Monthly Archive for February, 2009

Buckaroo Banzai

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by
Paul
on February 28, 2009
in Reviews
. 4 Comments Tags: , , , .

80s-palooza continued this evening with a viewing of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eight Dimension, a truly bizarre movie which I simultaneously am befuddled by and harbor some sincere affection for. This flick is ballsy in its unabashed weirdness, but the sincerity of the excellent cast really sells it. Well, mostly sells it, anyway. I admire just how dryly and surreally humorous Earl Mac Rauch’s screenplay is, but there are stretches that aren’t paced properly and other sections where the logical disconnects are coming fast and furious. I wonder if this is Rauch’s fault or that of first-time director W.D. Richter, but the ultimate result is an uneven and often confusing romp laced with sharp humor and clever ideas. I can honestly say that “Buckaroo Banzai” is unlike anything else I’ve ever seen, and that sort of originality goes pretty far with me. If the movie were a little less misshapen, I would happily align myself with the cult following it has maintained over the years. As it is, I give it an admiring but reserved tip of my metaphorical hat.

The Mindscape of Alan Moore

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by
Paul
on February 26, 2009
in Reviews
. 6 Comments Tags: , .

With the release of Watchmen fast approaching, I decided I’d have a look at this documentary on the visionary writer who conceived the comic book back in the middle 1980s. Anyone who’s followed comics in the past thirty years has heard the name Alan Moore. Not only did he write Watchmen, he also did stints on Swamp Thing and Hellblazer, and created such seminal work as From Hell, V for Vendetta and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Along with Neil Gaiman, he’s the closest thing comics has to a genuine rock star. Moore is an erudite and articulate man with a far-reaching mind and, as is often the case with men like that, he also has a strong inclination toward genuine  eccentricity. The Mindscape of Alan Moore is quite literally one hour and twenty minutes of that erudite and eccentric man talking. This is, at once, its greatest virtue and its biggest flaw. I say virtue since Moore is an unquestionably brilliant man capable of going on at length — and with surprising vivacity — about subjects as far-ranging as comic books, education, storytelling, science, religion, culture, and magic and shamanism (with the latter being, quite clearly, a driving personal passion). None of what Moore has to say is boring by any stretch (in fact most of it’s quite fascinating) — but there’s just so damn much of it. Therein lies the aforementioned flaw. It’s hard to listen to anyone go on for nearly ninety minutes regardless of how many topics they cover within that span. This is no fault of Moore’s really — we as simple creaures tend to have limited tolerance for lengthy discourse. Does that mean that I’m going to not recommend that you watch The Mindscape of Alan Moore? Quite the contrary, actually. I think the movie’s quite good and Moore’s a fascinating character. Here is what I recommend you do if you have even a passing interest in Moore or his work: Netflix the disc and watch it in three roughly thirty minute sittings. The meal is too rich to take in all at once (as I did this evening), but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t tasty.

The Beastmaster

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by
Paul
on February 23, 2009
in Reviews
. 16 Comments Tags: , , , .

If you’ve been paying attention here lately, you probably noticed I’ve been on a bit of a nostalgia kick; revisiting such1980s flicks as Fright Night, War Games, and The Sword and the Sorcerer. Well, that little trip down memory lane continued last night with a viewing of The Beastmaster, the 1982 movie featuring Marc Singer, an eagle, a black tiger, a couple of kooky ferrets, and Rip Torn’s villainous eyebrows. Let me just say right off the bat that The Beastmaster fared much better with me than The Sword and the Sorcerer — the production values are higher, the acting is moderately better, and the script was marginally less silly (although The Beastmaster does require you to shut down portions of your brain in order to fully enjoy the ride). I’m still a little hard-pressed to understand why this film was one of the most popular movies on cable for as long as it was (it was a perennial favorite on both HBO and TNT for a significant period), but that doesn’t mean this Beast is utterly without charm. I guess my problem with Sword and Sorcery movies in general is that, for a number of years, the studios refused to take them seriously — relegating them to ‘B’ and ‘C’ status — and it shows. S&S flicks were never able to garner decent casts or decent budgets and thus were immediately dropped to the level of kitsch. Part of me is always left thinking “well, if they don’t care, why should I?” But, as I indicated in my review of The Sword and the Sorcerer, I’m a bit of a curmudgeon on this topic so take me with a grain of salt if you must.

In closing, let me just say that the edition of The Beastmaster I watched has one of the best DVD “Easter eggs” of all time. Buried in the Talent Bios menu is a hidden button which leads to all of the Tanya Roberts nude scenes which wound up on the cutting room floor. Yes, it was pandering and crass of them to include this, but God bless them for it anyway.

Gaming Grab Bag (more Pseudo-reviews)

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by
Paul
on February 21, 2009
in Reviews and Videogames
. 6 Comments Tags: .

I’m continuing to enjoy my free month of Gamefly, and here’s a look at what I’ve dabbled in lately…

Grand Theft Auto IV:

Maybe I’m just old, but I didn’t get it. The world of Grand Theft Auto IV wasn’t nearly as immersive or as interactive as I expected and the story, as good as it may be in its latter stages, failed to grab me early on. I felt as though “GTA4″ put me on rails and there were only certain things I could do in order to advance the story. I wasn’t especially interested in or skilled at these activities, so I didn’t find the experience compelling. If there’s one thing I hate as a gamer it’s repeating things over and over again until I get them right. And, like many games before it, GTA4 not only makes you repeat the task itself, it shows you the cutscene leading into the activity again as well. So much for suspension of disbelief and so much for that big open sandbox world I’d been hearing about.

It wasn’t like the experience was a total wash, however. The game does allow you to engage in some grotesquely anti-social behaviors and that does make for some good maniacal giggle-inducing fun. But, for me at least, it wasn’t enough to sustain my interest.

Final Fantasy Tactics A2:

FFTA2 is a tactical combat game for the Nintendo DS using characters and settings from the Final Fantasy series of games. I confess to never really caring for Final Fantasy all that much. The stories always have that overwrought, nonsensical vibe one so often finds in Japanese animation and comics, and the gameplay (with its random encounters and repeated cutscenes [see above]) can be maddening. Oddly enough, however, this has been my favorite Gamefly game so far. In fact, I went ahead and purchased it from them at a reduced rate using their handy-dandy “Keep it!” feature. FFTA2 is compelling in the same way that chess can be compelling only, instead of using abstract pieces like bishops and knights and whatnot, you’re using little characters who can do magic and swing swords. The tactical aspect isn’t the only thing that grabs me, though. More than that is the “portability” of the experience. Almost all of the missions can be completeted in roughly fifteen minutes so I feel as though I can pick up the DS, invest a little of my time, accomplish something that forwards the story, and then be on about my business. Games which allow this sort of discrete but meaningful play always appeal to me.

Personal Trainer: Cooking:

Yeah, you read that right… cooking.

I read about this one over on the Brainy Gamer blog and it sounded like an interesting non-game use of the Nintendo DS. The title is more or less what it promises to be: You select recipes by region or food type and the program generates a shopping list for you and walks you through preparing the dish step by step. Pretty nifty, really. Although, I’ll be honest and say that I didn’t look at this one for more than a few minutes before throwing back it into the mailbox. My interest in Personal Trainer: Cooking was more academic that practical. (In other words, I’m far too lazy to actually make any of the dishes myself. ) That notwithstanding, I do recommend the Brainy Gamer. It’s written by a college professor named Michael Abbott who’s also an avid gamer. I read this site regularly, and I also listen to the podcasts Abbott puts together roughly once a month.

Street Fighter IV:

I got this one out of sheer nostalgia since I have fond memories of playing Street Fighter II on the Super Nintendo. I don’t expect to hold onto the game past this weekend since I’m not the type to obsessively master all of the various fighters’ moves, but I am impressed with how Capcom has updated the game for this generation’s hardware. Street Fighter IV is still ostensibly a 2D fighting game but it uses 3D characters and environments to flesh out the experience. (Occasional camera moves add a bit of flair, but during the battles, the view is locked to a profile view of the combatants.) I must say that the CG models of the classic characters are amongst the best I’ve ever seen. The texture work and animation are top notch — it really does feel as though the cel animated cast of SF2 suddenly popped out and became three dimensional.

Pay the Writer

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by
Paul
on February 12, 2009
in General and Writing
. 6 Comments Tags: , .

This is by far the best three and a half minutes I spent all day. [It's Harlan Ellison so, yes, there's some salty language.]

Fable 2 (Pseudo-review)

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by
Paul
on February 9, 2009
in Reviews and Videogames
. 0 Comments Tags: , .

I’ve flagged this as a psudeo-review since I didn’t actually complete the game. I don’t think I’m going to use that as a criteria for posting a game review from now on since these games can take a considerable amount of time to finish and, often, I have compelling reasons for throwing in the towel. My compelling reason for bailing on Fable 2 was that I didn’t like the game all that much. I consider this title to offer a very hybridized experience — it has a story to tell and, as a mechanic for delivering that story, it uses gameplay. I liked the story fairly well (in fact, I thought that it was both interesting and charming and I admired its decidedly British idiom), but the gameplay left me cold for all of the six hours I ended up devoting to it. Maybe I’m just a roleplaying game snob, but Fable 2 struck me as nothing more than “RPG-lite” — so much so that I would more qualify this Lionhead release as an adventure game with RPG elements thrown in for spice. All of that would be well and good, but even with its newbie-friendly approach, I found the underlying mechanics of character advancement and world exploration to be arcane and counter intuitive. To my way of thinking, it’s not always advisable to strip out all of the “under-the-hood” stat-shifting that one usually associates with computer roleplaying games. What you gain in accessibility, you lose in authenticity. What I mean by that is the player (or at least me) is left with the feeling that his customization choices aren’t really having all that much of an impact and the character he is customizing isn’t really all that custom. Also (despite the colorful dialogue and setting), I never really felt connected to Fable 2’s world. Perhaps I’m just too used to World of Warcraft (which ostensibly has a huge interconnected world where you can go anywhere and do anything), but the locations in Fable 2 felt to me not so much like parts of a living, breathing planet so much as nodes on a designer’s flow chart, interconnected not by geography but by gameplay and story delivery necessities.

A Further Note on that Whole “Pseudo-review” Thing:

I recently got a coupon for thirty days of free Gamefly and I’m attempting to go through as many of the games I’ve missed as possible. This strategy wouldn’t prevent me from keeping a game if it really compelled me, but Fable 2 failed to do that. Here’s my personal yardstick for a compelling game: If, after I’ve invested a reasonable amount of time in a game, I am thinking about it when I’m not playing it then it is compelling.  Admittedly, I don’t have a lot of free time, but even factoring that in, I don’t think my yardstick is a particularly unreasonable one.

Big Trouble in Little China

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by
Paul
on February 8, 2009
in Reviews
. 20 Comments Tags: , , , .

I’m no stranger to Big Trouble in Little China — it’s not like I’m revisiting it again after a twenty year gap like I did recently with The Sword and the Sorcerer. Since the movie’s release in 1986, I’ve probably seen it an additional three or four times, but still,  it had been a while and a buddy and I usually do a DVD flick every Saturday or Sunday night so the time seemed ripe to look in again on the world of Jack Burton and his supremely capable Asian cohorts. “China” was good, stupid fun in ‘86 and – no surprise — it’s good, stupid fun even today. Sure, it looks as though the physical production was done relatively on-the-cheap, but this is still one of the most offbeat action movies ever made. The Chinese mythology and culture provide a nice loopy backdrop and Kurt Russell is terrific as the delightfully inept protagonist. In many ways, Russell’s “Jack Burton” reminds me of Bruce Campbell’s similarly buffoonish “Ash” from the Evil Dead series of movies. Being a man, I respond to this sort of broad slapstick-y action at a genetic level and I can’t help but have enormous affection for Russell and Campbell both.  So, don’t look to Big Trouble in Little China to broaden your horizons — it’s got nothing more on its mind than giving you a good time and there’s not a damn thing wrong with that from where I sit.

Speed Racer

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by
Paul
on February 7, 2009
in Reviews
. 6 Comments Tags: , , .

In its slavish devotion to recreating the look of a property from another medium Speed Racer reminded me a lot of another film: Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy. Both movies share a lot of the same problems, in fact. By allowing style to dominate, both come off as cold and distant, more concerned with  pretty colors than the human element. I will say, however, that Speed Racer is a considerably better film than Dick Tracy. I would even go so far as to say that it didn’t deserve the complete flame-out that befell it at the box office. The problem (apart from the distancing aesthetics) is that the directors (the infamous Wachowski Brothers) try very hard to serve two masters — the 30-  and 40-somethings who watched the original anime series as kids, and the new generation of youngsters coming to the property for the first time. In the end, I feel that neither group gets its proper due. The original fans will have to sit through some excruciatingly broad slapstick delivered by Speed’s younger brother and his chimpy sidekick, and newbies (many of them no doubt very young) will have to sit through a two hour and fifteen minute running time as well as do their best to sort through some bewilderingly complex political maneuverings. Taken as a whole, the film doesn’t work but at least it doesn’t work while still maintaining a certain panache and charm (and it is undeniably beautiful to look at). Speed Racer is wobbly and misshapen, but I don’t regret having sat through it once. It gives me at least a tentative idea that the Wachowskis might someday redeem themselves for the debacle which was the Matrix sequels (a debacle which I would argue was worse in many ways than the Star Wars prequels — but I digress).

Anyway, bottom line: If you haven’t seen Speed Racer and you’re in the mood for a <ahem> quick diversion, you  could do worse. It is, on balance, a helluva lot better than, say, Michael Bay’s godawful Transformers adaptation.

Appaloosa (Harris)

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by
Paul
on February 1, 2009
in Reviews
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Appaloosa was pretty much exactly what I wanted it to be — a good, traditional Western with no revisionist agenda and some iconic (if quirky) characters. Ed Harris’ screenplay (adapted from Robert B. Parker’s novel), his direction, and his acting are all top-notch. Apart from some off-color language and some realistic depictions of violence, this film could have very easily been made in the 1950s — and that is by no means a bad thing. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but when I sit down to watch a Western, I’m not looking for deconstructionism, or post-modernism, or any other -isms. What I want is laconic men of action with a job to do who, by God, are gonna get it done. Throw in some nice scenery (which Appaloosa provides in spades — the cinematography is superlative), and I’m a happy camper. While this picture isn’t as epic (or mythic) as something like Lonesome Dove, or as crowd-pleasing as something like Tombstone, it is first rate. See it. It deserves your attention.