Another month has gone into the ever-growing world of the past, and boy what a month it was. I did watch some stuff, I read some stuff (though I don’t think I finished anything) but what I mainly did was go to the Netherlands!

I already posted about this here so I won’t repeat things now, except to say that we went there because it was where my wife was born (in Haarlem) and we hadn’t been back for a long time.

As a result I didn’t watch as much as I might normally do, but you can see all sorts of photographs of things we experienced. We were there because my wife actually born there (in Haarlem) and we hadn’t been back for a long time. So it was great to be able to go back, catch up, and see things that we haven’t seen before.

However, in addition to all the canals, windmills, cheese and treacherous staircases, we did also watch a movie, one night when we had time and my wife were browsing around her aunt & uncle’s various streaming platforms before landing on…

True Story

This mystery thriller movie from director Rupert Goold actually is based on a true story, about the relationship between a disgraced journalist Michael Finkel (Jonah Hill) and Christian Longo (James Franco), a man accused of murdering his own wife and children. The two become connected when Longo, a fugitive in Mexico, is found living under Finkel’s name. Finkel approaches him in jail to find out why, and Longo, who maintains his innocence, begins to open up and agrees to be interviewed about what has happened to him. For Finkel, this is an extraordinary opportunity to regain his credentials as a legitimate journalist, but the question remains as to whether he can trust Longo. Is the man really as much a victim of misfortune as he claims, or is he playing some other sort of manipulative game with Finkel.

Both Hill and Franco are good in their roles, and the story has you wondering about what sort of trouble Finkel is getting himself into, but the pace is a little slow and in the end the psychology of the two men is a bit muddled. It was interesting to watch but in retrospect not particularly insightful or memorable.

In addition to all the tourism, and in addition to the one movie, we played some games with some of the relatives.

The London Game

This one involves navigating around London via the underground, trying to visit various sites without being thrown off track by various hazards. I’ve never played this one before, it was simple but fun.

Amusingly, the relatives who had this game had recently bought another game, which we also played.

The Great Game of Britain

This turns out to basically be the same game as The London Game, except that it takes place over the whole British Isles and thus includes ferries as well as trains.

Ticket to Ride: Rails and Sails

Also combining trains and sea travel is this variation of Ticket to Ride that was new to me–the classic game rules with the twist that you have to build both trains and boats, and they require different cards. It made the game quite a bit more complicated. I enjoyed it but ended up losing horribly to my wife’s cousin.

Barricade

Another game that I’ve never heard of before was Barricade, which involves trying to move your little pawns to an end point along a series of paths, while erecting movable barriers in order to block other players from doing the same. This game is simple but gripping, with lots of changes in fortune, though it could also drag on and become quite long to play. Still, this was probably my favorite of the new games that we played, and the one my wife has said she might just recreate someday herself.

Valkuil

We also played this game, which involves putting marbles all over a board with sliders and holes. You try to drop your opponents marbles through those holes while leaving your own marbles safe. It’s something I used to play as a kid, and I couldn’t remember what it’s called in English, but then I found it in my basement when we went on from the Netherlands to our next stop, the United States.

Specifically we went to New York where I grew up, to see my mother, aunt, home church, friends, and some nice Autumn leaves.

That was the plan–to get there while we still had some cooler in the trees.

This also meant we were there for Halloween, which was interesting because Halloween is not that big of a deal in Australia. So it’s something that my daughter, who is traveling with us, has only really experienced in American media, like ET or Stranger Things.

We went to a town called Cold Spring, not far from where where we were staying, where my mother has a friend who was throwing a party. In Cold Spring there is a part of town that gets blocked off so the whole community can enjoy some serious Trick-or-Treating.

Basically, it’s a big street party, like an intensified version of the Halloween experience that I had as a kid, except that instead of having to knock on people’s doors, people just sit on their porches (which are usually decorated) and wait for kids to come up to them for candy.

Here is one that had a fun Star Wars theme going on.

My daughter is fully a young adult but still looks very young, so she channelled her inner child and took part in the proceedings, and came away with a decent haul of candy. Between that and the publicly celebrated cosplay, she thought it was just the best holiday ever.

That night we wanted to watch a Halloween movie, but nothing too grim or gruesome, so we settled on…

The Nightmare Before Christmas

This stop-motion film is not directed by Tim Burton, but you’d be forgiven for thinking it was. It’s based on a story and characters he came up with. It’s about the Pumpkin King of Halloweentown, Jack Skellington, who accidentally visits Christmas Town and becomes fixated on a holiday with such a different feel to what he is familiar with. Well-intentioned but misguided, he kidnaps Santa Claus so he can take his place for one Christmas Eve, but of course makes a mess of things. He then has to rescue Santa Claus from a resident bogeyman so that Christmas can be saved and Jack can go back to what he is really good at, albeit with a bit of a new Christmas-spirit inside of him.

It’s an inventive film with an impressive visual style, and I basically enjoyed it, but I also found it a little slow. It’s also a musical, which is something that I’d normally enjoy, but in the case of The Nightmare Before Christmas I found a lot of the music just caused the story drag, and seemed to take the place of writing scenes that genuinely explored character’s emotions and personalities.

So I didn’t love it, but it was still nice to watch on Halloween night.

The only thing to mention from this month was a two-part comic story that I ordered online a while ago and had waiting for me when I arrived in New York.

Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes: Convergence

Convergence was one of those DC events a while ago which somehow featured cities plucked from previous DC timelines and continuities being forced to fight each other. I never read it so I don’t really know what was going on, but in various two-issue tie-in miniseries we got some of those encounters, which allowed DC to publish out-of-continuity versions of characters again. That included this book’s version of the Legion of Super-Heroes–teenaged super-heroes from the future who have been subjected to many sweeping continuity changes over the years (read all about it here), who have to contend with Gardner Gayle and the Atomic Knights (another sci-fi property from DC).

Anyway, the book was interesting from a completist’s curiosity perspective, but not much more. It’s nice to read a new story with some of my favorite characters, but it’s an incomplete story and a version of the characters that never quite existed before. It’s similar to the team from the classic Paul Levitz’ run during the book’s Baxter paper run, but not exactly the same, and illustrated so differently that it really feels like unique versions of the characters. I’d still rather have more of these sorts of books than less, but it on its own it doesn’t make much of an impression.

Still, this is the only version of the Legion I’ve ever read where there is a semi-romance between Superboy and Lightning Lass, so that’s kind of interesting.

Until next time!