[Movies] Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer (2006)

A common plot device in movies is playing around with disabilities within a respectable limitation. This means we end up with blind men falling in love with gorgeous women or mute young women trying to escape from serial killers. It seems that Hollywood is of the opinion that it's a heck of a lot easier to take away senses and build a story around that as opposed to giving people better ones. Beyond typical movies involving characters who are stronger than they should be, we rarely see stories about people with superhuman sight or hearing apart from superhero genre films.

Maybe that's where the problem lies - when we talk about extraordinary abilities, Hollywood executives tend to translate this into "superhero movie" or "action-packed blockbuster" or something along those lines. But there's a heck of a lot more to such special interest stories if given a chance to really prosper, but that'll take a heck of a lot of convincing behind closed studio doors. Then again, I doubt this is going to become the next big thing in terms of genre movies anytime soon since the types of stories that are possible with this little quirk are a bit hard to come by.

Then again, it's nice to be pleasantly surprised by the creative works of other countries. In a manner that reminded me of how I felt when I first watched that Russian masterpiece Daywatch, this German-born movie was beyond impressive and certainly worth the time to watch it.

[Theater] Legally Blonde: The Musical (Atlantis Productions)

As much as I hope that I'll be able to catch an actual Broadway show one day, I have to admit that the local theater offerings aren't too bad at all. Sure, we don't necessarily have the kind of productions that involve dynamic moving sets and gorgeous costumes, but we certainly make do with the resources that we have. That statement wasn't meant to belittle local theater - just to acknowledge that we're not as generously funded as most major US theater productions.

Being the lover of musicals that I am (and that's not just about me being gay, mind you), I've come to appreciate the efforts of Atlantis Productions to bring many popular Broadway shows to local theaters. And these aren't just haphazard stagings quickly put together, but are in fact serious efforts to provide local audiences a taste of what Broadway patrons get on a regular basis. The quality of the shows has been more than great in recent years and I certainly hope they keep it up.

Their latest production is definitely a quirky one - a play that's part of a recent trend of adapting movies and other alternative media into stage plays, many of them as musicals. I think the best example of this trend include shows like Hairspray that started out as a movie, got turned into a play and then the musical was adapted back into a movie. Talk about full circle! But this one is a very special one if only for the fact that I doubt many people expected it to be so successful. But strong writing, great songs and dynamic dance numbers helped put this show right up there with many other musical classics.

[Games] My StarCraft II Day In Pikchurs

Being the net-enabled geek that I am, for some reason I ended up documenting how my StarCraft II Day unfolded from the moment I picked up my copy of the game. I sent all my photos to photo-sharing site Pikchur (for multiple social networking photo-spamming) and figured it would make a good starting point for today's blog entry. Pardon the quality of the photos - they were all taken with my Nokia E63, which isn't exactly designed for extensive photography.

It's too early for me to talk about the actual game just yet - give me more time to play through more of the missions before I post a more formal review of the game. I'm loving it so far, but of course that's a first impression still somewhat intermixed with my happiness that there's a StarCraft sequel, period.

So let's just jump into things, shall we?

[Books] Wyrd Sisters

I'm a huge fan of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books and I have happily managed to read most of his books along with managing to own copies of them as well. It's no modest feat and it's taken me a better part of the last decade to complete my collection and I'm still not quite done. It doesn't mean I haven't given up though - these books are too enjoyable to ignore when I catch them on the shelves!

And yet for some reason I've yet to get around to posting reviews for most of the Discworld novels. I suppose it's mainly because I read most of them before I even created the Geeky Guide so now I have a lot of review "work" to catch up on, if only to be able to share my passions for the series with you.

The Discworld books follow a number of loosely-related story arcs involving certain groups of characters. For example, there are a number of books focused on Death and others still on the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. It doesn't become essential to read all the books to get the story, but it certainly enhances to the experience when you have. And one of my favorite Discworld arcs remains to be those books that involve the Witches of Lancre, and this was the book that more or less got me hooked on their quirky tales.

[Movies] The Last Airbender (2010)

Man, I bet a lot of my movie reviews read like witch hunts for all adaptations, revivals, reimaginations and the like. But given how such movies and TV shows in recent years have fared, I think I'm more than justified in my opinions. And as much as it's fun to see such old franchises brought back to life, what we're really looking for is some real passion and loving care put into their creations. Instead, we're constantly reminded that Hollywood is more and more just about the bottom line instead of the art of their craft.

When it comes to this movie, I'm not quite sure if Hollywood is more to blame or the creative team behind the movie itself. That's the question really - did this movie turn out the way it did because of Hollywood greed or using the wrong talent to drive its success. Throwing in the fact that the writer-director-producer M.Night Shyamalan whose success in recent years has become more and more of a risky gamble at best. As much as we all loved his earlier movies, you have to admit his creative efforts have been more and more inconsistent as time has progressed.

It probably didn't help at all that this particular adaptation involved an animated TV series that has a very wide and passionate fan-following. There are few things worse than hordes of angry fans to kill a movie like this.

[Technicolor Musings] Life After BED

With BED Bar Malate closed until further notice because of a small fire last July 8, I can imagine a large portion of the local queer population somewhat displaced. Let's face it - whether you consider yourself to be into the "scene" as it were, BED remains a major anchor in the local GLBT scene and having it unavailable for a while is quite the loss.

So rather than mope around and complain, it's still a great opportunity to look for other things to do and make sure we continue to put our best foot forward in terms of local representation. The so-called "Pink Peso" still needs to make itself felt and besides - it's not like you want to stay home every weekend, right?

So in service to fellow queer geeks out there, here's a quick list of a few alternatives for you until BED opens again. We all know that they're going to make some sort of a comeback in a different form or maybe even name, but it'll return. In the meantime, get out there and mingle. And don't make me sing There Is Life Outside Your Apartment or something.

[Movies] Aliens vs Predator: Requiem (2007)

It's funny how some fan-driven match-ups were a lot more interesting in our minds than in reality. Then again, I suppose that's not at all surprising given the limitless potential of the human imagination versus what can actually be achieved in reality. Books do decently in this arena since they still rely on the imagination to fill the gaps despite a given story. Comics are the next best ones since despite set visuals, it's up to the reader to "animate" the characters actions between panels.

At the bottom of the barrel are movies and TV shows since they try to present the visuals to us and thus completing the experience. The imagination has little left to do since we rely on the vision of the director to see us to the end. This has resulted in some pretty bad translations of such ideas and yet others still that weren't quite as horrible. It's just hard to match the expectations we set as based on the products of our imaginations versus the final outcomes. I definitely don't envy those who make a living out of such visual forms of entertainment.

Regardless, the meeting of these two franchises was met with rather limited success the first time at bat. It looks like they tried to simplify things further this time around in order to make the whole experience more enjoyable. Let's face it - we're not in it to expect some award-winning material. We wanted these two races to meet for some raw hack-and-slash action, and that's exactly what we're going to get.

[Theater] Edges: A Song Cycle (Ateneo Blue Repertory)

College theater productions will always be somewhat endearing to me. I guess there's always that excitement about seeing new talent at work. The experience is no longer just about watching the play on its own merits. The true value is in seeing the potential in the players and the production and trying to map out where they might end up in the future.

Some would say that it would be wrong to judge a college production differently than other, but then that's just how I see it. It's important to have a sense of scale so that you don't set ones expectations too high. I know I even have some sense of scale applied to certain theater companies out there in the open, to be quite frank. But I digress.

So when a dear friend invited me to a college production he had directed, of course I agreed to the request. It wasn't just about blind support for the efforts of a friend, naturally. This was about my love of theater, my respect for my friend and my curiosity to see just how this production would come out. I definitely found the experience to be quite enjoyable.

[Web] A New Way Of Thinking

It's often highlighted in popular fiction that we use a very small portion of our brains. The rest of it doesn't appear to be immediately accessibly by the conscious mind and thus we try to make do with what we get. There have been countless movies, stories and other such flights of fantasy that speculate what might happen should we gain mastery over this unused portion of the brain. They normally go down the road of superhuman intelligence, mutant powers like telekinesis or pyrokinesis or perhaps just outright insanity, as our consciousness may not be designed to fully handle all that power or something.

We now live in very technological times. Sure, it may not be the kind of world of tomorrow that shows like The Jetsons predicted, but it certainly has its similar merits and advantages. At the forefront of a lot of change is the rapid development of the internet. In the past 15 years, we've seen a dramatic change in how we utilize this complex information repository. From its early roots in text-based BBS rooms, we're now in a period when almost anything is available online.

A popular accusation that has made the rounds is that the internet is making us dumber. The fact that people feel less obligated to memorize details or learn things for themselves given the alternative of going online does seem like rather damning evidence. But maybe we're just looking at the next step in our thinking process with old eyes and with the bias of traditional processes. I really don't feel the Web is a crutch - it may very well be a major part in the next step of our evolution.

[Books] Dance Dance Dance

Haruki Murakami remains to be one of my favorite novelists. His particular approach to storytelling is unique among authors plus his concepts are a bit out of his world. Okay, maybe very out of this world, but that's really one of the main draws of his stories.

His books, for the most part, stand alone. They're all masterful independent works that all remain independent. In his earlier years, there were a series of novels that were loosely related to one another. In terms of those that were translated into English and slated for a broader release, the one stands apart given it is in fact a direct sequel to a prior work, that being A Wild Sheep Chase.

I'm still of mixed opinions in terms of whether or not I'd like to see more sequels to his books. Part of the joy of exploring his titles is the fact that every novel feels like a new adventure. Each title is a completely new world to explore and this remains a very fun experience. Then again, there are a lot of characters that I'd love to learn more about and stories that I'd like to see continue on.

It's really up to the individual to decide how things should go.

[Movies] Inception (2010)

Dreams tend to be depicted in movies in a particular way. When we talk of dream sequences, we can expect the edges of the screen to fudge out a bit or the camera does a soft focus on the central figure in the dream. Some dreams have clouds generated by fog machines. Others have the shimmer of stars around the actors as a clear signal that THIS IS A DREAM.

In Hollywood, dream sequences have become synonymous with fantastical elements. This means being able to fly under your own power or channeling M.C. Escher in how the shots are organized. It can mean people mutating into monsters or your deepest, darkest sexual desires being realized. It normally means the excessive use of color to make the world seem almost alien and of course the classic tropes like your inability to read given the use of a different side of the brain while dreaming.

So when Chris Nolan, a skilled writer-director decided to take on dreams, I'm sure Hollywood executives were expecting a lot of the aforementioned patterns and other predictable sequences. I doubt anyone could have truly predicted what he would finally come up with in the form of this magnificent movie.

[TV] Will & Grace: Season 2

I've been enjoying the little cultural exchange programs that my partner and I go through as we share movies and TV shows that we like with one another. My sharing subjects tend to fall into two major categories - the geeky stuff and the gay stuff.

Obviously there's an overwhelming amount of geeky stuff for someone like me to share. On the other hand, there's also a good number of campy gay things to enjoy together. One of our recent pursuits is going through the various seasons of Will & Grace, which I'll always feel is one of the key shows in LGBT TV history. This is defintely one of those shows that works fairly well in a marathon situation - it's just laugh after laugh after laugh, quite frankly. You'll only end up stopping to take a break and if only to get the sound of Karen's insults out of your head or something.

Revisiting the show in this manner has also proven to be an interesting way to sort of relive the progress and evolution of the show. Knowing it lasted as long as it did, this helps one understand why the show worked and how it managed to survive for as long as it did.

[Movies] Signs (2002)

It's somewhat ironic that as I continue my efforts to post reviews for all of M.Night Shyamalan's movies, I get to this one just as Mel Gibson is all over the news. Granted, he's not exactly a headline item because of his acting prowess or anything decent like that. But we can ignore the scandal of his highly offense tapes for now and look at his more somber performance here.

When one traces the path of M.Night's movies, the big question in many people's minds is what happened to this guy and when precisely did his movie start taking a turn for the worst? Let's all accept that his movies these days aren't quite as good as they used to be as when he started with The Sixth Sense so the question is really how he'd get from point A to point crap?

I don't necessarily think that this was that turning point in his career. If anything, I feel it was one of the last of his better movies before he started getting really weird with the creative liberties the studios had granted him. And I mean really weird. We'll get to them in time, but for now lets dive into the cornfield.

[TV] Fringe: Season 2

With so little science fiction television around these days, the surviving shows end up being the stronger ones. It's Darwin's Law of Natural Selection applied to network television, or something like that. As much as lesser shows are sadly thrown to the curb in the aftermath, one has to admit that the shows that remain are pretty kick ass.

Then again, what else can you expect from Hollywood's golden boy of science fiction, J.J. Abrams? Most of his television projects have gone on to become long-lived and well-watched TV shows (e.g. Alias and Lost of course) with a few lesser projects here and there (e.g. Six Degree), but overall he's been pretty reliable in the ratings game. And that's really all that the networks care about - it's not about creativity or how novel your ideas are. It's all about reliability and whether or not you can draw in the ratings.

Thankfully, Abrams is both reliable AND highly creative, thus satisfying both the geeks in the audience and even the studio executives. As much as I want to support independent and new talent, one has to take the time to pay homage to this man's geekily creative vision.

So yeah, I'm really happy this show got renewed for a second season.

[Games] Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3)

As much as movies based on video games tend to be stinkers at the box office, games based on comic books are a mixed bag that tends to lean towards the dark side. Let's face it - the linear progression path of most games means that in the beginning, your heroic characters aren't very super. Typically it isn't until later stages that you start feeling like the hero you're supposed to be, and by the it's almost over.

In recent years there have been improvements made to the genre, leading to more creative games that do their best to capture the feel of the super part of superhero. For example, the Ultimate Alliance game franchise has gotten a lot better at making you feel like you're actually a hero given a more balanced power system and the availability of recharge modules. Really, it's just not the same when you don't have regular access to your powers.

So what do you do when the character doesn't have actual "powers" from a strict definiton sense. What do you when the hero is just a man in a suit? This is an enigma that has puzzled game designers time and time again over the years leading to a horrible host of Batman games that hardly deliver. Thus it's been an amazing turn of events that nerds at Rocksteady Studios actually manage to come out with a superhero game that wasn't just good but in fact be the best superhero game we've seen in years.

[Books] The Elves of the Cintra (Genesis of Shannara Book 2)

Terry Brooks sort of followed an unofficial pattern in the structure of his Shannara books back in the day. In the middle of his multi-book story arcs, the middle title tends to involve exploring the world of the elves in more detail. You can see this in The Elfstones of Shannara and The Elf Queen of Shannara. Why he chooses go this particular path is a bit beyond me - maybe it's just something he does for luck or something. Then again, the Elven nation will always remain to be one of the the more interesting races in his stories.

Other tropes of the Shannara universe include the reliance on the blue elfstones as a primary plot device. The are after all seeking stones and thus are design to drag the characters to their desired goal and double as a very effective weapon against the magical forces out in the world. It just always irked me that for some reason there are no other major elfstones in the world beyond these blue ones. Sure there's the Loden, but it's a lot more limited in its function and it tends to just be a major plot device object and little else, if you get my drift.

But despite tropes like this, there's certainly a degree of comfort in reading the works of Terry Brooks. Sure, the concepts can get pretty dark but in the end there's a certain reliability that hope wins out in the end and things will be nice and happy in time.

[Movies] Predators (2010)

As hokey as the initial concept may be to some people, I've always been a fan of the Predator franchise. Their species was always pretty cool and they were like lighter versions of Klingons or something. Let's face it - yet another race whose entire culture is based around hunting and ceremonial combat of other species.

The first two movies were unique icons of an older era of movies. While the Alien franchise went on to become rather epic with a very complex story, Predator kind of remained a movie that danced along the borders of campier horror and science fiction. The characters gained new life in the realm of Dark Horse comics and later on in the crossover movies for Aliens vs Predator.

They remain to be rather interesting characters - tall, physically imposing aliens armed with a variety of high tech weapons. They operate secretly using advanced cloaking technology to help make up for their limitation of only being able to see using the infrared spectrum. It made for a very unique cinematic experience, an alternative brand of stories and lots and lots of trope-potential behavior. And now they're back, campier than ever!

[Technicolor Musings] The Mutual Benefits of the Fag Hag Relationship

My partner and I were enjoying brunch at the mall one morning when we started to talk about my past gaydar article and trying to figure out other "tells" for identifying queers in public. And so like many other gay men around the world, we played the classic game of calling out if a passing individual was straight or not based on their clothing, appearance and demeanor.

Oh come on, we all find ourselves doing it when we have a clear view of lots of people.

Image via Wikipedia

While the people walking by at the time were hardly a challenge for even the more novice of gaydars, what was more interesting was how many of them were holding hands with a girl at the time. There clearly no romantic associations with the way they were walking - this was more along the lines of how two girls look like when they walk with their hands together, which remains more acceptable than two guys doing the same thing for some reason. As time passed, more and more queers, especially younger ones, all seemed to be doing this.

So instead of my original plan of running another gaydar update piece, I ended up with this little reflection on the gay male - fag hag relationship.

[Movies] The Sixth Sense (1999)

It wasn't until much later in life that I actually cared about how directed a film. To me, it was just all about the stories with the actors being incidental and the director being non-existent. Of course in time I learned the foolishness of this notion and after a healthy number of Oscar shows, I soon realized just how important the director is.

Then of course came the realization that there's a special subset of directors who try to exercise even greater creative control - the writer-directors! Not only do they get to execute their skills in terms of arranging the shots and telling the actors what to do, but since they also wrote the story, they have a much more cohesive vision of how the screenplay was meant to be translated onto the silver screen. This is not to say that all writer-directors are good or in anyway visionary - it's just a unique position to take that can give a truly creative mind a lot of leverage to work with.

And thus we come to today's famed writer-director, the enigmatic M.Night Shyamalan. This strange fellow broke out into the Hollywood scene as the next golden boy because of his unique perspective when it comes to making movies and his penchant for creative storytelling. With his latest film, the live-action adaptation of the Last Airbender, now out in theaters, it seems fitting to revisit his many works over the years as a way to commemorate how far he's come. Or perhaps how far he's fallen.

[TV] Glee: Season 1

In the constant din that is the overused cliche bag that Hollywood writers dig into in order to keep the TV-viewing public satiated, it's not often that a more or less original (or at least novel) idea for a show comes along. Not that this is a major issue - may viewers tend to turn to TV expecting the reliable and the familiar and hence such shows get to survive far longer than they should. I'm appreciate a reliable concept as much as the next guy, but repetitiveness can turn into monotony and thus eventually boredom. Ugh.

As much as we want truly original shows and movies to watch, Hollywood remains scared to death of the untested and the unconventional. Why gamble on something you're not sure a specific subset of the world will enjoy when you can bank on something that is a total rehash of another show with a very slight twist. It's kind of sad when the patterns and archetypes become increasingly obvious until the point when TV practically becomes predictable. Things haven't totally gone there, but there have been far too many near misses in recent years.

So when something fairly new and refreshing comes along, you can imagine how happy that makes viewers like me feel. What more a show that is dedicated to musicals, show choirs and all sorts of theatrical tomfoolery, right? How gay am I right now?

So yeah, this show was such a perfect match for me. And thankfully enough, it managed to find resonance in the hearts and minds of many other people out there, thus the show's modest success thus far.

[Games] Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires (PS3)

I know, I know, most of you out there probably consider Koei to be a one-trick pony when it comes to games. For the past several years they've been pretty much milking the Romance of the Three Kingdoms story for games including their classic hack and slash button-mashers like Dynasty Warriors and their various strategy-style games like, um, Kessen!

Yes, I actually played Kessen - and I liked it, too!

So anyway, that's pretty much how a lot of us remember Koei and as much as you think they'd start seriously putting money into either a new game engine or a new piece of historical fiction to exploit, they still continue to release more and more games covering the Three Kingdoms period. As repetitive as this may seen, it does result in interesting refinements to the gameplay style and different ways for us as players to be pleasantly surprised by how things work. I'd like to think that this edition of Empires was a nice improvement to the genre and still one of the more enjoyable PS3 games around that still offer local multiplayer options.

[Books] Einstein's Dreams

College was a great time for me, mainly because of my humanities classes. Sure, I still enjoy solving math problems until today and I'm obviously quite the computer geek but there was just something else about diving into new literary avenues with the rest of my class. Maybe I just got really lucky when I found a great Humanities professor who had such an interesting and eclectic taste in books that it changed a lot of my reading choices forever.

Up until high school, my book choices were pretty much either science fiction or science fantasy books. I hard rarely delved into more contemporary fiction titles since I was perfectly content trying to gather up all the Star Wars and Star Trek books, as nearly impossibly as this task sounds like. That was my life then and there was nothing wrong with that, I know.

But then college came along and soon I found myself wondering why I had never tried authors like this before. The stories were different and sometimes geeky too, but in very different ways. I wasn't getting bored with the lack of blasters, phasers and magic wands and instead I was really loving all these other books. Of course this one in particular holds a very special place in my heart - it's probably an Einstein thing, of course.

[Movies] 2012 (2009)

It's funny how the advent of better and better CGI as a special effects medium, it has also helped solidify the place of disaster porn as a movie genre. Sure, it's fun to use the power of modern movie-making technology to recreate historical locations, it's even more fun to use it to destroy historical landmarks and other popular locations. Sure, we can age a young actor to look like he's in his late 50's or we can try to add as much detail as possible to the destruction of the Eiffel Tower or something. The list goes on and on.

There are few directors out there who can be better associated with these types of movies other than Roland Emmerich. Ever since he shocked the world with his destruction of Washington, D.C. by an alien mothership in Independence Day, Emmerich has being doing his very best to determine bigger and better ways to destroy the world over and over again. I have no idea if there's a personal reason for why he chooses to do these movies beyond the money the studios probably offer him. However if there's some sort of personal drive to his desire to work on these movies, then well, he probably has some serious anger management issues.

I'm not totally complaining here - as far-fetched as a lot of these movies end up being in terms of the plot, they're still pretty fun to watch. That's the only reason we choose to head out and watch these monstrosities - to see how the special effects artists will destroy the world this time around. And here's the latest iteration of the Emerich's brilliance.

[Movies] Trick (1999)

As I continue to dig through my LGBT history for movies of note that might be worth reviewing since I don't have time to watch newer ones, I came across this odd moment in movie making history. As much as it was strange and shallow in many ways, it was also very endearing and sort of sweet if you learn how to see it that way. Plus in its simplicity, it was very real and a lot of movies lose sight of this kind of a goal and end up making somewhat hollow movies held together by special effects, big name stars and post-production 3D.

I first saw this movie based on the promptings of my circle of gay friends who felt this was one of those must-see films in every young gay boy's life, or something like that. For a hardcore science fiction geek, it was a bit tricky for me to break into something like this, but then once the ball got rolling it wasn't that bad. The issues were initially a bit alien / foreign to me given my lack of exposure to the gay scene but in hindsight it does make a lot more sense to me now.

The movie ultimately feels like a sort of slice of life kind of piece given how well it captures the diverse events in a single night for the protagonist. It's not going to change the way you life nor is it going to become something worthy of long-winded arguments with friends. It's just a fun movie to go and see and sort of kill time with.

[Movies] The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999)

Historical dramas tend to be somewhat hit or miss for me. When you think about it, they're sort of like the original remakes - classic tales and stories put to film or whatever. They can either go amazingly accurate in terms of detail or they can choose the more fantastical route in order to generate more ticket sales. Whatever the approach, it's always a tad tricky to determine if such a movie is worth seeing.

I put off seeing this particular one for many reasons. For one, I haven't been very religious since high school and this character always seemed too tied to religion for my comfort. I'm not a big fan of the protagonist either compared to the rest of the male population that happens to be, well, straight. Plus the period tends to put me to sleep when used in a movie unless it involves some element of magic or fantasy or something, such as movies based on popular mythology.

It took the prompting of my partner to finally getting around to giving this movie a chance since (1) I always trust his judgment and (2) I don't mind being proven wrong when it comes to how good or bad a movie might be. It's all part of the movie watching experience after all.

[TV] Samurai Jack: Season 1

There are some cartoons that become a lot more than just a cartoon. They become epic masterpieces in their own right - a clear reminder that animation really just a medium and not a definition of what they are capable of. Just because it's a cartoon doesn't mean it's just for kids - to make this assumption would be just plain wrong.

These days, you can't get through much channel surfing without encountering a cartoon that tries to work on multiple levels. You can blame the likes of Pixar and Dreamworks for upping the ante in the movie realm. However for the small screen environment, there were other pioneers of the craft. You can trace the roots of such a trend with the old Batman: The Animated series run, which certainly did a good job of targeting a multiple audiences.

Then you get this genius of a show that tried to tap into the fun of cartoons, the action of samurai movies and the epic scale of well-done cinema. I've yet to see another cartoon that has quite matched this one in terms of flavor and tone - and that may not be a bad thing in itself. It's really something special beyond all the others and this will always have a special place in my heart.