Konami: Making Small Waves

I don't often go on nostalgia trips, since they tend to end up being very disappointing. For years I eagerly awaited the moment that Disney would release The Black Cauldron (Dutch: Taran en de Toverketel) on DVD. In my memory, I had built the film up to be this big, scary event. It was pulled off the market for about twenty years (?), supposedly for making kids cry and therefore being a flop. At the time of the premiere there had been a lot of hype about the luminous mist in the movie, which was created with technology that was then cutting edge. As soon as the DVD came out, I bought it, ran home and... found out that it was mediocre and childish.
I have not had that experience revisiting my greatest childhood hobby, a couple of years ago: MSX games from Konami. By today's standards, the animation is seriously simple but the gameplay of my favourites has aged well, and the primitive music is still catchy. I don't know why somebody hasn't bundled them and sold them in a Nostalgia package, as has happened with other games from now defunct systems. I would happily revisit them on my Nintendo DS and think they would actually look pretty good on there. (Konami recently did bundle some games for DS, but not the good stuff, in my opinion.) As far as I know, the only way to play them now is:
a. hunt down a secondhand MSX and the original cartridges.
b. download them online somewhere to be played with an emulator on your pc.
The first option is way too costly in both time and money, the second one is potentially illegal unless you own the original cartridge. If you don't, the game should be deleted from your computer 24 hours after downloading. (Though who will be checking this, I don't know.) Possibly, you will be able to download them to your XBOX 360 or Wii or Playstation 3. But to me it seems clear they belong on the cosy screen of your handheld, like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, which very easily made the GameBoy Advance its new home
What sparked this nostalgia? Well, I visited the site of a company that readies games for the European market and was planning on sending them an e-mail in which I named some of my favourite games.
Reflecting on my past as a gamer, I went and looked up an MSX fansite with information on Konami games - I found out that Konami means 'small waves' - which also featured some covers. Just seeing Maze of Galious still warms my thirty-something heart. It was the first game I ever bought myself, having slowly saved up money for this epic spending. It starred two cute little knights (one male and blue, one female and pink) running around a cute little castle, gathering cute little objects while fighting cute little monsters and the occasional Boss (Big Monster). I will have to see if I can still find that cartridge somewhere and go Old School. I will leave Salamander aside; this was a frustrating, never-finished (by me) shoot 'em up that nearly had my MSX2 being flung out of a window on several occasions.
Ah, and then there is the first game I ever played, Jet Set Willy on the ZX Spectrum. But let us not speak of such things...

Movie Review: Night at the Museum

It is one of the basic kids' fantasies: things coming to life when no one is watching, except - in this case - one bewildered bystander. And the idea of a museum where the exhibits suddenly become animated, is an interesting one - if not a new one. The trouble is in the execution. It can be a slippery slope applying any kind of logic to a scenario like this and to a certain extent you should just enjoy the zaniness and put your higher critical facilities in cold storage for the duration. But there is a point at which even the less critical facilities can't suspend their disbelief any longer: there is no internal logic to this movie. The script keeps throwing cool things at the viewer: little people, a doggie-minded T-Rex skeleton, historical wax figures, a bubblegum craving Easter Island statue, etcetera - but none of these elements have been very well thought out on their own, let alone all of them in combination.
There are some attempts to explain what is happening and why, but this only points out how much is not explained. For instance; how a couple of escaped Neanderthals ditched the camera-people that had spotted them and made their way back to the museum undetected. Instead of thinking small and coherent, the movie thinks big and creates a literal and conceptual mess in doing so. This is really a kiddie-movie, only for those adults who are prepared to shut down their brain to a dangerous degree, stopping just short of vegetable. Fairly ironic for a movie that wants to convey the message that learning about stuff is GOOD.
Ben Stiller does his usual lame-but-cool guy shtick and does it as well as ever. The movie wastes most of the big comedy names in the cast (Robin Williams, Dick van Dyke, Ricky Gervais and Mickey Rooney) as well as the potential love interest, who never quite gets around to being the actual love interest. Maybe in the sequel.

Night at the Museum at IMDB

Movie Review: 300

With much bombast, 300 tells the story of Leonidas of Sparta, who defends his city from the invading Persian forces, led by the evil boo-hiss Xerxes. Like Sin City, the look of the film is heavily based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller, the master of stylised grit. The movie looks painted and is rich in color; bronze, copper and red dominating the screen. And it's not just the locale that looks good, the brave 300- give-or-take - Spartans are all sporting impressive pectorals and sixpacks, and are blissfully devoid of shirts. I suppose that is what you get for purging any less-than-perfect offspring from the gene pool, as the beginning of the movie shows us. The Spartans also have absolutely no moral ambiguity about killing off wounded and helpless opponents. Yup, they are a bit of a tough bunch, as the narrator does not get tired of telling us.
Opposing these manly, quite homo-erotic musclemen are the odd, exotic and frankly somewhat gay Persians. They are lustful, deformed, vain and overly made up. Especially Xerxes looks like a pissed off drag queen, even though his voice sounds all low and rumbly, with the help of some computer effects.
The entire movie feels visceral, with a little bit of sweaty sex and a huge amount of violence. The Spartans spend an inordinate amount of time impaling invaders in slow motion. During some of this there is - surprisingly - some Heavy Metal music playing in the background. But given how much bloody slaughter is taking place, the movie does actually feel a bit slow all around and seems to have to stretch to fill its running time. The story is ultimately fairly simple and the overblown, po-faced dialogue does not work in the movie's favour. After a while you just feel like slapping that narrator when he starts waxing lyrical about the Spartans again. It's hard to care about anyone when everyone is working so hard to be tough.
In short, the movie is just about worth seeing for the visual style and the hot bodies (well, before the part where they get decapitated or some such). And maybe the rousing speeches will stir up your inner warrior. But more likely the movie will send you scuttling to the gym to work on your sixpack. Or to the store for some Leonidas bonbons (man, product placement gets everywhere these days...).

300 on IMDB

Cool Site: Engrish

A colleague of mine from the bookstore can laugh herself silly at any kind of unintentional physical pratfall. Thankfully, her closest co-worker obliges her by regularly tripping over things in the warehouse and almost breaking his neck in the process. Hilarity ensues.
Though I like a good, painful home video accident as much as the next guy, what can really brighten my day is well-executed linguistic silliness. I love it when someone goes through a lot of trouble to pull off a really lame pun (as in Airplane, for instance) but it can be even better when a funny phrase is unintentionally so and widely published. Have a look at the link below. Where a good proof reader be when needed is one?

Engrish Website

Movie Review: Ghost Rider

Ah, so there's this guy who sells his soul to the Devil and ends up riding around on a motorbike with a flaming skull for a head, you say? Sounds a bit daft, no? Apparently not to Nicolas Cage who had been hell-bent (*snigger*) on portraying one of Marvel's more conceptually challenged heroes for quite some time. It is inherent in the basic idea that it rides a thin line between brooding gravitas (souls, damnation, judgement, all that jazz) and all-out silliness (...he's a flaming-skulled dude on a bike...).
Given the duality, it's no wonder that the movie ends up being a bit half-assed in both ways. It has some fun at its own expense, but plays it disturbingly straight at other moments and doesn't quite get away with it. And when a movie goes out of its way to create a mythology for itself, then it confuses and irritates when the established rules go out the window when they don't suit the screenplay later on. There are several moments where you go 'Hey, but if this character could do thís, then why not thát?' The ending especially does not make much sense.
There are some great visuals though and the flaming Ghost Rider persona impresses a lot more than his Nicolas Cage alter ego, sporting a seriously bad haircut. Some good one-liners almost make up for bad writing in other places and the whole thing is amusing enough in a cheesy sort of way. A sequel seems likely, and as long as they tighten up the script along with their internal logic and give Cage a better haircut, then it might be worth a second outing.

Ghost Rider on IMDB

Book Review: Body Talk

Only a small percentage of communication is done through words. Most meaning is transmitted by the way we say things - inflection, tone - and through body language. Unfortunately, this body talk is a lot more open to interpretation, on both the sending and the receiving side and can get confusing if people come from different cultures. If somebody holds up his fingers in a V sign, he is signalling victory to some people, while being very rude to others.
There are those who have a natural knack for the subtleties of non-verbal communication, more instinctive than conscious, which gives them a distinct advantage on all social fronts, be it at home or at work. But by becoming more aware of how we carry ourselves and what signals we are sending and receiving, it is possible to be a little more suave and persuasive. Allen and Barbara Pease give their readers some useful pointers to this effect in their book The Definitive Book of Body Language: How to Read Others' Attitudes by Their Gestures.
It's a fast and funny read - though not always as funny as the authors intend it to be - and centres mostly on body language for business purposes. There are fascinating facts in here for everyone - though some might leave you a bit sceptical - and, as is often the case with reader-friendly social science books, sometimes things seem oversimplified. Also, the Peases suggest several practical and entertaining social experiments that I wouldn't advise trying on hapless friends, since you might end up real lonely, real fast.
The authors delight in pointing out the differences between men and women, the men turning out to be fairly deficient when it comes to reading body language. The emphasis on man vs. woman should come as no surprise, since they previously devoted a book to it:
Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps: How We're Different and What to Do about It. Both books provide information and entertainment in equal measure and just might improve your life.

By Allen + Barbara Pease:
The Definitive Book of Body Language, Orion Publishing
Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps, Orion Publishing

Book Review: Good News for the Desperate and Amoral

Working in a bookstore, you regularly come across books that make you raise a quizzical eyebrow. We’re not only talking about vague or flaky books here - like the dubious, but very successful conspiracy book about reptiles secretly taking over the earth - but also morally suspect material. Who am I to say people couldn’t cure themselves of terminal diseases just by meditation or positive thought? But you have to doubt the integrity of the authors of such books, who might very well be meditating on dollar signs.

Male chauvinist pigs - or ‘players’, as the more delusional might call themselves - can now rejoice with the titles Make Every Girl Want You and The System, which promises to get you laid within twenty-four hours, regardless apparently of looks, social skills or personal hygiene. Though the first book sweetly leaves an opening for long term possibilities, the focus is on short-term SEX, catering to those men who have - presumably for good reason from a female perspective - gone without for too long. The gist seems to be that females are teasing, incomprehensible beings that irritatingly refuse to grant men their every sordid desire.

As these books pander to the Achilles’ heel of men, so does Mr. Right, Right Now! move right in for the kill on the desperately single woman. It comes all but equipped with a lasso, to reel in the poor, prospective partner as it blurbs: ‘Man Catching Made Easy’. One would think that keeping the man would be the actual challenge. And one can only imagine the emotional carnage that might result from a man who has read The System running into a woman with Mr. Right, Right Now! on her nightstand. These books should only be sold with obligatory purchase of Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps so that both clueless parties develop at least somewhat of an understanding of the other gender.

However, there is thankfully freedom of expression in the Netherlands and there are só many books and só many viewpoints, that it is impossible for us at ABC to impose moral judgement on what we buy for stock and special order for customers. Ultimately, it is you - the customers - who decide what is on our shelves by the age-old economic laws of supply and demand. So if you see a scary, dubious book in the store, remember that there is probably somebody around interested in buying it. Be afraid, be very afraid…

Make Every Girl Want You – John Fate, paperback, Axcione Publishing
The System – Roy Valentine, paperback, Eye Contact Media
Mr. Right, Right Now! – E. Jean Carroll, paperback, HarperResource
Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps - Allan and Barbara Pease, paperback, Orion Publishing Company