The Ward

Last night, thanks to the unseasonable heat, I had a hard time falling asleep. So, naturally, I decided to watch a horror movie. By myself. In the dark. Sounds like a good idea, right?

Well, actually, it was a good idea. Because it ended up being pretty good.

I discovered the movie a few months ago because of The Playboy Club. 

Amber Heard in The Playboy Club

After seeing some clips from it, and learning that the main actress (Amber Heard) was out and vocally supportive of LGBTQ rights, I wanted to find out more about her and which movies she'd been in. 


One of them was The Ward, a horror movie set in the haunted women's ward of a 1960s mental hospital.

Well. How could I resist a movie like that? Especially with such a lovely leading lady (and a lovely supporting lady--Lyndsy Fonseca, anyone?). Period piece? Mental hospital? Ghost? Count me in.

Of course, I thought maybe I should wait until I could see it with some friends. Watching horror movies by yourself tends to be considered a bit strange by most people.

But it takes so long to get people together for an event like that! And Session 9 and The Woman in Black are already next on our list of movies to watch.

So last night, bored and hot and really wanting to go to sleep, I decided to give in and finally watch it.

It really exceeded my expectations.

I was worried that there might be some issues with the whole accurately portraying a mental hospital thing, and that they might portray it as more of a horror than it really was, or portray it as not as horrible as it really was, or what-have-you. But, having not actually experienced a 1960s mental hospital for myself, it seemed a pretty fair representation to me.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

What really struck me about this movie, right from the get-go, was how well-made it was. This was no low-budget gore fest. Now, maybe it wasn't the best script or even the best premise in the world, but this movie was really well-made.

And I could tell it would be right from the opening sequence.

I think I would put the title sequence of this movie right up there with those of True Blood

and Dexter

and American Horror Story.

Really fantastic cinematography. Just beautiful.

And the music. Seriously, the music. Very good.

Lyndsy Fonseca in The Ward

That creepy female voice? Yes.

On a more superficial note. . .Lyndsy Fonseca as a little 60s nerd? So cute. So. Cute. I would totally have a crush on her character (Iris) if she were real. 


And Amber Heard is pretty as always, even with the weird almost-dreadlocks hair she had going on in this movie. But that's just me being a lesbian. Doesn't really have anything to do with the quality of the movie itself, just the attractiveness of the actresses. So. That's enough of that.

Anyway. . .


Plot-wise. . .it was decent. A classic ghost story, mostly, with sadly fake-looking SFX makeup for the ghost/monster that looked like a rubber Halloween mask. The acting (in terms of the main characters, at least) was good, and the set was certainly good, and as I said earlier, the whole movie was aesthetically pleasing; but a lot of the scares were predictable, and I never felt like I had no idea what would happen next. 


Unfortunately, I accidentally read a huge spoiler before I watched the movie, so the big plot twist at the end wasn't a plot twist to me, as hard as I tried during the movie to remove all memory of what I'd read about it. 


So, because of that (grrr!), I can't really be the best judge of its plot because I knew how it ended beforehand. Still, I would say that while the movie wasn't especially unique or original, it was very enjoyable, and is one of the better horror movies I've seen. I might not put it at the same level I would put The Skeleton Key and The Ring, but it is probably at least at the same level as The Uninvited, if not a little better (or maybe a lot better, just because of how pretty it was). 


Regardless, I would definitely watch it again. 


Even if only because I can't get that damn music out of my head.

First Letterbox Accidentally Thrown Out :(

The very first letterbox I ever saw, the one that introduced me to letterboxing in the first place, was a little tupperware container hidden inside of a hollowed-out book in my local library. A friend of mine showed it to me. She had actually found it using the clues, because she and her family hunt letterboxes together, but for me, finding this little secret in the most unused section of the library (inside an outdated Atlas in the reference section) was a wake-up call to the fact that there were countless other people out there who wanted to hunt for treasure just as much as me, and that there was actually this whole "letterboxing" hobby that I could participate in. I've longed to do so ever since.

But today. Today I found out that the Atlas-hidden letterbox is gone. On the planter's website, it said it was "inactive". I emailed the planter to ask why, and they replied that a librarian accidentally threw it out.

NOOOOOOO!!!

Terrible news. It had such a neat series of clues to get to it, too!

I'm wondering if maybe I should work with this planter to replace the letterbox. That was such a great hiding spot for a letterbox, it'd be a shame to not have one there.

But this letterboxer is pretty prolific (they have planted 352 letterboxes!!) so I don't know if they would really want the help of a newbie like me.

I think I'll see what happens with my own letterboxes first. Let's do one thing at a time, here.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail of Letterboxing

A prolific letterboxes named Choi has a Monty Python and the Holy Grail-themed series of letterboxes.

There's one for the Black Knight, one for the Trojan Rabbit, one for the Bridgekeeper, one for the Knights Who Say Ni, etc.

There are 16 total boxes in this one area (!!!!), and every single one represents another character or event from the movie! This person is dedicated!

I have not yet had the time to explore this fantastically themed series of letterboxes, but I am definitely looking forward to doing so in the near future.

Indie Games/Helsing's Fire

I've been on an indie video game kick recently. Looking into what it takes to make one, what some of the better ones are, how to get them, who made them. . .and so on and so forth.

Some of the better ones I've experienced myself are World of Goo and Helsing's Fire--the latter being one that I just discovered on this most recent kick. It's a game for mobile devices (like iPods, iPhones, possibly Droids but I'm not sure) and it is a very original puzzle game with a nice visual style, good music, and humor. I'm surprised I hadn't heard of it sooner. I actually found out about it through Autostraddle, and then kept seeing it popping up in various indie game website's top ___ lists of recent indie games, so I decided it was worth checking out. $0.99 on the Apple App Store and I got something like 120 levels of gameplay. Pretty good deal, if you ask me, especially considering the quality of this game. Normally I don't pay for games from the App Store, but this one is definitely worth it.

You play as Helsing (as in Dr. Van Helsing, from Dracula) and his buddy/servant Raffton, using a torch and tonics to rid the land of Dracula's evil minions. The unique part is that the game's puzzle mechanics are all built around light, and getting the light to fall in exactly the right places at the right times. It's very interesting and sort of hard to explain without pictures, but you should check it out. Really. I would recommend it to anyone. Helsing and Raffton's fist bumps and high fives at the end of every level are also pretty great.

Some QBlock Art

Here's what I've made with QBlock so far!

One of the great things about QBlock is that you can build off of/edit what other people have made. So that's what I did for a lot of them. Actually, most of them. But you know. These are just placeholder graphics, not what I would use in the end. I just want to see what I can do with AppInventor on my own.

Anyway, here are the pics:

First, the player's units:

Mine

This was the first thing I did. I made this one completely on my own. It's-a mine! (har har)

Temple.

My next foray into making something. This one I based off of someone else's and just edited it down.

Mage

This started out as Captain America. I changed it to be a mage.

Knight

This one is completely someone else's. I just saved it to my computer. It did inspire the whole player=blue theme I ended up going with, though.

Farm

This one was another edit of someone else's. It started out as a house with palm trees. I changed it to be a farm.

Castle

This one started out with uneven salmon crosses, a dark purple border around the bottom, and an unfinished inside. I changed it to look like this.

Miner

This one was someone else's, and I changed it to be blue instead of green and red, and changed his eyes to look more like the Knight and Mage's. Unfortunately, from this angle you can't really see his eyes.

Now, the enemy's units:

Android

This started out as Iron Man. I made it into a robot warrior.

Base

This I made from scratch. It would be the base for the enemy units.

Silo

I also made this one from scratch. This would be the enemy's equivalent of a mine.

Robot

This one is someone else's. I just fiddled with the colors a teensy bit and changed the eyes.

Drone

This one is completely someone else's. Again, these are just placeholders, to use while I figure out if I can even make this kind of game with AppInventor.

So there you have it. All my QBlock art. Took me a while, but whatever. It definitely looks better than it would have if I tried to draw it.

QBlock: 3D Pixel Art

Yeah, that's right. 3D pixel art. Kind of like Minecraft-style visuals, only you get to make it without buying a game.

It's online. It's free. It's great if you want to make your own video game but can't draw.

Pixel that sucker!

(That's what I'll be doing for my test game.)

http://kyucon.com/qblock/

AppInventor Test Game

Since AppInventor is back online, I thought I'd try my hand at making a slightly more advanced (and less restricted in terms of theme) game.

I started out thinking I might try to make a space shooter type of game, and I got the menu page working and all, but then I decided it might be more fun to do something else. Something a bit less like a standard shoot-em-up.

So I decided I want to see if it would be possible for me to make some sort of RTS (Real-Time Strategy) game like Warcraft or Starcraft with AppInventor, to see if I can figure out the logic of the coding through the slightly less difficult interface of AppInventor before I even think of attempting it using any kind of real programming language.

I found a background for it, and started thinking about how to program it, when I realized I had a heck of a lot of ImageSprites and no actual images for them, so it was getting kind of confusing moving everything around on the screen.

So I'm putting it on hold for a bit while I look for some graphics to use, or some way to make graphics to use, at least as temporary substitutes for whatever I would end up using in the final product.

We'll see what turns up.