The Little Prince

Can't stop won't stop. Gotta keep cranking out these 2016 movies so I can properly reflect on the year that was by the time the Oscars roll around in two weeks.

This? This was fine. Felt a lot like a Pixar movie, maybe ten percent less overtly cute and funny, ten percent more effectively poignant and sad.

A Bigger Splash

Sometimes a Letterboxd review suffices, and I feel okay about this one:

Hedonistic like a modern day Great Gatsby - less poignant, but funnier, sexier. This is one where rich, white rockstars saunter lazily around an Italian island with their friends and lovers. Everyone is barefoot and at least half-naked all the time and everything is flirting and jealousy and seduction. Ralph Fiennes is phenomenal here, all giggling and excited and dancing terribly and just having a fucking blast. Swinton's much more reserved, her character recovering from vocal chord surgery, her performance coming largely through stilted smiles and sunglasses. Struggles in the third act, exchanging the fun, decadent vibes for more of a straight farce, but Fiennes' party-loving goober alone makes it all worth it.

This is on HBO right now and while I can't think of anyone on the blog who'd like it more than I did, I mean, check it out if you like. This Ralph Fiennes performance is criminally underrated.

The Dresden Files: Changes (Book #12)

Twelve books in and I'm beginning to lose track of what's happening in these stories. For instance, as I'm typing out the title of this post, I blindly write in "book 11" before questioning myself, "Wait? Was this the eleventh book?" To double-check myself, I searched online to see book #11 was actually Turn Coat, the previous book I read and the series, and -- for the life of me -- I couldn't tell you what happened in that story. I know it has something to do with someone betraying someone else... but, ugh... my mind is a little frazzled keeping all these events in order. It's all turning into this magical stew of Die Hard-like action. 

That said, I don't think I'll have that same problem with this book. Changes is by far the most epic story to occur in the Dresden series... so far. The story opens with a huge spoiler -- Quite literally the first line of the novel is a bombshell of a reveal. And from that huge reveal, to story goes into high gear. Pulling in characters (both good and evil) from the entire franchise to build towards the largest fight Dresden has ever faced.

Changes is an appropriate title to this story as everything the readers have come to know and love about Dresden and his life are turned on their head or completely destroyed. Much like how Hermione comments at the end of the Order of the Phoenix (the movie version; can't comment on the novel), she says, "Everything is going to change now. Isn't It?" (Well. don't quote my quote. I'm paraphrasing here.) But that's the sentiment this book carries. Change.

I'm not sure if Butcher is able to write Dresden back into his former life or not after what choices and actions he's forced to make in this story, but even if he could go back... would I want him to? Tough call. 

All I can say is that I thoroughly enjoy this addition in the series. It might be my favorite so far. If not my favorite, then at least ranking in my top three. I'm chomping at the bit to see where Dresden goes from here. 

Sween, you still reading these? If you are, where ya at?

David Brent: Life on the Road

Loved The Office. Loved it so much I was one of those guys who (wrongly, spitefully) turned up my nose at the very existence of the American remake of The Office. But the thing about The Office that sat so well with so many people was that it wrapped itself up neatly after just two six-episode seasons and a two-part Christmas special. (Gotta love the Brits and their brevity. The longest-running British sitcom I can think of is Peep Show, which finally called it quits after... let's see... yeah, 54 episodes in total. Accounting for the half-hour episodes, that whole show had the same runtime from start to finish as the 27-episode first season of The O.C.)

I digress. My point is that Ricky Gervais and company seemed to know when to quit with The Office. Until they decided to bring it back - sort of - thirteen years later. Remember that small-scale redemption arc David Brent went through in the show's finale? Yeah - turns out, thirteen years later, he's still miserable and shallow and incessantly needy. In this movie, he takes a leave of absence from his new job (shitty, where he's no longer even a manager) in order to tour England with a crappy little band. It's funny enough, I guess, and it's always nice to revisit an old beloved show ('memba The Office?) but it doesn't really feel like it adds anything to The Office. Rather, if anything, the existence of this thing detracts from the show's wonderful finale.

It's still a must-see if you're a fan of the show, of course, but I can't imagine anyone seeing this without first seeing The Office and not shuddering.

Holidays

Still just chugging through 2016 releases over here. This is a horror anthology on Netflix - you know the drill, a collection of five or six horror shorts from different directors, much like V/H/S and its ilk - where all kinds of different holidays get the horror treatment. There were eight in total, meaning no short was more than fifteen minutes long or so. Here, let's tackle them in order.

"Valentine's Day"

An unpopular girl bullied by the rest of her swim team pines obsessively for her coach. This whole short seems to exist for the sake of a graphic punchline, but I'm okay with it! Sets the table appropriately. Felt like the kind of thing one of us might have tried to get away with in multimedia class (Keith, specifically?) but with actual production value.

"St. Patrick's Day"

Takes place in Ireland (of course) and the only scary moments involve a stereotypical "ginger" girl stalking her teacher and just looking creepy as all hell with a yellowy smile planted on her freckled face under wiry blonde-red hair. Gah! This one quickly gets campy and absurd, but in a head-slapping way fit for the holiday it honors.

"Easter"

So, what are the two symbolic representations of Easter? The late Jesus Christ and the Easter Bunny. And what are those, to a little girl? They're a man who came back from the dead and a giant furry thing that sneaks around your house at night. Holy shit, if any holiday was ripe for the horror treatment, it's this one! Probably the scariest of the stories - monsters, darkness - but also the slightest, thematically. (Which is saying something. All of these were slight.)

"Mother's Day"

A woman who gets pregnant every single time she has sex ends up kidnapped by some sort of witch covent in the desert. The payoff was weak as hell, which is a shame, because, well, what a set up.

"Father's Day"

All suspense, start to finish. Definitely the creepiest and most suspenseful of the shorts. Not worth describing - you've just got to see it.

"Halloween"

Ugh... Yeah, this was Kevin Smith's segment. It was absolute nonsense, which is what he specializes in now. It didn't even make sense. To his credit, he doesn't rely on a single preexisting Halloween trope, instead making a "horror" vignette about cam girls. This wasn't the worst of the shorts, but it was certainly the dumbest.

"Christmas"

Oh hey, Seth Green's in this one! A recognizable actor! Felt very Black Mirror - a man goes to desperate lengths to acquire a virtual reality headset for his son for Christmas, and when he tries it out  for himself he sees some pretty fucked up shit. I liked this one a lot, but that's maybe just because this is my favorite genre of horror - a blend of psychological and sci-fi.

"New Year's Eve"

An awkward first date turns into an, uh, unforgettable New Year's Eve. Best use of a New Year's countdown I've ever seen!

In the end, it's a mixed bag of "something for everyone." You've got some absurdly campy shit, some monster jump scares, some Black Mirror, some axe murder - none of it was great, but the variety alone makes this an easy collection to take in. I can't "recommend" it, but I had more fun with it than I did with V/H/S even if it feels like a lesser overall experience.

Split

Saw this last night with my sister. I know most of you haven't seen it yet, so no spoilers here, and a very brief recap.

1. James McAvoy was great. His was the only good performance, but it's more accurate to say he was giving half a dozen good performances.

2. Thought this was good, campy fun for about two thirds of its run time and then the third act breaks into something completely unexpected and substantially less clever than I hoped for.

3. About twenty minutes in I was convinced I knew "the twist" (every M. night movie's got one, come on, that's no spoiler) but the elements I thought the twist affected were, like, completely abandoned in the third act (as referenced above). So now I'm left with a theory - an unconfirmed twist I still believe could be true, really - and I'd love to talk about it with the rest of you. So, Keith, Trev - see this movie! See it so we can talk about it. Please!

This has also inspired me to go back and see a lot of the Shyamalan movies I missed out on before - notably, The Village, The Visit, and yes, even Unbreakable.

The Day the '60s Died

Fell down an Internet wormhole tonight - as one does - and wound up watching this entire hour-long PBS documentary on YouTube. Learned a lot. Was shocked and scared by how relevant and pertinent the events of Spring 1970 seem today, with the nation as divided as I've ever seen it and a legitimate animosity between the two factions. It's not the shootings or the Vietnam War protests that got to me - that's just 20th century American history at this point. Rather, it was the public reaction to the shootings. Polls showed a majority of Americans in 1970 thought that the students were more responsible for their own deaths than the National Guardsmen who fired upon them. "Should have killed them all," said plenty. This, even though a majority of Americans also didn't think we should have gone to Vietnam in the first place. Imagine that culture! Imagine a world where a significant group of people could oppose something, but then also find it justifiable to kill other people voicing such dissent. You think we're slipping into fascism now? Jesus Christ. To recap - in 1970, the American people were far more annoyed by the anti-war movement than they were by the war, even though a majority of them opposed the war. Wow!

Zooming out a bit - and this documentary kind of hints at this and sets it up without overtly focusing on it - Nixon and the Republican Party came out of this thing smelling like roses. Two years later, Nixon won reelection with over 500 electoral votes, and the GOP was able to finally capture blue collar white Americans from the Democrats - sound familiar? - a key demo they'd retain for decades, because blue collar white workers were fed up with rich college kids protesting, rioting, and sowing discord in America. (Okay, this is starting to feel too currently relevant and foreboding again. Time to stop.)

Here's the whole thing, right here. Check it out:

Sing Street

This was good. School of Rock was better. God Help the Girl was better. But this was good.

Twin Peaks: Season 1

I've been putting this one off for a while. Beloved '90s shows from Seinfeld to The X-Files have had a track record of disappointing me, and Sween's review a few years back wasn't exactly glowing, and for as much as I loved Mulholland Drive I worried that David Lynch wouldn't really be, you know, full blown David Lynch on network television in 1990.

But, here I am, through the first season of Twin Peaks - the good one, the short one - and, okay, yeah, I can see why everyone loved this so much. It's... weird. Delightfully weird, and unapologetically soapy. It's simultaneously about twenty years ahead of its time (only recently have even cable TV shows been allowed to be so strange and off-putting) and about twenty years younger than it looks in so many places - lily-white and set in the rural Pacific Northwest in some sort of alt-1990 still stuck the '50s. The dream sequences are what the show's most known for, but it's the little moments that really sold me on how weird and surreal this show is. Music plays and a guy breaks down crying in a crowded room then starts dancing all alone. A professional detective says goodbye to another one and then grabs his nose. A father, mourning for his dead daughter, grabs a photograph of her and just starts spinning in circles. It's all so wonderfully Lynchian, as is the recurring theme that plays nearly constantly in the background - the smooth, jazzy, film noir riff that really underliens what a goddamn mystery the whole thing is.

Who killed Laura Palmer? I've got no ideas, but frankly, I don't even care. What amazes me about this show is how unique it is today, let alone back in 1990. It is a treat to look at and to listen to, no matter how much or how little sense it's making. Rumor has it that things go downhill quickly in the second (and final) season, but with a revival slated for later this year on Showtime I'm interested in seeing it through. Hey, worst case, this becomes another X-Files experience that I throw on in the background and pay half attention to. I can swing that for 22 episodes, no question.

Firewatch

I listened to GameTimeBro podcast recapping the best games (three people played) for 2016. Lurking somewhere near the bottom was this guy. Struggling to find the next game to play... I settled on this. (Note: I coughed up $20 for this when only two days later Steam dropped the price by half. FML.)

OK, since building my own PC, I've been on the search to find games that truly punish my high-end GPU to make the most of my 4k screen (a whooooole lot of humble bragging going on here). Games like Skyrim and Doom (2016) both look incredible (shit... have I even posted in either one of those games?), and Resident Evil 7 was beyond-belief gorgeous. However, taking a step back from ultra realistic graphics, I found myself appreciating the art design of this game just as much as the other triple-A titles listed above. The colors and sprawling atmosphere of the park totally sucked me in as I found myself lost in a world of nature bound in surreal color.

The gameplay itself isn't anything to speak of. It's mostly a dialogue selector accompanied by exploring/navigating an uncharted map. But the point of this games (and others like it) is to experience the narrative in a way that's different from movies or novels. A way some might see as slightly more immersive. 

So, then... How was the story?

The story was good. Actually it was really interesting the more and more I think of it (having only beaten it yesterday). Your character is one that's running away from life's problems by spending the summer isolated off from the real world as a park ranger in the middle of a giant nature preserve. Your best friend turns out to be your boss and fellow ranger. Delilah, stationed across the way whom only keeps in contact via walkie-talkies. What really gets the story going is while out on a routine check to stop some kids from having a good time, your character encounters signs that there might be a nefarious third-party lurking in these (now) ominous woods. Before you know it you're attacked, and the story evolves into a tale of paranoia and suspicion that someone is out to get you. 

While I'm very impressed that they did a lot with what seemed like so little in this game, the climax felt underwhelming. Not that I needed a big fight scene or a giant explosion to cap this adventure off, but it just felt like my character wasn't rewarded in any capacity. Hell, I didn't even get to meet Delilah! I'm well aware that wasn't the intension of the creators here. To be fair, it's still a good ending that beautifully ties in the thematically problems your character is struggling with (e.g. isolation, running away from your problems, etc.). In many ways, by discovering this mysterious third party (ok, we've all played this, so I'm not spoiling anything) -- I mean Ned --  we learn that he's no different from your character. In fact he might be a premonition of what you could become if you stay on this path of trying to escape your problems instead of dealing with them.

It's not a bad ending. It's a fitting ending. Unfortunately, it's just not my preferred ending. However, it is an ending that really made me think and dwell over the consequence of trying to take easy path to avoid confrontation and responsibility. And if that's what the creators were aiming for, then they succeeded. 

Back to GameTimeBro... I'm not sure I would have put this in my top-10 list (if I've even played ten games from 2016), but I am glad I've experience it. 

I just wished I hadn't paid $20 to do so.