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Movie Round-Up: October 23rd, 2009

Reviews

Saw VI:

Another October, another Saw film.  I saw the first one and liked it.  I even saw the second.  I’ve yet to see the third, fourth, or fifth, so I clearly can’t see number six in the theater.  Also, I’m not a big fan of the uber-gore torture films.  The only interest I have in the Saw series at this point is the base plot and how they tie together.  I can get that from Wikipedia.

Amelia:

I didn’t get a chance to see a screening of this one, but it interests me in the same way that all movies about historical people do.  The cast looks great, and while I won’t be running off to see this at the theater, I’ll be eagerly awaiting the release on DVD so I can rent it.

Cirque du Freak – The Vampire’s Assistant:

Oh great… another vampire movie.  At least its not Twilight, which I finally saw and thought was awful.  But this movie has potential.  First, it doesn’t take itself too seriously, so you shouldn’t either.  The actors are all hamming it up pretty well, so you should join them as you romp through this tale together.  Its fun, maybe not worth full price, but probably worth a matinee or early bird showing.  I just hope that if the series continues it remains this light and fun.

Astro Boy:

The character has been around for over 50 years, and while I had seen the image now and then I have never read any of the manga or other comics or seen any of the TV shows or movies.  Going in to this film, all I knew was “Astro Boy is a robot.”  So the direction the movie took was quite startling to me.  Toby, the son of Dr. Tenma, is killed in a horrible accident, and the doctor, being a grieving robotics genius, builds himself a replacement son using the latest technology and the boy’s DNA.  Tenma quickly learns that this robot is not actually his son, and that having the boy-bot around is just a painful reminder of his loss.  The boy runs away, then is hunted, and eventually winds up on the surface below… oh, did I forget to mention they all lived in a floating utopia called Metro City?  Yeah, and the world below them is little more than where they dump their garbage, at least that’s what they think.  Astro finds new friends among the surface dwellers, but he won’t be safe for long as the President of Metro City is looking for the power source that is running the boy robot.  I thought the animation of this film was superb, and the voice acting was great, but really it is the story that knocks this movie out of the park.  I found myself at the edge of my seat, drawn in to this world and caring about Astro Boy.  Not since The Iron Giant have I cared so much about a robot, and while Astro Boy isn’t quite up to that level of greatness, it is great film.  Go see it.

The Graveyard Book

Reviews

Quite often, books fall into one of two traps.  The first is “everything happens all at once”, this is because they want to tell a story and they want to tell you all of the story, but they don’t want to drag it out over years, so instead everything happens in a short period of time.  A normal person is suddenly thrown into a mess and over the course of a few days the world is saved.  The second is “all the boring parts too”, this being where in order to tell the whole story they tell you the whole story, years of a character’s life when large chunks of it are irrelevant.

Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book is how you tell a long story without falling into either trap.  This is the story of Nobody Owens, a boy who loses his family and grows up in a graveyard.  His tale is told almost as a collection of short stories rather than as one long novel, but there is a common thread throughout and keeps it from being just a collection of shorts.  Like a stone across the water, we skip through Bod’s life as he has encounters and experiences that shape him, all the while hiding from the world and the man who might still be looking to kill him.

This book was a fantastic read, and perfect for the month of October and the Halloween season.  I enjoyed it thoroughly and can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t.

Movie Round-Up: October 16th, 2009

Reviews

Where The Wild Things Are:

Lots of people are familiar with the children’s book by Maurice Sendak and so there was much excitement and anticipation surrounding this movie.  The first thing you should do is remember how little story there is in the book.  In case you have forgotten, its about a boy who throws a tantrum and is sent to bed without dinner who then goes on a magical adventure with the Wild Things where they make him king and have a rumpus until the boy decides to go home, and after returning he finds dinner waiting for him.  It really isn’t the sort of thing you’d expect to be made into a full blown hour and a half movie.  Considering what little there is in the source material, Spike Jonze does a pretty fantastic job of turning it into a movie.  He does capture the style of the art, the Wild Things themselves, and the island they call home.  But the story here, which much expands upon the ten sentences of the original, is about a boy who may or may not have behavioral problems.  For sure he does based on his lashing out (wrecking his sister’s room and biting his mother), and we are only given peaks at the possible causes (a sister who doesn’t want him around, a single mother who works hard and is dating) but nothing concrete is ever said.  When Max runs off into the world of the Wild Things its obvious, to me at least, that each of the Things is an aspect of Max’s own personality, his feelings.  They play, they fight, they talk, and Max does eventually come home and his mom feeds him dinner.  I would caution people who want to take their kids to see this.  Go early when your kid has energy, because when I saw this at 6pm, the movie just wasn’t colorful or exciting enough to hold the attention of the fifty or so kids in attendance.  It makes for a good “art house” style film, but I think most kids are going to be bored.

The Stepfather:

Yeah… this movie isn’t exactly going to be breaking any new ground.  Guy is a psychopath who likes to marry women with kids, then kill them.  New step son gets suspicious.  Stuff happens.  You’ve seen this movie before and you will see this movie again.  Why?  Because it is fun!  But fun as it is, it is also not really worth $10 to see.  Wait for DVD.

Paranormal Activity:

If maniacal family members and overt scares aren’t your thing, consider going to see a late showing of Paranormal Activity instead.  I’m not going to blow smoke here.  This is not the scariest movie ever made, and anyone who has told you otherwise is lying to you.  However, the style and production of the film lend it to a level of creepiness that might get to you if you are the sort of person who is afraid of the dark.  It is a slow building film, similar to The Blair Witch Project, but in my opinion much better (and less shaky camera).  If you haven’t heard anything about this movie, don’t go looking, just go see it… this is one case where knowing nothing makes the movie better.

Black Dynamite:

Years ago, I’m Gonna Git You Sucka parodied the 70’s blaxploitation films by bringing it into the (then) modern era and poking fun at the common elements most of them shared.  Black Dynamite does the same, but with a decidedly different approach.  The production values make the film look more like a lost 70’s film, and their skewering of the genre is as much aimed at the construction of those films (the screenplay, the acting, the sets, the use of stock footage) as it is the tropes they all shared.  I honestly have not laughed this much or this hard at the theater in a long time.  If you can handle the language, sex and 70’s as well as the absurdities of the plot, this movie is well worth the price of admission.

Law Abiding Citizen:

The only release this week I haven’t seen a screening of is the one I want to see the most.  Gerard Butler plays a guy who feels his justice was undermined by the DA (Jamie Foxx) who offered one of the men who killed his family a deal.  It turns out he isn’t just any regular schmo but some super black ops type mega spy assassin dude who is going to get his revenge on the men who did the crime and the system that didn’t punish them to his satisfaction.  I may have mentioned before that I think I’d pay to listen to Gerard Butler read a phone book… damn I’d kill to have that accent.  Plus, I generally like every movie he’s done.  And hey, I saw the preview, stuff blows up, and there’s nothin’ wrong with that.

After The Climax

Gaming

bort.rose.150I recently finished reading a book that had a good thirty or more pages after the climactic fight scene.  It shook out the ramifications of the fight over a few encounters on a couple different days and let you know the status of all the people involved who had survived and even gave a hint at the direction future books might take without actually dangling a cliffhanger on the reader.  Movies are often like this too.  The climax hits and then you get anywhere from five to twenty minutes of tying up the story and letting you know what the climax means to the world this story has inhabited.

Games aren’t often like that.  Many games practically end with the climax.  Boss monster dies, “You win!!” flashes on the screen and the credits roll.  Other times, games slide in a movie ending, a pre-rendered cut scene that ties up the story and maybe lets you know what the climax means to the world the game took place in.  But that is sort of a cop-out.  That isn’t really a game ending, its a movie ending tacked on to a game.

This months Round Table tasks us…

How can the denouement be incorporated into gameplay? In literary forms, it is most often the events that take place after the plot’s climax that form your lasting opinion of the story. A well constructed denouement acts almost as a payoff, where protagonists and antagonists alike realize and adjust to the consequences of their actions. Serial media often ignored the denouement in favor of the cliffhanger, in order to entice viewers to return. Television has further diluted the denouement by turning it into a quick resolution that tidily fits into the time after the final commercial break.

But the denouement is most neglected in video games where it is often relegated to a short congratulatory cut scene, or at most–a slide show of consequences. This month’s topic challenges you to explore how the denouement can be expressed as gameplay.

So, how can the denouement be expressed through game play?

The simplest answer is just to continue the game mechanics into an interactive version of the cut scene.  If the game included NPCs throughout that you would talk to or exchange items with, continue that.  After the fight, put the player back in the game and make them take the sword they took off the demon lord back to the town and see it destroyed (try, of course, to avoid cramming in another boss battle or cliffhanger by making a town elder or someone grab the sword and fight you or run off with it).

A slight twist on that is to leave the actual end of the game up to the player.  Maybe during the game several people expressed interest in the sword, either for destroying or using, and let the player take it to whom he thinks deserves it most, let them pick the ending they want to see.  After the final boss battle, let the player go finish up some quests or other elements that give them story pieces concerning their actions and the other characters in the game world.

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance did this in a way.  The game could be completed without actually winning every level and side quest, and one level in particular required you to choose between two characters which one to save.  While the end of the game was nothing more than a series of cut scenes, it was a series that was built on the actions you did or did not take throughout the game.  The denouement of the game changed depending on the player’s performance.  The only failure here is that during the playing of the game, the player has no idea that this denouement will happen, they just play through so the choices they make don’t have the weight they might because the player isn’t really aware those choices are going to matter.

In the future, I’d love to see more games go at least as far as Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, but would really love it to see them go further and let me explore and control the end of the game a bit more.  The worst thing I think that could happen is to have a single player game climax and then roll into an MMO where you’ll meet up with other players who experienced the same single player game, where each of you was the hero and fought alone against the same bad guy boss.  That, in my opinion, would just render the entire single player game story irrelevant.  I suppose that’s why I tend to dislike most MMO tutorials.

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Thirty-five and One Thousand

Random Thoughts

35… Well, I haven’t had a midlife crisis yet, so I’ve got that going for me…

Today is my birthday… again… so, lets look back at “Thirty-four” and see how I did.

I got my work ethic back, I suppose.  I have a new job, though it did take a few too many months to get one (Thanks Economy! You suck!), and I enjoy it.  I’m back to working for a small company, so gone are all the retarded hour long meetings where nothing gets done but settling on who to blame for why nothing got done from the previous meeting.  We have projects, we do them, and then they are done.  Ahh… the sweet life.

Over the past year, I got myself under two hundred pounds, which is pretty nice.  But I’ve kinda plateaued.  I just haven’t found anything yet to motivate me to take it further.  Wii Fit Plus showed up on the doorstep this week and it promises to fix the major issue I had with the original, that of having to stop between every exercise, so we will see how that goes.  I’m also still struggling with getting my diet under control.  The main issue is that I’m hungry all the time, and I need to learn to ignore it.

And as for projects around the house… yep… still need doing, but again, I’m not going anywhere.

I did try the NaNoWriMo as well as Script Frenzy, but I finished neither.  The attempts, however, were important and should lead to better participation this time around.

That explains “Thirty-five”, now for the “One Thousand”.

This marks my one thousandth entry on this blog.  Kinda neat that it happened today.  Do you believe in signs or omens?  Sometimes I think I do, and sometimes I don’t… but I can’t help but wonder if this means something.  Its not exactly a pile of mashed potatoes that looks like the Devil’s Tower, but it is what it is.

Anyway.  This is my thirty-fifth birthday.  This is my one thousandth post.  Enjoy!

The Screening Secret Handshake

Random Thoughts

Once upon a time, I thought that in order to see an advance screening of a movie certain things had to occur.  A) You had to live in LA/Hollywood.  Or 2) You had to know someone on the inside.  Or D) You had to be lucky.

In my younger days, I’d only ever seen “Stay & See” screenings.  That’s where you’d pay to see one movie and then be allowed to stay and see a screening of a not yet released film, or you’d pay to see a screening of a soon to be released film and then get to stay and see some movie that’s already been out a couple of weeks.  The last of these I went to was in 1993, and it was Son In Law (yeah, the Pauly Shore movie) coupled with either Life With Mikey or For Love Or Money (both Michael J. Fox movies).  I can’t remember which was the screening and which was the released film.  But it doesn’t matter.  Anyway, a few years ago, I finally realized number 2 from above and met someone on the inside, someone who worked for a movie promotion company.  Through them I got to see a few movies, but there were times they couldn’t get passes, or couldn’t get enough for everyone.  But at some of these screenings, I met people who let me know that while number 2 was good, D was better and you could minimize the luck part of the equation.

People have asked me, in person, in email and on message board, “How do you to see so many movie screenings?”  Partly because I just want to, and partly because of the FTC ruling, I’ll tell you.  The answer is… I Googled.  Obviously, I don’t use Google to find passes anymore, but it is where I started.  “free screenings” was what I searched for and it lead me to a number of really awful websites and blogs, but by doing the legwork and looking through many of those facades, I found a few places, legitimate places, to acquire passes to free movie screenings.

Before I go on, keep in mind that I live in Atlanta, and these sites are the ones that best service me as someone who lives in Atlanta.  If you Google and search yourself, you can probably find other sites that better service where you live.

Further, if you do get passes to movie screenings, remember, you are a guest and are getting to see a movie for free.  So, don’t be an asshole.  Always put your phone on silent, don’t answer it, don’t text.  Don’t talk during the movies.  Don’t cut in line.  Don’t let twenty friends cut in line with you in front of the people behind you who managed to get there on time (you know, letting one or two people join you in line is fine, but when you have to ask the line to move back and make room, you’ve gone overboard).  Be kind, be courteous, and enjoy your free movie.

That said…

My current favorite place is Shakefire.  They do reviews for movies, music, TV and video games.  They also have columnists who occasionally talk about other stuff.  They have a community built around their forums.  And of course, they give out passes for movie screenings.  You have to join their site to have a chance, and they seem to favor people who participate in the forums over people who are just there to leech passes.  But hey, if you are there for the passes, the least you can do is go post about movies you’ve seen and what you thought.  The whole point of screenings is to get the word out anyway, so, get the word out.

CHUD is another place on the net for reviews and such, and they also give out passes and do other contests, but you’ll have to work a little more for these as they usually ask a question or two you need to answer in order to enter.

Film Metro is a good site for screenings, but they don’t give them out.  Instead you have to keep an eye out for when they become available and claim them.  Sometimes you get to know when, sometimes it just happens.

Another big player is GoFoBo.  This is a site actually run by a couple of movie promotion companies.  With them, sometimes screening just open up and you can grab a pass or two.  Mostly, however, you need a reservation code.  Codes are given to various websites or radio stations or newspapers or other outlets as part of promotions intended to drive traffic.  People used to post GoFoBo codes all over the internet, but GoFoBo has been cracking down lately and convincing people to post links to the partner websites instead.  Finding links for these partners is sort of hit and miss searching, but one place that seems to get a steady flow of them is this thread over at FatWallet.  The FatWallet thread is also a good place to find out which radio stations or other websites in your area give out movie passes.  That link will always take you to the last post in the thread, so you may have to read back to see anything recent you may have missed.  Do them a favor, and make sure you actually visit partner sites and look around, the codes are meant to drive traffic, and a couple minutes of your time is worth the free movie pass you just got.  GoFoBo also runs groups on Facebook, just search there for screenings or gofobo.

Also don’t forget to check out local publications like Creative Loafing or other print media who often have pass pickups at their offices, or will post ads about pass pickups at local businesses.

Anyway, there you have it.  I check those sites about once a day, maybe twice, and in general I end up seeing a screening a week (though sometimes there are weeks with none, and sometimes there are weeks with three or four or more).  To me, the key here is that if you go to see screenings, make sure you tell people about the movies you saw.  Tell friends, post on message boards, write a blog.  The screenings are meant to get the word out about the movie, so, get the word out.

Movie Round-Up: October 9th, 2009

Reviews

This is going to be short…

Couples Retreat:

The only movie opening this weekend and I did not get a chance to see a screening.  I’ve seen the trailer, and it looks like it might be funny, but there is no way I’d spend $10 to go see this in the theater.  But the moment it drops on DVD or Netflix, I’m sure I’ll see it.

The Value of Bad Press

Gaming

I first heard about it back in June.  But apparently it has recently been ruled on by the FTC that bloggers must disclose when they get free stuff.  Personally, I’ve never gotten a free game, and while I’ve gotten free movie passes they’ve never been sent to me specifically for review, I obtain them in other ways (more on that tomorrow).  But, other bloggers do get free games sometimes, or at least offers of free games, so there has been some discussion on the subject.

Being that free games are often sent out by marketing departments, and the goal of marketing departments is to try and get favorable review out in the wild where potential buyers can see them, the concern is that bloggers given free games might give a undeserved favorable review in order to continue getting free games.  Sadly, in part, this is why most game review magazines and sites tend to use the “7 to 9” scale of rating, reserving 10’s for truly astounding games and anything less than 7 for unmitigated pieces of crap, letting even a mildly entertaining game with numerous flaws still get a 7 out of 10.  Of course, the reality is that these places are actually reviewing on a 5 point scale: 6 or less, 7, 8, 9, and 10.  So getting a 7 there is kinda like getting a 2 out of 5.  Do you normally go see movies that get 2 out of 5 stars?

Now, while no game company really wants to get poor ratings, not all poor ratings are created equal.  Rather than trying to seek out favorable ratings, what they should be seeking is “fair” reviews.  By fair I simply mean that the game will be reviewed on its own merits, in detail, and then given a score intended to reflect the value of the game to that reviewer.  THEN companies should encourage people to read reviews instead of just viewing ratings.  Metacritic is the devil because it does the opposite, placing all the focus on the score and the reasons behind the score disappear.  The result is publishers pushing for higher ratings when what they should be pushing for is the abolishment of numerical ratings.  But players seem to demand “at a glance” ratings systems because its easier on them, even though in the end they are mostly being lied to.  Its all counter-intuitive and somehow self-reinforcing at the same time.

Personally, when I am trying to decide if I want to purchase something, I actually seek out poor reviews.  For example, on Amazon.com I may skim through the 5 star reviews, but I will read every single word of every 1 and 2 star review.  The reason is simple: people tend to more specifically describe their dislike of something than they do their like of something.  I’ve written about this before.  The main reason for this is that the only thing I can guarantee about a reviewer is that they are not me.

Take movie reviews for example.  Let’s say I was going to review Zombieland.  On a 10 point scale, I’d give the movie a 9, on a 5 star scale it would get a 4.5 or maybe even a 5 (I’m not a fan of the .5 in a rating scale).  But if you were looking for a movie to go see, the fact that I gave the movie a 9 out of 10 is less important than if you like zombie movies, gory movies, or comedies.  Even if you like zombie movies, Zombieland isn’t Dawn of the Dead, it is more like Shaun of the Dead, and that’s more important than my rating.  On the flip side, suppose I had given Zombieland a 2 out 10 and said, “This movie was just as dumb as Shaun of the Dead. If you liked that piece of crap, I guess you’ll like this too.”  And if you loved Shaun of the Dead, then despite my rating of a 2, you should probably see Zombieland.  When I get in to the idea of the value of bad press, well, I’ve already seen many dozens of reviews for Zombieland that were little more than “This was awesome! Must see!”  But all the negative reviews I’ve read have been very descriptive, and I think would actually be more helpful to people not sure about the film decide whether the film is something they’d enjoy or not.

In the end, though, I suppose I do agree with the FTC that people should disclose if they have gotten freebies, especially if they are going to comment on the value, like saying a game is or isn’t worth the $60 box price.  I’m not sure it should be a law with fines though.  At the same time, I don’t think people should discount a review just because the reviewer got a free copy, and I think marketing departments should push for quality reviews and not worry so much about just getting favorable ones.  They should reward reviewers who clearly spend time with the games and write well, not just those who blow smoke and tell them what they want to hear.

Here We Remain & What We Become

Reviews

After the devastation of volume 8 of The Walking Dead, I wondered where exactly the story would turn.  Here We Remain answers that as we follow Rick and his son on their own.  Of course, they don’t stay that way for long, and it turns out that not all of our old friends are dead.  But Rick still lost his wife and baby, and after all he’s been through it isn’t surprising that he might finally be going a little nuts.  We also meet some new people here, one of whom is a scientist who thinks he might be able to do something about all the damn zombies.

What We Become takes our group on the road to Washington D.C. where the new scientist friend says he needs to go.  Everyone is a little more frazzled and rattled having left the prison, left the ranch, and hit the road with many of them riding in the back of a truck.

Hands down, The Walking Dead is the best set of zombie stories I’ve ever read.  I continue looking forward to more.