Noiseless Chatter Archive

Hey everyone, let’s talk some more about El Camino ! See, Breaking Bad had an extremely good hook in the fact that no viewer could ever be certain what would happen to the characters next. Death (and worse) was a very real threat. Foreshadowing and misleads were interchangeable until the moment when, suddenly, finally, they were not. Part of what kept viewers tuning in was the desire to know what might happen next. El Camino could have had a similar effect on viewers, if it weren’t for the fact that “Where does Jesse go now?” isn’t all that intriguing a question. The film, I think, did realize that, which is why it spent so much time in the past. The problem with those scenes set in the past, of course, is that we know Jesse escapes the Nazi compound. There’s very little opportunity to wonder what happens next. We’ve seen it. And we’ve seen that he’s already moving on to new adventures. Why do I bring this up now? Because Better Call Saul had to find a solution...

I promised a review of El Camino , but that was before I saw it. It’s not that I have nothing to say about the film; it’s more the fact that anything I could say about it would be informed by my feelings about Better Call Saul . Of course, I’ll explain. El Camino is a sequel film to Breaking Bad . It’s on Netflix, so go watch it if you haven’t. It follows Jesse Pinkman through the aftermath of “Felina,” which sounds like a great concept. Except, really, the aftermath doesn’t end up being worth following anyone through. Walt’s world and the horrors with which he ravaged it felt huge in Breaking Bad . Of course they did; they were the focus of the show. The characters that came into his life and the ways in which they changed (or had change visited upon them) would certainly agree that the reign of Heisenberg was enormous, impactful, and cataclysmic. With just a little bit of distance, though, the events of Breaking Bad were what David Byrne might refer to as a tiny ...

I’ve mentioned it before — and sometimes even had the presence of mind to post them here! — but I’ve been writing for TripleJump on YouTube since the middle of last year. That definitely has contributed to my decrease in output here. My scripts are tens of thousands of words long, and they require research and first-hand experience on my end. Those aren’t complaints, but I’d like you to know that I’m still writing! My words are just being used for feature-length videos(!) instead of blog posts. Because a lot of those videos will take the place of active work here, I’ve set up a TripleJump page — accessible from the left-hand navigation — where I will post links to all of the videos I’ve written. Check them out. I hope you’ll enjoy them. It’s a new experience for me to write things that other people perform. It’s not the first time, but it’s the first time I’ve done it steadily. But what about this site? Well, stay tuned. Book news should be coming soon, and I have s...

Eight years ago, friend of the website Dave invited me to name my favorite thing from each year of the 1990s. I did that and it was fun! With the 2010s coming to an end in a matter of days, I thought it might be just as fun to look back on some of the few things from the past 10 years that did not make me weep for the future of humanity. No real rules aside from the fact that I’m picking only one piece of entertainment for each year of the decade. My selections are below, and I’d be genuinely curious to hear about some of your favorites in the comments. (Oh, and I guess rule #2 is that you should check out Dave’s selections as well .) Eventually I’ll do the 2000s and the 1980s, but, honestly, you know me. Don’t hold your breath. 2010 – Submarine I’ve wanted to do a Fiction Into Film on this one for ages, and I’m sure I’ll get around to it at some point. Suffice it to say a poorly written novel that worked so hard (and so tediously) to be off-putting became, just a...

Well, that was a year. Unlike 2017 and 2018 – two other years we can all agree were largely piles of massive shit, culturally speaking – 2019 didn’t really impress me with its games. It wasn’t a bad year, but it did feel like an uninspired one, and so my top 10 includes quite a few games that were good without ever being exciting. As usual, I didn’t play everything, but I got around to almost every release I actually had interest in. The only thing I wanted to try but didn’t have time for was Control . Otherwise, well…here we are. As with last year, I’ll be breaking a few 2018 releases I didn’t previously get to play into a smaller list of standouts this year. Easy. Less easy is the fact that release dates are getting hazier and hazier. For a while I figured I’d just go with the initial date of release, but that didn’t feel right. A game could be released in early access one year and properly the next. It could be released one year for one system but get a wide...

There’s no reason to dance around it: The Xmas Bash is cancelled this year. I’m sorry. That’s something else I don’t want to dance around; I am very sorry. If you’re still reading, we can dance a little now. I live in a state of being constantly overwhelmed. Those of you who know me in real life — and probably at least a few of you who only know me from my various creative endeavors — will already know that I do that to myself. Certainly many things happen unexpectedly, but I keep myself in a state of extreme busyness at almost all times. I sign up for things I probably won’t have time for, and then I force myself to make time for them. I feel one project winding down — and the relief that comes with that — but immediately launch into something else. I’m rarely working on only one thing. That’s a coping mechanism, I’ve learned; the more I overwhelm myself, the less attention I can spare for what’s happening around me. That was very helpful in my childhood, and I nev...

It’s easy to review horror without giving any indication that you were or are under its spell. You can talk about the inventiveness of the central concept, the performances, the casting. You can talk about the dialogue. You can talk about how predictable or unpredictable it was. But talk about horror — actually talk, with actual people — and it becomes much more difficult. With very few exceptions, your friends won’t want to hear or talk about the gears in the machine. They’ll want to hear and talk about the film’s effect . “It wasn’t scary,” and “It scared the hell out of me,” are two of the things you’ll hear most frequently. That’s not necessarily because your friends don’t have the vocabulary to assess the film on deeper levels; it’s because how much it spooked you is the common language of horror, just as how much something made you laugh is the common language of comedy and how much something made you cry is the common language of drama. Horror, though, is a...