Playing God: Exactly As Fun As It Soudns

In case you're wondering, midterms are over, and I did pretty well, but now I'm already stressing the oral exam in my philosophy class.

In other news, I finally rewatched Playing God the other day. Playing God is crime thriller from the mid 90s, starring David Duchovny as a surgeon who lost his license because of drug use, and Timothy Hutton as an organized crime boss. Angelina Jolie's also in there as a mutual love interest to make a neat little triangle.

I watched it back when it first came to home video, and it made a really big impression on me, I've always thought of it as one of my favorites. Watching Timothy Hutton as a sort of anti-hero on the show Leverage has lately had me wanting to rewatch my favorite role of his.

I still really like Hutton's character, I really wish this had let him branch out to playing more villainous roles, but the movie was a critical and commercial flop. The rest of the movie, is pretty bad. Duchovny was tailor made for the noir-esque narrating monologues, but he seems to lack any kind of real emotions throughout the entire movie. Perhaps that's because he's stoned out of his mind on heroine for it, but he just seems like a robot.

Really this is a movie where the bad guys get to shine, but in the end they all lose. Hutton's phenomenal, all of his henchmen are above average, and there's a great car chase at the end. But other than that, there's not really a lot going on in this movie, and I find myself kind of wishing that I hadn't watched it again, so that it could have stayed the way I remembered it.

Comments

Lemme Tell You About The Transformer, Astrotrain, And Why He's My Favorite

I am, quite obviously, a massive fan of Transformers, but I grew up in kind of a weird time for being a fan. Really, I'm just a LITTLE too young. I remember seeing my brother, who was six years older than I, get all of the coolest Transformers, and then by the time that I started being able to ask for Transformers for myself, the nature of Transformers had greatly changed. I have a great anecdotal story about him clipping Soundwave (arguably one of the coolest Transformers toys ever, which turned into a microcassette player) to his shorts and climbing a tree. He then proceeded to fall 30 feet out of that tree, and land on Soundwave, which poked him right in the kidney, and he peed blood for a week. While I still have a great deal of fondness for them, Powermaster Optimus Prime is just not as cool of a toy as the original Optimus Prime. Notably, if you landed on Powermaster Optimus Prime, he probably wouldn't puncture your kidney, but the original Optimus Prime mig

A Return To My Brainstorming Days Of Old

Way back when, say, ten years ago, I had a dream of making a game. At first I wanted to make it a videogame like a JRPG (Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, etc.). Then it was going to be a pen and paper RPG (Dungeons and Dragons). And for many years, it kept bouncing around, back and forth between the two, I thought I was so very creative and clever. Eventually I started to realize that I was never going to be able to do anything like this on my own, and that neither I, nor any of my friends, had the time or energy to put into learning the necessary technical skills for a videogame, or simply the desire for a tabletop game. Still, I really liked brainstorming ways that different elements of a setting would interact with each other, whether it be a game system, a fantasy world, a system of government, or a military force. Sometimes I'd write this stuff down, but more often than not, I just day dreamed about it. I think it was kind of like therapy. I still wanted to do something wit

The Worst Contact Allergic Reaction I've Ever Had

I'm started to feel like a bit of a freak show. I've of course been injured by shrapnel from a pipe bomb, and I've got impressive scars to prove it (side note: One of my friends said that I need to come up with a really awesome story to go along with my scar, and I sad "Someone throwing a pipe bomb at me isn't awesome enough?") I've mentioned that I took a first aid/CPR class in my first quarter of college, taught by Ron Hussman at Edmonds Community College. He was a great instructor, with a lot of great stories being a navy medic for 24 years, I think that's what he said. I'm proud to say that the pictures of my leg injury are now part of his curriculum, but I got tired of raising my hand every time he asked if someone had done something in particular. Called 911? Check Used an epipen? Check Been in shock? Check Ridden in an ambulance? Check Had burns in your throat? Check (seriously, don't let your kids hold roman candles while they fire) Lat

Bryce's Pipe Bomb Survival Guide*

Search This Blog