What Dreams May Come Review

What Dreams May Come is a kind of surreal supernatural fantasy drama film released in 1998 directed by Vincent Ward starring Robin Williams, Cuba Gooding Jr. and Annabella Sciorra about a man named Chris Nielson who dies and his journey through the afterlife and him being a ghost watching how his wife gets on after he dies. Before he died his children died and his wife is left alone and so she kills herself and is sent to limbo and the film follows this story and him trying to save her soul from limbo and reuniting with his already dead family. It centers around both heaven and hell but paints a picture of these places in its own imaginitive way which I really like about this film. The effects are done really nicely to help you get immersed in this world of the afterlife which I think alot of people will find really fascinating.

Watching this movie I actually got creepy chills especially towards the end and in the beginning after he dies and is haunting his wife it was kind of creepy to watch her go through that but the main character Chris you can also identify with that he doesn't want to be forgotten by his life partner Annie. It has a dreaminess to it with the soundtrack and just the fact that he's in the afterlife it plays out like a dreamscape the way they did it you almost feel like you're in a dream yourself which makes this film really stand out amongst other films.

There's a really big surprise at the end that makes sitting through the whole thing really worth while to find out this surprise towards the ending. It's kind of slow moving that's why I say this some people might get bored of it if they have a short attention span but if you're enjoying the story you should stick through it because it gets more strange and there's a big surprise at the end about the characters. I think going into this movie viewing it as a piece of art you should contemplate death and the afterlife and what it means to you and what you're beliefs are about the afterlife and then look at their portrayal of the afterlife. It's pretty philosophical looking at what awareness is and what existence is and what it would be like to be in limbo not knowing who you are or where you are dwelling on your life and really getting lost in yourself but knowing if you have people who love you you can get through anything. It's a metaphor for life and if this idea of the afterlife exists then it can only help you through its wisdom by you seeing this character go through limbo and death and having a loving husband risking his own sanity to help her through her current state of circumstances and also the kids being there and already being adjusted to being dead. It really makes you think doesn't it and I think it's a healthy contemplation and visitation with death while it gets dark at times there's also a lot of serenity portrayed in this vision of death.

I feel this is an important piece of film both as a work of art and as an awakening to a vision of what death is like. That's what is so great about storytelling and film is you get to use it as a way to gain knowledge and wisdom about anything and everything. We can never truly know what the afterlife will be like but if you've seen what dreams may come then you at least have something to go on and can be prepared for it. You can get perspective on what it would be like to haunt someone as a ghost or be haunted by a ghost if you haven't had any experiences like that before. If you subscribe to abrahamic religious views on the afterlife with heaven and hell then this gives you something within your world view to prepare you for that. It shows you the life of a family who all end up dying like we all die but that they can help each other still even in the afterlife as a family you know. It's a great film and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in death. I personally have my own relationship with the idea of death and the afterlife and I think i handle it a bit better than most people do. When someone dies i'm not grieving for very long I accept death. Sure I'll miss their physical presence in my life and that's a sad thought but you also have to understand that we all go through this rite of passage and you can't dwell on the past for your own sanity's sake. Some people might think i'm cold for not feeling that sorry for people dealing with the death of a loved one when they are stuck in the past dwelling on memories and not letting that person move on with their existence or nonexistence. I feel sorry for people struggling through that awareness and i'm willing to help them accept the inevitability of death but logically speaking it is just that inevitable and there's no use trying to fight it because you won't win. All you can do is move on with your own life and accept that it's happened. That's about all I have for this one hope you gained something from it if you yourself are dealing with death and if you're just looking for something artistic to watch this is a good one to try. Ciao!

Youtube Trailer
Youtube Movie
IMDB
Rotten Tomatoes
Amazon Listing

Obscure Genres: Vaporwave

Vaporwave is another one of those satirical subgenres born on the internet that really only people on the internet hear about and have a small community for. It has a strong emphasis on the arts aesthetic and less so on the music but with vaporwave I think more people into this subculture do actually listen to the music and are more involved in making the music of the genre.

The aesthetic is that 90s nostalgic aesthetic with a specific color palette and key items that make it vaporwave. With vaporwave what you tend to see is roman statues, windows 95, nihilistic comments done in japanese, glitch art, tropical settings and certain beverages like fiji water, arizona tea and sizzurp of all things. I'm not going to lie with vaporwave aesthetic art you do see mention of drug abuse like sizzurp aka lean or purple drank which is promethazine with codeine mixed with sprite and jolly ranchers, xanax pills, marijuana and sometimes over the counter cough syrups like nyquil. Why is this so? Well I think it has to do with the music which I will get into now:

Vaporwave music is a satire on contemporary consumerist society (whenever I say that to people they call me a hipster =/) and an avenue for nostalgia through sampling 80s and 90s pop, rnb, smooth jazz and muzak or easy listening/elevator music. Its a form of plunderphonics which if you don't know is essentially when you use audio piracy to revision a track making simple edits to make it something new. With Vaporwave what you're looking to do is get a deep vocal sound by slowing down the speed and make it really low fidelity with reverb and phaser or echo effects to get that vaporwave sound. Listen to some vaporwave and you'll understand what i'm talking about. I feel like for it to have a really vaporwave sound it has to have a drone in the background and with applying those effects you can attain that and also get a kind of lighter grainier sound that seems to resemble vapor. 

The name vaporwave doesn't actually constitute that vapor sound though the name comes from vaporware which is when a business puts adverts out about an upcoming product that may seem too good to be true and ends up being too good to be true they never release it but get all this attention for that product. It's nonexistent. I think that's where the nihilism came from with vaporwave because we know nihilism is the philosophy of life being meaningless all religions being false just your life being a big pile of nothing but that doesn't mean its a bad thing because if you know your life is meaningless then you can make the best of it by having fun or wearing your "yoloswagg" as it were lol. So we have the vapor in vaporware and wave actually being a marxist term to describe something that perpetuates itself and is meaningless in its philosophy giving it even more nihilist swag. 

All in all classic vaporwave is uninspired in its creation making use of its source content as a crutch for whether the song is good or not by itself but focusing on the vibe by the artist making the edit to whether its good vaporwave or not. There are of course subgenres within vaporwave like vaportrap for example that still has that vaporwave vibe and those iconic synths that really bring vaporwave to a new level as an artform to progress the genre which I believe is why this genre didn't die out fast like some other genres because there is room to explore with vaporwave and the vaporwave community welcomes that. One thing I really enjoy about this genre is the satire on consumerist society the nihilism in it (I'm not a nihilist myself but I enjoy nihilistic remarks) the fact that you can make a vaporwave track in around a minutes time and the fact that alot of the big vaporwave lp releases are released on cassette tape <3

Here comes the time where I share some videos to help you explore vaporwave for yourself giving you some examples and some interesting videos on the subject to help you grasp it.

How to Make Vaporwave by Frank Jav Cee

Vaporwave: A Brief History by Wolfenstein OS X

V A P O R W A V E  L P ' S playlist by myself



Key artists:

-Ramona Andra Xavier aka vektroid aka VectorFray aka vektordrum aka Macintosh Plus, New Dreams Ltd, PrismCorp Virtual Enterprises, Laserdisc Visions, 情報デスクVIRTUAL, and dstnt
-Saint Pepsi
-Oneohtrix point never aka chuck person
James Ferraro
Blank Banshee
T E L E P A T H
Internet Club

More Things to Check out:

Most Famous Record Label: http://dreamcatalogue.net/
The Archive of the Vaporwave Library Project: https://web.archive.org/web/20150219214318/http://vaporwave.me/
The Vaporwave Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Vaporwave/

Labyrinth Review

I've probably seen this at least 500 times not even kidding. You know how people have movies they watch on a regular basis like going to sleep or while cleaning or doing work etc. This is one of those movies for me, that and the dark crystal. Those old Jim Henson fantasy films are among the best fantasy films of all time and I'm not the only one who thinks so. Labyrinth is a timeless classic that just can't be missed. If you haven't seen this yet then well you need to.. like right now if you can afford to.

Not to be confused with Pan's Labyrinth, Labyrinth is a 1986 British American film directed by Jim Henson, executive produced by George Lucas, and based upon conceptual designs by Brian Froud. The film stars David Bowie as Jareth the Goblin King and Jennifer Connelly as Sarah the one trapped in the labyrinth.  So it's a movie about a girl who gets her baby brother kidnapped by goblins and she has to go to the goblin kingdom to get him back even though she doesn't like him very much she feels obligated to because he's her little brother.

People at its korny and has bad acting. Maybe the korny bit sometimes but I don't think the acting is that bad. I think some people confuse the two sometimes though. It's kid friendly and I would say pagan friendly as well. Sure it is part musical with the whole David Bowie thing but that doesn't overtake the film. I wouldn't say it's purely a musical, I'd say it's a fantasy film with a couple musical numbers.

There's alot of cool little puzzles in the movie that are solved for you. It's definitely an adventure film not much suspense or thrill. There is a few action scenes that keep you entertained but there are some real slow parts you may think are kind of boring. You just have to get past those parts really. All over its an enjoyable experience with fantastic creations you'll never forget. It's pretty immersive. It's easy to get lost in the story, in the labyrinth and you do feel like you've just been on an amazing journey to the goblin kingdom after its over and done with and you'll want to go there again and again or at least that was my experience and I've never met a person who didn't like this movie and lots of people will get a good kick of nostalgia when you mention something from this movie. So join the club watch labyrinth it's really good classic fantasy.  And one thing I want to point out is this is the earliest instance I know of hearing the word "hogwarts" nothing wrong with that, just saying though.  ;)

The Dark Crystal Review

I've seen this 500 times at least just like labyrinth. Guess I'm a sucker for classic fantasy, go figure.  I really love the dark crystal it has alot of special meaning to me. I've watched it many times and have searched for metaphorical meaning in it like the olde bardic tradition of studying a story for insight and I think there's alot to offer with this tale. It gives it alot of replay value to see new meaning in the events. This movie is filled with mystery and magick.

The Dark Crystal is a 1982 British American fantasy film directed by Jim Henson and Frank Oz and stars Stephen Garlick, Lisa Maxwell, Billie Whitelaw and Percy Edwards. It's a tale of ancient magic and good vs evil set in the form of an adventure of the last of a dying race of elf-like humanoids called gelfling. the main character is a gelfling who is prophesized to be the one who can return balance to their world after the evil race of vulture people called the skeksis take over the world ruling with the power of the dark crystal. They find out about the prophesy and kill all of the gelfling minus 2 who escaped and we're raised by different races of people one with small gnome like forest dwellers and one with a bizarre race of druidic wizard creatures that look like lizard/tortoise humanoid type things. As you can tell it's very nature and ancient pagan based with alot of fantastical creatures based loosely on real animals but the creatures in the dark crystal are definitely unique only minor things are relatable to reality most of the creatures are completely imagined to create the world of the dark crystal.

Most all the creatures are puppets or animatronics, some are people dressed in costumes. For this reason some of the movement like speaking and walking make it quite obvious this is only a puppet the movement looks very fake and lifeless at certain moments while at others look real as ever. It can be slightly inconsistent they may have had difficulties or puppeteers that weren't as experienced as others which is a Shame because the creatures and the story is so incredible that the technological inferiority of the time makes the quality of the film suffer but there is still a unique charm to those old puppet fantasy films. It's the viewers decision whether the fact that this is pretty much an all puppet movie is a hinderence to it or not. All in all the story and the aesthetic of the world and the creatures that inhabit is just superb. It's one of the best fantasy films of all time. It progresses just fine there's a balance of dialogue and action and it's all filled with great mysticism that makes it very very special indeed.

Malice in Wonderland Review

Like I may have mentioned before I love anything alice in wonderland I have an affinity for it and search for great media related to the story because I just think it's so awesome it can't be missed. Malice in Wonderland is no exception. This is an excellent film. It's a little strange but that's what I love about it. It stays true to the oddness that is Lewis Carol's Alice in Wonderland (the books mind you) while making it fresh and modern; abstract and artistic.

Malice in Wonderland is a 2009 British fantasy adventure film directed by Simon Fellows, written by Jayson Rothwell and  starring Maggie Grace, Danny Dyer, Matt King and Nathaniel Parker.  The story is based on alice in wonderland but set in an urban London ghetto with the queen of hearts being a mob boss and the white rabbit being a taxi driver and alice gets lost in this underground world of drugs and prostitution trying to find her memory after getting hit by the white rabbits cab after running away searching for her real mother. It's a bit more complicated than that but that's the gist of things and boy is it wild. The things they come up with for this film while still keeping it wonderland is phenomenal. Any fan of wonderland with an appreciation for the surreal and creative rendition will love this as much as I do.

The Alice character is beautiful and charming which she should be because she's the main character. Whitey is a funny cockney cab driver that helps alice through wonderland making it really surreal but totally true to the white rabbit character and the more the story develops the more you feel for him and want him to succeed. You can't have a book based alice film without the duchess and her peppered soup and this film doesn't let you down the duchess character is great I loved it.  The caterpillar is a drug dealer and helps alice get to the duchess in this movie which isn't really what I was expecting but I did enjoy that short scene with him in it really puts you in that world of urban wonderland, not the best way they could've  done it but it ended up working and I wasn't disappointed moreso wished there was more. I won't go through every character the last I'll say is everyone's favorite the mad hatter is played by a female freightline dispatcher with a small diner set as the headquarters for an underground prostitution ring definitely not what I saw coming but it's surely creative use of the character and trust be it does work to the films benefit. It's the most thrilling and suspenseful part of the movie and they still made it work to the classic wonderland tales well while at the same time but being a copy of the original.

All around this is just a great movie any alice fan will be proud to own and even if you just like artistic, dramatic, fantasy or adventure films this fits the bill in those categories as well. It really is an obscure gem and is worth the search for it.

Oh My Goth! Comic Books...

There are some fantastically gothic comic books out there but they are quite obscure and can be hard to find. Here is my list of gothic comic books I think anyone with an inkling for the dark and macabre will enjoy. This isn't a complete list by no means but these are some of the greats and most people have never even heard of them even when you go to a comic book store that has a goth section alot of these they don't even have so you'll have to go searching for them. Amazon is usually a good place to go or the publisher or authors own website they usually sell their own comic books there. 

Lenore 

Johnny the Homicidal Maniac 

Squee

Gris Grimly's Frankenstein 

Courtney Crumrin

Gloomcookie 

Sullengrey 

Eldritch!

Emily the Strange 

Sandman

Bear

I feel sick 

Nightmares & Fairy Tales 

Serenity Rose 

Ghost World Review

Ghost world is an obscure indie coming of age drama film about these two girls who are best friends in high school and how they get along after high school. They go through their differences especially when they older man gets involved with one of them and they grow farther apart but in the end they remain best friends.

Being 22 going on 23 here in the next month I can relate to movies like this. I have it on vhs and have seen it a couple times but I just revisited it looming through my vhs collection and put it on again. This one is a strange one for me. I had seen it numerous times at the video store, websites and later on at thrift stores but didn't actually see it for a good while. Rosy watching it again as an adult with a job and an apartment and having dealt with flying the nest more recently I can relate to this movie even more than any pervious time I've seen it.

Things like your first time in an adult store, finding an apartment, worrying about what the hell are you going to do with the rest of your life, disappointment after disappointment, relationships. This is a tough time for most when you're still growing up and all of a sudden the flow of your life that you've dealt with most of your life just abruptly stops and now you're in trouble. In this movie the main character has more going for her. She has an older man willing to be let her move in and be with her, she has her best  friend willing to let her move on with her and she has her father letting her stay with him. I didn't have all that and I know a good number of people who didn't either so some may look at this film and think she doesn't know the half of it but as I always say just because someone has it better than the worst doesn't mean they aren't suffering. This movie illustrates that point very well.

This is one of those drama films that ate really down to earth, tells it like it is and lets you experience and identify with the character and you meditate on your own life, revisit memories think of things you could've done or can still do to improve your life or help another's. The progression of the story is fine and the ending is abstract and artistic. It's not so much particular dialogue or even events that matter with a movie like this it's more of the whole experience of coming of age in general. It sounds kind of weird saying what happens in the movie isn't as important as what the movie means as a whole but that's how I feel about it. It's one of those movies you would suggest to a stranger in their 20s you start talking to at a college or a book store or an art gallery who starts telling you their own tragic life story and how lost they feel. This movie may help them gain perspective into their situation and promote brainstorming on new patterns on development in their lives.

All in all its a good down to earth indie drama that can help and heal certain people in certain circumstances. There aren't many like this out there and I'm glad it's there because I think it has some good potential. 

Windows 10 Hacks and Traps

Windows 10 became available July 29th 2015 and currently if you already have windows 7 and up you can get an upgrade to the Windows 10 Operating System for free. Of course since its a new WinOS release there's going to be bugs and zero days for well.. days. A lot of security features no one pays attention to and that can be a bad thing. This is the age of blind consent to any Terms of Service Agreement imaginable doesn't matter what it is it's an instant agree for anyone and everyone. In their defense everyone knows Windows 10 is going to be standard soon all the laptops are going to come with it Windows 7 is old hat now and XP is just unheard of nowadays.

Windows 10 has the same kind of simplistic aesthetic like Windows 8 but the start screen is optional now and they have more of a classical start menu that actually encompasses what's in the start screen and you can reize and customize it and it looks pretty nice actually. No more having to go to the corner of the screen and waiting a sec so you can reboot your computer or do a search the power options are in the start menu like before windows 8 and they automatically put the search bar right next to the start menu icon at the bottom left corner.

Win10 Desktop and Start Menu

Cortana. Cortana is like an AI robot assistant that comes standard in windows 10 now and not gonna lie I don't very much like it. Remember the MCP (Master Control Program) from that 80's hacker movie Tron? It's not exactly as bad as that but to even use Cortana you have to agree with her knowing your location, knowing where you live, what sites you go to, what your handwriting looks like, how you talk, your credit card numbers, all your passwords including wifi key, lots of stuff. She wants to know all this so she can "help personalize your experience." If you use the new Internet Explorer Browser called Microsoft Edge, Cortana is also monitoring all of that traffic. Apparently she can also look on the web and find events you might like. So if you want a robot that Microsoft gives to you that needs to know every gritty detail go ahead and use it i'm sure it has some use to anyone using it but I just like my privacy too much to agree to that. In fact...

You should take a look at the privacy settings and adjust those to your liking because Microsoft gathers all kinds of data and shares it with "Microsoft Partners". Microsoft even said even with the privacy settings disabling something they said they are still getting that information from you... One key thing is to not use a Microsoft email because I read that with the email, which is required for the in built app store which is like a Linux distro repository, they are collecting metadata from you that they can trace back to your identity and you agree to it by having that Microsoft email linked to your computer. If you already did it and you don't want it on anymore you can go to your account settings and take it off. It's basically reduce your functionality for your privacy or give up your privacy for increased functionality. No one is saying Microsoft is using this maliciously or that their partners are using it maliciously but it is a security risk you take nonetheless.

The MCP from Tron

There's this new thing called "WiFi Sense"it's not completely insecure but it is a potential hazard to your digital self. Zero Day Exploits are always going to exist and this "WiFi Sense" gives your wifi passwords to other people and will automatically connect you to networks they know about from crowdsourcing. Things like public free wifi networks that everyone warns you about not connecting to... yea with WiFi Sense on it's going to automatically connect you to it because it wants you to have internet access. If you have msn, outlook even facebook friends with it in it can give all those people your internet password to their computer and connect them to your network and vise versa of course. So if you don't want that shady random person who added you on facebook on your network but you want your bestie since kindergarten on your network just give your bestie access yourself don't have WiFi Sense give it automatically. I think you do have to configure it to give passwords but if you enable it for one you are enabling it for all and who knows who can hack into your WiFi Sense and get into your network or worse be able to access all the networks you can access like all your friends around town. It's a disaster waiting to happen if the wrong person gets access so I would suggest just not using it.

Wi-Fi Sense

Ok that was kind of paranoid web user status right there i'll scare you again in a minute but let's talk about something that is actually cool about windows 10. [Win Key+G]. Know what that does? Turns on the built in DVR and Game Bar. Yeah it has like a built in Fraps and just like with Fraps it will record any program not just games... but... it doesn't record the whole screen :( You cant record things like the desktop or windows explorer but all your games and various software applications you should be able to record just fine. All the recordings you can access through the native xbox app or navigate to Videos\Captures in the file explorer for your account to access those video files. which are saved to mp4 or png if it's a screenshot. I say game bar because it puts up a little bar and you press record and stuff and it's called the game bar. You don't have to click the game bar though you can use shortcuts and if you play PC games you know its better for your recordings to just use the shortcut instead of showing mouse strokes and such so you can alternatively use [Win Key+Alt+R] to start and stop recording and [Win Key+Alt+T] to hide or show the timer and those are reprogrammable so if you don't wanna use that you don't have to. For Example let's say you are using a USB NES Controller to record your speedrun of Wizards & Warriors or something and you don't wanna get up and press the key combination you wanna bind it to the select button or something you are more than welcome to do that. Also to take a screenshot the shortcut is [Win Key+Alt+Print]. I haven't done extensive testing on this feature so I'm not sure if its a ghetto method for copying a video like a livestream of your favorite WoW PvP live streamer or something but I suppose in theory it would work. I believe you can connect it to your xbox one as well if you have one.

Game DVR Settings

Let's say you are satisfied with it and you wanna clean up things a bit in the memory department, Windows 10 doesn't completely delete your old OS it keeps it just in case in memory and you can actually go get something like 10 gigs by deleting your old OS you have no plan on reverting back to. It's stored in this directory called Windows.old but windows won't let you remove most of it just deleting the folder can't do it that way k. You need to do it in Disk Cleanup which you can search for or you can search for "Free up disk space" because Windows 10 knows more lax speech now which is also another neat feature doesn't just take specific commands typed exactly how it wants you to. So free up that C:/ Drive and go to clean up system files and look for "Previous Windows installation(s) which should look something like 3-30GB of memory something like that and that will delete the old operating system version. If you think you might fuck something up and want to go back to windows 8 don't do this but if you don't give a fuck all yolo status it'll free up some memory for yuh.

Disk Cleanup

What else can you do? Theres a "Print to PDF" feature that lets you well print stuff to a pdf document instead of a printer which can come in real handy in a bunch of situations. An easy use for this is basically like a file type conversion for a document. Let's say you write a novel or an ebook guide for something you can easily write it up put all your fab pix in it or whatever then print to pdf and upload it somewhere. You can even sell it yourself on Ebay or something if you wanted to. You can go to Settings > System > Battery Saver and it has a built in battery saver mode that was developed for Mobile devices but can be used on your Windows 10 Computer now for when you're out and about.
You can create virtual desktops not like a personalized desktop for each but to open up a new workspace is probably a better term they should've used i'd say because it's just a copy of your desktop but no programs running. This new workspace is useful for lets say you want one desktop to have League of Legends running and another desktop that has a bunch of browser tabs open so you can look at different builds for different characters but you don't want to muck about minimizing LoL to open up the browser which can make a black screen for a minute. or maybe you are doing your homework and playing video games at the same time you can switch over to your homework when you hear your parents footsteps and they won't see the video game open at the bottom and you can switch back to it when they leave (provided they aren't checking whether you have multiple desktops activated. Also note that good ole [Alt+Tab] will cycle through every program running even on other desktops so you can easily switch between desktops. You can create a new virtual desktop using the [Win Key+Ctrl+D] to create a new desktop and [Win Key+Ctrl+F4] to close the virtual desktop. I have not tested what it would be like to write a little program probably in VBScript using the SendKeys Method that loops creating a new virtual desktop with the key shortcut as a denial of service attack but that's something that could potentially happen once people start writing all kinds of windows 10 compatible malware. =/

Speaking of which there are some neat tweaks you can make to Command Prompt now! It looks just like it always has but there is more setting tweaks. The most important naturally is that you can use [Ctrl+C] and [Ctrl+V] to copy and paste into the command line now which for some reason you couldn't previously do like go figure. I suppose it was a security measure to thwart script kiddies but you can use a batch file to much more devastating degree so it just made things difficult in the interpreter for no good reason but now you can enable that in the Experimental Tab on the Command Prompt Properties. Just make sure "Enable new Ctrl key shortcuts" is checked. You can easily copy paste results on the command prompt as well by highlighting it and Ctrl+C/V instead of looking at it and writing it in notepad or saving a txt document with the data makes certain things easier like copy pasting your public ipv4/6 address. Sometimes in fact you need to copy the results of a command to write a new command and this makes that a breeze now when before that was a straight bitch doing a lot of the time. There's a setting for word wrapping as well which is nice. One of the most important things if you're going to messing in the command prompt is to make sure you have your privileges elevated in that console otherwise a lot of things won't work and there's ways of doing that.

Enable new Ctrl key shortcuts

Simplest way is to just do [Ctrl+X] then Command Prompt (Admin). If you want to start an elevated command prompt in a certain directory you can Hold Shift and Right Click a folder to open command prompt in that folder. You can also do a search for cmd and do [Ctrl+Shift+Enter] and that will prompt to open with admin privs provided you have it. And because we are so awesome at computers we need GodMode on Windows 10 now. So go ahead on your desktop or whatever and make a new folder and name it GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} You can change "GodMode" to whatever you want but make sure its got that dot and that gobbledegook after it with squiggly brackets and have some fun but be careful if you fuck something up it's totally your fault yo.

GodMode

Blue is the Warmest Color Review

Oh man this movie. This one made me tear up a little bit at the end. It's an indie french drama film about a bi sexual school girl who falls in love with a blue haired tomboy. It's basically about her love life. The French title for this film is actually La Vie d'Adèle Chapitres 1 & 2 which translates in English to The Life of Adèle Chapters 1 & 2. Adèle is the main character the school girl. They describe this movie as an LGBT coming of age romance drama which explains it perfectly. She wanted to be a teacher so she becomes a teacher and moves in with her girlfriend who is an artist. They have their ups and downs and there's a couple amateur lesbian sex scenes in this one so just keep that in mind on who you watch it with. The ending is sad but I don't want to give away any spoilers so go check it out for yourself.

The movie came out in 2013 and was written, produced, and directed by Abdellatif Kechiche and stars Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos. I'm not really one for chick flicks but I did watch this one because the title interested me. I already knew it was a lesbian romance movie but yeah the title is what drew me into watching it. It is in French with subtitles as well just so you know. It moves fairly slowly but not too slow to make you bored of it which is a good thing because to be honest I usually get bored quick with korny romance scenes but this movie did it well. There were a couple times with no music which is an indicator that what the character is saying will be important and it creates tension and when you see the leads school friends and they do that you know they are going to say something nasty or nosey which makes you either listen closely for the drama or makes you hate those characters which leads you to be more empathic with the main character which is great for a drama film so they knew what they were doing.

Artistic indie films especially french ones (imho) seem to have a lot of meaningful symbolism like a good painting does that gives this some good replay value as you can come back to it from time to time and see a new meaning in the film which all great art does. Things like them mentioning Pablo Picasso who had his "blue period", the lighting being blue in the gay bar where Adèle meets Emma and Emma changing her hair color from blue to blonde towards the end of the film when the relationship starts to wane from its peak or the fact that they frequently have them eating a simple spaghetti when they have an enjoyable get-together be it with the art friends or with Adèle's parents. The blue I would believe is symbolic of something like the English title is a riddle to be solved. But art is always in the eye of the beholder so the things I mention you may not agree with and you may have your own opinion on what it means and that's what makes it so great I think.

I encourage you to watch this and find out for yourself what you think of the film. This is a gem of a film. Even if I don't like chick flicks I can appreciate what they did with this one it's like 3 hours long and if I can easily get through it I bet you can. ;)

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Obscure Genres : Witchhouse

Witch House as the name would suggest is occult themed electronic music. It's dark and kind of mellow while having a hint of horror to it most of the time not always though. It also goes by the names drag, rapegaze and haunted house. Haunted House is my favorite name for it I think thats clever and punny but I call it Witch House 98% of the time. There is also an aesthetic and a fashion that is pretty interesting. The dress is kind of like goth meets punk meets the occult. To dress witch house you would dress goth lots of black and white with occult symbols but it takes more of a playful punk direction by doing things like "Cat Magick" and have a cat with an upside down pentacle and an upside down cross on its third eye like its poking fun at christians who think those are demonic or satanic exclusive symbols. For real pagan witches it might seem a bit offensive at time but most of the time it's not as offensive as that. There are a bunch of retailers you can find on etsy and instagram (I see alot on instagram) Here's what it looks like:

Contrary to the name though this music isnt actually house music in the slightest. its alot of screwey hip hop beats with like distorted industrial noises and distorted synth leads, drum machines and strange experimental sounds and vocal samples. To make it you want to go for dark and ethereal think of a ghost talking through the white noise on an old tv with hip hop or trap type beats with a slow tempo. The white noise sounding bassline is a staple for alot of the witch house tracks but so is chiptune and more contemporary synths.



The witch house aesthetic of writing uses alot of unicode symbols like triangles, omega symbols, random foreign special characters even ogham and futhark runes are common. It's like using 13375p34k but with unicode instead of numbers. They say to do this to thwart search engines so it's harder to find witch house on the internet to keep it an underground movement so hope I don't get in trouble with the witch house police for making a blog post about it lol but this isn't a popular blog so I think it should be fine. ;)

They say it was created as a joke to describe a certain groups (shams) production sound but music journalists got ahold of it and it kind of stuck and is here to stay. There really isn't any set defining sound that says if you don't use this sound its not witch house its more of a vibe that makes something witch house, a little confusing. Of course you should have those elements like the gritty distorted sounds the hip hop drums, dense reverb, synthpop melodies to create that vibe but no particular one thing makes it witch house. Even some witch house mixtapes have things that you might say don't even classify as "witchhousey" but still make it in and help that witch house vibe keep flowing which is the most important part of the genre.

To get into Witch House I would check out the reddit page and check out those artists and i'll also have a good witch house playlist here as well. Salem has a bunch of mixtapes up for free as well but I don't think they are that great. I also made a mixtape i'll put up here.



My Witchhouse Mixtapes:

Ƒ⨹ѪїȽĬϪᏒ ຣρīƦį♰ by Catapilla on Mixcloud

ʤѦ☨Ƕ-Ⴌჰ⨹Ϸ Ħ△ШЖ ѪФ†Ҥ by Catapilla on Mixcloud

ਹǗӍΔŊڸᶅ by Catapilla on Mixcloud

Top Artists

Salem
oOoOO
White Ring
Purity Ring
Balam Acab
Crim3s
Grimes
Crystal Castles
Ritualz
Holy Other

XXYYXX

Retro Gaming

Mostly all retro gaming nowadays is done via emulation of consoles. You can go to any retro gaming story there's usually always one around that you can go to to pick up an old nes you can go online and find them on ebay and amazon but because emulation is a free method and is easiest to get it's taken over as a staple for retro gaming plus the fact that you don't have to blow on any cartridges to get it to work.

Arcade Emulation

There is, however, a physical console for retro gaming that actually uses emulation and can be hacked called the Hyperkin Retron 5 (Amazon Listing Here). That isnt the only model but that is the most common. It basically has a bunch of slots for cartridges and itll crack the rom and put it on the system and run it through the onboard emulator. It's pretty cool actually and it comes with its own controller that will work on all the consoles you can play on it and its wireless via bluetooth communication. It costs around $150 and can play NES, SNES, Super Famicom, Sega Genesis, Mega Drive, Famicom, Gameboy, Gameboy Color and Gameboy Advance Games all on one thing. The controller as i've seen is kind of shit but it also has ports for you to put in the original controllers and even cross compatible as in you can use an snes controller on an nes game etc. It also has filters to change the graphic appearance of any game which is a real plus like you can make old skool games look really high definition with it. The thing about it though is they kinda illegally stole peoples emulators to make profit off of it so idk how long this will be available if they get in trouble and have to take it down. Here are some images of what the thing looks like:

The black one with the controller

The white one with a Ogre Battle inserted

The GUI inside the Unit

Here is the hack for playing downloaded roms on the retron 5 without having a physical cartridge for it that I found on reddit:

Find an IPS ROM-patching program that can create patches. I used SamIPS2. Mac users can run this in Wine.
Click "Make IPS" tab
For current file, find the game ROM you would like to play on your Retron, like Sonic and Knuckles + Sonic 3.
For original file, put the ROM of a game you own. So basically, find the title of a game you have lying around, like Shaq-Fu. Find a ROM that matches that title, put it here.
Under "IPS file," you can name something whatever you want here, just use the .ips extension. For instance, Sonic-Knuckles-Sonic-3.ips.
Click "Create Patch."
You now have an IPS patch file. Load it onto your SD card, place the aforementioned game you had lying around into your cartridge slot and select that patch from your SD card.
Start the game. You'll be playing Sonic and Knuckles + Sonic 3, but Shaq-Fu will be in your cart slot. Not too shabby.
Note: You need "Patch expects header" selected for SNES; Sega, GBA, GB, GBC have all been tested and don't need Patch expects header selected. Downloading some NES ROMs now to check that part out, but I'm assuming NES/Fami/SMS will work the same as the other systems.

So that's how you can play it easily on your TV with specialized hardware for retro gaming. The next is going to be more ghetto and that's emulation on your computer. So this can actually be very handy for retro gaming because you can find roms available for free online you just have to google for "[console] roms" and find single file downloads or zips or even torrent the entire library for the console on bit torrent.

 Emulator Zone is probably the most popular for the subject and has a large list of both emulator software and roms indexed on the site but they don't have everything and don't always give the best advice. The Old Computer is a good source for your emulation needs as well. Emulators are like virtual machines for different operating systems but instead of sandboxing windows 95 your'e putting up an NES or an Atari what have you. It's not only good for those old systems there is also emulators for things like psp or xbox360 etc except those aren't the most viable emulators to run because they eat up alot of cpu and if you don't have a beefy computer you probably won't be able to run those games very well (the lag is real). One of the coolest ideas for this is to find an old tower computer and get a 32bit emulator and put it on the tower and just use the old computer as a gaming console like a ghetto retron 5. I've seen hak5 years ago make one with one of those joystick controllers for the computer and just made the emulator run straight away in full screen mode and bound the keys to it to make it like an arcade machine. They built a frame and everything for it and just used the old computer moniter as the screen. It was very cool. You can do the same kinda thing if you want but you'll have to buy USB controllers which you can find easily on amazon and you can hook it up to your tv via a coverter or if you have one even use your regular computer have the games on there and plug it into the tv with an hdmi cable most computers have that and bada bing bada boom you got your old skool gaming built in.



Another thing that you can do it put it all on your phone. Get an SD card with all your roms on it or just use the memory in the phone doesn't matter and get emulators on the play store or what have you. Most of them are free but there are a couple really good ones you can buy for like 5 bucks (you can always get a refund and keep the file but that's illegal) Why would you want to do this on your smart phone? Well I wouldn't really say put anything higher than n64 for 3d graphics on your phone because the more buttons it has the less actual control you have over the game. Old systems like nes had an a/b button select/start button and directionals, that's it. That can easily be played with the touch screen and now you have a mobile nes you can use anywhere you want. Another thing is those handheld consoles like gameboy and ds are meant for mobility and you can easily play those on your phone and it's kind of better than the original like the gba that didnt have an lcd screen so you had to be in the sun to see what you were doing but on the phone it's not like that and you won't hurt your fingers spamming the buttons. The only bad thing is about that is if your game needs a bumper you won't be able to easily play those games because the bumper is on the screen and not sideways like real bumpers are.

NES Emulator on Android

Search emulator zone and old school computer or the pirate bay for those emulators they are really easy to install and get going just need a repertoire of games to play pretty much every emulator will have it as file > load as how to open the game then you may want to check the key configuration to see which keys on the keyboard to press or to map your usb controller to the emulator. I don't think there is a real need to recommend any emulators right now because they all work pretty much just make sure to do a virus scan before you use anything. Maybe later ill make a top list of emulators later but putting this here would make this post too long. Bonne Chance!

Monkeybone Review

Monkeybone is a trippy dark comedy directed by Henry Selick starring  Brendan Fraser, Bridget Fonda, Whoopi Goldberg, Rose McGowan, David Foley, Giancarlo Esposito, Megan Mullally, Lisa Zane, Chris Kattan, and an uncredited Thomas Haden Church. Some of the scenes are kinda lame and boring in this one but for the most part its dark trippy and awesome.

The movie is about this comic artist who created this character monkeybone and its kind of his alter ego for his perverted excentric self and he gets into an accident and goes into a coma and in that coma he goes to this dreamscape place for people who are in comas and meets monkeybone and its all about his experiences in the coma and trying to get out of the coma to get back to his normal life meeting strange characters along the way.

There's alot of great comedy some of it cliche and lame but most of it is really cool. Its like really artistic and is like what an artists mind would look like. Some of the effects like the costumes and the animation are low quality and simplistic but they make it look really cool and artistic. The music is kinda mediocre. The characters they come up with are amazing. It's all very dark and bizzarre and that's what I love about it. It does have replay value everytie you want to go see something bizarre and cool but not scary you should watch this movie for sure.

Youtube Trailer

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Trick r' Treat Review

Trick r' Treat is a Horror Anthology Film based on a comic book of the same name. There are 4 halloween relayed tales and that all end up being interrelated in the end. Things you were wondering where that came from or things you might've overlooked all come together in the end. Each tale is really exciting and the aesthetic is just perfect for halloween. This is one of my favorite movies tbh but I really love halloween and I really love horror anthologies.

The film stars Dylan Baker, Brian Cox and Anna Paquin, is directed by Michael Dougherty and was released in 2007. So I think this is the best halloween movie nothing can top this for live action horror about halloween. I would say if you watch anything on halloween it would be this and maybe nightmare before christmas. It really captures the classic kids trick or treating getup but makes it more dark and spooky than what small kids will actually wear which is like spiderman and  disney princesses this shows kids dressed in vampire masks and witch outfits a more like mid 1900s approach that really looks badass in my opinion. The girl who dresses as a witch even talks about samhain which is the original name for the holiday which is a major plus and theres even some great morbid endings to the tales that you'll be all fuuccck that's awesome.

There are some cliche teenager movie moments to it but alot of great horror to it as well that is something you might see stephen king or edgar allan poe do. Standard horror movie music but that's quite common. I wouldn't get the soundtrack myself but if you like that kinda thing go ahead. The shots are great. The costumes are great. All around this is a really great horror anthology I think everyone should own. It should be a staple for every halloween night cuddle up and watch some  movies occasionally handing out candy to trick or treaters.

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