Wario Land II

Philosophical question. If you beat a video game a long time ago, and have absolutely - and I mean absolutely - no recollection of having done so, did you ever really beat it at all? I ask this because I started playing Wario Land II only an hour or so ago only to find myself continuing from a save point just before the final boss. I remember playing the game before, but barely. I was positive that I had made it no more than a few levels into the game at best. Yet here I was, continuing my game just before the final boss. Strange. I've had this game since 2000. That's a long time, but it still puts me at twelve years old when I first played it. In other words, if I did beat it - or even if I played it most of the way through - I should have remembered doing so. But I don't. At all. And I have a pretty good memory, especially when it comes to movies an video games and such. Weird. Like, I am convinced I personally did not put in all of the legwork to allow myself to start playing, one hour ago, just before the final boss. But then, who did? My younger sisters would be a long shot; though both occasionally dabbled with video games in my childhood, neither ever played my Game Boy. At least not that I can remember. (But then, said memory is what I'm starting to question anyway.) Was it a friend? If so, who? And why? The best explanation - I did get the game used - is that the previous owner had put in all of that "work." But that seems impossible because the one part of the game I do definitively remember is the beginning, and in order to start a new game you need to clear the data. Bizarre. Regardless, I just beat the final boss, and thus, the game, even if I can't remember playing - hell, swear I didn't play - the first 99% of it. Strange. At any rate, the very small amount of Wario Land II that I do recall (most of which just occurred) was fun enough to merit an overall thumbs up for the game, but as far as must-play classics are concerned, this one falls way short. It's just one of the better 2D platform games I've seen. Not one of the best, but one of the better ones. The nicest part about beating it is that I've now finished off the Game Boy portion of my backlog. No guarantees that I'll never touch another Game Boy game. Some old relics out there still pique my interest - most notably, Metroid II. But my goal isn't, and never has been, never to try any new things. It's just been to finish off all the games, books, and movies (and TV seasons) I already own. And I'm one small step closer to that goal thanks largely to the surprise "99% done" situation. That will always remain a mystery to me.

Call of Duty 3

As another WWII game like Call of Duty 2, Call of Duty 3 is best reviewed in comparison to its predecessor. How much did the game improve in a year? Can developer Treyarch stand up to Infinity Ward's lofty abilities? The answer is a wishy-washy "sort of." CoD 3 follows a single mission on several different fronts- the Allied forces pushing into the French village of Chambois. Why this was so important, I still don't know, but I'm no WWII historian. One of the big changes here is the push towards a full-time story with recurring characters with different personalities. It doesn't work great, but it's simultaneously miles ahead of Call of Duty 2, and behind Modern Warfare. The other big noticable change is that you play as a Canadian. Okay, maybe that's not so big, but it's worth mentioning. One of the playable scenarios in Call of Duty 3 involves playing as a Canadian. Interesting move, Treyarch. The missions here are for the most part more interesting and varied than the ones found in Call of Duty 2- in a given level you might fight your way to a tank, hop on board and cause all sorts of destruction, jump off, infiltrate a bunker while placing explosives at weak points in the structure, fight your way out, then make a getaway in a GTA-style open-world driving segment. Again, this appears to be a very transitory quality of the game- the static environments and most repetitive levels from CoD 2 are gone, but it's not quite up to the thrill-a-minute level of Modern Warfare. With the longer levels, though, comes a terrible use of checkpoints. While all the other Call of Duty games I've played have been loaded with checkpoints, ensuring you're never starting far back from the location of your last death, the checkpoints in Call of Duty 3 are few and far between, leading to tons of frustration and audible cuss words from me (just ask my roommate). It's a more technically impressive game than before in some respects with better graphics and animation, but also appeared to have a few glitches I hadn't seen in the previous installment- enemies running in place, discoloration in the background. It got distracting enough to detract from the game. Overall though, there were plenty of pluses and minuses here, and for the most part they all cancel out. I got the same amount of enjoyment out of Call of Duty 3 that I did from Call of Duty 2.

Angels in America

With all due respect to The Corner, it now stands as an anomaly to the rule: that when HBO makes a miniseries, that miniseries is amazing. John Adams intrigued me from start to finish. Band of Brothers blew me away. And now Angels in America has impressed me beyond any and all expectations. The miniseries - or really, the six-hour movie, if you want to look at it that way - is set in 1986 amid the outbreak of the AIDS crisis. (It's adapted from a 1993 play and it debuted in 2003 and I just watched it here in 2011. That's twenty-five years spanning four different decades. Timeless? Yes. Absolutely.) The three big names in the cast were Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, and Emma Thompson. But while each of them was as amazing as you'd expect, it was really the less known actors (or maybe just the characters they played) that carried the heart of the film. There are six or seven main characters who start out with three or four different story arcs but all end up crossing paths at various points in the lengthy film. A closeted gay Mormon man and his bored, frustrated wife have marital issues. The man works for Ray Cohn, a (real life) closeted gay lawyer suffering from AIDS but hiding it from the public eye. Meanwhile, another gay man discovers that he has AIDS. His partner of five years, scared and unsure of how to handle it, leaves him. His jilted lover suffers now not only from the AIDS slowly ravaging his body, but the humiliation and pain of being abandoned. The guilt-stricken man soon begins a relationship with the closeted Mormon. The Mormon's wife has long had wild and vivid Valium-induced hallucinations, but in the wake of her husband admitting his homosexuality to her, she really goes off the deep end. Meanwhile, the AIDS victim's long time ex is a male nurse for Ray Cohn, who despises him. And then the Mormon's mother comes to town, unsure of how much of his homosexuality is her fault, before befriending several of the other gay men we've seen so far. Oh, and the whole thing is interspersed with angels and supernatural phenomena. It's shot and scored beautifully, and I've already heaped praise upon the cast. Just a very impressive undertaking all around and something I do think most people would really appreciate seeing at some point. It really captures the uncertainty, dread, and depression of AIDS in the '80s among the gay community. Since this movie/miniseries is six hours long, there's such a gradual but obvious decay in health for the two AIDS victims. That's something I've never really seen in a movie before. It's obvious that AIDS is a death sentence, but to watch two very different characters deal with ever-worsening conditions - hey, is that a new lesion? was he limping this hard in his previous scene? - was a surreal and eye-opening thing. Huge props to both Al Pacino (expected) and Justin Kirk (Uncle Andy from Weeds, whose initial appearance in this miniseries was responsible for my biggest "Wait, is that that guy?" moment in a long time). Actually, Kirk may have even outdone Pacino, and this was Pacino at his best. Just incredible, really. Final tidbit: Mary-Louise Parker, also of Weeds (its main character), was also in Angels in America (as the Mormon wife). I don't know if I can ever watch Showtime's quirky black comedy the same way again.

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

Everyone's talking Vonnegut on the blog, and I couldn't help but jump back in. Unfortunately, this was one of my least favorite novels of his. (Fortunately, the bar had been set rather high; this wasn't a disappointing book - just a disappointing Vonnegut book.) The highest compliment that I can pay to it is that, two thirds or so of the way through, its myriad cast of interesting and quirky characters reminded me at least a little bit of Catch-22. But the similarities between the books stop there. While Heller's masterpiece used wit and humor to mask a horrifying and tragic, pointed satire, Mr. Rosewater hardly had any plot to speak of at all. In a nutshell, the gist is that a lawyer is trying to cash in by facilitating the transfer of an extremely large amount of money from an eccentric and possibly somewhat crazy man to that man's distant cousin. Vonnegut claimed that the main character in the book was "money," but he never actually made me believe that. All he did was avoid making any other character particularly important to the story at hand. The book ends with a humorous "just desserts" twist that kind of comes out of the blue, but it wasn't enough to justify the overall lack of story in the 270 preceding pages. But that's just my opinion! Six books into Vonnegut's bibliography, I'm very impressed overall. Still, I hope the next few I read are easier to like than this one was. Oh well!

The Catcher in the Rye

I’ll take Sweeney’s lead and continue on with Salinger here. It’s quite possible that I’m one of the very few that have never read this guy in school. It just slipped through the cracks for me. For those that don’t know this, I went to two different high schools - my sophomore year was spent at Lawrence Academy - and because of this, I somehow dodge ever having to read this book for mere academic purposes. Now, I’ve just done it for pure leisure... and curiosity. (I can die a happy man now that I understand what the hell this title means.)

Many people have stressed to me that this is a book that needs to be read through the eyes of a pissy, little teenager or else you’ll begin to hate Holden Caulfield - the epitome of all pissy, little teenagers. However, I believe I’m immature enough (or just hate the world enough) to sympathize a little with Holden. Yeah, I enjoyed this book. At times, I did find it a little trying to stomach Mr. Debbie Downer, but I usually felt sorry for him rather than getting fed up with his attitude. Every now-and-then you get a glimpse of Holden’s softer side - his compassion for others, regardless if he’s making snide comments about them within his own head. By the end, you see him more as this tragic figure just trying his best to find his own path in life. That’s a message most people can probably empathize with to some extent, no matter what their age might be.

The real question remains: Will I read anymore Salinger? Well, judging by Sweeney’s post and Stan’s comments... probably not. Although this book provides some heavy insight onto the human condition (or just growing-up, in general) it wasn’t that much of a page turner. So, based on the “glowing” recommendations for Salinger’s other works, it may take a backseat for the time being.

Mother Night

Here's a Vonnegut book several people I know have spoken highly of, and it's warranted. Vonnegut often gets lumped into the "sci-fi" genre because a lot of his books require science fiction as a plot device- the time travelling in Timequake and Slaughterhouse 5, accelerated evolutionary biology in Galapagos, and doomsday devices in Cat's Cradle. But Vonnegut can hold his own in stories that are grounded in reality, and he does just that with Mother Night. The book contains an "autobiography" of Howard Campbell Jr, an American living in Germany before the start of WWII who is recruited to become an American spy. To do this, he has to spit some Anti-Semitic invective over the radio to inspire the Nazis, but at the same time he's delivering coded messages for the American side. What he's coding, he doesn't know, and who's listening, he also doesn't know. In fact, he can hardly prove he's on the American side at all- Howard's only connection is to a single other man in the army, who rarely communicates with him. I found it a pretty novel idea- Howard is so good at being a spy that he becomes unable to prove he's a spy, and eventually is tried for his war crimes. The book takes part mostly long after he's returned to America to no hero's welcome- he lives in a shitty apartment with small funds from the government, trying to avoid getting caught by anyone. Of course eventually he's found out and a bunch of racists, Communists, and a former lover all want a piece of him. The rest of the events unfold in a typical Vonnegut fashion, all pointing to the moral of the story- "We are what we pretend to be." Despite thinking that the Nazis were awful people and serving America the whole time, there was little in Howard's actions to indicate he was not a Nazi. Mother Night was a quick one that didn't meander nearly as much as some of Vonnegut's other novels, but was still one of the better ones and I'd recommend it to any fan of his.

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour- an Introduction

I haven't read any Salinger books since high school, and I feel like he either took too much or not enough shit depending on who was talking about him. Like everyone else I read The Catcher in the Rye and as a 15 year old the book just plain worked for me- Holden Caulfield really captured that "loss of innocence" we all have as we slowly start making our way into adulthood. I liked it, but I wasn't obsessed with it. Some people look back on this as one of their favorite books, but they always seem to be the type of people who stopped reading anything after college. Other people look back on Catcher as terrible because Holden Caulfield is a whiny shit. He's supposed to be! How can he grow up at the end when there's nothing to grow out of? Anyway this post has become more of a review of Catcher in the Rye than Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour- An Introduction. I'll leave the critique of the former to Trev whenever he gets around to posting it, and concentrate on the latter, which I just read. Frankly, there wasn't much to it. The first novella, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters has nothing to do with carpentry but instead is about the Glass family, a commonly-visited subject for Salinger. In it Buddy Glass is on leave from WWII to see his brother Seymour's wedding, where Seymour is a no-show. Buddy gets stuck in a car with a few strangers who talk about what happened, and the majority of the book is just conversations in the car. Everyone else in the car is especially critical of Seymour, which mostly just pisses Buddy off, delivering more on the themes from Catcher- everyone's a judgmental phony! Anyway Seymour ends up eloping his wife in the end and that's the end of that. Not a great book, but whatever. Seymour- an Introduction, however. Ugh. Much like my old friend Beckett, Salinger goes for stream of conscious style writing, and just like before I have no idea why. It must be easier on an author to let it all out and not have to worry about editing it all down, but it's brutal on readers. And all of that boring writing for what? Exactly what the title says- an introduction to Seymour. Sort of a "here are the important things to know about Seymour." You read about his writing style and love of poetry, what clothes he wears, shit like that. Salinger answers the who, what, where; but skips entirely over the why. Why should I care about Seymour? How is he interesting in any way? He wasn't, so I hated Seymour- an Introduction.

Choke

More from Ryan's shelf. I had always been interested in reading some Chuck Palahniuk, as I really enjoyed Fight Club, even if it is a little played out by now. Choke carries over that heavily cynical tone Fight Club employed and reminded me a lot of the intro where the unnamed narrator becomes addicted to support groups. Addiction is a recurring theme in Choke- the protagonist Victor and most of the characters are sex-addicts in a 12-step recovery plan who have no interest in actually recovering. Palahniuk makes a good point about addiction- if it's new and exciting, it's glamorized, but if it's old hat then no one really cares. Reminds me of how you can't turn on the tv without seeing Hoarders or something similar. Along the way Victor becomes a con man to pay for care for his dieing mother- he feigns "choking" on food in restaurants to get people to save him, and out of an odd sense of responsibility these people keep sending him money to make sure he stays on his feet. Victor's relationship with his insane mother causes Victor to have some major issues with women, likely the cause for his sex addiction. Whether the book is taking a feminist or anti-feminist stance (men aren't as fortunate as women because they can't "create a miracle" (childbirth)) the themes certainly run deep. Another running subplot felt a lot like that movie Dogma- Victor receives some startling information that he may in fact be the son of god. At first you think "no chance, not even in the context of the book does it make sense" but along the way the parallels between this foul-mouthed asshole and Jesus become more and more clear and the possibility opens up. There's no "Tyler Durden is the narrator" type of twist here to wrap things up, but plenty of smaller ones along the way that kept the book fresh and interesting throughout. I'm slowly making my way down one of Ryan's bookshelves, and I don't think the next Palahniuk book (probably Fight Club itself) is far off- I'm looking forward to it.

Call of Duty 2

If I continued logging as I have been, I feel like I never would have finished my stuff. Everything was moving so slow! I needed a boost, and ironically enough that came from adding a lot more things to my backlog. My roommate Ryan has about six or seven XBOX 360 games (most short, two long) that I want to play, and a few shelves full of books that I'm interested in (I'll probably skip all the books about the Yankees). The second one I tackled was the classic short FPS- Call of Duty 2 (the first was Less Than Zero). I skipped over the first game in the series, but Ryan tells me it's terrible and this was an enormous step forward for the franchise. Well, it was pretty basic- a WW2 first person shooter? How many times have we seen that before? Either way it was a fun but short game that holds up pretty well after the six years it's been out. Stay tuned to hear my opinions on Call of Duty 3.

Any Given Sunday

This movie came out in 1999 and for the next seven years or so (middle school and high school, for me) it always seemed to come up every now and again when my friends and classmates would discuss football, movies, and especially football movie. So when I saw it on a $5 bargain shelf recently, I figured I had to find out some ten years later what all the fuss was about. And let's just say the lesson, as always, is not to take film recommendations from teenagers. Now, this wasn't a terrible movie. It wasn't even bad. But it was hardly a movie at all in the sense that a movie has a plot. This felt much more like a mesh between a documentary and a highlight reel - but not in a clever or creative way, make no mistake. The movie followed the Miami Sharks (a fictional professional football team) both on and off the field for the final five games of their season. Players get injured. Rookies pay their dues. The coach and the owner squabble. There's plenty of in-fighting among the lazy veterans and the energy-filled young guys. Wives and girlfriends get cheated on. Drugs are done. There are quite a few penises on display in several locker room scenes. And aside from a brief inspirational speech toward the end of the movie from head coach Al Pacino, nothing ever feels dramatic or meaningful in any larger scheme at all. Instead, this movie brings intensity. There must have been close to a hundred "hard football hits" depicted on screen and a dozen more off-field punches thrown. There's music playing at almost all times. Sometimes it's hip hop and sometimes it's rock, but at all times it's hard and heavy and fast and loud. So at the end of the 150 minute run time - way too long, by the way - the movie had all felt somewhat more like a never-ending artistic mash-up of music and football clips than it felt like a tale with a cohesive plot and appropriate amounts of time spent on rising and falling action. But again, this wasn't a bad movie. The acting was pretty great and the characters were surprisingly well developed for the little amount of background information we're given on each of them. Even the cinematography was well done. I just didn't care so much for the overall story because there really wasn't one. I had the same issue with the last Oliver Stone movie I watched, The Doors. That movie had a great soundtrack and decent acting, but was really just two and a half hours of Jim Morrison being a drugged out asshole. And this movie had an intense soundtrack and some solid acting, but was really just football players getting hit really hard on the field and doing cocaine off of naked hookers during their free time. It certainly depicted a fictionalized version of professional football in which everything that is done is done ridiculously hard, be it tackling or partying or arguing in the locker room. Like, at one point a player gets hit so hard that his eye pops out. What? And that brings me to my final point. Going into this 1999 movie, I expected it to be dated in some ways. And it was. But not in the ways I had anticipated. Today, there's such an emphasis on player safety. Even several years ago, quarterbacks and receivers were being protected from late hits and unnecessary roughness. But the 1999 football depicted in the movie is such bush league bone-crushing bullshit filled with late hits, helmet on helmet hits, and absurd amounts of post-whistle roughness. I know it's a movie, and I know movies need to play up things like violence and animosity. But without even trying to count them, I saw all kinds of late hits and hard hits throughout the movie that would warrant at least a flag - and probably a one-game suspension these days - but very rarely saw the refs calling any penalties. It's almost as if the film is a parody of the violence surrounding the culture of professional football. But it isn't. It's just an honest but slightly misguided attempt at making an enduring and compelling sports movie. No thanks. Give me even the worst three episodes of Friday Night Lights instead.

Less Than Zero

There are way too many covers for this book according to Google, and I couldn't even find the right one. Well, I did, but it had a crappy background that would have been hard to get rid of. I aint got time for that! Anyway the cover of the book I read featured three beautiful 20-somethings dressed up really nice sitting by a pool and it reeked of 80's style. This picture came from the movie they made out of Less Than Zero, which apparently has little to do with the book. I really have no idea how a movie was made from Less Than Zero, but that's neither here nor there. The book is the debut effort from Bret Easton Ellis, aka the guy who wrote American Psycho. And the similarities to that novel are striking. Ellis really paints a shocking picture of materialism in the 80's- rich New York businessmen in Psycho, and spoiled Los Angeles teens in Less Than Zero. The story follows 18 year old Clay, returning home to Los Angeles from college in New Hampshire (Camden, the college that eventually is the setting for The Rules of Attraction) for winter break. During this month or so he does lots of drugs, has lots of sex, and eventually realizes how vapid everyone is and decides to head back to New Hampshire, possibly for good. Ellis's heavy critique of society is demonstrated by nearly every main character participating in some sort of shocking depraved behavior- at first small (Clay's young sister insisting she can "get her own cocaine" in front of her parents, and no one seems to care) to the downright uncomfortable to read bits (Clay's friends are inspired by a snuff film and re-enact scenes with a 12 year old girl). It's not quite as bad as the stuff that goes down in American Psycho, but certainly enough to make you think Bret Easton Ellis is a little messed in the head. Anyway not much else happens here- by the end of the book Clay has barely learnt a lesson, but as with many books the simple plot is no big deal. To me both Psycho and Less Than Zero seem more like creative ways for Ellis to say "die, yuppie scum." And I know not all of his books involve materialistic 80's characters from watching the movie The Rules of Attraction, so I'm willing to check out some more of Ellis's work.

Capote

Capote was a decent movie, but it was Philip Seymour Hoffman who put on a phenomenal performance. The movie is a largely nonfictional account of Truman Capote and the time he spent writing In Cold Blood, his most famous work. Said work was itself a nonfictional account of the night two men broke into a Kansas home and murdered an entire family. While the story was interesting enough to keep me from counting down the minutes until the movie ended, it was by no means groundbreaking, unforgettable, or worth watching this film for. But Hoffman's performance as Capote was. Capote was one of the most interesting and eccentric characters I've ever seen at the center of a movie. He was Southern, gay, and extremely fond of recognition and attention. He was also a bit of an alcoholic. And Hoffman just nails it every step of the way. You can probably find some clips of the performance on YouTube, and you really have to see (and listen to) them in order to understand how strange and unique the role is. Hoffman makes Capote a rather flamboyant and strange character, but keeps him human enough for every one of us to recognize his plight and his dilemma. And for what it's worth, I've YouTubed a few clips of the real Truman Capote and can attest that Hoffman's version sounds nearly identical to its real life counterpart. Amazing. So yeah. The movie itself is decent but not special without Hoffman, who carries the whole movie up a few tiers with one of the greatest acting jobs I've ever seen.

The Lost Symbol

An interesting triangular logical contradiction occurred to me as I read Dan Brown's third Robert Langdon novel. Consider the following three statements: the book was fairly long; the book was a relatively quick and easy read; not a whole lot happened in the book. Any two of these truths can coexist easily. But introducing the remaining third one will always create an apparent paradox. A book can be both long and a quick and easy read, but typically only if it's fast-paced and full of action. A book can lack action and be long, but that would typically make it cumbersome to read. And a book can lack action and be a quick and easy read, but that would typically make it a rather short book. Yet, all three of these statements coexist as truth when it comes to The Lost Symbol, a predictable but entertaining enough romp through Washington, D.C. As was the case with the previous two Langdon books, supernatural symbology and wordplay-based riddles are recurring themes throughout the story, which takes place over the course of one night in accordance with the Dan Brown writing style. When I read the previous two Langdon novels - Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code - I was a senior in high school. I enjoyed them both, the former more than the latter. This was definitely my least favorite of the trilogy. I'm not sure how much of that has to do with being five years older and "wiser" than I was last time around, and how much simply has to do with Brown's style growing old. But most of it probably has to do with the absolute absurdity of this book. Suspension of disbelief is an important part of appreciating almost any work of fiction, but it only goes so far. For example, here, I could "accept" an ancient conspiracy regarding the true intentions of our Mason forefathers escaping the public eye for hundreds of years, but I couldn't accept when a scientist proclaimed that human thoughts have actual mass and gravity. "When enough people focus their thoughts on one thing together, the shared thought becomes massive enough to physically alter the world," she said, within the first hundred pages of this book. And so before even reaching the 100th page of this 640-page novel, I was already done caring about any story that took place in this blatant fantasy universe where human beings have supernatural powers. Fortunately, this ridiculous superpower was never actually used to advance or hinder the action in the narrative itself. Because of this, my broken suspension of disbelief was still strong enough to get me all the way through the story. The story never went after the gaping hole it had blown through said suspension of disbelief, so for the most part the horrible pseudo-science was ignorable. But then during the falling action of the story, when Langdon was getting ready to hook up with the traumatized lady scientist, it came back in full force. "I've seen people cure cancer just by thinking so strongly about it," Dr. Pretendology explains to Langdon. And the epilogue ends with Langdon just overwhelmed by a feeling of hope stronger than any he'd ever felt before. Look, I'm not trying to be the millionth guy to take an Internet shit on a Dan Brown book. The guy deserves credit, after all, for managing to make a long and relatively action-free book such a quick and easy read. But even as far as Dan Brown books go, this was a bit of a letdown. Give me Angels & Demons any day. Of course, I'm sure I'll still wind up seeing the inevitable Lost Symbol film adaptation. Maybe if I think hard enough about it, I can prevent it from coming out at all.

Futurama: Volume 5

Wait. How many seasons of Futurama have there been, anyway? That depends on whether you want to go by "broadcast" seasons - yearly runs of episodes - or "production" seasons - the chunks in which batches of episodes are ordered and commissioned. Some Wikipedia research has cleared everything up for me. This fifth "volume" (well played) of Futurama contains all thirteen episodes from the first thirteen episodes of the sixth "production" season of the show, or in other words, the seventh "broadcast" season. When the show first aired on Fox from 1999-2003, it did so in four "production" seasons but five out-of-order "broadcast" seasons. The four Futurama movies that came out in 2008 and 2009 were the fifth "production" season but the sixth "broadcast" season. (Which is still weird to me since they were movies, not TV seasons, but whatever.) The show was then picked up for 26 episodes by Comedy Central (a sixth production season) to be aired in two separate thirteen-episode broadcast seasons (the seventh and the eighth). Since then, an additional 26-episode order was placed, and now the show will run through at least seven production and ten broadcast seasons. Confusing? Yeah. Now I can appreciate that the DVD releases are all just called "volumes." So at any rate, let me stop boring you and actually talk about Futurama, and specifically this fifth volume of the show. It was a fantastic season (fuck it, that's just what I'm going to call these things from now on), perhaps the greatest Futurama season yet. As with all Futurama seasons, this one gave us a plentiful assortment of visual gags, groan-worthy puns, and clever punchlines. But it was also full of genuine heartfelt and emotional moments that you just don't get from most animated shows, or even most comedies these days. Combine these moving episodes with an assortment of lighthearted social commentaries on a wide variety of contemporary issues like iPhone obsession, gay marriage, The Da Vinci Code, and teaching evolution in schools, and you've really got yourself an entertaining and enjoyable series of episodes. Throw in some typical sci-fi fodder like time travel, body switching, and nanobots, and you've got yourself an excellent batch of episodes that could only be brought to you by Futurama. I'm very happy to have this show back on the air and pumped that there are at least thirty episodes left in its tank. Awesome.

Cat's Cradle

Not too long ago I was at a friend's house, in no need of a new book to ad to my log, when he thrust this book into my hands and demanded I read it. When I say not too long ago I mean longer than I really should have "borrowed" a book from a buddy kinda time frame. Anyway, since I decided this week that I was really going to start focusing specifically on those books in my possessions that are not mine, I decided that it was time to finish off this Vonnegut book. This is my first book by Kurt and I don't know how well it translates to the rest of his body of work (i'm sure some fellow loggers will be sure to tell me) but I found it to be a very interesting writing style. I got the feeling that I was reading Joseph Heller at some points, some of the humor seemed to follow a very Catch - 22 style. Its very dark and satiric.

The book starts with a dedication page that simply says "nothing in this book is true." The book is about a writer who wants to write a book about the day the atomic bomb was dropped and he focuses on the family of a man who worked on the bomb. The protaganist, the inventors son, is a midget who has recently been involved in a scandal with a Russian dancer midget. The book includes a complete theology based on a man named Bokonon who tells people not to follow his teachings because, like Cat's Cradle, it contains only lies.

It is one of those books that the plot doesn't really matter as much as the adventure that it brings you on. Its a weaving story that seems to be going nowhere but as you read it you don't mind and in the end it all weaves itself neatly together, like a cat's cradle.The means are more important than the ends.

All in all I think I will read more Vonnegut.

Norwegian Wood

Back in April I read my first Murakami book (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle) and absolutely loved it- I still give it the highest of recommendations. Here's the second, Norwegian Wood, named for the Beatles song that shows up in the novel from time to time. Unlike Wind-Up Bird Chronicle which involves a man exploring his dreams trying to save his faltering marriage (a full seven years before Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind came out), Norwegian Wood doesn't stray into the fantastic- some say it's the most autobiographical of Murakami's works. It's a sad tale of love and loss- a middle aged man reflects upon his freshman year at college in '69-'70 and recalls the two vastly different women he fell in love with- the childhood friend, emotionally troubled Naoko, and the more level-headed but extroverted Midori. The book gave me some heavy Catcher in the Rye vibes- that book itself is referenced more than once, but it certainly never reaches the same level of frustration. The narrator Watanabe frequently questions the actions of society as a whole but never to the point where you want to slap him. Also Murakami focuses his societal critiques not on meaninglessly calling people phonies, but with a specific purpose- pointing out that the student protests of Japan in the sixties were largely unnecessary and hypocritical. Murakami wraps a beautiful love story around this that's nothing revolutionary (a guy can't decide between two women), but his true strength here is in character development. Every time a new character is introduced I get excited because of Murakami's ability to load a book with interesting backstories. While the overarching plot wasn't as interesting to me as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Norwegian Wood was still a pleasure to read and has Haruki Murakami moving up the list of my favorite authors. Expect more soon.

Final Fantasy VI Advance

Is it dead in here or is it just Kefka? Anyway I usually use the excuse that I'm playing a lot of Final Fantasy games for my lack of posting, but Final Fantasy VI Advance took even longer than usual, even though the game itself seemed shorter than most! Ok, I've been lazy. Whatever. FF VI is awesome, and I completely see why Stan looks back on it with such nostalgia and considers it the best of the series. The story is pretty overwhelming- of the 14 playable characters, 11 have great story arcs spanning the whole game, most of which directly impact the main plot of the game. The easy parallels for me to draw include FF IX (the party constantly breaking up into different groups) and Mass Effect 2 (everyone getting a full and interesting backstory that's related to the mission at hand). Unlike many Final Fantasy games, this one never loses sight of the main story. The final villain is exactly who it should be (Kefka) and not some out-of-nowhere concept like Death or Chaos or some shit like that. Also unlike other villains who seek to destroy the world, Kefka actually does it, making him a leading candidate for best villain of the series. The music was superb, and the visuals were for the most part still beautiful after all these years, with the exception of wandering the overworld, where things often looked blocky. The combat is nothing out of the ordinary, but I have to note the awesome esper system, a great way to combine summons and magic spells into one category. It's very intuitive and makes me want to see more creative ways to level up- I've loved the few I've seen with espers, license boards and the sphere grid. Well, that's 8 down in the main series and 4 more to go, and here's the likely order in which I'll tackle them- the terrible but short FF II, the mixed reaction generating FF VIII, what many consider to be the greatest game of all time in FF VII, then finally the newest of the series, FF XIII. I'm almost there!

The Princess Bride

Oh damn, did I post the DVD image upside down? (Heh. Gotta love ambigrams.) Anyway, I've had this movie in my backlog for nearly a year and the book has been around for several more. The question of which to log first, the book or the movie, has been haunting me for months. But then I realized that if the book is better than the movie (as is always the case except with Lord of the Rings) and if the movie could give me a "quick look" at the setting and the characters, it behooved me (or "was woo of me") to go for the movie first and save the book for later. I liked it. It wasn't quite what I expected, which was more of a spoofy over-the-top comedy, but it was still an entertaining and enjoyable movie. And that doesn't surprise me since it was a Rob Reiner late '80s movie. I've said it before on Back-Blogged, but that dude was on fire in the late 1980s. Anyway, a decent flick all in all, and having seen it I'll now be more likely to jump into the book sooner instead of later. But not yet! Not yet.

Sons of Anarchy: Season 2

This second season of Hamlet With Motorcycles was just as intense and rewarding as the first one, if not more so. The majority of the thirteen-episode run focused on a growing rift between Jax and his uncle and stepfather Clay (not unlike the one between Hamlet and his uncle and stepfather Claudius in Hamlet Without Motorcycles) and a few other intra-club feuds that threatened to tear the Redwood Charter of the Sons of Anarchy apart once and for all. The acting and writing continue to impress me and I definitely want to catch up through the third season before the fourth one begins this fall on FX. All kidding aside, Hamlet With Motorcycles is little more than an interesting pitch, but Sons of Anarchy is so much more than that. Twenty-six episodes into the series, I've been moved, shocked, and above all, entertained countless times. The third season is apparently a very frustrating one, but as long as I go in with lowered expectations I'm sure I'll enjoy it just fine. In fact, fuck expectations altogether. They nearly ruined The Wire for me.

Run Lola Run

Everyone got their ecstasy pills ready? Alright, drop them... now!

Oh! Why must we be tripping-balls for this post, you ask. It’s because Run Lola Run is basically a giant rave of an adrenaline rush that you’ll need dinner-plate eyeballs to comprehend its awesomeness...

In all seriousness, I was not rolling for this film - that’s one mistake I wont make for the fourth time - however, this movie has such a heart-thumping, bass-kicking soundtrack that you just feel the need to dance under some strobe lights while sucking a pacifier. For all of you that are already lost at what I’m getting at here, let me start from the beginning.

Run Lola Run is a German film with subtitles... with that said I’m just going to skip over paying the cast and filmmaker any credence because, hey, if you’re not American or British... then you’re lucky we’re even referencing you. (Alright, all you need to know is that the lead girl, Lola, was played by the actress who’s Jason Bourne’s girlfriend that gets shot in head at the beginning of the second Bourne flick. Oh, and I think she may have been sleeping with the director during the making of this film in ’98... Moving on!) Lola is the dumb chick who has an even dumber boyfriend that accidentally leaves a giant bag of cash - probably drug money - on the subway that was meant to be given to his seedy, low-life boss. Now that he’s lost the money, he needs to get something like $300,000 (just guessing here) in 20 minutes when he scheduled to make the drop with his boss. And, yes, he’ll probably be killed if he shows up empty handed. So like any self-respecting thug, he calls up his girlfriend crying for help. With a gun tucked into his waistband, he tells Lola that in 20 minutes he’s going to rob the local mini-mart unless she can get to him first to save the day - or at least stop him from turning into a murderer. Lola hangs up, and takes off running to save the day.

Now, I don’t want to give too much away... but the film is SO much more than this simple premise. Aside from the kick-ass soundtrack there’s a vibrant, whirlwind directing style that keeps the film buzzing along at a heart-pounding pace. Sweeney has mentioned that this is one item he wishing to cross off his back-log so I’ll leave you with one last bit of information before I go spoiling everything. The film is essentially about fate. Or more precisely your ability to be able to change it. It seems everyone in this flick - even the extras walking along the street - are given a whole backstory (quickly shown within a brief 5-second slideshow). It may seem trivial, giving credence and attention to characters who’s presence in the film doesn’t even matter, but these slideshows are amazingly effective in communicating a great deal of information (sometimes bizarre and disturbing) in a nanosecond. But it’s bringing to life every person that the film truly utilizes it message in that we have our own fates... or maybe we all ability to change the outcome of our destinies.

Take it as you will, but I highly suggest checking out this flick.

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks

All done. With this game's completion, I've now finished off the final four Zelda games in my backlog in one month's time. I still haven't played all of them, with the two Oracle games and The Minish Cap still remaining on my lengthy "maybe someday" wish list and Skyward Sword due out later this year. But for now, the backlog is Zelda-free. This was actually the longest of the four games I'd beaten lately, coming in somewhere between eighteen and twenty hours (whereas Majora's Mask took something like fifteen to eighteen), which is a bit ironic because the other three games were all console-based. (I guess I still have trouble shaking the stereotype that handheld games run shorter than console games.) It was also the most enjoyable of the four games. I appreciated the maturity of Majora's Mask and the historical importance of The Legend of Zelda, but both of those games were frustrating at times due to control issues, difficulty, and shoddy-looking graphics. Spirit Tracks was, for the most part, a treat from start to finish. I'd heard several peers gripe about different issues in the game, most notably the train-track-based travel system and the DS-microphone-based flute-playing sections of the game. Honestly, I found the former tedious at worst and the latter easy and even a bit relaxing. And the final boss fight - or more specifically, the series of small battles and challenges that concluded the game - was one of the most satisfying and entertaining conclusions I've ever seen in a Zelda game. Consider me impressed, especially given all of the warnings I'd been given about the train and the flute. Because of my commitment to beating every game I own - a number still above sixty, but shrinking slowly as long as I continue to resist making new purchases - I tend not to spend much time collecting optional items in most games since doing so merely lengthens them and I'm at a point where longer games are more dreaded games. But I couldn't resist doing at least a few optional errands in Spirit Tracks - much like I couldn't resist doing in Infamous a few months ago - because they were genuinely fun and enjoyable. I explored villages for stamps and hunted rabbits out in the countryside merely for the sake of doing so. There was no reward or ulterior motive for the rabbits and the stamps unless I collected them all - something I wasn't going to do - but that didn't stop me from collecting about half of each. Because, you know, why not? Great game, glad I played it, moving on with a backlog that is now Zelda-free for the first time in years.

Speed Racer

First off, a series of apologies and excuses for making my first July post on the ninth of the month. Here goes. I'm disappointed in myself, except not really, because I had a great June, and I'm making good progress on a number of other items. Besides, it was Fourth of July weekend, and I had a busy week at work after that, and so on and so forth. Okay. I found Speed Racer in the five dollar DVD bin somewhere some several months ago. I knew the film had been critically panned in general, but I also knew that those who liked the movie said it was beautiful and visually original and that its detractors were too focused on its asinine plot and flimsy acting, which were intentional and meant to pay homage to the original Speed Racer anime series in the first place. Since I tend to appreciate "controversially" acclaimed movies as mush as (if not more than) universally beloved ones, I dropped the Lincoln on the "36% fresh" movie figuring that at worst I'd be out an amount less than that which I pay for lunch every day. And I'm glad I took that minimal risk because Speed Racer was everything its defenders said it was: visually stunning, unique, and very loyal to the original anime series (which i'll admit I've only seen a few clips of here and there). It wasn't a flawless movie, but my biggest gripe with the film was that it ran a bit long, taking two hours and fifteen minutes to tell a story that would have fit nicely into an hour-forty-five. No biggie. I think you need to judge movies on their own terms. Speed Racer was never supposed to be a movie with a complicated or original plot. Nor were its characters supposed to be three-dimensional and well-developed. The point is in the presentation, and even its detractors would be hard-pressed to find fault with the very other-worldly set design or the stunning and colorful CGI sequences. Speed Racer was everything it could have and should have been, so in a strange sense, it was basically a perfect movie. It just wasn't for everyone. (Including me. I'm defending it because it warrants defense, but I'm not about to call it even one of my favorite two-hundred movies.) See Speed Racer if you can, but only for the sake of the avant-garde visual treat. It looks like the coolest racing video game I can imagine, and it doesn't exactly demand a ton of your time or attention. And that's all I've got for you today. Glad to be back though. I'll be sure to post again in another nine days.

The Stone Raft

More from my boy, Jose Saramago. As I said in a previous post, I found a steal- 12 Saramago novels for 20 bucks on the Kindle, and this is only the third one down, so he'll be popping up on the Back-Blog regularly for a while. The first two I read were heavily connected- Blindness and Seeing; but The Stone Raft is the first stand-alone Saramago novel I've read. It was... a bit odd. As I've said before Saramago's modus operandi is usually to come up with an interesting gimmick to start off the book and let the rest of the book "write itself" by having some very normal people simply react to the situation at hand. This usually doesn't lend itself well to particularly interesting climaxes, but the stories are more a combination of intriguing allegory and a bit of a "what would you do?" theme as well rather than straight thrillers or mysteries. What would the government do if people just stopped voting? What would you do if you and everyone around you couldn't see? Basically what you'd expect, but Saramago provides interesting enough commentary on the events to keep me reading- at times he'll go off on a tangent about some literary cliche that bothers him, or he'll criticize a character and all but tell the reader "that was a dumb decision!" much more elegantly than I could ever summarize here. Anyway, when I read about the plot for The Stone Raft I was intrigued even if it sounded like it would easily fit into my Saramago stereotype- the Iberian peninsula somehow breaks off from Europe, slowly drifting off into the midst of the Atlantic Ocean. Naturally, I expected most of the book to be about people dealing with the sudden trans-Atlantic journey. This covers about a quarter of the book. The rest deals with a ragtag group of misfit "superheroes" who were all suddenly able to develop some type of power at the exact moment that Spain and Portugal split off. These powers seem to have nothing to do with eachother and in the end are inconsequential, but I can't get over how laughable they are. One guy is able to pick up a huge rock and throw it really far, then suddenly loses his super strength seconds later. One guy is followed by a flock of birds. Still another claims he can "feel the Earth vibrate" and seems to be vibrating when you touch him. Maybe he just has Parkinsons? Lastly, and perhaps most pitifully, a girl drew a line in the dirt with a stick and the line can't wash away. Why Saramago gave these guys such oddly terrible powers, I'll never know- he rarely explains the odd things that happen in his books, and I wasn't searching for an answer anyway. I guess it's just a plot device to get the characters together. Once they did get together it turned into a nice character-based story about people reacting to a crisis, but it certainly didn't need that bizarre setup to get there. So yeah, kudos to Jose for doing something unexpected, even if I have no idea where he was going with it. While I didn't like it as much as Seeing or Blindness, I have no problem reading 9 more of his novels, which is more than I can say about plenty of other authors.