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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8302661" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 58: Mar/Apr 1991part 5/5Into The Dark: In the 10 years the RPGA has been going, the wider world of media has been growing as well. While the degree of choice is still nowhere near what's at your fingertips nowadays with streaming, most homes had a VCR by the early 90's, and video rental was big business, so you were no longer a slave to what the TV channels wanted to show you. But the amount of choice could get overwhelming, especially if all you have to go on is the blurb on the boxes. Plus cassettes took up a lot more shelf space than DVD's or hard drives, so it was trickier to buy everything you wanted and keep it. So James Lowder starts up another (hopefully) regular review column. Let's find out what he recommends and what he pans. Miracle Mile gets a pretty positive review. It didn't do too well in the box office, probably because it wasn't flashy enough, but examining what people will do when they think it's the end of the world in a few hours remains eternally relevant, even if the cause (nuclear apocalypse) seems dated. Fade to Black gets a more mixed review. A slasher movie where the killer is a rejected nerd who various uses pop culture personae during his murders. Is this supposed to be a celebration or an indictment of hollywood's love of violence and sensationalism? So basically, this is the Ready Player One of it's day. Now I'm very interested in seeing how it's held up, and how many of the references in it have long since faded from common knowledge.Moontrap gets an outright slating. Bruce Campbell and Walter Koenig are wasted on a formulaic bit of alien invasion sci-fi with distinctly patchy special effects and a lame script. This'll never make for a long-running franchise. Evil Dead 2, on the other hand, reminds us that Bruce Campbell can turn in pretty awesome performances when the script and effects back him up. Continuity-wise, it's more of a remake than a sequel to the first film, and the tone is a lot lighter and more comedic, but the special effects are considerably improved. Of these 4, this is easily the one that's most well remembered today, given the further sequel movie and TV series. All of these movies were at least a couple of years old then, so this definitely seems aimed at the home video buyers and renters, rather than cinemaphiles who really want to see things when they first come out. Whether that will continue, or it'll gradually become more up to date, like many reviewers who started out as nostalgia marketed, we shall see. An interesting development, in any case. Regional Directors: Another list of these guys, as we're up to 24 now, including separate ones for northern and southern australia, and one dedicated specifically to internet gaming activities. May they soon get to the point where other countries merit being divided into regions as well. Wolff & Byrd remind us that the only certainties in life are death and taxes, and of the two, taxes come more frequently and are harder to evade. Unless you're earning no money, of course, which is relatively easy to prove when you're dead.We finish off with a listing of the official RPGA clubs. For many years this feature was virtually unused despite the well-plugged benefits, the number of clubs languishing in the single digits. Now they're up to 39, which is still an average of less than 1 per state, but definite progress nonetheless. Internationally it's still pretty much a wash though, those regional co-ordinators are still working with very small numbers. They'll need to do some more promoting if they want to have anything to actually co-ordinate. A lot going on in this issue, much of it pretty good. They've succeeded in some of their ambitions, but still have many clear goals still to aim for. Will the transition to monthly allow them to do twice as much, or will things seem to progress more slowly once they have? Let's see how long it takes the greater quantity of stuff to be taken for granted, and what new things they'll add with the extra room.</blockquote>

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