Flatland

Mostly moved into my new place, and with the day off from work to watch the cable guy drill holes in our walls for hours on end, I decided to try out this 1884 novella. I'd heard great things about it: notably, that it offered as good a conceptual image of multi-dimensional space as anything that has ever been written. Oddly enough, the author, Edwin A. Abbott, was actually not even a mathematician or scientist, but a literature enthusiast who enjoyed the Greek classics. The titular world of "Flatland" exists on an infinite two-dimensional plane. All people, things, and objects in Flatland are two-dimensional shapes that can "see" the world around them only as a series of lines. Since the entire world is coplanar, no being's field of vision can consist of more than one dimension, much as our own vision presents us with two-dimensional images; just as we (in three-dimensional "Spaceland") can infer the third dimension using depth perception, the shapes of Flatland can infer "depth" as well, allowing them to directly view one dimension while perceiving another. The protagonist and narrator of the novella is a simple middle-class square. One day the square visits "Lineland," a land in which all beings and objects are nothing more than colinear line segments. Each line segment can only "see" the one in front of it and the one behind it, and each is thus perceived as being nothing more than a point. The square finds it difficult to explain a second dimension to the linear residents of Lineland who have only ever known - and can only infer the existence of - one dimension. Even as the square passes in and out of the solitary line, thus projecting himself as a line that grows and shrinks depending on the square's angle, the lines in Lineland see it as nothing more than a line segment growing and shrinking. Frustrated, the square departs. Later, the square is visited by a sphere from "Spaceland," a three-dimensional world much like our own (except apparently with talking floating spheres). The sphere projects onto Flatland as nothing more than a circle, and the square has just as much difficulty understanding and believing in the concept of three dimensions as the Lineland beings did with two dimensions. But at last the sphere is able to somehow take the square with him into three dimensional space, and the square can see his home and world from a bird's eye view for the first time, giving him more clarity than he ever had pictured his own home with. As the story concludes, the square asks the sphere to take him one level higher - to a land of four dimensions, or even five, six, or seven. The sphere, of course is just as incredulous about the idea of higher dimensions as were the lines and the squares. But by now, we the readers are, like the square, wondering why there shouldn't be four dimensions. Two points become a line. Four lines become a square. Six squares become a cube. Why shouldn't eight cubes become some basic four-dimensional shape? And if such a four-dimensional shape existed, wouldn't it project onto our own world as nothing more than a simple cube, albeit one that seems to grow and shrink at will? I have to give Abbott huge props for illustrating very effectively the folly of believing in the finiteness of dimensions as well as the difficulty (and impossibility, even) of being able to infer or detect any and all dimensions beyond the three our world consists of. There was even an amusing and brief trip to "Pointland," a zero-dimensional "universe" consisting of a single point who is the ruler, sole resident, and entirety of the universe itself. There was also a lot of strange social satire in Flatland; the more sides a polygon had in Flatland, the higher his social rank was. Also, women were nothing more than straight lines. (In Lineland, women were mere points. Weird, but it was 1884, so whatever.) But the big takeaway for me was definitely the exploration of extra-dimensional concepts and perceptions. At under 100 pages, it made for a simple afternoon read and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who has ever wondered about how there could possibly be a fourth spatial dimension.

Knucklehead

I'm going to break with my recent tradition and post an item I watched on Netflix. In anticipation of the 2011 Royal Rumble, and because Sweeney and Keith vouched for it, I decided to watch Knucklehead featuring WWE's Big Show. Let me start by saying the plot of this movie was trite and I expected every twist and turn along the way but that doesn't mean I didn't love it. The cast of this movie is amazing, Dennis Farina revisits the role of the ruthless crazy boxing promoter that he portrayed in the movie Snatch. The little black kid from Role Models once again pushes the limits of what a little kid should be allowed to say and do in movies. And I have to admit that I always thought Melora Hardin was a cute chick but now I am forced to admit that she is straight up sexy, that scene where she "mud wrestles" in the bar and takes off that red dress was enough to make this my second favorite wrestling movie of all time (the first of course being Mr. Nanny).

Archer: Season 1

I've said before that 2010 was a banner year for new TV shows, at least on cable. Boardwalk Empire and The Walking Dead made for great dramatic television late in the year, the summer gave us Louie and Rubicon, and Justified premiered way back in the spring. But my favorite new show of all was Archer, an animated series on FX that ran from January through March. I've always loved Sealab 2021, an irreverent Adult Swim comedy from the earlier part of the decade. When that show died after four seasons, a certain void opened up in my TV viewing schedule, and that void was finally filled by Archer, which was made by the same team that did Sealab 2021 in the first place. It's hard to place what it is that makes Archer such a funny show. The animation is so true to realistic human form and movement; none of the humor derives from the way the show is drawn or sequenced. Instead, the humor is largely dialogue-driven. But it's not just the lines themselves that work, either. It's their delivery. I have to give credit to the voice actors for truly selling most of the lines beyond the mere point of using different voices to convey different feelings. I could type, right now, that "you look like some kind of cattle rapist," and it'd be somewhat funny, I'm sure. But putting the line on paper (granted, out of context) doesn't do justice for the disgusted malice with which Jessica Walter complains about her son's appearance. I could type, "that girl was like the Pelé of anal" without conveying the aroused delight with which H. Jon Benjamin sells that metaphor. Every episode teems with snappy dialogue and angry insults. The rewatchability and quotability levels are extremely high for Archer; I've seen every episode at least twice, most of them thrice, and some a full four or five times, and yet I could watch the season from start to finish at the drop of a hat if someone else were to propose the idea. Season 2 begins in just under 47 hours and I couldn't be more excited. Danger zone!

Risky Business

I guess you had to be there. Droves of critics and everymen alike cite this movie as one of the greatest '80s comedies, one of the greatest high school movies, and one of the best Tom Cruise showpieces of all time. But I didn't find the movie every funny, I wasn't reminded very much of high school when I watched it, and I thought young Tom Cruise was actually pretty terrible. I know I'm 28 years late to this party, but I just don't see what warrants all the praise. It probably doesn't help that I've already seen and enjoyed The Girl Next Door (2004), a film that admittedly borrows heavily from the plot of Risky Business; all I could think while watching this movie was, "this feels a lot like The Girl Next Door," even though I knew it came out some twenty years prior and hence had the "original" idea. But there's really not all that much about Risky Business that felt memorable or noteworthy in any way, aside from one scene ten minutes in where a pants-less Cruise parades around his living room playing air guitar to Bob Seger. Oh well. Not every movie I've ever bought was worth buying, even for three fifty.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

In 1998, a tactical RPG by the name of Final Fantasy Tactics came out and absolutely blew me away. I loved that game. I beat it five or six different times, each time through giving myself a new set of challenges to abide by. My favorite run was the final one I did, in which I customized my party (to the best of my abilities) to emulate the cast of characters from Final Fantasy IV. I mean, yeah, if the past few months on Back-Blogged haven't given it away, I've always been a bit of a Final Fantasy fanboy. Anyway, in 2003 this spin-off (note: not a true sequel) came out, exclusive to the GameBoy Advance. I didn't have a GameBoy Advance, but bought the GBA adapter for my GameCube simply to be able to play this game. Now, I'm glad I bought the adapter, as it allowed me to discover the wonderful game known as Metroid Fusion, but Final Fantasy Tactics Advance just wasn't nearly on par with my lofty expectations. It was childish and dumbed down where it shouldn't have been, and the gameplay was expanded upon where it didn't need to be. It wasn't a terrible game, but it wasn't nearly what I had hoped or expected it would be. Let's make a quick comparison. The original Tactics game had an immensely detailed story with more characters than The Wire and more twists and turns than a Dan Brown novel. And plenty of the elements were mature and complex. There was a complicated civil war. There was social commentary on the rift and animosity between the upper and lower classes. There was a puppetmaster manipulating the major players on either side in the war, and as it turned out, there was a puppetmaster manipulating him all along too. There was a morally sound protagonist whose achievements went unrecognized and ignored, and there was an opportunistic morally gray character who became a hero in the eyes of most of the public. There was regicide and fratricide throughout. All things considered, Final Fantasy Tactics had an awesome (and incredibly underrated) story. Tactics Advance, on the other hand, was about a bunch of children who get transported to a fantasy world. Ugh. And then one of them recognizes the fantasy world, specifically, as "the" world from Final Fantasy, one of his favorite series of novels (wait, what?) and games. Quadruple ugh. What's with the meta? What's with this shitty set-up in general? Fortunately, the gameplay remains similar enough to keep this follow-up from being a total letdown, but I still prefer the sleeker and more streamlined approach of the first Tactics game. If every aspect of the first game was a "ten," then I'd give Tactics Advance an eight for gameplay and a two for story: a five, overall. So, yeah. This game was only half as good as its predecessor. But that's okay; said predecessor is one of my favorite games of all time. And a game half as good as a fantastic game is, at the end of the day, an utterly average game. I think what bothers and disappoints me most about Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is that it received nearly universal praise upon its release, with the consensus being that it was a slight improvement if anything. I've still got this game's sequel, Final Fantasy Tactics A2, to log, but I doubt I'll jump into it anytime soon. Anyway, if I can leave you with any lasting recommendation, it would be to definitely give Tactics a try, but to also be warned that Tactics Advance feels like a child's attempt to recreate Tactics with a much more Disney-ish story and little more.

Frost/Nixon

It's been a year and a week since Webber posted about this movie giving it a positive review and recommending it to anyone. And I have to echo his statements, more or less. This was a good movie. I think that to this day Richard Nixon has been lampooned and criticized a bit more heavily than he deserves to have been (my own political opinions notwithstanding), at least compared with the number of other corrupt politicians and world leaders that have graced us with their presence at one time or another. But this movie manages to depict him as a flawed and lonely man. Whether or not you go into this movie thinking that Nixon was an evil asshole, you'll probably come out of it with a better appreciation for the human side of the disgraced former president. Granted, this is just a movie - Nixon could have been a total douche bag in real life, but through the magic of historical nonfiction, you'd never come to that conclusion based on this film alone. Another great offering from Ron Howard, another movie checked off my backlog.

The Wire: Season 2

Hype is a dangerous thing. Sometimes too much hype can ruin a actual experience. When I had heard, repeatedly and from a number of sources, that The Wire was the greatest show ever, I was pretty disappointed when the first season turned out "only" being very good. I then allowed my own expectations for the second season to drop a little bit, but recognizing this, I secretly created my own little hype machine of high expectations (since I'm not expecting to love this, I will probably love this!) Whatever. The point is, I'm now 40% done with the series and although I still believe it's very good, I still can't call it one of the greatest shows I've ever seen. That said, I recognize all of the excellent elements and I do not find it absurd that many people call it their favorite show ever. The acting, writing, pacing, direction, and production are all absolutely top notch. This is such an honest show. It portrays a city with bleak and transparent clarity. It's not a feel-good show; it's a realistic show. Not every "bad guy" is all that bad, and not every "good guy" all that good. There's complexity and subtlety to the spectrum of morality, and in the end, there are people on all sides of the conflict getting away with things they shouldn't or getting punished far more than they deserved. I started the first season of The Wire back  in June of 2010 (after the pilot episode failed to grab me two separate times in March and November of 2009) and finished in in August; I started this season either in very late November or early December and didn't finish it until late January. It's slow-moving. It's not "addictive" for me in the sense of wanting to (or even being able to) see every episode shortly after the previous one. If it was, I'd be able to knock off the final three seasons before March. But episodes are typically fifty-five minutes long. About 80% of what happens is dialogue-based, demanding your full attention at all times. I probably won't jump straight into the third season just yet, even though I've been told (again) that that's the season in which shit really begins to hit the fan. In the mean time, I'll probably just try to knock off a few more movies before the end of the month.

Little Big Planet 2

There is no physical way to measure the difference between Little Big Planet and Little Big Planet 2. Mainly because there is no way to measure creativity to begin with, and it's that amount of creativity that was separates the two games. A basic platformer that can let you run, jump and use tools, it really open up in the game with the art style. The story now follows a more defined line, with the Negitivatron destroying Craftworld, and the Alliance recruiting you to help save the world. The quirky creators of the world each have different set of abilities you need to use for their levels. While Lenny Di Vinci's levels are an introduction, showing you the basics of the game; it's Avalon Centerfuge who shows you how to ride mounts and Victoria Von Bathosphere who shows you shooting with the 'Sniper Trifle' (my absolute favorite play of worlds in the whole world.)

Now the story isn't serious, neither is the game. It's light-hearted to the max, and you'd hope a game with childlike appeal would have a much easier game-play to matches the feel. Wrong. This game is a challenge. Not a challenge to beat, but a challenge to not look like an idiot dying every second. I was awarded a badge (in game achievements that doesn't add to your PSN score) for dying 20 times in one level. Plus most levels have a section that can only be completed with two or more people, which takes some really co-ordiated actions, even if everyone is on a mic.

The only thing that gave my heart some sadness was the online community. I was ignored and rejected from multiplayer 90% of the time. The thing that made it better was the 10% that did play with me were not only very nice, but very talented and helped me with tricky parts. This game has given me the best experience on the PS3.

Little Big Planet 2. More Littler, More Bigger, More Planet.

Ghost Trick

Boo!

Did I scare you? No? Well neither will Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective. In fact, this ghostly game isn't about the spooky, but about what happens in the afterlife. You play as Sissel, an amnesiac dead man who only has to dawn to not only find out his who he his, but why he was killed. But what is this? He no ordinary ghost, but instead had the ability to possess objects, turn switches, travel on phone wires, knock and rock around small items, and of course travel back in time.

The time travel was the first thing I noticed that wasn't very 'ghostly' but hey, I really don't know what ghosts are up to. This Ghost Trick of travel back in time is an ability only Sissel can do, so he's very useful when it comes to solving murders. The rules are that he can only go back four minutes before the person's death, the person can't be dead for more than 24 hours, and he has to posses the corpse. Once a person is saved, not only do they remember their death in the new timeline, they can free speak to Sissel now.

Using all these abilities, you spend one night trying to figure out not only who you are, but saving other people's lives. Now you spend most of your time solving Rube Goldberg style puzzles, which is a wonderful time, but only leave you with one possible solution. It would be nice to see some variation in solutions in some of the complex machines.

From the creators of Pheonix Wright, they bring back the formula:
Crazy Characters + Detectives vs. Murders + a little bit of magic = A good game that leaves a chill down the spine.

Suikoden

Some say bigger isn't better. I say go big or go home and Suikoden agrees with me. A classic JRPG that keeps that doesn't really adventure out the usual. Monsters, magic and medieval. But it isn't doesn't have you running around with three characters, recruiting the random ninja or berserker to add diversity to your party. No, you're running around with your party of six looking to make an army of 108!

This isn't isn't a long game, but it is a big world. Suikoden world expands into mountains and planes and sea; taking a long time to traverse through it all. Plus you're playing as a fugitive on the run from the corrupt emperor and his evil sorceress, so where their army is, you usually can't go. No worries, you've fallen in with a good crowd, the rising Rebellion. You need to start recruiting people to your cause, because you're fighting a whole nation. Wizards, ninjas, pirates, elves and a giant tiger-man all come and join your cause, if you can convince them. Some will just join you because they think you're cool, sometimes you have to help them first and some you just have to pay to join. Once your group starts amassing, you get a cool fortress that you all work out of.

Now the game-play is classic turn style RPG, with speed, strength and defense all determining how the battle pans out. Six characters are place with three in the front and three in the back. Each character had a different range, with Short Range having to be in the front to actually inflict damage, and Long Range can attack anyone from anywhere, or is a magic attack. This helps and hinders your team, with having too many Short range fighters being useless, unless they have a strong magic. Having a good team is one that is diverse and with characters that are compatible, which sometimes they can unite an attack. (Like all the elves, fishermen or pretty girls can 'Unite.')

Now as fun as this game was, there was a few irks. First you can only carry 10 items, second your armor and equitable items (not weapons) count as your carry items, so that leaves you with 6 - 5 actual free spots. Also each potion or consumable item counts as a single item, so no collecting Red Flower x10, you have the actual Red Flowers fill ten item spots in your team. Magic was another irk. Magic comes from runes that you equip onto your characters. So a strong magic user can be an offensive fire user in one battle, and a defensive earth user the next. But to switch runes, you have to go to rune shops to get them unattached or reattached. These shops are few and far between, and your fortress does get one of these shops, but not soon enough.

Suikoden has given me a good time, which I want to continue into the sequel, which uses the firsts game data. The only thing stopping me from actually doing it is the rarity of Suikoden II. A used copy will send anyone back some moolah, plus most people aren't willing to part with the game. We will have to wait to see that log any time soon.

Flight of the Conchords

Funny? Yes. Musical? Yes. A foreign pair of hunks? Sure, why not. So why did Flight of the Concords didn't win me over in the beginning? I really don't know. It felt very slow to me, with the dry humor not really getting to me until two or three episodes in. But when it did get to me, I was laughing and singing along. I really warm up to the socially awkward duo of Bret and Jemaine, and even more to the characters of Murry and Mel. There's not much to say about the show. It's odd and musical, if you like oddness and songs. you'll like it.

A Drifiting Life

A Drifting Life by Yoshihiro Tatsumi is a heavy weight in your hand. An 840 paged illustrated memoir takes on the life of a young man learning about his love for manga, and even more his love for telling a story. This story takes place over fifteen years, in which a young highschool student grows up to become an influential storyteller in Japan, and the catalyst for a worldwide growth of mature graphic novels.

In the story, Yoshihiro has changed everyone's names, including his own. The protagonist, Hiroshi, is an artistic boy who grows up in a tough life to become an artist and writer. His father brings financial trouble into the house, and strains the already weathered marriage and home life. His brother, who is equally in love with manga, is slowly dying from lung trouble, is jealous of his brother's creativity and luck. Hiroshi turn's his love of his hobby into his career, working for small magazines and publishers, growing as an artist and an adult. He creates stories that pass the usual convention of children audience that it was created for, and made the gekiga style of manga. Gekiga to normal manga is what a graphic novel is to a comic book.

I don't read a lot of manga. This is actually the first one I've ever owned, but I as a fan of the graphic novel, something this heavy (literally and figuratively) is pretty great. A view inside the industry, just as is starts to change, it is a nice mix of Japanese history and the way manga authors lived, drew and worked together in the mid '50s. Hiroshi is a passionate artist and an inspiring character. I could identify with him, not wanting to do the normal comedic cartoon strips. He wanted to make something revolutionary and epic. This memoir is a testament to that want to be alternative, even if it isn't a dark or gritty story like his other books.

His art is simplistic, and the adaptation by Arian Tomine is a clean, easy read. Now that I know Tatsumi history, I'll try to read the rest of his work.

Persepolis

After finishing Harmony of Dissonance, I was certain that I could jump into another lengthy book and finish it off before the month ended. Unfortunately, while the book I chose was good, I got about 20 pages in before realizing what a dense read it was, and that now was just not the time for it. Instead I opted for something a little lighter- memoirs of a girl growing up during the Islamic Revolution in Iran! Okay so subject matter-wise, Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis would seem to be a tough book to get through, but get this- it's a graphic novel. That's right, Sweeney's jumping on the graphic novel train, all aboard for Easy-Readingsville. The book was finished off in a night. And I liked it. It was originally released in four parts, then combined into just two- the first detailing Satrapi's childhood and what Iran was like during a war with Iraq; the second tells of her life and education in Austria. While part one had much more historical significance, I found part two to be much more engaging- instead of Marjane as a little girl with a lot to learn, we see a much more interesting character who loves, loses, deals drugs, becomes homeless, rebels against basically everything, and eventually grows up into a mature woman. The art style is simple but effective, and was carried over to the film adaptation released a few years back. So yeah, despite being about a subject I didn't have much interest in, and at times later in the book bordering on chick-lit, I still found Persepolis to be a great read and highly recommend it.

Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance

Here's a random one. Last year when I got my GBA, I was bored at work and looking around for some highly-rated games to go with it. I stumbled upon a 2-pack of Castlevania games, both supposedly very good, for just 5 bucks on eBay and bought it immediately. I've wanted to get into the series for a while- it heavily follows to format of Metroid games, with one huge sprawling level that requires lots of back-tracking and searching for upgrades. Really the differences here are the gothic theme instead of sci-fi, the use of a whip instead of of a gun, and a bit more story than your typical Metroid. Anyway I opted for Harmony of Dissonance, and honestly there's not much to say about the game. It was fun, sure, but that's because I'm a sucker for games like these. The only thing really of note here is the way the whole map is set up. You start investigating a castle, and stumble upon a few warp points that take you to different parts of the map, but it feels like the two huge parts of the castle you explore never actually connect aside from through warp points- they share walls, but there's no way to physically walk from one to the other. "Whatever" I thought. Eventually, the big reveal is that they are in fact two different castles with the same design, just different enemies and items to be found all over the place. This might sound like a waste of time or needless lengthening, but it really added a lot to the game, jumping back and forth between two different castles filling out both maps. By the time it ended I was close enough that I went for the full 200%, giving me the "completion" status on my backloggery. Overall though, if you don't like Metroid games, don't bother with these ones- I'll probably play a few more, but it doesn't have the "full series" goal that I've given to other more acclaimed series- Zelda, Final Fantasy, and yes even Metroid. And as a teaser, I'm about to jump into another game from one of the aforementioned series. I'll bet you can't wait! But you're going to have to.

Infinity Blade

I believe this marks a first for iPhone games on the blog. I'm not sure if these guys even qualify as blog-worthy, but to quote the wise Kel Mitchell, "Awww, here it goes!"

For the last two weeks I've had shit to do at work but take double lunch breaks, make frequent trips to Starbucks, and snoop around the lot hoping to spot more celebs - twice Seth Rogen has almost run me over with his golf cart, the next time he passes me it will be my foot up his ass. Basically, I'm bored out of my damn mind. I know, I can already here most of you asking, "Why haven't you just surfed the next the rest of us schmucks?" Not to get into any specifics here, but I don't have a computer. Well, I do. Someone else is just using it for the next 2-3 weeks. In the meantime, I'm off to fend for my own. With so much free time on my hands I decided to check out some game content for my new iPhone and stumbled across this guy.

I really had no idea what to expect from this game - not that I really cared as long as it could make me forget that my life doesn't seem to have a purpose - other than it looked violent and ran the Unreal engine. Sounded like it would be both fun and competent. And that's exactly how it started off. No real storyline. Your a knight at the gate of a castle and have to take part in a series of one-on-one battles with monsters attempting to hinder your progress as you make your way to the top (seems to make sense). Like in any RPG, as you fight you gain experience and money, which will then be exchanged for new weapons and shit - same old story, you get the drift. Anyways, after about dozen or so fights, you make your way to the top of the castle were the God King awaits you. This cocky bastard chuckles at your request to fight him as he steps down from his throne. Note: With none of the other battles causing me any fuss, I thought this guy would be a cinch - or at the very least beatable. I got my ass handed to me without a second notice. And just like that, I was dead.

Everything goes black, and then the screen reappears at the beginning of the game. "Oh, great," I thought, "I'm going to have to start the level all over again." Then I noticed the small tagline Bloodline 2 followed by 20 years later. Huh? So, I'm apparently the descendent of my fallen character. It appeared that I would just have to replay the level again. So I did. Leveled up slightly. Then died at the God King, again. Bloodline 3. Same story, died. Finally, Bloodline 4 and yes, I beat the fucker. Now, the game can move on - or so I thought. The screen went black as I watched that miserable bastard die and then... Bloodline 5.

What the hell?!!! Five! First of, when did my character die, and, second, why am I restarting the game again. Did I do something wrong? The answer is no. This is a cyclical game that repeats itself hoping you enjoy the satisfaction of leveling-up and buying new weapons. I thought that maybe there was some sort of catch here, maybe I had to just kill the God King in the right way to move onto other challenges. Then I noticed it, the Infinity Blade at the bottom of the list for weapons to buy. It made sense - at least to me - that maybe you have to buy the item the game was named after to properly beat the game itself. So I went round and round in circles, slaying hundreds of monsters until finally I had enough cash to buy the sword. I ran off to visit the God King for the seven-hundredth time - truly believing this time to be our last - and mopped the floor with him. Finished, yes?

No.

This game has no end. You play for the love of playing. That's all. Where's the fun/reward in that?

Go fuck yourself Epic Games for wasting my very, very valuable time. Now I've got some Angry Birds to deal with. They know how to treat a man right.

30 Rock: Season 4

Today began like any other weekday. My alarm went off at 7:00 in the morning and I battled the snooze button until sometime between 7:30 and 7:45. I spent some pointless time on the Internet, showered for too long, dressed, and was out the door at 8:45. But there was a wintry mix coming down hard and traffic was nightmarishly slow. I was one exit further up the highway at 9:25. (Forty minutes is typically a long total commute for me. To get just one exit down the highway in that amount of time is downright absurd.) My windows were caked with snow, giving me enormous blind spots. The roads hadn't been plowed at all, and since traffic was stop-and-go, this led to all kinds of slipping issues. Assuming it'd be at least 10:30 before I even got into work at all, and acknowledging that perhaps they'd let us out early anyway since the forecast for the evening was freezing rain, I let out a big old "fuck this shit" and reversed course as soon as I could. So now I'll have to make up eight additional work hours in the near future. That kind of sucks. But you know what doesn't? Finishing an entire season of television in one day off. That's right. In addition to finally beating a video game I've had backlogged for 12 years, I knocked off all 22 episodes of 30 Rock's fourth season. And just to prove how easy it was to do so, let me point out that I also snow-blowed my entire driveway, took care of some financial errands, perused the Internet for apartment-related items, made and ate dinner with my family, played both a board game and a card game with them for an additional few hours, and - oh yeah - played five hours of video games. And made two blog posts. And I didn't even start this wonderfully productive day until 10:00 in the morning or so. Yeah, I realize that it's almost 4:00 in the morning now, and that it's no wonder I have trouble waking up to my 7:00 a.m. alarm, and that I technically skipped work today to do all of this. Quit judging me for it. Point is, I watched an entire year's worth of 30 Rock today, and I never again want to hear a certain someone say that she - sorry, he or she - can't watch more than two episodes of any sitcom at a time. Anyway, the fourth season of 30 Rock was entertaining and enjoyable, but I think the first eight or so episodes were stronger than the backend. I'd put it about on par with The Office these days, even though there are separate things that each show does better than the other. Will this show survive its move to 10:00 p.m. when it resumes in two nights? I don't know, but I also don't really care since Parks and Recreation will return then as well in the cushy 9:30 time slot that 30 Rock held for far too long.

Final Fantasy V

Well look at that. I haven't even had a chance to read Sweeney's Final Fantasy XII post yet, but here's the second straight game from that series. I'll try not to ramble but there will be so many opportunities for me to do so. First things first. I loved playing Final Fantasy numbers four and six on my Super Nintendo way back in the day and had all kinds of fun with the seventh installment (the one that broke the series out into the mainstream). So when Final Fantasy Anthology, a compilation for PlayStation that included Final Fantasy V came out in 1999, I jumped all over it. I quickly abandoned the game after what I thought was a solid chunk of gameplay but in reality was about five hours' worth. I blame the miserably slow loading times of the CD-based PlayStation. Oh well. Flash forward to a couple of years ago, when an eight-years-older version of me (on quite the retro kick) found and purchased the GameBoy Advance version of the same game for twenty extra clams. Finally, I'd be able to play this game both on the go and also without those dastardly loading times. And I did so over the past two months, completing the game in just under thirty hours and occasionally assisted for convenience's sake by a walkthrough. I liked it. I'll always have an unfair bias for the aforementioned fourth, sixth, and seventh games in the series, but this ended up being just as good as the fourth game, albeit in different ways. The gameplay was much better. The story was a bit blander, but the character writing was actually markedly improved. In a lot of ways, it felt very much like the transitory game between the classic but somewhat boring Final Fantasy IV and the richly-written character-driven masterpiece known as Final Fantasy VI. And granted, that's exactly what it was. This comparison will fall mostly on deaf ears, I'm sure, but Final Fantasy V can best be described as a Final Fantasy III that did everything better than Final Fantasy III. And I mean everything - story, writing, gameplay, combat system. I've now beaten the first eight games in the series, as well as the tenth, and I'm roughly halfway through both the ninth and twelfth; for those that don't know, the eleventh was an online-only game, and many of us fans of the rest of the series don't really like to talk about it or even consider it one of the main games. Anyway, my point is that this series of long-winded games is actually coming - slowly - to a close for me. I still think Sweeney could easily end up finishing the franchise off long before me. I mean, have you seen the blistering pace he's using? But I do think that with a little bit of focus and commitment, I can be done with Final Fantasies IX, XII, and even XIII by the time 2012 rolls around. That's no promise - I mean, have you seen how bad I am at keeping my logging promises? - but I'm simply saying that it can easily be done. Still, I doubt I'll get to any of those games anytime soon. I'm moving into my own place pretty soon, and although I'm excited for it, I'm sure I'll have many nights in the near future with more pressing things to do than play RPGs. Or log much at all, for that matter. I guess the final season of Heroes is something I could pay ten percent attention to while unpacking and rearranging furniture in different rooms altogether. Am I right?

Final Fantasy XII

The credits are currently rolling on the other exceptionally long item I've been working on to start the year- Square Enix's Final Fantasy XII. That's right, I'm now halfway through the twelve-game series (skipping MMOs). And as far as I can tell, this is the one that has strayed furthest from the established formula. Tons of changes were made, and while some of them caused controversy from die-hards, I think they were necessary. I mean, how long can the company put new stories over unchanged gameplay and keep the whole thing fresh? Well, let's take a look at the big ones, one by one. First, the story. Rather than going for the typical "band of misfits vs the ultimate evil", a more politically charged story was used. The citizens of Dalmasca, a small kingdom caught in between two huge feuding nations, seek peace, causing a small group to seek help from both sides in order to prevent a war. It's hardly some great story, but measure it up against the bare-bones early games and the angst-heavy more recent installments, and it suddenly looks Shakespearean. Second big change, the license system. Maybe it was due to my familiarity with the Sphere Grid from FFX, but it wasn't all that hard for me to figure out what was going on. Basically, for every enemy you kill, you get a certain amount of experience (leveling up works the same as pre-FFX games) but you also get a small number (usually just 1) of license points as well. Each character then can spend these license points to buy licenses- 30 license points might buy you the ability to use a new sword, or a new magic spell, or maybe a gambit slot (more on that later). This doesn't mean a character suddenly has the item available to use- you still need to find or buy the weapon or spell, and also have the license to use it. This might sound overly complicated, but I should note that I never felt limited by it- I rarely had an item but not enough license points to use it. It also gave the beginning of the game a bit of guidance- a character who started out with a gun would probably upgrade to another gun when the time came. Later on in the game I found that most of my license boards started looking exactly the same- when i bought a powerful weapon for one character, I usually liked it so much that I bought it for the rest as well and everyone ended up in basically the same situation. Anyway it certainly requires a good deal of time and research, but overall I felt like the license board helped more than it hurt. And now we get to the big one- the overhauled combat system. First of all, no random encounters. You walk up to an enemy and attack it with no transition into a battle scene. This also means that you control just one of the three active characters. The other two characters (and the one you're controlling, if you want) are controlled by a system of "gambits". Gambits are essentially a bunch of if-then statements designed to simulate how you'd play if you were controlling the character yourself. For instance, if a character's HP dipped below 50%, you might want to give them a potion. Now you can set a character up to use a potion whenever that situation occurs. At the start of the game you can only use a few customized gambits, meaning the game won't exactly play itself, but later in the game when grinding becomes a must you can set up gambits in a way that let you grind level after level by simply moving from enemy to enemy without pressing any buttons. I know Stan wasn't a fan of this, as he likes inputting an action for each character in his turn-based combat, but I really enjoyed this setup. It's less active, sure, but to me it was more fun deciding how to set up gambits and then see how they worked than to manually press "attack" over and over. This also led to a godsend of a cheat I found online- with the right setup of gambits against the right enemy, you could literally turn off your tv and go to sleep while your characters keep leveling up. Of course this calls into question why grinding is really necessary in the first place if it can be this mindless, but that's always going to be a part of rpgs I guess. There were other changes as well- finally you can rotate the camera, Cid is suddenly not an ally (did they do this in any other games?), and the super-fun limit breaks known as quickening chains. So as far as I can tell, this is actually pretty far from your typical Final Fantasy game. But whatever. As you can tell from my post, I enjoyed it very much. It's hard to tell where I'd place it among the ones I've played so far, but a true rankings won't come til I complete the six other non MMOs in the main series, including two of the consensus best games of all time. Can't wait.

The Doors

Whoops, almost forgot to make a write-up for this movie. I've waited nearly 24 hours to make a post - inexcusable, at least by the standards of any dedicated blogger. Anyway, for many years now this movie has stood out to me from various shelves and bargain bins at Best Buy, Target, and Wal-Mart. Maybe it's the shiny metallic cover or the double-wide case size, but it just seems like this DVD was constantly beckoning for me to claim it as my own. I never had a set a price point in mind, but when it dropped form ten bucks to seven, and then to six, and then to five, and then to four, and then straight to two-fifty, I finally caved. I'm not upset that I did so, but really, this wasn't a spectacular movie. Basically, for twenty minutes we see a young and somewhat interesting Jim Morrison (played by Val Kilmer "back before he was a big dweeb," as Sweeney noted). And then for almost two hours we see Morrison doing drugs and performing live and having sex. We get it. He's the man. His own death is foreshadowed like a dozen times and when it finally happens it feels incredibly anticlimactic. But I think it was supposed to feel that way. Maybe Oliver Stone meant for me to be thinking, "Oh thank God, he's finally done being a gigantic asshole." Because, you know, the whole movie is just Morrison being a gigantic asshole. On the bright side, there were a lot of Doors songs played all the way through, some multiple times, and it made for some really nice listening material. So the bottom line here is that this flick is one you should probably skip, unless you are a huge Doors fan or someone who enjoys it when rock stars act like enormous douche bags. I happen to know one person who is both of those things, and come to think of it, he really liked this movie.

Super Scribblenauts

Yesterday I ended up going on a road trip to Bob's Clam Hut in Kittery Maine to celebrate Jill's half birthday and to get some good old fashioned winter clams and scallops (they were delicious). On the way I had the opportunity to put the last couple hours worth of effort into this glorious second try in the Scribblenauts series. The initial game, Scribblenauts, had an amazing amount of potential that didn't, in my opinion, translate well into their final product. The idea that you could type in any item and the game would, in almost every single case, make that item for you and it would have the right characteristics and attributes and it would interact with other items correctly is a magical idea and I hope it becomes the basis for many many games to come. The first game was hard to control, as you had to drag the stylus in front of the main character Maxwell to get him to move. This movement style often ended with me accidentally forcing Maxwell to jump into water or other hazardous situations. Super Scribblenauts rectified this problem by changing the movement to the D-pad, giving the user much better control over Maxwell. The other major change that I appreciated from the first game is that Maxwell and his controller were forced to use a lot more thinking to solve puzzles in this game. In the first game a lot of the puzzles were simply commands to take one item from here to there and usually ended up with me summoning a helicopter and a tow rope to get the job done. This was not the case in this game, most levels included two items and a command to create a medium version of it. For example you would be shown a bird and a monkey and you would have to make a feathered monkey or a hairy bird. Or you would have to use a machine called the "createatron" in which you would be told to make an object by placing its parts in the machine, the superhero required clothing, an identity and a source of super powers (mask, person, bat) (cape, girl, arch nemesis). With the addition of adjectives the possibilities in this game are truly endless. Unlike its predecessor I was able to post this game because it was fun, enthralling, mind engaging and it's movements didn't upset me ( if I accidentally made Maxwell walk to his death one more time while trying to type in an item I was going to throw my DS at a wall). Needless to say I truly hope there is a third game to this series and I hope that, like the adjective addition, it comes with a new and better playing dynamic.

Full Dark, No Stars

Meh.

I don’t really know what else to say about this piece of work. Not that great, not that bad. It was meh. Alright, to start off let me explain that King’s new piece of work (with one seeming to come out every year) is a compilation of short stories - four to be exact. We’ve got one about a father who tricks his son into murdering his wife, also the boy’s mother, then suffers the haunting consequences; one about woman-novelist (King writing about a writer, that’s new and refreshing!) who’s raped and left for dead, then goes back out seek revenge by murdering all those responsible for this atrocity; one about a man down on his luck who makes a pact with a strange man (presumably the Devil) to trade luck with his fortunate friend, which in turn kills off most of the friend’s family; and, finally, one about a wife who discovers her husband of 25 years is sadistic serial killer and is now planning on how to murder the murderer.

There’s one - albeit, elusive - theme here. Can you guess it? I’ll give you a hint: MURDER!

Yes, it seems that King went back doing what he does best, although this really wasn’t his best. In fact, these stories - for the most part - were pretty boring. I didn’t find it necessarily hard to turn the page, but then that’s the beauty of short stories. It won’t be long before they’re over.

At the end of the book, King has a short afterword where he explains that this book was meant to look at the more realistic side of human nature, which is - more of less - what the book seems to exhibit. Most stories dwell on how a seemingly “normal” person would deal with difficult or tragic life events. It’s interesting, just not amazing. And also rather bleak.

I’ll say this though. For any King fans out there that have an inkling of picking up this book, I would suggest just searching out and reading the first short story only (1922 I believe it was called). I really liked this one. Probably because it was the least realistic of the whole bunch. I'll restrain myself from giving too much away, but I kind of wished King just did away with the rest of the stories and expanded on this guy making it a full length novel. After this woman's murder, she comes back to haunt her killer/husband, giving him a glimpse at what the future holds for both him and they're son; a punishment for his horrible to decision to rid the world of her. There was a lot that could have been expanded on. However, it still holds up well for what it is.

Otherwise, it’s all just meh.

2666

Okay, it's been a while, and as a founding father of the Back-Blog I feel as though I should be posting more often. But I assure you, I've been working on some lengthy items, and aside from a hiatus from logging in late December, I've been reading and playing a ton. Finally, something has been finished- Roberto Bolano's epic novel, 2666. Allow me to flashback to last year for a moment. At some point, despite my quest to finish everything I have, I developed a fascination with really long novels and went kinda out of my way to pick some up even if I wasn't going to get to them soon. However, on Christmas, I surprisingly received a Kindle- a great gift for a reader, for sure! So this finally motivated me to finish off a lot of the big books I have soon, so I can eventually make the transition to my E-Reader. 2666 is the first of these books. It clocked in at just under 900 pages despite being unfinished, and covers a huge array of topics in five separate parts. Since I liked it but didn't love it, I feel that my praise isn't likely to result in any fellow Back-Bloggers checking this out, so I'm gonna toss out a few spoilers. Not that there's too much to spoil here. The plot moves along slowly, and rarely twisted in some unexpected direction, but that was okay- I liked the writing enough anyway that it really didn't need to. To start with, the book opens up with Part 1- The Part About the Critics, in which a group of notable literary critics who are biggest fans of reclusive author Benno von Archimboldi get together to discuss his works, and eventually set off to find and interview him. Their search eventually takes them to the Mexican border town of Santa Teresa, where their lives spiral out of control. It didn't hook me at first, but by the time the critics make it to Mexico, the book really hit a great stride. This is continued in The Part About Amalfitano, which delves into the life of one of the minor characters in the previous part. Bolano is a bit vague about what is happening to Amalfitano- after the disappearance of his wife, Amalfitano either becomes a real, actual psychic, or he might be going crazy. Either way, interesting read. The novel keeps going strong with Part 2- The Part About Fate, in which Oscar Fate, author for a New York magazine with a focus on African-American issues, is sent out to cover a few stories- first to Detroit, and then to Santa Teresa to cover a boxing match solely because the usual sports guy passed away. While in Santa Teresa Fate becomes interested in a local story that's been quietly alluded to several times previously in the book- over the course of a few years, a few hundred unsolved murders have taken place in the city, possibly the work of the biggest serial killer of all time. This story comes to the forefront in Part 4- The Part About the Crimes. I don't want to say that the story came to a screeching halt here, but to me it was definitely the least interesting part of the whole book. Bolano describes in rich detail dozens of the 200+ murders, all from the time that the body is discovered. It's hard to pin down exactly how he talked about this- it's not presented as a police procedural, or some giant mystery, but taking a look at its effect of the crimes on the people in the city. After the first few times, the shock of "the next body was found by..." starts to wear off and eventually this part just gets boring. The novel started to win me back though in the final act- The Part About Archimboldi, which details the life of the author our critics were trying to find way back in Part 1 and eventually (and surprisingly) ties together a few loose ends from the previous four parts. But in the end, I still just wasn't sure what the purpose of the book was. It seems like a recurring theme throughout the book was that violence is senseless and unnecessary, yet a flashback to a Holocaust concentration camp almost felt like it was played for laughs. What? I really expected the "violence = bad" message to really come to a head there, and yet it's barely touched, which makes me wonder why it was covered in the latter parts of Part 5. Either way, the connections here are loose enough that I might recommend people read the book and simply skip most of part 4- I realize that Bolano wanted to really try something experimental and cover dozens upon dozens of murders in a (relatively) short amount of pages, but I felt like a lot of it didn't add anything, which is a shame based on how well the book started off. Because of that start, I'm also likely to check out what else Bolano has done, but not til every 500+ page book I own is done and logged. Expect another before the month is out.

Precious

With a day off from work thanks to the late and great Dr. King, I decided I should do my best to recognize the holiday in some way. After getting back from KFC, I remembered that I had just received this movie for Christmas and began to watch it. I really didn't know what to expect, aside from a whole lot of abuse from Mo'Nique's character. I knew it was a movie predominantly about poor and illiterate black women from the inner city; I, a more privileged white man who grew up in the suburbs with a good education, would seem like the polar opposite of this movie's target audience. And yet I wasn't. The movie was great. It wasn't uncomfortable for me to sit through in the least. The direction and camerawork were superb, as was the acting by the entire cast. There were some cringe-worthy moments for sure, but this film was not made with any intent to shock or offend, if you know what I'm saying. Oh, and props to Mariah Carey for doing a great job with a minor role. It's almost impossible to even be able to tell that the actress playing that role is diva extraordinaire Mariah Carey. Well done! This is definitely a movie worthy of the praise and accolades which it received, and the drama and tension feel very real and natural, and never forced for theatre's sake. Ch-check it out.

Mr. Holland's Opus

Here's a feel-good movie from 1995 that I watched over the course of the weekend. And I have to say that I didn't hate it. I just didn't think it was as good as I'd heard it was. The plot was too typical, the acting too ordinary, and the story too bland. Basically, it's a semi-biopic of a man who spends his whole life teaching music instead of writing it, and then just as he's forced into early retirement, all of his old students from the past 30 years reconvene to tell him and show him how much they care about him and what he taught them. It all just seemed very standard and cliched, so much so that even though the movie itself was decent I can't really recommend it to anyone. Nothing special, you know? Oh well. The backlog has decreased by one yet again. Woo woo.

Scott Pilgrim VS. The World

The movie went farther into the genre of stretching the limits between movie and video games. I understand that the movie is based on a comic so I therefore will assume that the comic has gone father in stretching the limits between video game and comic. I am not entirely sure how I felt about this movie. I thought the video game references were good and I actually liked that they kept going throughout the entire movie, I feel like a lot of people would have found the repetition to be annoying. I was wholly amused by the fact that one character was named Young Neil, obviously a Neil Young reference and another band member was name Steven Stills who is also a member of the band CSNY (as the S). Why they did this I do not know, perhaps they enjoy Neil Young as much as I do. The plot was a bit hectic, an simply put the main character, Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera), has to fight the seven evil ex's (they aren't all men/ boys) of this girl he likes Ramona. In my opinion the fight scenes were too long and kinda annoying, I really could have done without all of them. The movie has a whole was very scenester and kinda pretentious, mostly it just rubbed me the wrong way. Also the movie starts with Scott Pilgrim dating an annoying Asian chick who reminds me too much of a certain L.L. in Stanvick's grade. I didn't hate it, I didn't love it overall I would rate it MEHH.

Knucklehead

Before I post my opinions on this movie, I just want to thank Sweeney. I'm glad to have this in my collection.

Simply put, if you don't like The Big Show, you'll hate this movie. With that being said, if you like The Big Show...you'll have this movie. Calling this movie a comedy is a joke considering it's not funny. It relies far too heavily on poorly executed physical humor (Big Show hits his head on everything because he's SO tall!). The story revolves around 7-foot tall manchild, Walter Krunk. He still lives at an orphanage because no family has ever wanted to adopt him on account of his abnormal build. Fast forward twenty years and the nuns want him out. To make matters worse, he burns down the kitchen after trying to make breakfast. Without a working kitchen, the orphanage will be shut down. But how would they get the $25,000 it would take to redo the kitchen? Simple, Walter must fight in a tournament to win the $100,000 prize. In the finals, he faces Redrum. He wins. It was anticlimactic. Still, the little black kid from Role Models and Jan from The Office were in the movie. You get to see Jan in her bra and panties if that floats your boat.

It's clear that WWE Studios will greenlight any script because this one was atrocious. So guys, I think it's time to get writing. Just make sure you make the lead part perfect for John Cena, HHH, or The Big Show.

Grandma's Boy

The problem with waiting weeks between the time of watching and logging a movie is that I tend to forget everything about it. Still, I remember thinking this movie was pretty funny. Maybe it's because I was on a plane when I watched it and anything would seem entertaining compared to the in-flight movie (Charlie St. Cloud). Or Maybe it's because I was really tired and everything seems funny when you are really tired.

There's a monkey (who drives!), a bunch of old ladies, a hot chick, and pretty much every actor from Big Daddy. They play video games and smoke pot. It's not a really inspired story and a lot of the jokes miss the mark, but I can't help but love J.P. (a young prodigy in the world of video games who acts like a robot when he's nervous) and Mr. Cheezle (played by Kevin Nealon). I can't say I'll ever watch it again, but if you haven't seen it, it's worth a look I guess. You could do far worse in a comedy (see Knucklehead).

Fracture (2007)

I suppose you could classify this movie as a thriller in that I sure was thrilled when it ended. It wasn't a bad movie, but it was a terribly boring one. There's a difference. I mean, The Godfather is a boring movie, and yet it's regarded as one of the greatest films ever made. But this wasn't The Godfather. This was a simple legal drama in which Anthony Hopkins and Ryan Gosling try to outwit one another in court. I just didn't find a minute of this movie to be exciting or entertaining. Well-written and well-acted, sure, but by no means a "thriller" in my mind. Oh well. When you buy obscene amounts of $2.99 movies, you have to expect disappointment every now and again. Jesus, 2010 was a bad year for me in terms of anti-logging movie purchases. But two weeks into 2011, I have yet to buy a new movie. I hope to keep that streak going strong well into the future. But we'll see. We'll see.

Before Sunrise

Here's a highly regarded minimalist romance movie from 1995. It is essentially Lost in Translation set in Vienna instead of Japan. If dialogue ain't your thing, then don't bother; this movie is almost entirely dialogue-driven with the only "action" being the two main characters walking around in Vienna over the course of one night. It was a perfect movie to do some FF5 grinding during, since I only needed to listen to the movie and could easily steal glimpses at my muted DS without losing focus on the game. I thought Lost in Translation was a very overrated movie, but I did enjoy this one. The idea of two strangers spending a nearly perfect night together before departing in the morning to never meet again is not in and of itself a novel one, but the execution was pretty great and there were no unrealistic implications like "and the two spent the rest of their lives together afterward" or "but they never spoke to one another ever again." In fact, the ending is rather ambiguous and allows you to wonder whether the two will meet again or if their happenstance meeting was merely a "one night stand," so to speak. (Actually, the mere existence of the film Before Sunset implies that, yes, the two will meet again. But still.) Some of the dialogue felt hokey and forced, but the overall night-long conversation felt pretty genuine in general. All things considered, this was a decent movie with a pair of great performances from the leads. I'll certainly check out the sequel at some point.

Under the Dome

So, this is a long book. I like long books. I’m a fast reader so I feel like the longer the book the more worth my while it is. When I read the 1000+ page extended version of the Stand, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Man, I thought that book was horrible. I was worried the same thing was going to happen with Under the Dome.

Turns out, I was pleasantly surprised. The plot of this book, as you can gather from the title, is that a small town called Chester Mill all of a sudden mysteriously surrounded by a dome cutting off their society from the rest of the world. When the dome comes down, a lot of gruesome things happen around the town. A plane flies into it; A car smashes into it; People get cut in half. The usual. It’s what comes after this that makes the book interesting.

It’s hard at first to remember the large ensemble cast. They introduce you to the villain Rennie the framed good guy Barbie and a whole host of other townspeople. At first, it is hard to remember who is who, but you do have 1000 pages to figure it out. Things start getting real tense though. People are freaking out. The villain abuses his power. The police force turns bad. And there is the constant mystery of what is the dome?

The whole book they build up the final few chapters. I had heard from Sweeney that the ending was a bit of a let down, but I was happy with it. In my mind, the story was resolved and I learned everything I wanted to. So, Stephen King, after the disaster called The Stand, I liked Under the Dome.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence

Alright. This movie was somewhat uneven and not immune to flaws big and small, but it was also very interesting and extremely watchable. The long story behind this movie is that it was a Stanley Kubrick project in development hell for some thirty years. When Kubrick died in 1999, he passed the reins to Steven Spielberg. Spielberg fast-tracked it and it came out in 2001 as a Spielberg film, but most people had the understanding that it was a very Kubrickian film with some very strong hints of Spielberg. The result was a movie that was neither bleak and dystopian (Kubrick) nor hopeful and inspiring (Spielberg) but instead some strange sort of hybrid of the two. And it didn't work quite as well as it would have had the film been either wholly Spielberg's or wholly Kubrick's. Or at least, that was the common critical consensus in 2001. Spielberg has refuted this popular opinion as a misconception, claiming that many aspects of the movie most people attributed to him were actually Kubrick's doing, and vice versa. Now, sitting here ten years later at the tail end of a snow day (woo-hoo!), I feel the need to defend the Kubrick-Spielberg hybridism. Because that aspect of the movie worked very well. It felt more mature and thematic than most of Spielberg's sci-fi, and it also had a certain production value that I'd never seen in any of Kubrick's stuff. Although the movie was two and a half hours long, I only felt like three or four minutes of it were a waste of my time. There were three very distinct acts in this one too, and the third act takes a very surprising twist both out of whack with but also complementary of the first two hours of the movie. But then the ending just doesn't impress. It fits. It makes sense. But it doesn't really work as a satisfying capper to the preceding two and a half hours. It feels empty and weak - even though, again, it fits perfectly. I realize that must sound vague, but watch the movie in order to get a sense of what I'm talking about. I also think Jude Law was wasted on an uninteresting and ultimately irrelevant character who only appeared in the second act. I mean his character was just beyond pointless. Anyway, this movie is one that is worth watching, but don't expect it to blow you away or leave you completely satisfied.

Slap Shot

After being very disappointed in Caddyshack the other week, I was skeptical about watching another thirty-year-old sports-based comedy. But this one's been sitting on my shelf unwatched for several months now, making it one of my three or four oldest backlogged movies. So I gave it a shot. And I liked it. I didn't love it, but I definitely didn't dislike it or feel as though I'd wasted seven dollars or two hours of my life. It's a movie about minor league hockey fights, essentially, and with a fair share of genuinely funny scenes and punchlines. And there's plenty of Paul Newman. So what's not to love? There's not much else to say, really, so I'll leave now and let you get on with your Wednesday night.

Mother Night

I usually try to refrain from reading multiple books by the same author consecutively for one reason or another, but since I have plenty of Vonnegut to get through (four more books even after this one's completion) and since I'm enjoying his writing so far, I figured I'd go right ahead and treat myself to Mother Night after finishing Cat's Cradle. And I'm glad I did so. As I said in my post about Cat's Cradle, that book fell just a bit shy of my expectations. In Mother Night, however, we've got one of Vonnegut's lesser known works. I had no expectations going in and I was impressed and entertained all the same. I'll spoil nothing, except the premise: Howard Campbell is being held in Israel to be tried for war crimes as a Nazi in World War II. But Campell was actually operating as an American spy; he spewed antisemitic propaganda on the radio in Germany, but also broadcast information to American forces in code at the same time. Yet he was such a masterfully covert agent that no one now believes his story to be true. Rather than an American hero, he is recognized both at home and internationally as a Nazi sympathizer. The moral of the story, as Vonnegut admits right off the bat in the introduction, is that "we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." Of course, in typical Vonnegut fashion, he immediately amends that moral by saying that perhaps the real moral is that "when you're dead, you're dead," before finally deciding at the end of his introduction that another moral has just occurred to him: "Make love when you can. It's good for you." So, yeah. Classic Vonnegut. It wasn't quite Slaughterhouse-Five, but I enjoyed Mother Night a great deal just the same.

The Meaning of Life

I think most people (myself included) think first of The Holy Grail when they hear the name "Monty Python." But aside from that film and Life of Brian, everything the British comedy troupe ever made was of the much shorter sketch variety. This "film" is really no more than a collection of skits very loosely connected, and often with abrupt and nonsensical segues. I liked it. I liked it a lot. The production value on this 1983 movie felt much higher than that on Holy Grail (1975) or Life of Brian (1979), and when I say that I mean that I could hear the dialogue very easily over the sound effects and that the video was not blurry or fuzzy. So in that sense, it really felt like a contemporary movie despite being 28 years old. And beyond that, it was funny. Quite raunchy, even, and well-worthy of its R-rating. In a way it's a bit of a black comedy, but it isn't entirely morbid. I mean, it's Monty Python. You know what you're getting. I can't say that any of the sketches were dud or misses; each one was either funny enough or brief enough to keep my interest high and my funny bone tickled. One of my favorites was the musical number "Every Sperm is Sacred," a satirical song and dance about the Catholic Church's anti-contraception stance. I was unprepared for the shock value contained in "Live Organ Transplants," in which two organ harvesters show up at a terrified man's home and brutally remove his liver. Oh, and unlike the other movie I watched last night, What Dreams May Come, this movie's version of heaven was light-hearted and easy to appreciate; it's Christmas all the time in heaven and the whole thing is a cheesy Vegas show with topless burlesque girls in Santa hats. I mean, who'd be disappointed in that ultimate outcome? The Meaning of Life was a ridiculous and nonsensical collection of humor that I found amusing, but it's certainly not for everyone. If British humor, absurdist humor, and morbid humor are all varieties of comedy that you enjoy, you'll probably like it too.

The Twilight Saga Part 3 - Eclipse

No. Don’t be alarmed. This is not Webber posting. Despite an influx of teeny bopper Zac Efron filled movies from Webber, the blog is back to the norm with me posting crappy movies, television, and books. What can I say about Twilight? I really did enjoy the books. The writing is horrible. I can’t argue with that. The plot is ridiculous (but entertaining). However, the characters and storyline, I think, immerse you into the plot. Whether you love them or hate them, Bella and Edward have this fairytale love that people wish exist in real life. They are quick entertaining reads, and that’s all I asked for.

The movies though are an entirely different story. I haven’t seen any of these in theaters because I really don’t want to pay for them. They’re just not good. The first movie was down right awful. Unintentionally funny. But awful. They vampires running at full speed is cartoon esque. Kristin Stewart is one of the most annoying people ever. And middle age women around the globe are swooning over a baby faced 16 year old. I can’t take it! The movies turn the books into something they’re not. They focus on the creepy vampires approaching town rather than the relationship between Bella and Edward. And damn, it ‘s just not good. New Moon was slightly better. Same problem though. Also less Edward.

That brings me to the third movie. Eclipse. A newborn vampire army is coming after poor Bella. This movie was not awful. It was not good, but it was the best of the three. I attribute this to another new director. He made the new movie not entirely ridiculous. The plot of this movie also lent itself better to the action drama category. He cut out most of the stupid fighting between Edward and Jacob and did a good job keeping in the most important scenes. Good for you David Slade. You turned a ridiculous book into a decent movie. Congrats. You were replaced though. Oh well. Good luck to the next director who must turn a sex filled movie featuring a half human half vampire baby who was delivered with a vampire’s teeth into a PG13 movie. Have fun!

What Dreams May Come

Here's a movie that came out just a little too soon (1998) for me to have seen or understood in its own time. Going in, I knew two things about What Dreams May Come: that it was widely considered to be a visually stunning and imaginative masterpiece, and also that it's become the butt of many jokes about the career of Robin Williams. So the door was wide open here, and I didn't know what to expect. What I got was a partially satisfying, very memorable, but ultimately irrelevant experience. There's a certain innate arrogance that people will be faulted for having anytime they share their own personal idea of what heaven or the afterlife would be like, but I don't like that; I won't call this film pretentious. But I also can't call it a great movie, or even a good one on a technical level. It certainly was imaginative and stunning, but so was Inception, and we all know how riddled with plot holes and pseudo-drama that movie was. Actually, this movie reminded me a great deal of The Fountain, and that's kind of weird, because The Fountain has nothing to do with heaven or an afterlife. I think I liked The Fountain more, even if (or perhaps because?) it was way more vague. This movie was just a little too unoriginal for me. I swear I'm not spoiling the plot any more than the small summary on the back of the DVD case when I say that Robin Williams dies and goes to heaven and then his wife commits suicide and goes to hell and then he goes all the way into the depths of hell to rescue her. It just all felt kind of trite. The takeaway seemed to be a very bland combination of tried and true themes such as "love conquers all" or "the human experience is not bound by mortality." But at least the whole thing was better than the "sideways" universe in the final season of Lost. Ugh. Compared to that wishy-washy cop-out bullshit, this movie was like The Godfather. And at least here the afterlife sequences actually meant something. Remove them from this movie and all you're left with is a horribly depressing half hour in which a man and a woman lose their two children in a car accident, and then the man dies in a car accident, and then the woman kills herself, and then the credits roll. Somebody should cut that and put it up on YouTube or something, because that actually sounds morbidly hilarious. But yeah. Take the afterlife sequences out of Lost, and you're left with... well, you're left with what is probably a much better season. Anyway, in the end I'm glad to have seen this film but I don't think it's as special or meaningful as it wanted to be, and I won't be going out of my way to recommend it to anyone. And seriously, fuck Lost.

The Office: Season 6

So far, 2011 has been no different than 2011 as far as Back-Blogged is concerned; yet again, we've kicked off a month with an enormous lull. It's as if no one likes posting anything when the calendar date is in the single digits. But I digress. Over the past week, I've been watching the sixth season of The Office for the second time, having caught it once before on TV last year. And I think I owe the show a very small apology. I've been bashing it as hard as anyone lately, decrying its fall from greatness and recent poor writing. But the thing is, it's actually still a decent and funny show overall. There are a lot of things I could write about in this post, but I'll use it to pinpoint a few of the big reasons the show has become stale. It all starts with Jim and Pam. When the show began, they were two everymen who you couldn't help but root for. Jim was bored beyond belief at work and depressed about the prospect of working at a middling paper company for the rest of his life. Pam was trapped in an infinite engagement with a man who wouldn't support her dreams. Those dreams involved going to art school and doing something more with her life than secretary work. Jim longed for Pam. Pam saw him as a friend, but occasionally let her own feelings for him become something more. No matter how funny or zany the episode around those two characters was, it was those two characters who grounded the show and gave us someone or something to root for. The British Office featured the same dynamic, and wisely ended with (spoiler alert) Tim and Dawn (their Jim and Pam) finally getting together. But here in the American version of the show, that long-awaited union happened at the beginning of Season 4. Is it any coincidence that Seasons 2 and 3 were this show's strongest? I say no. And things only got worse from there as Jim and Pam became engaged, and then promoted, and then pregnant, and then married, and then parents. And somewhere along the way, as their lives becmae better and better, they became less likeable and harder to root for. This season, the two were borderline insufferable at times with their snarky sarcasm and pissy attitudes. Granted, they did get married and have a baby - but still. Unfortunately, I don't think The Office can undo the character development they've put into Pam and Jim and their relationship, and I see no way in which the two can ever recapture our enthusiasm and support. Another of the show's recent faults is the caricaturization of the entire staff. When the series was young, much of the humor was derived from Michael and Dwight's ludicrous stereotypes, assumptions, and inability to recognize the humanity in many of their coworkers. But somewhere along the way, Kevin turned into an oafish simpleton. Oscar turned into an elitist. Meredith turned into a promiscuous alcoholic. Creed became unabashedly insane. Ryan turned into a selfish fad-seeker without any morals. The list goes on and on. Part of what made the show so great so long ago was that the humor derived from everyday office situations. Now, nearly every character on the show is an unrealistic flat character. And that kind of brings me to my final point, which is that there are far too many characters. Regularly featured main characters this season included Michael, Dwight, Jim, Pam, Ryan, Andy, Stanley, Phyllis, Oscar, Kevin, Angela, Creed, Kelly, Meredith, Toby, Darryl, Erin, and Gabe. That's eighteen people in a twenty-two-minute show. The cast has only grown and never shrunk. That's not even realistic, let alone good casting. The cast is so bloated at this point that most characters are good for just a few lines per episode, and that only further influences the flattening of the characters that I griped about earlier. The only regular character who has ever been written off the show is Karen, who dated Jim back in Season 3 and has been seen only two or three times since then, and not at all in this season. But in a show set during this current economic crisis - and one that uses said economic crisis in so many plot points - the cast just keeps expanding. Toby and Ryan have each been written off at one point or another, only to return. And it's not that I'm wishing for any specific characters to just leave the show altogether (though I could do without the especially flat ones like Creed and Meredith). It's just that with so much cast expansion, everyone's role gets just a little more diluted. Something's gotta give. And apparently, it will be Steve Carrell, who has already announced that he will leave the show following the 2010-2011 (current) season. Great. Fine. I just hope the writers use this as a chance to overhaul the show. Wouldn't it make sense for a new office manager to slash a lot of personnel between seasons? There's a golden opportunity to clean this cluttered house, but I doubt the showrunners will take advantage of it. Oh well. Such is The Office these days. It's still a pretty funny show, but it can be frustrating to put up with. "Jumping the shark" is a frequently misused term, but somewhere over the course of the last three seasons, that's exactly what The Office did. And if you don't believe me, I'll just point you in the direction of this season's thirteenth episode, "The Banker." It was a clip show.