June 2023 Monthly Entry
From May until now, we still had sunny summer temperatures for the most part. Recently, we have had some rain bu the sun is poised to come back. The wildfires around the province haven't affected us too much on the Lower Mainland here though we had a little haze and a minor bad air advisory a couple weeks ago.
Knights Gathering will be in Denver this year on July 7-9, hosted by the Seattle Chapter. The major highlight is to attend the Rocky Mountain Regional 40th Rodeo in Aurora. We are staying at the Residence Inn Denver City Center and I will be bunking with fellow-Knight Eugene. I've never been to Colorado and a gay rodeo before so it should be fun for me. I'll write and post about the weekend before my July monthly entry.
Work has remained the same lately as we are inching closer to the end of the school year. I found out that the principal at Montecito these last couple of years is leaving us to work at the school board with children who have behavioural issues. So, we will have a new principal by September, who will be transferring from another school to ours. The only other thing to mention is that we are back to square one on the Westridge and daycare position. I wasn't paying attention to the job posts lately because if I were, I would have noticed a few weeks ago of the posting for the daycare position! It meant that the guy we had last winter and only lasted a week had since found a new permanent position while he took on a temporary contract elsewhere this whole time. We had a woman come in for over three months on a temporary contract to do the position and then she told me two weeks ago that her contract ended and would be going back down to casual. I thanked her for her work on her last day. I thought the previous permanent guy was coming back. Nope, we got a new permanent which was how I found out about the posting a few weeks prior. Okay fine, at least we had someone for the position. Well, he only lasted about a week also as he likely bowed out and went back to his previous position - though he never indicated to me that he would do this. I got a rude awakening last week Tuesday night when a casual came in - which I should have suspected as it was getting late and the keys for the daycare were not taken before 9:30pm. She is scheduled to work until next Monday I believe. I thought our new guy was sick last Tuesday, but nope, it seems he left the position. Sigh. I suppose we will get our new person at the tail end of the month. For the summer scrub, I'll be working day shift.
During my flights home from Chicago, I saw two films on the United flight app. The first was the 1954 romantic comedy, Sabrina. I haven't seen it in over a decade, which was giving on TV. It is still a great film, with great performances from Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, and William Holden. The other film I watched was Disney's The Little Mermaid, the original 1989 animated version. I haven't seen it since 2015. One of my childhood favourites, I refuse to watch the recent live-action release given Disney's track record.
Saturday I watched Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete on 4K Blu-Ray. I still own the previous two releases: the first was the original 2005 DVD, and then the 2009 Complete Blu-Ray release. I don't remember the last time I saw this film and in fact, I've never reviewed it here on LiveJournal! Advent Children is a film sequel to the popular 1997 Final Fantasy VII game. It takes place two years following the events of FF VII, during which the antagonist Sephiroth attempted to absorb the Lifestream (the lifeblood and soul of the Planet) and be reborn as a god. He was defeated by Cloud Strife and his companions. Still, Sephiroth's final spell, Meteor, destroyed the city of Midgar. Since the end of the game, the survivors of Midgar founded the new city of Edge, where Cloud and his childhood friend Tifa Lockhart now run a courier service and are the caretakers of an orphan Denzel and the adopted daughter of Barret Wallace, Marlene. Due to feeling guilty for failing to save Aerith Gainsborough during their pursuit of Sephiroth, Cloud has recently moved out and isolated himself from his friends. The story also portrays that many people, including Cloud and Denzel, are infected with a mysterious disease known as "Geostigma", which has no known cure. Cloud is contacted through Tifa and summoned to a meeting with the Shinra Company's former president Rufus Shinra, who was presumed killed in Final Fantasy VII. Rufus asks for Cloud's help to stop Kadaj, Loz, and Yazoo. The trio is the physical manifestation of Sephiroth's surviving spirit. They are seeking to resurrect him using the remains of the extraterrestrial villain Jenova. Given this plot, Advent Children may confuse anyone who has not played the original game. Thankfully, the 1080p Blu-Ray disc has all the special features included in the previous releases. There are a couple of special features that give a quick rundown of the story of FF VII plus it's prequels Before Crisis and Crisis Core (Crisis I reviewed in 2016 here) that includes footage from the games. This is good for those who want to know basically what is going on or need a refresher. I should point out that the dialogue runs very fast in these movies, so you may need to rewind to know what people are saying. They also trim a lot of fat, so you are getting VERY bare bones story content. Of course, there is nothing to link any of this to the Final Fantasy VII: Remake that was released in 2020 and I cannot comment since I won't be playing it years from now. As a fan, the movie is decent and the CGI was some of the best almost 20 years ago. My major gripe is that the 4K transfer was lazily done - it is nothing more than an upscale! While it does use HDR, the colours do mostly tend to be dark and bland in a lot of scenes. There is also pixelation with very fine lines, mainly characters with long hair (I could really see this with Tifa and Kadaj.) The English voice acting is hit or miss, as is the dialogue. I prefer it in Japanese and will have to watch it the next time that way. The music was great with some rearrangements from the original game done by the original composer, Nobuo Uematsu. What really sells the film are the incredible action scenes! They are still entertaining to watch and still some of the best to this day. The mix of anime and realism works very well in this film that I wish they made more of them. In fact, I wish more animation studios would attempt more hyper-real CGI films like 2001's Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and some of the Resident Evil CGI films. I say this because we constantly get CGI in cartoon form, which tends to be colourful and exaggerated. An occasional realistic CGI film would be a change of pace. For Advent Children, the mix of anime-look characters in a realistic setting works very well here - the shape of their eyes are not fully human proportionate, but they aren't too big-anime-style either. I'll admit that some of the CGI looks a little dated but for 2005, it was great to look at. I think some of the set pieces look too much like other Japanese-produced CGI films like the Resident Evil releases through the years. Disney/Pixar and other animation studios excel at this, but these films based on video games ( except the recent Super Mario Bros. Movie) tend to struggle with cinematography. They're not bad by any means, but they kind of lack the visual depth that we're used to. I still recommend Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete if you're curious, but best you play the original game or watch YouTube videos that have people giving you the plot synopsis.
Sunday night I watched Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 in 3D at Cineplex Langley. I've seen the previous two films ( first, and second) in theatres and while this may be my least favourite of the three, it was still a fun film. Unlike the previous two films, Volume 3 centers around Rocket big time. While he is mostly inactive for the film, he does make a major comeback in the third act. The other Guardian characters get decent screen time, though. I didn't find the jokes to land as hard as previous movies - I barely laughed though giggled a couple of times. Instead, the film was more emotionally stirring than the others, especially the flashbacks of Rocket's past. It did look great in 3D and glad I saw it in that format. A highlight for me was Bletelsnort, played by the sexy bear Benjamin Byron Davis. There is a scene in which Mantis uses her powers to (alas, temporarily) make him fall in love with Drax as a distraction and cruises him. WOOF! Wish that went places! If it shows up on Netflix in the future, I'll rewatch the film on there.
Doug Walker's review of the film is here or below:
Click to viewI've made little progress in The Last Story that I may not be done until July. I'll try to work on it more. I've also made little progress in Star Trek: TOS and Sailor Moon. Fatigue after work really sets in and my having small naps cuts into my free time before bed in the morning, leaving me with little time to work on games and TV shows. Hopefully working day shift this summer will change that a little.
Last Movie: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 (Theatrical), Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete (4K Blu-Ray)
Last Book: The C.S. Lewis Signature Classics - The Screwtape Letters
Last Game: Mario Kart Wii (Wii)
Current Book: The C.S. Lewis Signature Classics - Miracles
Current Games: The Last Story (Wii) & The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons & Oracle of Ages (3DS Virtual Console - GBC)