Tuesday, December 22, 2009
I Love the 00s: Three from Tarantino
Next on my list of my favorite things about the 00s is Quentin Tarantino. When the decade began he was MIA, curiously quiet after the lukewarm response to Jackie Brown (1997). Once he got back into the movie-making business, business was good. Very good.
His first film back from hiatus was Kill Bill (2003, 2004), an epic kung-fu/revenge picture that was forcibly split into two films by the studio. The end results made me wonder how Volumes 1 and 2 were ever part of the same picture, because the two films felt so very different.
Vol. 1 was a raucous splatterfest of swordfighting and rage, while Vol. 2 was a more restrained look at the characters left standing from Vol. 1. The final showdown between The Bride and Bill is emotional, not physical, and when she takes her revenge there is real sadness in the air.
One of the unsung triumphs of the movie(s) is the soundtrack. Cobbled together from other films and even a few television series, the music in Kill Bill is different than the pop-heavy mixes of Quentin Tarantino's earlier movies. Even though I couldn't recognize most of it, the use of instrumental music accentuated the film's numerous homages. When you hear Ennio Morricone, whether you can place its exact origin or not, you're going to think of spaghetti westerns.
It was three years before we saw another Tarantino movie, but it was worth the wait. Death Proof was the second half of the double-feature Grindhouse (2007), two films shown back to back with intentionally cheesy trailers preceeding each picture. I noted on my blog at the time that it was one of the best moviegoing experiences I've ever had - and that still stands. While the first film, Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror, was just as over the top as those trailers were, Death Proof opened quietly by focusing on four friends just hanging out. It's a slow burn, teasing the audience with glimpses of Stuntman Mike before eventually revealing that he's not just an over-the-hill stunt driver. The car chase at end of the film was one of the most exhilarating ones I've ever seen, right on par with classics like Bullitt and The French Connection. More so, perhaps, because those movies didn't have a woman strapped to the hood of the car during their chases.
Finally there's Inglorious Basterds (2009), a movie I've already written about several times since I saw it last month. I don't know if it's my favorite Tarantino film but it's certainly my favorite of the last ten years, as the opening conversation between the Colonel and that dairy farmer was so tense I almost couldn't stand it. That extended showdown of two men talking for I don't know how long was more tense than any clash in Kill Bill or crash in Death Proof.
I suppose it's selfish of me to wish that Quentin Tarantino could work faster. In the last ten years he made three films, while during that time we've had seven Coen Brothers movies, five Christopher Nolan movies and, ugh, five Michael Bay movies! Please, Quentin, don't rush things but don't leave us hanging for six years again. It's just cruel.
This represents Part 7 in a series of 25 posts about my favorite as well as the most disappointing entertainment properties/trends of the last ten years. To Be Continued!
つづく...(Click here to read more)
His first film back from hiatus was Kill Bill (2003, 2004), an epic kung-fu/revenge picture that was forcibly split into two films by the studio. The end results made me wonder how Volumes 1 and 2 were ever part of the same picture, because the two films felt so very different.
Vol. 1 was a raucous splatterfest of swordfighting and rage, while Vol. 2 was a more restrained look at the characters left standing from Vol. 1. The final showdown between The Bride and Bill is emotional, not physical, and when she takes her revenge there is real sadness in the air.
One of the unsung triumphs of the movie(s) is the soundtrack. Cobbled together from other films and even a few television series, the music in Kill Bill is different than the pop-heavy mixes of Quentin Tarantino's earlier movies. Even though I couldn't recognize most of it, the use of instrumental music accentuated the film's numerous homages. When you hear Ennio Morricone, whether you can place its exact origin or not, you're going to think of spaghetti westerns.
It was three years before we saw another Tarantino movie, but it was worth the wait. Death Proof was the second half of the double-feature Grindhouse (2007), two films shown back to back with intentionally cheesy trailers preceeding each picture. I noted on my blog at the time that it was one of the best moviegoing experiences I've ever had - and that still stands. While the first film, Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror, was just as over the top as those trailers were, Death Proof opened quietly by focusing on four friends just hanging out. It's a slow burn, teasing the audience with glimpses of Stuntman Mike before eventually revealing that he's not just an over-the-hill stunt driver. The car chase at end of the film was one of the most exhilarating ones I've ever seen, right on par with classics like Bullitt and The French Connection. More so, perhaps, because those movies didn't have a woman strapped to the hood of the car during their chases.
Finally there's Inglorious Basterds (2009), a movie I've already written about several times since I saw it last month. I don't know if it's my favorite Tarantino film but it's certainly my favorite of the last ten years, as the opening conversation between the Colonel and that dairy farmer was so tense I almost couldn't stand it. That extended showdown of two men talking for I don't know how long was more tense than any clash in Kill Bill or crash in Death Proof.
I suppose it's selfish of me to wish that Quentin Tarantino could work faster. In the last ten years he made three films, while during that time we've had seven Coen Brothers movies, five Christopher Nolan movies and, ugh, five Michael Bay movies! Please, Quentin, don't rush things but don't leave us hanging for six years again. It's just cruel.
This represents Part 7 in a series of 25 posts about my favorite as well as the most disappointing entertainment properties/trends of the last ten years. To Be Continued!
Labels: Grindhouse, I love the 00s, Inglorious Basterds, Kill Bill, movies, Quentin Tarantino
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
I Hate the 00s: Video Game Movies
No doubt, the last ten years have seen some wonderful movies come and go. You know one thing that all the great movies of the 00s have in common? They sure as hell weren't based on any video games! Yes, today's disappointment of the decade is the state of game-based movies: not only do they suck, they're getting worse.
I'm sure it's very, very hard to make a successful film from a critical or financial standpoint (to say nothing of both). One easy way to get people in the seats is to make a movie based on a known property. In the 1990s Hollywood dabbled in movies based on popular video games. The results were pretty abysmal; I'd argue that the only one of the bunch worth a damn is Mortal Kombat (1995) because it gets most of the characters right and they spend most of the film fighting each other. Then they tried to make a sequel and pissed away what little momentum the series had.
However, it takes time to get these things right. Movies and games are two very different mediums for storytelling, and the latter has only really begun to dabble in that department in the last twenty years or so. As games develop their narrative chops and, in this era of high-resolution graphics and performances from actual actors, crib more cinematic techniques as they go, movies and games should slowly converge, right?
Looking at the past ten years, the answer is a resounding "fuck no." Video game based movies seem to be the dumping ground for any and every cliched action script that only the hackiest of hacks can spit out. The process seems to be: [A] acquire rights to video game license [B] hire somebody to write a script based purely on the title of said game [C] release the resulting mess into theaters and watch it end up on DVD six weeks later. [D] Profit, I guess, because they keep doing this shit.
Look at Uwe Boll's first outing into game cinema, House of the Dead (2003). I'm hardly a fan of the original series of games, but I've played/seen them enough to know that they center around secret agents shooting zombies. Somehow the movie is about a group of teens who take a party boat to "Death Island" and wind up being attacked by the undead. Eventually there is one scene of shooting zombies and it's nothing but a long Matrix-inspired sequence of low-budget bullet time. Curiously, clips of the real game are actually edited into the movie, almost as a reminder as to what the story should be about, but isn't.
By all accounts, House of the Dead was a failure but Uwe Boll got to make another video game movie which managed to out-suck his first one. Alone in the Dark (2005) is the kind of film that routinely shows up on "worst movie ever made" lists and has been thoroughly mocked by the Agony Booth and The Nostalgia Critic, among others. Yet someone made their money back because Uwe Boll kept making movies, quickly cementing himself as a crap merchant dealing exclusively in video game properties. When video game companies license negotiate movie rights now, they demand a say in picking the director solely to avoid this guy (it's known as the "Uwe Boll Clause" and I'm sure they're only half-joking).
It wasn't just Uwe Boll though. Look at the Resident Evil trilogy of films which range from mediocre to OMG-awful yet a fourth film is on the way. Those games are extremely cinematic in their presentations, relying heavily on voice acting and camera angles from the beginning. It should have been an easy adaptation to make, but someone decided to gut the story and just turn it into another zombie movie and not a particularly good one. There's also a litany of forgettable movies based on fighting games like Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, D.O.A. with more on the way. No, I won't mention them by name because they make my brain hurt.
The future of video game movies is bright, at least in comparison to what we've got now. The Prince of Persia movie seems to have a lot of money behind it and a decent leading man, but I'm not holding my breath. It's not like Jerry Bruckheimer hasn't disappointed in the past. Even if that movie fails, I hope someone eventually figures out that games have stories worth telling because a good video game movie would be spectacular. If a fan-made zero-budget short like Turbo can at least approximate the excitement of a fake video game, why can't a multi-million dollar production even come close to a real one?
This represents Part 5 in a series of 25 posts about my favorite as well as the most disappointing entertainment properties/trends of the last ten years. To Be Continued!
つづく...(Click here to read more)
I'm sure it's very, very hard to make a successful film from a critical or financial standpoint (to say nothing of both). One easy way to get people in the seats is to make a movie based on a known property. In the 1990s Hollywood dabbled in movies based on popular video games. The results were pretty abysmal; I'd argue that the only one of the bunch worth a damn is Mortal Kombat (1995) because it gets most of the characters right and they spend most of the film fighting each other. Then they tried to make a sequel and pissed away what little momentum the series had.
However, it takes time to get these things right. Movies and games are two very different mediums for storytelling, and the latter has only really begun to dabble in that department in the last twenty years or so. As games develop their narrative chops and, in this era of high-resolution graphics and performances from actual actors, crib more cinematic techniques as they go, movies and games should slowly converge, right?
Looking at the past ten years, the answer is a resounding "fuck no." Video game based movies seem to be the dumping ground for any and every cliched action script that only the hackiest of hacks can spit out. The process seems to be: [A] acquire rights to video game license [B] hire somebody to write a script based purely on the title of said game [C] release the resulting mess into theaters and watch it end up on DVD six weeks later. [D] Profit, I guess, because they keep doing this shit.
Look at Uwe Boll's first outing into game cinema, House of the Dead (2003). I'm hardly a fan of the original series of games, but I've played/seen them enough to know that they center around secret agents shooting zombies. Somehow the movie is about a group of teens who take a party boat to "Death Island" and wind up being attacked by the undead. Eventually there is one scene of shooting zombies and it's nothing but a long Matrix-inspired sequence of low-budget bullet time. Curiously, clips of the real game are actually edited into the movie, almost as a reminder as to what the story should be about, but isn't.
By all accounts, House of the Dead was a failure but Uwe Boll got to make another video game movie which managed to out-suck his first one. Alone in the Dark (2005) is the kind of film that routinely shows up on "worst movie ever made" lists and has been thoroughly mocked by the Agony Booth and The Nostalgia Critic, among others. Yet someone made their money back because Uwe Boll kept making movies, quickly cementing himself as a crap merchant dealing exclusively in video game properties. When video game companies license negotiate movie rights now, they demand a say in picking the director solely to avoid this guy (it's known as the "Uwe Boll Clause" and I'm sure they're only half-joking).
It wasn't just Uwe Boll though. Look at the Resident Evil trilogy of films which range from mediocre to OMG-awful yet a fourth film is on the way. Those games are extremely cinematic in their presentations, relying heavily on voice acting and camera angles from the beginning. It should have been an easy adaptation to make, but someone decided to gut the story and just turn it into another zombie movie and not a particularly good one. There's also a litany of forgettable movies based on fighting games like Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, D.O.A. with more on the way. No, I won't mention them by name because they make my brain hurt.
The future of video game movies is bright, at least in comparison to what we've got now. The Prince of Persia movie seems to have a lot of money behind it and a decent leading man, but I'm not holding my breath. It's not like Jerry Bruckheimer hasn't disappointed in the past. Even if that movie fails, I hope someone eventually figures out that games have stories worth telling because a good video game movie would be spectacular. If a fan-made zero-budget short like Turbo can at least approximate the excitement of a fake video game, why can't a multi-million dollar production even come close to a real one?
This represents Part 5 in a series of 25 posts about my favorite as well as the most disappointing entertainment properties/trends of the last ten years. To Be Continued!
Labels: House of the Dead, I hate the 00s, movies, Resident Evil, Uwe Boll, video games
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Monday, December 14, 2009
I Love the 00s: Dystopian Laugh Riots
Let's transition from the the disappointment of the Dreamcast by highlighting two brilliant movies that predict a less-than rosy future for the human race. These are two of my favorite movies of the past ten years but even though they're both comedies that doesn't mean they don't also carry a message: we're on the wrong track.
WALL-E (2008): Pixar has been on a real roll in recent years, but WALL-E was a particularly remarkable achievement. This is a movie starring a barely-humanoid garbage-sorting robot with minimal vocal capacity and it manages to be more charming than all the "celebrity-voiced cute animal movies" put together. The eponymous WALL-E looks a little like Johnny 5 from Short Circuit in that he has a "head" and "arms" but tire treads instead of legs. He can't crack jokes or wax philosophically about "no disassemble" but he doesn't have to. Through pantomime and the occasional recitation of his own name, he communicates exactly what's on his mind to the audience.
WALL-E is almost two movies in one. The first is WALL-E sorting trash on our planet centuries after we high-tailed it into outer space. The second is WALL-E's encounter with a bio-seeking probe which leads him back to the robot-driven ship that initiated the search. As amazing as this sounds, laughs and tears permeate both halves of the story. While the ending may be a little too happy for the children's sake, I'll be damned if I wasn't stirred a little bit in my cold, cold heart when that musical cue from 2001: A Space Odyssey pops up during the climax.
Idiocracy (2006): Here's a movie that went criminally unnoticed in theaters, something made all the more insulting when you realize that director Mike Judge's previous feature Office Space met the same unfortunate fate. At this rate his next film will open in two theaters in North Dakota on a Tuesday night before finding a cult audience on DVD.
Idiocracy is a grand satirical comedy that shares a few traits with Woody Allen's hit Sleeper: both films center on a regular guy who wakes up in the distant future, alone in a world he barely recognizes. But while Woody awoke to an advanced society with robot butlers and orgasmatrons, Luke Wilson in Idiocracy finds himself in a world where the lowest common denominator has taken over. Famine is widespread because no one knows how to raise crops, the blockbuster of the era is an exclusively fart-driven epic called Ass and the main news source is, of course, Fox News. One wonders whether 20th Century Fox, the producers of Idiocracy, found that particular plot point offensive or good corporate synergy. Neither would surprise me.
Both Wall-E and Idiocracy take place on an Earth that has collapsed under the weight of our society's worst habits and corporate indifference to their own wicked deeds. The good news is that despite that bleak premise, both films are guaranteed to cheer you up: WALL-E for its robot love story and the eventual redemption of the human race and Idiocracy for its dead-on, hilarious take on our celebration of ignorance. Personally, I don't think an Ass-like movie is more than forty years away, tops.
This represents Part 4 in a series of 25 posts about my favorite as well as the most disappointing entertainment properties/trends of the last ten years. To Be Continued!
つづく...(Click here to read more)
WALL-E (2008): Pixar has been on a real roll in recent years, but WALL-E was a particularly remarkable achievement. This is a movie starring a barely-humanoid garbage-sorting robot with minimal vocal capacity and it manages to be more charming than all the "celebrity-voiced cute animal movies" put together. The eponymous WALL-E looks a little like Johnny 5 from Short Circuit in that he has a "head" and "arms" but tire treads instead of legs. He can't crack jokes or wax philosophically about "no disassemble" but he doesn't have to. Through pantomime and the occasional recitation of his own name, he communicates exactly what's on his mind to the audience.
WALL-E is almost two movies in one. The first is WALL-E sorting trash on our planet centuries after we high-tailed it into outer space. The second is WALL-E's encounter with a bio-seeking probe which leads him back to the robot-driven ship that initiated the search. As amazing as this sounds, laughs and tears permeate both halves of the story. While the ending may be a little too happy for the children's sake, I'll be damned if I wasn't stirred a little bit in my cold, cold heart when that musical cue from 2001: A Space Odyssey pops up during the climax.
Idiocracy (2006): Here's a movie that went criminally unnoticed in theaters, something made all the more insulting when you realize that director Mike Judge's previous feature Office Space met the same unfortunate fate. At this rate his next film will open in two theaters in North Dakota on a Tuesday night before finding a cult audience on DVD.
Idiocracy is a grand satirical comedy that shares a few traits with Woody Allen's hit Sleeper: both films center on a regular guy who wakes up in the distant future, alone in a world he barely recognizes. But while Woody awoke to an advanced society with robot butlers and orgasmatrons, Luke Wilson in Idiocracy finds himself in a world where the lowest common denominator has taken over. Famine is widespread because no one knows how to raise crops, the blockbuster of the era is an exclusively fart-driven epic called Ass and the main news source is, of course, Fox News. One wonders whether 20th Century Fox, the producers of Idiocracy, found that particular plot point offensive or good corporate synergy. Neither would surprise me.
Both Wall-E and Idiocracy take place on an Earth that has collapsed under the weight of our society's worst habits and corporate indifference to their own wicked deeds. The good news is that despite that bleak premise, both films are guaranteed to cheer you up: WALL-E for its robot love story and the eventual redemption of the human race and Idiocracy for its dead-on, hilarious take on our celebration of ignorance. Personally, I don't think an Ass-like movie is more than forty years away, tops.
This represents Part 4 in a series of 25 posts about my favorite as well as the most disappointing entertainment properties/trends of the last ten years. To Be Continued!
Labels: I love the 00s, Idiocracy, movies, sci-fi, WALL-E
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
I Love the 00s: Aughties Animation
It's funny that anime helped fuel my interest in Japan and the Japanese language, but now that I live here I hardly follow the field at all. That's not my fault though, that's just a statement on where anime has ended up. To kick off my 00 retrospective, here are four animated works (two Japanese, two American) that I hold near and dear to my heart.
Futurama (FOX, 1999-2003, plus four DVD movies): I consider it a cosmic tragedy that this brilliant sort-of spin-off of The Simpsons was run aground after four short seasons while that painfully unfunny juggernaut of a show continues to amuse no one every Sunday night.
Unlike The Simpsons which slowly found its way from overly sentimental, crudely animated fluff to comic genius, Futurama hit the ground running. The premise was surprisingly simple: take a know-nothing delivery boy and catapult him a thousand years into the future. While the show was happy to make occasional fish-out-of-water jokes (i.e. Fry's ignorance that "Christmas" had been replaced by "Xmas" and Santa was now a terrifying killbot) they also allowed Fry's simplicity to let him adapt to the future in a hurry.
I don't think it's simply my love of science-fiction that got me hooked on Futurama, I think the show nailed that delicate balance between absurdist humor and genuine character development and interaction. One moment the crew of the Planet Express ship is hopping through boxes into alternate universes, the next they're reflecting on how different their lives could have been if only that coin had come up heads...or tails.
The Venture Bros. (Adult Swim, 2003-present): It's funny to me that The Venture Bros. seems totally out of place among the Adult Swim lineup of barely-animated stoner humor and FOX reruns yet I couldn't imagine it running on any other network. Many shows on AS are rated TV-M for "mature" while they are anything but; the rating simply allows them to use gratuitous violence, pixelated nudity and beeped-out curse words. The Venture Bros has its share of violence, sexuality and profanity to be sure, but it's actually presented as part of a comprehensive story that's getting more complicated by the week. I swear the fourth season premiere delivered more exposition, laughs and intrigue in thirty minutes than most major network programming, animated or otherwise.
Summarizing The Venture Bros. is probably impossible. At the heart of the story is a failed "super-scientist," his washed-out special agent bodyguard, and his delusional twins who fancy themselves detectives, adventurers or anything other than the sheltered naive boys that they truly are. The family is tormented by a madman who dresses like a butterfly while they are occasionally assisted by an oddball "necromancer" and two scientists who live in a trailer park. In short, everyone on the show is a complete mess, yet after watching an episode or two I defy you to not care about every single one of them. When a relatively minor character died at the end of season three, I was stunned and more than a little dejected. He felt more human than either of the dead doctors on House.
Millennium Actress (2001, Japan): I first heard of director Satoshi Kon when I watched the credits after his stirring, twisted thriller Perfect Blue (1997). I never would have guessed his next film would be stirring, twisted love story nor that it would actually make me cry. I'm not normally the type to do that but even on repeat viewings I have to restrain myself during the final montage.
Millennium Actress tells the tale of a filmmaker who tracks down a reclusive, long-retired actress Chiyoko Fujiwara for an in-depth interview. As he sits down with her to talk about the past, he and his cameraman find themselves embedded in her flashbacks and fluctuating between Chiyoko's life story and the movies she made. It's just as disorientating as it was in Perfect Blue, only this time the technique is used to delight rather than horrify. The music is wonderful as well, particularly during the rapid-fire sequences where the characters run from era to era and movie genre to genre across Chiyoko's memories/fantasies. Much like Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress is an adult movie that is perfectly suited for animation because it allows the director to seamlessly blend together what's real and what's not.
Paranoia Agent (WOWOW, 2004): Another Satoshi Kon creation, Paranoia Agent is a thirteen-episode mini-series that originally aired on Japanese satellite TV before being horribly dubbed and shown on Adult Swim. While many characters come and go, the central story revolves around a young woman who is attacked one night by a boy with a bat on inline skates. As the police investigate, the story of Shonen Bat (literally "bat boy" in Japanese) spreads across the country. Hung onto the main story are several smaller tales of individuals whose lives are spinning out of control, only to come into contact with Shonen Bat. Soon reports of bat attacks and potential suspects dominate the public's attention.
I saw this series shortly before spending an entire year in Japan as an exchange student That experience really enhanced my enjoyment of Paranoia Agent because I saw first hand how quickly news can spread in this country. A single violent crime, diet fad or comedy punchline can captivate millions of people in a hurry. Even if you've never lived in Japan, this is an easily relatable and highly entertaining tale of media frenzy and its effects on a frightened populace. I certainly didn't see the demented twist coming.
This represents Part 1 in a series of 25 posts about my favorite as well as the most disappointing entertainment properties/trends of the last ten years. To Be Continued!
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Futurama (FOX, 1999-2003, plus four DVD movies): I consider it a cosmic tragedy that this brilliant sort-of spin-off of The Simpsons was run aground after four short seasons while that painfully unfunny juggernaut of a show continues to amuse no one every Sunday night.
Unlike The Simpsons which slowly found its way from overly sentimental, crudely animated fluff to comic genius, Futurama hit the ground running. The premise was surprisingly simple: take a know-nothing delivery boy and catapult him a thousand years into the future. While the show was happy to make occasional fish-out-of-water jokes (i.e. Fry's ignorance that "Christmas" had been replaced by "Xmas" and Santa was now a terrifying killbot) they also allowed Fry's simplicity to let him adapt to the future in a hurry.
I don't think it's simply my love of science-fiction that got me hooked on Futurama, I think the show nailed that delicate balance between absurdist humor and genuine character development and interaction. One moment the crew of the Planet Express ship is hopping through boxes into alternate universes, the next they're reflecting on how different their lives could have been if only that coin had come up heads...or tails.
The Venture Bros. (Adult Swim, 2003-present): It's funny to me that The Venture Bros. seems totally out of place among the Adult Swim lineup of barely-animated stoner humor and FOX reruns yet I couldn't imagine it running on any other network. Many shows on AS are rated TV-M for "mature" while they are anything but; the rating simply allows them to use gratuitous violence, pixelated nudity and beeped-out curse words. The Venture Bros has its share of violence, sexuality and profanity to be sure, but it's actually presented as part of a comprehensive story that's getting more complicated by the week. I swear the fourth season premiere delivered more exposition, laughs and intrigue in thirty minutes than most major network programming, animated or otherwise.
Summarizing The Venture Bros. is probably impossible. At the heart of the story is a failed "super-scientist," his washed-out special agent bodyguard, and his delusional twins who fancy themselves detectives, adventurers or anything other than the sheltered naive boys that they truly are. The family is tormented by a madman who dresses like a butterfly while they are occasionally assisted by an oddball "necromancer" and two scientists who live in a trailer park. In short, everyone on the show is a complete mess, yet after watching an episode or two I defy you to not care about every single one of them. When a relatively minor character died at the end of season three, I was stunned and more than a little dejected. He felt more human than either of the dead doctors on House.
Millennium Actress (2001, Japan): I first heard of director Satoshi Kon when I watched the credits after his stirring, twisted thriller Perfect Blue (1997). I never would have guessed his next film would be stirring, twisted love story nor that it would actually make me cry. I'm not normally the type to do that but even on repeat viewings I have to restrain myself during the final montage.
Millennium Actress tells the tale of a filmmaker who tracks down a reclusive, long-retired actress Chiyoko Fujiwara for an in-depth interview. As he sits down with her to talk about the past, he and his cameraman find themselves embedded in her flashbacks and fluctuating between Chiyoko's life story and the movies she made. It's just as disorientating as it was in Perfect Blue, only this time the technique is used to delight rather than horrify. The music is wonderful as well, particularly during the rapid-fire sequences where the characters run from era to era and movie genre to genre across Chiyoko's memories/fantasies. Much like Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress is an adult movie that is perfectly suited for animation because it allows the director to seamlessly blend together what's real and what's not.
Paranoia Agent (WOWOW, 2004): Another Satoshi Kon creation, Paranoia Agent is a thirteen-episode mini-series that originally aired on Japanese satellite TV before being horribly dubbed and shown on Adult Swim. While many characters come and go, the central story revolves around a young woman who is attacked one night by a boy with a bat on inline skates. As the police investigate, the story of Shonen Bat (literally "bat boy" in Japanese) spreads across the country. Hung onto the main story are several smaller tales of individuals whose lives are spinning out of control, only to come into contact with Shonen Bat. Soon reports of bat attacks and potential suspects dominate the public's attention.
I saw this series shortly before spending an entire year in Japan as an exchange student That experience really enhanced my enjoyment of Paranoia Agent because I saw first hand how quickly news can spread in this country. A single violent crime, diet fad or comedy punchline can captivate millions of people in a hurry. Even if you've never lived in Japan, this is an easily relatable and highly entertaining tale of media frenzy and its effects on a frightened populace. I certainly didn't see the demented twist coming.
This represents Part 1 in a series of 25 posts about my favorite as well as the most disappointing entertainment properties/trends of the last ten years. To Be Continued!
Labels: anime, Futurama, I love the 00s, Millennium Actress, movies, Paranoia Agent, Satoshi Kon, television, Venture Bros
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Thankful for the Basterds
Hey, it's Thanksgiving! Oh hey, I'm in Japan, so Thanksgiving doesn't mean dick! Indeed, this will be my first Thanksgiving in four years without any familial contact. Last year I was in New York on this holiday and the year before that my parents and sister were in town for my wedding. Frankly, even four years ago I was at Kansai Gaidai surrounded by similarly homesick Americans. I guess I can take some comfort in that I'm in the process of building my own family now, so someday in the future we can have our own Thanksgiving if we feel like it.
I keep thinking about Inglorious Basterds and how terrific it was. The more I revisit it in my mind, the more things I find to love about it. Conversely, I find the elements that bugged me about the movie becoming less significant. This is the opposite of how my thought process usually works. Typically, when I reflect on a film, video game or whatever, I latch onto the flaws and nitpick them while telling myself "I can only do this because the rest of it was so good." With Inglorious Basterds I'm actually downplaying elements that irritated me when I first watched it.
For example, I was not a fan of Eli Roth as Donny, "the Bear Jew." I hold no personal animosity towards the man (I liked Cabin Fever and found Hostel more interesting than people give it credit for) but his portrayal of the supposedly-intimidating bat-wielding Nazi killer did not work for me. There's an incredible set-up for the character where high-ranking Nazis (including Adolf Hitler!) discuss how horrible he is and how he might be a "golem" (boy do I regret not noting how they translated that word into Japanese), plus there's that long shot of the tunnel where you cannot see him but you hear the sound of his bat coming from the dark. But when he emerges, he's just a (somewhat) hairy guy in an undershirt. Not particularly bear-like, in my opinion.
However, as I think about the film again and again, I realize that the entire Basterds unit was a rather unassuming bunch of guys. They're not particularly bad-ass, they just kill Nazis in a purposely brutal fashion so that their enemies will spread rumors about their deeds. They're not The Dirty Dozen, they're just regular soldiers with a colorful modus operandi and Donny is perfect when viewed in that context. He's a loudmouth, a braggart; he carries a big stick but speaks loudly anyway. When he finds himself in a tight spot, such as sitting in a cinema full of Nazi brass, he looks genuinely terrified because he's in over his head.
(SPOILER ALERT)
...
...
In the end, their plan only succeeds due to the unexpected actions of others, namely Landa and Shosanna. Were it not for their "help," so to speak, Donny and the rest of the Basterds would have been killed, easily.
(end spoilers)
Even better than reconsidering what I didn't like about Inglorious Basterds is discovering new things that I did like. It occurred to me today that the movie made a direct appeal to me on a linguistic level. I have always had a strong sense of curiosity when it comes to foreign languages. The whole reason I live in Japan now is because of my interest in Japanese, and even though I'll probably never "master" it (if such a thing is even possible) I'm always on the lookout for tidbits of other languages.
One of the highlights of the JET Mid-Year Seminar is the free language class we get to remind us of what it's like to have a stranger speak to us using words we do not understand. After all, that's exactly what we do for a living. We never get too deep, as it's only one session, but I find it fascinating even if my retention level is pretty poor. Twice now I've gotten a taste of Cantonese from fellow JET Helen and the most I can remember is 1, 2, and 3.
Watching Inglorious Basterds reminded me of how exciting a multi-lingual environment can be. Nearly every character in the film speaks two languages with the glaring exception of the Basterds themselves. This is a group charged with infiltrating Nazi-occupied territory and the only members of the team who speak German were born in Europe. It reminds me of my trips abroad in high school when I met children my own age who spoke English wonderfully in addition to their native tongue while they were studying a third language in school. Meanwhile I was barely navigating basic conversations in French and my German was little more than a collection of nouns that sounded funny (e.g. eierstokke).
I know it's unfair to compare a multi-cultural continent like Europe with an archipelago nation that has serious xenophobia issues, but ever since I saw Inglorious Basterds Japan's view of foreign languages suddenly feels more imprisoning than ever. My day job consists of trying to expose sheltered rural children to the idea that there is an entire world full of people out there who do not speak Japanese. More often than not, I am met with resistance against the very notion that someone could speak more than one language. Everything around here is black and white in that respects.
I am told time and time again how "difficult" English is, as if that explains their national hostility towards it. Twenty years ago I spent months studying Hebrew against my will for my Bar Mitzvah. It wasn't easy and I complained a lot but I still did it. Compared to that, asking these kids to learn a handful of vocabulary words or study the alphabet does not strike me as unreasonable, yet their teachers cannot wait to make excuses for their lack of cooperation.
When you get right down to it, it's hardly the children's fault that they struggle with English. The entirety of Japanese society goes out of its way to shelter itself from foreign language. Advertisements are more likely to include a Japanese "search term" than an actual URL, lest a customer have trouble remembering a few letter of the alphabet. When foreigners appear on television outside of the NHK nightly news, they are typically subtitled and dubbed into Japanese. As if that double translation isn't enough to mask their bizarre manner of speaking, their words will be carefully rewritten to mimic rigid Japanese gender-based speech patterns.
Even while watching Inglorious Basterds in the theater I was feeling the Japanese pressure via the relentless subtitles. Absolutely every line in the film is subtitled, even ones that did not carry English subtitles, even one-word replies and people's names. Even Hugo's knife, which had an engraved message that flashed across screen for half a second while he sharpened it (upside-down, if I'm not mistaken), was subtitled in Japanese. Not a single moment in the film is left up to the audience to bear in an unfamiliar language. Hell, even when the year is written at the bottom of the screen, there's a Japanese subtitle just to make it clear that this is a year as opposed to a random declaration of a four-digit number (which they can totally read, by the way).
I guess I'll never understand why they are so anxious about these things, why nothing can be left untranslated or unexplained. Believe me, I wince when I see how the United States handles foreign language and foreign concepts from time to time (what I wouldn't give to see subtitled films in movie theaters instead of waiting for DVD), but at least we trust our lowest-common-denominators to understand that "si" and "non" mean "yes" and "no." Relax, Japan! A few funny-sounding words won't kill you, capice?
つづく...(Click here to read more)
I keep thinking about Inglorious Basterds and how terrific it was. The more I revisit it in my mind, the more things I find to love about it. Conversely, I find the elements that bugged me about the movie becoming less significant. This is the opposite of how my thought process usually works. Typically, when I reflect on a film, video game or whatever, I latch onto the flaws and nitpick them while telling myself "I can only do this because the rest of it was so good." With Inglorious Basterds I'm actually downplaying elements that irritated me when I first watched it.
For example, I was not a fan of Eli Roth as Donny, "the Bear Jew." I hold no personal animosity towards the man (I liked Cabin Fever and found Hostel more interesting than people give it credit for) but his portrayal of the supposedly-intimidating bat-wielding Nazi killer did not work for me. There's an incredible set-up for the character where high-ranking Nazis (including Adolf Hitler!) discuss how horrible he is and how he might be a "golem" (boy do I regret not noting how they translated that word into Japanese), plus there's that long shot of the tunnel where you cannot see him but you hear the sound of his bat coming from the dark. But when he emerges, he's just a (somewhat) hairy guy in an undershirt. Not particularly bear-like, in my opinion.
However, as I think about the film again and again, I realize that the entire Basterds unit was a rather unassuming bunch of guys. They're not particularly bad-ass, they just kill Nazis in a purposely brutal fashion so that their enemies will spread rumors about their deeds. They're not The Dirty Dozen, they're just regular soldiers with a colorful modus operandi and Donny is perfect when viewed in that context. He's a loudmouth, a braggart; he carries a big stick but speaks loudly anyway. When he finds himself in a tight spot, such as sitting in a cinema full of Nazi brass, he looks genuinely terrified because he's in over his head.
(SPOILER ALERT)
...
...
In the end, their plan only succeeds due to the unexpected actions of others, namely Landa and Shosanna. Were it not for their "help," so to speak, Donny and the rest of the Basterds would have been killed, easily.
(end spoilers)
Even better than reconsidering what I didn't like about Inglorious Basterds is discovering new things that I did like. It occurred to me today that the movie made a direct appeal to me on a linguistic level. I have always had a strong sense of curiosity when it comes to foreign languages. The whole reason I live in Japan now is because of my interest in Japanese, and even though I'll probably never "master" it (if such a thing is even possible) I'm always on the lookout for tidbits of other languages.
One of the highlights of the JET Mid-Year Seminar is the free language class we get to remind us of what it's like to have a stranger speak to us using words we do not understand. After all, that's exactly what we do for a living. We never get too deep, as it's only one session, but I find it fascinating even if my retention level is pretty poor. Twice now I've gotten a taste of Cantonese from fellow JET Helen and the most I can remember is 1, 2, and 3.
Watching Inglorious Basterds reminded me of how exciting a multi-lingual environment can be. Nearly every character in the film speaks two languages with the glaring exception of the Basterds themselves. This is a group charged with infiltrating Nazi-occupied territory and the only members of the team who speak German were born in Europe. It reminds me of my trips abroad in high school when I met children my own age who spoke English wonderfully in addition to their native tongue while they were studying a third language in school. Meanwhile I was barely navigating basic conversations in French and my German was little more than a collection of nouns that sounded funny (e.g. eierstokke).
I know it's unfair to compare a multi-cultural continent like Europe with an archipelago nation that has serious xenophobia issues, but ever since I saw Inglorious Basterds Japan's view of foreign languages suddenly feels more imprisoning than ever. My day job consists of trying to expose sheltered rural children to the idea that there is an entire world full of people out there who do not speak Japanese. More often than not, I am met with resistance against the very notion that someone could speak more than one language. Everything around here is black and white in that respects.
I am told time and time again how "difficult" English is, as if that explains their national hostility towards it. Twenty years ago I spent months studying Hebrew against my will for my Bar Mitzvah. It wasn't easy and I complained a lot but I still did it. Compared to that, asking these kids to learn a handful of vocabulary words or study the alphabet does not strike me as unreasonable, yet their teachers cannot wait to make excuses for their lack of cooperation.
When you get right down to it, it's hardly the children's fault that they struggle with English. The entirety of Japanese society goes out of its way to shelter itself from foreign language. Advertisements are more likely to include a Japanese "search term" than an actual URL, lest a customer have trouble remembering a few letter of the alphabet. When foreigners appear on television outside of the NHK nightly news, they are typically subtitled and dubbed into Japanese. As if that double translation isn't enough to mask their bizarre manner of speaking, their words will be carefully rewritten to mimic rigid Japanese gender-based speech patterns.
Even while watching Inglorious Basterds in the theater I was feeling the Japanese pressure via the relentless subtitles. Absolutely every line in the film is subtitled, even ones that did not carry English subtitles, even one-word replies and people's names. Even Hugo's knife, which had an engraved message that flashed across screen for half a second while he sharpened it (upside-down, if I'm not mistaken), was subtitled in Japanese. Not a single moment in the film is left up to the audience to bear in an unfamiliar language. Hell, even when the year is written at the bottom of the screen, there's a Japanese subtitle just to make it clear that this is a year as opposed to a random declaration of a four-digit number (which they can totally read, by the way).
I guess I'll never understand why they are so anxious about these things, why nothing can be left untranslated or unexplained. Believe me, I wince when I see how the United States handles foreign language and foreign concepts from time to time (what I wouldn't give to see subtitled films in movie theaters instead of waiting for DVD), but at least we trust our lowest-common-denominators to understand that "si" and "non" mean "yes" and "no." Relax, Japan! A few funny-sounding words won't kill you, capice?
Labels: frustration, Inglorious Basterds, Japan, JET, movies, teaching, Thanksgiving
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Game On, You Basterds!
Yikes, sick again. I just had a cold around Halloween, how can I have another one so soon? It's not fair! I keep telling myself that as long as there's no fever, I don't have the flu and I've got no excuse to stay home from work. Am I nuts?
Bronchial issues aside, I had a terrific weekend. On Saturday we dropped Go off with Mako's parents (with their blessing!) so the two of us could just spend the day together. Mako was nervous that something would go wrong and that they would never agree to watch him again but I can't imagine why. If anything, Mako's mom is better at getting the baby to fall asleep than either of us!
The first errand of the day turned out to be buying my birthday present. I have been without a wristwatch for the better part of three years now, perhaps longer. I guess when my last watch disappeared/died/whatever, I figured there was no rush to replace it because I already carry around a device that keeps time: it's called a mobile phone. Why bother strapping a completely redundant device to my wrist for a singular purpose?
What I've come to realize during that time is that using a phone as your primary timepiece is a major pain in the ass. First of all, it's always going to be in a pocket somewhere, which means to check the time I have to pull it out. This can not be done in a subtle fashion and we all know there are a variety of social situations where noticeably looking at a clock is a faux pas. Standing in front of a room full of children is certainly one of those situations, and while they are not offended per se it is impossible to look without creating a major distraction.
So after a few months of contemplating a watch, my wife listened to my murmurings and decided it would make a good birthday present. She also wisely realized that picking a watch without my input would be foolish, so we chose one together in Yodobashi Camera. It's probably the most expensive watch I've ever owned, but that's not saying much because I have always favored low-end digital watches. In my mind, wristwatches are like sunglasses: they are entirely too fragile to bother spending a lot of money on. But not this watch! It's a G-Shock with a stainless steel band, black with bronze "highlights" if you will. It feels heavy and looks good.
After buying the watch we went upstairs to Yodobashi The Dining (I love that name for a floor of restaurants) and had a terrific Chinese buffet lunch. It cost too much money, I suppose, but it tasted great and it was a special occasion of sorts. Here's a brief glimpse of our food and my watch as seen on Twitpic:
The main event of the day, by far, was our trip to the movies to see Inglorious Basterds which only just opened in Japan. Given Tarantino's fame here and their absolute adoration for all things Brad Pitt, I'm really surprised it took so long to show up in theaters. Then again, compared to most of the movies I wanted to watch in 2009, it arrived relatively quickly. A three month wait to see Inglorious Basterds is nothing compared to, well, FOREVER for the various indie movies I've been reading about all year. If I'm lucky, District 9 might show up on DVD sometime next winter...and that's a big if.
This sounds like griping but there is a point: in a movie-starved year for me, Inglorious Basterds was the best movie I've seen in a long time. I was a little uneasy about the premise, if only because I feel like I've seen enough World War II movies to last me until World War III, but Quentin Tarantino somehow made a war movie without much of a war in it. Even though nearly all the characters are soldiers, there are no scenes of combat and only a few minutes of gunfire ("few" being relative to the film's substantial length). Nearly all of that action takes place in the finale which is all the more powerful given the scarcity of violence leading up to it.
This is not to say the movie isn't tense; I would argue it's his most riveting film to date. The opening scene felt like it was an hour long but I say that because I was going out of my mind waiting for the hammer to drop. It's ostensibly a conversation between a high-ranking German and a French dairy farmer, full of conversational pleasantries (i.e. "Would you mind if I smoked my pipe?") yet I was on the edge of my seat. I don't know how he does it, but QT's dialogue continues to impress me with each and every picture he makes.
There's also the little things, small moments and quick shots that have no apparent meaning to me but I delighted in each one: Brad Pitt's character has a giant scar on his neck that is never explained. Julie Dreyfus' ridiculously gaudy wardrobe, particularly that leopard-like hat. Landa forgetting about the cream for the strudel, then insisting on waiting for it to arrive, followed by close-ups of it being served. Zoller's increasingly ostentatious uniform. The SS officer drinking beer out of a glass boot. The dwarf painting Hitler's portrait. Hitler's fucking CAPE.
The only thing that really confused me about the movie was its title. Not the misspelling of "bastards" but the decision to name the film after such minor characters. The team is introduced early in the film but few of them have any lines and none of them are on screen for very long. I suppose a few of them are integral to the finale but without giving anything away, there's a larger story at work which they are completely independent of. They are largely forgettable as characters with the exception of Donny and perhaps Hugo.
The real star of the film, both from a character and acting point of view, is Colonel Landa (Christoph Waltz). He's mesmerizing and I'm pretty sure that's the first time I've ever used that word (I had no idea how to spell it). From his conversation with the dairy farmer to his strudel moment to his extended laughter in the theater lobby to his last moment on screen, I could not take my eyes off of him. Here's a guy who has never been in a Hollywood movie before, playing a goddamn Nazi, and yet he's so charming he's almost sympathetic. He owns every scene that he's in, easily outshining Brad Pitt for sure. I hope when the time comes he is lauded like no other actor has been lauded before.
So yeah, I love the movie. Loved it. I spent the rest of Saturday and most of Sunday just thinking about how much I loved it. I didn't have much else to do at the time, which helped.
On Monday I made a hell of a long trek down to southern Osaka (yes, past KIX) for a gaming party thrown by fellow JET Graham. With the baby around and my relative isolation from other JETs, I suppose it was also the closest thing I'd have to a birthday party this year, so I was pretty excited about it. I was among the first people to arrive although my unfashionable earliness was intentional. Since it was so far away I knew I'd be leaving pretty early, so I wanted to get in as much gaming/socializing as I could before making the trek back home.
Graham's setup was really impressive. There was a big screen TV with a PS3 and all variants of plastic instruments hooked up in the main room of the party, which obviously spent most of the afternoon engaging in one kind of music game or another. However there was also a Wii and an Xbox in additional rooms, plus a computer with all sorts of emulators and two gamepads. Truly, there was something for everyone.
The first game I played was one I was kind of excited about, New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Graham and I played through the entire first world together, taking advantage of the game's simultaneous co-op mode. It's funny how easy it was to accept a two-player Mario game even though it's a completely new experience in the twenty-five year history of the franchise. Sure, we got in each other's way a few times and maybe he grabbed a mushroom that totally should have been mine, but for the most part we were working together in delightful ways. Your characters have a lot of interactivity potential, from bouncing on one another to outright picking up another player and throwing him.
My biggest complaint was, sadly, my predominant one with Wii games: controls. The Wiimote does not feel comfortable when held sideways. It might resemble a classic controller in that position but it certainly doesn't feel like one. Also, the inclusion of motion controls (shaking, twisting, etc) is downright obnoxious. I understand the fun of pretending to swing a baseball bat or a golf club, Nintendo, but don't force me to jerk my hands around just to spin jump. Considering how often the simplicity of Wii controls is touted, this strikes me as a grievous miscalculation. Still, if I can convince Mako to try it I will absolutely buy this game for our home.
Next up was an "oldie" (from five months ago) that I had been very curious about, Prototype. You might remember it hit shelves around the same time as inFAMOUS did with a very similar premise: ordinary dude gets extraordinary powers in an open-world city environment. While inFAMOUS had a demo (which I absolutely detested) Prototype did not and I didn't really hear enough glowing praise to make me take a chance on it. I was also in the middle of BioShock at the time and, let's face it, that's a hard game to put down.
I'm happy to report that Prototype is a lot of fun. It opens in medias res with your character Alex rampaging in Times Square. There are soldiers, tanks, helicopters and mutant things all around you and none of them are friendly. There are also hundreds of civilians, taxi cabs and other elements that are neutral towards you but you are free to dispatch them if you feel like it. Indeed, a well-aimed automobile is the easiest way to take down a gunship.
The carnage abruptly ends and you return to the start of the story with Alex waking up in a morgue. While many of the outrageous powers you just used are no longer available, Alex is still perfectly capable of leaping tall obstacles and running up the sides of buildings. The game gives you a few quick objectives (elude the military, find Alex's sister) but it quickly opens up and lets you do whatever the hell you want. I spent a good half-hour or so running around (and up) Manhattan fooling around with Alex's super powers. There is a Grand Theft Auto-esque warning system where you can attract the authorities' attention by acting suspiciously, but it's refreshingly lax. It wasn't until I started smashing police cars together that anyone seemed to take notice and even then a few minutes of not acting like a monster was enough to make everyone calm down. Compare that to GTA IV where I swear a single bump of a patrol car can force you into a high-speed chase.
I suppose the big moment of the day was when I caved to peer pressure and picked up a fake guitar to play Beatles Rock Band. I am absolutely terrible at rhythm games and would have been much more comfortable grabbing a microphone instead, but my throat was pretty raw from coughing all day so I was in no condition to sing. At the very least, I can handle the bass on the Easy setting as there's only three buttons to worry about. I had fun despite my gross incompetence, especially as the game allows for up to six players (three on instruments, three on vocals) and we had more than enough willing participants for that.
The overall party experience was most pleasant. I am, as always, a poor mingler but I had a few nice conversations about games while indulging in junk food and many glasses of Coca-Cola. I honestly came home feeling like a kid because that about summarizes most of the parties I attended in my youth. The only thing missing was the pizza and the chance of a sleepover.
So to sum it all up, I ate delicious Chinese food and saw the best movie of 2009 on Saturday, lounged around the apartment on Sunday, then gorged myself on games and snacks on Monday. Pretty great weekend if I say so myself. And hey, I just realized that I'm flying home in a month!
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Bronchial issues aside, I had a terrific weekend. On Saturday we dropped Go off with Mako's parents (with their blessing!) so the two of us could just spend the day together. Mako was nervous that something would go wrong and that they would never agree to watch him again but I can't imagine why. If anything, Mako's mom is better at getting the baby to fall asleep than either of us!
The first errand of the day turned out to be buying my birthday present. I have been without a wristwatch for the better part of three years now, perhaps longer. I guess when my last watch disappeared/died/whatever, I figured there was no rush to replace it because I already carry around a device that keeps time: it's called a mobile phone. Why bother strapping a completely redundant device to my wrist for a singular purpose?
What I've come to realize during that time is that using a phone as your primary timepiece is a major pain in the ass. First of all, it's always going to be in a pocket somewhere, which means to check the time I have to pull it out. This can not be done in a subtle fashion and we all know there are a variety of social situations where noticeably looking at a clock is a faux pas. Standing in front of a room full of children is certainly one of those situations, and while they are not offended per se it is impossible to look without creating a major distraction.
So after a few months of contemplating a watch, my wife listened to my murmurings and decided it would make a good birthday present. She also wisely realized that picking a watch without my input would be foolish, so we chose one together in Yodobashi Camera. It's probably the most expensive watch I've ever owned, but that's not saying much because I have always favored low-end digital watches. In my mind, wristwatches are like sunglasses: they are entirely too fragile to bother spending a lot of money on. But not this watch! It's a G-Shock with a stainless steel band, black with bronze "highlights" if you will. It feels heavy and looks good.
After buying the watch we went upstairs to Yodobashi The Dining (I love that name for a floor of restaurants) and had a terrific Chinese buffet lunch. It cost too much money, I suppose, but it tasted great and it was a special occasion of sorts. Here's a brief glimpse of our food and my watch as seen on Twitpic:
The main event of the day, by far, was our trip to the movies to see Inglorious Basterds which only just opened in Japan. Given Tarantino's fame here and their absolute adoration for all things Brad Pitt, I'm really surprised it took so long to show up in theaters. Then again, compared to most of the movies I wanted to watch in 2009, it arrived relatively quickly. A three month wait to see Inglorious Basterds is nothing compared to, well, FOREVER for the various indie movies I've been reading about all year. If I'm lucky, District 9 might show up on DVD sometime next winter...and that's a big if.
This sounds like griping but there is a point: in a movie-starved year for me, Inglorious Basterds was the best movie I've seen in a long time. I was a little uneasy about the premise, if only because I feel like I've seen enough World War II movies to last me until World War III, but Quentin Tarantino somehow made a war movie without much of a war in it. Even though nearly all the characters are soldiers, there are no scenes of combat and only a few minutes of gunfire ("few" being relative to the film's substantial length). Nearly all of that action takes place in the finale which is all the more powerful given the scarcity of violence leading up to it.
This is not to say the movie isn't tense; I would argue it's his most riveting film to date. The opening scene felt like it was an hour long but I say that because I was going out of my mind waiting for the hammer to drop. It's ostensibly a conversation between a high-ranking German and a French dairy farmer, full of conversational pleasantries (i.e. "Would you mind if I smoked my pipe?") yet I was on the edge of my seat. I don't know how he does it, but QT's dialogue continues to impress me with each and every picture he makes.
There's also the little things, small moments and quick shots that have no apparent meaning to me but I delighted in each one: Brad Pitt's character has a giant scar on his neck that is never explained. Julie Dreyfus' ridiculously gaudy wardrobe, particularly that leopard-like hat. Landa forgetting about the cream for the strudel, then insisting on waiting for it to arrive, followed by close-ups of it being served. Zoller's increasingly ostentatious uniform. The SS officer drinking beer out of a glass boot. The dwarf painting Hitler's portrait. Hitler's fucking CAPE.
The only thing that really confused me about the movie was its title. Not the misspelling of "bastards" but the decision to name the film after such minor characters. The team is introduced early in the film but few of them have any lines and none of them are on screen for very long. I suppose a few of them are integral to the finale but without giving anything away, there's a larger story at work which they are completely independent of. They are largely forgettable as characters with the exception of Donny and perhaps Hugo.
The real star of the film, both from a character and acting point of view, is Colonel Landa (Christoph Waltz). He's mesmerizing and I'm pretty sure that's the first time I've ever used that word (I had no idea how to spell it). From his conversation with the dairy farmer to his strudel moment to his extended laughter in the theater lobby to his last moment on screen, I could not take my eyes off of him. Here's a guy who has never been in a Hollywood movie before, playing a goddamn Nazi, and yet he's so charming he's almost sympathetic. He owns every scene that he's in, easily outshining Brad Pitt for sure. I hope when the time comes he is lauded like no other actor has been lauded before.
So yeah, I love the movie. Loved it. I spent the rest of Saturday and most of Sunday just thinking about how much I loved it. I didn't have much else to do at the time, which helped.
On Monday I made a hell of a long trek down to southern Osaka (yes, past KIX) for a gaming party thrown by fellow JET Graham. With the baby around and my relative isolation from other JETs, I suppose it was also the closest thing I'd have to a birthday party this year, so I was pretty excited about it. I was among the first people to arrive although my unfashionable earliness was intentional. Since it was so far away I knew I'd be leaving pretty early, so I wanted to get in as much gaming/socializing as I could before making the trek back home.
Graham's setup was really impressive. There was a big screen TV with a PS3 and all variants of plastic instruments hooked up in the main room of the party, which obviously spent most of the afternoon engaging in one kind of music game or another. However there was also a Wii and an Xbox in additional rooms, plus a computer with all sorts of emulators and two gamepads. Truly, there was something for everyone.
The first game I played was one I was kind of excited about, New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Graham and I played through the entire first world together, taking advantage of the game's simultaneous co-op mode. It's funny how easy it was to accept a two-player Mario game even though it's a completely new experience in the twenty-five year history of the franchise. Sure, we got in each other's way a few times and maybe he grabbed a mushroom that totally should have been mine, but for the most part we were working together in delightful ways. Your characters have a lot of interactivity potential, from bouncing on one another to outright picking up another player and throwing him.
My biggest complaint was, sadly, my predominant one with Wii games: controls. The Wiimote does not feel comfortable when held sideways. It might resemble a classic controller in that position but it certainly doesn't feel like one. Also, the inclusion of motion controls (shaking, twisting, etc) is downright obnoxious. I understand the fun of pretending to swing a baseball bat or a golf club, Nintendo, but don't force me to jerk my hands around just to spin jump. Considering how often the simplicity of Wii controls is touted, this strikes me as a grievous miscalculation. Still, if I can convince Mako to try it I will absolutely buy this game for our home.
Next up was an "oldie" (from five months ago) that I had been very curious about, Prototype. You might remember it hit shelves around the same time as inFAMOUS did with a very similar premise: ordinary dude gets extraordinary powers in an open-world city environment. While inFAMOUS had a demo (which I absolutely detested) Prototype did not and I didn't really hear enough glowing praise to make me take a chance on it. I was also in the middle of BioShock at the time and, let's face it, that's a hard game to put down.
I'm happy to report that Prototype is a lot of fun. It opens in medias res with your character Alex rampaging in Times Square. There are soldiers, tanks, helicopters and mutant things all around you and none of them are friendly. There are also hundreds of civilians, taxi cabs and other elements that are neutral towards you but you are free to dispatch them if you feel like it. Indeed, a well-aimed automobile is the easiest way to take down a gunship.
The carnage abruptly ends and you return to the start of the story with Alex waking up in a morgue. While many of the outrageous powers you just used are no longer available, Alex is still perfectly capable of leaping tall obstacles and running up the sides of buildings. The game gives you a few quick objectives (elude the military, find Alex's sister) but it quickly opens up and lets you do whatever the hell you want. I spent a good half-hour or so running around (and up) Manhattan fooling around with Alex's super powers. There is a Grand Theft Auto-esque warning system where you can attract the authorities' attention by acting suspiciously, but it's refreshingly lax. It wasn't until I started smashing police cars together that anyone seemed to take notice and even then a few minutes of not acting like a monster was enough to make everyone calm down. Compare that to GTA IV where I swear a single bump of a patrol car can force you into a high-speed chase.
I suppose the big moment of the day was when I caved to peer pressure and picked up a fake guitar to play Beatles Rock Band. I am absolutely terrible at rhythm games and would have been much more comfortable grabbing a microphone instead, but my throat was pretty raw from coughing all day so I was in no condition to sing. At the very least, I can handle the bass on the Easy setting as there's only three buttons to worry about. I had fun despite my gross incompetence, especially as the game allows for up to six players (three on instruments, three on vocals) and we had more than enough willing participants for that.
The overall party experience was most pleasant. I am, as always, a poor mingler but I had a few nice conversations about games while indulging in junk food and many glasses of Coca-Cola. I honestly came home feeling like a kid because that about summarizes most of the parties I attended in my youth. The only thing missing was the pizza and the chance of a sleepover.
So to sum it all up, I ate delicious Chinese food and saw the best movie of 2009 on Saturday, lounged around the apartment on Sunday, then gorged myself on games and snacks on Monday. Pretty great weekend if I say so myself. And hey, I just realized that I'm flying home in a month!
Labels: Beatles Rock Band, but I love gatherings, Inglorious Basterds, movies, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Osaka, poor health, Prototype, PS3, video games, Wii, Xbox
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Ten Years of Project Mayhem
It's been ten years...am I still not supposed to talk about it?
Fight Club was released in US theaters on October 15th, 1999. I probably saw it two or three weeks later at the discount second-run Silver Cinemas near Poughkeepsie. I had no interest in the picture based on the advertising which seemed to focus on dudes fighting in a basement. Why would I want to watch a movie about that? Why would anyone?
Thankfully, my friend Joe called me at some point and told me I needed to see this movie. He assured me it wasn't about dudes fighting in a basement but wisely wouldn't tell me what it was actually about. Indeed, in that sense the advertising was actually brilliant in that in gave audiences no clue that Fight Club was actually a radical tale of anti-commercial ism and self-destruction. I've never managed to think of a way to successfully sell this story to people other than the way Joe did it: he told me I should see it and he was right.
I covered some of this in my now-five-year-old essay about meeting Chuck Palahniuk, but the impact Fight Club has had on my life is hard to underestimate. Superficially speaking, it became my favorite movie of all time (a title I think it still retains) and the book managed to draw me into reading as a hobby, something I was never really keen on. Not just Chuck Palahniuk's work either, but books in general and, surprisingly, non-fiction in particular. I still read novels but the ideas put forth in the movie motivated me to read more non-fiction because such books invariably force me to look at the world in a different light, questioning things I assumed were just or normal and making me consider alternative viewpoints.
Then again, I can't say I found myself espousing much of the same philosophy raised in Fight Club even if the movie seemed aimed directly at me. At the time it spoke to me because it was a movie about men who felt purposeless. The line that still sticks with me to this day more than any other is "I'm a thirty year old boy." I remember when I really was just a kid and I looked up at adults and I wondered when I would be a grown-up and know what to say and have a job and a family. When I saw Fight Club I was legally an adult at 22 but I was as lost as I ever had been as a kid. I lived alone in a crappy basement apartment, I had a dead-end job at the post office and my friends and I spent most of our weekends just drinking the time away. Some of them were in college at the time but I was years removed from my resounding academic failure and I had no plans to go back. I was single with absolutely no prospects, no confidence and no clue on how to even approach a woman. I was probably clinically depressed but too stubborn to get help. In every sense of the word, I was a loser.
I'm not going to say Fight Club turned things around for me (I credit my interest in Japan for that) but it definitely reminded me that I wasn't alone. It reminded me that my job, my apartment, my obesity and my loneliness did not define me as a person. I didn't need to feel lost because most people my age (or any age) were no more "complete" than I was. I was beating myself up for not having a girlfriend or a good job that people respected, but people who had those things weren't living problem-free lives, they just had different problems.
In Fight Club men get together and start doing horrible things to each other and society in general, but that wasn't the message I took away from the story. Rather than going out and get into fights, I just started going out for going out's sake. I began spending a lot more time visiting my college friends and meeting new people. I don't think it's a coincidence that less than a year after seeing Fight Club I enrolled in evening classes at The Japan Society in New York. The characters in the movie embraced self-destruction (and destruction in general, frankly) while I began a move towards self-improvement. They found purpose in fighting and retaking control of their lives, I just went for the latter without all the scarring the former would entail. The main character has an unfulfilling job and an unremarkable condo so he throws it all away in a quest to hit bottom - all so he can rebuild himself. I had much less to work with than he did but rather than destroy what I had, I skipped that part and just started fixing what little things I could. Maybe that's why it took me five years to finally quit that terrible job and get back to school.
I suppose there's no straight line to draw between Fight Club and anything it inspired me to do, see or read. All I can really say about it is that it's an excellent movie that I'll never forget. That doesn't make it sound very special but maybe it can't be special to everyone. At the very least, I promise you it's not about dudes fighting in a basement - although that totally happens.
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Fight Club was released in US theaters on October 15th, 1999. I probably saw it two or three weeks later at the discount second-run Silver Cinemas near Poughkeepsie. I had no interest in the picture based on the advertising which seemed to focus on dudes fighting in a basement. Why would I want to watch a movie about that? Why would anyone?
Thankfully, my friend Joe called me at some point and told me I needed to see this movie. He assured me it wasn't about dudes fighting in a basement but wisely wouldn't tell me what it was actually about. Indeed, in that sense the advertising was actually brilliant in that in gave audiences no clue that Fight Club was actually a radical tale of anti-commercial ism and self-destruction. I've never managed to think of a way to successfully sell this story to people other than the way Joe did it: he told me I should see it and he was right.
I covered some of this in my now-five-year-old essay about meeting Chuck Palahniuk, but the impact Fight Club has had on my life is hard to underestimate. Superficially speaking, it became my favorite movie of all time (a title I think it still retains) and the book managed to draw me into reading as a hobby, something I was never really keen on. Not just Chuck Palahniuk's work either, but books in general and, surprisingly, non-fiction in particular. I still read novels but the ideas put forth in the movie motivated me to read more non-fiction because such books invariably force me to look at the world in a different light, questioning things I assumed were just or normal and making me consider alternative viewpoints.
Then again, I can't say I found myself espousing much of the same philosophy raised in Fight Club even if the movie seemed aimed directly at me. At the time it spoke to me because it was a movie about men who felt purposeless. The line that still sticks with me to this day more than any other is "I'm a thirty year old boy." I remember when I really was just a kid and I looked up at adults and I wondered when I would be a grown-up and know what to say and have a job and a family. When I saw Fight Club I was legally an adult at 22 but I was as lost as I ever had been as a kid. I lived alone in a crappy basement apartment, I had a dead-end job at the post office and my friends and I spent most of our weekends just drinking the time away. Some of them were in college at the time but I was years removed from my resounding academic failure and I had no plans to go back. I was single with absolutely no prospects, no confidence and no clue on how to even approach a woman. I was probably clinically depressed but too stubborn to get help. In every sense of the word, I was a loser.
I'm not going to say Fight Club turned things around for me (I credit my interest in Japan for that) but it definitely reminded me that I wasn't alone. It reminded me that my job, my apartment, my obesity and my loneliness did not define me as a person. I didn't need to feel lost because most people my age (or any age) were no more "complete" than I was. I was beating myself up for not having a girlfriend or a good job that people respected, but people who had those things weren't living problem-free lives, they just had different problems.
In Fight Club men get together and start doing horrible things to each other and society in general, but that wasn't the message I took away from the story. Rather than going out and get into fights, I just started going out for going out's sake. I began spending a lot more time visiting my college friends and meeting new people. I don't think it's a coincidence that less than a year after seeing Fight Club I enrolled in evening classes at The Japan Society in New York. The characters in the movie embraced self-destruction (and destruction in general, frankly) while I began a move towards self-improvement. They found purpose in fighting and retaking control of their lives, I just went for the latter without all the scarring the former would entail. The main character has an unfulfilling job and an unremarkable condo so he throws it all away in a quest to hit bottom - all so he can rebuild himself. I had much less to work with than he did but rather than destroy what I had, I skipped that part and just started fixing what little things I could. Maybe that's why it took me five years to finally quit that terrible job and get back to school.
I suppose there's no straight line to draw between Fight Club and anything it inspired me to do, see or read. All I can really say about it is that it's an excellent movie that I'll never forget. That doesn't make it sound very special but maybe it can't be special to everyone. At the very least, I promise you it's not about dudes fighting in a basement - although that totally happens.
Labels: anniversary, Fight Club, movies
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Begin at the Beginning?
Babies are like little paradoxes. On the one hand, babies are all about now. They have no patience or restraint. If Go is hungry, he cries until he is fed. If Go has to pee, he pees. Doesn't matter if he's got his diaper on or not, he just lets it flow. He has no idea how to "wait" so my wife and I must be very attentive and aware that his needs are immediate. There's very little in the way of preparation or planning, it's all about response time.
On the other hand, the birth of my son has sent my mind leaping into the future and wondering about the decisions I will have to make that will shape his outlook of the world. How will I explain religion to him? Will he accept my general abstaining from spirituality or will he start preaching to me? What kinds of questions will he ask me about sex, death, morality, and politics? Will either one of us be satisfied with my answers?
Then there are matters of pop culture: which Star Wars trilogy should he watch first? Who should be his first captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise? And whatever shall I do about video games?
It sounds silly to put pastimes on par with philosophical issues, but the reality is that all of this stuff is going to come up. Parents don't get to choose what their kids will be into but they certainly get a vote. I was raised in a Jewish household so Christmas has always felt foreign to me. My parents loved The Beatles so I've always been more interested in their music (and their peers) rather than Elvis. Can I really say that one of these culture-defining choices had more of an impact on me than the other?
Of course, there is no direct relationship between what my parents supported and what I adopted. They both strongly encouraged me to read more books, so much so that I eventually rebelled out of spite. They were fairly ambivalent concerning video games (never outright condemning them but not accepting them either) but I embraced them and continue to hold them in high regard.
So where does that leave me and Go? I haven't started playing music for him yet but I've been considering building him a playlist. Books are going to be important for his bilingual education; I wish there was a local library with any significant English collection but I don't believe there is. Movies will come later, I suppose, and we'll just have to see what's appropriate at that time. I can't wait to take him to a movie theater for the first time. It's just too bad there aren't any cinemas in Japan with gilded lobbies or curtains.
Video games are another story, for where do we begin? In my case, the seed was planted with the Atari and cultivated with the rise of arcades. Over the years, I played everything I could get my hands on and watched the medium evolve from abstract blocks and beeps to hand-drawn sprites to the advanced 3D models used today. Should I try to simulate that experience for Go with a (condensed) journey through gaming history? Or should he jump in at the present level and start his journey with Pokemon or whatever the kids are into nowadays?
The catch here is that the road of video games is largely a one-way street while other media is more timeless. I can read a fifty or even a hundred-year old book and I should be able to comprehend it and potentially enjoy it at face value. Likewise, when the time comes Go should have little trouble understanding Star Wars or Raiders of the Lost Ark even though they were made thirty years before he was born. But if Go even looks at a modern video game, how can he then pick up Super Mario Brothers?
The good news is that Japan offers me a lot of options in this matter. Arcades still exist in great quantities and a number of them carry older games to appeal to older gamers. There's also a roaring retro-game market in this country (which I wrote about earlier this week) so I could pick up an actual Famicom and a few of the classics to give Go his first taste in style. Of course, all three consoles have their share of downloadable versions of old games, to say nothing of emulators on the PC.
So what do you think? Should Go get the history lesson approach to gaming or just ride the wave of high resolution 21st century awesomeness? If so, is it worth picking up the authentic hardware to deliver the complete experience? Am I underestimating children by assuming that they can't simply go back and play old games once they get a taste of HD graphics and stereo sound? Are video games as timeless as films, books, or music?
つづく...(Click here to read more)
On the other hand, the birth of my son has sent my mind leaping into the future and wondering about the decisions I will have to make that will shape his outlook of the world. How will I explain religion to him? Will he accept my general abstaining from spirituality or will he start preaching to me? What kinds of questions will he ask me about sex, death, morality, and politics? Will either one of us be satisfied with my answers?
Then there are matters of pop culture: which Star Wars trilogy should he watch first? Who should be his first captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise? And whatever shall I do about video games?
It sounds silly to put pastimes on par with philosophical issues, but the reality is that all of this stuff is going to come up. Parents don't get to choose what their kids will be into but they certainly get a vote. I was raised in a Jewish household so Christmas has always felt foreign to me. My parents loved The Beatles so I've always been more interested in their music (and their peers) rather than Elvis. Can I really say that one of these culture-defining choices had more of an impact on me than the other?
Of course, there is no direct relationship between what my parents supported and what I adopted. They both strongly encouraged me to read more books, so much so that I eventually rebelled out of spite. They were fairly ambivalent concerning video games (never outright condemning them but not accepting them either) but I embraced them and continue to hold them in high regard.
So where does that leave me and Go? I haven't started playing music for him yet but I've been considering building him a playlist. Books are going to be important for his bilingual education; I wish there was a local library with any significant English collection but I don't believe there is. Movies will come later, I suppose, and we'll just have to see what's appropriate at that time. I can't wait to take him to a movie theater for the first time. It's just too bad there aren't any cinemas in Japan with gilded lobbies or curtains.
Video games are another story, for where do we begin? In my case, the seed was planted with the Atari and cultivated with the rise of arcades. Over the years, I played everything I could get my hands on and watched the medium evolve from abstract blocks and beeps to hand-drawn sprites to the advanced 3D models used today. Should I try to simulate that experience for Go with a (condensed) journey through gaming history? Or should he jump in at the present level and start his journey with Pokemon or whatever the kids are into nowadays?
The catch here is that the road of video games is largely a one-way street while other media is more timeless. I can read a fifty or even a hundred-year old book and I should be able to comprehend it and potentially enjoy it at face value. Likewise, when the time comes Go should have little trouble understanding Star Wars or Raiders of the Lost Ark even though they were made thirty years before he was born. But if Go even looks at a modern video game, how can he then pick up Super Mario Brothers?
The good news is that Japan offers me a lot of options in this matter. Arcades still exist in great quantities and a number of them carry older games to appeal to older gamers. There's also a roaring retro-game market in this country (which I wrote about earlier this week) so I could pick up an actual Famicom and a few of the classics to give Go his first taste in style. Of course, all three consoles have their share of downloadable versions of old games, to say nothing of emulators on the PC.
So what do you think? Should Go get the history lesson approach to gaming or just ride the wave of high resolution 21st century awesomeness? If so, is it worth picking up the authentic hardware to deliver the complete experience? Am I underestimating children by assuming that they can't simply go back and play old games once they get a taste of HD graphics and stereo sound? Are video games as timeless as films, books, or music?
Labels: Japan, movies, number one son, predicting the future, video games
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Unbelievable Memories
It's been twenty years since Batman was released in theaters. I remember begging my Mom to take me to an afternoon matinee after Children's Theater to see it and it blew me away. I watched it again on Saturday night and it didn't disappoint, although the new Nolan Batman flicks are noticeably better. Not that Keaton v. Nicholson doesn't rock, but the storytelling is just light-years ahead of the older pictures.
Oh, were you expecting something more relevant to recent events? Fine, look at this:
"I'm Batman." What, like he knows I'm fibbing?
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Oh, were you expecting something more relevant to recent events? Fine, look at this:
"I'm Batman." What, like he knows I'm fibbing?
Labels: family, fuzzy memories, movies, number one son
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
The (Re)Genesis Effect
I may be a month late to the party, thanks to the largely arbitrary international rollouts of American movies, but I am finally ready to talk about the new Star Trek film, Star Trek: The New Hotness.
Seriously, I couldn't believe all the hype I was hearing for this movie from across the Pacific. Apparently everyone loves it save for Roger Ebert, who only sort of liked it. New fans, old fans, it doesn't matter if you know how to do the Vulcan salute or not: Star Trek is a bonafide hit. Critically and financially, this is the most successful Trek movie ever. Not bad for a forty year old franchise that had been in mothballs for most of the 21st century.
I tried to keep an extremely open mind about Star Trek because of my long history of enjoying the television programs and feature films. I was once a Trekkie who went to conventions and spent hours obsessing over each week's episode (hell, I wrote an extended piece nitpicking the hell out of Generations that is still floating around the Internet last time I checked) but I've come to accept that Star Trek has its ups and downs. I didn't want to get caught up in the hype and set myself up for disappointment, but at the same time I didn't want to become a sourpuss who pined for the "good old days" of the sixties, the eighties or even the nineties (the less said about the "aughties," the better). In other words, I didn't want to come out of the theater sounding like these people.
Well, the good news is that Star Trek is a tremendously fun movie. All of the actors did a wonderful job of slipping into roles that were famous years before any of them were born. In particular, I thought Karl Urban (as McCoy) and Zachary Quinto (as Spock) were most impressive. Simon Pegg (Scotty) is brilliant as always, but he doesn't even appear until the second half of the film so I was a little disappointed by that.
Even more than the actors, I was amazed at how well the dialogue was written. When it's not weighed down with infamously meaningless technobabble, one of Trek's strengths has been conversations between the characters. The new movie virtually eliminates all the mumbo-jumbo and just lets these people argue, flirt, and kid around with each other. I thought Kirk had a ton of great lines, making him just as cocky and arrogant as you always figured he must have been as a young man.
The movie has its flaws, the biggest being the story which relies on time travel to "explain" how this adventure doesn't fit into the Trek continuity. While this does allow for Leonard Nimoy to show up as Spock and have a few dramatic scenes with the new cast, it raises more questions than it answers. Frankly, all of the black hole/time warp/red matter stuff doesn't make any more sense than the "Nexus" plot device that allowed Captain Kirk and Captain Picard to share the screen in Generations did.
There were plenty of petty imperfections I noticed in the movie, but I was more concerned with the strangely empty feeling I had when it was over. Even though I had been thoroughly entertained for two hours and was already looking forward to the inevitable sequel (will they call it Star Trek II?), I had a very unpleasant thought while the credits rolled. Knowing that this new Trek film is such a hit, I realized that the Trek I grew up with is officially dead. I know things were bad when Nemesis tanked and Enterprise was canceled, but even when there was no new Trek being produced there was always a remote possibility of a revival. Now that we've got a new cast, a new ship and a new "timeline" to explore, there's no way anybody is going to look back. I'm reminded of Project Genesis from The Wrath of Khan: in creating a new planet capable of sustaining life, it destroyed any existing life in favor of its "new matrix."
So while I applaud J.J. Abrams on his excellent new take on Trek, I must simultaneously mourn the loss of the old Trek which will never return to the small or big screen. There's always DVDs and reruns, I suppose. Maybe someday The Next Generation will get an HD facelift like the original show has been given. And who knows? In twenty years, maybe someone will decide to reboot that show with a new movie. That's the beauty of this: Trek can be killed and reborn an infinite number of times.
Star Trek is dead. Long live Star Trek!
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Seriously, I couldn't believe all the hype I was hearing for this movie from across the Pacific. Apparently everyone loves it save for Roger Ebert, who only sort of liked it. New fans, old fans, it doesn't matter if you know how to do the Vulcan salute or not: Star Trek is a bonafide hit. Critically and financially, this is the most successful Trek movie ever. Not bad for a forty year old franchise that had been in mothballs for most of the 21st century.
I tried to keep an extremely open mind about Star Trek because of my long history of enjoying the television programs and feature films. I was once a Trekkie who went to conventions and spent hours obsessing over each week's episode (hell, I wrote an extended piece nitpicking the hell out of Generations that is still floating around the Internet last time I checked) but I've come to accept that Star Trek has its ups and downs. I didn't want to get caught up in the hype and set myself up for disappointment, but at the same time I didn't want to become a sourpuss who pined for the "good old days" of the sixties, the eighties or even the nineties (the less said about the "aughties," the better). In other words, I didn't want to come out of the theater sounding like these people.
Well, the good news is that Star Trek is a tremendously fun movie. All of the actors did a wonderful job of slipping into roles that were famous years before any of them were born. In particular, I thought Karl Urban (as McCoy) and Zachary Quinto (as Spock) were most impressive. Simon Pegg (Scotty) is brilliant as always, but he doesn't even appear until the second half of the film so I was a little disappointed by that.
Even more than the actors, I was amazed at how well the dialogue was written. When it's not weighed down with infamously meaningless technobabble, one of Trek's strengths has been conversations between the characters. The new movie virtually eliminates all the mumbo-jumbo and just lets these people argue, flirt, and kid around with each other. I thought Kirk had a ton of great lines, making him just as cocky and arrogant as you always figured he must have been as a young man.
The movie has its flaws, the biggest being the story which relies on time travel to "explain" how this adventure doesn't fit into the Trek continuity. While this does allow for Leonard Nimoy to show up as Spock and have a few dramatic scenes with the new cast, it raises more questions than it answers. Frankly, all of the black hole/time warp/red matter stuff doesn't make any more sense than the "Nexus" plot device that allowed Captain Kirk and Captain Picard to share the screen in Generations did.
There were plenty of petty imperfections I noticed in the movie, but I was more concerned with the strangely empty feeling I had when it was over. Even though I had been thoroughly entertained for two hours and was already looking forward to the inevitable sequel (will they call it Star Trek II?), I had a very unpleasant thought while the credits rolled. Knowing that this new Trek film is such a hit, I realized that the Trek I grew up with is officially dead. I know things were bad when Nemesis tanked and Enterprise was canceled, but even when there was no new Trek being produced there was always a remote possibility of a revival. Now that we've got a new cast, a new ship and a new "timeline" to explore, there's no way anybody is going to look back. I'm reminded of Project Genesis from The Wrath of Khan: in creating a new planet capable of sustaining life, it destroyed any existing life in favor of its "new matrix."
So while I applaud J.J. Abrams on his excellent new take on Trek, I must simultaneously mourn the loss of the old Trek which will never return to the small or big screen. There's always DVDs and reruns, I suppose. Maybe someday The Next Generation will get an HD facelift like the original show has been given. And who knows? In twenty years, maybe someone will decide to reboot that show with a new movie. That's the beauty of this: Trek can be killed and reborn an infinite number of times.
Star Trek is dead. Long live Star Trek!
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Monday, April 13, 2009
So Long, Sakura
I've got bad news everybody: hanami season is over. Even here in Hana Town where the high elevation postpones all the major seasonal changes by a week or two, the pink cherry blossoms are falling from the trees like snow in the wind. In a matter of days, all the trees will look green again.
I took advantage of the beautiful weather this weekend to fit in a bit more sakura time with a long walk on Saturday to a nearby park. Mako and I are very fortunate that we live less than a mile from a major hanami destination in Osaka. Since she wasn't up to joining me last weekend, I felt pretty strongly about trying to spend some time as a couple in the presence of all this pink and white wonderfulness. Unfortunately, she's still super pregnant and cannot lounge on the ground for a picnic, but we settled for walking through the park and just looking around for about forty minutes.
For lunch, we had very un-Japanese pizza at an Italian-style pizzeria in Ikeda. We hadn't been there as a couple since summer (at least) and I last went there in November with Chad. It's a great little place and I hope someday to break my habit of always ordering the quattro fromage pizza that includes just enough gorgonzola to blow my mind without overpowering the other cheeses. Yet every time I go I see it on the menu and remember how awesome it is, so I fold and settle for an extraordinary pizza experience. I mean, I love variety but how I can refuse culinary greatness that I already know exists?
We hit the video store on the way home and then checked out the brand-new supermarket that opened on Friday in our (figurative) backyard. Our neighborhood is pretty small and relatively quiet despite the proximity of a train line, but we have been seeing a lot of growth in the past year. New houses are springing up all around us, usually three or four in every lot big enough to fit one normal American house. We already had a local supermarket but it's closed every Monday and the prices aren't so hot, so we usually do our shopping at the next-nearest market a mile away. It was convenient for Mako to stop there on her way home from the station, but since she doesn't commute anymore it's become considerably less so.
With a new supermarket and lots of new houses, I can't deny that this neighborhood is looking better and better the longer I live here. I'm still not convinced this is the right spot for me - it's nice to be near a train station but I want to be closer to Osaka - but I wonder if I'll ever become convinced that my placement was perfect. I can get to work in about an hour and the heart of Osaka in only thirty minutes. Supermarkets, restaurants, city hall, a 100 Yen shop and two video stores are within walking distance of our apartment. The only issue left is the apartment will soon become too small as our baby grows up and needs more space to himself, but why do I still feel like something's missing? If we moved into a house a few stops closer to the city, would things really be better than they are here?
After all that walking Mako needed to crash and take a nap, so I took the opportunity to finally sit down and watch Tropic Thunder. The movie was every bit as funny as my friends had told me it was. Indeed, I was laughing out loud before the studio logos even popped up because the movie was preceded by hilarious mock advertisements that both introduced the main players in the film and set the tone of the story. Making fun of Hollywood actors and politics is hardly a challenge but this movie still nails every target it sets its eyes on. The fake trailers for movies that do not exist are simultaneously absurd and completely plausible. I fully expect to see "The Fatties" turn into a real property by 2010.
I was also impressed at how un-controversially the allegedly controversial comedic material was handled. I remember being weirded out when I saw pre-release photos of Robert Downey Jr. in "blackface" and when I heard the film made liberal use of the word "retard." Yet when watching the actual movie and seeing/hearing this stuff in the context of the satirical story, it all made perfect sense. It was also hysterical. Tropic Thunder is one of the few movies I've rented that I immediately wanted to watch again. Sadly, being a new release I only paid for the one night rental, so I had to bring it back on Sunday...which is basically the only thing I did all day.
I did manage to connect, however briefly, with a few friends online this weekend though. The Trout's visit to Japan is less than three weeks away at this point and we had been meaning to have a conversation about potential activities and sights during his stay. However, when we actually got to talking things became preoccupied with the Xbox. As I feared, it was impossible to discuss his visit while navigating a zombie-filled hospital in Left4Dead. On the bright side, I got to play an Xbox game with my friends 7000 miles away. The experience was pretty seamless too; there was a hint of lag between when I pulled the trigger and when zombies fell over dead (um, again), but all this meant was I had to adjust my aim and fire a bit sooner. They seemed to run past my shots but then they would suddenly rupture and collapse. It was like I was killing them en passant.
I also got Mike on the horn via Skype yesterday morning. He is in Kuala Lumpur and doing fine, although he has yet to move into an apartment. It was great to check in with him, even if it was briefly and over a pretty poor connection. I hope we can see each other in real life before the end of the year, in any country.
In the meantime, I'm back at work and I'm now expected to teach again. Of course, they haven't finished created the lessons plans for this semester yet, but that's another story. An old and repetitive story which I am sick of dealing with every semester, but another story all the same. Good night.
つづく...(Click here to read more)
I took advantage of the beautiful weather this weekend to fit in a bit more sakura time with a long walk on Saturday to a nearby park. Mako and I are very fortunate that we live less than a mile from a major hanami destination in Osaka. Since she wasn't up to joining me last weekend, I felt pretty strongly about trying to spend some time as a couple in the presence of all this pink and white wonderfulness. Unfortunately, she's still super pregnant and cannot lounge on the ground for a picnic, but we settled for walking through the park and just looking around for about forty minutes.
For lunch, we had very un-Japanese pizza at an Italian-style pizzeria in Ikeda. We hadn't been there as a couple since summer (at least) and I last went there in November with Chad. It's a great little place and I hope someday to break my habit of always ordering the quattro fromage pizza that includes just enough gorgonzola to blow my mind without overpowering the other cheeses. Yet every time I go I see it on the menu and remember how awesome it is, so I fold and settle for an extraordinary pizza experience. I mean, I love variety but how I can refuse culinary greatness that I already know exists?
We hit the video store on the way home and then checked out the brand-new supermarket that opened on Friday in our (figurative) backyard. Our neighborhood is pretty small and relatively quiet despite the proximity of a train line, but we have been seeing a lot of growth in the past year. New houses are springing up all around us, usually three or four in every lot big enough to fit one normal American house. We already had a local supermarket but it's closed every Monday and the prices aren't so hot, so we usually do our shopping at the next-nearest market a mile away. It was convenient for Mako to stop there on her way home from the station, but since she doesn't commute anymore it's become considerably less so.
With a new supermarket and lots of new houses, I can't deny that this neighborhood is looking better and better the longer I live here. I'm still not convinced this is the right spot for me - it's nice to be near a train station but I want to be closer to Osaka - but I wonder if I'll ever become convinced that my placement was perfect. I can get to work in about an hour and the heart of Osaka in only thirty minutes. Supermarkets, restaurants, city hall, a 100 Yen shop and two video stores are within walking distance of our apartment. The only issue left is the apartment will soon become too small as our baby grows up and needs more space to himself, but why do I still feel like something's missing? If we moved into a house a few stops closer to the city, would things really be better than they are here?
After all that walking Mako needed to crash and take a nap, so I took the opportunity to finally sit down and watch Tropic Thunder. The movie was every bit as funny as my friends had told me it was. Indeed, I was laughing out loud before the studio logos even popped up because the movie was preceded by hilarious mock advertisements that both introduced the main players in the film and set the tone of the story. Making fun of Hollywood actors and politics is hardly a challenge but this movie still nails every target it sets its eyes on. The fake trailers for movies that do not exist are simultaneously absurd and completely plausible. I fully expect to see "The Fatties" turn into a real property by 2010.
I was also impressed at how un-controversially the allegedly controversial comedic material was handled. I remember being weirded out when I saw pre-release photos of Robert Downey Jr. in "blackface" and when I heard the film made liberal use of the word "retard." Yet when watching the actual movie and seeing/hearing this stuff in the context of the satirical story, it all made perfect sense. It was also hysterical. Tropic Thunder is one of the few movies I've rented that I immediately wanted to watch again. Sadly, being a new release I only paid for the one night rental, so I had to bring it back on Sunday...which is basically the only thing I did all day.
I did manage to connect, however briefly, with a few friends online this weekend though. The Trout's visit to Japan is less than three weeks away at this point and we had been meaning to have a conversation about potential activities and sights during his stay. However, when we actually got to talking things became preoccupied with the Xbox. As I feared, it was impossible to discuss his visit while navigating a zombie-filled hospital in Left4Dead. On the bright side, I got to play an Xbox game with my friends 7000 miles away. The experience was pretty seamless too; there was a hint of lag between when I pulled the trigger and when zombies fell over dead (um, again), but all this meant was I had to adjust my aim and fire a bit sooner. They seemed to run past my shots but then they would suddenly rupture and collapse. It was like I was killing them en passant.
I also got Mike on the horn via Skype yesterday morning. He is in Kuala Lumpur and doing fine, although he has yet to move into an apartment. It was great to check in with him, even if it was briefly and over a pretty poor connection. I hope we can see each other in real life before the end of the year, in any country.
In the meantime, I'm back at work and I'm now expected to teach again. Of course, they haven't finished created the lessons plans for this semester yet, but that's another story. An old and repetitive story which I am sick of dealing with every semester, but another story all the same. Good night.
Labels: food, friends, Japan, Left4Dead, movies, predicting the future, Xbox, zombies
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Whoa
Just wanted to blow everyone's mind out there by reminding you that The Matrix is ten years old today.
That is all.
つづく...(Click here to read more)
That is all.
Labels: movies
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Monday, March 30, 2009
More Entertainment Than I Require
I'm sitting at work right now in a nearly empty staff room, wearing my coat and waiting for Spring. Looking out the window, I can see the pink and white flowers just beginning to poke their way into the world. I welcome their arrival.
I had a very pleasant weekend and I feel good about nearly everything that happened. If anything, there were times where I could have had less fun and I would have had just as good a time in hindsight. So you could say that my only regrets are enjoying myself too much, as if there is some finite supply of happiness in my life and I squandered it.
Saturday was my day to go out and spend time with friends while Mako relaxed at home. It was also, not coincidentally, the opening day of Watchmen here in Japan. I mentioned just last week my enthusiasm for this film and of Mako's evident indifference to it. Picking up on her coolness and anticipating another drawn out experience where she doesn't just tell me she's uninterested in seeing it in theaters, I made it simple for her. I told her I wanted to see the movie on opening day and asked if she wanted to go. She didn't, and I did.
But not alone! I met up with Alex to eat lunch and then watch the film. Over some spicy Thai-style pizza in Namba, we talked about games, his upcoming podcast, and the new T-shirt line at Uniqlo. He also revealed that he has not yet read the original Watchmen story but is, in fact, in the midst of reading it now. I don't think I've ever seen a movie based on a book I was actively reading at the time, but I suppose it can't be much different than going into the movie blind.
The movie was preceded by two trailers for American films which I am still thinking about two days later. The first was the new Terminator movie which I cannot begin to understand. The original film and its stunning sequel were fantastic and continue to linger in my mind as two of my favorite science-fiction stories. The third, for all its flaws, was an enjoyable romp that ended very well. Considering its very existence nullified the solid ending of T2, T3 spun a remarkably appropriate conclusion for itself that improved my view of the entire film.
While I am a sucker for good time travel stories, the real appeal of the first three Terminator films was rooted in a gritty contemporary setting. All three showed visions of humanity's nightmarish future and the war with the machines, but the story was firmly modern-day and a good deal of the tension revolved around that restriction. The heroes often lament that the technology available to them in the 80s and 90s is insufficient to take down a superior foe. Likewise, the Terminator itself experiences routine setbacks when forced to constrain itself to the society it seeks to destroy. The Terminator films have always been fish out of water stories where the two fish are trying to kill each other.
So what does the T4 trailer offer viewers? Explosions and giant robots with Christian Bale shouting at people. This is (apparently) an entire movie dedicated to those short segments in the earlier films where everyone has laser blasters and is covered in grime. Maybe someone out there saw those scenes and said "Man, when are they gonna tell me the rest of that story?" Whoever that guy might be, he's not me or any of my immediate friends. Hell, most of them thought T3 went off the rails into Silly Town. While I managed to enjoy it, I can't say the new movie appeals to me at all. I may rent it if only to bring some context to the awkward audio clip of Christian Bale chewing out a guy on the set. I just need to know what he was doing at the time.
The second trailer was also full of explosions and giant robots because it was for the new Transformers movie. This falls squarely into the category of "fool me once, shame on you/fool me twice, shame on me." I knew the first film would be awful and despite all my efforts to lower my expectations and open my mind to the possibility of it being dumb fun ("my efforts" largely consisting of drinking heavily before going to the theater that day), it was even worse than I could have imagined. The new film seems to have learned nothing from the first, as everything I saw was nigh-incomprehensible. Even by movie trailer standards the action was splintered and disjointed, which is exactly what ruined the first movie for me. Well, that and draping a dull-as-fuck high school romance over the entire story. But what do I know? The movie was a huge hit and plenty of people I know and respect managed to enjoy it. Go on without me fellas.
After all that noise and dubiousness, the movie I actually paid to see began. Watchmen surprised me right away with two curious choices. The murder of The Comedian became a spirited fight scene and there was actually an opening credits sequence (a rare sight in action movies). The fight scene represents my biggest problem with the adaptation while the credits got me excited to see the rest of the story unfold. Those initial few minutes turned out to be a microcosm of everything I liked and didn't like about the movie.
As the fight scene demonstrated, everyone's a bad-ass in the Watchmen movie. The Comedian is supposed to be a tough guy who's way past his prime, yet he's punching through walls and getting up after having his head smashed into tables. His mystery assailant is likewise incredibly strong and fast and the two of them duel with rapid-fire punches and kicks rather than brawling. Later in the film, all of the heroes demonstrate that they are incredibly gifted martial artists and gymnasts rather than just being motivated to fight crime while wearing costumes. This transformation of the "costumed vigilantes" to legitimate superheroes is Watchmen's greatest translation error. The original story was dedicated to deflating the comic book hero by showing his (and her) flaws. These characters still have their problems but completely devastating regular people isn't one of them.
On the other hand, the opening credits demonstrated a real affection for the original comic by delivering a slick, streamlined history lesson of the major events that precede the "present day," which in Watchmen is 1985. This is what the movie unquestionably gets right; it preserves the overall story of the original and presents it in a modern comic book movie aesthetic. Even if the action seems out of place from a logical perspective, I could not deny that I still got caught up in the excitement. Director Zach Snyder has given us hyper-real action setpieces before, but only in Watchmen is there a story worth telling alongside all the slow-motion combat. And while his bright ideas for "improving" 300 were laughably bad, Watchmen survives the inevitable hurdles of adaptation and actually thrives.
Rather than detail things I noticed about the movie being different than the original, I will simply point you to this article in The A.V. Club that goes through both works in their entirety. It's been a few years since I read the comic and I hadn't recalled exactly who did what to whom. Watching Watchmen has reminded me of why I was excited about the movie at all and I feel compelled to revisit the comic to make my own comparisons now. That may be the best thing anyone can say about an adaptation: it doesn't require you to know the entire backstory and watching the movie should encourage you to read the original afterward.
After the movie Alex and I swung by Uniqlo to check out some of the new video game themed T-shirts they're offering now. All of the shirts are cool but the only one I wanted (among those that are on sale now) is their Resident Evil T-shirt that is nothing but a list of enemy names. Unfortunately, they had no XL-size shirts and only one L-size which Alex claimed. I am torn between going to their website to buy one or just waiting for more shirts to come out so I can buy all of them at once, which will likely lower the per-shirt price. My only worry is that hesitation will result in the shirts disappearing, as Japan has a tendency to offer new and incredibly cool things for a limited time. I'm still waiting for the White Chocolate Maple Kit-Kats I ate in 2005 to make a return to the shelves.
With our (ok, HIS) shopping done, Alex ran off to handle his own affairs while I wondered what to do next. I sat down for some dinner and called Kazu out of the blue. I had debated for a while whether or not it would be "right" to just call him and see what he was doing. I don't know why I treated the whole situation like some kind of first date. Kazu is someone I've known for years; there's no reason to be anxious about calling him on the phone. As it turned out he was shopping in Umeda and he was eager to meet. We had a few drinks at the same bar we hit last week before parting ways around 10.
(This post has turned out longer than I expected but I'm just going to continue rather than cut the story in half)
Spending all day (and night) out on Saturday made me more eager to spend Sunday relaxing at home with Mako. We had lunch at a little place called "Kitchen Pot" that we had been meaning to try for a long time and it turned out to be really good. The portions were large and the prices were more than reasonable. There was a friendly vibe to the place that I dare say had something to do with their choice of oldies music. I got burned out on those tunes due to continuous over-exposure during my time in the post office, but something about hearing Elvis' "Return to Sender" again made me smile.
After our meal and some shopping, we settled in for the last day of the sumo tournament. It didn't end so well as many of the wrestlers I like ended up losing or just finishing with poor records. I was especially down about the final yokozuna match. Even though Hakuho had already secured the championship, I still wanted to see Asashoryu beat him to spoil his unblemished record and save some face. It didn't happen. Drat.
For dinner we tried making nachos again. We are slowly but surely getting the hang of the taste but we need to work on our form. As seen here last week, our nachos take the shape of a burial mound with the chips smothered in a heap of toppings. Last night's version turned out the same way, except we added guacamole and sour cream to the mix. The results were delicious but we still needed to dig our way through to the chips beneath. Mako said she was full halfway through and I pretended to be disappointed in her. Meanwhile, I could barely fit another bite into my mouth but I soldiered on to avoid the nasty leftovers we would end up with. I think "burial mound nachos" is a good name for our dish because if we keep eating like this we'll both be dead in six months.
With both of us beyond satiated we collapsed onto the couch with nothing to do. I received the green light to play video games and decided to finally try the last level of Resistance 2. While playing too much of the enormously entertaining co-op mode got me into trouble in January, I have been quietly making my way through the single player mode over the past few months. I can't say I was into the story or the characters, but I did find the game provided me with enough thrills and big "moments" to keep me coming back for more.
The basic premise (bald space marine fights aliens) is beyond cliche at this point, but Resistance 2 has its share of action setpieces that made the experience worth it. I remember coming out of an underground bunker and seeing San Francisco burn while a massive enemy fleet hung in the sky above. I remember going through abandoned homes and dark warehouses that were full of nasty zombie-like creatures gestating in pods. I remember fighting a skyscraper-sized foe in Chicago who found my rocket launcher more of an annoyance than anything else, but shooting him in the face with it was enough to convince him to throw me through an glass-enclosed catwalk and onto another building five blocks away.
Unfortunately, the ending of the game didn't offer much in the way of memories. In fact, my memory was a hindrance because playing the final level made me think back to earlier stages and older, better games I had once played. Sure, it was really cool to look out the window of that Louisiana estate and see what looked like a fire-breathing dinosaur stalking me. I also got a kick out of fighting my way onto a large steamboat and going cabin to cabin looking for monsters. But the entire finale of storming the mothership with a nuclear bomb in tow felt exactly the same as the mission where I flew an enemy craft into another vessel and set off charges on the bridge. Both had me explore metallic alien corridors and then make a "daring" escape while a clock ticked down in the corner of my screen before flying away with just seconds to spare.
The final showdown with a flying psychic cephalopod was uninteresting at best and lacked all the polish of previous boss fights, even the really hard ones. Fighting a giant alien swarm halfway through the game had been so frustrating I actually got angry, but at least it was something new. The last boss encounter didn't offer a challenge so much as it did closure. You see him escape capture in the first level and then you get to put him down in the last one. Justice/vengeance is served, ho-hum.
The actual ending cinema of the game was abrupt, extremely anti-climactic and could have been handled much better. I thought I had reached the "bad ending" because I played the game too slowly. The main character is trying to finish his mission before the alien virus in his body destroys his humanity, so I thought I missed the deadline. According to the Internet, that's the only ending there is.
Having said all that, I will not dismiss Resistance 2 for its lackluster conclusion. The single player game was more than adequate and the co-op mode was genuinely exciting in ways I would never have expected. Hell, it still is genuinely exciting, I just don't have much time to play online anymore. I feel like taking a break from shooting aliens for a while...right after I finish Half-Life.
To get back to my point (huh? oh, right..."too much fun"), this weekend I ate more food than I needed to, stayed out drinking when I could have gone home, and kept plugging away at a video game to reach the end rather than put down the controller and finish it the next day. I say this not because I think I made the wrong choices, but rather to remind myself of how fortunate I am. There's nothing wrong with a little excess after a long week of not working.
Hey, speaking of work, it's almost time to get going. I wouldn't want to miss that one o'clock bus home.
つづく...(Click here to read more)
I had a very pleasant weekend and I feel good about nearly everything that happened. If anything, there were times where I could have had less fun and I would have had just as good a time in hindsight. So you could say that my only regrets are enjoying myself too much, as if there is some finite supply of happiness in my life and I squandered it.
Saturday was my day to go out and spend time with friends while Mako relaxed at home. It was also, not coincidentally, the opening day of Watchmen here in Japan. I mentioned just last week my enthusiasm for this film and of Mako's evident indifference to it. Picking up on her coolness and anticipating another drawn out experience where she doesn't just tell me she's uninterested in seeing it in theaters, I made it simple for her. I told her I wanted to see the movie on opening day and asked if she wanted to go. She didn't, and I did.
But not alone! I met up with Alex to eat lunch and then watch the film. Over some spicy Thai-style pizza in Namba, we talked about games, his upcoming podcast, and the new T-shirt line at Uniqlo. He also revealed that he has not yet read the original Watchmen story but is, in fact, in the midst of reading it now. I don't think I've ever seen a movie based on a book I was actively reading at the time, but I suppose it can't be much different than going into the movie blind.
The movie was preceded by two trailers for American films which I am still thinking about two days later. The first was the new Terminator movie which I cannot begin to understand. The original film and its stunning sequel were fantastic and continue to linger in my mind as two of my favorite science-fiction stories. The third, for all its flaws, was an enjoyable romp that ended very well. Considering its very existence nullified the solid ending of T2, T3 spun a remarkably appropriate conclusion for itself that improved my view of the entire film.
While I am a sucker for good time travel stories, the real appeal of the first three Terminator films was rooted in a gritty contemporary setting. All three showed visions of humanity's nightmarish future and the war with the machines, but the story was firmly modern-day and a good deal of the tension revolved around that restriction. The heroes often lament that the technology available to them in the 80s and 90s is insufficient to take down a superior foe. Likewise, the Terminator itself experiences routine setbacks when forced to constrain itself to the society it seeks to destroy. The Terminator films have always been fish out of water stories where the two fish are trying to kill each other.
So what does the T4 trailer offer viewers? Explosions and giant robots with Christian Bale shouting at people. This is (apparently) an entire movie dedicated to those short segments in the earlier films where everyone has laser blasters and is covered in grime. Maybe someone out there saw those scenes and said "Man, when are they gonna tell me the rest of that story?" Whoever that guy might be, he's not me or any of my immediate friends. Hell, most of them thought T3 went off the rails into Silly Town. While I managed to enjoy it, I can't say the new movie appeals to me at all. I may rent it if only to bring some context to the awkward audio clip of Christian Bale chewing out a guy on the set. I just need to know what he was doing at the time.
The second trailer was also full of explosions and giant robots because it was for the new Transformers movie. This falls squarely into the category of "fool me once, shame on you/fool me twice, shame on me." I knew the first film would be awful and despite all my efforts to lower my expectations and open my mind to the possibility of it being dumb fun ("my efforts" largely consisting of drinking heavily before going to the theater that day), it was even worse than I could have imagined. The new film seems to have learned nothing from the first, as everything I saw was nigh-incomprehensible. Even by movie trailer standards the action was splintered and disjointed, which is exactly what ruined the first movie for me. Well, that and draping a dull-as-fuck high school romance over the entire story. But what do I know? The movie was a huge hit and plenty of people I know and respect managed to enjoy it. Go on without me fellas.
After all that noise and dubiousness, the movie I actually paid to see began. Watchmen surprised me right away with two curious choices. The murder of The Comedian became a spirited fight scene and there was actually an opening credits sequence (a rare sight in action movies). The fight scene represents my biggest problem with the adaptation while the credits got me excited to see the rest of the story unfold. Those initial few minutes turned out to be a microcosm of everything I liked and didn't like about the movie.
As the fight scene demonstrated, everyone's a bad-ass in the Watchmen movie. The Comedian is supposed to be a tough guy who's way past his prime, yet he's punching through walls and getting up after having his head smashed into tables. His mystery assailant is likewise incredibly strong and fast and the two of them duel with rapid-fire punches and kicks rather than brawling. Later in the film, all of the heroes demonstrate that they are incredibly gifted martial artists and gymnasts rather than just being motivated to fight crime while wearing costumes. This transformation of the "costumed vigilantes" to legitimate superheroes is Watchmen's greatest translation error. The original story was dedicated to deflating the comic book hero by showing his (and her) flaws. These characters still have their problems but completely devastating regular people isn't one of them.
On the other hand, the opening credits demonstrated a real affection for the original comic by delivering a slick, streamlined history lesson of the major events that precede the "present day," which in Watchmen is 1985. This is what the movie unquestionably gets right; it preserves the overall story of the original and presents it in a modern comic book movie aesthetic. Even if the action seems out of place from a logical perspective, I could not deny that I still got caught up in the excitement. Director Zach Snyder has given us hyper-real action setpieces before, but only in Watchmen is there a story worth telling alongside all the slow-motion combat. And while his bright ideas for "improving" 300 were laughably bad, Watchmen survives the inevitable hurdles of adaptation and actually thrives.
Rather than detail things I noticed about the movie being different than the original, I will simply point you to this article in The A.V. Club that goes through both works in their entirety. It's been a few years since I read the comic and I hadn't recalled exactly who did what to whom. Watching Watchmen has reminded me of why I was excited about the movie at all and I feel compelled to revisit the comic to make my own comparisons now. That may be the best thing anyone can say about an adaptation: it doesn't require you to know the entire backstory and watching the movie should encourage you to read the original afterward.
After the movie Alex and I swung by Uniqlo to check out some of the new video game themed T-shirts they're offering now. All of the shirts are cool but the only one I wanted (among those that are on sale now) is their Resident Evil T-shirt that is nothing but a list of enemy names. Unfortunately, they had no XL-size shirts and only one L-size which Alex claimed. I am torn between going to their website to buy one or just waiting for more shirts to come out so I can buy all of them at once, which will likely lower the per-shirt price. My only worry is that hesitation will result in the shirts disappearing, as Japan has a tendency to offer new and incredibly cool things for a limited time. I'm still waiting for the White Chocolate Maple Kit-Kats I ate in 2005 to make a return to the shelves.
With our (ok, HIS) shopping done, Alex ran off to handle his own affairs while I wondered what to do next. I sat down for some dinner and called Kazu out of the blue. I had debated for a while whether or not it would be "right" to just call him and see what he was doing. I don't know why I treated the whole situation like some kind of first date. Kazu is someone I've known for years; there's no reason to be anxious about calling him on the phone. As it turned out he was shopping in Umeda and he was eager to meet. We had a few drinks at the same bar we hit last week before parting ways around 10.
(This post has turned out longer than I expected but I'm just going to continue rather than cut the story in half)
Spending all day (and night) out on Saturday made me more eager to spend Sunday relaxing at home with Mako. We had lunch at a little place called "Kitchen Pot" that we had been meaning to try for a long time and it turned out to be really good. The portions were large and the prices were more than reasonable. There was a friendly vibe to the place that I dare say had something to do with their choice of oldies music. I got burned out on those tunes due to continuous over-exposure during my time in the post office, but something about hearing Elvis' "Return to Sender" again made me smile.
After our meal and some shopping, we settled in for the last day of the sumo tournament. It didn't end so well as many of the wrestlers I like ended up losing or just finishing with poor records. I was especially down about the final yokozuna match. Even though Hakuho had already secured the championship, I still wanted to see Asashoryu beat him to spoil his unblemished record and save some face. It didn't happen. Drat.
For dinner we tried making nachos again. We are slowly but surely getting the hang of the taste but we need to work on our form. As seen here last week, our nachos take the shape of a burial mound with the chips smothered in a heap of toppings. Last night's version turned out the same way, except we added guacamole and sour cream to the mix. The results were delicious but we still needed to dig our way through to the chips beneath. Mako said she was full halfway through and I pretended to be disappointed in her. Meanwhile, I could barely fit another bite into my mouth but I soldiered on to avoid the nasty leftovers we would end up with. I think "burial mound nachos" is a good name for our dish because if we keep eating like this we'll both be dead in six months.
With both of us beyond satiated we collapsed onto the couch with nothing to do. I received the green light to play video games and decided to finally try the last level of Resistance 2. While playing too much of the enormously entertaining co-op mode got me into trouble in January, I have been quietly making my way through the single player mode over the past few months. I can't say I was into the story or the characters, but I did find the game provided me with enough thrills and big "moments" to keep me coming back for more.
The basic premise (bald space marine fights aliens) is beyond cliche at this point, but Resistance 2 has its share of action setpieces that made the experience worth it. I remember coming out of an underground bunker and seeing San Francisco burn while a massive enemy fleet hung in the sky above. I remember going through abandoned homes and dark warehouses that were full of nasty zombie-like creatures gestating in pods. I remember fighting a skyscraper-sized foe in Chicago who found my rocket launcher more of an annoyance than anything else, but shooting him in the face with it was enough to convince him to throw me through an glass-enclosed catwalk and onto another building five blocks away.
Unfortunately, the ending of the game didn't offer much in the way of memories. In fact, my memory was a hindrance because playing the final level made me think back to earlier stages and older, better games I had once played. Sure, it was really cool to look out the window of that Louisiana estate and see what looked like a fire-breathing dinosaur stalking me. I also got a kick out of fighting my way onto a large steamboat and going cabin to cabin looking for monsters. But the entire finale of storming the mothership with a nuclear bomb in tow felt exactly the same as the mission where I flew an enemy craft into another vessel and set off charges on the bridge. Both had me explore metallic alien corridors and then make a "daring" escape while a clock ticked down in the corner of my screen before flying away with just seconds to spare.
The final showdown with a flying psychic cephalopod was uninteresting at best and lacked all the polish of previous boss fights, even the really hard ones. Fighting a giant alien swarm halfway through the game had been so frustrating I actually got angry, but at least it was something new. The last boss encounter didn't offer a challenge so much as it did closure. You see him escape capture in the first level and then you get to put him down in the last one. Justice/vengeance is served, ho-hum.
The actual ending cinema of the game was abrupt, extremely anti-climactic and could have been handled much better. I thought I had reached the "bad ending" because I played the game too slowly. The main character is trying to finish his mission before the alien virus in his body destroys his humanity, so I thought I missed the deadline. According to the Internet, that's the only ending there is.
Having said all that, I will not dismiss Resistance 2 for its lackluster conclusion. The single player game was more than adequate and the co-op mode was genuinely exciting in ways I would never have expected. Hell, it still is genuinely exciting, I just don't have much time to play online anymore. I feel like taking a break from shooting aliens for a while...right after I finish Half-Life.
To get back to my point (huh? oh, right..."too much fun"), this weekend I ate more food than I needed to, stayed out drinking when I could have gone home, and kept plugging away at a video game to reach the end rather than put down the controller and finish it the next day. I say this not because I think I made the wrong choices, but rather to remind myself of how fortunate I am. There's nothing wrong with a little excess after a long week of not working.
Hey, speaking of work, it's almost time to get going. I wouldn't want to miss that one o'clock bus home.
Labels: Alex, comic books, food, friends, Kazu, movies, Osaka, PS3, Resistance 2, sports, sumo, video games
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Monday, March 23, 2009
Feit SMASH!
Spring is just lurking around the corner here in Japan but after a lovely weekend of 60 degree weather, it seems to have taken a few steps backward. It looks to be a cold, cloudy week of unappealing weather. That's OK, I can take it, but I hope those cherry blossoms start poppin' soon. I want to see that beautiful side of Japan again!
I thought about expanding on my all too brief review of The Incredible Hulk today, but the more I think about the movie, the more I realize it's just not worth the effort. If they didn't really care about the final product, why should I bother elaborating on exactly why the movie isn't very good? In the end, the film obviously aspired to be nothing more than a mediocre replacement for the awful Hulk film from 2003. They reached for the middle ground and they got there. Mission accomplished: your movie isn't worth watching.
Movies are definitely on my mind because it's been a while since I hit the theaters. I missed Benjamin Button because Mako strung me along: she insisted she wanted to see it so I waited for her, but when it came time to go she said she wasn't that interested and she couldn't sit through a three hour film. I'm not mad, of course, but I'm a little disappointed that she didn't just admit to me earlier that she wasn't going to watch it. I can feel her pulling the same stunt with Valkyrie and Watchmen as we speak - when I ask her she says she wants to go, but when I suggest a time and a place she backs down. Does she just not want me going to the theater without her? It doesn't seem fair to wait for weeks/months for these films to come to Japan and then have Mako decide that I'm waiting another four months until they come out on DVD.
I guess I need to write more about the unborn baby because it's all people ask me about when they call or write. The baby hasn't gone anywhere folks, he's right where I left him. He continues to grow and physically abuse Mako's insides. At this point, when he kicks her I can feel it without actually touching her belly. Just lying in bed next to Mako is enough to pick up on the shockwaves. It looks like our baby is The Juggernaut. At least I know what to name him now: Cain.
That's a joke, of course, which reminds me: no, I'm not telling anyone what the baby's name is going to be. We've pretty much secured a single choice after culling so many options from a variety of cultures. Mako can be very stubborn and, whether she's kidding or not, she has been pushing for "Daniel" since the fall. For some reason, I was able to let go of my suggestions that she shot down ("sorry my boy, your mother wouldn't let me name you Akira") but she will not stop with "Daniel," "Junior," or worst of all "D.J." If my son wants to be a DJ when he grows up, he can spin all the records he wants. But I'll be damned if his birth certificate is going to have two initials where his name should be.
OK, I can feel this post getting nasty, so let's end on an upbeat note. Last night I successfully earned a trophy in PixelJunk Eden for completing an entire garden in less than ten minutes. I beat it with just five seconds to spare. I welcome any and all congratulatory comments, e-mails, telegrams, and chocolates.
つづく...(Click here to read more)
I thought about expanding on my all too brief review of The Incredible Hulk today, but the more I think about the movie, the more I realize it's just not worth the effort. If they didn't really care about the final product, why should I bother elaborating on exactly why the movie isn't very good? In the end, the film obviously aspired to be nothing more than a mediocre replacement for the awful Hulk film from 2003. They reached for the middle ground and they got there. Mission accomplished: your movie isn't worth watching.
Movies are definitely on my mind because it's been a while since I hit the theaters. I missed Benjamin Button because Mako strung me along: she insisted she wanted to see it so I waited for her, but when it came time to go she said she wasn't that interested and she couldn't sit through a three hour film. I'm not mad, of course, but I'm a little disappointed that she didn't just admit to me earlier that she wasn't going to watch it. I can feel her pulling the same stunt with Valkyrie and Watchmen as we speak - when I ask her she says she wants to go, but when I suggest a time and a place she backs down. Does she just not want me going to the theater without her? It doesn't seem fair to wait for weeks/months for these films to come to Japan and then have Mako decide that I'm waiting another four months until they come out on DVD.
I guess I need to write more about the unborn baby because it's all people ask me about when they call or write. The baby hasn't gone anywhere folks, he's right where I left him. He continues to grow and physically abuse Mako's insides. At this point, when he kicks her I can feel it without actually touching her belly. Just lying in bed next to Mako is enough to pick up on the shockwaves. It looks like our baby is The Juggernaut. At least I know what to name him now: Cain.
That's a joke, of course, which reminds me: no, I'm not telling anyone what the baby's name is going to be. We've pretty much secured a single choice after culling so many options from a variety of cultures. Mako can be very stubborn and, whether she's kidding or not, she has been pushing for "Daniel" since the fall. For some reason, I was able to let go of my suggestions that she shot down ("sorry my boy, your mother wouldn't let me name you Akira") but she will not stop with "Daniel," "Junior," or worst of all "D.J." If my son wants to be a DJ when he grows up, he can spin all the records he wants. But I'll be damned if his birth certificate is going to have two initials where his name should be.
OK, I can feel this post getting nasty, so let's end on an upbeat note. Last night I successfully earned a trophy in PixelJunk Eden for completing an entire garden in less than ten minutes. I beat it with just five seconds to spare. I welcome any and all congratulatory comments, e-mails, telegrams, and chocolates.
Labels: comic books, marriage, movies, PixelJunk, pregnancy, video games
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
I Don't Like the Toys (but the Toys Like Me)
"The things you own, they end up owning you." -- Tyler Durden in Fight Club
What makes people collect things?
I feel like I should know the answer inherently because I have, at one time or another, collected all kinds of things. There were toys at first, mostly Transformers but also G.I. Joe and the like. I didn't just play with the ones I had, I always wanted to get more. In fact, when my friends and I would play with one another, if there was a character we didn't have we would actually build a proxy version out of Construx. I can't say what motivated us to keep expanding and expanding our rosters. It's not like we could ever possibly play with all of the toys we had, but somehow more toys equaled more fun in our young minds.
It wasn't long before I moved on to video games. My parents were passively accepting of my video game habits without actually aiding me in my efforts to buy games. Aside from an initial compromise from my mother who agreed to pay for half of an NES if I achieved a certain amount in the sixth grade, I was always on my own for purchasing new software or hardware. I found it surprisingly easy to meet my goals by saving my allowance, money from my paper route or whatever other funds I happened to come across.
Once I bought a game I played it as much as I could. Even if the game wasn't good (Anticipation, anyone?), I always kept at it for a long while before moving on. When a game was "done" (a state which varied from game to game) I just put it aside and thought about what might be next. Certain games were never "done" while others were occasionally resurrected when I learned something new about them or when a friend came over and had never played it before.
It was years before I even considered selling old games to make way for new ones; eventually that became my modus operandi. I was in a near-constant state of flux, selling and buying, trading things for store credit then immediately cashing out. Since the process was never a one-for-one deal, my collecting days were over as I began playing more and more titles. As the console competition began to increase, I actually sold entire systems in order to buy new ones. Maybe it was commercial peer pressure that drove me to cannibalize my collection so that I could keep buying newer/faster/bigger games and systems, or maybe I simply realized that holding onto games I didn't play was meaningless.
Then again, perhaps I just substituted one collection for another. As my stockpile of games and paraphernalia decreased, I started spending more money on movies. At first it was VHS tapes, but I became one of the "early adopters" of the DVD format. My interest in movies was nothing new, as I had always been nuts about going out to see new films in theaters and I was the major catalyst in our family's video rental membership, but it wasn't until high school or so that I really started buying a lot of movies and keeping them in a closet. Part of it had to do with my new-found interest in foreign films and anime, few of which were even available for rent in our local store, but I owned plenty of mainstream Hollywood films as well. My collection certainly wasn't just for show - I actively watched and re-watched everything when I had time, and I took great pleasure in loaning or showing new things to my friends. At my urge's strongest point, I honestly had a "buy first" rather than "rent first" attitude. Sometimes this led to pleasant surprises (Unbreakable is still my favorite M. Night Shyamalan film) while other times it led to extreme disappointment (insert random kung-fu flick here, especially since they often cost double or triple a domestic film).
Things got really ugly when collecting became a means to an end. Owning more toys, games or films doesn't enhance your ability to enjoy them - it just means you have more stuff. When I discovered Magic: The Gathering, that was not the case. Buying more Magic cards gave me more options for playing the game and the constant introduction of new cards, combined with the power of rare-by-design cards, drove me to spend thousands of dollars on the game when I rarely earned more than a hundred in a week's paycheck. Once I started working at the post office and earning a real salary, I spent even more. The game was, and still is, tremendously fun. I cannot deny enjoying those late-night sessions I spent facing off against my friends using our various decks of cards. However, the collection aspect of the game demanded too much of me. Not only was I spending money on new packs of cards in the hopes of finding rare cards, I was buying individual cards to strengthen the decks I already had.
As my collection grew I needed to spend money (and goodness knows how many hours) on binders, boxes and folders just to keep all the cards in order. Then came the magazines and buying guides that both showed me what cards might be useful to me and how much my current cards were worth. I spent less time playing Magic: The Gathering and more time just Gathering my Magic. Looking back it was a kind of sexy nightmare; a gilded cage I built for myself, loving every minute of it even as I poured money out the window. When the time came to shed my massive collection, the whole thing netted me $300 - surely less than a tenth of what I had spent.
So what now? All my collections from the past have been scattered to the wind and now sit in at least three separate locations, sitting in someone's closet or basement thousands of miles away. I no longer buy any toys or movies (at least, not since dropping 9000 Yen on that Japanese copy of Grindhouse *_*) and while my video game buying habits are still strong, you could hardly describe my handful of titles a "collection." Have I gone cold turkey? Am I just one new obsession away from succumbing to the cry of the collector?
At this point I believe my collection needs are being met virtually-speaking, thanks to the PlayStation 3's trophy system. They are the perfect collectible, honestly. They have no mass and cost no money. There are no "limited editions" or artificial scarcity. I will never need to re-acquire an old trophy or replace one with a newer version. They cannot be broken or stolen. All I can do is earn them by playing video games which is a hobby I already practice. Best of all, they have no use whatsoever. I am free at last.
Today's post was inspired by the second episode of Robert Ashley's brilliantpodcast Internet radio show, "A Life Well Wasted." I highly recommend it to everyone, even those who wouldn't normally consider listening to a gaming podcast. Also, big props to Dr. Wicked's "Write or Die" app for enabling me to write this in record time. Anyone who writes (especially bloggers) should try it out.
つづく...(Click here to read more)
What makes people collect things?
I feel like I should know the answer inherently because I have, at one time or another, collected all kinds of things. There were toys at first, mostly Transformers but also G.I. Joe and the like. I didn't just play with the ones I had, I always wanted to get more. In fact, when my friends and I would play with one another, if there was a character we didn't have we would actually build a proxy version out of Construx. I can't say what motivated us to keep expanding and expanding our rosters. It's not like we could ever possibly play with all of the toys we had, but somehow more toys equaled more fun in our young minds.
It wasn't long before I moved on to video games. My parents were passively accepting of my video game habits without actually aiding me in my efforts to buy games. Aside from an initial compromise from my mother who agreed to pay for half of an NES if I achieved a certain amount in the sixth grade, I was always on my own for purchasing new software or hardware. I found it surprisingly easy to meet my goals by saving my allowance, money from my paper route or whatever other funds I happened to come across.
Once I bought a game I played it as much as I could. Even if the game wasn't good (Anticipation, anyone?), I always kept at it for a long while before moving on. When a game was "done" (a state which varied from game to game) I just put it aside and thought about what might be next. Certain games were never "done" while others were occasionally resurrected when I learned something new about them or when a friend came over and had never played it before.
It was years before I even considered selling old games to make way for new ones; eventually that became my modus operandi. I was in a near-constant state of flux, selling and buying, trading things for store credit then immediately cashing out. Since the process was never a one-for-one deal, my collecting days were over as I began playing more and more titles. As the console competition began to increase, I actually sold entire systems in order to buy new ones. Maybe it was commercial peer pressure that drove me to cannibalize my collection so that I could keep buying newer/faster/bigger games and systems, or maybe I simply realized that holding onto games I didn't play was meaningless.
Then again, perhaps I just substituted one collection for another. As my stockpile of games and paraphernalia decreased, I started spending more money on movies. At first it was VHS tapes, but I became one of the "early adopters" of the DVD format. My interest in movies was nothing new, as I had always been nuts about going out to see new films in theaters and I was the major catalyst in our family's video rental membership, but it wasn't until high school or so that I really started buying a lot of movies and keeping them in a closet. Part of it had to do with my new-found interest in foreign films and anime, few of which were even available for rent in our local store, but I owned plenty of mainstream Hollywood films as well. My collection certainly wasn't just for show - I actively watched and re-watched everything when I had time, and I took great pleasure in loaning or showing new things to my friends. At my urge's strongest point, I honestly had a "buy first" rather than "rent first" attitude. Sometimes this led to pleasant surprises (Unbreakable is still my favorite M. Night Shyamalan film) while other times it led to extreme disappointment (insert random kung-fu flick here, especially since they often cost double or triple a domestic film).
Things got really ugly when collecting became a means to an end. Owning more toys, games or films doesn't enhance your ability to enjoy them - it just means you have more stuff. When I discovered Magic: The Gathering, that was not the case. Buying more Magic cards gave me more options for playing the game and the constant introduction of new cards, combined with the power of rare-by-design cards, drove me to spend thousands of dollars on the game when I rarely earned more than a hundred in a week's paycheck. Once I started working at the post office and earning a real salary, I spent even more. The game was, and still is, tremendously fun. I cannot deny enjoying those late-night sessions I spent facing off against my friends using our various decks of cards. However, the collection aspect of the game demanded too much of me. Not only was I spending money on new packs of cards in the hopes of finding rare cards, I was buying individual cards to strengthen the decks I already had.
As my collection grew I needed to spend money (and goodness knows how many hours) on binders, boxes and folders just to keep all the cards in order. Then came the magazines and buying guides that both showed me what cards might be useful to me and how much my current cards were worth. I spent less time playing Magic: The Gathering and more time just Gathering my Magic. Looking back it was a kind of sexy nightmare; a gilded cage I built for myself, loving every minute of it even as I poured money out the window. When the time came to shed my massive collection, the whole thing netted me $300 - surely less than a tenth of what I had spent.
So what now? All my collections from the past have been scattered to the wind and now sit in at least three separate locations, sitting in someone's closet or basement thousands of miles away. I no longer buy any toys or movies (at least, not since dropping 9000 Yen on that Japanese copy of Grindhouse *_*) and while my video game buying habits are still strong, you could hardly describe my handful of titles a "collection." Have I gone cold turkey? Am I just one new obsession away from succumbing to the cry of the collector?
At this point I believe my collection needs are being met virtually-speaking, thanks to the PlayStation 3's trophy system. They are the perfect collectible, honestly. They have no mass and cost no money. There are no "limited editions" or artificial scarcity. I will never need to re-acquire an old trophy or replace one with a newer version. They cannot be broken or stolen. All I can do is earn them by playing video games which is a hobby I already practice. Best of all, they have no use whatsoever. I am free at last.
Today's post was inspired by the second episode of Robert Ashley's brilliant
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Labels: A Life Well Wasted, collecting, fuzzy memories, movies, PS3, toys, video games, Write or Die
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Monday, February 16, 2009
So Fracking Disappointed
Remember what I said about expectations and how they ruin everything? This Saturday was a textbook example of what can happen when you think something is going to be awesome and it is merely very good.
Let me stop right there and make sure no one is jumping to any serious conclusions: today's material is purely superficial stuff (with some spoilers).
I had a lovely weekend and Valentine's Day with Mako. She gave me my present, crunchy chocolate-covered castella sticks, on Friday night, all the while apologizing for buying them in a store rather than making me something at home. I insisted (as I did days beforehand) that she doesn't need to make me anything and I would be thrilled to receive any chocolate from her. "By Any Means Necessary" isn't just a cry for revolution - it also perfectly sums up my attitude towards the distribution of gifts. As much fun as her handmade gifts can be, I would never criticize Mako for failing to spend hours making me something when a commercially-available option exists.
We spent our Saturday afternoon in Umeda where we took advantage of the discount Toho Cinemas promotion to see Street Kings, a Keanu Reeves police drama retitled "Fake City" (フェイクシティ) in Japanese. Neither title means much and the movie was unremarkable, cliche-driven and entirely forgettable, exactly as I thought it would be. Unstable cop who ignores procedure because it only gets in the way? Check. Angry superiors who berate him for his methods while simultaneously praising his results? Check. Impressionable and doomed rookie cop (complete with fiancee - how tragic!) who is manipulated by the hero into breaking the rules? Check. Stock female characters (mute victims, worried girlfriend, grieving widow, dead wife) who only exist to soften the male leads? Check. And most troubling of all, litany of minority stereotypes who are beaten, tortured and killed by the hero cops along the way? Check and Mate.
I guess I should have seen those last two coming but I thought maybe, just maybe, that we had moved beyond that bullshit by now. The only concession made to the real world is that a few of the cops are not white guys (Forest Whitaker is one of the perpetually outraged captains) but they are still all guys. Seriously, not even the "here are the bullets I found" medical examiner is a woman. You get the feeling that Hollywood producers want to go back to the Shakespearean custom of having all the roles played by men, but as a compromise they merely play every character with any impact on the plot while the attractive Hispanic actress is limited to wearing a bikini and kissing Keanu after a hard day's work murdering "suspects."
The ironic result of having zero interest in the film (particularly when I guessed the ending about halfway through) was that I did not come out of the theater feeling cheated or offended. I knew the movie would be shallow and empty and it was. All I did was enjoy my popcorn and the knowledge that Mako got to see one of her favorite actors on the big screen. If anything, I left the theater happy because we enjoy being out together as a couple.
On the contrary, when I came home and I watched the season one finale of Battlestar Galactica I had high hopes for the outcome. Not only was I still riding high from the Prison Break finale we watched a few days earlier, but the overall quality of the series led me to believe I was in for something special. Instead, the two-parter left me asking question after question about what direction this show was headed.
For starters, the last few episodes have been increasingly toying with supernatural and religious elements. While I have been impressed with the show's inclusion of faith, an element curiously absent from most scienece fiction, BSG is increasingly implying that these "lords of Kobol" are real. It's one thing to have Dr. Baltar panic and pray to God before being cleared in that treason frame-up, but it's quite another to have the President seeing prognostic hallucinations that coincide with scripture and turn out to be accurate. The finale has her ordering a ship to go on a incredibly risky solo mission just to retrieve a spiritual artifact that she believes will help them find Earth. She knows the Cylons are swarming around both the planet they think is their mythical homeworld and the planet where the artifact is being kept, meaning that everything about this could be a trap or downright staged (especially since one of the Cylons told her they were going to find this planet), but they go through with it anyway.
On the more tactical side of things, I don't understand the nature of this "plan" the Cylons boast of in every episode. How many more facilities and ships are they going to sacrifice towards this plan? I know they claim not to give a crap about "death," but do they simply have infinite resources? They allowed one of their own sleeper agents to nuke a gigantic Cylon vessel, even though they had more than enough opportunities to stop her (or at least reduce their losses). Then she goes back and promptly blows her cover by shooting the Commander in the gut - twice. What's the point? Even if he does die (which I very much doubt - this actor has top billing on the show), what good does that really do the Cylons? They had an agent on board in the military. She already blew up the ship's water supply a few episodes earlier. She could have potentially destroyed the entire ship or killed everyone on the bridge. Instead, she gave herself up in exchange for shooting one guy.
I know this is all pretty geeky and I know I'm still eager to see more of BSG. In fact, I've already rented the first two discs of season two as there were plenty of other major plot elements in that last episode that I want to see resolved. But at the end of the day, the very good television episode left me feeling disappointed while the absolutely pointless cop movie met my meager expectations. How does that make any sense at all?
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Let me stop right there and make sure no one is jumping to any serious conclusions: today's material is purely superficial stuff (with some spoilers).
I had a lovely weekend and Valentine's Day with Mako. She gave me my present, crunchy chocolate-covered castella sticks, on Friday night, all the while apologizing for buying them in a store rather than making me something at home. I insisted (as I did days beforehand) that she doesn't need to make me anything and I would be thrilled to receive any chocolate from her. "By Any Means Necessary" isn't just a cry for revolution - it also perfectly sums up my attitude towards the distribution of gifts. As much fun as her handmade gifts can be, I would never criticize Mako for failing to spend hours making me something when a commercially-available option exists.
We spent our Saturday afternoon in Umeda where we took advantage of the discount Toho Cinemas promotion to see Street Kings, a Keanu Reeves police drama retitled "Fake City" (フェイクシティ) in Japanese. Neither title means much and the movie was unremarkable, cliche-driven and entirely forgettable, exactly as I thought it would be. Unstable cop who ignores procedure because it only gets in the way? Check. Angry superiors who berate him for his methods while simultaneously praising his results? Check. Impressionable and doomed rookie cop (complete with fiancee - how tragic!) who is manipulated by the hero into breaking the rules? Check. Stock female characters (mute victims, worried girlfriend, grieving widow, dead wife) who only exist to soften the male leads? Check. And most troubling of all, litany of minority stereotypes who are beaten, tortured and killed by the hero cops along the way? Check and Mate.
I guess I should have seen those last two coming but I thought maybe, just maybe, that we had moved beyond that bullshit by now. The only concession made to the real world is that a few of the cops are not white guys (Forest Whitaker is one of the perpetually outraged captains) but they are still all guys. Seriously, not even the "here are the bullets I found" medical examiner is a woman. You get the feeling that Hollywood producers want to go back to the Shakespearean custom of having all the roles played by men, but as a compromise they merely play every character with any impact on the plot while the attractive Hispanic actress is limited to wearing a bikini and kissing Keanu after a hard day's work murdering "suspects."
The ironic result of having zero interest in the film (particularly when I guessed the ending about halfway through) was that I did not come out of the theater feeling cheated or offended. I knew the movie would be shallow and empty and it was. All I did was enjoy my popcorn and the knowledge that Mako got to see one of her favorite actors on the big screen. If anything, I left the theater happy because we enjoy being out together as a couple.
On the contrary, when I came home and I watched the season one finale of Battlestar Galactica I had high hopes for the outcome. Not only was I still riding high from the Prison Break finale we watched a few days earlier, but the overall quality of the series led me to believe I was in for something special. Instead, the two-parter left me asking question after question about what direction this show was headed.
For starters, the last few episodes have been increasingly toying with supernatural and religious elements. While I have been impressed with the show's inclusion of faith, an element curiously absent from most scienece fiction, BSG is increasingly implying that these "lords of Kobol" are real. It's one thing to have Dr. Baltar panic and pray to God before being cleared in that treason frame-up, but it's quite another to have the President seeing prognostic hallucinations that coincide with scripture and turn out to be accurate. The finale has her ordering a ship to go on a incredibly risky solo mission just to retrieve a spiritual artifact that she believes will help them find Earth. She knows the Cylons are swarming around both the planet they think is their mythical homeworld and the planet where the artifact is being kept, meaning that everything about this could be a trap or downright staged (especially since one of the Cylons told her they were going to find this planet), but they go through with it anyway.
On the more tactical side of things, I don't understand the nature of this "plan" the Cylons boast of in every episode. How many more facilities and ships are they going to sacrifice towards this plan? I know they claim not to give a crap about "death," but do they simply have infinite resources? They allowed one of their own sleeper agents to nuke a gigantic Cylon vessel, even though they had more than enough opportunities to stop her (or at least reduce their losses). Then she goes back and promptly blows her cover by shooting the Commander in the gut - twice. What's the point? Even if he does die (which I very much doubt - this actor has top billing on the show), what good does that really do the Cylons? They had an agent on board in the military. She already blew up the ship's water supply a few episodes earlier. She could have potentially destroyed the entire ship or killed everyone on the bridge. Instead, she gave herself up in exchange for shooting one guy.
I know this is all pretty geeky and I know I'm still eager to see more of BSG. In fact, I've already rented the first two discs of season two as there were plenty of other major plot elements in that last episode that I want to see resolved. But at the end of the day, the very good television episode left me feeling disappointed while the absolutely pointless cop movie met my meager expectations. How does that make any sense at all?
Labels: BSG, chocolate, family, food, movies, television
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Friday, February 13, 2009
Call it etalocohC
Wow. You know how on Wednesday night I wondered if I would make it through the next two days with my voice intact? By 10 o'clock on Thursday I was hacking and coughing like the Marlboro Man. Maybe it was a mistake to admit to having a cold before class. I think the kids see that as a window to misbehave.
Last night we watched the Prison Break Season One finale and I still can't believe how good it was. After watching the next-to-last episode and seeing (most of) the gang make it over the wall, I naively assumed the finale would be a simple culling of characters as they made their way to the airstrip and onto the plane. I went through the cast in my head and just started guessing who was going to make it and who wasn't. Despite the fact that "the plan" had to be revised and modified so many times just to escape, I honestly believed that the last phase would somehow work out just like they expected. Instead, the show kept throwing curveballs and I kept swinging with wild abandon trying to keep up. Did they make it to the plane? Nope. Did anybody get killed or recaptured? No. Does the season end with any element of the story successfully wrapped? Not really, no. I can't wait to start renting Season Two but I think Mako needs a break. Watching the show is so physically involving that we both get worked up just sitting on the couch. For DJ's sake, Mako wants to stay calm and settled as best she can over the next few months.
Speaking of concessions made for Mako, tomorrow is Valentine's Day. It also happens to be "Toho Cinemas Day" which means cheap movie tickets at any Toho Cinemas. I had hoped to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button but that was before Mako found out about a "new" Keanu Reeves movie opening on Saturday. I say "new" because it came out in the States last April and everything about the movie looks cliched and behind the times (Seriously, Keanu, you're a cop who doesn't play by the rules? What a fascinatingly fresh way to portray a police officer), but Mako loves him and I must abide. I'm sure it won't be the most banal film we've seen together; at the very least, Hugh Laurie is in it.
What's really confusing me is the sudden push for me to give Mako chocolate on Valentine's Day in spite of the glorious Japanese tradition of doing things the other way around. As previously noted in years past, this is a day where Japanese women give chocolate to men, be it husbands, boyfriends, family, or even just friendly coworkers. Men who have wives or girlfriends are expected to return the favor next month on White Day. Now it seems that someone (I suspect the chocolate people) has been promoting the idea of gyaku-choco (逆チョコ, literally "reverse chocolate") so that men give chocolates to women. The promotion is so strong that lots of popular everyday chocolates have special backwards packaging on the shelves, no doubt intended to remind male customers of their brand-new obligation. I view it more straight forwardly as an admission that this entire idea goes against common sense.
Japan had got it right for once in the world of gender relations. There was a balance to it all. Tomorrow was supposed to be my day for sugary satisfaction and Mako would get her generous gift next month. Quid pro quo, tit for tat, ebony meets ivory, perfect harmony. Now I'm expected to give her TWO gifts in exchange for only ONE? That's the worst kind of discrimination; the kind that discriminates against me.
...OK, you know (I hope!) I'm not really angry about this. Buying gifts for Mako is one of my favorite things to do and any occasion where she and I get to eat chocolate is a wonderful day in my book. Indeed, we both shared one of the chocolate fondants I received from her mother this week and it was outstanding. I just hope there's a future movement to realign the order of things with gyaku gifts on White Day for men. Hey, I just realized! The Xbox 360 is white, isn't it?
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Last night we watched the Prison Break Season One finale and I still can't believe how good it was. After watching the next-to-last episode and seeing (most of) the gang make it over the wall, I naively assumed the finale would be a simple culling of characters as they made their way to the airstrip and onto the plane. I went through the cast in my head and just started guessing who was going to make it and who wasn't. Despite the fact that "the plan" had to be revised and modified so many times just to escape, I honestly believed that the last phase would somehow work out just like they expected. Instead, the show kept throwing curveballs and I kept swinging with wild abandon trying to keep up. Did they make it to the plane? Nope. Did anybody get killed or recaptured? No. Does the season end with any element of the story successfully wrapped? Not really, no. I can't wait to start renting Season Two but I think Mako needs a break. Watching the show is so physically involving that we both get worked up just sitting on the couch. For DJ's sake, Mako wants to stay calm and settled as best she can over the next few months.
Speaking of concessions made for Mako, tomorrow is Valentine's Day. It also happens to be "Toho Cinemas Day" which means cheap movie tickets at any Toho Cinemas. I had hoped to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button but that was before Mako found out about a "new" Keanu Reeves movie opening on Saturday. I say "new" because it came out in the States last April and everything about the movie looks cliched and behind the times (Seriously, Keanu, you're a cop who doesn't play by the rules? What a fascinatingly fresh way to portray a police officer), but Mako loves him and I must abide. I'm sure it won't be the most banal film we've seen together; at the very least, Hugh Laurie is in it.
What's really confusing me is the sudden push for me to give Mako chocolate on Valentine's Day in spite of the glorious Japanese tradition of doing things the other way around. As previously noted in years past, this is a day where Japanese women give chocolate to men, be it husbands, boyfriends, family, or even just friendly coworkers. Men who have wives or girlfriends are expected to return the favor next month on White Day. Now it seems that someone (I suspect the chocolate people) has been promoting the idea of gyaku-choco (逆チョコ, literally "reverse chocolate") so that men give chocolates to women. The promotion is so strong that lots of popular everyday chocolates have special backwards packaging on the shelves, no doubt intended to remind male customers of their brand-new obligation. I view it more straight forwardly as an admission that this entire idea goes against common sense.
Japan had got it right for once in the world of gender relations. There was a balance to it all. Tomorrow was supposed to be my day for sugary satisfaction and Mako would get her generous gift next month. Quid pro quo, tit for tat, ebony meets ivory, perfect harmony. Now I'm expected to give her TWO gifts in exchange for only ONE? That's the worst kind of discrimination; the kind that discriminates against me.
...OK, you know (I hope!) I'm not really angry about this. Buying gifts for Mako is one of my favorite things to do and any occasion where she and I get to eat chocolate is a wonderful day in my book. Indeed, we both shared one of the chocolate fondants I received from her mother this week and it was outstanding. I just hope there's a future movement to realign the order of things with gyaku gifts on White Day for men. Hey, I just realized! The Xbox 360 is white, isn't it?
Labels: chocolate, family, food, Japan, movies, Prison Break, television
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
(That's Entertainment!) x 3
Found myself with some unexpected free time at work today and all I could think about was how much fun I had over the past three days, with each day featuring a completely different form of audio/visual amusement.
On Saturday, Mako and I watched a few more episodes of Prison Break. Two things continue to impress me about this show. First, each new episode fits tightly with earlier ones, and no matter how many new developments unfold the writers keep acknowledging earlier unsolved problems. It's like the exact opposite of Heroes, where characters seem to appear and disappear at the writers' convenience and past episodes are similarly ignored whenever it suits the latest crisis. Prison Break also manages to keep ratcheting up the tension and the already-high stakes with each new twist, even though (as I remarked yesterday) I know that the two main characters are going to escape...eventually. Again, contrast that with Heroes which has enough magical healers and time-traveling characters to undo anything and everything, leaving me to wonder why I even bother to watch.
Saturday night I went out and had a blast hanging out with Alex. I should explain who that is, shouldn't I? Alex is a fellow foreigner in the area, an English teacher (as in "from England")/video game enthusiast/blogger who I managed to "run into" on the 1UP forums. We had a couple of drinks last month at my favorite bar, Captain Kangaroo, where we got along quite well. Meeting people (male or female) after an online encounter is always a shaky prospect. You never know if the humor or mood of your e-mails will carry over into the real world. Alex and I, as it turns out, have a great deal to talk about and we both appreciate the occasional alcoholic beverage.
This time, we started our evening at Captain Kangaroo but then went to his apartment for a few hours of (drunken) gaming on both the PS3 and the Xbox 360. Ever since Mako flatly insisted that I never buy one, I have been tormented by my interest in the Xbox and a few of the exclusive games that it offers. Thanks to Alex, I finally got my hands on three of those games: Braid, Castle Crashers, and Left4Dead. Castle Crashers was not as much fun as I had hoped, but Braid and Left4Dead were even better than I had anticipated. Fortunately, L4D is also available on PC (if I ever upgrade) and Braid might very well turn up there by the end of the year. They both felt good with a controller in my hands though...Mako, won't you reconsider?
Sunday was the first of the month which in Japan means cheap movie tickets for all. At last, Mako and I went out and saw the latest James Bond film Quantum of Solace. Odd title aside, I loved everything about this movie, mainly thanks to the risky decision to make a direct sequel to Casino Royale. I say "risky" because Bond doesn't normally roll that way. He and his supporting characters may have existed for 40+ years and 20+ films, but rarely does any film have any significant connection to any of the others. Sure, he got married and his new bride died in one film, but other than the occasional acknowledgment of her death, he didn't change. This time out the entire film is a continuation of Casino Royale, picking up where that film so dramatically ended and featuring nearly every character in a return engagement. This sudden embrace of continuity added a lot of weight to the film: the customary opening action sequence actually means something for a change. I'm willing to admit that Casino Royale was a better film but that's honestly the strongest criticism I can muster for Quantum of Solace. Mako loved it as well, but she says that she still prefers Sean Connery. No argument here!
Yesterday was Monday and a work day but it also managed to be Super Sunday thanks to a Super Bowl rebroadcast after dinner. I was tired as hell and a little frustrated by my internet withdrawal but it all paid off beautifully. The game was terrific, packed with much more drama than I could have imagined from two teams I don't care a lick about. If anything, that neutrality helped me enjoy the see-saw of the final few minutes, though any game with more scoring in the 4th quarter than the previous 3 quarters combined should win over even the most disinterested fan. Or a non-fan, as Mako doesn't know a thing about the game but she got completely caught up in the intensity, especially that endzone-to-endzone interception return and the fast-paced touchdown passes of the last few drives.
So to wrap it up, I am feelin' fine. Great even, despite the long week of work that still lies ahead. TV, video games, James Bond and football are just as thrilling as ever. What did you people get up to this weekend?
つづく...(Click here to read more)
On Saturday, Mako and I watched a few more episodes of Prison Break. Two things continue to impress me about this show. First, each new episode fits tightly with earlier ones, and no matter how many new developments unfold the writers keep acknowledging earlier unsolved problems. It's like the exact opposite of Heroes, where characters seem to appear and disappear at the writers' convenience and past episodes are similarly ignored whenever it suits the latest crisis. Prison Break also manages to keep ratcheting up the tension and the already-high stakes with each new twist, even though (as I remarked yesterday) I know that the two main characters are going to escape...eventually. Again, contrast that with Heroes which has enough magical healers and time-traveling characters to undo anything and everything, leaving me to wonder why I even bother to watch.
Saturday night I went out and had a blast hanging out with Alex. I should explain who that is, shouldn't I? Alex is a fellow foreigner in the area, an English teacher (as in "from England")/video game enthusiast/blogger who I managed to "run into" on the 1UP forums. We had a couple of drinks last month at my favorite bar, Captain Kangaroo, where we got along quite well. Meeting people (male or female) after an online encounter is always a shaky prospect. You never know if the humor or mood of your e-mails will carry over into the real world. Alex and I, as it turns out, have a great deal to talk about and we both appreciate the occasional alcoholic beverage.
This time, we started our evening at Captain Kangaroo but then went to his apartment for a few hours of (drunken) gaming on both the PS3 and the Xbox 360. Ever since Mako flatly insisted that I never buy one, I have been tormented by my interest in the Xbox and a few of the exclusive games that it offers. Thanks to Alex, I finally got my hands on three of those games: Braid, Castle Crashers, and Left4Dead. Castle Crashers was not as much fun as I had hoped, but Braid and Left4Dead were even better than I had anticipated. Fortunately, L4D is also available on PC (if I ever upgrade) and Braid might very well turn up there by the end of the year. They both felt good with a controller in my hands though...Mako, won't you reconsider?
Sunday was the first of the month which in Japan means cheap movie tickets for all. At last, Mako and I went out and saw the latest James Bond film Quantum of Solace. Odd title aside, I loved everything about this movie, mainly thanks to the risky decision to make a direct sequel to Casino Royale. I say "risky" because Bond doesn't normally roll that way. He and his supporting characters may have existed for 40+ years and 20+ films, but rarely does any film have any significant connection to any of the others. Sure, he got married and his new bride died in one film, but other than the occasional acknowledgment of her death, he didn't change. This time out the entire film is a continuation of Casino Royale, picking up where that film so dramatically ended and featuring nearly every character in a return engagement. This sudden embrace of continuity added a lot of weight to the film: the customary opening action sequence actually means something for a change. I'm willing to admit that Casino Royale was a better film but that's honestly the strongest criticism I can muster for Quantum of Solace. Mako loved it as well, but she says that she still prefers Sean Connery. No argument here!
Yesterday was Monday and a work day but it also managed to be Super Sunday thanks to a Super Bowl rebroadcast after dinner. I was tired as hell and a little frustrated by my internet withdrawal but it all paid off beautifully. The game was terrific, packed with much more drama than I could have imagined from two teams I don't care a lick about. If anything, that neutrality helped me enjoy the see-saw of the final few minutes, though any game with more scoring in the 4th quarter than the previous 3 quarters combined should win over even the most disinterested fan. Or a non-fan, as Mako doesn't know a thing about the game but she got completely caught up in the intensity, especially that endzone-to-endzone interception return and the fast-paced touchdown passes of the last few drives.
So to wrap it up, I am feelin' fine. Great even, despite the long week of work that still lies ahead. TV, video games, James Bond and football are just as thrilling as ever. What did you people get up to this weekend?
Labels: Alex, football, friends, Heroes, James Bond, movies, Prison Break, sports, television, video games, Xbox
つづく...(Click here to read more)
