Why Would I Believe Anything You Have To Say?

Time to RIP through some reviews

1. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple - This is it. This is what I want. If you’re going to do sequels and franchises. This is how you do it. I’ll start with the visual style. Each film looks so different. Starting with Boyle’s 2000’s punk vibe, they’ve changed how each film feels with every installment. Going from iPhones in 28 Years Later to DeCosta’s very smooth and omnipresent camera, the film takes a couple minutes to get adjusted. It felt weird at first but you slowly get lulled into its trance. Secondly, Bone Temple is such a rad tonal shift from the previous installments. Shoulda seen that coming with the shift 28 Years takes once Spike meets Dr Kelson, but jeez Ralph Fiennes is so so so good in this role. He’s tender. He’s kind. Mild spoilers, but coming from Alex Garland, I’m surprised Bone Temple is so kind (despite being very very very very unkind). Dr Kelson’s willingness to reach across the aisle to help people is inspiring. No surprises here, I loved The Bone Temple. Praying that we get a third installment from this set of films cause when that music drops at the end…. Lets goooooo.

2. The Rip - I’m mostly against Netflix’s model and release system, but leave it to Ben Affleck and Matt Damon to use Netflix’s business model to get a 1980s vibe-y police drama shoot em up made. Movie rules pretty hard tbh. Damon and Affleck are so charismatic and I’m super here for anything they make. Chuckled at Damon’s Odyssey beard showing up in the infancy stage. It’s streaming now if you need something to rip. 

3. Johnny’s Video Game Corner: Is this game worth my time?

   Lost Records: Bloom & Rage (Spoiler free) Stumbled upon this game while trying to make Xbox Game Pass worth the money I spend on it and wasn’t really sure what to expect, just that it was made by the same company who developed Life Is Strange (which I haven’t played).

   You play as Swann, a red-headed teenage girl with a camcorder, who makes new friends with three other teenage girls during the summer of ‘95 before she moves from Michigan to Vancouver. In game, you actually start 27 years later at a bar where you’re meeting up with those same friends, with lots of vague conversation on how “something” happened back then and the friend group mysteriously split up.

   Gameplay-wise, you swap back and forth from past and present where relational decisions you make as a kid affect the present day bar conversations with said friends. It’s like watching a mini series that’s a choose your own adventure. The game is broken up into two acts and the first one is pretty slow; mostly just introducing you to the personalities of each character through summer hangs, then a major plot point is dropped to lead into act two which stays pretty engaging. There’s different game endings depending on the choices you make, and you can always go back to replay a scene if it didn’t turn out like you wanted. Is this game worth your time?

   Well it’s under 13 hours so it isn’t crazy long. It’s an emotionally-driven story about friendship in the ‘90s with NSFW language, conversation heavy, low gameplay action, some mystic happenings, and is closer to a visual novel rather than your typical video game, so if any of that doesn’t appeal to you than it’s probably a skip. I liked it, it made me cry (even if some of the dialogue was cheesy) but I’m into single-player story games and have been known to be overly emotional and nostalgic.

4. Album Update - We got together last week and took inventory. There’s 9 songs in our Box right now. We were pretty encouraged by the process. I attached a demo last week, which was a song that was really close to being on our ’25 EP. Anywho, we need/want to write about 10 more songs and then we’ll start recording. We’ve got some really really rad ideas and think this album could be special. Hold tight. More updates… next week.

5. Show Updates - Saturday, April 11 at The Green Turtle in Whittier, CA w/ NIV, The Undertaking!, Meadow and more TBA. Sunday, April 12 at Roadies in Vista, CA w/ NIV, The Undertaking!, Meadows, St. Didicas and more. Tickets for sale soon. Both shows are all ages. Will crush. 

6. I’m writing this newsletter while with the band, watching a movie called Gunslingers. Its terrible. Nic Cage is in it. It’s very bad. Do not recommend. 

Good bye.

Song of the Week - I’m really excited about this Converge album.