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August 6, 2008

Hollywood Endings

So, okay, this is kind of an oldie-but-goodie, and it’s not what I’d call a “real” review, but I’m putting it in that category, anyway, just because it sorta is. I watched the 2004 movie The Final Cut today. For those who don’t remember or haven’t heard of it, it takes place in a not-too-distant future where people have biomechanical implants inserted into their brains at birth (or possibly before birth — it’s kind of unclear, which is one of my complaints) that turns every moment of their waking lives into video. Upon their death, editors cut pieces of your life into a nice, feature-length “rememory” (this is the movie’s word for it, not mine) for grieving friends and family members.

A nice concept with a shitload of moments that kinda rip off The Conversation, but at least they’re ripping off a good movie in the service of an interesting sci-fi premise. Unfortunately, as stated above, writer/director Omar Naim could have done a better job fleshing out the conceit of the film. He gives us the impression these chips are implanted after birth, yet on multiple occasions he treats us to footage of births (from the point of view of the baby). Although he shows us that the implant categorizes life moments (in helpful folders like “sleep,” “hygiene,” and “masturbation”), I found myself wondering how Robin Williams’ “cutter” character dealt with people’s faulty memories. Early in the film a grieving brother asks Williams to make sure to include a particular fishing trip. Is there a “fishing trips” category? All the brother can say is the summer the trip occurred. This isn’t like a three-month film shoot, which might yield 100 hours of footage; excluding eight daily hours of sleep, Williams would have to wade through about 1500 hours of footage to find this one particular trip

You’re lucky I watched this movie a week ago and don’t remember much more to nitpick about; I remember feeling a lot of frustration, but I can only distinctly remember one more nitpick with the premise. And that is: we know these chips are very expensive, but we never get a reason why Williams’ parents would take out a loan to pay for one for their son. We don’t get enough of the outside world — aside from some cartoonish protesters — to understand how this implant has changed things. Aside from a few vague references (like a hellion who turned her life around the day she found out Someone Would Be Watching), we never get a sense of this implant as a status symbol or that it’s perceived as so useful that a middle-class family would go into debt to buy one. Him having a chip is portrayed as a Big Twist (even though it’s obvious from the first scene), but nothing about the movie convinced me that he would or should have one.

Those nitpicks marred a concept that, in better hands, could have made for one of the most thought-provoking sci-fi movies in decades. They didn’t completely destroy my enjoyment of the movie. The ending did, though. If you haven’t seen the movie but still think it’ll be good, don’t read on. I’m trying to explain why you shouldn’t waste your time, so if you ignore me and see it and think it sucks — hey, I warned you.

It goes like this: Jim Caviezel plays an ex-cutter (or assistant — another thing that’s not entirely clear), who keeps showing up around Robin Williams to make vague comments that one might perceive as threats. He’s sort of like the rival sound recordist in The Conversation, the one who keeps needling Caul about teaming up or giving some information about his secret gear and his setups. Except, you know, without the subtlety or purpose. Caviezel shows up haphazardly and implies he’s aligned with these protesters now; eventually, he turns into a plot generator, demanding footage from the EYE (I’m not making that up) Corporation’s recently deceased pedophile attorney. Yeah, I’m not making that up either. They think if they expose a lawyer as some kind of liar and fraud — shocking allegations, to be sure — it will take down EYE and these implants will no longer exist.

At first Williams refuses to hand over the footage, but through a series of strange coincidences, his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend (Mira Sorvino) shoots the lawyer’s implant, destroying it and all the footage on it. Almost immediately after, we get the “Big Twist” that Williams has an implant. Offscreen, it dawns on Caviezel that if they shoot Williams and extract the chip, they can get the relevant pedo footage (from his viewing of it while editing) and save the world! So he follows Williams to an isolated cemetery (long story) and pulls a gun on him…

…and then, almost immediately, has a change of heart. He shoots the gun into the woods and whispers for him to run away. Williams stands there like a moron, at which point Caviezel’s not-at-all-menacing mercenary friend. It is seriously laughable how tiny, scrawny, and weasel-like this “tough guy” is — he’s like a modern Elisha Cook Jr., only Cook usually played unsuccessful mercenaries. This dude, whoever he is, is eminently successful in his goal of shooting Robin Williams dead.

The final scene has Caviezel frantically editing Williams’ footage and saying something vague like, “Your death won’t be for nothing!”

Here’s the problem: nothing the movie established about their relationship or Caviezel’s thin but very much existent character suggests a reason for Caviezel to back down. He’s portrayed as a guy who will do what he needs to in order to achieve a goal that’s bigger than him. We’re never given any reason to believe that he and Williams had a friendship (in fact, it seems like they were rivals when he still cut), and his backing down seems to go against what little we know about the character’s nature…

So I’m going to go ahead and blame it on Jesus. Because, you know, earlier in 2004, Jim Caviezel played Jesus in a movie that made a shitload of money. A shitload. And you can’t have Jesus, in his immediate follow-up, gun down Mork from Ork in cold blood. Or, at least, I can imagine some haggard production executive thinking that and forcing them to reshoot an ending that makes almost no sense. The Final Cut has a metric assload of problems, but nothing compared to its final moments, which undid all the good that came before it and turned a movie I would have admired for its ambition, despite its flaws, into a total piece of shit. Bravo!

I have nothing to back up my feelings on the tampered-with ending except that, from a story standpoint, the ending makes no sense. Caviezel is the heavy, not his sashaying hired gun. It comes down to the two of them, and Caviezel says throughout the entire movie, “You have to do this because it’s what’s right and it’s bigger than us,” and he bails at the very last second. Williams doesn’t run away and make it hard for him; Caviezel just pussies out for no discernible, character-motivated reason, then acts “shocked” when his pal does the dirty work for him, then goes right back to saying, “It’s bigger than us, so I’m glad we got the footage.” I would have almost accepted this ending if Caviezel had completed his change of heart by destroying Williams’ footage, as well; it still barely makes sense, but at least it’s somewhat consistent with Caviezel’s new attitude.

I know movies are as much about their marketing as anything else, but I guess I don’t look at it that way. Actors act. Caviezel can play Jesus and some nefarious protester. He’s an actor. He’s not actually Jesus, nor is he actually a guy who would gun down someone he knows in order to take down a big corporation. He should be allowed to play it like that, no matter what.

But hey, if I’m wrong and Naim intended to end the movie this way all along, it loses what little sympathy I have left. If that’s the case, it’s just shitty writing.

Posted by Stan on August 6, 2008 3:52 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)

July 13, 2008

‘Monk’ and ‘Psych’ Return

Following last week’s Burn Notice premiere, two more terrific USA Network shows will return this Friday (July 18th). Here’s an early look at each.

Monk — Last season, I praised this venerable season for having the equivalent of a second wind—after stagnating with predictable plots and dumbed-down characterization, the writers came back with a vengeance. Last season boasted both complex mysteries (none of which felt like cheats—plausible and not as predictable) and a drastic improvement in the characters’ shades and nuance. Great work all around.

The seventh season premiere shows that the writers intend to keep up the high standards they set last year. I won’t reveal the details of the plot, except to say that it revolves around Monk buying a new house and discovering a crime scene. Ringers like Brad Garrett and Hector Elizondo fill out supporting roles. In particular, Garrett does a very good job of playing against type as a handyman with a dark side. Elizondo does a fine job stepping into the difficult role of Monk’s new therapist.

Since the show’s inception, Stanley Kamel has played the role of Dr. Kroger, a therapist who deals with Monk’s quirks with as much sensitivity and compassion as humanly possible. On occasion, Monk drove him as crazy as everyone else, but he tried not to let it show—a testament to Mr. Kamel’s skill was relying almost exclusively on body language and facial tics to convey that conflict. Unfortunately, Mr. Kamel passed away in April. Although it’s “only” a recurring role, his absence leaves a massive void.

This episode is dedicated to his memory in both a literal sense and a spiritual sense. Monk’s grief over the loss of Dr. Kroger motivates the action that drives the entire plot, and it ends with a touching tribute. Monk, a man with such a huge fear of change, ironically, changes everything about his life in order to avoid facing the grief. This is what leads him to buy the new house. Although Monk claims a neighbor’s noisy (read: inaudible to anybody else’s ears) piano playing requires drastic action, Elizondo’s Dr. Bell astutely observes that the particular piece she plays reminds Monk of Dr. Kroger; it’s not the noise that bothers him.

Nonetheless, the new house leads to a murder, and the question of why the murder took place takes us through the rest of the plot. In addition to Monk’s usual compulsions, the writers gave us some nice examples of his thriftiness, emotional insensitivity and self-absorption—characteristics that somehow make Monk more endearing. The supporting cast do an excellent job, as usual.

All in all, the premiere has me excited for the rest of the season. It’s a bit of a downer because of the real-life tragedy surrounding the episode—but in a good, cathartic way.

Psych — Last season left us with a cliffhanger—Shawn opens the front door and says, “Hi, Mom!” Audiences wondered for about five days who it could possibly be, until every media outlet on the planet announced it will be Cybill Shepherd. Despite what I’ve heard about her behind-the-scenes bad behavior, I’m a fan of Shepherd, but it surprised me how little they gave her to do. Don’t get me wrong—it was a really entertaining episode, but her presence did little more than give more depth in the difficult relationship between Shawn and Henry. I shouldn’t harp on it too much, because they can cast as big a name as they want for as thankless or small a role as they want. She does a wonderful job with what they give her, and I hope she’ll return in a larger capacity.

Given somewhat less thankless roles are two other ringers whose names should be as recognizable as Ms. Shepherd’s: Todd Stashwick (The Riches) and the inimitable Christopher McDonald play Gus’ bosses. I liked this turn, not just for the people they cast in the roles, but for the writers finally exploring an oft-forgotten aspect of the show: Gus slacks at a full-time job to help Shawn. They’ve addressed this in a few episodes, but it often takes a backseat to the main story.

As with Monk, the mystery here takes some weird turns, so I don’t want to divulge much more about the plot. Just know that it’s as funny as always; James Roady and Dulé Hill have lost none of their chemistry, and while the supporting players (Corbin Bernsen aside) didn’t get much to do in this episode, I’m very enthusiastic about this show. The premiere had more big, laugh-out-loud moments than I’m used to, which is probably the biggest compliment I can pay it.

On July 18th, Monk will air at 9PM Eastern, followed by Psych at 10PM. USA Network will also air an eight-hour Psych marathon on July 18th, leading up to the premiere, starting at 9AM.

Posted by Stan on July 13, 2008 12:00 AM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)

July 6, 2008

‘Burn Notice’ Returns

One of last summer’s best shows returns for its second season on Thursday. USA Network’s Burn Notice follows ex-spy Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan), who has been “burned” (hence the title) by his former employers. That means they’ve stranded him in Miami with no money, no job, no contacts—he has to make due with the support of an old friend (Bruce Campbell), an ex-girlfriend (Gabrielle Anwar) and, sometimes, his mother (Sharon Gless). Since Michael has no other skills to fall back on, he finds himself doing odd jobs to help ordinary people solve extraordinary problems.

The first season did an excellent job of combining comedy and spy thriller. Creator Matt Nix has crafted some great characters, well-played by the cast (all of whom have great chemistry with one another—put them in any combination, and the scene will make you laugh). More than that, Nix and his writers look at the human side of spycraft. In voiceover, Michael makes observations and explanations about how, for instance, spies are trained to spend hours waiting around or utilize specific kinds of ammunition for different tasks. I don’t know if any of these insights have a basis in reality, but they feel authentic.

Last season’s cliffhanger had Michael finally being led to the person who burned him; on faith alone, he drove into the back of a truck, which would then take him to a secret location. Not surprisingly, the premiere picks up from there. The mysterious voice on the phone (who, we’ll discover by episode two, is played by Battlestar Galactica’s Tricia Helfer) forces Michael into a jam, then threatens to kill him if he doesn’t get out of it. Along for the ride is a computer nerd (Patrick Fischler, who’s always great) with whom Michael has to work to steal data from a security company’s computers.

From there, it’s a pretty typical episode of Burn Notice—except with the stakes raised higher. Instead of helping good people for some sort of unspoken karmic atonement, Michael’s helping not-so-good people with the lingering threat of death hanging over his head. The writers have laid down some new ideas that will hopefully play out over the course of this season—obviously the subplot with Helfer is a big one. The second episode introduces some new conflict between Michael and his mother that will hopefully provide Gless a bigger, less thankless role than she had in the first season. They also dropped some hints that Bruce Campbell’s Sam Axe is yearning for a more well-rounded life than acting as a boy-toy for wealthy socialites and hanging around with Michael (who is, apparently, his only friend).

This looks like another great season. The writers have done an effective job of raising the stakes and making Michael’s “missions” more difficult—but while they do that, they’re digging deeper into characters who were pretty interesting and entertaining to begin with.

If you managed to miss Burn Notice’s first season or want to refresh your memory, get ready to set your TiVo or VCR: USA is rerunning most of the first season (eight episodes of 12) on July 10th, from 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Eastern. That leads up to the show’s second-season premiere at 10 p.m. If you like good TV, do yourself a favor and check it out.

Posted by Stan on July 6, 2008 12:00 AM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)

June 1, 2008

How to Make ‘Grand Theft Auto IV’ Not Suck

I have talked almost nonstop about my distaste for Grand Theft Auto IV. You can watch the marked progression from “good but problematic” to “ass factory.” So with a couple weeks’ distance between finishing the game, I’m just going to come right out and say it: it’s an awful, awful game.

If you ignore the rampant bugs, the hilariously inept implementation of a cover system, and the legendary pop-in glitches and poor frame rate (all of which — including, if you want to get technical, the poor implementation of new features — are hallmarks of Rockstar game design), it’s impressive from a technical standpoint. But not that impressive — not so impressive that I can ignore the myriad flaws in gameplay, story, and just…well, I always hear about how this amazing Euphoria technology. You know, the thing that takes cold and sterile Lieutenant Commander Data and fills him with vibrance and emotion unlike anything seen in a machine.

Euphoria is supposed to randomize things like reactions from passersby, even reactions from Niko and other characters. Which is fine, except for how unamazing it is. You’re in a game where the prime reaction to Niko running — something he has to do at all times because walking is totally fucking useless — is a horrified gasp, arms raised in the air, an O of shock on the pedestrian’s face. Niko doesn’t have a gun out, isn’t charging into people, isn’t starting fights — he’s just running. You might find it hard to believe, but I have run around in large cities. Like, Niko-style running. This is not “put on the jogging shorts and the silly headband and go jogging.” This is “I have a 10-minute break and need a fucking cup of coffee, stat!“-style running — just a normal guy in street clothes, running a couple of blocks to a coffee shop, then running back.

Here’s approximately what happens: maybe one or two people will give you a second glance, but otherwise nobody gives a shit. Nobody’s shocked or horrified. Nobody’s diving to the ground for fear that you’ll hit them. Nobody’s shouting a limited range of prescripted responses. I swear to God, if I hear somebody yell what sounds like “cheesy vagina!” one more time…well, fuck, it’s a moot point since I’m done with story mode and have listed it to sell on Amazon. I’m done with this piece of shit.

So is that clear? The game is not amazing from a technical standpoint. It has some nice-looking graphics in a lot of spots, but have you ever gone exploring? Certain areas are loaded with rich detail; others are bland and detail-free. They created a large city, but they did not create a living, breathing city, which is why I wish they’d concentrate less resources on “realism” they will never achieve with current technology and had instead put their eggs back in the “fun, engaging gameplay” basket.

I didn’t really care about the technology, though. Sometimes I’ll play a game to marvel at the technology; mostly, I just want to play the fucking thing. Like special effects in movies, the technology in a game — graphics, control, sound, gameplay mechanics — all exist to serve the gaming experience. Making a game that isn’t fun to play but boasts some impressive visuals won’t win any awards in my book. I’m more concerned with the overall gameplay than with how it looks.

I didn’t really want too much from GTAIV. In fact, I only had one hope, which the game fell spectacularly short of fulfilling: I wanted it to be better than San Andreas. When I heard this would be a more serious, dramatic game, I thought it could work. San Andreas had a few moments of legitimate drama within the goofy/fun story, and like I said, while playing Saints Row I thought about the idea of how interesting, engaging, and landscape-changing a game that brings the depth and complexity of The Wire to a console would be. It didn’t do that. At all.

So I came up with my three biggest problems, and solutions to all three that could have made this a vastly superior game.

• Niko doesn’t need money by the time you hit “Three Leaf Clover.”

  Don’t try to convince me I’m wrong on this one, because it’s the absolute truth. I haven’t tallied it all up, but I’m pretty sure buying every article of clothing in the entire game would cost less than $20,000. I finished the game with around $750,000, and I had bought most of the clothes, done none of the very few side missions, and spent too much time fucking around with these asshole characters because I thought keeping them happy would actually be worth the effort in the long run (spoiler alert: it’s not).

  From a story standpoint, it’s very difficult to reconcile the “fractured American dream”/”Niko as reluctant assassin”/”he’s doing it all for his family” ideas with the fact that your bank account is packed to the gills with useless cash. More than anything, they needed to integrate the property-purchasing/business-running components of previous games. It’s a fun aspect in general, but it’s the only time in the entire game that having that feature would have made story sense. If Niko has to blow his wad on buildings, houses, and/or businesses before he can start making the money his family desperately needs, it’d go a long way to forcing him into a corner in which he has no choice but to fall back into the life he came to America to escape.

  But let’s take it a step further. What about the utterly pointless, barely exploited time component they added to the game? We have days of the week now that only had any kind of effect for, like, three missions. What would happen if they put a clock on Niko’s earnings? What if he has to earn, say, $5000 each week that gets sent right back to Eastern Europe? What if something catastrophic will happen if he doesn’t get that money?

  “But wait,” you might protest, “weren’t you the one who bitched endlessly about how the heavy scripting in this supposedly ‘sandbox’ game? Wouldn’t this just script it even more by forcing you to do missions instead of fucking around?” Well, yes and no. The whole key to this new component is a combination of time management and money management. First of all, there’s no rigid law saying, “Niko has to do standard story missions to make the dough.” If he wants to spend the entire week punching the shit out of pedestrians until he gets the $5000, that’s his prerogative. Or if you want to fuck around, just do enough missions back to back, then spend the rest of the game week relaxing. Taking it even further: if you don’t give a shit about the consistency of the story or the character, just let the fucking family die. I’m not suggesting that you’d “lose” if you don’t get the money, just that something bad would happen to them. Maybe there’s a three-strikes-and-you’re-out thing. Who cares? Just something to add a little suspense, add a reason to Niko’s actions, add a way to spend vast sums of money so he’s not running around with $600,000 saying, “I’m desperate for money.”

• Shameful lack of mission variety.

  When I’ve talked to people or read nerdy forum posts where people bash the game, 90% of them cite three different missions from each of the three PS2 games, each of which illustrate the general lack of variety in mission structures and the specific lack of variety within the mission. Very few missions give you those delightfully sandboxy “50 different ways to beat it” tasks. In GTAIII, people point out the one where you have to kill Tanner, because you can do it any fucking way you want. In Vice City, it’s the country club mission. In San Andreas, it’s the one where you burn the fields of weed. Granted, in that one you can’t necessarily solve it a bunch of different ways — it’s more an example of the kinds of missions that are unlike anything else in the game, illustrating the wild variety in tasks and mission types.

  Where the fuck did that go? For every mission where you set up a date with a gay guy then shoot him like a dog in the street, there are 10 missions that feature endless amounts of driving around the city, with or without a car chase, to some dingy warehouse or apartment where there’s a cover-heavy shootout. Ooh, the excitement.

  I mentioned to a friend of mine that one of the major things GTAIV lacks is a nice little suburban area. I figured that’d be Alderney, but Alderney seems to mimic nothing but the grimy industrial cesspool of Jersey City without getting into the sprawling, ritzy suburban areas at all. A nice Long Island surrogate would have helped. For the sake of both visual variety and mission variety — people still laugh (no, really) about the hilarity of driving around the soccer-mom crack dealer in her minivan in Saints Row.

  This might sound dumb, but a few days ago I watched the movie Boiler Room, an underrated and mostly forgotten 2000 thriller about an underachiever running a casino out of his apartment who ends up working as a power-broken for a shady investment firm. In addition to containing a performance by Giovanni Ribisi that makes me wonder why his star never got brighter, it also contains the only known good performances from Vin Diesel and Jamie Kennedy.

  It’s a terrific movie, but I don’t want to ruin it. I’m just going to give you the overall story arc of the first two acts: Ribisi’s approached by an old friend and a new acquaintance to join this firm; he thinks it’ll be a great thing for him — getting him out of his life of pseudo-crime with a legitimate job. Rather than working on Wall Street, he’s at some office park way at the end of Long Island (that’s where my brain started cooking, when I decided GTAIV needs some suburban environs), and slowly but surely Ribisi starts to realize he’s working for a bunch of crooks. He’s not sure what they’re doing or how, but he keeps getting more pieces of the puzzle; when he finally puts it together, he decides to pull one over on them.

  Look, I’m telling you. Watch the movie and tell me it wouldn’t work perfectly well as a GTAIV mission arc. Hell, that’s what all of these arcs should have been — Niko, looking to get out of his life of crime, starts doing jobs he thinks are legitimate, but they inevitably turn out to be criminal enterprises. You have variety in the types of crimes being committed, the types of missions involved — not all of them have to be overtly illegal. People who praise GTAIV keep praising the social system, the idea of “just hanging out.” So what about a half-dozen missions that are all about Niko getting and keeping legitimate, nonviolent jobs? They inevitably turn violent, but the “arc” of Niko getting tricked into committing illegal activities usually lasts through the first mission, at which point he’s resigned to continue working for these people. Give us some build-up, some suspense.

  It adds mission variety, and it could even add some fun submissions. One of the only things I’ll praise about this game are the new vigilante missions — they did an excellent job with that. So why not give us some similar missions with Pizza Delivery or Ambulance Driver. Different styles of missions, not just repetitive tasks, with all of them fulfilling that same arc of Niko trying desperately to go straight but somehow getting fucked over. For all the repetitive exposition in the game, the one thing they didn’t highlight enough (or tried to but botched) was Niko’s early attempt to go straight. He should have kept trying throughout the game in different ways.

• With two exceptions, the voice acting is atrocious.

  I think, of all the things I say about the game, this will be the one that catches me the most flak. One of the things I see from people who think all other aspects of the game are failures is praise for the voice acting, and praise for Rockstar using unknowns rather than big celebrity voices (as they have in the past).

  I’m going to be blunt: Niko has one of the most irritating game voices I’ve ever heard. I’ve played hundreds, if not thousands, of games, and too many of them are plagued with shitty voice acting, but nothing like Michael Hollick as Niko. To be honest, if you’re going to do a game with a bunch of immigrants with heavy accents, why not use real immigrants with heavy accents? The only thing more annoying than the accent itself is the inconsistency of its application. And the voice’s…I don’t know how to describe its quality, but there’s something about it that rivals nails on a chalkboard. When I finally got through story mode, I took to just muting it as I ran around achievement-whoring (that lasted about a day before I got sick of the game altogether) so I wouldn’t have to listen to him anymore. He’s awful.

  So the only voices I like in the game are Packie and Brucie. Do not confuse this with me liking the characters. The video game world has never seen a character more irritating and less funny than Brucie. Ever. I actually sort of liked Packie, despite the fact that he’s little more than a rehash of Ziggy on The Wire. But both are well-voiced. They certainly beat the bland, similar-sounding female characters and the awful, awful Alderney characters. I can’t even remember the name of the lame Joe Pesci wannabe, but the only thing in the game worse than that guy was Phil. That guy could not act. Not even a little. He makes Niko sound convincing. The only reason I’m so hard on Niko is because you hear him for so fucking long, but Phil is by far the worst voice in the game.

  Other than the suggestion to use people with authentic accents if you’re going to have that be a characteristic of the game, I don’t have much idea on how to improve it. I mean, I can say, “Just don’t have foreign characters in your game.” That’ll solve some problems. Or, “Get a better class of voice actor.” Who knows? All I can say — and I know I’ve said it before — is that people like Ray Liotta and Luis Guzmán added a great deal to Vice City, and the zillions of celebrity cameos involved in San Andreas really enhanced the quality of that game. Come on — James Woods? That was around the time where you’re sorta getting sick of the game because it’s too long. Then James Woods busts in with comedy gold and some of the most bizarre missions in the game — it’s an amazing rejuvenation late in the game. Even so, I have to give credit to Young Maylay as CJ. He’s a relative unknown, but he did great work…

  …unlike most of the folks involved in GTAIV. I guess the bottom line is: try a little harder. For all its graphical improvements and new ideas, GTAIV just feels like a thrown-together cash-in, on par with the PSP disasters.

If I think of anything else, I’ll certainly continue to rip this game a new asshole. I really, really hated it.

Posted by Stan on June 1, 2008 5:48 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)

May 31, 2008

National Treasure: Book of AWESOME

I was fairly indifferent toward the first National Treasure. True, it was goofy, fast-paced entertainment in the style (but not substance) of the Indiana Jones films, but I guess its stupidity overwhelmed the sense of fun. Because, really, there are three types of action-adventure movies: fun and smart (a la Indiana Jones, which is not necessarily “smart” in terms of plot or mythology but in the sense that they understand the conventions of an adventure film and either defy or play into expectations), fun but bland (2005’s Sahara), and fun and stupid. National Treasure falls into the last category, but it benefits from being so mind-boggling and ridiculous while the actors play it absolutely straight. Sure, there are attempts at legitimate humor — Justin Bartha’s surprisingly non-annoying computer nerd/wacky sidekick wouldn’t exist otherwise — but the story itself, while over-the-top and insane, isn’t played for laughs.

This didn’t work for me with the original National Treasure because, while fun, having Cage pursued by both the master-thief villain (played with sleazy menace by Sean Bean), the straight-laced FBI guy (Harvey Keitel, who I gotta say seemed kinda bored) felt like a little too much. I could take the FBI, but Bean’s character didn’t really add anything except more stupidity — but the annoying kind, not the fun kind. He mostly just sat there, acted menacing, and even admits at one point that all he has to do is wait for Cage to solve the puzzles. So where we initially think there’ll be a race-against-time, the suspense is dampened by the fact that Cage is racing against a guy who’s…just sitting around waiting for someone else to do the work. It’s like “The Tortoise and the Hare” on acid.

On the other hand, National Treasure: Book of Secrets sold me with the first trailer. I think it sold me with, “We have to kidnap the President.” Because one of the amazing things about the original National Treasure is that Cage plays a very black-and-white hero. He doesn’t want to steal the Declaration of Independence — he has to, in order to protect it. Similarly, in Book of Secrets, Cage needs the eponymous book, which only the President can see. Even if I were to ignore the other awesome elements — the conspiracy to discredit Cage’s great-great-grandfather, the city of gold under Mount Rushmore — the promise of a high-profile kidnapping made the movie worth checking out.

Nothing could have prepared me for the astounding awesomeness of the movie’s greatest moment:

Queen Victoria, not Benjamin Franklin Cage’s great-great-grandfather Thomas Jefferson Gates, was in on the conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln.

It’s a moment that passes so quickly, you’re not sure if it’s a real plot point or a fevered hallucination caused by transcendental genius, but yeah, it’s there. Queen Victoria sided with the Confederates because she wanted their cotton, and the whole chain of events leading to Gates’s naïve involvement trace back to her.

Only in a movie like National Treasure: Book of Secrets could something like this be treated as just another passing fact, but there you have it. It was at that moment that I realized the National Treasure series is truly something special — the closest thing to pure cinematic mayhem the mainstream world has to offer, with director Jon Turteltaub and husband-and-wife screenwriters Cormac and Marianne Wibberley spreading anarchistic wackiness through the dream-factory sandbox Disney lets them play around in. I mean, what other movie would have a serious line like, “We can’t let the Confederates get to the city of gold”?

The dual-villain gets a better treatment this time around, too. Something as bombastic and goofy as this doesn’t leave much room for subtlety, so it gets bonus points for treating Keitel and newbie villain Ed Harris with some respect. Keitel’s attitude this time around is along the lines of “what have you gotten yourselves into this time,” pursuing them more out of duty than desire. Harris starts out cartoonishly evil, first discrediting Cage’s own story about his ancestor, escalating until he commits something I can charitably describe as “attempted murder.” But once Harris realizes that he was wrong all along — duped by a conspiracy on top of a conspiracy — he nobly sacrifices himself to save the others.

Best of all, President Bruce Greenwood isn’t even angry that Cage kidnapped him. He willingly leads them to the Book of Secrets because he understands not only the importance of family — he understand the importance of Cage’s patriotic philosophy:

Benjamin Franklin Gates: Because it will probably lead us to the discovery of the greatest Native-American treasure of all time — a huge piece of culture lost. You can give that history back to its descendants. And because you’re the President of the United States, sir. Whether by innate character or the oath you took to defend the Constitution or the weight of history that falls upon you, I believe you to be an honorable man, sir.
President Bruce Greenwood: Gates, people don’t believe that stuff anymore.
Benjamin Franklin Gates: They want to believe it.

Both movies have surprising acting talent involved, from selling-out-and-phoning-in folks like Harvey Keitel to having-a-blast coots like Jon Voight — I’ll even defend the talents of Nicolas Cage, who usually gives good (or at least entertaining) performances despite appearing in only three actual good movies. When this ridiculous, cornball dialogue is delivered, I actually felt something — something you don’t get in vastly superior Alan J. Pakula thrillers from the ’70s: hope.

Like everything in the movie, it’s glossed over and pushed past like a behind-schedule parade, but there’s a definite — if unsubtle — truth to this dialogue, and in Cage’s delivery of that last line, that made me say, “Yes, people do want to believe it. I want to believe it.”

So no, it’s not a great movie, but I want to believe it is.

Posted by Stan on May 31, 2008 2:36 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)

May 28, 2008

Seagalogy: A Study of the Ass-Kicking Films of Steven Seagal

I didn’t know much about Steven Seagal prior to reading this book. Several years ago, a bizarre cable loophole got me free HBO for about five years, so I saw snippets of Above the Law, Hard to Kill, and other early Seagal movies. I think the only one I watched from beginning to end was Under Siege. It left me fairly indifferent toward Seagal.

Seagalogy is a series of essays, presented chronologically, analyzing the Steven Seagal oeuvre—the good, the bad, and the ugly, from his 1988 debut in Above the Law through 2008’s Pistol Whipped. Ain’t It Cool News writer Vern (just Vern) has an entertaining, conversational writing style and a definite affinity for Seagal. His enthusiasm for the man and his body of work is infectious. Because Vern goes in-depth on every Seagal movie, I did my critical duty by checking out Seagal’s first seven films and sampling some of the later direct-to-video fare. I wanted to see if Vern did them justice. Reading the book as I watched the films, I came away a sincere fan of Seagal. I don’t think I can pay Vern (or Seagal) a higher compliment than that.

An interesting thing casual fans like me may not know is that Seagal often serves as producer of his films—he has creative input from day one and often does uncredited writing work (or, at the very least, on-set improvising). If you hate his movies, this level of control will just contribute to the dislike; if you don’t know much about him and start watching them, you’ll come away with a new respect. You’ll notice the same things that inspired Vern to write this book—certain motifs, recurring themes, and details that speak to Seagal’s own foibles and fascinations. This isn’t a meat-grinder of repetitive stories and characters—this is the work of a man obsessed with government conspiracies, environmental activism, Eastern culture, and music. When I got this book, I expected it to be full of glib irony and sarcasm, but Vern treats Seagal’s films with respect. He’s still hilarious and doesn’t pull punches, pointing out goofiness and inconsistencies (such as Seagal and Keith David managing to get duffel bags of machine guns and a decapitated head through customs in Marked for Death) and the relative badness of his later, sloppier, low-budget work. However, Vern’s humor comes across more like good-natured teasing than hostility.

Vern doesn’t just limit himself to Seagal’s star vehicles. He delves into producing efforts, films in which Seagal has little more than cameos, Seagal’s albums and energy drink, a long list of movies that were almost made or that Seagal has mentioned an offhand desire to make—even Seagal’s commercial and rare TV appearances. I don’t think a more comprehensive assessment of the man’s body of work has ever been written, or will ever be written. He closes with an enthralling account of Vern attending a Steven Seagal concert. It leaves readers with the same wild, breathless optimism found in that concert’s crowd—wanting more.

Whether you like Seagal or not, do yourself a favor and check out Seagalogy. You’ll come away with renewed respect for him.

Posted by Stan on May 28, 2008 4:19 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)

May 27, 2008

The Life I Lived

Many low-budget films share a common problem: too much ambition, not enough money. This often leads to the filmmakers spending more time attempting (unsuccessfully, more often than not) flashy camerawork, whiz-bang action sequences, or impressive special effects. They lose focus on story, character, and quality performances, and the movie yields unimpressive results.

It’s refreshing to find a movie like The Life I Lived, which manages to combine ambition with its obvious tight budget. Sure, it suffers from problems common to truly independent films (weak performances from bit players, inconsistent editing, derivative musical score), but the flaws give it a scrappy charm, and writer/director Ben E. Solenberger doesn’t let the story overplay its hand. He crafts a complex, nonlinear story that works despite its rushed third act.

The Life I Lived follows entrepreneur Bill Cacchiotti (Richard Bennett) from the 1970s to the present. As he reflects on, um, the life he lived, it occurs to Cacchiotti that things didn’t quite go as well as he had planned. He hoped his son, Eddie (David L. Buckler), would follow in his footsteps and take over his electrician business. He wanted to live the high life, so he joined up with some other local businessmen to become part of a small-town mob syndicate. By the time Cacchiotti reaches retirement, he’s no longer sure if he laid the best tracks for his son to steam down.

The story has echoes of The Godfather, but the main difference stems from the difference in motivation. Michael Corleone rebelled against his family’s ways—a reluctant mobster, only helping out when he realized his brothers were incompetent and his father was near-death. In The Life I Lived, Cacchiotti is the reluctant mobster, a man who destroyed his life (and, ironically, his family) because of his criminal behavior and the ensuing guilt. Eddie, on the other hand, is perfectly willing to take over the business, shady dealings and all.

The film dwells quite a bit on Cacchiotti’s early forays into criminal life, glossing over his rise to power. I’m okay with this because it’s implied early on that Cacchiotti’s local-businessman pals already have a syndicate in place—he’s just joining up. However, I wish they’d spent a little more time on the idea that Cacchiotti may say he’s doing everything for his family, but in reality he’s doing it for himself. He wants a nice car, he wants to eat at fancy restaurants—he has clear, selfish reasons in addition to the noble family reasons. The movie brings this up in one early scene but doesn’t mention it again. Mainly, it focuses on the big traumas—Cacchiotti’s first murder, his extortion (and torture) of a local politician, his marriage falling apart, his son discovering Cacchiotti’s dark side.

One quiet, affecting scene finds Cacchiotti haunted, decades later, by a single look of anger and disapproval an employee gives him after learning of Cacchiotti’s criminal empire. Another finds him reaching rock-bottom, drunkenly badgering kids on Halloween before plunking down in the street, in his underwear, with scotch in one hand and stolen candy in another. These scenes work best because they show the torment and drama found in life’s quieter moments. I wish they’d included more of these scenes rather than painting Cacchiotti’s life in broad strokes. With such a short running time (80 minutes including fairly long end credits), digging deeper into Cacchiotti couldn’t have hurt.

The broad strokes contribute to the rushed feeling in the third act. I don’t want to spoil it, but Solenberger goes for some unearned twists and turns in both plot and character. Though I liked the conclusion’s irony, the characters’ sudden shifts in motivation didn’t convince me. Going back to the brief runtime, we should have gotten a bit more development from Eddie and Gary (Ted Taylor), Cacchiotti’s longtime capo/enforcer, or at least a slower build to the third-act twists.

Overall, I liked the movie. It’s an imperfect underdog, but its flaws don’t overshadow its strengths. I’ve seen plenty of low- and no-budget indies, and most of them (especially crime dramas) are just atrocious. The Life I Lived is far from atrocious—it’s actually pretty good.

This is just a side-note, but I figured I ought to mention it since it contributed to my enjoyment of the movie: this is the story of a small-town mobster, set and shot in rural Virginia, cast with locals. You don’t often see mob movies where the characters aren’t wandering gritty urban streets talking with heavy New York or Chicago accents. It’s both refreshing and bizarre to see mobsters doing their dirty work in the backwoods, speaking to each other with that distinctive Virginian lilt. It’s a minor detail, but it makes The Life I Lived all the more endearing. If you like low-budget indies, you should check this one out.

Posted by Stan on May 27, 2008 4:20 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)

May 13, 2008

Grand Theft Fun

I promise this’ll be my last post about Grand Theft Auto IV. Ever. And, by the way, the title doesn’t refer to a sudden change of heart after initially bashing it. I know explaining defeats the purpose of a joke, but it must be stated: Rockstar stole pretty much every element from their formerly fun games that made them worth playing.

I’ve about given up playing it. I don’t know how far along I am in terms of story (the game says I’m 60% complete; I’m guessing that refers to just the missions since I’ve barely done any of the side games), but I’m just not having fun. Just when the story’s drawing me in, it pushes me away with Bernie, the lamest character in the history of GTA’s extensive pantheon of stereotypes. Just when I’m willing to forgive the gameplay, I run into stuff that’s so poorly implemented, it’s almost unplayable (did anyone actually enjoy the missions that force you to use a motorcycle?). I guess they took the game’s limitations into account, because every time I stress that I’m going to lose a mission because I’m on a motorcycle and hit something that knocks me off, and I have to wait 400 years for Niko to get back on the bike, I’ve never failed (as I would have in previous GTA games). Getting frustrated doesn’t make it more fun, though. Neither does sapping the challenge because you know the gameplay itself is half-assed.

But the thing that’s really driving me nuts has more to do with the “realism.” Ordinarily, I wouldn’t give a shit about GTA and realism. The game’s are not, and never have been, realistic. It’s only the jackasses at Rockstar running around to the press saying it’s realistic, and reviewers somehow believing this, that drive me crazy. Because they strive for realism but, like everything else, come up half-assed.

The two things that are really bugging me now are the prevalence of Britishisms and the shitty A.I. I’ve bitched about both before, but they’ve reached levels of obnoxiousness that, when combined with the dreadful story, cardboard characters, and stilted gameplay…just kinda make me want to stop. I haven’t officially stopped yet, because I want to get to the end of the story so I can mock it properly, but more of this might just drive me crazy.

So I’m just going to leave you with a few illustrations of the bad A.I. and Britishisms I’ve noticed since my last post about GTA.

Bad A.I.

• I got bored with the game, so I shot this one dude on the street in cold blood. A policeman was standing on the corner, staring at me as I did this, and just…kept standing there. No police warning, no gun drawn.
• When you want to ride in a cab, if you find one that already has a passenger or two, you yank them out as you would when jacking the car. Rather than giving Niko new dialogue for this completely different action, he continues to say things like “I need this. Buy a new one” or “I’m stealing your car,” which make no sense considering what he’s doing.
• On the subject of cabs, the funniest/stupidest moment I’ve experienced in the game so far goes like this: I jacked a cab because they’re the only cars in the game that handle well enough to not irritate me, but there was a bit of a jam so I couldn’t get away from the driver before he pulled me out of the car to steal his own car back. That’s nice, and I like the randomness that some people do that while others run away. Fine. So I enter the same cab as a passenger, and there’s no reference to the fact that I jacked it not 30 seconds before. Maybe this doesn’t qualify as bad A.I., but it does seem sloppy that Rockstar — with the development time and budget — didn’t think of these contingencies and program/write accordingly.
• The enemies in shoot-and-cover missions — the only ones I’ve liked until now — have finally reached a point of predictability where they’re no longer fun. The shoot-‘em-up villains in previous games were equally predictable, but there weren’t nearly as many of them (or as many missions of that type).
• I accidentally nudged a parked car, which I intended to steal, with my (about-to-explode) car. A cop in a car was just sitting there, like, whatever, although in previous games they’d come after you for the car alarm going. He did literally nothing until Niko smashed the window, at which point I got the ol’ one-star.

Britishisms

• On a calendar in the office where you get missions from Phil, the word HOLIDAY is scrawled across an entire week’s worth of days. Since I’m unfamiliar with any week long holiday breaks for American companies, I assume this is the British use of the word (synonymous with a general vacation, not a special day of celebration), which is very infrequently used in the U.S., and highly unlikely to be used on the calendar in a grimy warehouse run by a shady mobster. I guess I could buy this in the office of an eastern European character because there’s at least a chance that they learned British English before arriving in the U.S.
• Playing darts with Kate: “You’re rubbish, Niko.”
• Now I’m annoyed, because I’m sure I noticed more, but I can’t think of them. I’ll edit this if I remember or spot them again.

This isn’t quite a Britishism, but it does further my annoyance with the subpar voice acting. In one of the McCreary missions, you stage a sham prison break by taking out a convoy under the “Booth Tunnel.” About five seconds of deep thinking makes you realize that it’s a “subtle” allusion to John Wilkes Booth (i.e., Lincoln Tunnel in NYC = Booth Tunnel in LC, har har har!). Yet, everyone in the dialogue stresses the name in a weird way, to make it sound like the prominent feature of this tunnel is that it contains some kind of gargantuan booth. It’s just shoddy as ever. The recording engineers or directors couldn’t coach more natural readings out of these people?

Posted by Stan on May 13, 2008 5:29 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)

May 8, 2008

Movies That Haven’t Aged Well: American Beauty

I’m going to start off the bat by saying many of the elements that contributed to American Beauty’s commercial and (limited) creative success still hold up: Kevin Spacey’s fantastic performance as Lester Burnham, Conrad Hall’s breathtaking cinematography, even Sam Mendes’s direction (though he has yet to repeat this with as much success). Really, the thing that sinks it when I recently plucked it off my DVD shelf to watch — for the first time since probably 2000 — is its Oscar-winning screenplay.

Granted, Alan Ball is no Diablo Cody, but there’s something so…I guess the politest way to put it is “obvious” about the characters, the satire, and each characters’ storyline. I really enjoyed this movie when it first hit theatres, so I can’t know if the problem is me getting older and more worldly (making me realize that the cardboard-cutout characters are more stereotype than archetype) or if it’s the prism of time reflecting a big brown blob of shit rather than a pretty rainbow.

To deal with the latter argument: many movies have come out since 1999 that have been pale imitations of American Beauty. The only one I can think of that comes close is The Secret Lives of Dentists, and even that’s not as good. So it’s not a problem of American Beauty being eclipsed by its own imitators and therefore losing relevance. Maybe it’s the problem of the transformation of the world (or, at the very least, this country) over the past (almost-)decade that makes American Beauty’s dysfunctional but optimistic message feel a little far-fetched. I can’t say.

The beginning of the end is the opening of the movie: Thora Birch, on video, asking…that dude who seemed to disappear off the face of the planet (unseen because he’s the videographer) to kill her dad. This moment is all but meaningless in the storyline: it’s not really a murder mystery, and call me crazy, but the instant we see that, you pretty much know she didn’t do it. So why’s it there? A remnant of the edited-out cliché of a courtroom framing device, in which (allegedly; I’ve never read the screenplay) Chris Cooper allows his son to take the blame for his own crime. I’ve gotta say, it definitely improved the movie that they cut it out, but why leave this one artifact that has very little to do with anything? Mendes doesn’t attempt to build any suspense out of the idea that Birch and her creepy boyfriend have any interest in really killing him; the movie’s not even a murder mystery of any kind. It’s a year-in-the-life where you know upfront that the year will end with Kevin Spacey’s death. (And you know that upfront from his introductory voiceover, making the goofy video-voyeur opening even more unnecessary.)

In many cases — Annette Bening’s shrill performance, which was even annoying and over-the-top in 1999, is a glaring exception — the strength of the performances masks the bland characterization and unimpressive story. Looking at it again, it’s hard to not notice how pat everything is: Chris Cooper as the southern-redneck ex-military homophobe who’s secretly struggling with, or at least trying to deny, his own sexuality (double-stereotype — score!); Annette Bening as the focused career gal whose resentment of her family and obsession with work manifests itself in the silliest affair in cinematic history; Thora Birch’s desperation to finance a boob job despite her most notable asset — in high school terms — being her gargantuan bazongas; Mena Suvari’s shallow teenager existing solely to occupy Spacey’s fantasies and undermine Birch’s confidence; Wes Bentley (yeah, I looked up his name) as the “outcast,” a voyeurism-obsessed neighborhood pot dealer; and Allison Janney as a distant, either-crazy-or-a-drunk wife trapped in a loveless marriage.

Is there anything here that hasn’t been seen before and done better elsewhere? I’ll toss out the random example of Parenthood, Ron Howard’s 1989 dramedy that utilized many of these ideas but in much more nuanced ways. Hell, pretty much every moment involving the teens was done better in any John Hughes movie you can think of (except maybe Uncle Buck). And it’s here where I kind of hit on the biggest problem with American Beauty: it’s a sign of the exact time in which it was made and nothing more. That’s why it doesn’t hold up nearly a decade later, while movies that are now between 20 and 25 years old do hold up.

In any given John Hughes movie you’re subjected to synth-pop, legwarmers, and goofy slang, but the core of the movies — the story and characters — still hold up, not just as nostalgia pieces or cynical reflections of the times, but as reflections of timeless teen themes. Sure, maybe nowadays all kids have cell phones and IMs, so they might not relate to tactics like throwing rocks at the window of a girl you like (which I don’t think ever actually happened in a John Hughes movie, but it does happen in the awesome Breaking Away, another great but old film about teen angst and small-town disaffection) when they could just “txt” them, but they can relate to the angst and fear involved in actions like that.

To double back to the adult characters, the only one whose journey is truly interesting is Burnham’s. Granted, we need the cheesy “confused” homophobe and the irritating wife (and even the stereotypical cheerleader-who-knows-she’s-hot-shit-and-wants-to-be-a-model) to lead to the cynical ending, but why can’t we get a little nuance? What do we ever learn about Cooper (and his wife, and his kid) that we don’t expect? Same question could be applied to every other “supporting” character. Doubling up on stereotypes and obvious traits doesn’t count as nuance or subtlety. I think the only unexpected thing is Birch’s obsession with the boob job, because it doesn’t seem like something she’d obsess over. Especially when the person undermining her confidence is boobless Mena Suvari; you’d think she’d be more obsessed with developing an even-more-clichéd eating disorder. So hey, they have that going for them.

I think the ending is still moderately interesting, in that it’s ambiguous (the “trial” framing device would have robbed it of this ambiguity). Burnham realizes his life is pretty awesome, and then — BLAM! So is that a cruel and unjust world, robbing him of life just as he’s starting to realize how good he has it, or is it a just world, allowing him to die in his first moment of true happiness since his youth, riding around in a bad-ass hot-rod? I think the original version, with Bentley going to jail, would have reenforced the “cruel and unjust world” side of things. Thematically, the ending of the actual movie supports the overall idea that everyone’s looking for happiness (or beauty, if you prefer) in the wrong places, which is a nice if unsubtle message.

When it was originally released, its endlessly-repeated tagline was LOOK CLOSER. Watching it again, looking closer only creates problems. It’s too bad, because I really did like this movie in 1999. Then again, full disclosure: back then, I wanted Being John Malkovich to win it all at the Oscars (even though it ended up only getting three nominations and won none of them), and I still think it should have. It’s much weirder on the surface, but it asks many of the same questions American Beauty does (notably about looking for happiness in the wrong places, i.e. in Malkovich’s portal), but it both asks and answers these questions in more interesting ways.

Posted by Stan on May 8, 2008 10:40 AM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)

May 7, 2008

More Thoughts on ‘Grand Theft Auto IV’

Slightly more positive this time around!

Last time, I mentioned unhappiness that they removed some of my favorite minigames. Actually, my all-time favorite was the time-wasting, mind-numbing cab game — I couldn’t tell you why, but the idea of hustling to get all those people around town was a lot of fun for me. I also enjoyed rooting around town for the lists of desirable cars. Especially in GTA3, those crazy easter egg cars like the ice cream truck made finishing those lists an epic quest. Replacing them with Roman’s laaaame taxi missions and Brucie/Steve’s car-hunting expeditions just isn’t working for me.

However, I found myself quite enjoying the police submissions. So far, the only enjoyable missions in the game are the firefights, so I just login to the police computer until I find something along the lines of “gang activity,” then go have an enjoyable shootout. It’s even interesting because your running around shooting people gets you a police rating of your own, so there’s dual danger. That’s kind of fun. I’ve noticed several fire stations around but haven’t really bothered seeking out whether or not they have a game attached to them. I thought the firefighter missions were a waste of time before, but I’d imagine this game has much cooler fire effects than GTA3. (They were such a waste of time that I never bothered to find out if they had them in Vice City or San Andreas.)

I’m also finding the story a little more tolerable. It’s not great by any means, but it’s moved from “awful” to “almost serviceable.” Niko still doesn’t come close to being a compelling, unique character, but the farther along I get, the more interesting the missions become as a result of the story. So I guess it’s not so much the story getting better as it’s just allowing for better mission opportunities. To that end, another big complete — the near-total lack of challenge — is gone. One or two missions have required multiple attempts, and multiple approaches, before I could beat them. Even the ones I beat on the first try have some interesting challenges. The shootout when Roman gets kidnapped was a lot of fun, even though it was comically easy. I also haven’t fallen victim to quite so many annoying glitches, so that’s cool.

Finally, a friend of mine pointed out something jaw-droppingly obvious: I now have enough money to both take cabs everywhere and skip the endless ride. Since I started doing that, it’s made the game assloads more fun. I still hate the driving (except, ironically, when I’m driving the cab; even then, so much of the time it takes forfuckingever to get anywhere). I’m not exactly happy — I shouldn’t have to find alternate methods to workaround shitty game design — but I’m enjoying the experience a teensy bit more.

The cutscenes are still endless, though. Oh, and Packie just seems like a warmed-over version of Ziggy from The Wire (and since I’ve already compared this game unfavorably to that great television series, the reminder doesn’t exactly help GTA4’s case). And I’m noticing more Britishisms in this game than usual. The only one I can remember off the top of my head is the use of the extremely British “advert” (as opposed to “commercial” or just “ad”), and for those ready to cut me because Niko’s European, it was spoken by an American on one of the radio ads (the one for the electrolyte energy drink, itself a much shittier version of a great running gag from Idiocracy). Is this because they’re hiring unknowns so happy to have a voice-acting gig on a high-profile project, they don’t have the balls to say, “No American would ever talk like this”? Whatever the explanation, it’s not exactly bringing me over to the side that this is brilliant writing for any medium — it’s the little nitpicks that reveal how lazy and/or sloppy a piece of writing is. Trust me: I’m both lazy and sloppy.

Posted by Stan on May 7, 2008 4:14 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)

May 4, 2008

Easy to Hate: ‘Grand Theft Auto IV’

Yeah, I spent the whole weekend playing it instead of blogging, writing, or doing anything useful. Sue me.

Pros

The graphics/sound are very nice. I haven’t noticed any of the major graphical glitches that flooded message boards. Not saying they aren’t there; they just aren’t hindering my “enjoyment” of the overall game.

The missions are varied enough to hold my interest and haven’t gotten repetitive (yet!).
Despite the actual functions of the controls, I like the layout of the controls now that I’ve gotten used to them. Of course, there are a couple of control functions I sort of hate, but I’ll go into that under “cons.”

While not as elaborate as San Andreas, the city design is very impressive, detailed, and real-feeling. Neighborhoods have distinct feels and citizens to match, and you can even see a little bit of pseudo-history in the city itself — places where arches that look like they’re hundreds of years old still stand for no apparent reason except that that’s just how metropolitan infrastructures work. Of course, just like San Andreas, there are a few areas where you can tell they didn’t spend much time working on the design or polishing the graphics. Overall, though, it’s really cool-looking (and I haven’t even played enough to unlike the big Manhattan surrogate).

One of the more subtle things that impressed me happens after (spoiler alert!) you kill Faustin and have to hide out on Charge Island. I was a little afraid because I still have a shitload of things to do on Dukes, and I figured it’d be like getting all but thrown out of Portland in GTA3 — everywhere you’d go on Portland, you’d have vicious gangs chasing you. Try driving through Little Italy, and you’d get blown up after a couple of good shotgun blasts from the Mob. Well, I had to do one mission that’s focused right on Hove Beach, in the heart of the people I’ve pissed off. Yet, nobody harmed me…

…until I opened fire on the mission’s target in broad daylight on a public street. I always thought getting exiled from an entire borough was kind of funny, but working it like this is a little more realistic. Not everybody knows Niko at first glance. Even if they did, they might not pay enough attention to the random guy going on a gay date at the diner. Then you shoot the guy, they take a second glance, and they’re all, “Oh shit!” I liked that.

Cons

The highly praised story and, especially, the dialogue are just atrocious. Like, to the point where all the 10/10 “best game of our generation”/”Oscar-quality writing” bullshit must have been written by PR people. I know I’m a big fan of fictitious conspiracies, but I find it impossible to believe so many reviewers praised things about this game that are, simply put, fucking terrible. Adding insult to injury, the cutscenes are about 1000 times longer than they need to be. For what purpose? About half of it is devoted to character development so bland and redundant, they make the folks on CSI: Miami seem well-rounded. The other half services either the grander story (with heavy-handed foreshadowing) or the game’s “sense of humor” (with the laziest dick jokes that didn’t make the cut for Adam Sandler’s last three movies*). The one or two percent left over is devoted to the actual mission.

The voice acting doesn’t help. For the most part, it’s bland and inoffensive; in some case it borders on horrible, but mostly it’s just…there. The cutscenes were a bit more pleasurable when they featured the voice talents of legitimate, well-known actors. Even then, they were still shorter. I don’t exactly have a stopwatch, but I’d wager the longest cutscene in any of the previous games is still shorter than IV’s shortest cutscene. Maybe I’m wrong on the actual timing, but they sure feel longer this time around.

I understand what Rockstar is trying to do. They’ve said it in the press, and it’s been repeated endlessly in the paid-for-praise early reviews: they’re making a groundbreaking piece of art that takes gaming to the next level. If that’s the goal, they failed. Big-time. Having shallow characters and the storyline of a direct-to-video action movie is less noticeable when the game isn’t bogged down in pretension; the previous Grand Theft Auto games had fun stories that rarely — if ever — attempted legitimate dramatic scenes. Look, when one of your big “character moments” is something so predictable, I figured it out before I even owned the game (based purely on what friends who rushed to buy it told me about the character), you’re doing something wrong. And you aren’t writing an “Oscar-quality” game. Well…maybe.

I guess the thing that disappoints me most here is that there’s so much room for quality. A few months back, I got hooked on Saints Row, a shameless GTA knockoff that manages to get right plenty of things GTAIV gets wrong. The story is absolutely atrocious, but it’s forgivable because the game is about having fun and blowing shit up; the developers accepted that and made fun, mercifully brief cutscenes to tie the shit-blowing-up together. That’s it. But when I thought about how much the city of Stilwater reminds me of Baltimore**, I started to think about what a lost opportunity the game is. No visual entertainment fits the “urban entertainment” description more than HBO’s Baltimore-set The Wire.

How great would it be to play a video game with the same kind of emotional resonance, bleak worldview, dense story, and complex characters? This is what Grand Theft Auto IV wants, but they’re either too afraid or too unsophisticated to go the full nine. Their attempt at “bleak worldview” results in awful, blunt-edged “satire” mostly found on the talk-radio stations (but also prevalent in many aspects of the story) — so it’s there, but it’s lame and obvious. I’m general both a patient viewer and player, but the only emotion I’ve felt so far is boredom. Neither the story nor the characters have hooked their claws on me, because both rely heavily on awful clichés (a cynical Eastern European ex-soldier haunted by his past? Revolutionary!) both from movies and from other GTA games (seriously, why is every “big mob boss” some kind of coked-up sociopath with an embittered lieutenant?). I’ve read a shitload of reviews and forum posts (seriously, I’m addicted to the comedy gold of the game’s staunch defenders), and the people who argue in favor of the story’s awe-inspiring quality act like they’ve never seen an actual good movie or ever read a book. I don’t mean that to sound snotty; it’s just incredible to believe anyone could see something like Niko’s backstory as a triumph for the medium. I’ve played Super Nintendo games with more nuanced and interesting characters.

So yes, I’m massively disappointed with the story/characters/dialogue/etc. When I first read rumors that this would be a more serious, dramatic game than its predecessors, I had hopes that, with the shitload of time and money they had at their disposal, Rockstar would come up with something great. I mention The Wire not because I yearn for a video-game rip-off of that series, but because the story’s length and complexity is a good frame of comparison. They should have strived for something like that, rather than Bad Boys 3: Only 50 Hours Longer and with a Little Eastern Promises Tossed in for Good Measure. Either step up the quality or embrace the fact that you’re making the shitty action movies of games, not The Godfathers.

Enough about that. Let’s move on to more shit I don’t like:

• The driving in previous games used to be fun. What happened to that? It seems like the main problem with the driving in this game are the brakes. Sure, most of the cars handle like shopping carts, but even that would be acceptable if they fucking stopped when you told them to. And the handbrake is just embarrassing unless you want to spin out the whole time. I’ve gotten to a point where I’m used to the driving enough for it to be tolerable…until I get into a car-chase mission, and then it goes back to infuriating me. Maybe it’s more “realistic,” but I’m pretty sure people aren’t going to GTA for realism. (If they are…wow, we’re in trouble.) Going back to embracing the “shitty action-movie” aspect of the game: in what action movie does the “hero” chase a car that makes a hairpin turn into an alley, while you skid past said alley, spin out, and slam into the side of the building? In what way is that entertaining to anyone? I have found a couple of cars (notably the yellow cab; I haven’t really learned the names of the other cars yet) that handle decently enough when you aren’t in chase mode, but shit…it’s ridiculous.
• Similarly, missions are too easy. I can’t tell you how many missions I’ve gone through so far, but I’ve beaten almost all of them on the first try; the others have taken a second try (and all of the failures have been the result of what I’ll call “rookie mistakes” — not positioning an easy-access car in case the guy flees in his own car, forgetting to refill my health before starting a new mission, etc.). And, to be fair, I’m fairly awful at video games. Some missions in earlier GTA games had me insane with frustration because I had to play them 10 or more times before beating them.

  I’ve accumulated a comical amount of guns and ammo without trying (I haven’t spent money on a weapon yet), so I’m not struggling to complete missions with the meager weaponry the game provides me. The attempt at Rainbow Six-like stealth hiding/crouching is a nice touch, but it makes things easier still. GTA is not for stealth — it’s for rushing headlong into a warehouse full of gun-toting lowlives, and just shooting like a motherfucker until everyone is dead. I don’t mind the more realistic approach, but the A.I. is uniformly bad. In the mission where you (spoiler alert!) kill Faustin, there are at least a dozen guards armed to the teeth. The game expects you to take them all out, then give chase. All you have to do is just run past them, unless one gets right in your face. Half of them didn’t even shoot; the other half were too dumb to stop and aim. I got through with very little health lost and killed Faustin with ease. (And you can tell it’s easy because some missions are laid out in a way that you can just tell they expected this to be a much longer, more difficult chase.)

• Shooting while driving is almost as awful as driving itself. Shooting while driving has never been GTA’s strong suit — remember the awful side-view drive-by missions, eventually replaced by the less-ridiculous-but-still-cheesy “someone else drives while you pick off targets” missions? Saints Row had a really nice implementation, where you’d just drive like normal but the target would be up, so you could fire when ready and know roughly where it’d hit. Adding an extra button to this just confuses the issue and makes it more difficult than it needs to be. (And yet, as mentioned above, I’ve still never had trouble beating a “shoot at a moving vehicle while driving” mission.)
• Dating. It was a largely optional, time-wasting feature in San Andreas. Here, it’s integrated into the story. And although I haven’t gotten to the “shocking reveal,” could it be more obvious that Michelle is an undercover cop of some kind? I called it on the first date, and if I’m wrong, I will owe anyone who disagrees with this rant $50. Anyway, integrated into the story or not, it’s a waste of fucking time.
• A similar but related tangent: they seem to have dropped some of the minigames I actually liked and replaced them with either nothing or nothing fun. Poorly implemented darts, bowling, and pool? Okay, pool was also in San Andreas, but again, also as an optional, time-wasting pursuit. So to reiterate: they’ve stripped the game of a lot of fun-but-pointless minigames while keeping and adding more pointless games but making them mandatory for story mode? What the fuck sense does that make? Oh, sorry, I guess that’s part of the “groundbreaking” experience. Just like The Wire, every piece matters. Right.

All right, I think that about sums it up. I feel like I have more to complain about (and some things to praise), but I can’t remember anything else at the moment. Most of what I had to say is on the nitpicky side, along the lines of my praising the only good moment of A.I. so far (the post-Faustin-death Russian mobsters not noticing you until you do something obvious), so I’ll probably shut the hell up until I’m further enough along in the story to make more detailed complaints about it.

*No, I’m not a pretentious snob who thinks Sandler represents everything wrong with Hollywood and society. (Rob Schneider’s your man for that, with Sandler serving as his cheerleader/enabler/financier.)
**Ironically, Wikipedia says (with no citation) that Stilwater is supposed to be “loosely based on Detroit, but more accurately Chicago.” I have never seen a city, in video games or in life, that looks less like Chicago than this place. Even Los Angeles, about as un-Chicago as you can get, has a small pocket along Wilshire that’s eerily reminiscent of Chicago. Based on the layout, demographics, and even the aesthetics (endless boarded-up rowhouses with a distinctly Colonial look), I get a Baltimore feel.

Posted by Stan on May 4, 2008 11:59 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)

April 24, 2008

What It Takes to Make ‘CSI’ Not Suck

In the vast realm of popular culture, there’s very little I hate more than the CSI juggernaut*, but recently I’ve found myself obsessed with the Miami flavor. I can’t tolerate anything other than this one because it always seems to me that the cast goes wildly over-the-top because the performances are secretly tongue-in-cheek. They always have these little grins on their faces, which may or may not be the excessive botox and facelifts the regular cast members have obviously undergone, that makes me think they’re going to crack up as soon as they cut. I have to believe this is the case to keep my sanity.

The other series, which I’ve sampled on occasionally out of curiosity, don’t hold up nearly as well because there’s a different kind of attitude to the cast — a smugness, as if they really feel they’re a part of something important. I guess you could argue that it’s important to bring joy to tens of millions of Americans who like the kind of TV you can watch while doing the laundry and making dinner, but I like something a little more substantive. Even the Seagal movies I’ve raved about lately, while ridiculous and implausible, are at least attempting to get at something resembling a higher truth — exposing rampant police and government corruption, oil companies fucking over both Native Americans and the environment, and so on — while the CSI shows are content to play out the same basic ideas over and over again (to be fair, the Law & Order shows on NBC are equally guilty of this, and more than anything else so is American Idol). Making crimes ridiculously over-the-top is not a substitute for quality, especially since it always turns out to be the first person they interview, played by an actor so cartoonishly evil any good detective would hold them in interrogation until they break them.

Well, recently I decided to take a look at the two-part fifth-season finale. Quentin Tarantino directed both episodes, and while I enjoy his movies I should say upfront that I’m not really an obsessive, Tarantino-defending fanboy. I downloaded these particular episodes for what the Internet has declared CSI: Original Recipe’s crowning moment: Gil Grissom’s eleventh-hour antgasm. It was as funny as I expected, but it also disappointed me…

…because the episodes themselves were actually kinda good.

I can think of two simple reasons for the surprising quality. First, each episode had almost nothing to do with lab work. The thing that sinks most CSI episodes is the cartoonishly over-the-top crimes. Yes, the crimes have to get sort of wild in order for them to be solved using most likely inaccurate science!!!, but these shows take it to extremes that make Agatha Christie’s weirdest shit sound reasonable. It doesn’t help that the lab tests these people perform on whims cost tens of thousands of dollars, and no police department on the planet would justify the amount of goofy tech and tests they use. (That’s not even getting into the fact that most forensic investigators rarely have anything to do with interviewing suspects, arresting people, etc. To its credit, CSI actually got this detail right at the start, but soon enough it got ridiculous.)

For those thinking I’m ripping on this shit for being implausible because that’s the best I can do, and I should just relax and enjoy the show, here’s the thing: there are junky procedurals I like. I like House, I like Bones, I like Monk…all three are ridiculous in almost every possible way, but they’re also populated with interesting characters. I can check out and stop caring about real-world impracticalities if I’m interested in the characters and conflicts happening in each scene. When I don’t have that, and on CSI I never do**, I bitch. I bitch when the plot doesn’t make sense, or when something doesn’t seem like it could really happen, because nothing else of interest is happening.

The second major difference in this episode of CSI is that, for the first time, we’re given that conflict, especially in the form of George Eads’s Nick Stokes. Much more of this has to do with Quentin Tarantino’s ability to work with actors than the actual writing — these people gave more than I’ve ever seen them give before, including in the movies, so I have to assume Tarantino is responsible for that. Television is not known as a director’s medium, but it just goes to show what a good director can bring — he rushes past the plot holes and builds the suspense and drama from the helplessness of the usually unstoppable lab team.

The plot basically goes like this: a CSI is lured to an odd crime scene. Turns out, someone manufactured the scene so they could nab a CSI, lock him in a plexiglas coffin, and bury him alive. Whoever perpetrated the crime knows his shit — they get their lab work out of the way pretty quickly, and there’s nothing. No leads. Eventually they get a package that leads them to a webcam broadcasting Stokes’s struggle to survive. Boo-hoo. Oh, also, the guy wants $1 million in 12 hours, or Stokes dies.

Once they’ve exhausted their attempts at “science,” all we’re left with is a team who has to deal with the terror of a fellow lab worker trapped in an unknown location. When they finally get the money and deliver it, the man (played by the awesome John Saxon) is shocked — that was never part of the plan. He pretty much intended just to blow himself up. That’s how part one ends. In part two, they find an intact thumb, figure out the man’s motive (shoddy lab work got his daughter convicted of murder), and use actual investigative skills to figure out what happened to Stokes.

It’s not without its flaws. I know they need to find him, but the thumb thing just struck me as way too easy, especially when they contrive false drama from Sara’s inability to find any fingerprints, and then in, like, the next scene another lab tech is like, “Oh, I ran it through another database and found something.” Then, of course, there’s the breathing tube protruding very obviously from the middle of a path. It’s a place of business — nobody would notice that?!

I also have an issue with the frustrating, moronic “time” element toward the end of part two. It sort of reminded of the movie Soultaker, featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000, where initially it’s a big part of the plot that they have to get back to their bodies by midnight or their parents will pull the plug — but even after they’ve changed their mind, the director keeps showing shots of the clock as they frantically rush to the hospital rooms. Same deal here: Warrick estimates Stokes has 90 minutes before the fan circulating the air will die (it’s on a battery). All this means is that when the watch stops, that gives him the two and a half hours Grissom estimated he’d have based on the size of the coffin. Nonetheless, when the timer goes off, Warrick looks like he’s about to give up — what the fuck?!

It had some frustrating moments of stupidity, but I was actually disappointed about how little comedy fodder this episode had. In fact, for the first time in my life, I actually enjoyed CSI in a non-ironic way. Again, I’m going to go ahead and credit Tarantino with this, because if CSI’s producers were capable of this kind of work all the time, the show would be halfway decent. (Also, even though Tarantino only receives a STORY BY credit, his severed-thumbprints are all over this episode’s writing, from the distinctive dialogue style to the weird — some might say annoying — ’70s pop-culture fixation.)

*Note that I also qualify the other Bruckheimer-produced procedurals (Cold Case, Without a Trace, and Close to Home, a surprise failure) as part of the juggernaut, because (a) they’re on the same network, (b) they’re made by the same production company, and (c) face it: they’re the same show. One deals with cold cases, one deals with kidnappings, one dealt with “suburban”/small-town crime, but they conform to the exact same formula.
**Yes, each show has defined characters, but in the worst possible way. Each has a distinctive trait, maybe two, that we’re supposed to latch onto.

Posted by Stan on April 24, 2008 3:29 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)

April 21, 2008

Pacific Heights

(I intend to spoil the shit out of this movie, but I actually thought it was pretty good — good enough to recommend — so if you have any interest in seeing it, don’t read this.)

So here’s the thing about Pacific Heights, John Schlesinger’s bizarre 1990 thriller: it shouldn’t work. At all. The opening scenes show us a nice, Reagan-era yuppie couple (played by Matthew Modine and Melanie Griffith) trying to figure out how to fudge their mortgage application so they can buy a house so comically enormous they can convert the entire thing into two apartments and live in the movie-huge attic. What I’m trying to say is, they didn’t need this house, and the fact that they paid $750,000 — in 1990 dollars — should make them much less sympathetic. The entire plot hinges on the possibility of them losing their property, so if we can’t understand why this home means so much to them or why we should care if they lose a house when they’re spending waaaaay beyond their means, the ending won’t exactly satisfy.

Wisely, Schlesinger and writer Daniel Pyne avoid potential audience backlash by not apologizing for these characters. They’re portrayed as selfish and kind of vapid, and while it’s not fully explained why they feel they need such a gigantic house in such an expensive neighborhood in the most expensive city on the planet, they seem like the kind of couple who would dive headlong into an unwise investment like this. It’s a good thing, too, because a lot of the plot also hinges on their ignorance of both tenants’ rights and home ownership.

Initially, I felt like this was going to be some kind of comment on race relations. One of the first prospective tenants is a black man (played by Carl Lumbly, who doesn’t have much of a role here but kicked all kinds of ass as Dixon on Alias), and he assumes it’s a race issue when they’re a little uncomfortable with his financial situation. The movie goes out of their way to show the characters aren’t racist, which is probably good for the sake of sympathizing with them but bad because it leads to a too-convenient scene where he slips his application under the door…the night before some other tenants move in, and it inevitably gets trampled and discarded by a mover.

I’m not sure if it would have made a better movie if they had denied Lumbly because he was black, or hell, even if they had found another legitimate reason to deny him. I guess it would have given the story a “they had it coming” vibe that they probably wanted to avoid. I’m a big fan of ironies like that, though. Nonetheless, it’s pretty amazing the movie even got mad — there’s so much potential for it to go wrong. In order for the story to work, they have to be wealthy enough to afford a huge house with some minor paperwork-fudging but also poor enough that they’d lose the house if they couldn’t rent to tenants. Obviously, the size of the house matters — if they’re poor and all they can afford is a little saltine box in the suburbs, they won’t be able to rent rooms or convert chunks of it into apartments. (The movie doesn’t go into detail on how they can afford all this.)

The plot works like this: Michael Keaton shows up as a slick businessman who impresses Modine by driving a Porsche, talking big, and flashing wads of cash. We already know he’s shady because a scene that plays over the opening credits shows him in a weird apartment that’s empty except for a mattress, where he’s sexing up Beverly D’Angelo — but we don’t know why he’s shady. Based on the way he was looking around, and his apparent fixation on the bathroom, I thought Keaton was some kind of thief who somehow knew the house was loaded with money or valuables. I don’t know if they did that on purpose, but it made even more sense when Keaton’s first act of craziness involves refusing to open the door as his drilled and sawed and did all kinds of mysterious, unseen work in the apartment. When the door finally opens, it’s not Keaton — he has a creepy assistant, again leading to the theory that he’s a low-life criminal.

Turns out, his plans are even bigger. First, he uses the noise to drive out the other tenants. All the while, he hasn’t paid Modine a dime. Neither Modine nor Griffith have a clue what’s happening, and if Modine didn’t keep losing logic to rage, he’d be able to rationalize — where’d the 911 call come from? Keaton’s apartment? Yet the guy on the phone sounded very calm? It’s easy to consider something like that a flaw, but in this case it worked for me because it was grounded in Modine’s primary character flaw — that he’d rather yell at him and get into a fistfight than figure out the right way to handle him.

The cop who interrupts their scuffle explains to Modine that the tenant has all the power here, so he needs to talk to an attorney. He does, and she’s played by Jackie from Roseanne! I’m guessing this took place while she was actually filming Roseanne, because she has a very small role and has that same long, stringy hair Jackie had during the second and third seasons. (Usually when I see Laurie Metcalf in movies from this era, she does some kind of transformation to distance herself from Jackie.) It’s around this time that we get to the real heart of the movie: tenants have a shitload of rights that they can very, very easily abuse. It’s kind of weird to see a movie that sympathizes with the landlords and not the tenants, and again, that’s why it’s so surprising that this got made.

The rest of the movie gets really weird, as we discover (thanks to Modine sneaking under the house at a convenient time) Keaton’s plan all along is to make them not only lose the house — he wants it to escalate to a point where he can sue them and win their house. This is how he makes his living. Even though he discovers this, Modine continues to get taken in by Keaton’s passive antagonization. This results in him getting a major ass-beating and a couple of bullets.

While Modine is stuck recuperating, Metcalf’s eviction finally goes through and Keaton is forced out. Griffith discovers he destroyed the whole place — both trashing it and stealing all the appliances, including the toilet. (This is where Lumbly briefly reenters the story, in a meaningless scene where we learn he’s a police lieutenant. He says, “I bet you’re wishing you’d rented to the black man.” Griffith confidently says, “You never returned an application.” Lumbly says, “Uh-huh,” all sarcastic-like. That about sums it up. Like with the 911 call, neither of them take the time to think things through: gee, maybe Griffith lost the application; gee, maybe shoving it under the door in the middle of the night wasn’t the best way to do things. I mean, this is why people have mailboxes, right?)

I have a problem with what happens next. Certain events in the movie strike me as convenient, like the way Modine just happens to slither under the house to find out what Keaton’s up to just when he and his partner start to fight about it, so he finds out everything. But that works for me, under the guise of “time compression” — it’s unlikely that the first and only time Modine attempts to eavesdrop would result in such important, useful information, but that’s how movies work. If they show him trying to eavesdrop repeatedly, not hearing anything interesting, trying again later, it would be more realistic, but it would screw up the pacing. But the big twist, which leads us into the third act, doesn’t have a speck of plausibility to it.

Well, maybe a speck — once we learn more about Keaton, we learn the importance of family. Maybe it shouldn’t surprise me that the only thing he leaves behind is a childhood photograph that just happens to have his full, real name written on the back. But, again, if family’s so important to him — why did he leave it behind? Based on the briefcase o’ backstory Griffith later finds, it becomes evident that Keaton’s been doing this trick for decades, and we soon discover he does this to support his family. That tells me two things: (1) he would have some kind of old, nostalgic picture, and (2) he’s not that sloppy.

However, without this slip-up, we’d have no third act. Once she learns his real name, Griffith does an exceptional job of tracking him down — so good, in fact, that her character might make a decent living as a private investigator. This, too, is hard to believe, but it’s also the most intriguing and satisfying part of the movie. Not only does she uncover who Keaton really is — she gets her revenge.

I don’t know what to say. Despite the convenient moments and the implausibilities (especially finding the photograph), I enjoyed it. I’d like to know how much this changed as it went through the studio wringer, though. The stuff with Lumbly feels tacked-on, but it also feels like maybe the script was rewritten and rewritten until the racial angst was downplayed to the point of meaninglessness. On the other hand, it might have come so late in the game that Pyne didn’t have time to fully explore the possibilities of this character or the racial undercurrents in the story.

I’d also like to consider a more interesting method of discovering Keaton’s true identity. I honestly don’t have a clue of how to do it in a way that would be less convenient. If he hadn’t stolen all the appliances, I would’ve suggested maybe hitting REDIAL on his phone and seeing who answered, but if he left everything but the phone that’d be just as convenient (even though phones are cheap). Maybe she could have discovered the picture, but before he left. I don’t know — that would ruin the shock of the moment we discover what he’s done to the apartment.

So you can see why they stuck with this twist — it doesn’t exactly work, but I’m hard pressed to think of something better.

Posted by Stan on April 21, 2008 3:19 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)

April 15, 2008

Fahrenheit 451: The Book Is Now the Movie!

I’ve loved Ray Bradbury since my misspent youth. In fact, there was a very long period where I’d never actually sit down and read a book unless it was one he wrote. Despite this, I’ve always kinda hated Fahrenheit 451. The ideas and themes, while admirable, don’t justify the plot holes and and overwrought heavy-handedness. I guess my biggest problem, from the first time I read it*, is with the timeline. We’re to believe it takes places approximately 200 years in the future, and it’s strongly implied that the switch over from firemen who put out fires to firemen who burn is in the distant past — so long ago that the idea of firemen putting out fires is little more than a rumor. So, here’s a silly question: why does these people know how to read? If all books are outlawed, why teach them to read?

I’m annoyed that I can’t remember my other complaints, and that even after watching François Truffaut’s 1966 film version, I can’t recall them. Truffaut’s film, which I’ve just seen for the first time, has some key differences from the novel — some better, some worse — but unfortunately, it shares with the book the crappy “why do these people know how to read?” plot hole.

I guess the biggest difference is the incorporation of Clarisse (Julie Christie**) into more of the story. Her actions in the novel replace other characters’, and there’s a whole creepy, added section involving a school where she’s branded as something akin to a traitor after getting fired for (one assumes) her radical ideas. I didn’t hate this change, but I didn’t like it, either. Her mysterious disappearance in the book was effectively creepy, so having her become something of a love interest felt too easy. I seem to recall the character being much younger in the book, and Montag wasn’t in love with her so much as fascinated by the questions she asked. That’s a more interesting dynamic to the relationship than kind of a blasé “Montag thinks she’s hot so he starts reading books” dynamic.

Another huge change is the ending, which the film vastly improves. You want goofy, graceless symbolism? Try Bradbury’s novel, where the city he just fled is destroyed before his eyes and Montag starts to remember quotations from the Bible. Subtle, huh? I much preferred the film’s more poetic idea that each of the people in the little book refugee shantytown has selected a book to commit to memory, thus becoming the books. It’s actually kind of a subtle opposite to Linda’s obsession with her “family” on the television — while Linda strives to become the TV show, these people strive to become the book. It’s a little less obvious than the “ignorant, godless people were too busy watching TV to notice there’s a war going on” ending Bradbury chose.

I know I’m crazy for feeling this way, but I find there’s nothing creepier than an old, outdated glimpse into the future. It makes me think of alternate universes and such — if the ’60s had kept on going, this is what the future would have looked like. Movies like this one, Logan’s Run, even the Mad Max movies, in many ways, wear the period of their making on their sleeves, and it terrifies me even though I enjoy the movies. Much as I hate George Lucas for not letting me own the real trilogy on DVD***, I give him credit for creating a futuristic world that isn’t overwhelmed by garish ’70s-ness. Unlike, say, the Star Wars Holiday Special. I guess maybe I should credit this more to production designer John Barry than to Lucas himself. Fuck Lucas, man! The prequels sucked. Suuuucked.

Okay, I’m getting off-topic here. One other complaint about the film is the remarkable quality and condition of the books everyone keeps reading. It’s nitpicky, I know, but it bugged me to see mostly pristine copies of books getting tossed around in a future world where nobody reads. Where are these books coming from? The book hints at pirate printing presses, which is fine, but would they really bother with hardcover binding and glossy, full-color dust-jackets? Wouldn’t you be more likely to find a bunch of pulpy sheets of paper tied together with some string? Or, if you did find a real book, wouldn’t it be in horrible condition? I had a paperback copy of All the President’s Men from 1975 whose spine split in half the last time I tried to open it; I had to go and get a new copy. So, yeah, it’s a little difficult to believe pristine books would survive into the dystopia.

In the interest of fairness, here’s another switch I like: in the novel, the Captain humiliates Montag in front of a fireman card game to explain, in great detail, about a dream he had in which Montag spouted off book nonsense, and the Captain himself responded to each with quotations from books — thus showing their meaninglessness. In the movie version of this scene, Montag and the Captain are alone, in the attic library of an old woman who looks uncomfortably like Tom Bosley, and the Captain makes similar observations without going on and on with quotations and hypothetical statements from his alleged dream version of Montag.

I’d like to close by pointing out some irony. Bradbury has said repeatedly that the book is not about censorship, fascism, or anything truly political (Truffaut must not have gotten that memo); in fact, he wrote a book about how the then-new medium of television makes people stop caring about literature and would, at some point, make us stop caring about facts altogether. I don’t disagree with the sentiment (you can’t if you’ve watched any cable news channel for more than 30 seconds), but it’s hard not to point out that he personally worked on a TV anthology series, Ray Bradbury Theater, that converted many of his short stories into 30-minute episodes. Is this the pot calling the kettle black, or did he just realize 30 years later that money is awesome?

*Yes, I’ve read it four times, hoping each time that it’d improve with age. It hasn’t, and in fact, the most recent paperback version I read has an essay by Ray Bradbury, written 50 years after the novel’s original publication. I thought, “Finally, I can get some insight from the man himself on why he’d insert all these crazy plot holes when he’s normally such a careful writer.” Instead, he quotes extensively from a stageplay version he also wrote, which opens up yet another plot hole by showing the Captain having an extensive library of books. I guess he’s going after the same idea as the computer in “I Have No Mouth, But I Must Scream” by Harlan Ellison: by keeping them around, he can remember why he hates them to begin with. Still, I think he could do that with no more than a dozen. A full library, powerful image that it may be, makes no sense.

**Christie also plays Montag’s wife, known as Linda in the film (Mildred in the novel). Though it’s an exceptional dual performance, it’s kind of dunderheaded and obvious in terms of symbolism, so put that under the the column of changes I didn’t like.

***A version of the Star Wars trilogy with the original version intact was released, but it contained comically inferior, low-resolution and low-bitrate versions taken directly from old Laserdisc releases. Waste of money and an embarrassing way to treat a classic movie trilogy. Even more embarrassing than digitally inserting Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen.

Posted by Stan on April 15, 2008 5:50 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)

April 9, 2008

A Mild Defense of ‘On Deadly Ground’

I promise I won’t go in-depth on any other Seagal movies. Ever. They’re fun, better than I ever imagined, but I think all the in-depth analysis needed has been covered in the Seagalogy book I’m reviewing.

As I mentioned, I’ve watched more Seagal movies than any sane man should, in chronological order from his screen debut in Above the Law through his directorial debut, On Deadly Ground. I plan to continue with more, but I’m pausing to catch my breath and remark on what’s regarded as Seagal’s most laughable movie.

First, a clarification for folks who don’t know much about Seagal (I didn’t know any of this until I started watching these movies a few days ago). He looks like another meathead action star, and in many ways he is, but he also elected to take the Stallone approach, demanding creative control early and often. Except, unlike Stallone, he doesn’t steal other people’s screenplays and credited himself with writing them. Seagal has done largely uncredited writing work on every movie he’s starred in, giving the writers credit for forming his strange but awesome ideological beliefs into a story that’s often coherent. He also has producing credits on every movie he’s starred in. Not executive producer, associate producer, or co-producer — the elusive produced by credit, meaning he actually had more authority over the movies than your average star.

With the surprise success of Under Siege, Seagal took it up a notch, holding Warner Brothers’ sequel hostage like so many ex-CIA terrorists…unless they gave him the opportunity to direct. The product was On Deadly Ground, a savagely anti-oil, anti-big-business, anti-government, pro-environment, pro-Native American rights, pro-animal movie that combines the strangest quirks of Seagal’s personality with huge explosions. Vern, Ain’t It Cool News reviewer and the author of Seagalogy, calls On Deadly Ground “the essence of Seagalogy,” and he’s absolutely right.

Calling it “good” would damage what little credibility I have as a critic, but I look at it like a guy who has a lot of good-intentioned things to say, but he picks the absolute wrong way to say them. Because he’s Steven Seagal, action star, and he knows what his audience expects: action, and lots of it. Would they mind if he incorporated a bit of his political philosophy into it? Probably not, because his five previous movies were loaded with dark subplots about political and police corruption. But he went way over the top this time.

The story goes like this: Forrest Taft (Steven Seagal) is a well-known and well-respected…oil guy. Somehow, he makes $350,000 per year, shares Thai hookers with his boss (played awesomely by Michael Caine), and has made his way into the upper echelon of the Aegis Oil Company because he’s real good at putting out fires. Seriously, the introduction to his character involves him blowing the shit out of an oil rig (featuring an excellent shot of flames engulfing the entire frame as Seagal and Caine stand there looking like bad-asses), and that appears to be his entire job. In an unusual use of crowd looping, Seagal-the-director tosses in clear feedback from workers on the rig, all of whom applaud Taft’s arrival on the scene: he’ll take care of this fire. What else does he do to earn all that money?

At the very least, we get a nice implication of Taft’s history in the oil business — he’s more at home with the blue-collar workers in the field than he is with stuffed-shirts like Caine, John C. McGinley, and Shari Shattuck. Everyone likes him, even though he essentially sold them out to make more money and become some kind of oil mercenary, I guess. Literally the second scene in the movie is a long barfight that manages to combine kick-ass action, character development, and several plot points — surprisingly well-written and well-choreographed. The barfight also includes film’s strangest ending to a barfight ass-kicking scene: Seagal challenges “Big Mike” (Mike Starr — you’d know him if you saw him) to a game of Slaps (known in some quarters as Bitchslap). For those who haven’t played it, it goes like this: one person holds his hands out, palms up. The other puts his hands on top of them, and the first guy tries to maneuver his hands around to slap the opponent before he can pull away. If you get slapped, the slapper gets to punch you. In a Seagal movie, he gets to break your nose and punch you so hard in the chest you vomit.

So Big Mike, broken and bloodied, vomit drying on his lips, loses the game in spectacular fashion. Seagal asks him, “What does it take to change the essence of a man?” Big Mike, breaking down in tears, says, “I need time to change.” Seagal nods, suddenly looking depressed, and says, “I do, too. I do, too.” Then he gently puts a hand on Big Mike’s shoulder before leaving the bar. And…scene.

And…what the fuck was that? Call it stupid if you will, but I’ve never seen a more bizarre or interesting barfight scene ever, and I’ve watched a shitload of westerns. At first I thought they were implying he was half-Indian, just like Billy Jack, but then a tribal chief confuses him with a bear and he doesn’t have any knowledge of the Inuit language or culture, so it seems pretty unlikely. Either way, I do think that scene was supposed to tell us that he’ll use violence as a…well, basically a first resort, but after he wins, he will Dr. Phil them into submission. Big Mike won’t be messing with anybody ever again.

The actual plot progresses from here: Aegis Oil is using inferior…things (blowout valves, I think they were) because a shipment was delayed. If they don’t get their mythical Aegis-One station online before a certain deadline, mineral rights revert back to the damn Injuns. Michael Caine won’t let that happen, even if it means blowing up Aegis-One. It really is a short-sighted plan: he knows the things won’t work, he knows the result will be a catastrophic explosion that will destroy the entire site (which consequently means they will miss they’re drilling deadline…right?!), but he doesn’t care about the safety of the workers or — more importantly — the land and Natives living there. He’s Michael Caine, the guy who screams at innocent makeup ladies for complimenting him. (Granted, I’d yell at them, too, if I got a look at the ridiculous dye job they gave him for this movie.)

So Seagal’s left with no choice: he runs away. More accurately, in the process of running away he gets caught in a bizarre trap, leaving him injured. An Inuit tribe nurses him back to health, and he goes on a vision quest. Really, this is a strange subplot for an action movie. It takes up a great deal of time. For at least 40 minutes, there’s a back-and-forth between Michael Caine cutting corners and Seagal hallucinating about naked chicks and fighting bears. No real action (the bear fight is impressive because Seagal really tackles Bart the Bear, but the “fight” is very, very short, possibly because bears don’t like being tackled), just sweaty vision questing.

Eventually, the vision quest leads Seagal to go back and fight for what’s right — with environmental terrorism. Yes, the overall message of this movie is that if you care about the environment and don’t want Big Oil crushing everything in its path, you need to commit acts of environmental terrorism. That’s not something you usually see in this kind of movie.

The end of the movie contains a fairly long, detailed monologue intercut with stock footage of animals, environmental protests, and tribal dances. Here’s where I really want to rush to the defense of the movie. Because right or wrong, misguided or not, he’s impassioned. He doesn’t have a lot of range as an actor — mostly veering between intense concentration and gadabout sarcasm — but in these final scenes he really sells the speech. Because he isn’t acting — he believes every word he’s saying. Here’s a transcription of the speech, which originally ran for 11 minutes (test audiences found it dull and preachy):

I’d like to start out by saying, thank you to all the brothers and sisters that have come here today representing this cause. I have been asked by Mr. Itok and the tribal council to speak to you and the members of the Press about the injustice that has been brought against us by some Government Officials and Big Business. How many of you out there have heard of alternative engines? Engines that can run on anything from alcohol to garbage or water. Or carburetors that can get hundreds of miles to the gallon. Or electric or magnetic engines, that can practically run forever. You don’t know about them because if they were to come into use, they’d put the oil companies out of b