Flash Game Review: Chuck the Sheep

I haven't really watched any tv shows this week that I haven't reviewed and I'm behind on my schedule so I'm going to give you something different: a flash game review!

I'm a big fan of casual games and simple games that you can waste a bit of time playing in between projects. Or while you should be doing projects, but we'll pretend that doesn't happen.

I happened across Chuck The Sheep a few days ago, and I sat and played for two hours when I was just going to check it out for a few minutes and bookmark it if I liked it. It's got everything I'd want in a casual game, and I've definitely been going back to it since the first day which is pretty rare for me.

The basic premise is that Chuck The Sheep doesn't want to lose his wool, so he decides to make a break for it in a homemade airplane. It's a pretty simple game that uses launch mechanics and only a few keys to play. You try to get a good launch by hitting space at the right time as a dial spins, you hit the up and down buttons to (kind of) steer. Shift gives you a boost, and space gives you extra shields if you've upgraded. Collecting resources means you can upgrade your ship and get further on the map with each launch.

I actually didn't realize at first that there is a physical goal (even though there's a progress bar at the bottom of the screen, I somehow missed it) so you actually can finish and win the game. But even after you get to the end, you can keep playing to finish your upgrades, level up, and complete more quests. The quests are fun and silly, and even the more difficult ones aren't impossible. Like I said, I finished the game in a few hours but it's enjoyable enough to have continual replay value so it has the best of both worlds for me. I hate games that don't actually end.

The graphics are great, they're adorable and fun. The game doesn't take a long time to load and I haven't found any glitches with it. The keyboard shortcuts make sense and are easy for you to keep your hand in one place and not be reaching randomly for the key you need. All in all, it's absolutely a game you should play through at least once if you like flash games at all, if only just for the adorable graphics.

RuPaul's Drag Race Season 4

A few months ago, I watched all of seasons two and three of RuPaul's Drag Race in about two days on Netflix. I'm still trying to figure out why I can't watch Season One on Netflix or Logo. People say they're there, but they're not there when I look. But that's beside the point. I recently sat down to watch all of season 4 over the course of a couple days. I learned a few things doing it this way: first, that Logo's web player is terrible. It is one of the most wretched I have ever come across. It frequently glitched out, it would play commercials on repeat for ten minutes sometimes because it got stuck in a loop, and if I muted things half the time they wouldn't unmute. Which became a big problem because I was muting those horrible anti-smoking ads they played EVERY SINGLE BREAK. I really wish there was a button for "I'm not a smoker and never have been, stop trying to scare me straight."

Anyway. All of that is still beside the point. The thing I really picked up from watching the show so quickly though was that more than 2/3 of the people on it make absolutely no impression on me. When I first started reviewing Project Runway episodes, I noted that in the first two or three episodes of the season I have no idea who anybody is, and I rarely remember the people who were eliminated first. I always have to look up their names a million times to write a recap.

Drag Race has that, but it persists through at least half of the season. When Ru said that the judges could bring back one Queen that had already been eliminated, they went through the list and I couldn't for the life of me remember more than two or three of them. Those I could remember, it wasn't very fondly. Which just makes me wonder about who is making the casting decisions for the show.

Listen, I'm the first to admit I don't really know that much about the drag scene. Being a cisgender hetero woman, I enjoy watching drag shows but it's not a culture I'm really ever going to be IN. But it baffles me sometimes who gets chosen to go on the show, especially when they make it to the final five and I have no clue what anybody sees in them because their personality flops like a dead fish. Maybe it's different in person, that's definitely a thing. One major lesson I learned when I was casting one of my short films was that an audition can feel one way in person and it's ENTIRELY different when you watch it on camera. If you're in the room, you're not really seeing what the camera sees unless you're watching on a monitor.

I was pretty happy with this season's winner, but as usual I loved a lot of the runners up more than the winner. I won't spoil it for people by talking about details, but I will point out again that this particular crop wasn't really resonating with me. When Pandora Boxx was eliminated in season two, I was mad. I had several favorites that season, and season three was just as strong (though Pandora Boxx is still my favorite of all of them). But I can only think of one elimination this season that made me grumpy, and even I could see it was fair.

I think the show itself is darn near perfect. There is no better host than RuPaul, who somehow manages to capture that Tim Gunn mentor-quality AND the no-nonsense judge mentality. The mini-challenges are fun, and the winners usually get something that is useful bot not over the top advantage. The design of the set, the wardrobe for the regulars, Snatch Game, everything is honed to perfection. Even the fabulous product placement is perfect. So why they aren't populating this perfect reality competition world with the perfect contestants too, I don't know.

Of course this season also had the "controversy" with Willam. One thing that I hate in reality tv is being vague, it's nobody's friend. Not being vague and being clear cut is one of the reasons Top Chef is a success. When a contestant was sent home for breaking the rules in season two, they showed the offense, they explained it, and Tom said specifically what rule was broken. When Project Runway sent a contestant home, they explained in great detail what exactly they did wrong and why it was wrong.

But in the last year both America's Next Top Model (which I don't watch but read blogs that talk about it) and RuPaul's Drag Race have mysteriously eliminated a contestant without explanation. Sure, they had the reunion where Willam said he was eliminated because his boyfriend was visiting him at their hotel. But first of all, they should have just put that out there in the episode itself and second, did anybody else think that rang so completely false and made up? And then they've signed Willam to be a professor on Drag U, so I have no idea what's going on but by being coy about it everything seems sketchy.

I'll keep watching the show anyway, I love RuPaul and I love Santino now (which is hilarious if you go back to my original posts about him on ProjRun). If nothing else, maybe I can learn some makeup tips because goodness knows these guys make better women than me.

In The Grip of Evil

This is movie is yet another one where I didn't even remember putting it on my Netflix queue or why until I started watching it. I had added it after watching the first ten minutes in a class four years ago. It's an exploration of a case of alleged demonic possession that inspired the book The Exorcist. I'm frequently intrigued by the real life stories behind famous works of fiction, so the idea of a documentary about the real case that inspired a movie was already intriguing. To be honest, I wish I had just read about it on Wikipedia instead. It's not that In The Grip of Evil is terrible, it's that it's not any more interesting or evocative than an online article. There's nothing that makes you say "that right there, that's why this is a documentary and not a book." Which I know is a sentence that doesn't make sense to a lot of people, but it's the best way to summarize my reaction.

The film relies a lot on old standbys of "true" tv shows like Unsolved Mysteries. There's the gravely older male voice telling you how spooky and terrible things were. There's the often repeated still shots of the places involved where they zoom in and out of the picture of the church while it fades from color to black and white (sometimes with a flash of lightening effect). Some of the experts they interview are great, like a priest who was actually present for the exorcisms, but some of them you have no idea why that person is still talking. They interview a psychiatrist who seems to waffle back and forth about the idea of exorcism and the supernatural. She offers explanations for some things, and then makes a statement that sounds like she believes the boy really was possessed. Nothing about the way she is shot or framed sets her up as authoritative so I ended up discounting almost everything she said.

All of the interviews are done in this weird style that is clearly meant to make you feel like things are spooky and strange. I'm not sure, but my suspicion is that they shot everything with the camera on a tripod and then added motion effects in post-production so that the shots would slowly go back and forth from a dutch (crooked) angle and back. Or slowly zoom in and out. I think it was done in post because the motions were too perfectly timed to the clips they were using and if you did that during production you'd usually end up with partial moves and bad timing. Plus, can you imagine being interviewed while the camera man was weaving the camera all over the place? It'd drive me insane.

Anyway, if you love The Exorcist and you want to know more about what inspired it, I'd suggest just reading the many articles online about it or reading the original newspaper articles themselves. But if you like the show Unsolved Mysteries or you're a completionist that must know everything, then In The Grip of Evil isn't going to be a waste of your time.