rebootied

I've been on a Guillermo Del Toro kick, so I rewatched Blade II and Hellboy. Blade was just about as good as I'd remembered, with plenty of very comic-book styled action and gorgeous visuals, from the ruined Eastern European industrial and rave settings to the indulgently slick artifact-like technology of the vampire strike team. I was surprised to see how much of Blade II GDT brought with him to his TV series, The Strain. It was also surprising to see Red Dwarf's "Cat" and Defiance's Datak Tarr in the vampire strike team, and Norman Reedus on Blade's support team. I had forgotten or perhaps never noticed how much CG is used during some of the fight scenes -- not the exploding bodies, of course, but the leaping about and vampire-kung-fu scenes have some particularly elegant-for-its-time transitions to-and-from live action actors. This turned out to be true for Hellboy as well.

Everly was a 99¢ special, so I took a chance on it. In general, I don't think Salma Hayek is often hired for her acting skills as much as her figure. She wasn't bad in this, which surprised me. On the other hand, the script was just frustratingly bad. It felt like someone wanted to write a more comic book version of Kill Bill, but include a nearly single stage, theatrical set in which to show it. Plus add a little grit and maybe some torture porn. I can't stand the latter. Just so much stuff didn't make internally consistent sense. I'm fine with suspension of belief to just about any degree, but I can't stand when the Reality Gauge needle is shoved around like a bullied victim in a school yard.

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation was great popcorn fun, and that's about it. M:I 3 and Ghost Protocol are both movies which made an impression. I could tell you about all kinds of scenes in this one, but the overall plot was less satisfying and coherent than JJ's previous outings.

Mulan
And why not? Movie is still better paced, and has better music than Frozen. There’s also no opportunistic male betrayal casually thrown in as a lever to pry apart siblings. The message of culture being important but also needing to evolve has never been more important.

Kingsman: The Secret Service
Mark Millar’s casual douchery is more subdued here than in WANTED, and there are no peanut-butter-craving rats in this, so: WIN. The observations on class and entitlement were my favorite bits. The action was epic, and very few plot steps were nonsensical. Nice to see Sam Jackson doing something quirky, to boot.

Taken 3
Should have been taken back and shot. The Brian Mills character has gone from a security consultant to a Special Forces veteran with a top secret record. No longer a clever and resourceful beast of his own history, he now uses his cellphone in a stolen police cruiser to “hack the LAPD” while being chased. Also, after handling stepdads in the best light in the original movie, why fall prey to the lamest of clichés about them now? It was nice seeing Brian’s team step up and risk everything to help him, and the LA setting was well handled; otherwise, though: bleh.`

This is Spinäl Tap
Sorry I can’t get the umlaut on the “n” like a true fan would manage. This movie is still perfect. Watching Tap go through its various eras, mocking each of the music of the time is just so glorious. I enjoyed every minute.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
I fell asleep. In fairness, this was 1:30AM for me, and I was having a rough flight, but for a Guy Ritchie movie, it was somehow a slog. Their take on Moriarty was interesting, but it doesn’t explain why Sherlock doesn’t just wetwork the Professor during their initial meet-up when he states that Watson’s family is also a planned target. I know I’m arguing logic in a movie with Cossacks who parkour but, hey.

I watched Oblivion. I really wanted to like this movie, but there are too many “wait, what?” moments peppered throughout it for me to consider it serious SF. There are so many ways they could have made this movie suck less.

What I liked:
It was really pretty. The tech was pretty. Turns out it was almost all meaningless, due to the main plot conceit, but it was neat.
The music was awesome. Like Tangerine Dream produced by Hans Zimmer.
The effects, especially the landscape shots were just gorgeous.
I’m always happy to look at Olga Kurlyenko.
Tom Cruise is fun to watch.
A fairly subversive but insufficiently explored subtext about each of us unthinkingly carrying out our role in society, which is actually being ruled by entities which don’t have our best interests at heart, and are running drone attacks on those who could potentially ally with us.

What I didn’t like:
Vika is made out to be an unlikable person; the idea that the two of them would get along for the duration of the three year contract in isolation is unrealistic but, already, I’m arguing about something realistic in a world of cartoon logic.
The repeated phrasing of “Are you an effective team?” is an unnatural phrase which should have greater impact or some larger reveal, but it’s just a key point on which Vika can be made more dislikable.
The story is basically nonsense.
No, really: utter nonsense. The idea that the aliens are playing some weird memory game with Vika and Jack to keep them docile, when it’s later revealed that the aliens had “thousands” of Jacks cloned as dog soldiers in their invasion, is inexplicable. Or, rather, it’s explicable but in a movie as short on logic and thin on story, why not throw in some exposition?
THOUSANDS of Jacks being used in an invasion, but now dozens or hundreds of cloned Jacks are now being used as drone maintenance men, so let’s go through the trouble of setting up designer houses and rebuilding -- or inventing -- our tech so that it can be used by humans.
Hm... the aliens have managed to make their way to Earth, and have set up factories for harvesting energy, which need to be protected by drones, because the drones are made to largely look like human technology...
WHY NOT JUST USE WHATEVER TECHNOLOGY YOU USED TO GET TO EARTH, AND USE IT ON EARTH, INSTEAD OF MAKING STUFF WHICH CAN BE USED BY YOUR CONFUSED CLONE WORKFORCE?

...Jesus.

Also, everyone else hit by alien/drone weapons is burst into charcoal tidbits. It’s a great effect. Morgan Freeman is not burst into charcoal; he has time to give a last soliloquy -- and a bit more on top of that.

I’m glad I saw it, I won’t see it again, and people who are comparing it favorably to PKD’s oeuvre need to read some more books to understand what separates wheat from chaff.

The Karate Kid without Karate; Jackie Chan as Sifu not-Miyagi: I really liked it. I don't like just about anything Jackie's done from a Hollywood studio, I don't like Will Smith's son, and I don't like remakes, but this was pretty fun. I'm still not sure why Chan needed backstory added for his surliness, but he had good chemistry with his student. The bad-guy Sifu looked really cruel and arrogant. I halfway thought they'd add a fight between the teachers, but I'm glad the only fight shown with Chan is him beating up children. (Ha!)

Ghibli's Tales from Earthsea: I was excited about this when it was first announced, but never got around to watching it until recently. It's not really watchable. I got through about half of it, but gave up. It's tepid. Gorgeous scenery design, but everything else is bog-standard anime, no Ghibli flavor except character design. The son is not the father.

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters: Yup, that was a movie. The first half is pretty fun; I was prepared to enjoy the movie a lot, and had zero expectations, so when this medieval/mythic/fable Europe setting begins with sketches of missing children pasted on milk bottles, I was immediately ready for a goofy ride. The movie doesn't bother with euro accents, either; even Gemma Arterton adopts an American English accent for her role opposite Jeremy Renner. Stuff explodes, people get shot (yes, medieval shotguns... and tasers... and record players for that matter), and weirdly Deadite-looking "witches" descend and harass the local population. It is, however, oddly unsatisfying.

Actually, come to think of it, just a little more of a push, and this could have been Army of Darkness 2, with all the guns and quips, and explode-y bits. Add just a little more humor, shift the backstory just a hair so that Gretel is just some girl Ash saved, and it could work. Too bad.

Fable 2 was a wonderful, engrossing game for me, and Fable 3 is total crap. I'd give the former 4 out of 5 stars, and the latter 2.

I have been desperately trying to figure out what the difference has been between the two experiences. I'd summarize it as:

1. This Sanctuary "menu" system, where I navigate my character in an aleph, managing my inventory, clothes, spells, etc. is bloated, heavy, counterintuitive crap. My butler, John Cleese, telling me that there's new DLC available EVERY FUCKING TIME I show up is straining our relationship.


2. Sanctuary "menu" for my Inventory meant I have an armory somewhere, where my character can change his equipped weapon, spell, and firearm. Somewhere. I spent 25 hours in this game before realizing that (a) spells get changed in the armory, and (b) I already owned all the gauntlets which cast spells.


3. There is no need to actually travel anywhere 99% of the time; Fast Travel will pop me to the Quest location immediately, so I have no sense of journeying anywhere. Oddly, Fast Travel sometimes seems to put me RIGHT where I need to be, and other times it will put me further away than I was before electing to Fast Travel.


4. They tried to do something interesting with the "Make a promise" (required to advance the storyline), and then introducing conflict/agony over fulfilling the promise. Sadly the game's own economy makes it circumventable fairly easily, and in the most boring manner possible: I can donate my own sizable reserves to Albion's treasury, eliminating actual consequences. If this worked, it would have been really impressive, even heartbreaking. But it doesn't.

The final confrontation in Fable 3 is worse than in 2. It spends a heap of time implying there'll be a huge battle against an even larger foe than the previous, seriously epic battle for the throne, and ends up being a waltz down Main Street Bowerstone. The game squanders its potential for emotional involvement at every opportunity.

I also enjoyed Fable 2's open-world stuff more than 3's. The town jobs actually had some variation in gameplay, there were a few extended non-main storyline missions, and the minutiae were kind of fun to manage. I also enjoyed fighting.

Fable 3 has that Bioshock Infinite problem where it's no longer necessary to work for anything. I never looked into upgrading my weapons because fighting was never a challenge. When I looked into it, I found I'd never used magic effectively; I used Vortex/wind the whole game. I never even knew weapons could be upgraded by performing some challenges -- why not start the Hero with a weapon which sucks, but has easily-met upgrade conditions? This would educate the player naturally. Fast Travel, again, here. There's no reason to actually run anywhere, so there is no perception if distance or place.

Anyway, it's done. I finished the last tolerable Achievement last night, and now it's on to the next thing. In the end F3 was an education in what NOT to do.

A remarkable movie, full of stunning performances across the board, believable dialog, and very much like watching a slow motion car crash interspersed with shots of showing the driver earlier, and why the car is going to crash... perhaps deserves to crash.

Louis CK's appearance was understated, as was Alec Baldwin's, but the real surprise was Andrew "Dice" Clay showing up and owning his role. I am hoping it means a return to work for him; I was one of the fans who didn't like his schtick, but realized it was his stand-up character, and not representative of his beliefs.

As much as the other actors really hauled their weight, I am again convinced that Cate Blanchett may be the best actress of our age. She's consistently amazing.

The writing, though. My god, this was just an intricate, balanced house of cards, waiting for the end for the author to sweep it aside of his own volition. I'll be thinking about this movie for some time to come.

A few weeks ago, Wolf Children aired on standard broadcast TV. It was a moving, modern fairy tale about a woman who loves a wolf, and bears him two children. The movie mostly follows her efforts to raise them, trapped between two worlds, two very different "cultures." It was surprisingly sensitive and nuanced, and the art was really impressive.

This sparked an interest in Mamoru Hosada, its director and co-writer. Last night we watched Summer Wars, a neat mostly present-day piece where the main difference from our world is a shared virtual space called Oz, where pretty much everyone in the world's 10,000,000,000 people (maybe this is near-future?) has an account. This story mainly follows a couple of high school students: a flighty high school girl who has brought her friend, a bookish underclassman, to work part-time at her family farm.

This film relied more prevalently on CG, with swaths of the movie taking place in this virtual reality which is largely a super flat styled space, with simplified and stylized avatars roaming throughout its multipurpose environs. The bulk of the real-world portion takes place in the countryside, the journey to which is itself worthy of note: As the characters leave the city, they move from bullet-train to standard train, to trolley, to bus... exemplifying the gradually lowering technology and modern convenience until arriving at the farm, itself a turn-of-the-century relic of traditional Japanese architecture.

The girl's family is very well-realized, with a number of interesting characters being portrayed across a number of traditional character types. While the two main characters were fairly realistic in their presentation, the surrounding family relied more heavily on dramatic archetypes; surprisingly this worked well, despite the contrast.

The film is, despite the grand scope it eventually enters, a coming of age tale writ large. It has strong undertones of how we are all interdependent, reliant on each other. Oddly there is another theme about how "the old things are better," showing analog methods to be the most reliable ways -- when the majority of the world is unable to access their bank, work, and school accounts online, the grandmother pulls out old letters and postcards to reach out to her real-world network of people to help. She calls them on a rotary phone. The boy, a math olympics champion, relies on a pencil and paper to reverse-engineer a necessary password at a critical plot point. However, the film itself ignores the fact that the grandma's phone is connected to all her fellows' by a digitally linked network which is only possible through technology, and the boy's efforts on pencil and paper could only have been sped up by a portable calculator. It's possible I missed a plot point where the grandmother's phone use /is/ detected on the digital network, and possibly the math savant's phone has a calculator but he fears not use it because it's networked... but seeing as the pencil-and-paper method is employed before Things Go To Hell, I'm guessing it's just a desired affectation to enforce the theme.

The reason I'm blagging on about this is that it seems so ironic: to realize the full vision of this movie, the modern contrivance of CG is used to amplify the visuals all over; not just the VR world, but many items in the "real" world are rendered into it rather than being hand-drawn. In addition, the movie has relied heavily on Korean studios for the production -- outsourcing, another step away from tightly linked small studios in Japan, to the broader, cost-sensitive world of distributed development. I'm not saying it is wrong, but it is a shade ironic.

It is, without a doubt, one of the best animated films I've seen. It is a fun ride, with a good message at its core, despite some unintentional irony.