I love Edgar Wright. Spaced, Shaun of the Dead, and Hot Fuzz are all marvellous things.
Scott Pilgrim is about a character who's absorbed video game culture, and largely processes the world in those terms. For Wright, this is largely going back to Spaced territory. I'm a video gaming nerd. This should be a home run. So the fact that this mostly didn't work for me was a major disappointment.
My problem with the movie can be summed up with two words: Knives Chau.
Knives Chau is a seventeen yearold high school girl. Scott Pilgrim is dating her, which is like totally a major scandal because he left high school like thirteen years ago*. She's charming, bubbly, naive and immensely likeable. He's dating her because it's nice and easy after the horrible breakup he suffered. If you've ever been on that end of a relationship you should already have a cringing realization of how horrible a dick he's being to her. This dickishness is cemented when he meets Ramona Flowers, the girl of his dreams -- literally: there's a subspace highway through his head, which she makes use of for her job as an Amazon.ca delivery girl -- strings Knives along because breaking up is totally like hard and stuff until he bags Ramona and leaves Knives adrift in a terrible black frame of despair.
This is as good a point as any to point out that Scott Pilgrim makes no sense as a whole except at the metaphorical level. Scott Pilgrim has to fight Ramona's seven evil exes to be able to continue to date her. Scott gains the Power of Love, causing a sword to burst from his chest to fight an Evil Ex -- read: emotional baggage from previous relationships. This makes no sense in the real world, but on an emotional level it makes perfect sense.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yes: Knives is likeable. She is far more likeable than Scott. Scott hurting her makes him immensely dislikeable. Now, in a comedy, having a dislikeable protagonist is not necessarily a problem. For one, a sufficiently charming actor can make you root for a character in spite of the dickishness. Alternately, we could simply be treated to watching the dick suffer at the hands of the Comedy Gods.
Michael Cera is not the actor to make Scott likeable. He can be a likeable nerd. A likeable asshole nerd? No. And the movie expects you to care about Scott's fight against the seven evil exes for Ramona's love. Worse: Scott and Knives have some chemistry. Scott and Ramona have none. If we had a hopelessly doomed relationship abandoned in favour of a promising one, I'd might still sympathise with Scott. Instead, we get the opposite.
In the end of a romantic comedy, which is approximately what this is -- CAUTION this is a major SPOILER coming up; if you haven't seen the movie, read along at your own peril -- when the secondary romantic interest sends the hero towards His True Love with a stoic "I'm too cool for you anyway" and your immediate reaction is "Damn right you are!" instead of "AWWWWWW" it is a major fucking problem.
Another problem is the fights against the seven evil exes. I hate to embarass myself like this, but I am as gay as Scott's awesome gay roommate has ever been for fellow Bushmill's loving sexy Irish redhead John Rogers, and his post on how to write action is as relevant as ever.
To summarize: action scenes are suspense scenes that require action to resolve. If there is no suspense, they should reveal character. If you can't do that, deliver exposition. If there's none of that, you're utter shit. Scott Pilgrim is to fight seven evil exes. So the first ex delivers exposition on the role of the exes. We've already established that the movie plays by no real-world rules, and we've no ways of discrning's if Scott's in danger or not. Besides, do you really believe anyone except the seventh would present a reasonable challenge? No, me neither. The fights slightly reveal character, but by revealing slight bits of Ramona's backstory, and ultimatey Ramona's a bloody cipher, nothing but an object of Scott's desire. If Scott is to earn his redemption, and redeem himself in my eyes, the fights need to make him face horrible truths about his dickishness. They do not. This means I was mildly bored, watching a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. Sure, there was an occasional gag in there, but not enough to justify the screen time.
I am being horribly down on this, but it is inevitable, since the movie's emotional core and central conceit falls completely flat. But really, I love everything except he central characters. Kieran Culkin is brilliant as Scott's cool gay roommate, and his droll delivery of lines frequently salvage scenes that should be moribound. The movie's full of energy. The visual style is splendid. I love that Brie Larsen -- who plays the evil ex that broke Scott's heart -- actually sings the vocals to Metric's Black Swan instead of miming to the song. I love Kim Pine, Scott ex-girlfriend and his band's drummer. I love Knives Chau. I love that the movie turned me on to Metric:
I love everything except the central couple. There's a hollow vacuum where the movie's heart should be, and there's nothing the ancillary details can do to overcome this. I can't actually love the movie. And this breaks my heart.
*Actually, he's 22. Admittedly on dodgier end of things, but not quite Lolita territory, in case you were worried.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Dragon Age: Witch Hunt
A three step guide to making your customers feel ripped off with your DLC:
1) Re-use your environments from the base game and expansion. (No, using origin stories environments who most players the might not have seen does not make this better.)
2) Make the battles piss-easy and uninteresting. Dragon Age had some wonderful tactical battles in its repertoaire. Any given random encounter in the main game will pose more of a tactical conundrum than the entirety of this combined.
3) Make the entire selling point of the DLC -- meeting up with bitch-witch supremo Morrigan -- take all of five minutes, and not resolving much of anything except in the vaguest of terms possible.
In a way, I can sympathize with the problem of developing new, bite-sized chunks for a game like Dragon Age. The appeal lies in the long game, developing your character over time and watching your choices play out. A couple of hours worth of satisfying content has to be much trickier to develop. But there's really no excuse for the lazy reuse of environments and terrible fights in this. Just...fuck off. It's particularly egregious when it's released on the same day as Lair of the Shadow Broker -- Mass Effect 2 DLC -- which similarly intended to resolve another character arc left hanging, but did so in a very satisfying manner, and showcased some fantastic new environments while doing so.
1) Re-use your environments from the base game and expansion. (No, using origin stories environments who most players the might not have seen does not make this better.)
2) Make the battles piss-easy and uninteresting. Dragon Age had some wonderful tactical battles in its repertoaire. Any given random encounter in the main game will pose more of a tactical conundrum than the entirety of this combined.
3) Make the entire selling point of the DLC -- meeting up with bitch-witch supremo Morrigan -- take all of five minutes, and not resolving much of anything except in the vaguest of terms possible.
In a way, I can sympathize with the problem of developing new, bite-sized chunks for a game like Dragon Age. The appeal lies in the long game, developing your character over time and watching your choices play out. A couple of hours worth of satisfying content has to be much trickier to develop. But there's really no excuse for the lazy reuse of environments and terrible fights in this. Just...fuck off. It's particularly egregious when it's released on the same day as Lair of the Shadow Broker -- Mass Effect 2 DLC -- which similarly intended to resolve another character arc left hanging, but did so in a very satisfying manner, and showcased some fantastic new environments while doing so.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Recent Observations of Moving Pictures
The Brothers Bloom
I adored Brick, writer/director Rian Johnson's previous film. It was basically a love letter to Dashiell Hammett, a modern day film noir. Only set in a high school. It sounds unworkable, but it sold it beautifully, and managed the tricky feat of being very funny while still never winking at the camera.
Enter The Brothers Bloom. Convoluted tale of crime? Check. Anachronistic pulp aesthetic? Check. The signs are good.
So why doesn't it quite work?
Rinko Kikuchi nearly steals the show as the almost-mute Bang-Bang. Rachel Weisz is ditzy and adorable. Adrian Brody is put-upon and vulnerable. The actors all do their part.
The problem is in the plotting. The main characters are con-artists, and there's a bit too much knowing self-awareness there. And soon you become aware that everyone is being jerked around by Stephen Bloom and his preternatural planning ability. Including the audience.
It's just a bit too clever by half.
(Also, I don't know if I've been broken by too many movies slavishly adhering to the three act structure, but there's something wonky with it there. But let's not get too nerdy here.)
Public Enemies
The story of America's most famous bank robber and the FBI agent that hunted him down seems tailor made for Michael Mann, who's made a career out of depicting duels between men on different sides of the law.
Alas, this will go down as one of his mediocre pieces.
Not from lack of acting caliber though. Depp and Cotillard in particular are great, as is Billy Crudup as J. Edgear Hoover. A lot of the actors are short-changed by the script though, Christian Bale in particular has very little to do except being the grim humourless lawman. A lot of the elements, like the other big bank robber in the yarn, Baby-Face Nelson, feels very undercooked.
Somewhere, there's a half an hour longer cut that fleshes everything out and lets all the elements breathe properly.
His stylistic tics steer him wrong this time. He's been going for a glossy, high-saturation look since at least the Miami Vice/Manhunter days, so him embracing digital photography is in many ways a natural development. Much like the rest of the movie though, there's plenty of times when it just doesn't work. For every moment that feels like you're right there, there's another where the cinematography goes all high-contrast, ultra-digital and just throws you out of the scene.
It's a Michael Mann movie, so it's still worth seeing, but it's a bit of a disappointment.
Duplicity
He's a spy, she's a spy. They work for competing corporations, fighting over a new top secret formula. They have an affair. But wait! She's actually using him. But wait! They're really in love, and they're working together for one of the sides. But wait! He's really...you get the idea.
It's reasonably likeable fare. Clive Owen and Julia Roberts are decent enough leads, and Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson are clearly having fun as the dueling CEOs. But after a while, you get tired of the constant reversals. Like Brothers Bloom, it suffers from too-clever-by half syndrome. And while it does have a stronger throughline in that we're constantly focused on the Roberts/Owen relationship, it's not nearly as charming or stylish as Bloom.
Crank 2
In a way, this was the most remarkable film I've seen lately.
But not in a particularly good way.
In the first Crank, Jason Statham had to keep his adrenaline up to prevent a poison from killing him. And then he fell out of a helicopter with the guy who poisoned him. Fin.
Well, no. It made money, so he miraculously survives and gets snatched for harvesting his miraculous organs. This time around he has to keep electrocuting himself to prevent his spare heart from stopping until he can get his real one back.
The first Crank was immensely stupid, and pretty funny. This one's immensely stupid, grotesque, rancid and mad.
At one point, Jason Statham gets so electrocuted he imagines himself as a child on a talk show. Geri Halliwell is his mother. Then he's electrocuted to the point that he imagines himself as Godzilla. That's the sort of lunacy that should make you cackle with glee, but instead you feel soiled. Part of it is the camerawork, which is the worst sort of ADD-filmmaking, and somehow makes every frame feel ugly.
The other part of it is the stuff like a man cutting off his own nipples for little discernable reason. Or a stripper getting shot in the breast, blood and silicone pouring out. And the movie expecting you to laugh at this.
Oh yeah. It has a bit of a problem with women. Every female character is either a whore or a stripper, or an old woman that Statham has to rub against to generate static electricity. Because that's hilarious.
Either this is writers/directors Geraldine and Naylor extending a giant middle finger for having to make a sequel against their will, or it's them vomiting their id all over the screen. In any case, you find yourself unable to look away, but really wishing you could.
I adored Brick, writer/director Rian Johnson's previous film. It was basically a love letter to Dashiell Hammett, a modern day film noir. Only set in a high school. It sounds unworkable, but it sold it beautifully, and managed the tricky feat of being very funny while still never winking at the camera.
Enter The Brothers Bloom. Convoluted tale of crime? Check. Anachronistic pulp aesthetic? Check. The signs are good.
So why doesn't it quite work?
Rinko Kikuchi nearly steals the show as the almost-mute Bang-Bang. Rachel Weisz is ditzy and adorable. Adrian Brody is put-upon and vulnerable. The actors all do their part.
The problem is in the plotting. The main characters are con-artists, and there's a bit too much knowing self-awareness there. And soon you become aware that everyone is being jerked around by Stephen Bloom and his preternatural planning ability. Including the audience.
It's just a bit too clever by half.
(Also, I don't know if I've been broken by too many movies slavishly adhering to the three act structure, but there's something wonky with it there. But let's not get too nerdy here.)
Public Enemies
The story of America's most famous bank robber and the FBI agent that hunted him down seems tailor made for Michael Mann, who's made a career out of depicting duels between men on different sides of the law.
Alas, this will go down as one of his mediocre pieces.
Not from lack of acting caliber though. Depp and Cotillard in particular are great, as is Billy Crudup as J. Edgear Hoover. A lot of the actors are short-changed by the script though, Christian Bale in particular has very little to do except being the grim humourless lawman. A lot of the elements, like the other big bank robber in the yarn, Baby-Face Nelson, feels very undercooked.
Somewhere, there's a half an hour longer cut that fleshes everything out and lets all the elements breathe properly.
His stylistic tics steer him wrong this time. He's been going for a glossy, high-saturation look since at least the Miami Vice/Manhunter days, so him embracing digital photography is in many ways a natural development. Much like the rest of the movie though, there's plenty of times when it just doesn't work. For every moment that feels like you're right there, there's another where the cinematography goes all high-contrast, ultra-digital and just throws you out of the scene.
It's a Michael Mann movie, so it's still worth seeing, but it's a bit of a disappointment.
Duplicity
He's a spy, she's a spy. They work for competing corporations, fighting over a new top secret formula. They have an affair. But wait! She's actually using him. But wait! They're really in love, and they're working together for one of the sides. But wait! He's really...you get the idea.
It's reasonably likeable fare. Clive Owen and Julia Roberts are decent enough leads, and Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson are clearly having fun as the dueling CEOs. But after a while, you get tired of the constant reversals. Like Brothers Bloom, it suffers from too-clever-by half syndrome. And while it does have a stronger throughline in that we're constantly focused on the Roberts/Owen relationship, it's not nearly as charming or stylish as Bloom.
Crank 2
In a way, this was the most remarkable film I've seen lately.
But not in a particularly good way.
In the first Crank, Jason Statham had to keep his adrenaline up to prevent a poison from killing him. And then he fell out of a helicopter with the guy who poisoned him. Fin.
Well, no. It made money, so he miraculously survives and gets snatched for harvesting his miraculous organs. This time around he has to keep electrocuting himself to prevent his spare heart from stopping until he can get his real one back.
The first Crank was immensely stupid, and pretty funny. This one's immensely stupid, grotesque, rancid and mad.
At one point, Jason Statham gets so electrocuted he imagines himself as a child on a talk show. Geri Halliwell is his mother. Then he's electrocuted to the point that he imagines himself as Godzilla. That's the sort of lunacy that should make you cackle with glee, but instead you feel soiled. Part of it is the camerawork, which is the worst sort of ADD-filmmaking, and somehow makes every frame feel ugly.
The other part of it is the stuff like a man cutting off his own nipples for little discernable reason. Or a stripper getting shot in the breast, blood and silicone pouring out. And the movie expecting you to laugh at this.
Oh yeah. It has a bit of a problem with women. Every female character is either a whore or a stripper, or an old woman that Statham has to rub against to generate static electricity. Because that's hilarious.
Either this is writers/directors Geraldine and Naylor extending a giant middle finger for having to make a sequel against their will, or it's them vomiting their id all over the screen. In any case, you find yourself unable to look away, but really wishing you could.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
The words "seduction community"
Catching up on Penny-Arcade and the associated newsposts brought this to my attention.
I wish it hadn't.
I'm not one to get moralistic about who people choose to have sex with; if some people who met five seconds ago choose to get it on, that's fine with me. It's only if the power dynamics get iffy that my hackles get raised.
The "Seduction Community" is basically selp-help -- with the all of baggage that brings -- where the objective is to form you into a grade A pussy hound, downing women like gazelle on the savannah. Learn to use Neuro-Linguistic Programming for speed seduction! Love Systems will teach you the secret of Same Night Lays!
Press up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, a, b for pussy.
If you're unaware, the basic idea of Neuro-Linguistic Programming is to hack language and social cues in order to get people to do what you want. In reality, it's a bunch of pseudo-scientific tosh dressed up in fancy language, more accurately summarized as sales technique.
Picture it if you will: a jolly bunch of travelling salesmen, gathering to share tips, slap each other on the back, and improve their oily craft. Only instead of selling insecure, unassertive people stuff they don't need, they're selling insecure, unassertive people fucks they don't want.
You don't have to be Feminist McRage for that thought to make your blood curdle.
The internet might be a magical place where dreams come true in the form of mpeg files, but before it existed, I didn't have to go to sleep with the knowledge of people coming together all over the world to celebrate and reinforce their pathologies instead of having their delusions ground away by a world filled with people outside their little circlejerk.
I wish it hadn't.
I'm not one to get moralistic about who people choose to have sex with; if some people who met five seconds ago choose to get it on, that's fine with me. It's only if the power dynamics get iffy that my hackles get raised.
The "Seduction Community" is basically selp-help -- with the all of baggage that brings -- where the objective is to form you into a grade A pussy hound, downing women like gazelle on the savannah. Learn to use Neuro-Linguistic Programming for speed seduction! Love Systems will teach you the secret of Same Night Lays!
Press up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, a, b for pussy.
If you're unaware, the basic idea of Neuro-Linguistic Programming is to hack language and social cues in order to get people to do what you want. In reality, it's a bunch of pseudo-scientific tosh dressed up in fancy language, more accurately summarized as sales technique.
Picture it if you will: a jolly bunch of travelling salesmen, gathering to share tips, slap each other on the back, and improve their oily craft. Only instead of selling insecure, unassertive people stuff they don't need, they're selling insecure, unassertive people fucks they don't want.
You don't have to be Feminist McRage for that thought to make your blood curdle.
The internet might be a magical place where dreams come true in the form of mpeg files, but before it existed, I didn't have to go to sleep with the knowledge of people coming together all over the world to celebrate and reinforce their pathologies instead of having their delusions ground away by a world filled with people outside their little circlejerk.
Sure Is The Risk Made
It seems like only two years ago that wily young man Conelrad put out a lovely lp of ambient/shoegaze noise filled with nuclear paranoia. And now he's at it again:
Yes, an entirely new, entirely free album. On the first couple of listens, it's been just as good, if not better. Go get it here.
Yes, an entirely new, entirely free album. On the first couple of listens, it's been just as good, if not better. Go get it here.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Gomorrah
A courier carrying money to the families of imprisoned gang members. A middleman and his apprentice facilitating the illegal dumping of countless tons of toxic waste. Two teenage wannabe gangsters obsessed with Scarface. An even younger boy going from observing the clans' drug trade surrounding him to a participant. A tailor making haute couture for a pittance in a blackmarket factory. All lives inextricably tied to the Camorra, the Neapolitan mafia.
Gomorrrah isn't a movie that bothers to spell things out to its audience. After opening with a seemingly unrelated massacre in a solarium, it heedlessly plunges into these five story threads, and observes them with a documentarian's eye. Even when the director pulls out obvious cinematic tricks like completely killing all the sounds in a scene, it never ceases to feel authentic. Small wonder, since it's based on journalist Roberto Saviano's exposé that landed him in police protection when published, and has a completely convincing cast compromised of local amateurs. (Some of which have apparently since been arrested for their ties to the Camorra.) It's grungy, gritty and thoroughly unglamorizing of its subject matter, with violence shockingly casual and ever-threatening.
The movie gives a good sense of the poisonous web of crime and corruption that permeates everyday life in Naples, but the complete dedication to the characters' viewpoints comes at the expense of clarity with regards to the bigger picture, both within the mafia and society at large. Saviano's book, for all it's flaws and tendency to ramble, never shied away from pointing out the way the Camorra's operations fit into the greater economy. And inside the movie itself, there's a war brewing within the clans, a splinter group of malcontents causing tension and an increasing bodycount, which initially seems to come completely out of left field. That is, until you remember the massacre that kicked off the movie an hour earlier.
Still, Gomorrah is an easy recommendation to make for anyone who doesn't mind their crime movies filled with uncomfortable amounts of real life.
Escape From City 17, Part 1
As someone who greatly enjoyed Half-Life 2, this made me smile. Youtube's low fidelity helps the bits cribbed from the game blend in better, but it's still pretty nifty, especially considering it was put together for $500.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
...and we exhale, and roll our eyes in unison
Goodbye to that ignorant, venal, criminal fuck. But credit where credit's due, that was quite a legacy:
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Today's recipe is liver, darling
A new year, and along with the customary Don't Be Fatty McFatass, You Fatty resolution, there's a corollary Cook Properly, You Lazy Bastard resolution.
My first go was at that unfairly maligned organ, the liver. I know, I know, I've suffered through the same school kitchen horrors, and the Finnish maksalaatikko (approximately liver casserole, if we consider casserole a superset of all things thrown into a pan in an oven) is an abomination, but when properly done, liver is bloody delicious. And like so many other dishes, what is needed to do it properly is bacon*.
It is also extemely easy. You will need:
Chop the onions and sautée them together with the bacon in a pan over medium high heat, until the bacon is done and the onions translucent. Remove. Quickly rub your spices onto the sides of the liver - I went with simple salt and pepper, but there's no reason you can't get more exotic - before tossing into the pan to fry in the bacon fat. Be careful not to overdo it, liver should preferrably be a little bit pink inside.
Aaand - you're done!
Well, you'll need something to serve it with as well, unless you fancy an all-protein diet, but I'll leave that up to you. I went with potatoes and lingonberry jam.
If you're a closet alcoholic like me, you can also grab that bottle of red wine and use all the flavour in the burned bits in your pan to improvise a red wine sauce. Brown a bit of flour to get your basic roux, add red wine, and boil off while loosening the bits in the pan until you have a consistency that pleases you.
Just make sure the bottle's a screw top, otherwise you'll *have* to drink all of it to make sure it doesn't spoil. And that way lies intoxication, madness and posts on the internet.
*If you think you've spotted a conflict between resolution A and corollary resolution B, you're mistaken. Bacon is a vegetable, and vegetables are good for you.
My first go was at that unfairly maligned organ, the liver. I know, I know, I've suffered through the same school kitchen horrors, and the Finnish maksalaatikko (approximately liver casserole, if we consider casserole a superset of all things thrown into a pan in an oven) is an abomination, but when properly done, liver is bloody delicious. And like so many other dishes, what is needed to do it properly is bacon*.
It is also extemely easy. You will need:
- Bacon
- Onions
- Liver
- Spices
Chop the onions and sautée them together with the bacon in a pan over medium high heat, until the bacon is done and the onions translucent. Remove. Quickly rub your spices onto the sides of the liver - I went with simple salt and pepper, but there's no reason you can't get more exotic - before tossing into the pan to fry in the bacon fat. Be careful not to overdo it, liver should preferrably be a little bit pink inside.
Aaand - you're done!
Well, you'll need something to serve it with as well, unless you fancy an all-protein diet, but I'll leave that up to you. I went with potatoes and lingonberry jam.
If you're a closet alcoholic like me, you can also grab that bottle of red wine and use all the flavour in the burned bits in your pan to improvise a red wine sauce. Brown a bit of flour to get your basic roux, add red wine, and boil off while loosening the bits in the pan until you have a consistency that pleases you.
Just make sure the bottle's a screw top, otherwise you'll *have* to drink all of it to make sure it doesn't spoil. And that way lies intoxication, madness and posts on the internet.
*If you think you've spotted a conflict between resolution A and corollary resolution B, you're mistaken. Bacon is a vegetable, and vegetables are good for you.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Cansei de Ser Sexy Is My Hot, Hot Sex
So I get home after a week of too long days and too little sleep, tired, cranky and with a fierce desire to drink, and announce this to the world by misquoting lyrics. Lyrics I annoyingly can't quite place, so I set out to track down the source. Not a hard thing to do, since I know the Gillen is responsible for putting it in my head, and quickly find Brazilian party rockers CSS with Let's Make Love and Listen to Death From Above.
And then I watch it again. With wine then beer then more then again. And again. And again. And all desire to hear Marilyn Manson wail about spiders washes away in a rush of nonsense lyrics and bouncy synths. It's impossible to stay miserable listening to it. It's fucking brilliant. And thanks to the wonder of the electric internets, the entire album is swiftly purchased and secure on my harddrive, and it's almost as good throughout.
There's some throwaway songs on there, and bits of it are in Portugese but that shouldn't turn anyone off in the slightest, because there's an overwhelming sense of playfulness and fun driving the thing, even on the angry parts. And even when the lyrics are in English rarely make sense. Meeting Paris Hilton is borderline incomprehensible because Pixie-like vocalist Lovefoxxx (yes, Lovefoxxx) pronounces beach and bitch identically. And when they do make sense , they're ridiculously punny, like "suck, suck, suck my art-hole" on the spiteful Art Bitch.
They're also rather naughty, which can only be a good thing.
Really, you should go give them a listen.
And then I watch it again. With wine then beer then more then again. And again. And again. And all desire to hear Marilyn Manson wail about spiders washes away in a rush of nonsense lyrics and bouncy synths. It's impossible to stay miserable listening to it. It's fucking brilliant. And thanks to the wonder of the electric internets, the entire album is swiftly purchased and secure on my harddrive, and it's almost as good throughout.
There's some throwaway songs on there, and bits of it are in Portugese but that shouldn't turn anyone off in the slightest, because there's an overwhelming sense of playfulness and fun driving the thing, even on the angry parts. And even when the lyrics are in English rarely make sense. Meeting Paris Hilton is borderline incomprehensible because Pixie-like vocalist Lovefoxxx (yes, Lovefoxxx) pronounces beach and bitch identically. And when they do make sense , they're ridiculously punny, like "suck, suck, suck my art-hole" on the spiteful Art Bitch.
They're also rather naughty, which can only be a good thing.
Really, you should go give them a listen.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Quantum of Solace
Remember Casino Royale? Of course you do. It was a fantastic reboot of the Bond franchise, cutting away the camp of the later Brosnan movies, and Daniel Craig creating the definitive Bond by sweating, bleeding and being hit on the balls a lot. It could've used a bit of trimming, but overall it left me really excited about Bond for the first time in a really long while.
Quantom of Solace completely pisses that away.
Let's pause for a brief wanky beret moment. Closure is the act of observing the parts but perceiving the whole. Filling in the blanks. Everytime you move between panels in a comic, or an edit happens in a movie, you're relating the frames spatially and temporally, as well as extrapolating from the visual elements in the frame. This takes brain power, and audience involvement. Knowing how to use it is absolutely key in visual storytelling.
At some point, someone had the idea of making more agressive use of this, sacrificing clarity in favour of getting in close and giving a more impressionistic view of action sequences in the hope that it would increase audience involvement. And you know, people complain about shaky cam a lot, but I'm fine with it when in the hands of a skilled director. Remember the Tangiers chase in the Bourne Ultimatum? Ten minutes of Bourne running after Desh, Desh closing in on Nikki, and the audience completely pinned to their seats.
Marc Forster is not a skilled action director. So he just throws a bunch of frenetic edits of moving bits at the screen, without little regard for establising spatial relation, in the mistaken hope that we'll mistake the confusion for excitement. There's a particularly egregious sequence kicking off the film, a car chase where it's fucking impossible to make out who's chasing who until it's over and you realise that Bond was in the car in the front becasue he's still moving and the car behind crashed.
This is a problem when the movie is 90% action. It's even more of a problem when the script gives the action sequences little purpose other than being loud, noisy padding.
Oddly for a movie that literally picks up an hour after Casino Royale, it has little interest in what made that movie good, or the fraught emotional state Bond was in at the end. Oh, there's some lipservice about how angry and hurt he is, but anytime there's danger of a real character moment, the movie panics and hurtles along to the next action sequence as if slowing down would put it in danger of being accosted by rape-goblins.
It's a real pity, because Daniel Craig is still as great in the part as ever, Judi Dench is in fine form, and Olga Kurylenko is a good Bond babe, but the script doesn't put them to good use. The only weak link among the principals is Mathieu Amalric as the hilariously ineffectual and unmenacing villain.
It's not worth writing off the rebooted franchise completely yet, but they'll have to do a lot better next time around.
At least it's better than Max Payne, which has an appealing performance by Kurylenko for all of her five minutes of screentime, and then goes back to being completely useless, lumpen pap. You'd think it wouldn't be too hard to get a pulp tale of revenge for murdered loved ones up to acceptable standards, but alas, the video game movie curse struck again.
Quantom of Solace completely pisses that away.
Let's pause for a brief wanky beret moment. Closure is the act of observing the parts but perceiving the whole. Filling in the blanks. Everytime you move between panels in a comic, or an edit happens in a movie, you're relating the frames spatially and temporally, as well as extrapolating from the visual elements in the frame. This takes brain power, and audience involvement. Knowing how to use it is absolutely key in visual storytelling.
At some point, someone had the idea of making more agressive use of this, sacrificing clarity in favour of getting in close and giving a more impressionistic view of action sequences in the hope that it would increase audience involvement. And you know, people complain about shaky cam a lot, but I'm fine with it when in the hands of a skilled director. Remember the Tangiers chase in the Bourne Ultimatum? Ten minutes of Bourne running after Desh, Desh closing in on Nikki, and the audience completely pinned to their seats.
Marc Forster is not a skilled action director. So he just throws a bunch of frenetic edits of moving bits at the screen, without little regard for establising spatial relation, in the mistaken hope that we'll mistake the confusion for excitement. There's a particularly egregious sequence kicking off the film, a car chase where it's fucking impossible to make out who's chasing who until it's over and you realise that Bond was in the car in the front becasue he's still moving and the car behind crashed.
This is a problem when the movie is 90% action. It's even more of a problem when the script gives the action sequences little purpose other than being loud, noisy padding.
Oddly for a movie that literally picks up an hour after Casino Royale, it has little interest in what made that movie good, or the fraught emotional state Bond was in at the end. Oh, there's some lipservice about how angry and hurt he is, but anytime there's danger of a real character moment, the movie panics and hurtles along to the next action sequence as if slowing down would put it in danger of being accosted by rape-goblins.
It's a real pity, because Daniel Craig is still as great in the part as ever, Judi Dench is in fine form, and Olga Kurylenko is a good Bond babe, but the script doesn't put them to good use. The only weak link among the principals is Mathieu Amalric as the hilariously ineffectual and unmenacing villain.
It's not worth writing off the rebooted franchise completely yet, but they'll have to do a lot better next time around.
At least it's better than Max Payne, which has an appealing performance by Kurylenko for all of her five minutes of screentime, and then goes back to being completely useless, lumpen pap. You'd think it wouldn't be too hard to get a pulp tale of revenge for murdered loved ones up to acceptable standards, but alas, the video game movie curse struck again.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Hello again blog
It's been a while, hasn't it? No, contrary to appearances, I did not disappear into a crippling WoW addiction. I rode out the trial and left it at that. I was just being lazy again.
The apparent irony of that last post was pretty funny though, wasn't it?
Even if it wasn't true.
I have to admit that I sometimes feel a slight temptation whenever I walk past a retail copy of WoW though. It's a very polished game, and Azeroth has a lot of sights to see. And I can definitely see why people get stuck in it. There's always a new little reward. *ding* You reach a new level. *ding* You get a new spell. *ding* You find a nifty item. *ding* You learn to make a better sandwich. *ding* You fi- *ding* Y- *ding* *ding* *ding*
It's a constant barrage of little happy pills of accomplishment.
It still can't escape the fundamental rubbishness of the genre though; the inability to affect your world meaningfully, all the while maintaining that you're super awesome one chosen hero of singleplayer rgps. But you can't fool me. I possess cleverness and functioning retinas. I can see that those nasty critters I genocided the minute before spawned back and nothing changed.
Which wouldn't be that big a problem if your genociding the evil critters was fun, but WoW's combat is neither visceral nor tactically challenging enough to make it entertaining. It's easy to do the math and see how an engagement will end the minute it starts, and then it's a dull couple of minutes to execute your plan. Unless of course an angry bear spawns in behind you, and then you die, because you're as fierce as a soggy kitten and can't handle angry bears in addition to the other enemies, and the camera refuses to let you spot their filthy spawning hides before you pull aggro. And then you swear copiously, while wondering why you're supposed to put up with this on the promise that it gets better after the first 20 or 30 levels.
Which leads you to putting the box back down in the store and move on to purchase other, more appealing games. Like Fallout 3. On which there will be many words later.
Unless shiny things happen.
You can't trust those shiny things.
The apparent irony of that last post was pretty funny though, wasn't it?
Even if it wasn't true.
I have to admit that I sometimes feel a slight temptation whenever I walk past a retail copy of WoW though. It's a very polished game, and Azeroth has a lot of sights to see. And I can definitely see why people get stuck in it. There's always a new little reward. *ding* You reach a new level. *ding* You get a new spell. *ding* You find a nifty item. *ding* You learn to make a better sandwich. *ding* You fi- *ding* Y- *ding* *ding* *ding*
It's a constant barrage of little happy pills of accomplishment.
It still can't escape the fundamental rubbishness of the genre though; the inability to affect your world meaningfully, all the while maintaining that you're super awesome one chosen hero of singleplayer rgps. But you can't fool me. I possess cleverness and functioning retinas. I can see that those nasty critters I genocided the minute before spawned back and nothing changed.
Which wouldn't be that big a problem if your genociding the evil critters was fun, but WoW's combat is neither visceral nor tactically challenging enough to make it entertaining. It's easy to do the math and see how an engagement will end the minute it starts, and then it's a dull couple of minutes to execute your plan. Unless of course an angry bear spawns in behind you, and then you die, because you're as fierce as a soggy kitten and can't handle angry bears in addition to the other enemies, and the camera refuses to let you spot their filthy spawning hides before you pull aggro. And then you swear copiously, while wondering why you're supposed to put up with this on the promise that it gets better after the first 20 or 30 levels.
Which leads you to putting the box back down in the store and move on to purchase other, more appealing games. Like Fallout 3. On which there will be many words later.
Unless shiny things happen.
You can't trust those shiny things.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
This cannot possibly end well
Yes, I installed the free WoW trial. Sometimes you just get curious, and jam a needle of heroin into your eyeball to find out what's so great about it, y'know?
Saturday, August 9, 2008
"What is it with you and women?" indeed
I defy anyone remotely familiar with Frank "WHORES" Miller to not burst out laughing at the latest trailer for his adaption of Will Eisner's The Spirit:
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Random art appreciation moment.
Just to get that last piece of nastiness out of the way, here's a man who's clearly played too much Silent Hill. Or at least shares fetishes with those games.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
1. Sexual Harassment 2. ???? 3. Children!
I have prejudices against Russia. In a way it's only natural; Finland and Russia have had a bit of a rocky history so it's only natural I'd absorb some level of distrust through osmosis. It's not something I'm particularly proud of, and I try to be aware of it and not let it cloud my judgement too much.
I really wish they try to help me out sometimes, y'know? It's got to be a two-way thing if we're going to make this work, and it's just not going to get any better if complete scumfuck things like this continue to leap at me from the headlines.
I really wish they try to help me out sometimes, y'know? It's got to be a two-way thing if we're going to make this work, and it's just not going to get any better if complete scumfuck things like this continue to leap at me from the headlines.
The unnamed executive, a 22-year-old from St Petersburg, had been hoping to become only the third woman in Russia's history to bring a successful sexual harassment action against a male employer.
She alleged she had been locked out of her office after she refused to have intimate relations with her 47-year-old boss.
"He always demanded that female workers signalled to him with their eyes that they desperately wanted to be laid on the boardroom table as soon as he gave the word," she earlier told the court. "I didn't realise at first that he wasn't speaking metaphorically."
The judge said he threw out the case not through lack of evidence but because the employer had acted gallantly rather than criminally.
"If we had no sexual harassment we would have no children," the judge ruled
Monday, August 4, 2008
Phonogram: The Singles Club b-side
Perennial bad influence and former professional beard grower Gillen is teaming up again with Jamie McKelvie, professional drawer of hot punk girls, to bring the world the second series of Phonogram.
As with the first series, they're starting to hype it by releasing one-page comic "b-sides".
Like so:
The first series, which you can still read the first issue of here, if you scroll down a bit, was quite good, so this should be one to look out for if you read comics that don't feature pervert suits.
And if you like hot punk girls.
As with the first series, they're starting to hype it by releasing one-page comic "b-sides".
Like so:
The first series, which you can still read the first issue of here, if you scroll down a bit, was quite good, so this should be one to look out for if you read comics that don't feature pervert suits.
And if you like hot punk girls.
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Some Dark Knight or other
Everyone has been going gaga over this one, partly fueled by Ledger's explosive performance and his subsequent tragic demise, with critics showering praise all over it. It's the new Godfather, the new Citizen Kane. Two and a half hours of orgasmic bliss for nerds.
Alas, the truth is far more disappointing. It's not even as good as Batman Begins. (Which admittedly set the bar pretty damn high.) It's merely a good, albeit overlong and messy movie, with some excellent performances.
The main problem with the movie is that it's too crowded. The Joker, Harvey Dent and Batman are one too many characters for the movie to develop comfortably, and the need to cram them all in there makes the movie rush from scene to scene without ever letting you pause for breath. It never feels like a two hour movie, but on the other hand you hand you walk out of the theatre feeling like you've just been run over by a truck. And frankly, even though Aaron Eckhart does a pretty decent job, Harvey Dent isn't nearly as interesting to watch as the Joker. Ledger's nihilistic sociopath will probably go down as one of the great villains of all time, the movie lights on fire every time he's on screen, and every time the movie breaks from him and his escalating reign of terror you just want him to get back on there. Cramming Dent's arc in there was a mistake.
At which point people will go: "How can you say that, you charismatic sexpot you? Surely you must see that Harvey Dent is essential to the story and illustrates the war Batman and the Joker wage over Gotham's soul?" And while that is a fine idea, it doesn't really work dramatically. Nolan needed to find another way to make that point, and write a leaner screenplay. Or at the very least have the decency to resolve everything at the same time, instead of first tying up the Joker's thread, and then limping to a weak confrontation with Two-Face.
My other chief complaint is how coy it is with the violence. The Dark Knight lives up to its name; this is a very dark movie in tone, and the Joker is one terrifying antagonist. It has no business pretending to be anything but an R/15 certificate movie, and sometimes the need to cut as much as humanly possible get it past the censors really hurts scenes. I'm not asking for gore for the sake of gore. While everyone will remember the Joker's brutal magic trick, which gets by fine on implied content, there's also bits like the first time he tells the ever mutating story about his scars, in a scene which builds and builds and builds, and then dissipates with an odd cut to a body slumping to the ground. Sometimes you need a visceral punchline, even if it's through everything *but* the knife that causes all the screams and blood, but this is a luxury the studio couldn't afford. Because apparently relying on adults to pay for a blockbuster is fucking impossible.
There's plenty of other nits to picks, such as the trip to Hong-Kong being extraneous, the Two-Face make-up being too over the top for the grounded take on the Batman mythos, the sonar system being goofy, etc, but in the end it's still an entertaining, if flawed movie, and I don't want to keep ragging on it for too long. It's still well worth seeing.
It's just not as good as it should have been.
Alas, the truth is far more disappointing. It's not even as good as Batman Begins. (Which admittedly set the bar pretty damn high.) It's merely a good, albeit overlong and messy movie, with some excellent performances.
The main problem with the movie is that it's too crowded. The Joker, Harvey Dent and Batman are one too many characters for the movie to develop comfortably, and the need to cram them all in there makes the movie rush from scene to scene without ever letting you pause for breath. It never feels like a two hour movie, but on the other hand you hand you walk out of the theatre feeling like you've just been run over by a truck. And frankly, even though Aaron Eckhart does a pretty decent job, Harvey Dent isn't nearly as interesting to watch as the Joker. Ledger's nihilistic sociopath will probably go down as one of the great villains of all time, the movie lights on fire every time he's on screen, and every time the movie breaks from him and his escalating reign of terror you just want him to get back on there. Cramming Dent's arc in there was a mistake.
At which point people will go: "How can you say that, you charismatic sexpot you? Surely you must see that Harvey Dent is essential to the story and illustrates the war Batman and the Joker wage over Gotham's soul?" And while that is a fine idea, it doesn't really work dramatically. Nolan needed to find another way to make that point, and write a leaner screenplay. Or at the very least have the decency to resolve everything at the same time, instead of first tying up the Joker's thread, and then limping to a weak confrontation with Two-Face.
My other chief complaint is how coy it is with the violence. The Dark Knight lives up to its name; this is a very dark movie in tone, and the Joker is one terrifying antagonist. It has no business pretending to be anything but an R/15 certificate movie, and sometimes the need to cut as much as humanly possible get it past the censors really hurts scenes. I'm not asking for gore for the sake of gore. While everyone will remember the Joker's brutal magic trick, which gets by fine on implied content, there's also bits like the first time he tells the ever mutating story about his scars, in a scene which builds and builds and builds, and then dissipates with an odd cut to a body slumping to the ground. Sometimes you need a visceral punchline, even if it's through everything *but* the knife that causes all the screams and blood, but this is a luxury the studio couldn't afford. Because apparently relying on adults to pay for a blockbuster is fucking impossible.
There's plenty of other nits to picks, such as the trip to Hong-Kong being extraneous, the Two-Face make-up being too over the top for the grounded take on the Batman mythos, the sonar system being goofy, etc, but in the end it's still an entertaining, if flawed movie, and I don't want to keep ragging on it for too long. It's still well worth seeing.
It's just not as good as it should have been.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Stray Rounds
West Baltimore. Another turfwar over drugdealing rights. A neighbourhood woman hears the first gunshots, and with practised routine she grabs her toddler and ducks into her bathtub. Bullets might go through those cheapass walls in the projects, but enamel as well? Not likely.
It's incidental detail like this that makes The Wire about the best show on television.
Pity her nine-yearold didn't have the same practise with gunfights and caught one of those stray bullets though.
It's incidental detail like this that makes The Wire about the best show on television.
Pity her nine-yearold didn't have the same practise with gunfights and caught one of those stray bullets though.
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