Posted on by Alexander Case

Con Report: Kumoricon 2025

Time for my second con report of the year, for Kumoricon 2025.

‘Solecism’ by Scott Buckley – released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au

Please support my Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/countzeroor
Buy me a coffee at Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/countzero
Watch my Live-Streams on http://twitch.tv/countzeroor
Check out my Let’s Plays at https://www.youtube.com/@CountZeroOrPlays

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Posted on by Alexander Case

Film Review: Close Encounters of the Spooky Kind

The Hong Kong movie industry of the 80s and 90s was one that was willing to create a bunch of action comedy horror films, with Sammo Hung serving as almost the martial arts film equivalent to Dan Ackroyd on Ghostbusters. I’ve covered one of the films of this era in the past with Mr. Vampire. Now it’s time for another, one starring Mr. Hung himself, with Close Encounters of the Spooky Kind.

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Posted on by Alexander Case

Video Game Review: Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward

Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward was one of the games that was on my New Year’s Resolutions list for the year. While I haven’t quite hit the start of the next expansion, Stormblood, yet – I have rolled credits on the main expansion, and am partway through the patch content between expansions (including having done one of the new Raid series – Alexander). So, I’m at a pretty good spot to give my thoughts on the expansion itself.

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Posted on by Alexander Case

Vlog: What Lit SF Cons can Learn From Anime Cons

On an as-of-this-recording recent episode of Charlie Jane Anders & Annalee Newitz podcast “Our Opinions Are Correct”, they discuss ways that SF cons (implicitly meant to be LitSF cons) can be more equitable in how they’re organized and run – and they present a lot of solutions that Anime Conventions have been using successfully, but without getting into that anime cons have been using those solutions. I get into why there might be that failure of cross-pollination of ideas.

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Posted on by Alexander Case

Video Game Review: Gloomhaven

When I was a kid, I played a board game called HeroQuest a lot. This was a collaboration between Games Workshop and Milton Bradley, intended to transform the dungeon-crawling RPG experience into a board game. Eventually, I ended up having to get rid of my copy of that game in a move, but I always wanted that experience back, either as a board game or video game. I missed out on the Descent board game when that came out, and that never really got a PC or console version. However, Gloomhaven did get a console and PC port. So, I thought, this is what I’ve been looking for. It wasn’t.

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Posted on by Alexander Case

Film (Video) Review: City on Fire

This week I’m taking a look at Ringo Lam’s undercover-cops-and-robbers crime thriller, City on Fire.

City on Fire is available from Amazon.com (Affiliate Link): https://amzn.to/4oGSqt2

‘Solecism’ by Scott Buckley – released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au

Please support my Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/countzeroor
Buy me a coffee at Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/countzero
Watch my Live-Streams on http://twitch.tv/countzeroor
Check out my Let’s Plays at https://www.youtube.com/@CountZeroOrPlays

Donation Links…

Posted on by Alexander Case

Film Review: Way of the Dragon

When I was in Middle School, I discovered Hong Kong martial arts films through researching the wuxia genre on the Internet after watching Big Trouble in Little China, and the first I sought out was Bruce Lee’s The Big Boss. So, I’ve always known that Bruce was one of cinema’s greatest film performers, and I’d assumed he could do no wrong. That there was no such thing as a mediocre Bruce Lee film. It turns out there is, and it’s called Way of the Dragon.

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Posted on by Alexander Case

Film Review: Trog

Trog, as a film, is probably one of the more lazy and derivative horror films I’ve seen. However, it accomplishes this not by knocking off one genre of horror films, but several all at once, in an effort to turn it into some kind of horror cinema Dagwood. It doesn’t succeed, but it does manage to be entertaining in the attempt, but not in the ways they intended.

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