Music

One thing I really like to do is listen to music. It's one of my favorite pastimes, up there with reading and
writing. I have a wide range of tastes when it comes to music. I like listening to everyone from the Newsboys to Ray Charles, to every genre from alternative to soundtracks to classical (except for death metal). I don't know how I became interested in such a diverse range of music, but it probably had to do with watching a lot of musicals growing up. I just like music. Granted, I don't feel like I have the insight or ear to be a music critic, but I love listening to it. I have almost 24 hours of music in my collection, and I'm steadily adding more to it. I hope to finish someday.

The most pervasive genre in my collection is by far soundtracks. Soundtracks are a rather peculiar genre. They can range from anything from rock to classical, but still be counted under one category simply because they were released with a film or a video game. As such, soundtracks make for a diverse selection. In particular, I love Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori's soundtrack from the Halo franchise. It's so emotional, so heart-melting, so incredibly splendid. It really puts you in the mood for the story, and truly sets it apart from any other story. All of their stuff is brilliant, but some of my favorites include "Wake Me When You Need Me" and "Unforgotten." Ditto for the works of Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard on the Dark Knight Saga, Nick Arundel for Batman: Arkham City, John Williams for the Star Wars saga, Howard Shore for The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Nathan Furst for the original three Bionicle movies, and Klaus Badelt for Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl. Sometimes a movie's music is one of its few redeeming values, such as with the otherwise atrocious The Last Airbender (Howard Shore) and the cosmically overrated 1989 Batman film (Danny Elfman). "Flow Like Water" remains a favorite of mine to this day.

I also like other genres, such as Christian rock. My favorite band is the Newsboys, with their catchy tunes and clever lyrics. My two favorite songs from them are "Belly of the Whale" and "Born Again", for when they switched lead singers. Also of note is their cover of "In Christ Alone" and "Wherever We Go." The Newsboys are my only particular favorite Christian rock band, come to thing of it. I usually scrounge around for whatever is handy when selecting other Christian rock music for my collection. I've got chunks of Jeremy Camp, Joe Poppino, Jars of Clay, and a sprinkling of individual, one-off entries from various Christian artists like Mark Schultz and Jaci Velasquez. I am also a fan of ApoligetiX, a Christian rock group who describe themselves as a cross between Weird Al Yankovic (who I also like) and Billy Graham. Some of their songs include "The Devil Went Down to Jordan" and "YHWH".

One Christian artist that I have a lot of that's not rock is David Klinkenberg. My dad picked up a couple of his CDs when they were on sale at my church, and I've listened to his strings over and over again. He's a great artist and singer. His "Rich Mullins Medley" and "Immortal Invisible" are particularly good. Other non-Rock Christian artists that I have on in my collection are a series of covers done by Bill Anderson and Brenda Lee, plus a series of highlights from Handel's Messiah.

Other rock and alternative groups I like that aren't Christian rock groups are Cryoshell and Queen, though most of the songs from these genres are individual songs from different bands, with no long stretches of songs from specific bands. These songs have a good tune and memorable lyrics. Such songs included "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" by U2, "Wanted Dead or Alive" by Bon Jovi, and "Short Change Hero" by the Heavy. I really love Cryoshell for the music they provided for the Bionicle saga.

Then there's music which appeals to my sentimental side, like R&B and pop singers like Ray Charles and Rick Astley. I love a good love song, and Ray Charles album Genius Loves Company provides just that. I really dig Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up," and I was given a disk of some of his pop songs (Portrait, to be specific) by my cousin Hudson, which I still enjoy. I currently have plans to purchase albums by Ray Charles and Frank Sinatra. I love Ray Charles' covers on "You Don't Know Me" and "Sweet Potato Pie" and Rick Astley's "What the World Needs Now."

In sum, my musical tastes are very diverse, reflecting my diverse interests. I love listening to music while I read, and am listening to music as a write this article. Most of all, I feel that music is a gift from God. Music is its own language, expressing emotions and feelings in a way that words cannot convey. Thusly, we are encouraged to use music in worship, and I feel that it is a valuable tool for that purpose. I myself have dabbled in making music in the past (I used to take piano lessons). Perhaps one day I will return to that. But for now, I am content to listen. And listen I shall.

Image courtesy of picsandsticksmusic.com

Review: Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn

I've written about Halo before, and I wrote there that I wasn't sure if I'd review Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn or not, but now I feel that the world deserves to know about this study in contradictions. Is it cleverly and professionally produced online series, or low budget sci-fi flick? Is it a definitive story of the origin of the Human-Covenant War, or a spanner in the works of an otherwise airtight continuity? Let's find out.

Originally released online in serialized form, but now combined into a ninety minute movie, Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn tells the story of the cadets at the Corbulo Academy of Military Science. The principal character is Cadet Thomas Lasky (Tom Green), who doesn't really want to fight. His friend Chyler Silva (Anna Popplewell), on the other hand, is apparently very much for fighting the "innies," that is, insurrectionists. The other cadets have their own stories, but most of the focus is on Tom and Chyler, with a little time spent on the others. But just as Tom is beginning to step up as a leader, who should show up at CAMS but the Covenant. They proceed to blow up the school, until only Tom and a small group of other Cadets are still alive against a force of Covenant troops. But they're not alone. Master Chief shows up! Yeah! Will Chief and Tom and company get out safely, or will everybody get killed to death? If you've played the Halo games, you probably know that it's a combination of both.

I call this series/movie a study in contradictions because I got a very different reaction watching it in serialized form online than I got from watching it as a movie. In serialized form, there was suspense and cliff hangers every week, and our investment in the characters was built up as time went on. I'm no film major, but I know that serialized shows and full length films are built very differently, and the movie version suffers for it. Granted, the movie version has extra scenes of the cadets introducing themselves at the beginning which gives them a little more depth, but that's about it. Also, all of the mini-cutscenes with Cortana and Master Chief were shunted to the front of the film or to the back. Of course, this film was made in order to promote Halo 4, so that may be a sign of it's quality.

To get to the point, Forward Unto Dawn simply doesn't work as a film, both for the reasons previously stated and for other structural flaws in the story and characters. But there are some good things about it. The acting is really strong, particularly on Tom Green's part, and the action scenes are really cool. The characters are also all likeable, even if not all of them get a lot of character development. We at least get some motivation for most of them, and we've got some good supporting characters in the form of Colonel Mehaffey (Ayelet Zurer, who played Jor-El's wife Lara in Man of Steel) General Black (Michael Dopud), and, of course, Master Chief (Daniel Cudmore). In hindsight, I'm kind of confused on why they had a different actor provide Master Chief's voice. I was thinking they could have gone with the Darth Vader approach and put some big guy in the suit while having Steve Downes, his voice actor from the games, do the voice. That said, Cudmore is still pretty good as Master Chief. I'd also like to offer high praise to the emotional depth that this series manages to pull off. Despite its flaws, that's the one thing it has in common with the games.

But remember those structural flaws in the story and characters that I mentioned? Yeah, we're going to have to talk about that now. Let's start with Chyler Silva. Despite being played by great actress Anna Popplewell, who I loved as Susan Pevensie in the Chronicles of Narnia movies, she's kind of a flat character. We're told through expository dialogue what her motivation is, as opposed to, say, an emotional reveal. I think the creators were trying to play up the contrast between the Lasky's wild card nature to her straight laced demeanor, but it only partially succeeds. The end result is a completely implausible romance. What do these two have in common that makes them bond? We are never told.

And then there's the other cadets. Sure, we're given some background on a few of them, but the potentially interesting ones, like J.J. and Vickers, are only given so much time to shine. I don't want to spoil anything, but even those that make it to the end of the movie aren't given much background and character. April (Enisha Brewster), the commanding cadet officer, in particular, is really underused. She's easily the coolest of the bunch, but she gets the least character development, though she still has some great scenes.

There's also the issues this story raises for just how the Human-Covenant War got started. I haven't read the Halo books, but from what I understand, the war began when the Covenant invaded the planet Harvest about a year before Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn. I think it's implied in here that the whole alien invasion thing was being kept secret from the rest of humanity, but I find that a pretty hard bite to swallow. I also read somewhere that it was stated in one of the books that humanity didn't run into Elites and Hunters until sometime later in the war, yet there a Elites and Hunters in this movie. If there are any Halo book readers in the audience, I would like to be enlightened.

On the whole, Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn isn't the best thing I've ever seen, having serious flaws. I want to like it, and again, I loved it serialized form, but as I said before, it just doesn't work as a movie. What's good about it though is that it's still available online, free to watch, albeit without the extra footage at the beginning. For this reason, if you're a die hard Halo fan, then you might want to pick it up on DVD, or at least watch it on Netflix. Otherwise, though, just go see it online. You'll have a lot more fun watching it that way; I certainly did. Mind you, however, this is a movie based on a first person shooter, so there's some gore, but not a lot, mixed in with a one or two cases of severe swearing. I'm actually surprised at how tame it was compared to the actual Halo games, which by themselves are pretty tame for a first person shooter.

RATING: 6.5/10

Image courtesy of itunes.apple.com

Halo

I'll be honest; I'm not a very big video game guy. Sure, I've played through the first two LEGO Star Wars games and Batman: Arkham City, and way back in the day I used to play LEGO Island, Liberty's Kids, Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings, and various Winnie the Pooh learning games, all of which I have fond memories of. Heck, I even tried taking up Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic not to long ago, before I decided it was a waste of time, even for a video game. But there's still one game I've played only a little that I follow very closely. Truth is, I'm terrible at this particular game, have little taste for it's genre, and have never owned a single copy of any of the series' installments. Yet, I am deeply awed by the detailed story, emotional depth, stellar visuals, and cool characters.

That game series is, of course, Halo.

Beginning with Halo: Combat Evolved in 2001 and going through seven more installments, the most recent being last year's Halo 4, the Halo saga follows the adventures of various heroes of the United Nations Space Command in their desperate war against the ultra-destructive, fanatically religious alien alliance known as the Covenant. The main hero of this first person shooter series is Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Spartan John-117, most commonly known as Master Chief. A Spartan-II super soldier, Master Chief has to fight not only the Covenant, but also a parasitic race of space zombies called the Flood. In the most recent installment, Halo 4, you get to fight against the Prometheans and the Covenant, but not the Flood, and there are no Brutes. In Halo 3: ODST, you fight against just the Covenant, but there are no Elites to fight. Master Chief is assisted by his A.I./girlfriend Cortana, who provides helpful instruction in all of the games that Master Chief appears in save the majority of Halo 3, and gives Chief someone to talk to in Halo 4.

Backed by his easily killed Marine followers, Master Chief later teams with the Arbiter in Halo 3 (you get to play as the Arbiter in some parts of Halo 2). The Arbiter is a Sangheili, better known as an Elite, a Covenant holy warrior turned de facto leader of the Elite people after the Elites broke away from the main Covenant to Ally with the humans. In Halo 3: ODST you play as an assortment of characters in an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper (ODST) squad. These characters include "the Rookie," known by some studious research at the Halo wiki as James D. Also in the squad and available to play as are Buck, Dutch, Mickey, and Romeo. In Halo: Reach you play as Noble 6, a Spartan-III who is customizable by the player, including the character's gender. Halo Wars is a noticeable departure from the other games in that it is not a first person shooter, but a real time strategy game, kind of like Age of Empires. It's the only Halo game that I have not watched a YouTube walkthrough of. And really, that's the only way I know so much about Halo. I haven't read the books or comics, but I've learned a lot about Halo through the glory of the internet. One day, I will read the books and the comics, and maybe I'll watch the animated series, Halo Legends. I've seen Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn in both episodic web form and compiled movie form (the former was much better), and I've watched my share of videos at Halo Waypoint. And I will continue to gather information about Halo.

My favorite game of the series in undoubtedly Halo 3: ODST, which I believe is an underrated gem. It has some degree of unpopularity among gamers due to its short campaign and lack of new maps. However, I find it to be my favorite because of its many references to the Divine Comedy through a side story called Sadie's Story and it's deep character portrayals. I have a soft spot for Halo 2 because it's the first game of the series that I ever played, and introduces my favorite character, the Arbiter, but I would one day like to play Halo 3: ODST. If I could just get my mind around how the controls work, I'd be groovy.

My all time favorite Halo character is the Arbiter (also known as Thel 'Vadam), because of his interesting backstory and unique characterization. I hope that in future Halo games the creators will reveal what exactly happened to him after Halo 3. I haven't read the Kilo-5 series for more information on this, but I've heard bad reports about it. The author, Karren Travis, isn't exactly on my scope as an author worthy of my attention. I've heard really bad things about her work in the Star Wars universe. Yikes. Other favorite characters of mine include Commander Miranda Keyes, Lord Hood, Chips Dubbo, Sergeant Johnson, Rtas 'Vadum, the Rookie, Thomas Lasky, Mickey, and, of course, Master Chief himself.

In sum, Halo is a grand saga on the level of Star Wars, and I would heartily recommend the books and comics for your reading pleasure, but I have not yet read those books and comics, so I am unable to.  However, when I read them, I will be sure to recommend them if I find them worthy of that honor. It is also one of my inspirations for my writing, and I will readily look to it when I write a science fiction story some day. Thusly, I hereby recommend the Halo games, with the exception of Halo Wars because I haven't watched a walkthrough of that movie yet, to all of you gamers out there who like to play semi-gory first person shooters (I say "semi-gory" because most of the blood in Halo is blue, and not entirely excessive), which, as Sergeant Johnson would say, is wrapped up in an epic science-fiction story which is so freaky, it gives me shivers just thinking about it. So, go read/watch/play some Halo!

Image courtesy of t3.com

RPG Group 2013 - Session #3 & Life Updates

Today was the third session of my RPG Group, and what I believe was the first longer session. We went on a real adventure. We started off by meeting with a member of the Free Telos Army to talk about ganging up on the Empire. We then planned and executed an assault on an Imperial base, where the FTA members caused a distraction while we snuck inside and stole some kind of information container thing. Something that would help us track troop movements or something. Anyway, the party then exited by another way, stealing an imperial airspeeder, which had a grenade launcher. My character was the lookout during this entire operation, keeping an eye on our exit route. Also, Captain Veemo of the FTA went out of contact after the battle. He and his guys are probably all dead.

We rendezvoused at a parking garage where my character used his knowledge of technology to get rid of the stolen combat airspeeder's transponder, and then we split up- Embar took the more subtle airspeeder we had taken earlier to go to a library from where he could use the thing we stole to hack into the Holonet in order to access info from the Imperial base, while we took the combat airspeeder to go back to the base. Unfortunately, another combat airspeeder of the same make and model came across us even after we had ripped out the transponder and began to tail us, no doubt waiting for back up. We tried to lose them, but my character kept rolling poor pilot checks. Stupid plastic sewing board. Anyhow, what followed was a lengthy speeder chase/fight through the streets of Terrovae. During this engagement, both of the speeders were damaged, but we managed to escape after I finally rolled a fifteen, which combined with my +8 pilot skill, plus a -2 on pilot rolls due to damage, allowed for a nice 20. After making a stop by this campground to check our speeder for any homing devices, we went back to base and applied some kind of paint we had lying around over the imperial markings. Then we called Embar to see how he was doing. Turns out the library he was at had been taken over by Imperials, and they were searching everybody. So we ran down to the library to see what we could do, and just before we had to end the session, Torin, Linnae's character, threw a grenade as a distraction. Hopefully, my good friend Nick will be joining the group next session. Unfortunately, I will be unable to attend next week's session, due to me being at Nationals. Which brings us to our next order of business.

Today, I finished writing the rough draft of my book, worked on the front garden, practiced my sermon, quoted 1 Thessalonians 5 to my mom, and answered 12 quiz questions. After going to the RPG group meeting, I went home, after which I sat around not doing much of anything. At 7:00, I went to the church to participate in a meeting of the church library ministry staff, which I have recently joined. We discussed various ideas for helping to promote the library, make the library look nicer, and other stuff, but I failed to take notes. I will divulge that we are interested in setting up a sort of book club, which I will be taking polls about and asking around about as soon as I can. After I came home, I decided to watch Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn. I'm not sure whether I'll review it or not.

In other news, last night was the last Bible Quiz Team practice before Nationals, which will take place at the IFCA Youth Convention this coming week. We depart Saturday for West Virginia. It will be a long and involved effort, during which I will probably be unable to update my blog. So be prepared for a full blogout. I for one am partly excited and partly nervous about going on this trip. On the one hand, there's the usual hassle of going on the airline and what not, but on the other, there's the possibility of returning to where I went for my first Nationals, for which I will be coming full circle. It's something one thinks about, I imagine.

Levi Sweeney's Day Off

Today was the first day of the year in which I did not have any schoolwork to do, apart from my Bible Quiz Team stuff. I got up around eight o'clock A.M., where, after showering, I compiled the following list of goals for the day:

1.) Read today's One Year Bible entry.
2.) Read a page of the dictionary.
3.) Type at least 500 words on book.
4.) Type at least 3 pages for graphic novel.
5.) Edit review on Captain America: The First Avenger.
6.) Read minimum of 3 sections of Batman: Night of the Owls
7.) Brainstorm for The Misadventures of Nobody (and X-Ray) and Hero-Guys
8.) Review Quiz material; Ephesians 5 & 1st Thessalonians 5. Quote Ephesians 3 and answer 13 quiz questions.

As of this writing, I have accomplished every one of these objectives fully or partially, and then some. The only two that are not completely done are objectives 6 and 7. Throughout the day, I interspaced these objectives with activities such as watching Halo walkthrough videos (Halo will be the subject of a future post), reading an online resource on gangs, reading the now defunct blog Diary of a Police Officer, listening to the How to Succeed in Evil podcast (a satirical work starring an "Evil Efficiency Consultant", which I will review), weightlifting with a 15 pound weight, and going to the pool and swimming. I swam twenty lengths of the pool in 10 to 15 minutes. I'm glad to have gotten some exercise. I'm also glad to have made further progress on both my book and my graphic novel. On my book, I am happy to report that I am only a couple of chapters away from completion, plus an epilogue or two. As for the graphic novel, I think that I'm about halfway through. I also intend to brainstorm and write down ideas for a new fan-fiction I plan on writing, The Misadventures of Nobody (and X-Ray). It will involve Nobody, an anthropomorphic running joke from my other fan-fictions, my internet persona, X-Ray, general Bionicle stuff, namely Ahkmou, and the Russian Mafiya. In short, it's gonna be pretty awesome. I also began writing down ideas for The Ultras, another graphic novel series I have in mind to create, which will be in the same universe as Hero-Guys (the title of a graphic novel for The Ultras would be Hero-Guys: The Ultras: Superhuman, to give an example). I intend to use the "Seven Basic Plots" as a basis for telling their stories, just as I'm using "the Hero's Journey" as a basis for yet another graphic novel that I'm planning, Heroic.

Anyway, after all of that, I ate dinner and then went to Master's Club at my taekwondo school. Then I came home and wrote this blog post before getting to work on objectives 6 and 7, after which I might watch The Third Man...

Also, it's a bit late, but I wrote and posted a Batman fan-fiction in BZPower.com's Off Topic Culture section, Whatever Happened to the Agent of the Bat? I'd saddened to say that no one has reviewed it so far. So, read it and, if you're a BZPower.com member, review it! I'd love some feedback.