The Darkness That Comes Before

A new series?! Weak! Here’s the upside, though: it’s only a trilogy and it’s already completed, so I’m neither likely to die waiting for the final book nor to forget what was going on with the overarching story before I reach the end. (I’m looking at y’all, Jordan, Martin, and Erikson.) I wonder why this is not a concern when I think about the graphic novel series I’ve been reading lately. Hmmm. Less time investment, I bet. I know that seems like a digression, but as Polonius said, the unexamined life is not worth living. I mean, he probably Shakespeared it up, though.

Anyway, this Prince of Nothing series is pretty cool so far. It’s got priests against wizards, wizards against an evil force from beyond space and time (well, something like that; it’s not entirely clear yet), emperors against popes, civilization against barbarians, prostitutes against, well, okay still that evil force from beyond space and time (and okay it’s only one prostitute, but still), and this one philosopher guy who can read faces like other people can read books against everyone in the whole world. And maybe also against his father who can do that same awesome manipulation and hitting arrows out of the air thing as the guy I mentioned in the first place. Oh, and according to prophecy, that guy (the son, I still mean) will be against the evil force from beyond space and time. But you had probably guessed that yourself.

So this wizard spy keeps showing up in time to discover all the odds and ends of how the world is on the verge of the Second Apocalypse. We like the wizard spy. He’s there in time to watch the pope guy (who we do not particularly like) declare a Holy War against the people to the south who are heathen and own our holy city, only we never really minded before, so that’s a little suspicious. And he’s there to figure out why the wizards would agree to ally themselves with the Holy War, despite that priests dislike wizards even more than heathens, if that’s possible. We don’t know why the pope is willing to invite them, I don’t think. And he and his girlfriend the prostitute are there to uncover the first signs of the evil force from beyond space and time (who we especially do not like, as they seem to be somewhat spidery plus they crawl out of otherwise perfectly normal people). And certainly he’s there when the philosopher guy (about whom we have not yet made up our minds, though he is clearly Cool) and the barbarian general (who we like, even though we suspect he would not particularly like us) arrive to save the day and get the plot rolling. He isn’t really there for anything to do with the emperor, but that’s okay because we don’t like him anyway.

Brutal world, where the good guys are by turns plagued with self-doubt or unenlightened self-interest, there are entirely too many guys who probably aren’t good at all even though they should be, and the bad guys pale in comparison to how bad the evil force from beyond space and time is, but if not for that would be pretty unpleasant in their own rights. But there’s still plenty of hope, in that the self-doubt is likely to be overcome and in that the whole point of the philosopher guy, aside from being a badass, is that he seems primed to bring enlightenment and justice and above all LIGHT to a world that really needs it.[1] I mean, unless the evil force from beyond space and time wins instead. Which, despite just how badass the philosopher guy is, I wouldn’t rule out. (To be clear, though, he’s not the hero, that’s the wizard spy. He’s just a foil against which to measure the wizard spy’s growth. So he has to be really cool for there to be something to aspire to. That seems reasonable, I think.)

[1] Hence (among other ways that it works) the title of book 1: The Darkness That Comes Before.

Hotel Dusk: Room 215

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I’m definitely liking the DS. It’s eminently portable, being pocket-sized even in jeans (if admittedly only just in that circumstance), yet it has good enough graphics to look really nice in the amount of screen real estate available. Plus, there are a lot of fun small games to play on it. It’s no wonder it’s selling so well, really. I played such a game in various bits of free time over the last few weeks. Hotel Dusk tells the story of a down and out ex-cop consumed by his quest for answers about the fateful day when he shot his turncoat partner. In his day job as a door-to-door salesman, he washes up at a shabby hotel in Los Angeles which holds all of the answers he seeks, and the answers for a few other people besides.

It’s a fun game, but having reached the end of it, I’m left with the conclusion that the best way to describe it is ‘not enough’. The side characters wandering the hotel (with the notable exceptions of bellhop with a criminal past Louie and little girl without a mother Melissa) just aren’t quite interesting or entertaining enough. Their stories don’t have quite enough depth, especially chick with a missing sister and who may or may not be a pre-Maxim model Iris and maid who is estranged from her son Rosa. The solved mystery, though itself reasonably compelling, doesn’t lead to an entirely satisfactory conclusion. The leaps of logic that you are required to make (and which sometimes can result in the game ending upon failure) waver between way too easy and choosing blindly. The puzzles to be solved are often fun, but sometimes result in frustration if you’re trying to solve them too early or if you’re trying to do the right thing but in the wrong way. (I maintain that a flathead screwdriver would be an easy tool to use to fix a partially unspooled cassette.)

That said, most of my complaints didn’t materialize until right at the end, when so much had seemed undone. The noir thing was pretty cool, and like I said, there were certainly genuinely compelling characters. And I liked the book aspect of it. There was a lot more reading than playing, but with a better story and better characters, I would be down with that. And the part where you hold the DS in book orientation and look back and forth as the characters speak and react to each other? That was just cool. Not cool enough to make up for the flaws in the game, but definitely cool enough to play through the next DS novel that comes out. It occurs to me that we are officially one step closer to the holodeck.

Vacancy

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Sometimes my ability to fall behind on reviews can be ascribed to laziness, sometimes to being excessively busy. This time, though? Sheer exhaustion. Well, and being excessively busy. Since I saw Vacancy, I’ve had one day of weekend followed by three more days of being at work. And I didn’t really get enough sleep on Sunday, much less the other days. On top of which, Monday and Tuesday were as busy as any days at work I’ve had here, with the added virtue of occurring back-to-back and did I mention on not enough sleep? My fake vacation cannot occur quickly enough. (Literally. If the place weren’t so understaffed with other people on vacation right now, I’d go ahead and take off tomorrow, lost money be damned.)

Speaking of bring trapped in a Sartreian room that has a snuff film running on loop in the corner[1], estranged married couple Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale set out to re-demonstrate a lesson we’ve all long since learned: don’t take a shortcut unless you want something bad to happen to your car in the middle of nowhere, don’t expect the stranger in the tiny town a mile or two from the middle of nowhere to actually have your best interests in mind, and don’t stay in hotels where the proprietor is funny-looking and you are the only guests. But it’s okay; these lessons are clichéd for a reason.

Because once they get into that vacant room, they start to realize just how much trouble they’re in. I mean, watching people in your room getting murdered on video has a way of putting those petty little snipes and dislikes and even deep-seated angers with one another into perspective. (Which is the difference between this and actual Sartre; his characters would have finished the conversation first, then worried about how to escape imminent bloody death on videotape. In a way, I’m the mildest bit disappointed now and wish I hadn’t though of the comparison to start with.) From there, it’s all cat-and-mouse tension that is never relieved for any longer than what is required for the audience to remember to breathe. At least one scene is genuinely disturbing, and another is pretty terrifying in a laudably subtle way. And one scene, well, simply doesn’t fit the movie. But as that’s my only complaint, I say good on them. It’s not like it’s the best movie you’ll see this year, or even this month, but it might well be the best dramatic thriller you’ll see this year. Unless that one with Halle Berry and Bruce Willis is good? I think I heard not, though. So, yeah, this one, then.

[1] I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right. I could probably complain to someone and get the channel changed. But the alternative is this weird propaganda loop, and after a while the screams provide their own cold, inhuman comfort. …sorry, got distracted there for a second.

Grindhouse (2007)

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So, a cool thing happened to me. While contemplating my upcoming trip to see Grindhouse last weekend, I figured out why this feature seems like it painted a giant target on my forehead right before the previews for it came out. (Or, put less like the way I would put something, it was totally aimed right at me.) See, there’s this place that I have mentioned from time to time called the Alamo Drafthouse. In addition to what is gradually becoming a standard practice of combining slightly overpriced food and alcohol into the movie-watching experience, they have made themselves into a movie-geek’s wet dream by gathering up all kinds of old forgotten reels from the 60s and 70s, throwing TV watching parties week after week for free admission, sing-along parties with themes as diverse as old school TV themes, Michael Jackson, boy bands, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and showing movies outdoors in appropriate settings. (Piranha at Aquarena Springs in San Marcos, Texas, where the climactic scene was filmed? Serenity in an old West ghost town? Chainsaw at the original Chainsaw house? Tell me that’s not just super-awesome. You will be wrong when you choose to do so.) Anyway, that’s a place in Austin, the Drafthouse. And it gathers together on a multi-weekly basis exactly the kind of person who would be thrilled by mocked-up grindhouse style movies such as Planet Terror (zombie invasion!) and Deathproof (carsploitation, with girls!) and gives them leave to laugh a lot and make fun and be rowdy and have a generally good time.

But then I remembered that Robert Rodriguez is from Austin and still lives there, and that Quentin Tarantino hangs out there constantly, and both of them will from time to time (at least once a year) host a film festival or a particular movie at the Drafthouse, with presentations, Q&A, the whole works. (Which is another awesome for film-geeks thing that the Drafthouse does, getting together actors and directors and stuff for a wide swathe of the movies they show. Such as the time I got to sit about 20 feet from Jewel Staite and just bask.) And so, of course (my theory goes) they see these people year after year, maybe drop in for shows just because without fanfare, and it must have occurred to them as they watched theater after theater be sold out that there might be a Thing here. So when people speculate that this movie was aimed right at me, well, my point is I kind of think it actually was. (And the opening shot of Deathproof being a driveby of the original theater on 4th Street cemented that opinion pretty firmly.)

Having mentioned the zombies and the carsploitation, there’s not a lot to add. You already know from reading this if you’re That Person like I am or not. But I will point out that there were multiple instance of spot-on comedic timing related to the way that movie theaters and reels actually worked at that kind of theater in those days, that each and every one of the mocked up trailers for fake grindhouse style movies is something that I would pay to see and am sad that I’ll never get a chance to, and that Quentin Tarantino kind of crossed a carsploitation flick with a Quentin Tarantino flick. There’s nothing wrong with how much the man loves to listen to other people recite his dialogue, but there were a couple of times when it felt out of place. On the bright side, it is really good dialogue on average, so out of place doesn’t automatically map onto a bad time.

Anyway, I know what I just said about the trailers being fake, but please, oh please, will someone make Werewolf Women of the SS? Please?

Dead Silence

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The immediate reactionary part of me will claim that I liked Dead Silence. It had a good creepy atmosphere, some really cool sound effects, disturbing-looking evil dolls, and a gruesomely vengeful spirit. But the other part of me that has been staring for hours now at the empty screen where this review will eventually be typed up seems to disagree. Because not being able to come up with something to say about a movie? Never a good sign.

So this guy has a wife, and while he’s down to the chinese place for take-out, she is murdered by means of her tongue being ripped out and her jaw being nearly removed. Although he immediately associates this event with the mysterious appearance of a ventriloquist’s dummy at his doorstep minutes before the murder and an old rhyme about an angry ghost from their hometown, detective Donnie Wahlberg is not convinced. And so the guy (whose name I’ve forgotten entirely) has to gradually unravel the mystery with the help of the local undertaker and his wife as well as the guy’s estranged father and his new stepmother, all while avoiding both the constant death being thrown at him by spirit and dolls and being taken into custody by detective Donnie, whose character I’m pretty sure has no relation to Bob Lee Swagger. Maybe if I remembered his name either (or really anyone’s besides the vengeful spirit chick, Mary Shaw), I could speak with more authority on this point.

But seriously, it was pretty cool, mostly due to the atmosphere, which was never chintzed upon. Why have a cemetary when you can have an overgrown cemetary that does not appear to have been cared for in decades? Why have a spooky abandoned theater when you can have a spooky abandoned theater that’s twice as large as it reasonably should be, and why build it on the ground when you can build it on a lake, and why have it be some generic lake when you can make sure to name it Lost Lake? And yet, none of this felt like a step too far (well, except for the name of the lake), because it looked so damn good. Plus, evil dolls? Completely terrifying as long as you don’t camp them up. Well, not completely terrifying, because that would be an evil doll made up to look like an evil clown.

See? Pretty cool.

Shooter

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As winter ebbs into spring, so too do a young man’s fancies turn from horror movies to action movies. (Okay, that’s just not true, I could watch a new horror movie every day and, save for the effort of reviewing everything, not get tired of it. But that is kind of the cycle that Hollywood thrusts upon us on average, and so here we are.) Anyway, the first action movie of the season that I’ve noticed is Shooter, in which Mark Wahlberg [SPOILER ALERT!!!] shoots people. See? Totally an action movie.

Of course, I was nearly derailed right at the beginning, when our hero’s military partner was named Donnie. But I recovered from that bit of amusement (luckily, there were no Dirks) and settled into a pretty engrossing action drama. See, this sniper guy has retired from the military because of a difference of opinion between him and a commanding officer about whether he should have been left behind without support during an illegal incursion into another country. (He was against it, you see.) So now that he’s living the quiet isolationist mountain lifestyle with a lot of guns and a dog and no human contact, Danny Glover decides that he actually has gotten too old for this shit, and it’s time to contract out saving the President’s life to someone else. See, some other awesome sniper is about to assassinate our gunnery seargent’s estranged commander in chief, and only an equally awesome sniper can figure out how he’ll do it, so they can stop him. Except, Danny was always lying about that age thing, and is instead a bad guy setting up someone to take the fall after the assassination. Luckily, Marky Mark somehow manages to survive the first fifteen minutes and then enlists the help of a hot red-headed chick and an idealistic FBI agent to trace down the conspiracy and get his life back.

Except, he finds out that it goes All The Way To The Top! (No, not really. The President is not targetting himself. I promise.) Anyway, there’s lots of fugitive-y stuff, a fair amount of wargames and shooting, the occasional sniping, a helicopter explosion worthy of having been accomplished by James Bond, and also cool conspiracy elements like I mentioned previously. My only complaint is that I liked the dark ambiguous ending to the film that occurred about seven minutes before the actual ending better than the one that preceded the credits. But the explosion and the hot redhead make up for that, so.

Loki

Although I’ve done a little bit of delving into old-school Spider-Man and X-Men, for the most part I’m only barely aware of the Marvel canon, outside what movies have told me. Of course, the comics have lots of advertising and in-story references to the other Marvel characters, so I’m getting a vague idea of what the universe looks like, thanks to the aforementioned excavations. So sure, I know that Thor spent some time as an Avenger (whatever that is), and that his comics frequently refer to Norse legend, which seems only right. But when I got the Marvel-branded book Loki for Christmas, I had no idea if I’d really be able to follow. As it happens, this story pre-supposes no Marvel knowledge at all that I could discern, so yay that! Even yayer, despite saying on the back that it collects Loki #1-4, it’s a completely self-contained story, so I wasn’t stuck wanting to buy future volumes and hope they might come out someday, and so forth. My point is, as far as the presentation, all good.

So then there’s the part between the covers. The art is amazing, though not entirely comic-like. Rather than contained action on each page, it’s more like a series of paintings. But since the story is a very introspective one, that works well. We open with Loki triumphant, in command of Asgard with all of his foes vanquished and Thor on his knees in chains at Loki’s feet. All that is left is for Loki to get the common people to follow his will, to decide how he will accomplish this, and, part and parcel, to decide what kind of ruler he will be. What follows is 60 or 80 pages of recriminations, impassioned arguments, and bitter tirades as Loki wanders a castle that holds no real meaning for him in itself, trying to apportion blame for his fate, the fate of the other Asgardians, and especially the fate of his brother Thor.

I know it sounds like one of those apologist texts that finds a way to blame other people for one’s own bad actions and decisions. To an extent it is, but only to the extent that Loki sees himself as a victim. The reader is free to make whatever decision they walk away from the text with, as all points of view are given equal time. But anyway, that’s just the sideshow. The burning question, ‘What will Loki do?’ is addressed with measured deliberation and to excellent effect by the story’s end. I don’t know how good this is for people who like Marvel, but I definitely recommend it for people who like Norse mythology.

Siu lam juk kau

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After a long, long time, I’ve started watching Netflix stuff again. Which is nice, because it means I get to spend my money a little better and also because I might get to see the final season of Alias sometime this year and also also because every so often I get some random movie or other into the queue, something I missed theatrically and then nearly forgot about and would never have heard from again, but for those fine people. (The ones at Netflix, you see.)

In this case, I get to be the last person in America to see Shaolin Soccer, despite that I had heard about it in 2001 when you could only get it via illegal download. Sure, it’s a ridiculous movie that you’ve seen a million times before. An underdog coach gets a chance to redeem himself by defeating his longtime rival, but only if he can whip his scrappy players into shape in time for the big game! (Or maybe the lead player is the one who’s redeeming himself against the longtime rival. Either way.) So yeah, of course you’ve seen it.

But, have you seen it with tai chi sticky buns? Or with a cunning plan to repopularize kung fu via lounge singing? Or with a nemesis who looks suspiciously like Takeshi Kaga? I am willing to bet that you have not, outside of this movie, which admittedly you have almost certainly seen. Perhaps it’s worth another look, though? ‘Cause, let’s be clear here, there’s something really cool about a movie that not only uses the over-the-top magic-laden version of kung fu to play a game of soccer, but does so in the same script that pauses long enough to make fun of wirework in Chinese cinema.

The Fall of Reach

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A few years back, a game was released for the X-Box. You may have heard of it. This guy in green armor who everyone thinks is the badass to end all badassery crash-lands onto a ring-looking device that has atmosphere and terrain on the inside surface, and then races against multiple alien species that are bent on the destruction of humanity to discover the device’s purpose. There was a sequel, too, and maybe another one coming out? Anyway, relatively popular.

Apparently, a tie-in prequel novel was written along about the time the game first came out, providing some valuable backstory on how this Master Chief guy and his cool armor came to be present on the Halo in the first place. And, okay, it’s a video-game novelization, so how good could it be, right? Answer: perfectly serviceable! There are some glaring editing problems wherein the numbers of Spartan students fluctuate unexpectedly and wherein the amount of time that passes between the start and finish of the story might be ten years off depending on which section you believe. But those aren’t actually bad, just dumb. The plot itself flows pretty smoothly, borrowing here from Ender’s Game and there from Starship Troopers (not the satirical movie version, though) and generally providing enough information to make the first game a lot more full of sense than it was when I initially played it. I’ll probably read the two game novelizations as well, though that will be a mistake: one of this book’s biggest strengths is that it has a much higher plot density than descriptions of fights against aliens density.

TMNT

The problem with not reviewing things right after you finish consuming them is that you run the risk of acquiring a debilitating sports injury and having a hard time remembering what you might have wanted to say through the haze of pain, tiredness, and general malaise that accompanies such events. But, y’know, through such tribulations I forge ahead.

So, it was like this. On Sunday, I went to see the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie with a few of the guys and mostly the kids. It was a kid friendly movie, of course, in that there were lots of kid-laughs that tended to make me roll my eyes, but it definitely had a little bit of depth shining through the stylized art and sporadic comic relief. A couple of paralleled but different takes on the meaning of family and teamwork, thoughts on vigilantism, good hint-dropping for a sequel, plus all kinds of mutant ninjas vs. regular ninjas vs. regular mutants three-way combat action. If that’s not enough to convince you but you’re still fan in general, I should point out that this is clearly Raphael’s movie. Since he’s the best one, that should persuade any remaining foot-draggers.