW2, Gabriel Book is the proprietor of the amusingly named “book’s books”. Although thanks to a “Special letter from Churchill” from services he provided during the war, he acts as a special consultant to the local police force when required. Assisted by his wife, Trottie, and newly released from prison youngster, Jack.
Ah internet darling Murderbot. I’d read the first book in the series a few years ago but I fell off the series due to the price of them in the UK 1. I did like what I read in that first book, but I drifted off into the realms of Vandermeer and Abercrombie instead as I just couldn’t justify the price to collect the lot.
I did enjoy what I read in that first book. Don’t get me wrong. It was good writing and I really liked the character and universe that is being presented. It’s a well worn but interesting spin on the AI/BladeRunner/Westworld style brand of Sci-Fi and sentient AI. This adaption understands what the books are about 100% and portrays it really well. The presentation of the the bigger corpo controlled world is decent enough. Just attractive enough for the upper classes so you can see the appeal but also shows the poor people who are sacrificed to make it work. it does get into this a little bit in the last ¼ of the series, but not quite enough to show how truly shitty that life would be. Totally it’s played more for laughs with one later scene that should have been much more serious essentially fast forwarded through in a way that puzzled me. this is a minor point in a series that is overall well done however.
I like Murderbot’s design and the tech on display. It does the thing of showing computer screens and HUDs in-world against the characters. Those and the other effects are really well done.
🚨 Warning: Here be spoilers. I wouldn’t read this until after you’ve seen the film if I was you. But you do you.
I’ve warned you.
I like Tom Hardy. He always seems like a nice bloke in interviews and I’ve enjoyed some of his acting over the years. Even his attempts at accents bless him.
I’ve been using a piece of software recently that has really impressed me.
After admiring it from afar for many years I finally decided to just purchase a specialist bit of software by the name of SecureCRT, and it gave me some thoughts about software, tools and utility in this day and age.
Ahhh B-Games. Like B-Movies, they’re the smaller releases that don’t garner as much attention as the AAA tentpole releases. Indie games sort of blur the lines on B-Games nowadays regarding how they’re published, who finances them, how polished they can be, and many other factors. The lines between AAA, Indie, and B-Games aren’t all that straightforward anymore.
For me, a B-Game is a lower budget, possibly sliiiightly unpolished release. But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t got heart. I’d say the Precinct fits that definition perfectly. It’s an ambitious swing for the fences by a small team 1 that wears its intent proudly on its sleeve. The game has lots of mechanics and an open world to play within but it doesn’t necessarily always gel together as smoothly as it could. There’s chunks in the formula. But that’s ok. Sometimes we like chunks.
My first Eggers film! There was a deal on Apple TV for a 4 film collection of his works 1 so I thought why not. Let’s have a little Eggers season and work through them! A really great tribute to vampiric tales and lore as a background to themes like depression, love, lust, societal expectations and sexism.
Beautifully shot with some great effects it’s a beautifully looking film. The language in the script is great as well. Its choice of language is so rich it adds to the atmosphere brilliantly.
Count Orlock is genuinely terrifying in his portrayal, and Lily-Rose Depp is haunting in her role. Defoe is amazing as usual and Aaron-Taylor Johnston is surprisingly great as well.
It’s a film that begs a second viewing for sure. Maybe after I watch the other 3 films in the collection! Next, the VVitch I think!
VVitch, The Lighthouse, The Northman and Nosferatu
It’s ridiculously cheesy, excitingly ultra-violently “watch through your fingers” sometimes, with incredible fightwork and is pretty well shot.
It has a great cast as well.
Episode 5 has to be one of the craziest most tense scenarios with one of the craziest fights and subsequent deaths that must have ever been put to screen 🫣
A really, really fun experience. Takes a while to get going at the start, but once you get into the rhythm of upgrading and levelling up with a few character skills behind you it’s great fun right to the end. It looks fabulous1 and it’s a really well written game. It causes me to have belly laughs multiple times throughout. It plays with your assumptions and the zombie genre brilliantly. I found it really amusing one of the characters you can pick is dressed as a fireman, but you actually discover pretty quickly after starting the game that he’s really a stripper dressed as a fireman.
I didn’t play it co-op but it supports up to 4 players just like previous dead island titles. I imagine that’s even more of a chaotic blast.
customising your weapons and the elemental effects is fun to play with without becoming overwhelming. There’s enough freedom to play around and find a character build that is fun for you to play with.
Well worth picking up if you didn’t catch it on release.
Especially after its PS5 Pro patch. It must be one of the crispest looking games on console.
I love me some David Simon and this is an amazing, funny, tragic, brutal look at the military, warfare, America, youth, peer pressure, failure of leadership, racism, violence, incompetence, PTSD, ambition, the pointlessness of war and much much more.
Appreciated it even more now than when I first watched it.
RIP Evan Wright