tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54492326987833243522024-03-13T13:00:13.139+00:00Pop Culture JunkieReviews of anything that hits my fancy in the wild, wild world of pop culture.Steven van Lijndenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13972653100372774370noreply@blogger.comBlogger134125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449232698783324352.post-26827078204016878302013-09-18T09:48:00.001+01:002013-09-18T09:48:43.489+01:00Find Me At PopCultJunk.comThis blog has moved to <a href="http://popcultjunk.com/">PopCultJunk.com</a><br />
<br />
All these posts and more current ones can be found there.<br />
<br />
Come have a look!Steven van Lijndenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13972653100372774370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449232698783324352.post-73555442364238439522013-06-30T09:09:00.000+01:002013-06-30T09:12:29.541+01:00Game Review: Uncharted 1 and 2 (PS3)<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0eMc2pfxS7c/Uc_lkusFcOI/AAAAAAAABFE/O1Ydzl0s_jM/s500/500x_uncharted_2_npd.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="191" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0eMc2pfxS7c/Uc_lkusFcOI/AAAAAAAABFE/O1Ydzl0s_jM/s320/500x_uncharted_2_npd.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tomb, sweet tomb.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">The
<i>Uncharted</i> and <i>Tomb Raider</i> games owe a lot to each other and to Indiana Jones.
With a small tweak to their back-story, Nathan Drake and Lara Croft could
easily be revealed to be Dr. Jones' grandchildren. They are ancient
artifact-chasing adventurers who spend an inordinate amount of time climbing
around giant rooms activating very complex mechanisms that somehow didn't break
down despite being inactive for centuries. Why be straightforward when you can
put together cryptic clues and have the time and budget to get dramatic about
it? Some of these previously sealed rooms even feature mysteriously lit fires
that seemingly have been burning forever. These must hold the secret to an
unlimited energy source that could save our world, but our heroes don't ponder
such details. It's also a wonder that the ruins these contraptions are found in,
have always declined to the point that there is only one single, precarious
path to get to the target. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-968Ln0b7ZBw/Uc_lkoq2WiI/AAAAAAAABE4/Sv-4d03G1yQ/s500/Uncharted+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-968Ln0b7ZBw/Uc_lkoq2WiI/AAAAAAAABE4/Sv-4d03G1yQ/s200/Uncharted+1.jpg" width="173" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">In any
case, having just finished Lara Croft's <a href="http://popculturejunkie.blogspot.nl/2013/05/game-review-tomb-raider-2013-pc.html">latest adventure</a>, I decided to give the
<i>Uncharted</i> series a try. While playing <i>Uncharted: Drake's Fortune</i> (2007) I was
reminded a lot of the two Tomb Raider games from around the same time: <i>Legend</i>
(2006) and <i>Underworld</i> (2008). The climbing around feels near-identical,
including things like ridges that crumble as you cling to them and vines or
chains that allow you to run along a wall to the next ridge. But <i>Uncharted</i> is a
lot more gun-happy, constantly throwing you into arenas littered with
convenient places to take cover, where you shoot at generic baddies. They come
in orderly, highly predictable waves. Honestly, I got bored with the shooting
and just wanted to get to the next bit. I am not sure if this is the game's
fault or an accumulative effect of playing too many shooters. The story is like
that from an old adventure movie and the characters are interesting, but not
fully fleshed out yet. There are plot holes, like characters turning up in places
they couldn't logically have reached. And Nathan leaves a buddy in dire straits
at some point, without a second thought. The friend miraculously escapes, but
it's never made clear how he managed it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">The
climbing around can be awkward in that it's often not clear which parts of the
scenery you can actually climb. This means you will sometimes find yourself
oddly humping a wall or hurling yourself to your death. As in the <i>Tomb Raider</i>
games, the camera often tries to be cinematic by going to a wide angle that may
prevent you from seeing where you're going. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-a0CfugRaau4/Uc_lk5-hvpI/AAAAAAAABE8/KWeT00QnLl0/s498/uncharted2-platinum.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-a0CfugRaau4/Uc_lk5-hvpI/AAAAAAAABE8/KWeT00QnLl0/s200/uncharted2-platinum.jpg" width="160" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><i>Uncharted
2: Honor Among Thieves</i> (2009) takes the formula from the first game and improves
on it. The graphics are more polished and pacing is better. It switches between
platforming, puzzles and shooting constantly and smoothly, while making sure
there is enough variation to each section to make it different from previous
ones. The dialogue is less wooden than in the first installment, even though
the comedic timing can be off on occasion. Hearing Nathan say a funny one-liner
just after snapping someone's neck, makes him come across like a dangerous
sociopath. And I guess he is indeed dangerous, leaving a massive pile of bodies
in his wake. But then, these guys were all trying to kill him, so turnabout is
fair play.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">The game
has imperfections. There's a weird gleam to people's eyes that makes them look
like cyborgs. Jumps you can barely make, show you getting pulled towards walls
the last inch, like they possess their own gravity field. There's an impatient
Hint system, that all but goes 'Hey, stoopid - do THIS!' when you dally for a
moment. The way you always get handed the weapon you need at the exact moment
you need it, becomes a bit obvious. The final Boss fight is a tedious slog.
There's a frustrating 'run for your life' section where the camera angles
backwards in a way that is very cinematic but doesn't let you see where you're
supposed to be going. And I can't quite reconstruct the cause-and-effect of how
the hero actually saved the day in the climactic scenes. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yOTmulUd7ow/Uc_lkbaqIJI/AAAAAAAABE0/70i5mUFvmEI/s610/Uncharted-2-Review_02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="196" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yOTmulUd7ow/Uc_lkbaqIJI/AAAAAAAABE0/70i5mUFvmEI/s400/Uncharted-2-Review_02.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Old statues. They tend to harbor secrets. And look really angry.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Finally (kept
vague to avoid spoilers): if you had the key to a door that the Bad Guy should not
be allowed to open, would you: a. try to beat him to his end goal, possibly
leading him there in the process or b. simply destroy the key, ensuring that the
door could never be opened? If you picked 'a' - congratulations - you could be
a character in this game.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">But <i>Uncharted 2</i> is like a great roller coaster ride. Whether you find yourself in a collapsing building, climbing all over the longest train in human history, taking down a helicopter, having a gunfight while hanging from a street sign or improbably reconnecting with your ex-girlfriend, you'll have a very good time. On to <i>Uncharted 3</i>!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4LU4YNLH12w/Uc_llrq0djI/AAAAAAAABFU/PTzLSoAJ_qI/s1280/uncharted2pic1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4LU4YNLH12w/Uc_llrq0djI/AAAAAAAABFU/PTzLSoAJ_qI/s400/uncharted2pic1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The longest train in human history.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br /></div>
Steven van Lijndenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13972653100372774370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449232698783324352.post-8085447686954690492013-06-11T12:10:00.000+01:002013-06-11T12:21:10.632+01:00Movie Review: Behind the Candelabra<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--LA7aCK9fI4/UbcCsdqvsjI/AAAAAAAABEA/udAx2KTf7PY/s1600/behindthecandelabra1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--LA7aCK9fI4/UbcCsdqvsjI/AAAAAAAABEA/udAx2KTf7PY/s400/behindthecandelabra1.jpg" width="282" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><i>Behind the
Candelabra</i> is a biopic about Liberace, a diva who spent his life lingering in
the glass closet, at a time when that term did not exist yet. He was a
piano-playing showman, into kitsch and glittery things to an almost
pathological degree. Despite being flamingly gay to the point where satellites
orbiting Earth would nudge each other and go 'You think he's…?' 'Well, DUH.' he
somehow managed to slip under the radar of grandmothers everywhere. His public image
was that of the ideal son-in-law. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Liberace
had flings with various younger, twinky guys over the course of his life and
this HBO movie tells the story of perhaps the most significant one: his
six-year relationship with Scott Thorson. (It is based on an autobiographical
novel written by Thorson.) For a television production, <i>Behind the Candelabra</i>
is heavy on stars: Michael Douglas plays Liberace, Matt Damon plays Thorson and
if you look behind various forms of dubious facial hair and/or make-up, you may
recognize Scott Bakula, Dan Akroyd, Paul Reiser and Rob Lowe. In a production
that features a lot of creepy-looking characters, Lowe edges out the competition
as a cosmetic surgeon whose skin is pulled back so tight that his eyes have
turned into cat-like slits. Gay-fave Debbie Reynolds puts in an appearance as
Liberace's mother. The director also comes with a pedigree: Steven Soderbergh.
He has made a fair amount of great movies like <i>Ocean's Eleven</i> and <i>Traffic</i> and
has had a few misfires, like <i>Ocean's Twelve</i> and <i>Thirteen</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oTFSEg9_-A4/UbcCscDfTQI/AAAAAAAABD8/R5JGUSs3wiw/s1600/candelabra-08.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oTFSEg9_-A4/UbcCscDfTQI/AAAAAAAABD8/R5JGUSs3wiw/s320/candelabra-08.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Michael Douglas. In some shots (though not this one) his <br />
head is superimposed over that of an actual piano-player.<br />
Almost seamlessly - but not quite.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Given the
star-power behind and in front of the camera, <i>Behind the Candelabra</i> is
unexpectedly subdued. When Liberace is on stage, there is spectacle. When he is
off it, there are strange-looking and not all that sympathetic people having
mundane conversations in gaudy surroundings. Matt Damon's face looks oddly shiny
in the beginning - presumably an attempt make him look young - and looks just
odd after he gets cosmetic surgery later in the story. His stomach also draws
the attention: it goes from flat to belly and back again, not very
convincingly, by Damon temporarily wearing something pillow-like under his
shirt. Michael Douglas is bravely unattractive as Liberace. On stage he looks
like a doll and off it - especially when the wig comes off - he just looks
fragile and old.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iXsKBeD1IyY/UbcBskZCVLI/AAAAAAAABDk/OIpqxPr4VSA/s1600/scott-thorson-and-liberace.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="179" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iXsKBeD1IyY/UbcBskZCVLI/AAAAAAAABDk/OIpqxPr4VSA/s320/scott-thorson-and-liberace.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The real Liberace with Scott Thorson.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Interestingly,
this HBO movie doesn't castrate Liberace, as popular culture tends to do with
gay men, especially the more effeminate and older ones. He is a horndog and we
do get to see Michael Douglas en Matt Damon kiss, simulate anal sex and have a
discussion about who gets to top and who gets to bottom. All of this is
refreshing to see, but it also left me feeling a bit queasy. This isn't a
sweet, romantic story. Liberace and Thorson were definitely using each other, even
if there was some real affection. The movie is non-committal about the amount
of love versus cold self-interest, but as romances and relationships go, it was
a bit of a car-crash, with a fair amount of sex, drugs and piano-music.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><i>Behind the
Candelabra</i> is an interesting oddity, definitely worth checking out. But in the
end it feels a bit flat. Like Liberace's stage persona, it's about the surface
and it does not really engage emotionally.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WTBdH7cQwIA/UbcBsHJ1V5I/AAAAAAAABDs/f6nk2ayXaOc/s1600/Behind-The-Candelabra-HBO-Films-05272013-07.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WTBdH7cQwIA/UbcBsHJ1V5I/AAAAAAAABDs/f6nk2ayXaOc/s320/Behind-The-Candelabra-HBO-Films-05272013-07.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mee-ow!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
Steven van Lijndenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13972653100372774370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449232698783324352.post-80188449411647531472013-06-04T21:54:00.002+01:002013-06-06T06:18:54.132+01:00Movie Review: The Parade<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Fdn2duxmRgc/Ua5TBBIa8rI/AAAAAAAABCo/lO5us5fSV8Y/s1600/Parade+poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Fdn2duxmRgc/Ua5TBBIa8rI/AAAAAAAABCo/lO5us5fSV8Y/s320/Parade+poster.jpg" width="223" /></a></div>
<i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1784575/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Parade</a></i>
is a Serbian tragicomedy about a homophobic gangster who, through a series of
unlikely events, ends up having to protect the first attempt at a Gay Pride
parade in Belgrado. It won Best Feature during the Roze Filmdagen (a gay film
festival) in Amsterdam in 2013 and deservedly so. It is both a farcical buddy
movie and a call to arms and it manages to balance these two elements
skillfully. There are stereotypes all around, from boorish straight blokes to
screechy queens, but as everyone operates on the same level of comical exaggeration,
it works. The characters are sympathetic and there is genuine heart in the way
the little group that will be in the parade bonds with their reluctant
bodyguards.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It's sad
that the movie had to end with a turn for the dramatic, as so many gay-themed movies
do, but the intent here is clear: the makers mean to make you angry. Generally
speaking, Eastern Europe is still a shitty place to live for lesbians and gays.
The scenes in the movie depicting ruthless homophobic violence and blind hatred
are chilling. Watch <i>The Parade</i>; you'll laugh, you'll cry and then - hopefully
- you'll realize there's much more work to be done for gay rights and
contribute to the fight in whatever way you can.</div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rpMEN7UTlMI/Ua5U-GsVK-I/AAAAAAAABDA/uRS7Hf3RtVk/s1600/Parade+gangsta.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="243" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rpMEN7UTlMI/Ua5U-GsVK-I/AAAAAAAABDA/uRS7Hf3RtVk/s400/Parade+gangsta.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
Steven van Lijndenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13972653100372774370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449232698783324352.post-26461748239695351972013-06-04T20:49:00.000+01:002013-06-04T20:53:58.266+01:00Movie Review: Resident Evil: Retribution<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YNfs0EQ8x_Y/Ua5DjOcXPsI/AAAAAAAABCU/E9UYXou86eA/s1600/resident_evil_retribution_ver7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YNfs0EQ8x_Y/Ua5DjOcXPsI/AAAAAAAABCU/E9UYXou86eA/s320/resident_evil_retribution_ver7.jpg" width="214" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">I just
observed <i>Resident Evil: Retribution</i>. I say 'observed' rather than watched,
because I knew going in that I would enjoy it more on an analytical level than
I would enjoy the story or characters. I knew this because the previous four entries
in this franchise all contained a lot of loud noises, kinetic energy, slightly too
cheap special effects, flat characters and lacked any real emotional point of
entry for the viewer. It's not that the franchise lacks plot, it's just that it's
a massively convoluted and badly thought-out one, which keeps getting twisted
and turned in awkward ways. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">The movie
picks up right at the moment its predecessor stopped, and after one artsy scene
it has the leading lady (Milla Jovovich) recapping 'the story so far' for the
viewers, including shots from previous entries in the franchise. That's pretty
lazy storytelling and it doesn't seem all that necessary as the film quickly resolves
the last movie's cliffhanger in a sloppy and unsatisfying way and then reverts
to the 'let's escape from a big base'-scenario from the first movie. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">So what is
the franchise about? The evil Umbrella Corporation had a virus that
accidentally spread from an underground vault and turned most of the world
population into mutated zombies. The A.I. from that ill-fated vault decided to
stop the mutation by killing everybody on the planet and the head of the
formerly Evil company now wants to stop it. Meanwhile, Jovovich first escaped
from the vault, then got injected with the virus but it gave her superpowers
but then those have been taken away again. Or something. I may have glazed over
at some key points in the narrative.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">I am not
entirely clear on how she is being all Neo and doing slow-motion backflips and
in general kicking martial arts-style ass if she is just a simple human now,
but then I am not entirely clear on a lot of things in this movie. Such as: why
does a big monster waste no time killing a few people, but then doesn't kill
the one person still necessary to the plot, dragging its victim to its nest
instead? Why is this monster first impervious to bullets and then temporarily
incapacitated by them? Why does an A.I. need to create an actual physical
representation of people and a city to simulate a viral outbreak? Why doesn't
it run virtual tests and infect some of the army of test subjects apparently at
its disposal? How is this massive base run by just a handful of people?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Much like
the previous flicks, this <i>Resident Evil</i> entry strings together action sequences
that have the semblance of Cool, but lack rounded characters or a coherent bigger
picture to give them meaning and make the viewer care. It comes with enough
plot holes in the central storyline to make even the most hardcore suspenders
of disbelief snap. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">But maybe I
need to just speak for myself, as the movies are apparently successful enough
to continue churning out new ones. And director Paul W.S. Anderson and his
wife/ lead actrice Milla Jovovich keep koming back for more, so it seems they
are having fun with this franchise. Which is romantic, I suppose. The next
entry is rumored to be the last one, but I'm sure someone down the line will
reconsider if it's successful enough. Just like some of the villains in this
movie, the <i>Resident Evil</i> series seem almost impossible to kill.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ivq0h3T4aD0/Ua5DjL1B5tI/AAAAAAAABCQ/RAj98e4MByA/s1600/Resident-Evil-Retribution-620x350.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ivq0h3T4aD0/Ua5DjL1B5tI/AAAAAAAABCQ/RAj98e4MByA/s400/Resident-Evil-Retribution-620x350.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Things go 'boom'. A lot.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
Steven van Lijndenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13972653100372774370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449232698783324352.post-35555021746550672922013-05-24T18:48:00.000+01:002013-05-24T18:55:24.357+01:00Game Review: Tomb Raider (2013, PC)<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gPycIFBJ5ko/UZ-gEPqmvwI/AAAAAAAABBg/Hr16onZnmjk/s1600/2013-05-04_00005.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gPycIFBJ5ko/UZ-gEPqmvwI/AAAAAAAABBg/Hr16onZnmjk/s400/2013-05-04_00005.jpg" width="400" /></a>Lara Croft is an ambivalent creation, like most female characters in video games. She is empowered and doesn't need a man to come to her rescue, but she has also been designed to please hormonally bothered teenage boys. Traditionally, she had a tiny waist and sported considerable cleavage. And though she went about kicking ass, there were flashes of what seemed to be misogyny in the elaborate death scenes that would occur when a button prompt was missed or a jump went wrong. There are even gleeful collections of Lara's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSznzrV30QQ">death scenes</a> on YouTube.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Oqgkv6p-0Tw/UZ-gEuslDZI/AAAAAAAABBs/cBFGJLPASiY/s1600/2013-05-08_00002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Oqgkv6p-0Tw/UZ-gEuslDZI/AAAAAAAABBs/cBFGJLPASiY/s400/2013-05-08_00002.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I'm not saying that I'd like to build a summer home here, <br />
but the trees are actually quite lovely.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The new <i>Tomb Raider</i> game, supposedly a reboot of the franchise, downsizes Lara's bra and gives her a more believable appearance, even though she is still very, very pretty. The odd mix of girl power and gruesome failure is maintained. Like Lara Croft herself, this new game was created based on two separate approaches. There is the storytelling aspect and there is the gameplay. The story introduces us to a younger Lara Croft than the previous games, but it seems to take place in the present-time. Her back-story is unchanged in so far as it is discussed: adventuring parents gone, silver spoon present. Within a few cut-scenes she finds herself stranded on an island with some violent factions and hints of a Lost-like mystery. From just trying to survive, she goes through challenge after challenge until she grows from a hapless victim into a pro-active predator. At least, that is the story the cut-scenes tell us. The gameplay didn't quite get the memo.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YbgYFyzWGxA/UZ-gESaZGwI/AAAAAAAABBk/MVO5YGZMw2o/s1600/2013-05-04_00009.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YbgYFyzWGxA/UZ-gESaZGwI/AAAAAAAABBk/MVO5YGZMw2o/s400/2013-05-04_00009.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">She's going deeper underground.</td></tr>
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It's not much of a spoiler that Lara gets hurts badly very early on, getting impaled on an iron bar that runs through her side. This would put most people out of commission for a while, if not for good, but the pain is forgotten. It takes Lara longer to walk it off than the average action hero, but the game takes place over the course of a day or two and she takes so much abuse that her being mobile, alive even, beggars belief. Despite all her wounds, she pretty soon learns to fling herself at walls with an axe and climb her way up them without wear or tear, among other amazing feats. She also turns out to be a really good shot with a bow (or a gun) even at long distance, right from the start.<br />
<br />
Not only does she have the constitution of The Terminator, which undercuts the semblance of realism, her psychological journey also doesn’t come across so well in the gameplay. Much is made of the first time Lara kills a man, even though he really had it coming. She agonizes about this and her next couple of kills in a cut-scene and a few lines of dialogue. Then she proceeds to rack up a body-count throughout the game that most serial-killers would be envious of. It doesn't help that, as a player, the kills are actually fun, because you are given a lot of options to get creative with it. It distances you from the character you're supposed to be.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oil5836P7ao/UZ-gFaV9b2I/AAAAAAAABB8/FzD_thkA52A/s1600/2013-05-13_00002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oil5836P7ao/UZ-gFaV9b2I/AAAAAAAABB8/FzD_thkA52A/s400/2013-05-13_00002.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nothing's gonna stop her now.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
That's not to say this isn't a great game. The story and gameplay don't mesh very well, but are a lot of fun when compartmentalized. The gameplay is varied and polished and there's an interesting mix of exploring beautiful and varied environments, mild puzzling and action. (Though I would have preferred a bit less action and some more complex puzzles, like those featured in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_Raider:_Underworld">last two</a> <i>Tomb Raider</i> games.) There are the usual collectibles strewn about, which help you upgrade your equipment, gain experience points to level up or give back-story on the island and its inhabitants. The places they're in often make no sense contextually, but they're fun to track down.<br />
<br />
I've never played any of the <i><a href="http://uncharted.wikia.com/wiki/Uncharted_Wiki">Uncharted</a></i> games, but allegedly this <i>Tomb Raider</i> incarnation has taken more than a few pages from its book. It's a roller coaster ride of an adventure, but it manages to retain the familiar <i>Tomb Raider</i> flavor, even if it is a bit low on raiding actual tombs. (And most of the tombs here are small and optional.) There is an ancient civilization featuring mysticism that may very well be factual, there are gory deaths and there are personal losses, which are also a staple of the franchise. Quite why Lara has a taste for more when it is all over, is not clear. But unless the entire next game is about her going through a severe case of post-traumatic stress disorder, maybe the franchise is better off dropping the pretense of realism.<br />
<br />
PS: I haven't bothered with the multiplayer, which I've heard is okay. For me, the <i>Tomb Raider</i> franchise was and is (despite the current emphasis on action) mostly appealing because of the sense of isolation and wonder that comes from wandering alone through overgrown tombs with clues about ancient societies all around. And, of course, it appealed because of her giant rack. Phwoar! Am I right, guys!? <br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GHbzm7Nk7AU/UZ-gFO7QPCI/AAAAAAAABBw/RtcunOGulT0/s1600/2013-05-09_00005.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GHbzm7Nk7AU/UZ-gFO7QPCI/AAAAAAAABBw/RtcunOGulT0/s400/2013-05-09_00005.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ancient civilizations. And a hot babe.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Steven van Lijndenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13972653100372774370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449232698783324352.post-53428667200690568832013-04-23T18:02:00.002+01:002013-04-23T18:03:42.924+01:00Movie Review: Cloudburst<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YBCZji1xecE/UXa95V8qnfI/AAAAAAAABBA/2fUChz9gryg/s1600/cloudburst.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="227" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YBCZji1xecE/UXa95V8qnfI/AAAAAAAABBA/2fUChz9gryg/s1600/cloudburst.jpg" /></a></div>If you angle the candelabra that is affixed to my ancient oak bookcase just so, and tip-toe down the winding stairs that this action reveals, then cross the bridge over the alligator pool, pass the Bieber dartboard, pass my geeky game room and my naughty gay room and then open the door just to the west of the giant Vin Diesel pin-up, you will find a shrine dedicated to Olympia Dukakis. In other words: I am a fan.<br />
<br />
I am not quite sure what it is that generally makes gay men admire strong women. We don’t want to be them (speaking for myself, in any case) and we definitely don’t want to sleep with them, but we would love to knock back some beers with them (or maybe appletini’s, if that’s more your thing) and bitch and laugh about men in general and straight men in particular. Olympia Dukakis has this quality and in the role of Anna Madrigal in the <i>Tales of the City</i> tv-series, also has shown a maternal warmth. She seems like someone you could tell all your sordid secrets to and who would give you a reassuring hug afterwards, without judgment. <br />
<br />
Playing a butch dyke, she is the best thing about <i>Cloudburst</i>, a road movie about an elderly lesbian couple. Her character Stella is crass and blunt, aware of this but unable to help herself, and she is softened and redeemed by the clear love for her partner, who is near-blind and dependent on her. When a scheming family member in denial about their relationship tries to place Stella’s partner in a care home against her will, the couple decide on a trip to Canada. Getting married there would give their relationship more validity and better legal standing, they think. Along the way, they meet an attractive young hitchhiker with a troubled past who is on his way to visit his ailing mother. <br />
<br />
The ancient cliché applies to <i>Cloudburst</i>: it is not so much about the destination, it is about the ride. The mood is more important than the script, which is a bit lightweight. The movie meanders, the scenes loosely sketching out the characters and their relationships. We learn more about the history of the couple, their travelling companion and watch the beginnings of a friendship. There are shots of landscapes, scenes with mild suspense and there are some farcical scenes, notably one in which stuntman Randy Bolivar is plastered across the windshield of a car while full-frontal nude. (Going by the mostly lesbian audience I saw this with, male genitalia do very well as comic relief.) Both this scene and the insertion of an attractive guy as the third lead, seem intended to capture the interest of gay men, widening the potential audience. <br />
<br />
I imagine the ideal viewers for this movie are lesbian couples, curled up together on the couch, imagining themselves growing old together. It is about equal parts sad, sweet and comforting. I would have preferred a slightly more upbeat ending, as it seems all too many gay and lesbian films end on a maudlin note, rather than leave you smiling. But it’s a trip worth taking. And now I am off to take a trip of my own, to light a new candle at my shrine dedicated to Olympia Dukakis. Because the lady still kicks ass.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-p_NRjpyOLW8/UXa95SeMTGI/AAAAAAAABBE/geKhocSb0YU/s1600/cloudburst_web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="225" width="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-p_NRjpyOLW8/UXa95SeMTGI/AAAAAAAABBE/geKhocSb0YU/s1600/cloudburst_web.jpg" /></a></div>Steven van Lijndenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13972653100372774370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449232698783324352.post-60635005382258681222013-03-31T19:22:00.000+01:002013-03-31T19:22:45.545+01:00Game Review: Batman: Arkham City<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DJWlJiQThbI/UVh59XKKIdI/AAAAAAAABAw/v7vxSRIM7jU/s1600/Arkham+Cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em"><img border="0" height="400" width="270" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DJWlJiQThbI/UVh59XKKIdI/AAAAAAAABAw/v7vxSRIM7jU/s1600/Arkham+Cover.jpg" /></a></div>The first word that comes to mind when thinking of <i>Batman: Arkham City</i> is ‘stuffed’, possibly even ‘overstuffed’. The second is ‘detailed’. The game crams a plethora of Batman’s foes into a part of Gotham City that has been rendered in beautiful detail. The area has been cordoned off to serve as a penitentiary, for reasons that become clear later in the game, though they don’t quite convince. Bruce Wayne (aka Batman) purposefully gets himself thrown into this dangerous place to put a stop to all sorts of nefarious shenanigans.<br />
<br />
<i>Arkham City</i> is a direct sequel to <i>Arkham Asylum</i>, a wildly successful game from 2009. The graphics haven’t changed much, but then they were great to begin with. The game marries the grittiness of Nolan’s Batman movies with the more outrageous designs found in Tim Burton’s version. When Robin puts in an appearance, however, he seems photocopied out of Joel Schumacher’s cinematic attempts, minus nipples on the suit. Every part of the design seems to have been carefully, lovingly pondered and despite the blending of the visual style of various movie versions, it forms a cohesive whole. Think dark, dirty gothic with splashes of neon.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fxpMSOUt4E8/UVh52HW_PBI/AAAAAAAABAU/-JCLZjUUXwE/s1600/2012-12-22_00003.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fxpMSOUt4E8/UVh52HW_PBI/AAAAAAAABAU/-JCLZjUUXwE/s320/2012-12-22_00003.jpg" /></a> Of course, in terms of realism, there is plenty here that is ridiculous. Most people like Batman because he is just a guy, allegedly lacking superpowers. This makes you wonder how he can beat up hundreds of thugs and various of his most deadly enemies over the course of one night, without so much as a nap or a toilet-break. And realistically his arms should be close to falling off by the end of the game, from ziplining all over the city for hours on end. But even though Batman remains in top-condition (outside of the cut-scenes, in any case, where he looks a bit more troubled), his costume does start to show wear and tear as you go, which is a very cool, subtle touch. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Uat2yGK6yEg/UVh52FYkDFI/AAAAAAAABAc/xxhekwu8GqM/s1600/2012-12-12_00001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left; margin-right:1em" ><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Uat2yGK6yEg/UVh52FYkDFI/AAAAAAAABAc/xxhekwu8GqM/s320/2012-12-12_00001.jpg" /></a>The second outing in the Arkham franchise is more of a sandbox game than its predecessor. There is more space to explore in-between the missions that advance the main story and this exploration is even necessary to wrap up a couple of side-quests. Evil mastermind The Riddler has left little trophies all over the city, as he did last time in <i>Arkham Asylum</i>. Some are easy to access, just needing to be found, others require combined application of Batman’s gadgets to grab. Getting them unlocks challenge levels, art designs and other treats. The game is so generous with extra content, that you’re actually likely to ignore part of it. It all becomes too much of a time-sink and takes away focus and urgency from the main narrative. Without spoiling things, going by story logic, Batman shouldn’t be wasting precious time. Though the game doesn’t put a timer on you, it just feels odd for him to be hanging around on rooftops, figuring out how to get his hands on a trophy. The designers have crafted every alley with obvious care, but they seem to expect that you will spend hours of your life admiring every inch of their work. This seems a bit greedy.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tKAt1i1IDUI/UVh52r8_YzI/AAAAAAAABAo/Zx-8CUyW8co/s1600/2013-01-26_00003.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tKAt1i1IDUI/UVh52r8_YzI/AAAAAAAABAo/Zx-8CUyW8co/s320/2013-01-26_00003.jpg" /></a>If you just follow the main story, tackle a couple of the less time-intensive side-mission as they pop up (some are inaccessible later on) and collect some trophies you stumble upon while you ignore the rest, it is a jolly good game. There’s some mild detective-work, some exploring, some puzzles and a lot of non-lethal fighting. The latter is as smooth and satisfying as ever, and it doesn’t surprise that so many other recent games have copied the franchise’s approach to it. <i>Arkham City</i> improves upon its predecessor when it comes to the Boss fights. The previous game upped the difficulty level towards the end by throwing more and more waves of samey enemies at you until it turned into a frustrating slog. Here, there is more variety. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Fs3Xn1-mHBs/UVh52NjADaI/AAAAAAAABAQ/eOm--UlZxlQ/s1600/2012-12-13_00001.jpg" imageanchor="1"style="clear:left; float:left; margin-right:1em" ><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Fs3Xn1-mHBs/UVh52NjADaI/AAAAAAAABAQ/eOm--UlZxlQ/s320/2012-12-13_00001.jpg" /></a>If you bought a non-used copy of the game, you get to play a few missions as Catwoman, which is a nice change of pace. And if you buy the Game of the Year edition, you will also get a DLC mission that takes place after the ending of the main game. It picks up on the very interesting way that things were left off, but it poses more questions than it answers and throws in one of those massive arena fights that the main game had mostly dropped. As I understand, the writer of Arkham City and its predecessor (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Dini">Paul Dini</a>) wasn’t asked back to plot the DLC and it shows. Even though writing is generally one of the weakest elements in games, the importance of an interesting story to hook you and keep you invested, should not be underestimated.<br />
<br />
<i>Arkham City</i> is the continuation of a trend where I really like a game but I am done with it long before it seems to be done with me. Games these days tend to give you a percentage of completion as you go, to show you far you have advanced. I tend to be ‘done’ at slightly over 50% which generally means that you finished the main game, but didn’t bother with any multiplayer, trophies and achievements. Of course, it’s great that all that extra content is there for those who want it. But as a 35+ year old gamer, it does make me look back nostalgically at a younger age when it seems people have all the time in the world. In any case, I’m on to pastures less neon.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--rjxV8nai-Y/UVh52-maEQI/AAAAAAAABAg/-Opp3bd-rMA/s1600/2013-01-29_00001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"> ><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--rjxV8nai-Y/UVh52-maEQI/AAAAAAAABAg/-Opp3bd-rMA/s320/2013-01-29_00001.jpg" /></a></div>Steven van Lijndenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13972653100372774370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449232698783324352.post-64040293801826728072013-03-24T10:23:00.000+00:002013-03-24T21:38:16.816+00:00Movie Review: Tensión Sexual, Volumen 1: Volátil<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9r5n5TC2QMI/UU7S8T3GoJI/AAAAAAAAA_0/8G7Y78Pb5is/s1600/Sexual+Tension.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="227" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9r5n5TC2QMI/UU7S8T3GoJI/AAAAAAAAA_0/8G7Y78Pb5is/s320/Sexual+Tension.jpg" /></a></div><i>Tensión Sexual, Volumen 1: Volátil</i> is a collection of vignettes, mostly about bulges in underwear that travel dangerously close to someone who might be interested in the contents of said underwear. The viewer is made complicit, as the bulges often get close to the camera and linger there. There is even some full-frontal nudity on the part of some sexy Argentinian men, which doesn’t displease. There is no release to the tension, at least not on screen, as these charged, short encounters between men fizzle by design, apart from one or two pieces where a well-timed fade-out leaves you wondering. <br />
<br />
At its best, <i>Tensión Sexual</i> is playful and manages to be erotic, but it does fall flat on occasion. For instance, there is a wordless story about a male nurse who replaces a sexy man’s usual nurse. The nurse proceeds to soap and shower his patient in an extended sequence that had me checking my watch. It doesn’t help that the nurse has something creepy about him, and that his sexy patient mostly looks bored. Chemistry can be hard to bring across on screen, especially if you can’t fall back on kissing and sex, because the general theme here is ‘missed opportunities’. There may be as many lingering stares here as there were in the infamous Twilight. Not surprisingly, the couple of stories that forego dialogue are the worst offenders in this respect. <br />
<br />
The pieces I enjoyed the most were the ones that showed a sense of humor. There is the fairly unbelievable story of one supposedly straight guy teaching another supposedly straight guy how to make love to a lady, by getting near-naked and acting things out with him. And there is a story where it becomes clear that one of two muscled training buddies is sneakily seducing the other. The fun here is that it takes the audience a while to figure out that one of them is doing it, and that his friend doesn’t catch on even after we do.<br />
<br />
You do have to be a somewhat shy and patient person to identify with most of the characters in this movie. Once or twice I rolled my eyes wondering why someone was playing coy and didn’t just make a move already. By the end of it all, despite some lulls that lead to mild boredom, <i>Tensión Sexual</i> mostly delivers on its title. It is extended foreplay without the release of sex. It leaves you titillated, a bit frustrated and in need of a good shag.<br />
<br />
Steven van Lijndenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13972653100372774370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449232698783324352.post-62632742496697342172013-03-11T16:03:00.000+00:002013-03-11T16:03:35.890+00:00Movie Review: Silver Linings Playbook<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_zKzerbT0po/UT3_G-O8W6I/AAAAAAAAA_k/TQxmjlKjWK0/s1600/Silver-Linings-Playbook-2012-movie-poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="400" width="270" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_zKzerbT0po/UT3_G-O8W6I/AAAAAAAAA_k/TQxmjlKjWK0/s1600/Silver-Linings-Playbook-2012-movie-poster.jpg" /></a></div><i>Silver Linings Playbook</i> is about two troubled people (one with a borderline personality, one an emotionally wobbly widow) who end up orbiting each other. Will they be able to help each other or even *gasp* fall for each other? No, seriously, take a guess.<br />
<br />
<i>SLP</i> is an interesting movie. Or rather, two-thirds of an interesting movie and one-third of a generic romantic comedy. It spends a good long time building up nuanced, troubled, believable characters (even the ‘sane’ characters turn out to be a bit kooky) and then suddenly decides to chuck realism in favor of an all-out upbeat ending. It ends up as one of those movies where the camera rotates around a kissing couple to signify the passion and intensity of the kiss. It’s a shame that the first, more realistic part of the movie makes it hard to believe that all problems have been resolved, as the ending wants us to believe.<br />
<br />
Is the movie worth seeing? Well, yes. The performances are great, especially those by the leads. Apart from being convincing as someone with borderline syndrome, Bradley Cooper is dreamy enough that I could watch him read aloud from a dictionary for two hours and still not nod off. Jennifer Lawrence seems a little young to be paired up with him, but then that’s the way Hollywood likes it. And her performance easily makes you forget about the age gap, as there is more than enough chemistry to bridge it.<br />
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Speaking of chemistry, it is a bit suspicious how drugs seem to be the silent heroes of the film, used to fabricate the happy ending. And it is odd how drinking two glasses of Wodka doesn’t impair someone’s ability to dance. Alcohol apparently disappears right out of your body when a script calls for it. But then, that’s a silly romantic comedy for you. If you can roll with the switch from fairly realistic dramady to romance-fixes-everything (as most people on the <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1045658/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">IMDB</a> seem able to) then <i>Silver Linings Playbook</i> will leave you with a big smile on your face. Steven van Lijndenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13972653100372774370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449232698783324352.post-17809655990859089632013-02-12T17:13:00.000+00:002013-02-12T17:13:22.853+00:00Movie Review: The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NZHKmM2su0I/URp2w9F7bVI/AAAAAAAAA-w/C1zh_F2mLcU/s1600/bilbo-poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="400" width="270" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NZHKmM2su0I/URp2w9F7bVI/AAAAAAAAA-w/C1zh_F2mLcU/s400/bilbo-poster.jpg" /></a></div>Is it a good idea to take <i>The Hobbit</i>, a relatively simple story for children contained in a single, not especially thick book, and then to spin it into three epic, connecting movies? The answer from an economic perspective is, of course, “yes”. After all, the three movies will form a prequel to the hugely successful <i>Lord of the Rings</i> trilogy. It means three tickets sold per viewer by the end of it all, instead of two. (To just make one (1) movie out of one (1) book would be madness. And more importantly, bad for business.) That’s not to say I believe returning director Peter Jackson had dollar signs for eyes when he decided to make it a trilogy again, just that he was over-indulged by a movie studio with less than artistic motives.<br />
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<i>The Lord of the Rings</i> was basically about a hobbit bringing a ring to a volcano to save the world. <i>The Hobbit</i> is about a related hobbit originally finding that ring and helping some dwarves reclaim their homeland by taking on a dragon. <i>The Hobbit (or there and back again)</i> was written by Tolkien as a children’s story, though he was consciously laying the foundation for something more, while The Lord of the Rings was a full-fledged attempt to create a new mythology for England, and was aimed primarily at adults. (To Tolkien’s horror, it ended up having the most impact on hippies and stoners at the time of publication.) Not surprisingly, considering the source, there is a different, more playful tone to Peter Jackson’s newest outing into Middle-Earth. While there was already some silliness to the first trilogy, here it is more prominent and it doesn’t quite track with other scenes that are deadly sincere. There is a delicate balance when getting people on board for a story about goblins, elves, trolls and the like. You want them to take it seriously, but most people will need an occasional wink to acknowledge that you are asking them to take a large leap of faith. This time around, there are a few too many ‘yeah, right’ moments in the recipe, that we’re expected to take at face-value.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ieRocNwe5YE/URp3QuUaQ8I/AAAAAAAAA-8/8UdvJeixN7c/s1600/radagast-and-gandalf-hobbit-movie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="226" width="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ieRocNwe5YE/URp3QuUaQ8I/AAAAAAAAA-8/8UdvJeixN7c/s320/radagast-and-gandalf-hobbit-movie.jpg" /></a></div>Not helping matters is that real danger seems to be lacking. The group of heroes at the center of the story go from one deadly situation to the next and emerge pretty much unscathed. Tension starts to drain away with each unlikely victory. Gandalf makes things worse, and you understand why Tolkien sidelined him for large parts of <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>. While I love Ian McKellen for both his acting and his work as a gay rights activist, his wizard character serves as a Deus Ex Machina too often. He is powerful, though his powers are ill-defined, and he can always save the day in a seemingly hopeless situation. (Though, oddly, not before it has actually started to seem hopeless.) Despite feeling too ‘safe’, the movie is not really for kids, as there is a fair amount of graphic violence.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-M12n8cF8vL4/URp3wbiZRAI/AAAAAAAAA_M/X5SN4ne3OiQ/s1600/hobbit%2Btrolls.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="136" width="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-M12n8cF8vL4/URp3wbiZRAI/AAAAAAAAA_M/X5SN4ne3OiQ/s320/hobbit%2Btrolls.jpg" /></a></div>A lot of extra content has been added to the original tale and back-story has been added, delving into Tolkien’s mythology. This doesn’t disguise the fact that the main narrative is being stretched to near the breaking point. Lots of exciting things happen to the heroes, but large chunks of the movie could have been removed without impacting the rest of the story. One thing happens after the other, and it doesn’t feel like all of it is intricately connected. Admittedly, spending time in this beautiful-looking realm again is fun regardless, as is meeting up with characters from the original trilogy. All the actors are game, joyously throwing themselves into their roles, and Martin Freeman is perfect as Bilbo. But forward momentum is missing, and though the end goal is noble, the stakes are not on par with those from the previous trilogy. The element of surprise is gone and it all feels very familiar. There are only so many sweeping shots of people in fantasy-gear trekking across imposing landscapes that one has patience for.<br />
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By the end of this first chapter, the heroes’ journey is far from over. (Even though they seem to have an opportunity to reach their destination quickly, which is oddly ignored.) There will no doubt be many more roadblocks on their path, but it’s going to be a long slog. For them and the viewers. <br />
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<b>Technical note</b>: This movie made history by being shot at double the usual frame-rate. This was supposed to render a sharper image, without motion blur, but ended up taking away movie magic. It allegedly makes the film look like a documentary and makes special effects, costumes and make-up look unconvincing. I chose to see the film at the regular frame-rate, in 3D. The 3D is fine but doesn’t add a lot to the experience. Ps: I am going to bitch-slap the next person with perfect vision who whines about having to wear 3D-glasses for a couple of hours. Cry unto me a river.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hHFrBFPBMMc/URleBpQOB3I/AAAAAAAAA-E/Gx0ftzfyChM/s1600/TheHobbitCast.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="122" width="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hHFrBFPBMMc/URleBpQOB3I/AAAAAAAAA-E/Gx0ftzfyChM/s400/TheHobbitCast.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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Steven van Lijndenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13972653100372774370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449232698783324352.post-7456364853855721612013-02-03T19:42:00.000+00:002013-02-08T08:45:56.898+00:00Game Review: Dishonored<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bhw9tdKH71g/UQ67iA52WlI/AAAAAAAAA8Y/i97KYLSLL0Q/s1600/Dishonored%2BCover%2B-%2BCopy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="227" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bhw9tdKH71g/UQ67iA52WlI/AAAAAAAAA8Y/i97KYLSLL0Q/s320/Dishonored%2BCover%2B-%2BCopy.jpg" /></a></div><i>Dishonored</i> is a rare thing: a successful, big league game that is not a sequel. That’s not to say that the game is entirely original, as it remixes a lot of familiar elements. When it comes to gameplay, imagine a more stylized, steampunk version of <i><a href="http://popculturejunkie.blogspot.nl/2012/01/game-review-deus-ex-human-revolution.html">Deus Ex: Human Revolution</a></i> with gloomy flavoring reminiscent of <i>Bioshock</i> (though it actually looks more like the upcoming <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioShock_Infinite">Bioshock Infinite</a></i>).<br />
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You play the apparently mute bodyguard-turned-assassin Corvo Attano. After a trip abroad, you return to the city of Dunwall. This is a seaside place that is preoccupied with whaling, as whale oil is a very important energy source. (And a rather explosive one, as you will discover.) The city is having a hard time, slowly getting overrun by rats that are spreading a deadly plague. You arrive just in time to get framed for the murder of the Empress you were supposed to protect. Her young daughter is kidnapped by conspirators who want to take control of Dunwall and it is your mission to rescue the heiress to the throne and either restore order or simply avenge. <br />
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Your situation seems hopeless at first, but thankfully, there is a shadowy guy from another realm at hand, to creepily watch your progress and gift you awesome powers as a reward for collecting ‘runes’. The most important of these is ‘Blink’ which allows you to zip from one place to another (within a certain range) instantaneously and invisibly. Others allow you to slow or stop time, see enemies and other things of import through walls (‘Dark Vision’), blow enemies away with a gust of wind or to turn them to dust. <i>Dishonored</i> tells its tale as a succession of missions you are sent on. Each gives you a target and drops you in a couple of connected areas, which contain a smattering of guards to avoid/incapacitate and resources to find.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Kaz18vt83nI/UQ68ebyVZ0I/AAAAAAAAA8w/Sly3KMSCfe8/s1600/2013-01-06_00001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="180" width="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Kaz18vt83nI/UQ68ebyVZ0I/AAAAAAAAA8w/Sly3KMSCfe8/s320/2013-01-06_00001.jpg" /></a></div>So what approach will you choose? You can seek revenge by going on a murderous rampage or take out your opponents by non-lethal means or slip through the entire game as a shadow, undetected. The more people you kill, the more the plague spreads, presumably because of all the dead bodies. It makes the amount of guards you encounter increase as well, and it ups your ‘chaos’ rating. Awkwardly, a happy ending can only be achieved by mostly reining in your killer instincts, maintaining a low chaos rating. It’s odd that the creators are encouraging the stealthy, less bloodthirsty way of playing the game, despite the fact that this gives you less possibilities to get creative. Dishonored hands you a lot of fun, deadly toys and then chides you for using them. <br />
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The non-violent approach does make more sense for the story, admittedly, as you are most often fighting guards who are not evil so much as misinformed or innocent (albeit aggressive) victims of the plague. And, from what I’ve heard, the game doesn’t fault you for assassinating your main target for each mission. (Even though there is always a non-violent way to get rid of them as well.) But the story could have been tweaked to have a few levels where you would fight some kind of steampunk robots, for instance, enabling you to cut loose without getting punished for it. Discouraging the more creative way of play, seems like a sneaky way of making you spend more time on the game, making you have to play it twice to experience all it has to offer. This is made less enticing, however, by the fact that you will also have to hunt down all the collectibles again to unlock the same powers you acquired in your previous game. Probably the best way to go about it – if you have the time and patience – would be to replay each mission twice right after each other. Once the violent way and once the stealthy way, choosing to activate the appropriate powers for each approach. It doesn’t really benefit the pacing of the story though, and requires managing of game-saves.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-78a75bkmPRY/UQ69LNCyUFI/AAAAAAAAA9U/eIlUjhZ2gCw/s1600/2013-01-14_00002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="180" width="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-78a75bkmPRY/UQ69LNCyUFI/AAAAAAAAA9U/eIlUjhZ2gCw/s320/2013-01-14_00002.jpg" /></a></div>The guards you encounter as an interesting bunch. For one thing, they seem to share a hive mind. Guards at different parts of the city can be overheard uttering the same weirdly specific phrases, like “Think you will get your own squad after what happened last night?” It’s hard to miss the recurring chatter, so it’s unlikely this slipped by unnoticed during the game’s production. Were they hoping for free publicity? A meme along the lines of <i>Skyrim</i>’s “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vncIBREXCwU">I used to be an adventurer like you, but then I got an arrow in the knee</a>”? Having a voice actor record a larger amount of more generic lines, would seem like an easy and not all that expensive fix. <br />
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The guards also suffer from terrible memory, poor peripheral vision and an overall lack of curiosity. If they spot you clearly, but you manage to slip away quickly, they tend to just stand in place for a moment until their suspicion dissipates, rather than go investigate. Anything that happens outside of their official cone of vision (which is visualized in your Dark Vision mode) doesn’t register, even if a door swings open right next to them. Previously closed doors that are suddenly open also go unnoticed by guards doing their rounds, as does the disappearance of colleagues. And the simple act of crouching makes you significantly less visible and audible, even in places where this doesn’t make much sense. I get that these and some other abstractions are necessary to make the stealth approach less frustrating, but it does make the guards look amusingly incompetent. Despite the various behavioral oddities you come across, taking out the opposition or slipping by unnoticed is addictive and fun. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-s0ynyL2UW6E/UQ681vKhWSI/AAAAAAAAA88/1-W5e4uf_DY/s1600/2013-01-06_00002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="180" width="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-s0ynyL2UW6E/UQ681vKhWSI/AAAAAAAAA88/1-W5e4uf_DY/s320/2013-01-06_00002.jpg" /></a></div>Dunwall is an interesting place to roam and the look of it and its inhabitants is distinct and memorable. The story that drives the game is pretty straightforward and it ends with a whimper rather than a bang, especially if you manage to keep your ‘chaos’ rating low. Nevertheless, the resolution is fitting and satisfying, and it seems like there are a lot of interesting places to go with this game world, in the almost inevitable event of a sequel. I’d be very happy to see one, maybe in a different city from the same world and featuring more options for non-lethal playthroughs or no penalty for being lethal. Some sites have called it their ‘Game of The Year’ for 2012 and while I wouldn’t quite go that far, it is a very satisfying way to blow through some free time.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AWmqkYehE1M/UQ68-GCC-ZI/AAAAAAAAA9I/1moYUR-rK0Y/s1600/2013-01-04_00002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="225" width="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AWmqkYehE1M/UQ68-GCC-ZI/AAAAAAAAA9I/1moYUR-rK0Y/s400/2013-01-04_00002.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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Steven van Lijndenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13972653100372774370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449232698783324352.post-19112969337907372292013-01-23T18:34:00.001+00:002013-01-23T18:37:04.559+00:00Game Review: Thirty Flights of Loving & Dear Esther<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-23_gTpV-SyU/UQAqZqZWNSI/AAAAAAAAA7I/op3tG2jISjk/s1600/2012-12-29_00004.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="180" width="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-23_gTpV-SyU/UQAqZqZWNSI/AAAAAAAAA7I/op3tG2jISjk/s320/2012-12-29_00004.jpg" /></a></div> I just took a break from being Batman and running around Arkham City to cross two non-games off my to-do list. I say ‘non-games’ because each of the two in its own unique way is an interactive experience rather than a game. They don’t so much tell a story as strongly hint at one, tickling your imagination by giving you just enough elements to suggest a narrative without quite connecting the dots for you. In both cases, there is room for interpretation of how it all ties together.
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aAowdFvLyO8/UQAr2ZzFSfI/AAAAAAAAA7U/c3qIHe7DPxg/s1600/thirty-flights-e1346178664227.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="225" width="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aAowdFvLyO8/UQAr2ZzFSfI/AAAAAAAAA7U/c3qIHe7DPxg/s320/thirty-flights-e1346178664227.jpg" /></a></div>
<i>Thirty Flights of Loving</i> – In this highly stylized short story that takes about fifteen minutes to ‘play’ from beginning to end, you’re part of a trio executing a heist. There is no dialogue, barely any text and you see everything from a first person perspective. Most interesting about this flight of fancy is the use of jump cuts. You may find yourself running down a hallway only to suddenly be in a different scene, be it one taking place earlier or later. Apart from moving around and being able to click on things to move the plot forward, you have no influence on the course of events. <i>Thirty Flights</i> is the sequel to the equally experimental <i>Gravity Bone</i>, which shares its colorful, primitive graphics but has a few more traditional gameplay elements and a great, cinematic final scene. In this earlier game, you play the part of a contract killer, but things get silly; at some point you have to take photographs of birds which afterwards explode for some unknown reason. On Steam, <i>Gravity Bone</i> comes packaged with <i>Thirty Flights</i> and there’s a text commentary option for the latter that gives insight into the making of it but does not clarify the story. ‘Playing’ both stories and reading the commentary will not take more than an hour in total and it’s certainly worth picking up for the curiosity value, assuming you find it on sale. I don’t quite get why the reviews have been so massively positive though. Granted, it’s novel to apply artsy cinematic ideas to a slightly interactive animated short story, but the end product doesn’t seem all that substantial from a story perspective. To me the ‘games’ seem to be stuck in a weird and slightly uncomfortable Limbo between a game and a short film.
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5J7E_dX8RG4/UQAsLA9mz-I/AAAAAAAAA7g/uFxMIxd50MA/s1600/2012-12-28_00003.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="180" width="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5J7E_dX8RG4/UQAsLA9mz-I/AAAAAAAAA7g/uFxMIxd50MA/s320/2012-12-28_00003.jpg" /></a></div> <i>Dear Esther</i> – <i>Dear Esther</i> tells its ambiguous story in a totally different way. You don’t click or interact with anything or anyone, you just observe as you move around the stunningly detailed landscape (or possibly mindscape) around you. The abandoned island you find yourself on, contains strange sights for you to see as you follow a long, winding way to a beacon blinking on the horizon. There are signs painted with luminous paint, lit candles in unlikely places and stranded boats of the wooden as well as the paper variety. A voice joins you now and then on your walk, dropping pieces of a sad and spooky story that must somehow be related to the island and its strangeness. The connection gets clearer as you go, but never completely solidifies. Apart from the voice, there are only ambient sounds and the occasional piece of piano, violin or choral music to break the silence. The sky is grey, overcast, with a ray of light in the distance. There’s a beautiful sadness to it all. The path you walk is very linear, the environment laid out in such a way that you can make a small extra detour, but never wander off in an unintended direction. There is no running, you move at a slow but steady pace. Those short on patience need not apply. <i>Dear Esther</i> only works if you give in to the mood of the piece: put on headphones, turn off the lights and preferably have a large, high-resolution monitor. Don’t expect action, more a meditation with hints of story. This meditation will take about 75 minutes to complete.
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As you see: despite both being an experiment in storytelling, we have an apple and an orange here. I enjoyed <i>Dear Esther</i> more, because of the atmosphere. It’s funny that simply the act of moving yourself through the environment makes it a compelling experience, when the minor adjustment of watching the game as a movie would likely make you fall asleep by the midway point. Important note: the save system was messed up. If you don’t complete the story in its entirety at first, you may only be able to start at the beginning instead of at one of the other three chapters. Thankfully, there’s a <a href="http://dear-esther.com/?page_id=133">work-around</a> for this.
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Anyway – I am off to be Batman again. As one does.
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DxkaZqOxWbw/UQAsWTLRvYI/AAAAAAAAA74/H71eFns8M4k/s1600/2012-12-28_00006.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="225" width="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DxkaZqOxWbw/UQAsWTLRvYI/AAAAAAAAA74/H71eFns8M4k/s400/2012-12-28_00006.jpg" /></a></div>
Steven van Lijndenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13972653100372774370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449232698783324352.post-60029379655779529402013-01-12T10:57:00.000+00:002013-01-14T18:58:13.207+00:00Movie Review: Skyfall<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Snx_U1Y0pm4/UPE_vT5mN8I/AAAAAAAAA5s/bX6bRZbQcfM/s1600/SKYFALL-UK-POSTER_650.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="400" width="270" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Snx_U1Y0pm4/UPE_vT5mN8I/AAAAAAAAA5s/bX6bRZbQcfM/s400/SKYFALL-UK-POSTER_650.jpg" /></a></div> Convoluted plots and unlikely action sequences have always been a staple of the James Bond <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bond_in_film">franchise</a>. (As well as hot women, exotic locations, gadgets and shaken-not-stirred martini’s, before sponsoring by Heineken perverted the latter.) But since Daniel Craig has taken on the Walter PPK of 007, the movies have tried to head into a grittier, relatively more believable direction. <i>Skyfall</i>, more than previous installments, puts the emphasis on characters and is unusually introspective. Respectful nods are made to Bond movies past and both Bond and his boss ‘M’ (Judi Dench) are reflecting on a career that is closer to the end than the beginning. As the story progresses, the scale of it seems to be shrinking and getting more personal, rather than growing bigger and being of import to the world at large. Unfortunately, as with <i><a href="http://popculturejunkie.blogspot.nl/2012/09/movie-review-dark-knight-rises.html">The Dark Knight Rises</a></i>, the realism makes the somewhat more ridiculous parts stand out in uncomfortable contrast.
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For starters: what’s the deal with Evil Masterminds? Why do they feel the need to set up complicated webs of intrigue and precarious plans, full of unpredictable factors, when their end goal could obviously be reached in a much easier way? Because then there would be no movie, that’s why. Both MI6 and their adversary show some true foresight at points in the movie, while having strange blind spots at others. There were a few instances in which a car was at the ready to pick up someone at just the right place and time, despite these people just exiting a chaotic, unforeseen situation. And the way a mode of public transport is used effectively for a quick, spectacular escape at one point seems to give up completely on probability, sacrificing it on the altar of coolness (and, admittedly, it does look cool). There is an IT component to the plot and, as usually happens in movies, the sequences which attempt to make hacking look visually exciting seem to have no bearing on reality either. And dear screenwriters: our hero gets taken into an Evil lair, but no one thinks to give him a thorough body search? That signifies either sloppy henchmen or sloppy writing. (Who in their right mind would pass on a chance to give Daniel Craig a body search?)
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While I do like Craig’s gritty Bond and the self-awareness about getting older and possibly having peaked already, I don’t like some of the characterization he’s been handed. Without getting too specific, there is more than one occasion in the film when Bond seems all set to act the hero, but only springs into action a moment or two after it’s too late. Maybe this was done to humanize him and make him feel more fallible, but it’s a jarring shift between this and his action hero mode. Also worrying, given the more realistic tone, is the disregard for collateral damage, be it of the material or innocent bystander variety. Must be a ‘greater good’ mentality.
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The continuity between Bond movies remains somewhat baffling. It is understood that ‘M’ and ‘Q’ are codenames for a certain position within MI6 and that the title is passed on from one person to the next. Even Ms. Moneypenny could potentially be a code-name. But does the same count for the 007 moniker and the name James Bond? The numbers signify agents, but are we supposed to assume that the previous incarnations are all pushing up daisies? That doesn’t seem the case, as it’s made clear in Skyfall that James Bond is 007’s actual birth-name. (Weird that he would use his real name to introduce himself - “Bond. James Bond” – while on the job.) So then it seems that all James Bonds are indeed meant to be the same person, duplicating in slightly varying forms throughout the last 50 years, in what must be alternate realities. So there you go: it’s a scifi-franchise.
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DIl3om8tLdQ/UPFAEkkgrSI/AAAAAAAAA6E/UMq9ihSBDPU/s1600/skyfall_04.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="180" width="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DIl3om8tLdQ/UPFAEkkgrSI/AAAAAAAAA6E/UMq9ihSBDPU/s320/skyfall_04.jpg" /></a></div> Is <i>Skyfall</i> the best Bond movie ever, as some people claim? No, I wouldn’t say so. But it is one of the most interesting ones, fleshing out the characters of Bond and M more than usual. It gives Judi Dench a lot of screen time, which is always a good thing. And it is notable for an unusual ending, that I unfortunately can’t get into without major spoilage. Despite a script containing plot holes that are hard to miss, as well as a generous helping of silliness, the movie is definitely worth seeing, for newbies and die-hards alike. The latter will likely get out of it the most out of it, though, being able to appreciate its cheeky winks to its heritage. I have it on good authority that James Bond will return.
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Steven van Lijndenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13972653100372774370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449232698783324352.post-80070884499900296572013-01-02T19:30:00.000+00:002013-01-02T19:38:07.858+00:00Game Review: Spec Ops: The Line<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-O0LncLXvWs8/UOSJvbq7tgI/AAAAAAAAA4g/dJNFfCEXx5s/s1600/spec-ops-the-line.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="400" width="286" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-O0LncLXvWs8/UOSJvbq7tgI/AAAAAAAAA4g/dJNFfCEXx5s/s400/spec-ops-the-line.jpg" /></a></div> I do not like military shooters and tend to avoid them like the plague. A lot of them are morally awkward, featuring mostly white Westerners shooting at whichever group of ‘others’ seemed the most threatening at the time the game went into production. Also, the online-multiplayer seems to be the main selling point for most of these games, and I don’t enjoy getting continuously ‘fragged’ or ‘pwned’ by foulmouthed teens who have spent all their time online practicing instead of developing social skills or getting laid. And finally: realistic shooters tend to bore me with their machismo and rabid patriotism. But then along came <i>Spec Ops: The Line</i>. It’s a military shooter, but it gathered so much buzz for its unconventional storyline that I decided to pick it up when I spotted it on sale.
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You are Captain Martin Walker, a guy who at first seems like a cookie-cutter all-American hero. You lead a squad of three into Dubai, which has been hit catastrophically by sandstorms. Your job is to covertly find out what happened to a previous team – the 33rd battalion led by a certain John Konrad. It was sent to Dubai to evacuate the inhabitants that were left behind after the rich and powerful had fled the city. As you walk into an unclear situation with multiple factions fighting each other, mistakes are made which escalate the situation, including one as harrowing as I’ve ever witnessed in a video game. Walker’s mind and body take a severe beating and his team begins to doubt him. Depending on what you do during the final mission and the sequence that follows after the credits, it leads to one of four downbeat, existential endings. None of them include bunnies, rainbows or unicorns. Despite this, all of them are worth watching and profound in their own way.
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tm663s2LzKc/UOSLKO7qzxI/AAAAAAAAA5Q/plUo4qQrJGE/s1600/2012-12-30_00005.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="180" width="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tm663s2LzKc/UOSLKO7qzxI/AAAAAAAAA5Q/plUo4qQrJGE/s320/2012-12-30_00005.jpg" /></a></div> Having been pre-warned by reviews that the parts where you shoot a literally unbelievable amount of opposing soldiers are fairly generic and turn into a slog near the end, I played through the game on ‘easy’. I can actually recommend doing that, if – like me – you just want to optimally experience the story (‘enjoy’ seems the wrong word). It improves the pacing as you won’t have to replay any of the lengthy and increasingly grim battles more than once. From a gameplay perspective, the actual shooting is indeed pretty standard apart from a mechanic where you can shoot glass that has sand on or behind it, to pour an avalanche over your enemies. Some people have complained about the fact that vaulting and melee combat were mapped to the same button, but I wasn’t hindered by this too much, engaging long-distance by preference. Dodging hand grenades is a pain, however, because sticking to cover, getting out of cover and running are all controlled by the same button. So if someone lobs a grenade at you, you have to carefully un-stick yourself and amble away from your cover far enough for you start running when you press that button again, instead of going right back into cover and getting blown up.
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Pn15iLGOowY/UOSKaFMA-dI/AAAAAAAAA44/V4wslN4laU0/s1600/2012-12-30_00002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="180" width="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Pn15iLGOowY/UOSKaFMA-dI/AAAAAAAAA44/V4wslN4laU0/s320/2012-12-30_00002.jpg" /></a></div> The game has been criticized for being hypocritical, discussing the horrors of war, while at the same time trying to entertain by way of gunfights. But the context of the shooting matters. Odd as it is, you feel somewhat guilty as you go through these sequences, but compelled to keep going because you want to see what happens next. And yes, there is heroic rock music playing on the background at points, which is obnoxious if taken at face value, but which contextually is clearly ironic, along the lines of that ‘<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZdJRDpLHbw">America, f*ck yeah!</a>’ song from the South Park guys. The gore may be entertaining to some people (and in some other games it is to me too), but here it mostly feels painful. The faces of the soldiers you kill are generally detailed enough that they become individuals when lying dead on the ground. At some point you hear a couple of guards having a very normal, humanizing conversation, right before you inevitably have to kill them. If you’re not engaging with the game intellectually, all you’ll see is a bland shooter. And you’d be missing the point entirely. In a strange way, it would be less fitting if the killing was very creative and a lot of ‘fun’. Admittedly, the fact that you can get ‘achievements’ for certain kinds of kills is a bit dubious, but to avoid a financial loss with expensive-to-make games like this, you have to please gamers of all kinds, not just the ones with a philosophical bent. So, yeah, the game does make a few concessions that slightly weaken its point.
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MfT2mUWaYE8/UOSKon4gCII/AAAAAAAAA5E/6hagAYAW450/s1600/2012-12-29_00001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="180" width="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MfT2mUWaYE8/UOSKon4gCII/AAAAAAAAA5E/6hagAYAW450/s320/2012-12-29_00001.jpg" /></a></div> Though some of the things you will see in <i>Spec Ops: The Line</i> are hard to watch, the graphics themselves are impressive and the sand swept environments are outright beautiful at times. For the atmosphere, the visuals and the story, I really recommend picking up the game if you catch it on sale. Run through it over the course of an afternoon on ‘easy’ to get the most out of it (and forget about the allegedly mediocre, tacked-on multiplayer component, which I ignored). Of course, alternatively you could just look up the cut scenes on YouTube. But when taken out of context and without the interactive element, I don’t think these scenes would have the same impact. To feel that, you have to identify with Walker, at least up to a point, and feel responsible for his actions. It’s not often that a war game lets itself get inspired by something as thoughtful as Joseph Conrad’s <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_of_Darkness">Heart of Darkness</a></i>. (Note that the name of the ambiguous leader of the 33th battalion is Konrad.) If you’re a gamer on the look-out for something with substance, don’t miss out on this experience. Even – or maybe especially – if you normally hate military shooters.
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Steven van Lijndenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13972653100372774370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449232698783324352.post-1264527040787249782012-12-27T21:39:00.000+00:002013-01-01T17:32:27.574+00:00Metacriticism: Reviewing Reviewers<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I am not sure how rare my condition is, but I am someone who loves reading/watching/hearing reviews. Even when they’re about something I have no actual interest in. For instance, I have spent more time reading about the Twilight phenomenon and watching the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gugBiEkLwU">Honest Trailers</a>, than I ever will spend watching the movies or reading the books. There is something appealing to me about analyzing culture (be it of the ‘pop’ or ‘high’ variety) and picking apart what makes something work or fail. It’s also what makes me write reviews myself. Though this may surprise and shock, I am not making any money on this blog, it’s mainly for sh*ts and giggles. And maybe worldwide fame.
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But how much does someone else’s opinion matter, as there is no accounting for taste? Well, ultimately the only way to be certain if you would like something or not is to experience it yourself. The problem is that there is a LOT of entertainment out there and there is no way you can absorb all of it, past and present. To get the best out of your time investment, you’ll want to have the worst crap weeded out before you dive in. The distinction between good and great may generally be in the eye of the beholder, but the distinction between toxic waste and something worth your time is a fair bit more universal. And though there are rumored behind-the-scenes shenanigans going on at sites that group together reviews – sites like Metacritic, which covers <a href="http://www.metacritic.com/tv">tv</a>, <a href="http://www.metacritic.com/movie">movies</a>, <a href="http://www.metacritic.com/game">video games</a> and <a href="http://www.metacritic.com/music">music</a> – meaning you have to take the accumulated scores with a grain of salt, they do give you a good general idea about quality. And as you follow a certain reviewer you like, you will discover how his or her taste relates to yours and how you should interpret their opinion. The best reviewers realize that their reviews should be a form of entertainment. Here are a few I have been following and enjoying.
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lGC2PaGM6js/UNy6bxbbttI/AAAAAAAAA2s/tFDh4oxV-PU/s1600/roger%2Bebert.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="169" width="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lGC2PaGM6js/UNy6bxbbttI/AAAAAAAAA2s/tFDh4oxV-PU/s200/roger%2Bebert.jpg" /></a></div>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Ebert">Roger Ebert</a> - Though it’s fun to root for an underdog, sometimes there’s a reason someone is at the top of the heap. Though I don’t always agree with his ultimate judgement, he writes about movies thoughtfully and passionately and doesn’t forget to entertain. His reviews can be found <a href="http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/">online</a> and collected in <a href="http://popculturejunkie.blogspot.nl/2007/04/book-review-thumbs-up.html">books</a>, either by year or by rating. Though he refrains from cheap shots, occasionally he does rip a deserving movie apart and the collections of <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23569.I_Hated_Hated_Hated_This_Movie">those</a> kind of reviews will likely have you smiling the most.
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KaR-kcpEVds/UNy6oaBtggI/AAAAAAAAA24/YR6onV-U0Jw/s1600/comedy%2Bfilm%2Bnerds.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="186" width="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KaR-kcpEVds/UNy6oaBtggI/AAAAAAAAA24/YR6onV-U0Jw/s200/comedy%2Bfilm%2Bnerds.jpg" /></a></div> <a href="http://www.comedyfilmnerds.com/">Comedy Film Nerds</a> - This is a podcast hosted by two stand-up comedians: <a href="http://grahamelwood.com/">Graham Elwood</a> and <a href="http://chrisjmancinionline.com/">Chris Mancini</a>. They talk about upcoming movies and review new ones currently in the theater or premiering on BluRay or DVD. Generally there is a guest from either the movie industry or the comedy circuit. Breaks in the regular podcasting schedule are covered by less topical shows that discuss a movie genre or contain interviews with someone in showbiz. The banter is easy-going and funny, as you’d expect from two stand-ups, and it’s a great way for movie buffs to get informed while commuting, working out or otherwise multi-tasking.
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Other good sources for movie reviews: <a href="http://www.imdb.com/">The Internet Movie Database</a>, <a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/">Rotten Tomatoes</a>, <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/blogs/the-travers-take">Rolling Stones’ Peter Travers</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/catherinereitman">Catherine Reitman</a>, <a href="http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/moviebob">MovieBob</a> and <a href="http://www.dvdverdict.com/">DVD Verdict</a>.
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oAMv4t94VIA/UNy6xkOwbDI/AAAAAAAAA3E/Oevque8TFuo/s1600/Zero_Punctuation_guitar_hero.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="143" width="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oAMv4t94VIA/UNy6xkOwbDI/AAAAAAAAA3E/Oevque8TFuo/s200/Zero_Punctuation_guitar_hero.jpg" /></a></div> <a href="http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation">Zero Punctuation</a> - It’s not often that a reviewer spawns imitators, but <a href="http://fullyramblomatic-yahtzee.blogspot.nl/">Yahtzee Croshaw</a> (not actually his birth-name, as you may guess) has managed to do so. His reviews of video games are animated videos that run around the five minute mark. Against a bright yellow backdrop, simple black-and-white characters illustrate (or humorously add to) Yahtzee’s breathlessly read, sardonic opinions. These tend to be blunt and contain a creative collection of (sometimes self-made) swear words. Unlike in ‘normal’ reviews of games, there are no screenshots or videos of gameplay. A picture of the cover will pop up somewhere in the video and is likely to get savaged in one way or another. The reviews are impressionistic and more free-form than you’d get from a site like <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/">Gamespot</a> or <a href="http://www.ign.com/">IGN</a>. Assuming you’re on board with his brand of humor, you may find yourself binging on his videos at first and though the novelty wears off a bit, the charm remains. He posts a new review (almost) every week.
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mX1Vhis-w9w/UNy66tcTY9I/AAAAAAAAA3Q/sahFxlfoTl4/s1600/AngryJoe_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="112" width="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mX1Vhis-w9w/UNy66tcTY9I/AAAAAAAAA3Q/sahFxlfoTl4/s200/AngryJoe_2.jpg" /></a></div>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/AngryJoeShow">The Angry Joe Show</a> - A clearly very enthusiastic gamer, <a href="http://angryjoeshow.com/">Joe</a> likes to get in-depth with his video reviews, which often run longer than twenty minutes. Standing in front of a related backdrop and aided by some nifty computer animations, he passionately describes his experiences. Unlike Yahtzee, he does show actual gameplay video, so you get a clear idea of the look of a game. There may also be dressing up and there may be little skits, which are sometimes funny and sometimes slightly off the mark. But as he is very articulate and engaging, the occasional joke falling flat isn’t a big deal.
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Other good sources for video game reviews: <a href="http://www.gamerankings.com/">GameRankings</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/TotalHalibut/videos?query=wtf">WTF is...</a>, <a href="http://www.machinima.com/">Machinima</a>, <a href="http://www.ign.com/">IGN</a>, <a href="http://www.gamespot.com/">Gamespot</a>, <a href="http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/">PocketGamer</a>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LpZPFLCZDDQ/UNy7ifB4vpI/AAAAAAAAA3o/oUeyekfrs5E/s1600/Dice%2BTower.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="139" width="180" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LpZPFLCZDDQ/UNy7ifB4vpI/AAAAAAAAA3o/oUeyekfrs5E/s200/Dice%2BTower.jpg" /></a></div>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/thedicetower">The Dice Tower</a> - Tom Vasel is a board game fanatic. His video reviews show the components of a game, give an overview of the rules and conclude with his opinion on what about the game in question works and what doesn’t. His videos are very family friendly. He apparently comes from a religious background and was even a pastor, which as a gay guy makes me slightly queasy about his non-board game related opinions. But I am just making assumptions as the reviews don’t stray at all from the topic at hand. The videos may occasionally co-star one of his six (I think) daughters. He’s a likeable guy and the leading reviewer in this field. There is also a <a href="http://www.dicetower.com/">podcast</a>, though I haven’t listened to it.
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Other good sources for board game reviews: <a href="http://boardgamegeek.com/">BoardGameGeek</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/BoardtoDeathTV">Board to Death TV</a>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-h_9CgJ9c7bA/UNy7c-6izdI/AAAAAAAAA3c/8auAQdnyUxk/s1600/CBQ.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="153" width="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-h_9CgJ9c7bA/UNy7c-6izdI/AAAAAAAAA3c/8auAQdnyUxk/s200/CBQ.jpg" /></a></div>
<a href="http://www.comicbookqueers.com/">Comic Book Queers</a> – This is a podcast on which a group of gay guys offer their (often conflicting) opinions on new comics and talk about current happenings in the comic book industry. As someone who used to be a big comic book fan, but now only occasionally picks up a graphic novel, it’s nice to hear what’s going on with all kinds of characters I used to read about. It’s telling that I enjoy listening to the podcast more than I enjoy reading comic books these days. (ps: there is also a – unrelated – <a href="http://comicbookbears.libsyn.com/">Comic Book Bears</a> podcast, but I haven’t checked it out yet)
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Good source for book reviews: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/">GoodReads</a>
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Mind you, the stuff I mention here is a fairly limited selection of what I have stumbled upon. I have skipped television and music entirely as I tend to through Metacritic to find reviews on these topics. I hope you will enjoy some of these reviewers – and hope you will still be reading my reviews as well, of course.
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<b>Please feed my ego by following this blog through Twitter, to get notified whenever I post a review here.</b>Steven van Lijndenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13972653100372774370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449232698783324352.post-36200940731943794662012-12-18T12:51:00.000+00:002012-12-18T13:36:57.926+00:00Movie Review: Looper<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1276104/">Looper</a></i> is a futuristic action thriller that combines criminals, hover bikes, time travel and telekinesis to interesting effect. It starts both Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis as Joe, a ‘looper’. Loopers assassinate people that are sent back from the future by a criminal organization, for clean disposal. When they come to the end of their employ, the older version of them is also sent back in time in a process that is called ‘closing the loop’. They kill their older self, collect the gold that comes packaged with their matured version and enjoy an early retirement until such time that they get killed by their younger past self. See how this could get confusing? Well, things certainly do get complicated when older Joe (Willis) manages to escape and runs rampant in the past, trying to set things right for the future, requiring younger Joe (Gordon-Levitt) to go after him.
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There’s a lot that works about this movie and there are only a few minor things that annoy. The telekinesis angle seems superfluous at first, but starts to make sense later on. The related special effect that’s used a few times to make a coin hover, looks glaringly fake however. Considering that it seems like such a simple and probably not too expensive special effect, that boggles the mind. But as nitpicks go, it’s a pretty small nit. A larger one is the make-up that was applied to Gordon-Levitt’s face to make it more believable that he would age into Willis. In a movie that requires us to buy into complicated time-travel scenarios and other flights of fancy, it seems odd to think that the audience needs face-altering make-up to go along with Joseph turning into Bruce. If anything, it’s distracting until you get past the “hey, that’s Gordon-Levitt, but he looks kinda weird” phase.
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The acting is solid all the way round. You expect as much from the big names that come attached, but the show was stolen by the most ‘real’ and likeable precocious kid I’ve seen in a long time. He is completely believable, both when he’s being unnervingly mature and when he suddenly shows his actual young age and acts like a vulnerable kid.
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Getting into the plot in detail… well, it’s hard to discuss it without avoiding spoilers. So instead, a note about time travel: there are only two approaches to this that avoid a paradox. The first one states that you can’t really change the past. If you go back in time to change things, it will turn out that you were in fact already a deciding factor in how things turned out initially. The second one states that you can change the past, but this will not affect your own past. Instead, it will create an alternate reality spinning off from the moment where you intervene (See: <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0796366/">Star Trek</a>). Any other form of temporal causality is likely to have you scratching your head. Changing your own past is bound to get fuzzy when it comes to logic. In <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088763/">Back to the Future</a>, when time-travelling Marty McFly messes up how his parents initially meet, he should have disappeared. (I’d say instantly, the movie says gradually.) But then, if he never existed, he never would have derailed their meeting, so he would have existed as before and messed up their meeting again. (Sidebar: scifi comedy series Red Dwarf cheerfully thumbs its nose at this kind of temporal logic by having <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Lister_(Red_Dwarf)">Lister</a> be his own dad.) I could go on about time travel a lot longer, but just read my reviews of <a href="http://popculturejunkie.blogspot.nl/2008/08/television-review-doctor-who.html">Doctor Who</a> and <a href="http://popculturejunkie.blogspot.nl/2008/04/television-review-terminator-sarah.html">Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles</a> for more ranting on the topic.
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<i>Looper</i> doesn’t avoid paradoxes in the end, though things seems neatly wrapped up at first glance. The narrative falls apart when you start to think things through, in ways I can’t explain without spoiling the ending. But the movie is undeniably entertaining, so it’s probably best if you don’t give it a second thought and just enjoy the ride.
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Steven van Lijndenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13972653100372774370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449232698783324352.post-59975999566125355402012-12-08T20:57:00.000+00:002012-12-08T21:02:20.093+00:00Game Review: Max Payne 3<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-v_dXAovsA94/UMOkjt3za6I/AAAAAAAAAwk/yXBUPbbhn7M/s1600/max_payne_3_frontcover_large_Migr4Z4a2SydLUy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="400" width="283" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-v_dXAovsA94/UMOkjt3za6I/AAAAAAAAAwk/yXBUPbbhn7M/s400/max_payne_3_frontcover_large_Migr4Z4a2SydLUy.jpg" /></a></div> When Max Payne is around, any glass that’s half-empty is soon to be entirely empty, literally and figuratively. The guy can’t catch a break and has decided to drown his grief in alcohol. Having lost his family in the previous installments of the Payne franchise, he gets entangled in all sorts of nastiness again this time around, when a gig as a bodyguard in Sao Paolo goes south. In a gravelly voice and with a gloomy, sardonic demeanor, he narrates his woes to the player, who mostly gets to take control during the parts of the story where there’s shooting to be done. The monologue has a distinct hard-boiled/noir detective feel to it and Max’s world is one of double-crossing crooks, in which innocence is a rare commodity. Odd visual glitches occur and spoken words float across the screen from time to time, visualizing his feeling of being hung-over and off-balance.
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GscWfur0Ol0/UMOllrr_kGI/AAAAAAAAAxU/EFRJlNp-4i4/s1600/Max-Payne-3-002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="192" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GscWfur0Ol0/UMOllrr_kGI/AAAAAAAAAxU/EFRJlNp-4i4/s320/Max-Payne-3-002.jpg" /></a></div> Despite being a grade A boozehound, as well as addicted to painkillers which magically heal bullet wounds, Max’s reflexes are apparently still superhuman. As before, his speed and marksmanship are portrayed in the form of Bullet Time. This gameplay conceit was made popular by the first Max Payne game and has been incorporated in so many games since, that it has almost become cliché. It means that you have the ability to see things happen in slow-motion while you can aim and shoot in real-time. So you can take a leap sideways or forwards, sailing majestically through the air, while strategically pumping bullets into various parts of your enemies as their bullets whiz past you slow enough to see them travel. You will need to make use of this tactic a lot. A mechanic that allows you to take cover has been added this time around, giving you a few more strategic options, but because your foes tend to come running at you and silencers aren’t effective, stealth is short-lived and things tend to get hectic. Thankfully, you also have the option to blow up cars, gas tanks (and so on) near your enemies by shooting them, meaning you can cut down enemy numbers at a good pace.
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vO27D0u0-1A/UMOmPYDTNcI/AAAAAAAAAxg/-XZ1gZ4VhJc/s1600/maxpayne3-2075-1920.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="197" width="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vO27D0u0-1A/UMOmPYDTNcI/AAAAAAAAAxg/-XZ1gZ4VhJc/s320/maxpayne3-2075-1920.jpg" /></a></div> Max has a low tolerance for bullets, by game standards (though he is still a fair bit more resistant than people are in real life), meaning you don’t last long at the normal firing rate. So you will find yourself suspended in midair quite a bit, possibly ending your journey sooner than planned by embarrassingly crashing into a wall or some other obstacle that you didn’t notice before taking flight. Though it looks silly, it does give the action movie acrobatics a charmingly realistic counterpoint.
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Seeing how your survival often depends on taking out multiple targets on the go, before time resumes its normal speed, it’s annoying that the game doesn’t make it clear when an enemy is down for the count. When you hit someone, they will drop to the ground, but the amount of bullets it takes to keep them there is unpredictable. You are likely to find yourself getting shot in the back now and then, because one of the guys you thought was dead – a reasonable assumption after emptying a clip on him – was actually just mildly inconvenienced.
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-d3GbF7o8Ob4/UMOlBN8LrcI/AAAAAAAAAw8/1VLl_AtqtN8/s1600/MaxPayne3-2012-07-02-19-51-12-87.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="180" width="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-d3GbF7o8Ob4/UMOlBN8LrcI/AAAAAAAAAw8/1VLl_AtqtN8/s320/MaxPayne3-2012-07-02-19-51-12-87.png" /></a></div> <i>Max Payne 3</i> looks great. The beautifully detailed surroundings invite you to look around and there are rewards when you do so in the shape of ‘clues’ to be found and parts of guns that – if you collect them all – give a bonus on damage and ammo capacity. But the game is schizophrenic when it comes to pacing; often, if you take a moment to wander off the beaten path to find these goodies, either Max’s voice-over or a character you have with you, will remind you that time is of the essence and that you really should be hauling ass.
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Unfortunately the game is not without bugs and glitches. Some are hilarious one-offs, such as the time when Max, after landing on the floor on his back, started spinning around like a break-dancer on speed. (Other players have encountered the same <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADwCunjBtqE">glitch</a> in different spots.) I also had a moment when, right after coming back to life, I was glitched to the wrong side of a wall and found myself at the end of a level, not able to proceed. There are a few recurring problems that are more annoying though. There is a targeting aid, that on the normal setting provides just about the right amount of guidance given the fast-paced shooting. But it did on occasion lock on an enemy that was out of range while there were other, more viable targets right in front of me. And most critical is a bug that started occurring in the last couple of chapters and raised the difficulty level from challenging to frustrating. Apparently at random, Max would seize up while in cover, able to reload his gun but unable to otherwise move, aim or shoot until someone came along to put a few bullets in him and trigger a ‘last man standing’ slow-motion shoot-out. (This mode itself also has a recurring bug: you sometimes will be looking at your assailant while your gun appears to be stuck in a different direction.) These bugs don’t spoil the experience ultimately, but they are surprising given how polished the game looks and sounds otherwise.
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Essentially, <i>Max Payne 3</i> is a very well-presented and very linear procession of shooting galleries that tells a convoluted and somewhat hard to follow story. Max is a well-drawn character in both meanings of the phrase and his gloomy attitude makes sense considering his history. Most chapters of the story see him failing at his main objective, only adding to his troubles. But listening to narration by someone whose demeanor is basically ‘Eeyore with a gun’ for an entire game, does start to grate a little. The combination of Bullet Time and cover-based shooting is fun but does get repetitive, despite a large arsenal and despite special sections that shake up the formula. On normal difficulty it’s pretty challenging to someone like me who sucks at shooters, but if you have to replay a certain part often, the game self-adjusts the difficulty level momentarily by throwing you some extra health. Because of this and because your enemies always start out at the same position, you’re unlikely to get stuck for long (well, maybe literally; if that bug acts up).
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At one point, Max says: “Sometimes a complicated problem is best tackled with a simple solution.” His solution is always the same: shoot a whole bunch of bad guys. That is great fun for a while, but by the end of it, you’ll likely be craving something less restrictive and linear.
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Steven van Lijndenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13972653100372774370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449232698783324352.post-70545891036344044022012-12-04T16:07:00.000+00:002012-12-04T16:07:07.633+00:00Movie Review: Ted<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DlgEwgRVDD4/UL4fAIEGzdI/AAAAAAAAAwM/9II1crXYAc8/s1600/ted-movie-poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="400" width="243" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DlgEwgRVDD4/UL4fAIEGzdI/AAAAAAAAAwM/9II1crXYAc8/s400/ted-movie-poster.jpg" /></a></div> The movie <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1637725/">Ted</a></i> was written and directed by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seth_MacFarlane">Seth MacFarlane</a>, the creator, writer and main voice actor behind the animated series <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Guy">Family Guy</a></i>. This series is basically a politically incorrect version of <i>The Simpsons</i>. The latter isn’t afraid to satirize and poke fun at all kinds of topics, but <i>Family Guy</i> fights with the gloves off. It’s more crude, more surreal and less afraid to take taboos and rub them in your face. Kinda like <i>South Park</i>, really. There’s a fairly good chance your gender, orientation and/or ethnicity will be on the receiving end from time to time, so there’s no point in watching it if you can’t laugh at yourself as well as at others.
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Though the movie <i>Ted</i> is somewhat tame by comparison (no marathon vomiting scenes here), it carries over a lot of familiar elements and doesn’t skim on the absurdity and political incorrectness. There’s a free-flowing “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” vibe to the entire undertaking. The plot: a young boy named John Bennett wishes for his teddy-bear to be his best friend forever, as a falling star passes by. Magic ensues for some reason - and the bear lives! Years later, the boy (now played by Mark Wahlberg) and his toy have grown up to be a couple of immature potheads. Despite this, John has managed to snag a hot, funny and smart girl, played by Mila Kunis (who also happens to do the voice for <i>Family Guy</i>’s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meg_Griffin">Meg</a>). But man-child John is at risk of losing her if he doesn’t put aside childish things. Things like Ted.
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It’s hard to be absurd and crude and still keep your audience invested in the fate of your characters and the workings of your plot. <i>Ted</i> just about manages it. The story is simple and a bit predictable, but the main joke of a walking, talking and misbehaving teddy-bear doesn’t wear as thin as you would think, because Ted actually has a personality. His voice was done by Seth MacFarlane and with typical self-awareness, the movie contains a joke acknowledging that Ted sounds a lot like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Griffin">Peter Griffin</a> from <i>Family Guy</i> (who is also voiced by MacFarlane). Not all of the tangents the movie goes off on hit their mark (I didn’t really connect to its Flash Gordon subplot, I guess you had to be there) and it’s puzzling that near the end, the movie decides to turn from romantic comedy into a tongue-in-cheek thriller for a while, before reverting back. Ultimately the epilogue, featuring a voice-over by <a href="http://memegenerator.net/Picard-Wtf">Captain Picard</a>, reminds you that the plot didn’t really matter and that anything goes as long as it’s good for laugh. And <i>Ted</i> does indeed have enough of those to make it worth watching, with characters that are likeable enough to make you care. Despite knowing that you should know better.
Steven van Lijndenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13972653100372774370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449232698783324352.post-13958436468984085442012-10-31T18:26:00.000+00:002012-10-31T19:24:36.973+00:00Gamer Rant: XBLA vs. Steam<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<p>I love console gaming. For me, this involves hanging out on the couch, in front of a big screen with all the lights turned off and my headphones on. And until recently, playing games on my PC seemed like a stupid idea. I have a midlevel computer which lacks an especially impressive graphics card and I have a traumatic past filled with games crashing to the desktop for no apparent reason or even refusing to start up. So how did I learn to stop worrying and love PC gaming?
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If you’ve played PC games in years past, you probably know first-hand about having to deal with bugs and unpredictable technical incompatibility. But as I found when finally giving PC gaming another go, these problems are getting less common and will likely be becoming even more rare. (If the promise for the future holds, installation of games may no longer be required as you will play online from a server, presumably on a remote computer with much better specs than your own.) And I finally realized that the current generation of consoles is ancient now by technology standards, so even a fairly cheap PC will be able to yield a better performance than a console with most games.
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But the real clincher for me is this: the greatness of the <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/">Steam</a> store (PC) versus the crappiness of the <a href="http://marketplace.xbox.com/nl-NL/Xbox?xr=shellnav">X-Box Live Arcade</a> (XBLA) experience. As legally downloading games becomes more and more common, as opposed to running out to buy a physical copy, the importance of the sales platform greatly increases. Steam knows how to make people glad to spend money and entices them with very good temporary deals, making the sport of grabbing a great game while it’s on sale almost a game in itself. It’s also laid out well, making browsing of popular and/or cheap titles a snap. In a smart move, it lists the averaged score a title received at reviews-site <a href="http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc">Metacritic</a>, even if it is a low one. It’s a convenient and honest piece of info, regardless of how much you think the score is worth. (There are occasional reports of reviews not being impartial and about good games being overlooked just because of a bad review or two.) Payment is easy once you’ve registered and there is a variety of options, like PayPal/CreditCard and iDeal (where applicable). When payment is complete, Steam lists the title you bought in your Library: you can download and install the game then or later. You can also buy a game as a gift for a friend, passing it to them right away or putting it aside for a while. And if you ultimately want to keep it for yourself, that is not a problem. Installing is automatic and requires no effort on your part. You can delete games if you need the hard-disk space and can re-download them later on. When you have Steam running it is also very easy (even for a novice like me) to see when friends are online and join them in a game. The only downside (which is admittedly a big one) is that Steam wants you to be online to start up your games and that you will be in trouble if you for some reason irretrievably lose access to the Steam account to which your games are attached. I thankfully haven’t needed to contact them about something like that, so don’t know how good their support team is.
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You don’t have to be online to play on the X-Box 360, though it pays to connect to the internet for a moment when booting up a new game as there may be updates/bug patches to download. (Games are rarely released in a bug-free state unfortunately.) If you want to buy a game on XBLA, there is the stupidity of Microsoft Points (MS Points) to deal with. You have to use a creditcard or a scratch card bought at a store to put bundles of these points into your account. The amount you have rarely is in sync with what you want to buy, so you are likely to have unused point in your account most of the time. Compared to Steam (and to the iTunes store), prices on XBLA are high. There are a few special offers at any given time, but still nowhere near the price-level of Steam, where you are likely to find the same games a lot cheaper. It is also more work to find them: Microsoft recently gave the X-Box 360 a new, less user-friendly menu to put it in line with its mobile phone and Windows 8 design. Casually browsing through a lot of titles on the console becomes annoying fast, so I never do. It’s better to walk to your PC and browse and buy the games on there, after which they are added to your account. Admittedly, installation is as easy as it is through Steam; simply download and play. And it also leaves you the option of deleting a game to clear up space and re-downloading it whenever you feel like it. I have had the misfortune of locking myself out of a X-Box account once and in this case I can report on the customer service: it both sucks and blows. There was no response to my questions about options for getting back into my account. I ultimately had to start a new one and won’t have access to the handful of games I bought under the old one if my X-Box 360 breaks down at some point.
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To be able to play with friends online, Microsoft wants you to pay for a subscription. Considering that these days money increasingly comes from people making in-game purchases while playing online in multiplayer games, you’d think Microsoft would want as many people online and playing as possible. But no. As I only play online maybe one day out of a month at most, I’ll stick to the PC on that front and buy my multiplayer games through Steam. In fact, I found that I spent a lot more money during the last two big Steam sale events (they go crazy with their prices a few times a year) than I ever spent on XBLA in my five years of owning an X-Box 360. On Steam, I ended up buying games I would never have considered full-price, simply because I was curious about them. Because of the bargain prices, I would sample a game just because of an interesting concept or presentation and not feel cheated if it ultimately wasn’t my thing. Bad for my wallet, smart of the Steam-team and a sign that XBLA is doing things wrong. I strongly doubt that apart from the occasional add-on for a game I bought for X-Box 360 before discovering Steam, they will get any more money out of me. They totally had me, but by now they have totally lost me. It’s time Microsoft stops trying to squeeze money out of their customers in obvious, unfriendly and ultimately counter-productive ways. They need to convert to a system where gamers are actually happy to buy things, because it’s made easy – even fun – and because prices are reasonable enough to encourage impulse buys. No more of that Microsoft Points crap for me. XBLA = nay. Steam = yay.
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PS: To be fair, a downside is that Steam sometimes gets laggy or even crashes when it gets too busy, like during the current Halloween sale. I was unable to visit the site just now when trying to add the Steam link to this praising blogpost. Oh, the irony.
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PS2: the PS3 and the store that goes with it are both unfamiliar to me, so your experience there may vary.
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Steven van Lijndenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13972653100372774370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449232698783324352.post-21345217941419492482012-10-28T21:16:00.000+00:002012-10-31T09:20:41.160+00:00Movie Review: The Hunger Games<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1fcvD62MGRE/UI2f31C5lVI/AAAAAAAAAu4/HWmpVgYgWE8/s1600/the-hunger-games-movie-poster-24.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="400" width="260" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1fcvD62MGRE/UI2f31C5lVI/AAAAAAAAAu4/HWmpVgYgWE8/s400/the-hunger-games-movie-poster-24.jpg" /></a></div> The <i>The Hunger Games</i> franchise consists of a trilogy of young-adult books, which are being made into a quadrology of films over the next couple of years. The first chapter has already passed through cinemas and features an odd central concept: a bunch of kids is forced to kill each other until only one survives. There’s a bit of <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Royale_(film)">Battle Royale</a></i> to be found here and even a hint of <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Running_Man_(film)">The Running Man</a></i>, but those films weren’t aimed at a young audience. Admittedly, the franchise is not lauding juvenile violence and there is a societal satire lingering in the background, but still: it’s kids reading about - or watching - kids killing kids. Eepy-cray.
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The story takes place in an alternate future. The brutal Hunger Games are a penalty for an uprising among part of the populace against their leaders. You are rooting against the dickey upper-class straight away, as they all sport silly haircuts and wear clothes that are way too colorful. It’s like a futuristic revenge of the eighties. By contrast, the former revolters lead a poor, minimalist, woodsy kind of existence. They have been sorted into districts and from each one a girl and a boy is selected yearly to do battle. The main heroine of the story is a girl (Katniss Everdeen) who gets drafted for these games – well, actually she volunteers; it’s complicated – and mostly because of her winning personality, she manages to gain a fan base among the viewers. She also threatens to spark another revolution, making the people who are coordinating the Hunger Games feel perturbed.
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I have not read the books, but the first film has the violent central concept clashing awkwardly with an unwillingness to taint the heroine. Once Katniss gets thrown into the arena, she obviously can’t kill other innocents, but she does hang back while a small group of sociopaths does the dirty work for her. (By the way: it’s odd that a group would band together like that, as ultimately they would have to turn on each other until just one was left.) She only kills in self-defense and only people who deserve it. The writers seem to clear the way for her, taking care of any obstacle that could make her have to act immorally to survive. She’s not just lucky in this way, but also in that she tends to come across people or things that help her just as she needs them. Once you realize that the universe conspires to retain her virtue, the movie loses any edge it may have had apart from the occasional unclear or very short shot of a dead or dying kid. Very luck then, this lady, except for her love life: a complicated triangle seems to be getting set up for the sequel.
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I don’t understand the mass appeal of this franchise, though it apparently has it. To me, it seems too toothless for adults and too morbid to let young-adults read or watch. But the action and the acting in the movie are okay, especially the solid performances by Jennifer Lawrence as the leading lady and by Woody Harrelson as her trainer. I guess I am curious to see where they go with it next, as this doesn’t seem like a formula you could just repeat as-is. But when the sequels roll around, they are likely to linger on my ‘I’ll get around to it’-list for a good, long while. In short: meh.
Steven van Lijndenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13972653100372774370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449232698783324352.post-5148660181981938852012-10-18T21:28:00.000+01:002012-10-18T21:28:26.475+01:00Movie Review: Hope Springs<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TvCQdvWeWwo/UIBlhm4YMgI/AAAAAAAAAuc/_MlbsmU0Jxk/s1600/Hope-Springs_2012_Couples-Poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="400" width="270" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TvCQdvWeWwo/UIBlhm4YMgI/AAAAAAAAAuc/_MlbsmU0Jxk/s400/Hope-Springs_2012_Couples-Poster.jpg" /></a></div> The romantic life and especially the sex life of married people in their sixties is not a topic oft-encountered at the movies. Going by romantic lore, I guess you are supposed to have settled into your happily ever after by that age already, no questions asked. So it is refreshing that the rather sappily titled <i>Hope Springs</i> focuses on these relatively taboo topics. The movie is about a couple who find themselves in a marriage that has lost any semblance of vitality long ago. Kay (Meryl Streep) is a sad and lonely woman longing to have a real connection again with her husband Arnold (Tommy Lee Jones), but has been afraid to speak up. For his part, he is going through his daily routine like a sleepwalker. He doesn’t seem especially happy, but is oblivious to her feelings or to the fact that things could or should be different.
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When Kay comes across a book written by a lauded relationship therapist (played by an unusually subdued Steve Carell), she sees a week of intense marriage counseling with him as a last resort to save her marriage. Arnold begrudgingly comes along, convinced it is a waste of time and money, but as they go through their sessions something starts to happen. I don’t want to spoil whether it brings them back together or makes them at peace with breaking up, but it is a sweet character study acted to the hilt by Streep and Jones, with great support from Carell. Neither party is to blame for them growing apart exactly, but as the therapist has them reflecting on their past, it does become clear how the slow process took place. There are some gender cliché’s at play, but certainly among an older generation, those are likely indeed still valid. Going by the audience in the theater I was at, the movie mostly appeals to women in the 50+ category. There was a group of said category in the row behind me and going by the enthusiastic feedback they were giving each other, it hit home.
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I really liked this movie, but do have to agree with other reviews that point out the horrible use of introspective pop songs on the soundtrack. Tunes with very blunt, obvious lyrics are applied to emotional scenes on a few occasions, to hammer home what the characters are feeling, even though the actors are doing a very good job of bringing that across already. It’s a bit like having great chef cook you a delicate meal full of subtle flavors and then pouring an avalanche of generic ketchup all over it. It wouldn’t matter in a soppy teenage romance movie, but is completely out of place here and you wonder how no one during the editing of the movie caught it. A studio underestimating the audience perhaps? In any case, go see this movie if you’re in a long-term relationship. And avoid getting to the stage of estrangement Kay and Arnold were at.
Steven van Lijndenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13972653100372774370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449232698783324352.post-51120397203411985152012-10-10T18:37:00.000+01:002012-10-10T18:37:13.214+01:00Game Review: The Walking Dead: season 1, episode 1-3<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YNUttcS8hYA/UHWwyMfBdDI/AAAAAAAAAtg/BnhBQVrAhk4/s1600/Walking%2Bdead%2Bcover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="226" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YNUttcS8hYA/UHWwyMfBdDI/AAAAAAAAAtg/BnhBQVrAhk4/s320/Walking%2Bdead%2Bcover.jpg" /></a></div> <i>The Walking Dead</i> is a <a href="http://popculturejunkie.blogspot.nl/2010/04/comic-book-review-walking-dead.html">comic book series</a> about the survivors of a zombie-apocalypse. While the shambling, hungry corpses loom as an ever-present threat, the series is really more about the behavior of people in a desperate situation. (Note that the title possibly refers to the survivors rather than the zombies.) The comic has been adapted for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walking_Dead_(TV_series)">television</a> and is now also a point-and-click adventure game which is being released in five installments, each part taking a couple of hours to play through, together forming a ‘season’. So far, three of the five chapters have been released and this review is based on those chapters. The fourth chapter is being released for PC the day I post this.
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While the comic and the television series focus on the story of former policeman Rick Grimes, his young son and the people he encounters, the game serves as a spin-off prequel to both. One of the characters that will go on to appear in both the comic and television series pops up before heading off to his twofold fates, but the lead is new: Lee Everett. He was on his way to prison when the world went mad, gets liberated because of it and soon stumbles onto an abandoned little girl (Clementine) he feels compelled to protect. Like Rick Grimes, he becomes part of a group with more than its share of power struggles and infighting, while taking care of a kid. He finds himself continuously having to take sides and make life-or-death decisions. Who does he pick when he can only recue one out of two people? When he spots a woman too far off to save, being attacked by zombies, does he let her die screaming to keep drawing attention to herself and away from him as he gathers vital supplies for his group? Or does he mercifully shoot her, which would draw the zombie-mob his way?
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More than anything, <i>The Walking Dead</i> in its game incarnation is about interactive storytelling. There generally isn’t an obviously right or wrong solution to the morally muddy questions it asks and no matter what option you go for, you’re likely to piss off someone in your group. This isn’t necessarily something new and has been seen in games like the <i><a href="http://popculturejunkie.blogspot.nl/2012/05/game-review-mass-effect-3.html">Mass Effect</a></i> and <i>Dragon Age</i> series. But unlike in those games, where the dialogue and interaction between characters serves as an enticing backdrop to the action-packed meat of the experience, here the story is the main course. Sure, there are some bursts of action to keep you on your toes and there is the occasional traditional point-and-click problem-solving along the lines of ‘find this item and then use it on this person or thing to move the plot along’. But it’s all in service of the tale being skillfully told: it looks like a well-drawn, gritty graphic novel, the people Lee encounters are interesting and are always a bit more complex than they seem at first glance and the voice-acting is great. The combined effect is that you feel involved as you make your choices and see the sometimes unpredictable consequences. You care about the members of your little group. While kids can easily grate if written wrong, Clementine does make you want to keep her alive at all costs. And when the game makes you pick between two likeable people, knowing the other person will die, it hurts.
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A very effective gameplay mechanic, which is a new one as far as I know, is that you only have a limited time to pick a reaction/response from the up to four options you get when having to make a decision. How much time you are given exactly, is contextual. If you are asked for your opinion in the middle of a discussion, you don’t have forever, but longer than when you have to convince someone to jump off a bridge onto a fast-moving vehicle. This forces you to be fairly spontaneous and in-the-moment, making your responses more honest: you tend to go with how you think you would really react under the given circumstances. This way, I discovered I would likely be very diplomatic, protective, suspicious and mostly very moral, though occasionally giving priority to pragmatism. And I did kill someone I didn’t technically need to. But he was a very, very bad man. The speed at which you have to read and respond make this game unsuitable for people with dyslexia and you are likely to accidentally select an unintended response once or twice. If you feel really annoyed about that, thankfully you can ‘rewind’ to the beginning of the chapter you messed up and set things right. Or as right as they get in the <i>The Walking Dead</i> universe, which is fuelled by hope, but dotted with the violent deaths of people who don’t deserve such a fate.
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Speaking of gameplay issues: I have heard grumblings about them and the technical performance on various platforms, the iPad version being especially choppy, but my PC version was mostly fine apart from one memorable occasion on which I got eviscerated by a zombie for about ten times in a row because it was unclear which contextual button I was supposed to press in the second or two allotted to me. It ultimately is just a minor annoyance though and it won’t ruin the game for you.
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The makers of the game claim that by the end of the five-part ‘season’ players will have much- different sets of survivors and allegiances. Much as I am enjoying the game, I unfortunately have to call shenanigans on this. Playing is engrossing and as addictive as reading a great book, making it hard to stop because you want to know what happens next. But the further you get into the story, the clearer it becomes that a lot of your choices don’t really matter in the long run. Circumstances beyond your control wipe the slate clean partly and invalidate a lot of your earlier hand-wringing. It makes perfect sense that the writers can’t let the plot get away from them and evolve into entirely separate stories, so like in <i>Mass Effect</i> they find ways to lead the various narrative paths back to the same seemingly fated main events. Different characters may fulfill the same roles and scenes may play out differently but have the same outcome. The flavoring is different, but it’s mostly the same dish. One day, someone will hopefully succeed in the nigh-impossible task of combining very tight storytelling with giving the player a lot of freedom, but The Walking Dead doesn’t quite crack that nut.
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Due to the big success of the game version of <i>The Walking Dead</i>, a second ‘season’ has already been announced and I have mixed feelings about this. Though the franchise was always conceived as a zombie movie that doesn’t end, this makes it seems likely they will kill off all but one or two of the current cast in the end to have players start in the exact same place in season two, all previous decisions null-and-void. Then again, they may have an open ending, leave this group to their unknown destiny and jump to a fresh set of characters. Either way, despite not quite making good on the promise of wildly diverging paths, I am hooked and will be there to see where it all leads.
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Steven van Lijndenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13972653100372774370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449232698783324352.post-86080283305544558402012-10-07T16:57:00.000+01:002012-10-07T16:57:30.148+01:00Movie Review: The Woman in Black<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Daniel Radcliffe is immensely likeable. He doesn’t just have the specter of saint-like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter_(character)">Harry Potter</a> still hovering over him, he is also very outspoken about potentially controversial topics like gay marriage. He has made sizeable donations to – and starred in public service announcements for – <a href="http://www.thetrevorproject.org/">The Trevor Project</a>, which supports gay teens. And there is a charming rebellious streak apparent by him copping to being drunk quite a bit while filming the last chapter of the Harry Potter-saga and by going full-frontal on stage during a production of Equus. He is clearly trying to put some distance between him and his bespectacled alter-ego and his first movie on that path is <i>The Woman in Black</i>.
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<i>The Woman in Black</i> is an old-fashioned haunted house horror movie that aims to make you squirm not by throwing entrails at your face, but by having carefully lit, spooky surroundings through which the camera creeps, dropping in the occasional unexpected burst of movement or a blast of sound to make you jump. Radcliffe’s primary role is to be the one who guides the viewer through these environments. Rather than run off screaming, he keeps stealthily sneaking towards whatever inexplicable noises echo through the house, which turns out to be less abandoned than advertised. His curiosity is ill-advised perhaps, but also necessary to keep the movie from being really, really short.
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The primary motivation for his character to hang around is that he works for a law-firm and has to sort out the paperwork to be able to sell the mansion or lose his job and therefore the means to support his young son. Also, he is still grieving for his wife and is intrigued rather than scared by the idea of ghosts, as that seems to point to an afterlife in which he could be reunited with her. The locals of the town neighboring the house seem very keen to be rid of him, but rather than vocalizing exactly why that is, the writers prefer to have them make vague, ominous comments in an aggressive tone. Looking back, there is no convincing reason why they wouldn’t just spit out the entire back-story of the mansion and run him off. Radcliffe has to find out the slow, roundabout way what happened there and why children die violent deaths in the town at a higher than usual frequency.
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The movie is not exactly an acting stretch for Radcliffe, his moods being fairly muted for the most part and switching primarily between sadness, apprehension and fear. But he does make you forget about Harry Potter for long stretches at a time, helped by a period look (end 19th century) that makes him appear more mature. He shies away from anything like glasses, that would remind you of his acting legacy. <i>The Woman in Black</i> isn’t a classic: it feels a bit slow despite being not all that long and though it sets the mood very well, it gets a bit more hokey near the end when the action is upped. But for a relaxed movie night at home with the lights off, on a big screen, curled up against a date, this nostalgic, atmospheric creepfest just about hits the right spot.
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Steven van Lijndenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13972653100372774370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5449232698783324352.post-13612729411397027432012-09-25T21:29:00.001+01:002012-10-01T20:25:29.810+01:00Movie Review: The Amazing Spider-Man<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-N9FY22vLQhk/UGITMAgX-II/AAAAAAAAAsY/_LRJJNe1vlI/s1600/amazing-spider-man-movie-poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="400" width="292" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-N9FY22vLQhk/UGITMAgX-II/AAAAAAAAAsY/_LRJJNe1vlI/s400/amazing-spider-man-movie-poster.jpg" /></a></div> Did we really need a Spider-Man reboot so soon after the Sam Raimi-shaped trilogy? Probably not, but the company behind it (Sony Pictures) did, to retain the rights to the character and to keep them from defaulting back to Marvel. Bad news for those hoping to see him join <i>The Avengers</i> anytime soon. And the movie may also have been needed to purge the <a href="http://popculturejunkie.blogspot.nl/2007/05/movie-review-spiderman-3.html">bad taste</a> left by <i>Spider-Man 3</i>, which was a major letdown after the spectacular <i>Spider-Man 2</i>: the people at the showing I attended even laughed out loud at what was supposed to be a very emotional death scene. And let’s collectively suppress the memory of Tobey Maguire as ‘evil’ Spidey, shall we? Repeat after me: It. Never. Happened.
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In any case: <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0948470/">The Amazing Spider-Man</a></i> is actually surprisingly entertaining, considering how unnecessary the entire undertaking feels, basically retelling the superhero’s origin story again while remixing it with new elements from the Spider-Man universe. It gives us The Lizard/Dr. Curt Connors as the supervillain du jour, played by Rhys Ifans. By the way, this must be frustrating for actor <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0048414/">Dylan Baker</a> who lingered in the background during the Raimi trilogy as the same character, foreshadowing his ass off, fruitlessly waiting for his time center stage. Andrew Garfield makes for a younger and hipper-but-still-underdog Peter Parker and Emma Stone as Gwen Stacey is a less doe-eyed, more assertive love-interest than Kirsten Dunst was as Mary Jane Watson. Parker discovering his powers is also done better here than it was the last time, with more of a sense of wonder. Spidey’s webshooters, which were creepily organic in the previous incarnation, making for all kinds of pubescent symbolism, are mechanical and somehow less practically believable in this one.
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The script is very much by the numbers and at no point was I especially surprised. Like in <a href="http://popculturejunkie.blogspot.nl/2012/09/movie-review-dark-knight-rises.html">The Dark Knight Rises</a>, there are big displays counting down to something bad happening, miraculous recoveries and various other unlikelihoods, but because this movie has a more playful and comic-booky feel to it, it seems to hurt less here than it did there. Nevertheless, there are some eye-rollers: I could have done without a sappy moment involving cranes that went for the heart-strings a bit too bluntly. It seemed to ape a similar, but more effective moment from <i>Spider-Man 2</i>. And it is odd that this version of Spider-Man still has a secret identity in the end as he finds himself without his mask in (semi-)public, quite likely within the reach of a camera. But then he doesn’t seem to be all that concerned about remaining anonymous and is soon more out of the closet about it than his predecessor was.
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Where will the franchise go from here? Will it re-use the same villains or introduce new, less well-known ones? It’s worrying that The Goblin is getting set up as the villain for a future movie, considering that he wasn’t the best of villains last time, even if he is a main-stay in the comics. The first time around, the character wasn’t served well by the head-covering mask. Going up against the equally masked Spidey, there was an embarrassing whiff of Power Rangers to their fights. If he is indeed headed for this version of Spider-Man, that could spell trouble for Gwen Stacey, going by comic book lore (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night_Gwen_Stacy_Died">spoilers</a>). But then, that infamous moment from the comics was already toyed with in the previous trilogy, so the series would be repeating itself. The question remains: will the franchise stick to safe and predictable remixes or actually throw the viewers a curve-ball and prove it has a right to exist? Fingers crossed for the latter.
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Steven van Lijndenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13972653100372774370noreply@blogger.com0