Gary Devore's Blog, page 4
October 9, 2013
A Writer’s (Tardy) Review of Broadchurch
I’d heard great things about iTV’s Broadchurch, written by Chris Chibnall (who I know mostly through is work on the modern Doctor Who and Torchwood). It’s finally been imported to BBC America where I found the acting stunning, the production (mostly) beautiful, and the writing passable at best. As someone struggling with writing a murder mystery currently, I was hyper-focused on how Broadchurch would do it, and was I have to say very disappointed. Here are some random thoughts why.
This post w...
October 7, 2013
Things could be worse… It could be Octavian.
While the US Republican party (who lost the last two elections) seems bent on doing as much damage as they can to the country in a petulant tantrum, and things look bleak, we can at least say things today are better than Rome during the summer of 41 BCE.
That was when Octavian returned to Rome after he and Antony defeated Brutus, Cassius and the other assassins of Caesar. Octavian, only 22 years-old, was nominally in charge of the western empire by his rights of conquest (and the power he comm...
August 13, 2013
Cosmo Jarvis- Master of the Complex Single Take Video
August 8, 2013
Playing as a Roman in Skyrim
One of the best things about one of the best games out there, Skyrim, is the ability to use mods to personally tailor the PC gaming experience. I have played around with creating some of my own mods (like this waterfall house), but my absolute favorite, and must-have mod was a Roman Imperial Armor and Weapons one made by Jedo Dre.
On the whole, we are poorly served by adventure games set in the Roman world, despite there being a lot of Roman themed games out there. Rome Total War is a decent s...
August 7, 2013
Pantheon Trailer Now Close Captioned
Not exactly a smooth automated process (the timing could be better on some of the lines), but my Pantheon novel trailer now is close captioned for your viewing pleasure on YouTube.
(And another public thanks to the great Debbie Irwin who does the fantastic voice-over!)
To turn close captioning on and off, look for the CC icon at the bottom of the video window (which may or may not only show up on the actual YouTube site instead of in an embedded window).
Filed under: Pantheon Tagged: pantheon, t...
Author Website Redesign
I’ve overhauled my author site at garydevore.com. I hope the design is cleaner and more attractive, and I love the little black and white icons.
Please note that you might have to refresh each page to see the changes if your browser is holding on to an old version in your cache.
Filed under: Links, Website Tagged: redesign, website
Today’s Old School Jam (from “Girl in Gold Boots”)
I absolutely loved this song when I first heard it in the MST3K episode of “Girl in Gold Boots” (watch it here) (read about it here). It is otherwise a completely forgotten and obscure tune from the ’50′s. Blast it and sing along.
Filed under: Music Tagged: mst3k, music
May 19, 2013
Eurovision 2013 Post Mortem
As with previous years, the songs I liked didn’t get many votes (although Azerbaijan’s wasn’t bad), but the winner, Denmark, wasn’t as sucky as last year’s winner (a horrible Bjork wannabe from Sweden). The host, Petra Mede, was fantastic, and I thought the butterfly motif (with butterflies decorated as each country’s flag in the artist bumper) was neat. Two of the best things were definitely Petra’s witty “Swedish Smörgåsbord” song presenting the host country, and comedian/singer Sarah Dawn...
May 5, 2013
New Pompeii Show in London: an elusive, ever-changing quest
But then a sculpture such as that of Pan making love to a goat plunges us back into darkness and uncertainty, and makes the chasm of two millennia feel as abyss-like as ever. We will never be able fully to comprehend what the sculpture meant to the Romans who first saw it. Where we see smut or rape, perhaps they saw comedy or even tenderness. All we can say with certainty is that their attitudes towards sex and violence differed radically from ours. Understanding the past is an elusive, ever-...
April 2, 2013
Matt Alber is amazing
In a new DVD, Matt Alber gives new arrangements to some of his songs by involving a cello string quartet. The result is truly amazing and they deliver an incredible performance.
In the clip below, the song “Old Ghosts” even includes a line that jumped out at me with this viewing. The novel I’m currently writing involves initiates to the Roman cult of Mithras, or “Crows”. It is a murder mystery set in the 3rd century province of Britain, and although the topic of the song and the novel are very...
