Top Five Movie Moments #7

#7 - American Beauty (1999)

As a film fan I owe an awful lot to Alan Ball and Sam Mendes (amongst many others). Their writer/director collaboration that resulted in the wonderful American Beauty not only gave me one of the finest films I've ever seen, but it also changed my whole attitude to films in general, inspiring me to seek out and watch many examples I would most likely have previously steered clear of.

I never used to be too bothered by Oscar-winning films, for example, stupidly dismissing them as overly artsy and/or melodramatic. American Beauty came highly recommended by my good friend Luke though, with whom I mostly share a taste in films, so I figured it must be worth watching at least. And without getting into a detailed critique of the film, it was worth watching, to say the very least.

It had such an impact on me, in fact, that as soon as the credits rolled and I sat there in stunned silence, staring at the names scrolling down the screen as I contemplated what I had just seen, it was immediately my favourite film ever. Accordingly, near enough ever scene and every line of dialogue is important to me so choosing just five moments for this list was a tough job, but here they are:

Spoiler Alert: the Top Five Movie Moments featured here obviously assume that you've seen the film in question or don't mind knowing about its most prominent moments so don't come whining to me if they ruin a film that you haven't seen yet!

5... The Plastic Bag

Having grown up with an overbearing, ex-military father and a meek, browbeaten mother, Ricky has ended up a very interesting character. Angela dismisses him as a 'freak' and Jane finds him creepy as well, partly on account of him filming almost everything with his handheld camera (including her), but she soon changes her tune when he actually pays attention to her rather than Angela as is usually the case (Ricky: "I didn't mean to scare you, I just think you're interesting.")

After walking home from school one day (Angela, incredulously: "Jane, that's, like, almost a mile!"), Ricky shows Jane a few things he finds interesting... including his favourite recording: a plastic bag fluttering around in the wind. Yes, it's a scene that's been mocked many times since, and I suppose with reason in some ways. However, it's not so much what it shows but more about what it means to Ricky and how he speaks about it with such poignancy and emotion which, when combined with Thomas Newman's haunting score, makes it a tremendously memorable scene.

Ricky: "You want to see the most beautiful thing I've ever filmed?"

(cut to a TV showing a plastic bag fluttering around in the wind as they watch)

Ricky: "It was one of those days when it's a minute away from snowing. And there's this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it, right? And this bag was just... dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. That's the day I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid. Ever."

"Video's a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember... I need to remember..."

"Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it..."

Shinobi Series - Part 6

The Cyber Shinobi (1990)
By: Sega Genre: Platform/Fighting Players: 1 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: Sega Master System
Also Available For: Nothing

Pretty much all the Shinobi games have been big news at the times they were released but almost certainly the least well-known and least appreciated of them all must be Cyber Shinobi. It was released only for the Master System which didn't really open it to the biggest audience, but it was intended as a direct sequel to the superb (if not entirely accurate) MS conversion of the original Shinobi which meant it could also be superb. In theory at least, but it didn't meet with a huge amount of praise from the press of its day so I've always been a bit wary of it to be honest. Now, however, I am forced by this sometimes-splendid blog to dip into these seldom-tested waters with the hope that time has been kind. The story sounds interesting enough - nothing too original or ground-breaking I'll grant you, but more of the same if fine by me if the 'same' is Shinobi!

So Much To Do, So Little Time...

Oh hello there, how's stuff 'n' junk? Things have been rather busy here in RKS Land, as some of the regular visitors among you may have noticed from the notably less-frequent posts here at Red Parsley. The main reason for this for the last couple of months or so has been my work. As much as I'd love to do this blog or something similar for a living, it is still sadly very much a part-time venture, undertaken purely for the nostalgic love of and continuing passion for video games, specifically those of older origins or created in a similarly splendid spirit.

The World Cup rules but it takes up a lot of time!

But yes, unfortunately I do have a need for a 'day job' and it's always ultra-busy at this time of the year which rarely leaves me in the best frame of mind for blogging when I get home, and I often haven't had time to take lunch breaks either, which is time usually spent playing games for reviews here. It's been this rather than a lack of interest or inspiration that has caused the reduction in new posts here and it's likely to continue for at least another month or so. My work is gradually easing up but now I have two new problems of sorts: firstly, the FIFA World Cup is here which is awesome, but it also means many of my evenings for the next few weeks will be spent on the sofa (or in the pub) with a few beers, watching some fine football; and secondly, my wife and I have some family visiting from Brazil for the next two-and-a-half weeks or so which inevitably means lots of taking them around to see places, meals out, and even five days in the ever-impressive Paris!

Random Game I've Never Heard Of #10

Bakuryu a.k.a. Wild Rapids (2000)
By: Fujimic Inc. Genre: Racing Players: 1-2 Difficulty: Easy-Medium
Featured Version: Sony PlayStation
Also Available For: Nothing

One of the great things about the really successful consoles such as the PlayStation is that amongst its millions of releases are lots of obscure, niche titles that cover all sorts of ground left untouched by releases on other systems. One great example is this game which I discovered just this past week, having never previously even heard of it. It must've received a release somewhere in the West judging by its alternate title but it was the Japanese version I happened upon and was surprised but pleased to find a racing game, albeit one featuring kayaks in place of cars! Aside from the rowing event in Daley Thompson's Decathlon on the Speccy I don't think I've ever been in command of an engine-less boat in a video game before so I was immediately intrigued by this largely unknown game.

Film Review #65

Django Unchained (2012)
Director: Quentin Tarantino Starring: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, Don Johnson, Walter Goggins

Certificate: 18 Running Time: 165 Minutes

Tagline: "The "D" is Silent. Payback Won't Be."

As most movie fans know, Tarantino is a bit of a nerd. Ever since he's been making his own films they've been filled with various tributes to his many favourite films, characters, and other bits and pieces, and pretty much all of the films themselves have been homages to his preferred genres too. This latest example from his infrequently-enlarged filmography is no different, having been inspired and heavily influenced by the many Spaghetti Westerns he watched in his earlier years. Unsurprisingly then, it's set the Old West and Deep South just a couple of years before the start of the American Civil War and as such contains many depictions of slavery - a delicate subject at the best of times, so I was very interested to see how the hugely-unsubtle QT approached the subject.

Arcade Shmups #21

Dr. Toppel's Adventure a.k.a. Dr. Toppel Tankentai (1987)
By: Taito Genre: Shooting Players: 1 Difficulty: Hard
Featured Version: Arcade First Day Score: 55,750
Also Available For: Nothing

In my experience you can quite often tell something about a game just from its name, or at least what genre it probably falls into, so accordingly, when this title first caught my eye I thought I was in store for some sort of amusing, leapy platformer. To my surprise, however, it soon became apparent that Dr. Toppel's Adventure is actually a shoot 'em up, and a rather peculiar one at that, too! It's unclear what kind of doctorate the titular character possesses but he takes the form of a strange green quadrupedal creature with rocket boosters for legs, and it's by making use of these that he flies through seven vertically scrolling rounds with the aim of preserving the beautiful nature of the Kerol River.

Single Screen Platform Games #12

Chuckie Egg (1983)
By: Nigel Alderton / A&F Software Genre: Platform Players: 1 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: BBC Micro First Day Score: 173,320
Also Available For: ZX Spectrum, Dragon 32/64, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, Acorn Electron, MSX, Tatung Einstein, Atari 8-bit, PC, Amiga

There have never really been too many single-screen platform games around but a good number of them were not only arcade games, but Japanese arcade games. One of the most notable exceptions is a game that's legendary here in the UK but less well known elsewhere. If you grew up in the 80's here it wasn't a question of if you had played Chuckie Egg but rather which version you'd had access to. Despite owning a Speccy, most of my time spent with the game was courtesy of my good friend Luke and his Dragon 32. Many pleasant weekends were spent charging around the luminous green stages (a trademark of many Dragon titles) and we loved the game, but all these years I've been hearing about how the BBC version is supposedly the best of the many available. Having recently 'explored' this classic system, finding proof of this claim seemed like an ideal way to start my reviews for the system.

Sega: To Be How Good Takes Ages? - Part 1

I suppose it's inevitable that companies come and go over time, much like people, cultures, and everything else really I suppose. Even behemoths like Microsoft and (shudder) Apple will be distant memories one day. Most of the time it doesn't really matter too much when a company goes down. I mean, it's sad that people might've lost their jobs and all that stuff, but it rarely makes much actual difference to our everyday lives - there's almost always another waiting to rise in its place after all.

On some odd occasions, however, a loss is more keenly felt. Take, for example, the downfall of arcade and console giant, Sega. They're still in business, I know, but what a shadow of their former selves they now are. Their fall from grace was one felt profoundly by me as well as many other Sega fanboys and it's one that has had a not-insignificant impact on our gaming lives and the industry at large as well. My recent acquisition of an Xbox brought back memories of my happy Dreamcast days, the sadness that followed when news of its apparent failure broke, and my short-lived hope that Microsoft's bulky machine would carry on where Sega's had left off. It was while musing over these events that I decided it might be interesting, for me at least (chuckle), to take a (hopefully fairly brief) look back at Sega's history as well ponder what the future could hold for them.

PSN Downloads #3

PixelJunk Shooter: The Depths of Disaster (2009)
By: Q-Games Genre: Shooting Players: 1-2 Difficulty: Easy-Medium
Featured Version: Sony PlayStation 3
Also Available For: PlayStation 4, Vita, PC, Apple Mac

My knowledge of the modern game scene is slowly improving but back when I first got my PS3 I knew about as much as a blind octopus. The whole PSN, downloadable indie games thing was new to me then, but upon my first browse through the ominous PlayStation Store, I kept seeing games with 'PixelJunk' in their name. As primarily a retro gamer I like pixels so I decided to take a look at one of them and, as a shmup fan, the choice of which one to plump for was easy - PixelJunk Shooter. Despite featuring a name as generic as most other PixelJunk games, it still had to be a shoot 'em up, surely? And that meant it was already awesome, potentially at least! I still had no idea what to expect though...

Adult Games #4

Celery (1989)
By: Parsley Genre: Action Players: 1 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: NEC PC-98 First Day Score: ???,???
Also Available For: Nothing

Many of the few 'adult' games I've looked at so far have been obscure arcade titles but most of them have also been Japanese. I guess our Far-Eastern friends are a little keener on mixing gaming and nude girlies than us Western prudes - so much so, in fact, that a few of the systems native to that region are positively heaving under the vast weight of games featuring saucy minxes of all descriptions. One of these is NEC's Windows-based micro, the PC-98, so when I decided to start covering more of its games I suppose it was inevitable I'd encounter a nudey example at some point. It was actually the rather amusing name of this one that caught my eye but it didn't come as too much of a surprise to find... that's right, naughty girlies!

Film Review #64

The Straight Story (1999)
Director: David Lynch Starring: Richard Farnsworth, Sissy Spacek, Harry Dean Stanton, James Cada, Wiley Harker

Certificate: U Running Time: 112 Minutes

Tagline: "A true story that proves a little determination goes a very, very long way"

David Lynch's name may be synonymous with the likes of Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, and Mulholland Drive amongst others, but my favourite film of his has always been The Straight Story. Unlike most of his output thus far it's fairly straightforward and it's also based on a true story - that of Alvin Straight, a pensioner from America's Midwest who embarks upon a remarkable journey. Alvin (Farnsworth), you see, grew up very close to his brother, Lyle (Stanton), and they remained close for much of their lives until an unspecified bust-up sent them their separate ways. Ten years later and the two are still not talking. However, news reaches Alvin that Lyle has had a stroke. Motivated to salvage their relationship, Alvin decides to visit his brother, but this is not nearly as easy a proposition as it might seem.

Currently Playing...

F1 2012 by Code Masters (2012) - PlayStation 3

Now that the new Formula 1 season is upon us and already looking (though not sounding) more interesting than the last few seasons combined, I figured it was time to refresh my own racing skills. The last F1 game I played extensively was F1 World Grand Prix 2 for the N64 which is very good, but that was quite a while ago now so this was a good opportunity to see how the genre has progressed. Code Masters seemingly holds the official F1 license these days which of course means yearly 'updates'. However, owing to people's idiotic need to always have the most up-to-date release, I picked up this slightly older version for a very reasonable sum. As far as its play modes are concerned, little has changed. There are the standard Quick Race and Career modes, both of which are splendid, with the latter obviously being significantly more involving, but there are also two other modes called Young Driver Test and Season. The former is basically a tutorial mode but the latter is where I've spent most of my time so far. This consists of a shortened season of ten races during which you can pick a 'rival' who you then need to try and beat over a best-of-three mini-series.

Hack 'n' Slash Games #1

Golden Axe (1989)
By: Sega Genre: Fighting Players: 1-2 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: Arcade First Day Score: 205 (one credit)
Also Available For: MegaDrive, Master System, PC Engine CD, WonderSwan Color, Amiga, Atari ST, PC, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum
Download For: Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, Wii Virtual Console, iOS

Video games may have started off in the world of science fiction but it wasn't long before they entered the realms of fantasy as well. One of the many type of resulting sub-genres quickly became known as the hack 'n' slash game and still one of the most successful and enduring examples must surely be Sega's mighty Golden Axe. It tells the story of an enchanted, magical land called Yuria in which warriors, amazons, knights, dragons, sprites, dwarves, and ordinary townsfolk all live together peacefully... until a demonic oaf called Death Adder steals the Golden Axe, the magical emblem of Yuria, kidnaps the King and his daughter, and starts killing people until they accept him as their new ruler. The cowering peasants of Yuria don't have to live in fear for long though - three brave souls step forward and pledge to send him back to the darkness from whence he came.

Ultimate: The Collected Works - Part 4

Cookie (1983)
By: Ultimate Play the Game  Genre: Action  Players: 1  Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: ZX Spectrum  First Day Score: 4,630
Also Available For: Nothing

Ultimate might be legends in the Speccy world but they weren't perfect. Their last effort - Tranz Am - for example, was rather poor compared to the first two games, but with Cookie they've made a swift return to the simpler, single-screen action/shooty formula that worked so well before. As with those it has a unique and slightly strange concept - this time you're cast as Charlie the Chef who is trying to make cookies. However, his apparently sentient ingredients keep escaping from the pantry and running amok! Once they're out, Charlie must stun them with flour bombs and direct them into his mixing bowl at the bottom of the screen which is marked with a number indicating the required number of ingredients before the level is completed. It's not quite that simple though!

Top Five Capital Cities I Want To Visit

I've been pretty lucky over the last few years to have had the opportunity to visit a number of interesting countries, and in most cases their capital cities too, and as some of you may remember I posted a list of my favourite such examples (so far) a few months ago. Since then I've also visited Bangkok which was... very crowded, but also home to many impressive temples and other stuff of cultural interest. There are, however, still many places I'd like to visit one day. I doubt I'll manage to fit them all in (especially since the wife isn't interested in three of them) but these are the ones I'd most like to see. Maybe one day...

5. Nuuk

Which is, for anyone who doesn't know, the capital of... Greenland! Yes that's right, though apparently unknown to many, not only does Greenland have people living on it but it even has a capital city. It's located on the south-west part of the enormous (and curiously un-green) island and is home to over 16,000 people who all speak Danish (Greenland is part of the Kingdom of Denmark). As you can probably see though, most of them live in colourful wooden houses dotted around the rocky landscape rather than the giant concrete blocks and glass/steel towers that are usually found in capital cities. I think it would be quite interesting to live and work here for a while but for holiday purposes I think one week would probably be sufficient. Shame it costs so damn much to go there - as far as I can tell there's one flight a month and the cheapest price I found was a few coins shy of £1,000!