My Week in Media 6/22/08

Everything’s Eventual

Stephen King’s Everything’s Eventual is a collection of short stories published in 2002. There are 14 short stories in the book, and if you like King, most of them are good. He does something different with these stories than he has done with previous ones. The stories in this book aren’t all about the dark and macabre. Instead, there are quite a few “realistic” stories, such as that of a man who is about to be autopsied before he’s dead and the fictional story of the Dillinger gang.

I liked how he departed from the typical spook stories. When reading the autopsy story, I felt as though it wasn’t King writing it. There’s nothing wrong with knowing King wrote the story, but it’s a good thing King can shift his voice after all of these years.

The collection isn’t without King’s usual scary tales, though. One of my favorites is 1408, which was recently made into a movie starring John Cusak and Samuel L. Jackson. The story is about an author who writes reviews on haunted locations but is a skeptic on the subject. So, he’s told about this haunted room in a hotel and wants to stay in it to see if ghosts actually do exist. I won’t ruin it for you, but the room is more than what the author was expecting.

Overall, it was a good short story collection, but not King’s best. If you’re looking for his best, I’d go for Night Shift

Be Kind Rewind

Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind stars Jack Black, Mos Def, and Danny Glover. It is about the owner and employees of a run down video (VHS only) rental store in Possaic, New Jersey where a famous jazz singer was born. The store was going under and while the owner was away, Black’s character accidentally erased all of the tapes due to be magnetized, dooming the small business. Def and Black, desperate to supply a copy Ghostbusters for an old lady, decided to make their own version. This act snowballs into them making many other remakes, and of course, trouble comes shortly thereafter.

I liked this movie a lot, but it was very different than what I was expecting. The synopsis I read for it and the trailer I saw for it both made me believe this was going to be a straight forward comedy, but it’s more heart warming than that. It wasn’t as funny as it was a plain old good movie. It’s a fair trade off, I think.

Cel Damage

The now out of business, Pseudo Interactive’s game Cel Damage is a cartoony vehicular combat game released for the Xbox, PS2, and Gamecube. There’s not a real story to it, but I will try to explain it anyway. The game is about a cartoon show in which the characters battle each other repeatedly. Yeah, that’s the best I got.

I’m a bit partial to the vehicular combat genre, and considering the lack of games in the genre, Cel Damage is a welcomed addition. The main mode is a free for all battle where you have to score 500 points to win. There are 12 different levels, and a large arsenal of weapons to pick up on the battle field. The weapons are cartoon based such as a giant axe, harpoon gun, boxing gloves, holes your enemies can fall in to, and giant saw blades to name a few.

I like the entire cartoon effect the game has. It’s light hearted, but not too childish. It’s easy to pick up and play, but takes time to really get good at using the weapons. Because it’s a rather old game, and an unpopular one at that, I bought it for four dollars. Even if it isn’t the greatest game in the world, it was worth the money I spent.