Monthly Archive for December, 2008

Quantum of Solace

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by
Paul
on December 29, 2008
in Reviews
. 2 Comments Tags: .

Well, it’s been out for more than a month, but I finally got around to seeing Quantum of Solace, the follow-up to Casino Royale (the price you pay for having two-year-old twins). I dug the film a lot, but it’s certainly not without it’s problems. Chief amongst those problems is the fact that it’s not as good as Casino Royale, but the disparity isn’t so great that it’s damning. The story’s a little hard to follow at times (as it is in just about every espionage film ever made), and the villain is enormously underwhelming (I didn’t for a second believe that Daniel Craig couldn’t beat the ever-lovin’ shit out of the guy, and he eventually does). Even more puzzling is the villain’s henchman. Perhaps I’ve just gotten used to classic Bond henchpeople like “Jaws” and Robert Shaw in From Russia with Love, but this film breaks new and puzzling ground in this particular area of the mythos. I’m willing to believe the makers of “Solace” thought they were being deconstructionist or ironic by giving their villain a beanpole henchman with a bowl-cut, but at the end of the day, it’s still a beanpole henchman with a bowl-cut, and it left me asking myself “What the hell?”.

But, hey, I had a good time at Quantum of Solace. I like the reset they did with the first two films, and I think Craig is doing a fine job in interpreting James Bond for the twenty-first century. In the third installment, however, I wouldn’t mind seeing them forget about forging a continuity and just giving us a straight-up Bond adventure. The origin’s out of the way, now let the character strut his stuff…

In parting let me just say (and this is not in any way an original thought ) Quantum of Solace is the worst title in film history — with the possible exception of Rampagin’ Rectums! a late seventies Jan Michael Vincent vehicle.

An Experiment in Flash Fiction (”Awake”)

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by
Paul
on December 26, 2008
in Show and Tell and Writing
. 4 Comments Tags: , , .

Long story short, I’ve been getting more into both reading and writing lately. It’s a comfortable place for me to return to in these troubled times, and I’m digging on both activities immensely. Recently, in surfing around ye olde blogosphere, I stumbled across a term I’d not heard before: Flash Fiction. I’ve seen multiple definitions on just what F.F. truly is, but basically, it’s just really short short stories — say, 1000 words or below. The form came into vogue primarily because of the internet; a story that length can easily be slapped up onto a web page and digested by the user in a reasonable amount of time. ‘Intriguing,’ thought I. ‘Maybe I should try my hand and this, how you say, Flash Fiction…’ And so I have. Here’s my first ever short short story made especially in a bite-sized chunk. I found cranking this baby out to be a pleasurable experience, so I expect I’ll do more. Let me know what you think…

Awake:

Underneath the searing pain, Ruth saw a tiny, beckoning glimmer, and she recognized it for what it was: relief. The question would no longer be hers to answer; the responsibility would fall to someone else. Another wave of agony rolled through her. The chest into the arm, the chest into the arm – the left arm. Her vision contracted to a pinhole, a rippling tear surrounded by black. Through it, the porch. The porch Henry had painted three days before he died. Her home for the last fifty-two years. A fitting place for this. She listened, but she did not hear Daniel’s voice, or the clomp-clomp-clomp of his sneakered feet. “Now,” she whispered. “Now would be good.”

The pinhole dilated closed, completing the ebon field. Sound collapsed away too, like the inrush of too much water into the ears. Then the separating, the tingly disjointedness. The pinhole reopened, and the porch was replaced with… replaced with… One word came to mind: “Disney”. Amber, orange, blue, red, green, purple, yellow, and white – like a Technicolor cartoon of the forties, and everything was suffused with the scent of honeysuckle. A momentary flash of herself as a child – maybe six – standing by the fence of her parents’ home, patiently drawing the white tube from the heart of a honeysuckle flower, placing it in her mouth, and relishing the tiny beads of nectar.

“Take my hand.” The voice was Sharon’s – to the right and clear in a way that no voice had ever been. Without ears, without ear canals, without cartilage, bone or blood to obscure the sound. This was a voice not heard in almost four years and it was all the sweeter for its heart-breaking clarity. Ruth held out what she thought was her hand and she felt Sharon take it. She felt every line, every fold, every crease of their palms conjoin, and she felt their two pulses synch in their rhythm and become one.

Over the sound of their commingled heartbeat, Ruth heard a new rhythm, a familiar rhythm which unnerved her and which she tried to ignore.

Continue reading ‘An Experiment in Flash Fiction (”Awake”)’

The Drowned Life

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by
Paul
on December 20, 2008
in Reviews
. 6 Comments Tags: , .

The Drowned Life (P.S.)

I stumbled across Jeffrey Ford’s The Drowned Life — a collection of short stories — quite by accident one day as I was browsing the “New & Noteworthy” section of the Kindle store. The description intrigued me enough that I downloaded a sample chapter and I was immediately hooked. Ford’s writing style is elegant without being ostentatious and his choice of subject matter and use of imagery is very engaging. One of the things I really enjoyed about this collection was its all-over-the-map sensibility. Within the same (virtual) covers, there were stories which might be labeled “straightforward modern fiction” (and by that I mean stories about normal people in normal crisis saying normal things albeit eloquently), and stories which were wonderfully askew –shot through with elements of folklore and whimsy. In many ways, The Drowned Life reminded me of how I used to write before I became bogged down with neuroses and shattered dreams. It’s the type of writing I’d like to get back to if I could ever get my head out of my own ass.

But I digress and I didn’t set out trying to bring down the room. Bottom line: read The Drowned Life. It’s really good. Good enough to make me seek out more of Jeffrey Ford’s stuff.

The Pixar Story

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by
Paul
on December 16, 2008
in Cartoons & Animation and Reviews
. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

The Documentary:

I suppose it’s a little unusual to review a DVD extra by itself, but The Pixar Story is a feature length documentary (and a slickly-made one at that) so why the hell not? All in all, Leslie Iwerks’ look at the history of the Emeryville animation giant is a terrific piece of work. All of the key players are present and accounted for, the timeline of the studio is covered in as much detail as can be expected in an hour and a half, and there are some great rare clips here which will surely be of interest to even the casual fan (early tests combining hand-drawn and computer animation done while John Lasseter was still at Disney, prototype shots done for the first Toy Story, etc.). In particular, I would highly recommend this documentary to anyone who is unfamiliar with the people and events that shaped Pixar and who wants to learn more. The information is neatly and entertainingly dispensed and the whole experience goes down easy.

Here’s the one thing I would object to: Like To Infinity and Beyond (a book which relied heavily on Iwerks’ filmed interviews, by the way), The Pixar Story plays fast and loose with Steve Jobs’ involvement in nurturing the company. If you take either the film or the book at face value, you come off believing that Jobs was a romantic who bought into the dream of feature length computer animation from the get-go. Other sources (such as the book The Pixar Touch) paint a different story. Jobs’ initial interest in Pixar was as a hardware company and he was, at least at first, resistant to the whole animation idea. He came around, to be sure, but not without considerable (alleged) drama. i guess it’s not surprising that a project that got Pixar’s blessing would choose to gloss over the shortcomings of one of its founders. At any rate, this “tidying-up” of Jobs’ image isn’t a deal-breaker; The Pixar Story is still worth your time.

The Disc:

All-in-all, the blu-ray for Wall*E is really terrific. As always, Pixar does a superlative job with their discs. The picture quality is unrivaled, and the included short films are great (especially Presto). I’m still a little befuddled by the adulation the film has recieved, however. A few critics have placed it atop their year-end best lists. Sure, it’s a good movie, but is it really the best of 2008?

L.A. Confidential

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by
Paul
on December 14, 2008
in Reviews
. 4 Comments Tags: , , .

I spent a good bit of the late 90s evangelizing for L.A. Confidential. I was one of the few people I knew at the time who’d seen the film during its theatrical run, and I couldn’t help thinking that that was a damned shame. Here was a new classic, a film worthy of comparison with the true greats and people were missing it! I’d like to think that a lot of you out there have caught up with “Confidential” in the eleven years since its initial release. If you haven’t, listen to this, my final plea…

  • The script (adapted from James Ellroy’s epic novel) is as tight as a drum and engaging in both its complexity and its human drama.
  • The movie features star-making performances from Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce. The rest of the cast (Kim Bassinger, Kevin Spacey, James Cromwell, Danny DeVito, and David Strathairn) are all as good here as they’ve ever been.
  • The direction and cinematography are impeccable. I really feel as though I’ve entered the world of 1950s Los Angeles. [The stupefying thing to me is the choices director Curtis Hanson has made since "Confidential" (8 Mile, In Her Shoes). It seemed like he was poised to become a major creative force and then... nothing.]
  • The scene where Bud White (Crowe) interrogates the D.A. is pure gold. If you’re a fan of swift and blinding violence as I am, this scene will become a new favorite.

So, get out there, all you hold-outs: see L.A. Confidential already. I guarantee you won’t be sorry. (And I say that with the movie fresh in my mind. A friend of mine was good enough to give me the new blu-ray disc for Christmas. The flick is as good as it always was and it looks spectacular in this new incarnation.)

Wrath of the Lich King (Initial Impressions)

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by
Paul
on December 13, 2008
in Reviews and Videogames
. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Questing as Meditation:

Many of my friends who play World of Warcraft are pretty hardcore — they reach level caps quickly, they’ve beaten all of the big raid bosses, they always have the best gear. I am not like my friends. I am what’s known in the Massively Multi-player community as “casual” which I think is at least somewhat interchangeable with the word “wuss”. The simple truth is that I am incapable of putting in the marathon sessions epic achievement within the game requires. Some of the guys I know think nothing of sitting there for four hours at a stretch whereas I get “WoW Fatigue” after two. My eyes start to cross, my ass starts to hurt, and something which started as fun begins to feel like work. No, the main reason I enjoy World of Warcraft is the questing, meandering through the world with whatever time I feel willing to commit. In fact, I consider it relaxing which is, as you might imagine anathema to my dyed-in-the wool-fanatic associates. I still reach the level caps eventually; I just do it at a much more leisurely pace than my friends. Which means, I think, that I’m getting more for my money. On the other hand, I’m also missing out on a significant portion of the content Blizzard is providing by not participating in the raids and dungeons. Unfortunately, this puts a dent in my I’m-getting-more-for-my-money-argument.

With the release of WoW’s second expansion Wrath of the Lich King, I’m now not only getting tons of new “meditation friendly” quest content, I’m also getting to see (at least to a small degree) how the other half lives.

Everything Old is New Again:

First thing’s first: What do I think of all the new quest content? (The primary reason I’ve been playing the game for five years. Yes, five years. That’s a whole year longer than the game’s been available commercially. I know people at Blizzard. Suck it, bitches.) Well, for the most part, I think the new quest content is wonderful. The writers have kicked it up a notch since the last expansion (2006’s The Burning Crusade) in every important respect but one. Narratively and stylistically, the writing is the best it’s ever been. But then there’s that nagging “one respect” I just alluded to. This ain’t a novel, people, and if it doesn’t function well within the constraints of the game mechanics, then it’s lacking in an important way. What do I mean by that? Well, in my experience (I’m currently level 75 out of a possible 80), much of the quest text is lacking in explicit direction. I’m often not told where to go, what to do, or who to speak with when I return. And it isn’t just me… When I get confused, I address my questions to the general chat channel. The responses I get are almost always two-fold. First, I get the answer to my question and, second, I get an opinion which goes something like this: “Doesn’t the quest text suck this time out?” This has happened to me on numerous occasions. So, anyway, what I’m saying is “A-plus for Style/Content, B-minus for functionality”.

But don’t let that initial assessment be your only yardstick. Let me also point out that the WoW Quest Team have outdone themselves with new and unusual things for players to do. They’ve really started to innovate in ways which weren’t as evident in the initial two offerings (meaning WoW itself and The Burning Crusade). There’s some really clever, witty new stuff here — both in terms of story content and in game mechanics. As much as I’m annoyed at the occasionally faulty quest text, I am re-energized by all of the fun stuff to do. In fact, I don’t think I got half-way to level cap in “Burning Crusade” anywhere near as quick as I have in “Wrath”. That’s a testament to the “funability” of the product. [Funability is a word my brother and I coined to describe when a game is just, you know, working. Aesthetically, technically, it's just kicking ass -- even if you're not entirely sure why.]

Before I move on, let me just mention two other things which make “Wrath” a stand-out in the MMO space. First, the artwork. The people doing the environments have really hit it out of the park this time. In fact, I’d say there’s been a radical improvement in this area since “Burning Crusade”. All of the zones I’ve been in so far have been simply breath-taking. Second, the Death Knight. Blizzard has added a new character class this time out. The Death Knight is an evil, magic-wielding warrior who can raise the dead. The starting area where this character class is introduced contains some of the finest storytelling Blizzard has done to date. Playing through that area really was a blast. It’s what happens after that that caused me to be less effusive in my praise regarding the Death Knight than I might have been otherwise. After that the starting zone, the Death Knight moves into the mainstream WoW experience, and it’s a real let-down. I went from fighting in a war which would determine the very future of the world to gathering scrap iron and cast-off lumber. Talk about a drag.

Seeing How the Other Half Lives:

As I indicated, I’ve never been much for grouping in WoW. I wasn’t playing with friends and, as a result, I was missing out on much of the higher-end content (which can’t be done solo). I justified this on two levels: 1) I don’t have the patience or the time to devote hours and hours to dungeon crawling and 2) “Pick-up” groups are a bitch. Since I wasn’t playing with friends, if I wanted to group, I had to seek out strangers with similar objectives. This can be, as you can imagine, a highly variable experience. Hook up with cool people and you’ll have a good time. Hook up with dilllwads and you’ll want to shoot yourself. Unfortunately for me, most of my grouping experiences were of the second variety so I just wrote off the higher end content. With Wrath of the Lich King, I was invited by some close friends to go on some dungeon runs — my first in several years. All in all, this has been a good time although it’s been complicated somewhat by my own lack of experience. (My friends are somewhat more well-heeled than I, but not so much that they’re becoming frustrated with my ineptitude in a group dynamic). We’ve done two of the dungeons in “Wrath’s” new continent of Northrend with mixed results. In one of them, we’ve been unable to defeat the final boss after multiple tries, and in the other, we sailed right through the whole thing on the first try without referring to any online strategy whatsoever. I don’t know if this indicates some sort of balancing issue, but it is strange.

At any rate, it has been nice to catch a small glimpse of what I’ve been missing all these years. Has it changed my life? No, I still prefer questing, but the odd dungeon here and there will add some nice spice to life.

To Sum Up:

Bottom line: Is Wrath of the Lich King worth your hard-earned dollars? No question about it if — and this is a big “if” — you already have a high level character. There’s almost no content for “newbies” at all. So, those of you who are level 67 and below can skip this one until you gain some ground. Otherwise, buy it; buy it now. Honestly, given the consistent level of quality in these products it’s not hard to see why WoW has eleven million subscribers and its closest competitor has barely a million. I wonder sometimes why other companies even try.

-

The Verdict

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by
Paul
on December 10, 2008
in Reviews
. 2 Comments Tags: .

Let’s cut to the chase: The Verdict is a terrific story (adapted for the screen by the venerable David Mamet), it’s supremely well-made (thanks, in large part, to director extraordinaire Sydney Lumet), and it features probably the best performance of Paul Newman’s career. Any one of those three names ought to be enough to get you to seek out The Verdict if you haven’t seen it already. And, if you’re not familiar with one or more of those guys, first of all, shame on you, and second of all, just know that you’re in good hands. Mamet, Lumet and Newman are (or were) seasoned pros at the top of their respective games in 1982, and they all three totally delivered with The Verdict. In fact, I can’t think of anything bad to say about this picutre. That has to constitute some kind of first.

Plot Envy 3: Politeness Doesn’t Pay

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by
Paul
on December 5, 2008
in Writing
. 0 Comments Tags: , .

A Dirty Little Secret:

Let me preface this, my third article on plot, by making a little confession: I talk to myself, albeit in written form. Some people reach a conclusion by thinking out loud. Me, I write out loud. Whenever I have a problem to work through, I begin to write, dissecting all of the aspects of the situation until I reach some logical conclusion. Let me give you a for instance: I follow the practice quite a bit when I’m hashing out a storyline. Opening a trusty spiral notebook, I will ask myself a question like “What is this character’s motivation?”, and then I will write until a lucid train of thought evolves (or, as is sometimes the case, doesn’t). My personal notebooks are shot through with these little solo conversations. Needless to say, I don’t share these rambling discourses with anyone, and that’s a good thing since I fear I would have been institutionalized long ago had I made them public. The funny thing is, with these semi-recurring entries on “plotcraft”, I’ve outed myself as “therapeutic essayist”. But the cat’s out of the bag now, so let’s forge ahead…

Third Time’s The Charm:

In looking over Plot Envy Part One and Plot Envy Part Two again recently, I noticed a lot of the neurotic self-bantering I alluded to above. Clearly, here is a guy who, after two essays, is still conflicted on the subject of plot. In part one, I make a gutsy promise to forgo Old Habits and get a handle on plotting once and for all. In part two, I belittle the guy who wrote part one, and I mount a hasty defense of the aforementioned Old Habits. Let me just say that I think there are valid points in both articles, but strangely, neither of them mention an irrefutably vital element of all drama. This omission is very telling and it points up my longstanding Achilles Heel as regards plotcraft. Here now is that irrefutably vital element: Conflict.

There’s an old axiom: “drama is conflict”. Without conflict, you have two guys in an empty room with nothing interesting to say or do. If you want a story you’re going to have to get the two guys mad at one another. But, let’s be clear: Here’s a charmingly folksy definition of conflict… One guy (let’s call him “The Protagonist”) wants something. Another guy (let’s call him “The Antagonist”) doesn’t want him to have it. The Protagonist, seeing The Antagonist as a clear obstacle to his want, takes action until one or the other of them falls and the whole thing comes to a (hopefully) satisfying conclusion. The tug o’ war between those two guys is the essence of conflict and thus the essence of drama and thus the essence of plot. Of course all of this is a fairly grotesque oversimplification, but it is, I feel, a reasonably good definition of the plot mechanic. Simple, right? So, why do you suppose it is it took me three essays to reach this conclusion? Well, I’ll tell you: I’m not good with conflict. I have a tendency to avoid it in real life and that impulse, sadly, carries over into my fiction writing. But here’s something I’ve been telling myself lately and I’m coming to believe it’s true: At least in terms of crafting plot, Politeness Doesn’t Pay. If everyone’s getting along, then what you have is a boring, stillborn story. Make your characters mad at one another, have your hero want something and take it away from him; then you’ve got something. Do you want to craft a good story? Be mean to your hero.

Anyway, I think I’m feeling comfortable enough with this whole notion of plot to let it lie for now. No doubt I will have more to say on the subject of writing, but this particular thought train has reached the station. Until my next bout of public neurosis, I bid you adieu.

The Amazon Kindle

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by
Paul
on December 4, 2008
in Reviews
. 4 Comments Tags: , .

Kindle: Amazon's Wireless Reading Device

I was fortunate enough to recieve an Amazon Kindle as a gift last month, and I must say that I really do love the damn thing. For those of you not hip to the Kindle, it’s an “e-reader”: an electronic device from which you read. You can store roughly two hundred books inside the Kindle itself and there’s a slot for a memory card which will allow you to store something like two thousand more.

I can already hear a lot of you saying “I don’t want to read my books off of any damn video screen! Paper’s just fine for me, thank you very much.” Well, to you I say “It’s not a video screen, not really.” The Kindle actually uses electronic ink on a surface that very much resembles traditional paper. Don’t ask me how it works, but the experience of reading on the Kindle is very much like reading a standard book only you flip the pages back and forth via two appropriately labeled buttons. It’s simple, it’s straightforward and this one little device allows you to eliminate the clutter that roughly two thousand physical books entails. And the process of obtaining those books really couldn’t be any easier. First of all, there are thousands of public domain titles available on the web. With a little searching (and a little USB cabling) I quickly added many of the greats of Western Literature to the device in very little time. But if you want new books rather than musty/crusty ones, the means of acquisition are built right into the Kindle itself. You simply connect to the Amazon store (via an always-on, totally free wireless connection which is built-in), you search for what you want and then you hit the “Purchase” button. Your new book will be safely nestled in the Kindle’s memory bank in (generally) less than a minute. It really is just that easy. And here’s a bonus feature I make constant use of: Pretty much every book in the Kindle Store has a free, download-able sample. That is you can try before you buy. I’ve both found new and exciting things this way and I’ve dodged the odd bullet or two by discovering a book I wanted to buy was actually a steaming pile before I bought it. Nice feature, wouldn’t you say?

The analogy I would use is that the Kindle is the iPod for bookworms. Truth be told, I’ve always been a bigger reader than a music fan so I’d say the Amazon Kindle has nudged my iPod out of the top spot in my gadget lovin’ heart. And I do love me some iPod. (Don’t anybody tell Rhonda.)

But, in the interest of full disclosure…

…I should tell you that I’m on my second Kindle. The first one I got developed a line down the center of the screen in which no “ink pixels” would draw. I called Amazon and they said, “We’ll have another one for you in tomorrow’s Fed-ex. Sorry about the inconvenience.” A potentially annoying problem deferred by friendly, prompt customer service. Color me pleased.

Entourage 5

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by
Paul
on December 1, 2008
in Reviews
. 0 Comments Tags: , .

It just occurred to me that a week’s gone by since the finale of Entourage Season 5, and I neglected to mention it (which didn’t seem quite right considering my effusive praise for the prior four seasons). So, what did I think of this run of episodes? Well, truth be told, this season has been my least favorite so far. It wasn’t bad, mind you, it was just lacking the pizazz of the previous sets. I did like the way things wrapped up, and I’m looking forward to the start of Season 6 in summer of ‘09, but I do wonder if the bloom’s starting to come off the rose of one of my favorite TV shows.

So, yeah, I wasn’t blown away by Season 5 (the stakes didn’t seem as high, the comedy wasn’t as funny and the drama wasn’t as, well, dramatic) , but now that it’s Sunday night again and my boys are MIA, I gotta admit that I miss them.