A History of Violence

October's been a hell of a month for movie-logging for me (fifteen!) and twelve of those films were released in 2002 or later. I've definitely gone out of my way this month to check out some movies that came out while I was in high school and college, and A History of Violence (the last mainstream movie to get released in VHS) fits right in with so many other recent viewings in that regard. Clocking in at just a hair over ninety minutes, this was no epic movie and the scope was fairly limited. A simple suburban man becomes an overnight hero when he kills two would-be-murderers who try to rob his diner. His actions draw national attention and all of a sudden some mobsters from Philadelphia decide to pay him a visit, forcing him to confront his very dark and violent past. It's no original concept, and nothing you haven't seen before. A gifted assassin or hitman just wants to retire to a simple life with his family, but don't you dare try to goad him out of it or you'll pay the price indeed. Man on Fire and Taken were richer in character development and more violent, respectively, but there's still something so elegantly simple about the much smaller and less meaningful killing frenzy that Viggo Mortensen achieves in the shorter and simpler movie I just enjoyed. It just goes to show that even a sparse - if not exactly minimalist - crime thriller can work very well with the right writing and solid performances. Actually, that last sentence more or less sums up Drive, a newer movie I recently saw in theaters. I'm sure I'll log that one someday because it was too awesome for me not to someday own a copy of on Blu-ray. But A History of Violence was pretty good too. Happy Halloween and good night one and all.

Breakfast of Champions

In the preface to Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut describes the novel as a "50th birthday present" to himself. That's a really apt description of the book in general, which has no real moral or theme overall (or at least, even less of one than most of Vonnegut's books), but which is easily the most "Vonnegut" of all eight Vonnegut books I've read. There are non sequiturs, there is overt foretelling of events (straight up spoiling, really), the fourth wall is broken and completely abandoned about two thirds of the way into the story, and there are even crude illustrations of things like Nazi flags and vaginas - which made me very worried and aware of my surroundings as I read this book in an airport and on a plane, by the way. Vonnegut interjects human tragedy with human silliness, and vice versa, for 300 pages in his trademark way, and even though the book was fairly light on plot, per se, it'll likely go down as one of the more memorable books I'll ever read. Totally silly, but completely enjoyable. "And so on."

Magnolia

For a long time now, Magnolia has been one of those movies I've always been meaning to see because it earned both critical acclaim and a fair share of "WTF?" reactions from many of my peers. I figured it was some kind of confusing movie on the surface rife with underlying meanings. Whenever people complained about the absurdly biblical ending (spoiler alert: it rains frogs) I always imagined that had to be foreshadowed throughout the film in some meaningful way. Well, I finally did see Magnolia last night, and I have to say... "WTF?" Don't get me wrong. This nearly-three-hour movie kept me intrigued and entertained, which I guess is all a movie is supposed to do, but after it ended - and even after sleeping on it and poking around on the Internet for the opinions of others - I can't say I have any real idea what the point of the movie (or the climactic amphibian downpour, for that matter) was. There's an ensemble cast of characters, and they're all connected in certain ways ranging from employer-employee relationships to familial ties. And these characters are all looking for happiness or closure or love or something similar, and most of them mingle or cross paths with most of the others in some way, and some find what they're looking for and others don't, and then it rains frogs. And in a closing paragraph, a narrator asks us to consider whether or not certain things that happen are coincidental, or something more. And that's that. Again, I didn't hate it, wasn't bored by it, and don't regret seeing it. But man, do I have no idea what it's all supposed to "mean" or "do." Was it supposed to elicit certain emotional reactions in me? Was it supposed to just be a collection of smaller simple personal stories that intersect? Did it rain frogs in some sort of biblical symbolism, or was that an intentionally cheap deus ex machina trick thrown into the script with a wink? The other two Paul Thomas Anderson movies I've seen - Punch-Drunk Love and There Will Be Blood - were also fairly vague at times, but the former resonated with me emotionally as a love story and character study, and the latter was just an excellent biopic about a ruthless American capitalist. Magnolia? I dunno. I've got nothing. It seemed like Crash in that it was just sort of a collection of small interconnected stories, but in Crash there was a common underlying theme of racism in America. Magnolia had no such unifying feel to it, and instead just looked at a whole bunch or people struggle with mostly minor personal demons. In that regard, it very much felt like the late '90s film it was. Is it just me, or was 1999 just something of a year-long self-aware feel-good party in America? The economy was great, there were no real foreign conflicts to fear, the new millennium was coming, and it was time to let the good times roll. The biggest box office hits were psychological pieces rather than historical biopics or war films. We all turned our observations inward and looked at American society at the turn of the millennium. Fight Club. American Beauty. Being John Malkovich. The Sixth Sense. The Matrix. Office Space. So much focus on "man vs. self" rather than "us vs. them." So many commentaries on how shallow and vapid our society had become. You just didn't see movies like these, at least dominating so much of pop culture all at once, after 1999. Soon the millennial party was over and it was time to get back to focusing on the future instead of taking an in-depth look at our culture as it currently stood. September 11th, a pair of wars, a pair of recessions, and some sobering natural disasters and bubble collapses later, we're much more jaded. It's all about the day-to-day grind. We're no longer interested in taking a deeper look at the holes beneath the superficially perfect American lifestyle because the American lifestyle is so clearly no longer even superficially perfect. No, don't show me a movie where a man is unhappy because he has some daddy issues. Show me Batman saving a fictional city. Show me a man cutting his own arm off with a pocket knife in order to survive. Show me a planet full of blue catlike people, and let me watch them defend their home from an invasion. Show me a social outcast who becomes a billionaire because his website became an Internet sensation. These days we want inspiration, not introspection. We want protagonists to succeed, not to defeat themselves. Our thematic content of choice has collectively gone from "find meaning and purpose in your life" to "live and get by for another day." (Whew. Lengthy ramble. Sorry, it happens from time to time.) Anyway, maybe some of the deeper meaning or beauty of Magnolia was lost on me because its already dated and no longer relevant. If I was supposed to share the anguish of once character when, say, he peed his pants on national television (no, really, that happened), I didn't. I kind of laughed at him and at his situation. And maybe I was supposed to. Again, I'm not really sure what it was Magnolia was trying to do or say. And not because the plot was vague or hard to follow. If anything, it was overly easy and straightforward. Mundane, even. I dunno. I'm running out of coherent things to say about Magnolia, but I feel no closer to really describing or exploring it than I did when I began this post. So what about you, fellow bloggers and dear readers? Did you ever see Magnolia, and if so, what the hell was it all about anyway? I concede the floor to the rest of you.

Samurai Champloo

I don't really watch a lot of Anime, but of the few series I have seen Cowboy Bebop is one of my favorites. The show about a group of rag-tag space bounty hunters had a truly original aesthetic appeal as well as an amazing, diverse soundtrack (Bad Dog, No Biscuits!). This show (that we should see in a live-action movie soon starring Keanu Reeves and Bruce Willis... and Megan Fox, sad-sigh) was all the brainchild of Shinichiro Watanabe. Back in High School, he released his new work: Samurai Champloo. I only ever caught an episode or two, but remember Sheridan raving about it. Well, I've finally sucked it down and have found it rather refreshing.

Much like Cowboy Bebop, Watanabe has incorporated a truly original theme and style to this show. Even though the show's set back in 1800's (?)... ummm, a long time ago when Samurais roamed Japan, there's this cool, rap/hip-hop attitude infused with the soundtrack and theme. (Hell, the main title screen is placed on a spinning vinyl record.) This is just plain... cool.

Take this and add in gore and violence in the non-stop avalanche of sword fights and samurai duels. Always engaging. Always fun.

If I had to say anything bad about this show, it's the same thing I would want to say about Watanabe's previous work: The show's story craps out by the end. This was my big guff in Cowboy Bebop. There was this awesome build as we find our main character's doppelganger has obtained control of this huge crime syndicate, his best gal has just been gunned down by hired goons, and now we're approaching the final showdown. Alright, I'm ready for this... but then the fights over even before it has begun, and as for all the rest of the characters (there are four besides the lead), they just sort of go off on their own paths. Nothing is resolved. Life just resumes. This didn't seem to bother most people as it did me. I guess I just like closure.

Back to Champloo... The story revolves around three individuals: two samurais (one well-tempered, the other a nut-job) and a ditsy girl that's run away from home or some crap. Anyways, the girl convinces the other two guys - who are committed to having this duel with one another - to hold off fighting and help her find a samurai that smell of sun flowers. In short, through much blood they find the sun flower samurai (turns out to be the girl's estranged father) which is accompanied by a bunch of long-winded battles... then the show ends. Not to spoil anything (although I've already revealed plenty), but all three characters live, the two samurais agree to not battle one another, and everyone splits off at a diverging road to head along their own paths, literally. Once again, no closure. It just rubs me the wrong way when you witness a lack in character growth - or, in this case, none at all. What did I just suffer through? What was it all for? Sure, there were some entertaining fight scenes - I'll give it that much - but why not show, let's say, the nut-job samurai how to control himself???

To be fair, the show does touch upon these points. And while not completely obvious, there are a few fleeting moments where we see some changes in our characters. It seems what Watanabe looks to do in his work is to just educate the audience on his characters' backgrounds; slowly but surely. That's the payoff... I suppose. By the end of the show we are finally made aware of how each person has got there, and maybe that gives the audience some indication of where they might go next after the story ends. For some, this works.

Not for me. I like a proper ending, dammit!

Before Sunset

Nine months ago, I watched and very much enjoyed the 1995 film Before Sunset. This is its sequel, made (and presumably set) nine years later with the same two actors playing the same two characters. And it works very well as a follow-up to the original. The characters are older, wiser, and more mature now, and as such, so are their conversations. But by the same token, it doesn't quite capture the perfect "strangers as soul mates" feeling that the first movie provided way back a while ago. These people are still young, for sure (probably in their early to mid-thirties) but with a handful of life experiences behind them now, they're also just a little more cynical and jaded. Both are in serious relationships (one is married with a child) but neither are very happy. Both eventually admit to being unable to stop thinking about each other since the fateful night nine years ago when they first met. This movie unfolds in real time and is only eighty minutes long; the two leads, after nine years apart, do a very convincing job in picking up right where they left off initially, but also in slowly letting their guards down over the course of their very brief reunion. There's also an ambiguous ending. The man must catch a flight to go back home, but it isn't clear if he does so or does not. (Just as the last movie ended with a question about whether they would or wouldn't meet again.) Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy helped write all of their dialogue in this film and both have said they'd be open to revisiting this pair of characters in the future. I think that'd be very interesting. If another sequel came out every ten years or so to revisit these characters and where their lives have brought them, I'd keep tuning in. Of course, at a certain point they'd either have to hook up for an extended period of time or agree to stop seeing each other once every decade or so. Maybe the hypothetical next movie finds the pair married and completely unhappy with each other. I dunno. All in all I was pretty happy with this movie. It expanded upon the story that originated in 1995 without trying to outdo that original one night stand. I suppose I prefer Sunrise to Sunset, but maybe only because the former movie can stand alone while this movie kind of requires some familiarity with the original in order to get the full effect. Regardless, the movie backlog is back down below ten, and the goal is to keep it there.

2001: A Space Odyssey

Whenever you see a very old but very widely acclaimed movie for the first time, it can be tough to view it with a truly neutral and passive eye. All too often, there's a desire to like the movie and to appreciate it because it's what so many people before you have done. Or, if the movie just isn't clicking for you, there's a sudden impetus to take things in the other direction, to hate the film, to dub it "overrated," and to feel at least somewhat counter-cultural for doing so. But 2001 was just too weird, too unique, too ahead of its time, and too dated all at once for me to either emphatically like or dislike it. This is a movie that came out in 1968. That's before man had ever even walked on the moon. (Or - fine, I'll entertain the conspiracy theorists - before the government ever tricked us into believing man had walked on the moon.) The movie depicts a "future" 2001 in which the space age has really taken off and traveling to the moon is commonplace for civilians. On the one hand, we can certainly forgive a movie from the past for having a very optimistic view of the future. On the other... did Kubrick really think in 1968 that mankind was 33 years away from space colonization? But I guess the year in question doesn't really matter. Pretending this film takes place in 3001 instead of 2001 takes nothing away from it, and remembering that it was made back in 1968 is what's important. The special effects used in 2001 were seriously impressive. This was nine years before Star Wars, which seems to have set the precedent for space age special effects, and it holds up just as well to this day. So no matter how I look at it, 2001 was a very impressive filmmaking feat, both in hindsight and also contemporarily. But that story... so ambiguous. So strange. So light on narrative. The first twenty-five and final twenty-eight minutes of the film contain no spoken lines at all. They're fairly engrossing and visually engaging, for sure, but it cuts nearly an hour out of any expository or conclusive story that can be told. Now, without dialogue the film remains visually stunning and is loaded with iconic scenes and moments. There are also a number of well-made musical montages of sorts; at one point a number of man-made satellites spin through space to "The Blue Danube" for a few minutes, and frankly, it just plain works. Actually, the whole film "works." But it still gets extremely weird before it ends. I don't even want to ruin anything by trying to describe it, but if you've seen 2001 you know what I mean. Apparently the novelization of 2001 was written in parallel with the film's development, and provides a much better narrative to the story than the film (while the film provides musical and visual storytelling that the book simply can't). I'm definitely at least somewhat interested in reading the book someday and finding out just a little bit more about the monoliths, HAL, and that giant floating space fetus. The book even has three sequels that further expand the mythology and story of Kubrick's futuristic universe. Maybe they're all worth a read. But of course, due to the current heft of my backlog... not yet. Not yet.

Inglourious Basterds

Because I've seen a number of Quentin Tarantino films, I was sure of several things about this movie before I even popped it in. I knew there would be sporadic but cartoonish violence. I knew there would be an homage to filmmaking in some way or another. I knew every main character was at risk of immediate and unpredictable death. I knew there'd be a close up or two of some lady feet. And I knew the movie would feature a substantial amount of well-written dialogue. But I did not know that the movie would be almost entirely dialogue and so light on action sequences. Now, I don't mean to infer any complaint with that statement. Two and a half hours of conversations - sometimes tense, sometimes silly, sometimes subtitled, sometimes not - made for an excellent movie and never felt forced, tired, or stale. And there was certainly enough violence and action to satisfy my, umm, bloodlust. It's just that, this being a World War II movie, I expected more battling and less scheming and interrogating. The movie seemed at least ostensibly to be about a group of Jewish American soldiers (the titular "Inglourious Basterds") running around France and sticking it to the Nazis one by one. I remember the trailers and promos implying as much. But the majority of the Basterds have ten lines of dialogue or fewer. Of the eight to ten of them, I think only Brad Pitt appeared in more than three or four scenes. The Basterds certainly earned their nickname, though, scalping every Nazi they killed in some sort of nod to the Apache Indians of America. But they really weren't the focal point of the film, as I alluded to above. Instead, the film's plot, in a nutshell, is that a bunch of top Nazis, including Hitler himself, are attending a film screening in Paris and two separate plots to blow up the theater are in place. One plot is concocted by Bradd Pitt's Basterds, but the other - and in my mind, the more compelling one - is led by the secretly Jewish woman who owns the theater. Now, in any other movie, you know both plots will fail, because you know Hitler doesn't get killed in a movie theater in Paris. But in a Tarantino flick, you just kind of expect him to play fast and loose with history. I won't spoil whether one, both, or neither of the plots gets carried out successfully, but the climactic sequence of events felt very satisfying to me. Actually, the entire movie did. There were a plethora of memorable characters and noteworthy scenes and Tarantino's trademark style was evident throughout. Ultimately this wasn't my favorite of his movies, but it definitely feels as well-made as any of them. Unless you really despise Tarantino (and I know a few who do) then this is definitely worth a watch, even if only because it so starkly contrasts with the gravity and austerity of nearly every other WWII film out there.

The New World

First and foremost, I want to apologize on behalf of this movie's cover. Not only does it fail to do the movie any justice; it fails to depict a scene featured in the movie at all. No, I promise you, this is not some sort of shitty Pathfinder 2. In fact, it was one of the most prettiest movies I've ever seen. Terrence Malick (the guy who directed The Thin Red Line and The Tree of Life) is known for making beautiful movies with authentic footage of the films' settings. And he really nailed it in The New World, which was essentially just a live-action (mostly authentic) version of the story of Jamestown and Pocahontas. In order to fully convey to the audience the awe the English settlers must have had for the proverbial New World, Malick provides footage and sounds fit for any nature documentary. The marshes of the Chesapeake did indeed seem like a wholly foreign place to me during the first half hour or so of The New World. And although I've only praised the cinematography so far, the rest of the production was fairly top-notch as well, from the acting to the writing to the set design and costuming. The thing is, this movie was more poetry than prose (if that makes sense) and while the quality was amazing, the story was somewhat slow and drawn out, not to mention predictable (like any historically accurate dramatization). So although I never stopped enjoying the movie for what it was, I can't say the characters and the action held my interest once the first hour or so had gone by. The film picks up a bit near the end when Pocahontas heads to London. With beautiful tonal symmetry, this very familiar Western world of textile clothing and cobblestones and the English language and large buildings now seems to be a whole "New World" in and of itself, both to us and, of course, to Pocahontas. The New World wasn't the most popular movie. There's a good chance you haven't even heard of it. It was released on Christmas Day in 2005 in the middle of "Awards Season," no doubt hoping for some big Oscar nomination recognition. It was nominated for one category (cinematography) in which it lost. It barely made back its budget. Nonetheless, there are a few critics who absolutely love it. I've seen it on a handful of "top 10 films of the decade" lists and heard more than one person call it the greatest movie of the decade. That's quite lofty praise for such an unknown and ignored historical drama. My own opinion of the film isn't nearly that high, but I still think it's an underrated hidden gem from the not-so-distant past. And for what it's worth, I liked it more than any of the other Best Picture nominations from 2005 that I've seen.

L.A. Noire

First and foremost, L.A. Noire should have been a movie, not a game.

I explained this to Sweeney a while ago immediately after finishing the game. He directed me to some website critiquing the game in which they basically pointed out the same flaw. Both movies and games have the amazing potential to entertain and enlighten us, but the true fact is that - at least at this point in history - they really don't crossover too well. (Scratch that. Mario Bros. the movie is amazing.) Examining L.A. Noire, the story was incredible (for a game, that is); however, I kept finding myself pissed off every time the narrative cut away and I was back to "playing" the actual game. Now, I feel most here are familiar enough with this game that won't waste time explaining the gameplay. You can really just summarize it as this: 1) Arrive at crime scene; 2) Scout location for evidence; 3) Question witnesses/suspects (sometimes this may involve a chase or shootout of some kind; 4) Get new leads; 5) Repeat steps 1 through 4 until the case is closed. While cool at first, this rigmarole gets old pretty fast - at least it did for me - and I found myself only caring about the storyline after a couple of hours of gameplay.

Before I rip into the game any further, I should say this: I do applaud this game's existence. Why? They tried something new. Never has there been a game (not to my knowledge, at least) that's paid attention to little nuances of being a detective. Looking for clues and evidence. Interrogating suspects and paying attention to their facial expressions (although there turned out to be an extremely simple method in winning this - always choose lie) even if their tells for lying or being truthful were obvious to spot. I still praise the developers for trying to branch out into something new. And if there was anything they did extremely well it was their attention to detail.

Living in L.A., I have the opportunity to cross-check their map design to see how authentic it actually is. Clearly, many things have change, but I set out one day to just cruise through Downtown and the south-east area to see how reality compared to the game. The south-east has changed... that's for sure. It wasn't long before I got some stares by the locals (a white kid in a Jetta really doesn't belong in that area) and retreated back to safer territories. However, Downtown sill contained many landmarks used in the game. From the city design to the cars to the radio commercials... these developers paid much attention to the authenticity of the environment and atmosphere in relation to the game's time period. For this I give the game much applause.

Now I'm left wondering... "Will this game be made into a movie?" At Sony, we already have Uncharted and Metal Gear slated to make their way to the big screen, which makes me cringe a bit. Aside from Mario Bros. (a situation where something is so bad that it's now good), there are no successful video game to film crossovers. I'm talking about the quality here, not Box Office revenue - the Tomb Raider series cleaned-up. But I might be eating my words if this guy ever got the chance to make the crossover.

Don't worry. I doubt that will ever happen.

Dead Nation

As you can see, Stan and I co-oped our way through Dead Nation, so now all of our faithful blog readers have to suffer through two separate posts about it. Or you could just skip this post entirely, whatever. The two games I picked up after the PSN Meltdown of 2011 were this and Infamous, and Stan had been hassling me to get this done, so we got through the entire game over the course of a few hours last night. Dead Nation's an isometric third person shooter where you try to survive a... sigh... zombie apocalypse. Are zombies insanely played out right now, or has it always been this way and I just never noticed? It seems like after Dawn of the Dead and Shawn of the Dead both came out in 2004 we've had a pretty steady stream of zombie media for nearly a decade. That's not to fault Dead Nation, which was actually a pretty good game, but I'm glad that nothing else in my backlog of video games seems to be zombie related, and my undead fix will come from passive tv watching of The Walking Dead. Anyway Dead Nation is pretty solid for a downloadable title that I got for free- the game plays just fine, looks good, was plenty of fun to play online co-op, the works. There's a well instituted upgrade system for weapons that it felt like we spent at least 1/3 of the game messing around with- you can buy all sorts of different weapons and respective upgrades at the many weapons stores, and money is plentiful so after each break in the action your gameplan will likely change at least a little bit. Armor was also upgradable, but unfortunately never seemed to produce any noticable effects and the upgrading system somehow managed to be confusing and overly simplistic at the same time. It's ok though, because that rarely mattered. Fighting hordes of zombies was actually more exciting from a third person perspective here than the similar Left 4 Dead titles' first person view; I think being able to see an actual huge crowd of zombies made for more fun than simply having a few of them crowd a first person view. The only real negatives I had with the game is that it never really got too creative outside of its fun upgrading system- a few zombies were much stronger and acted different from the rest but there was never any real boss fight to speak of; and while I don't think puzzles or platforming are necessary in a shooter, it would have been nice if some sections required a little more thought than "kill everything, then move on." Still though, I have to agree with Stan- it's a game I'd happily return to for a second go-around that I'll bet would improve quite a bit on a second play.

Dead Nation

This was the second of two games I got for free from Sony after the PS3 security breach fiasco. It's an arcade-style shoot 'em up where you and a friend (possibly multiple friends, but I did it with one) cooperate to blast, burn, and bomb your way through ten levels full of zombies. In typical shoot 'em up fashion, the game really only consists of getting from "Point A" to "Point B," but various gates along the way won't open until you've destroyed all of the enemies in the area. It was a very simple game, made simpler I'm sure by the fact that Sween and I shamelessly opted for "easy" mode. (Why struggle to beat a game in eight hours when you can get the same experience, sans the challenge, in four?) Weapon and armor upgrades were available at several points in each level, and there are an infinite number of "continues," so to speak, from multiple checkpoints throughout the levels - something we only really took advantage of at the very end of the game. All in all, I found the game pleasant and enjoyable. It made for an easy evening beating, but I could at least see myself playing this game again. (I probably won't. Not with 56 games still backlogged. But at least I feel like I could do so and enjoy it all over again.) If I didn't have so many "hard copy" games on discs and cartridges, I'd really take advantage of these short, cheap DLC titles more often.

The Illustrated Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

Wow, I can't believe I actually finished this one (i'm sure that Sweeney is delightfully surprised as well). The whole time I was reading this book I kept thinking of the scene from Billy Madison where billy is talking about The book the Tale of Two Cities and he says, "I can understand nine words in that book now." It was definitely a difficult read and a whole lot of it went over my head, that did not surprise me. I expected to be challenged but I hoped to learn something. That is where the surprise came, I actually feel like I learned something significant.

This book, for those who do not known, is a book about the theoretical physics that scientists believe make up our universe. Since the evidence for all current theories is still theoretical it is, by definition, currently not provable.

The book starts by giving a brief history of physics and the most pronounced physicists in history. The book covers such topics as black holes, light cones, the theories of time and space, the expansion of the universe (as it relates to such theories as the Big Bang and others), the uncertainty principle, elementary particles and most importantly the creation of the universe.

What did I take away from this book? I learned that the matters contained without mostly regarding the origin of the universe is very much up for debate. Physicists are tackling the issue from many different sides and several distinct theories exists and all of them have severe flaws. The ultimate goal is to attain a cover all theories or a universal theory but it is just as likely that if the universe it to be completely understood it would be done through a series of theories that work together. For all we know about the universe at this point we are the closest we have ever been to understanding it but likely as far as possible at the same time.

Mostly I learned that Stephen Hawking is a lot smarter than I had previously given him credit for. What I mean by this is I always knew that he was , extremely intelligent but in this book he made it possible for the lay person, such as myself, to grasp some very advanced concepts. I am by no means an expert nor would I even go so far as to say I am a beginner when it comes to these topics but I definitely know more than I would have without Hawking's excellently simplified explanations of these ideas. It is this ability to explain these topics so that even I can understand them that is Hawking's greatest asset.

Slaughter House Five

This is the second book by Vonnegut that I have read this year, the first being Cat's Cradle. When I started this book I expected something along the same lines. Overall, I would say that is not the case. I noticed a distinct writing pattern that I might suggest is entirely Vonnegut in origin but besides that the two books were vastly different. I won't compare the two here.

Slaughter House Five is perhaps his most popular work and has landed itself on many of the top 100 fiction book lists. The first thing I can say about it is that it is written in a way that is distinct from any other book I have ever read. After finishing the book I am unsure whether there was any conflict or resolution in this story. I can't tell what the individual characters' parts played in the overall plot of the story. It was disjointed, crude, unorganized, confusing, sarcastic, fatalistic and enjoyable. I enjoyed it for what it was not for the message it was "supposed" to send. I think this is a book about the journey over the destination. "So it goes."

Brokeback Mountain

Let's make it two straight movies about a pair of lost and confused guys alone in the mountains. This one's about gay cowboys, in case you hadn't heard. Or perhaps it's more accurate to call them bisexual cowboys, as each one carries on a married relationship with a woman for some time. Apparently one big source of controversy with this movie (and there were many, as you can imagine) came from attempts to classify the two main characters' sexualities. My own take? Gyllenhaal's character is a very gay-leaning bisexual while Ledger's is a bisexual much more capable of being attracted to women. (But what do I know?) Either way, the two are very much in love with one another, though Ledger's character sometimes tries to deny or de-emphasize the relationship. Brokeback Mountain got a shitload of praise and award recognition back when it was released, but honestly I didn't think it was so special. Take out the homosexuality of the relationship between the two leads (in other words, make one a woman) and this is a fairly straightforward and plain and boring love story. Of course, to remove the gay elements of the film would be to change it entirely; I'm not suggesting that the movie itself was boring or bland. But clearly a lot of the attention this film got was given, both positive and negative, came solely from the fact that it was a major motion picture about a homosexual relationship. You've got conservatives complaining about the media's acceptance and promotion of this film and saying it's got an obvious gay agenda, and then you've got social leftists complaining that it was snubbed for the Oscar for Best Picture because the Academy was too homophobic. Now, I certainly didn't leave this film feeling as though a gay agenda had been pushed upon me (or any potential much younger viewer) but I also didn't think it was the best film of 2005. Not by a long shot! (Of course, neither was Crash, which won Best Picture that year. People put too much stock in that award anyway.) Ultimately I think this was a fine movie, and  definitely one worth seeing some day if you have the chance, even if only because of the importance Brokeback Mountain has to the modern pop culture canon.

The League: Season 2

Just marathoned through this entire 13-episode season with a group of friends. Also had about ten beers. Tired as shit. Happy Sunday, folks. Good night.

Gerry (2002)

The last Gus Van Sant movie with Matt Damon and Casey Affleck that I saw was Good Will Hunting, and I fell in love with that movie. So when I learned of the existence of this one - a very, very minimalist indie film about two guys getting lost in the desert - I knew I had to at least give it a chance. And I'm glad I did. Gerry is far too sparse in both plot and dialogue to recognize as a truly great movie, but I can't say I've ever seen a film quite like it. The movie plods along in a painfully slow manner for the most part, but then, it's a movie about getting lost in the desert. Not even the woods, like in The Blair Witch Project, where at least the scenery changes, but the desert. The vast and increasingly open and desolate desert. Wouldn't time practically slow to a standstill if you got lost in a desert? There are minutes-long tracking shots that just follow the friends walking along in silence. There is, of course, a fair amount of dialogue, but it's scattered and largely irrelevant, especially toward the end of the film when the circumstances become most dire. When the two actors break the silence and speak to one another, it's rarely ever meaningful. Due to the length of so many of the shots, you can easily tell that most of their non-plot-driven conversations are fairly improvised, anyway. This isn't Lost in Translation or Before Sunrise, and the movie's lack of characters beyond the two friends should not imply a rich back-and-forth between those two guys. There's not even a backstory or history given for either of the friends and we never learn why they decided to go on a nature hike in the first place. The long tracking shots tell this specific story better than any lines or facial expressions or songs could, and that's what made it so compelling for me and kept it from getting boring. Make no mistake - this is an hour-forty-five of lingering silence and very little action. If you sat down with friends to watch it one evening, you'd all be immensely unimpressed. But, I dunno. It made for some fantastic late night solitary viewing for me. It hardly even matters that the duo becomes impossibly lost - that they traverse more different terrain types, and climb more mountains and cross more wide open desert than could possibly exist between the end of a nature trail and the nearest highway. I kind of let it ride as vague symbolism that they started off in a shrubby brush-covered area, crossed some gigantic rock formations, trekked across some desert dunes, and wound up on an endless salt flat in the course of like three days. At this point I'm running long because I might be out of non-spoilery things to even say about the film. There's not a whole lot to it, and yet, I really liked it. Again, no instant favorite, but if you're ever in the mood for something very different than most other movies out there, consider Gerry.

Carnivàle: Season 1

There was a time in the middle of the last decade when HBO could do no wrong. Look specifically at 2003-2005. The Sopranos was still going. The Wire had hit its prime. Deadwood and Rome had just debuted. Curb Your Enthusiasm was still doing a season every year. Entourage wasn't terrible yet. Six Feet Under was wrapping up. And somewhere in the background, a quirky little show named Carnivàle ran for two seasons and 24 episodes. I requested and received those two seasons on DVD last Christmas. I did so not because I'd even heard anything about the show, but out of brand loyalty to the mid-decade powerhouse that HBO was. (This is the same mistake that led me to sit through an entire season of AMC's The Killing, but the less said about that, the better.) And I'm sad to say it, but I just wasn't nearly as interested in this show as I'd hoped to be. All the elements were in place. A 1930s setting, an array of interesting characters ("freaks" in a traveling carnival), and tons of religious allegory and symbolism. But for everything that Carnivàle had, a compelling plot was missing. Maybe this was just a case of everything being way too convoluted for me to understand some sort of simpler narrative beneath it all. I'll admit, by the middle of the season I'd already completely lost interest, and as such, kind of phoned in my attention span the rest of the way. Apparently I wasn't alone, as I can hardly find a summary of any episodes anywhere on the Internet. Critical reviews seemed to echo my own inability to follow a narrative thread, and even the show's biggest fans don't seem able to provide one on their websites. And that's too bad. I kind of feel like this is a big missed opportunity. And whether I mean the show missing the opportunity to impress me, or my missed opportunity to enjoy a subtle and articulate show, I'm not sure. But there's a disconnect one way or the other. Allegedly the upcoming second season is a bit more plot-driven and has an obvious (if cliche) "good vs. evil" conflict at its center. I'm still on the hook for that second season (though thankfully that's all there is), and I hope that whenever I do decide to give it a go, I can do a better job of meeting the show halfway; maybe I won't understand or care about half the stuff that's going on, but that doesn't mean I should just browse the Internet while the show kind of happens in the background. I'll have time to do that during Season 7 of Entourage, after all.

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters

Wow. What an underdog story. Even though this documentary focuses on something so absurdly frivolous in the larger scheme - the Donkey Kong world record - it still managed to be inspiring, gripping, and emotionally stirring. And it's all of those things because the two main characters (and since this is a documentary, they're very real people) contrast so perfectly with one another. On the one hand is Billy Mitchell, revered as a god in the world of competitive retro arcade gaming. He's so over-the-top that you'd swear he was a fictionalized caricature. Patriotic neckties, shoulder-length straight hair, eyes permanently fixed in some sort of scowl. In every other talking head he gets, Billy stresses the importance of competing or winning or integrity. He owns his own business. His wife is large-breasted and admits she's never seen him play Donkey Kong. He has held the world record for the game since 1982, with a mark of over 874,000. (For comparison's sake, the second best score on record is in the 500,000s.) Billy isn't just a veteran of the subculture this documentary explores; he's an icon. Fellow Donkey Kong gamers vie for the title of "Billy's protégé" and hail his record as unbeatable. Meanwhile, across the country, family man and recently laid off engineer Steve Wiebe decides to take up Donkey Kong, since video games are one thing he can have control over. He's never competed at arcade games in his life. He's an outsider to the Billy-worshipping arcade subculture. It's fitting, really, because he couldn't be more unlike Billy. Steve is quiet. He's humble. He works as a middle school science teacher. He has two young children. He is the Matt Saracen to Billy's J.D. McCoy. The Yossarian to his Milo. The Rocky Balboa to his Apollo Creed. (We're talking about the first Rocky movie in that last analogy, in case it wasn't clear.) And in his garage one day, Steve tapes himself scoring over 1,000,000 points. He's the new world champion. Or is he? Suspicious about Steve's machine, Billy sends some of his lackeys all the way out (from New Hampshire and Florida) to Washington in order to tear the machine apart and investigate the motherboard. And because the board was provided to Steve by one of Billy's long time nemeses (without Steve's knowledge), Billy and his friends - who happen to include several of the highest ranking referees and record keepers in competitive gaming - decide that Steve's record isn't valid. Heel move, right? They invite Steve to fly out to New Hampshire to attempt to set the record on one of their own machines, and when he does so they're kind of amused. A few of Billy's loyal soldiers try to play mind games with Steve, hyping up the pressure of playing on camera and warning him that several gamers swear the machine is "possessed" and more difficult to play on than any other Donkey Kong machine. Lo and behold, Billy's cooked up a scheme of his own, and sends a little old lady to New Hampshire with a video tape and some very specific instructions regarding who can see it. Steve ends up setting a new record of 985,000, this time for all the (interested) world to see. No one can deny it, and Steve becomes the official proverbial "King of Kong." But less than one hour later, Billy's tape arrives and the old guard have a private viewing party that Steve is not invited to. Sure enough, Billy has beaten his old score (and Steve's new one, and even Steve's disallowed garage-based one) and has posted a 1,047,000. He has done so from his home in Florida, and yet the officials deem it valid. This upsets and flusters Steve (understandably), and things only get more unreasonable when Steve is not allowed to watch Billy's tape. Worn out and frustrated, Steve heads home, but not before giving a weirdly relatable talking head in which a tear rolls down his cheek. This is a grown man crying about video games and bullies. And yet, it was one of the saddest film scenes I've seen in ages. I realize I've now recapped and spoiled the first two thirds of the movie, but the final showdown between Steve and Billy is the most compelling part. A year or so later, Steve issues a challenge to Billy that he will come down and beat him in his hometown. Billy doesn't accept it, but Steve shows up anyway at the local arcade, intent on destroying Billy's record. For all the times Billy has said, in talking heads, that it's important to be able to compete when the pressure's on, and that public scores are much more impressive than taped scores, you'd expect the icon to finally saddle up and compete (for the first time all film, I'll add). But... he doesn't! Is he shrinking from the pressure? Did Steve's challenge catch him totally off guard? Will Steve end up getting that world record? Will Billy finally show up to face off with him? I won't give the ending away, but I'll say this much - regardless of who ends the documentary as the world record holder, the pair have exchanged the record three times (including one with a guy named Hank Chien) since then. This rivalry isn't over yet! The King of Kong may only be a video game competition documentary on its surface, but deep down its a beautiful film about perseverance as a means to achieve the ends we seek. It's also a great story of an outsider forcing his way into an elitist inner circle and earning respect and acceptance. Check it out some time if you can. You won't be disappointed!

Captains Courageous

Eh, why not? Make it three straight books from 1897. Rudyard Kipling has written books more famous than this one (does The Jungle Book ring a bell?) and although Captains Courageous has been made into a movie at least a few times in the past hundred years I'd hardly call it an integral part of the Western canon. It's a simple coming of age tale about a rich and spoiled boy who falls overboard from his parents' steamship only to be rescued and immediately put to work by a fishing vessel. Throughout the tale's 200 pages, the boy learns about the personal achievement one feels by doing ones own hard work, and by the end of the novel he's a very changed person as he reunites with his parents. Like I said, the whole thing isn't very memorable, but at least I credit Kipling with penning a novel in a style of prose that feels modern and not completely dated. (Looking at you, Bram Stoker.) I doubt I'll get to The Jungle Book any time soon, as it isn't on my backlog and doesn't seem like anything I should go out of my way to read, but this small sampling of Kipling at least didn't turn me off from his writing in general. So, kudos.

Star Fox 64 3DS

$40 bucks beat in one sitting. Not cool Nintendo not cool!

Shadow of the Colossus

I may not have finished this Ico prequel before it came out on PS3 in HD, but I don't care at all. This, my friends, was a fantastic game. It had most of the artistic tone and feel of Ico but managed to be much more fun and much less frustrating. You play as an unnamed young man seeking to restore life to an unnamed dead young woman who you love. You arrive in a vast but isolated and desolate land where an all-powerful spirit-voice promises you that it can restore life to your lady if you slay sixteen colossal beasts. And so you do so, one at a time, and it it is awesome. The area you're in is void of other people and hostile monsters except for the enormous colossi. Thus, the game is nicely split between the calm and peaceful time you spend traveling through the vast and empty landscapes to get to the colossi and then the adrenaline-pumping epic boss fights that await you once you find them. Great stuff. My Ico post ran very long, and if I tried to say everything about this game that I wanted to I would only be repeating half of that post in different words. So I'll cut this off here and say that anyone with a PS2 (or PS3) should try to play this game at some point, preferably after Ico. (But if you only play one, make it Shadow of the Colossus.)

Friday Night Lights: Season 4

It's somewhat ironic that I'll be the third guy to post about Friday Night Lights on the blog. After all, I was the guy who got previous posters Marissa and Sween to watch the show in the first place, and Marissa even logged my very copy of the fourth season a year ago. As such, there's not a whole lot left for me to say. I think Season 4 marked a turning point in the series that sort of worked immediately and sort of took all season to feel right. The atmosphere around the main characters shifted from a quiet little football town in West Texas in Season 1-3 to the suddenly extant inner city streets of that same quiet little suburb in Seasons 4 and 5. The show thus began to tackle socioeconomic issues and did its best Wire impressions with a few scenes where black teens are up to no good and have guns, even going so far as to cast Wallace as the new main character and D'Angelo as a one-episode mentor figure. I think the season started out pretty strong (and the fifth episode, "The Son," is extremely powerful on an emotional level and is my favorite in the entire series) but I also think it kind of faded into a brief, small rut in the latter half of its run. The storylines that took center stage were an abortion, a chop shop, and a love triangle between a girl, the star quarterback, and the goofy kicker. Regardless, this is still one of my favorite dramas ever and I hardly minded watching it a second time on DVD.

The King's Speech

Well, I can see why this won the Academy Award for Best Picture. It was a simple, humble, small-scale movie that told one very specific and historically true story and did so rather well. And sometimes that's all it takes to win the most prestigious annual award in film. I don't think The King's Speech was one of my favorite movies from 2010, and I don't know if it was anyone's favorite movie of 2010 - aside form the guy with that blurb on the DVD cover, of course - but it was a film with universal appeal. The King of England has a stammer, and that would have been completely fine before the era of widespread radio broadcasting. But nowadays - in the glorious 1930s - all of the English common folk (and all of the people of the worldwide British Empire, for that matter) know their leaders' voices even more than they do their faces. How could a stammering king possibly be respected by his people? And with World War II looming, the people will need to hear a voice of confidence now more than ever before. What to do!? Fortunately, in comes Geoffrey Rush, a failed Australian stage actor who managed to help some World War I veterans get over their own shell-shocked stammers. Both characters are well-written and well-acted and the film is well shot with impressive cinematography that manages to frame the king in certain helpless-looking ways when he stammers. Very well-made and pleasing overall, like a rich and creamy scoop of vanilla ice cream. Everyone likes that dessert. And like this movie, it's got universal appeal. But I doubt there are many people who would call vanilla ice cream - even the best vanilla ice cream there is - their favorite dessert. I didn't dislike The King's Speech at all, but it was still just, you know, a bowl of vanilla ice cream. Alright, screw this, I'm going to go eat some vanilla ice cream.

Dracula

Damn - October's just a week old, and already I'm posting my third "horror" story. Will I have any left once the Halloween season kicks into high gear? (Granted, the first was just a book in which people lived forever, and weren't necessarily zombies or even monsters. But, still, the cover had the Grim Reaper on it. Good enough, right?) I tried to read Dracula two years ago, in college, but within the first ten pages or so it became evident that this was yet another Victorian England novel with stuffy prose and too many words in general. I decided to set it aside for a later time. However, having now read through this surprisingly sexually-charged vampire classic, I really need to give some overdue credit ...to Twilight and True Blood. Those and other modern day vampire franchises may be campy and way over the top, but they've taken some of the same "vampires and sex" parallels made by Stoker back in 1897 and made them palatable for a modern day audience. Silly me. I always figured the "sexy vampire" was a new trope in pop culture, an overly fetishized goth fantasy that used bloodlust as a metaphor for regular lust. How wrong I was! Turns out even old Bram Stoker was doing this a hundred years ago. Just, you know, in the most vanilla and carefully-worded way possible. (Furthermore, turns out other authors were doing it before Stoker, too. But don't blame me for forgetting about Carmilla, because that book was terrible.) I guess vampires and sex just go together, and always have. Makes sense. Fangs penetrate. Body fluids are exchanged. Something about a virgin's skin breaking and blood being drawn? Too much? I dunno, but I guess vampires are just sexy monsters by definition. But again, like I said, it's tough to buy into vampirism as a sexual theme when the characters in the story are from Victorian England. Dapper and noble gentlemen. Pure, innocent virgin women - and weakly-written women, at that. I know Stoker wrote this book back in a certain place and time, when a woman's role was simply to be weak, helpless, attractive, and motherly, but the female characters in Dracula are just so one-dimensional and flat. This would be fine if they existed mainly on the story's periphery, but two of them are very prominent characters who even get to narrate certain sections of the epistolary book. One is clearly meant to be the more promiscuous of the two, but only because she's got a few suitors and lets it slip - once - that she enjoys being the target of men's affections. I guess Dracula was an interesting book to read and I can see why it's a classic. There are a lot of themes and metaphors and such that must make it a high school English teacher's dream. Also, like Shelley's Frankenstein, Dracula left its timeless mark on pop culture in the form of a memorable monster villain. It's been made into something like fifty different movies through the ages. Clearly, there's lasting appeal here. Either way, I'm glad I'm starting to run out of 19th century literature on my backlog.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

More from Gallagan's shelf. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is probably most famous for it's somewhat repetitive title, which spawned a few parodies- such as a book on running by one of my new favorite authors, Murakami. Anyway What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is a collection of short stories from Raymond Carver that seem to set out to answer that question from many different angles. The seventeen shorts all have a 'love story' at their heart, but most only offer a glimpse into peoples' lives that ends far too quickly. While a few can stand alone as stories I'd sorta recommend, most just feel like the start of a potentially good book that for some reason Carver stopped writing at page 10. I always thought the short story medium lent itself well to clever mysteries or parables that can be consumed in bite-size chunks, while stories that really try to capture emotions should be given a bit more depth, but Carver apparently felt different. Oh well, I don't think I'm going to run into him again as there aren't any more Carver books on the still-in-progress Gallagan's Shelf.

Downfall

You knew I was going to end up seeing the source material for the "Hitler reacts" meme sooner or later. Downfall is a German film about a very specific and bittersweet time in German history: the Battle of Berlin, the bloodiest battle in world history and the end of World War II in Europe. No time is wasted on anything leading up to Hitler's final stand; the movie is solely about the downfall of Hitler, Berlin, and Nazi Germany, as its title suggests. Apparently, this movie broke a big German taboo by providing a sympathetic portrayal of Hitler. A minor fuss was made by critics who worried that a film with a sympathetic Hitler at its center would be perfect propaganda for various neo-Nazi movements. Personally, I don't see why. First of all, having watched the film I never really felt sympathy for Hitler as much as I did pity. It's not as if the film portrayed him as a loving and terribly misunderstood soul. There are scenes where Hitler enjoys good home-cooked meals and kisses his beloved pet dog, but I don't necessarily see that as an unfairly kind portrayal of the man. Because he was exactly that - a man. Given the recentness and tragic heft of World War II and the Holocaust, it's understandable why Hitler ranks atop the list of Western culture's all time most monstrous people. But at the end of the day, Hitler was a human being. He did horribly inhumane things and had very little value for other human beings, and one could argue that he was hardly "human" at all, but my point is that in a very literal sense he was a man and not a monster. He was a fleshy bag of blood and bones capable of having emotions and connecting to various things in various ways, just like all the rest of us. Now, secondly, the film doesn't spare you the details of Hitler's violent and inhumane side. He's got a short temper in the film, as anyone who has seen the aforementioned meme knows, and as he goes about Berlin in its final days he is ruthless toward his own civilians and refuses to surrender. He wants every last man, woman, and child in Berlin to die along with him for Nazi Germany, and how can any critic worry that a character like that is going to provoke new-found interest among viewers in the idea of totalitarian nationalism? But enough about Hitler. He ends up dying (suicide by headshot) almost an hour before the movie ends, and it's that final hour that may have gripped me the hardest. Their leader dead, their war clearly lost, all of the remaining members of the SS begin to kill themselves as well. Many kill their wives and children, too. Prior to watching this movie, I had never heard of the Goebbels family and the horrific way they met their end. Civilians all around the city try to flee only to be shot down by both the invading Russians and the Nazis themselves who treat the fleeing citizens like deserters. Even after Hitler is dead and gone, his horrible influence hangs over the entire city as his most fanatic followers try to ensure that there's nothing and nobody left for the Soviets to take once the city has fallen. A few Nazi officials recognize the folly of destroying themselves and their city, but most just turn their pistols on themselves and take the easy, "honorable" exit. The whole thing was pretty effective. As an American, I'm used to the fall of Berlin being the happy ending of my World War II movies and video games. And even here, the film doesn't treat the ending as if the wrong side won; I think most modern Germans, these film makers included, are pretty embarrassed about what their country became for a brief but vital period of time. This film's tone isn't "what a shame that we lost." It's "let's take a look at how ugly the ending was for us." After all, there are two sides to every story, and multiple points of view to consider for any event. History is written by the victors, as the saying goes, and it was a nice change of pace to see the Allies' happy ending from another point of view. Because even the Nazis had a point of view worth trying to see things from every now and again.

The Invisible Man

The gist of this one is pretty simple. A man discovers how to make himself invisible, but can't reverse the process. This results in him being super-human and yet still feeling sub-human. It's hard to have any self worth, after all, when you've got no visible "self" to speak of. The titular character slowly becomes detached from society and cynical about his condition for a while before finally just abandoning all pretenses and going into complete criminal mode. It ends more or less how you'd expect it would, but that's alright, since the publication year is 1897 and we need to lower the bar for good writing back then. (It's like baseball. In the same year, Hugh Duffy of the "Boston Beaneaters" led all of professional baseball with eleven home runs.) This is the third H.G. Wells book I've read, and will probably be the last for quite a while; unlike other authors who I've sampled more than once, Wells wrote fifty novels (and easily that many non-fictional works and collections of essays and short stories). So there's simply no way I'll finish his bibliography. That isn't to say I'll never return for more of his fine turn-of-last-century sci-fi, but I think I've now read his three most famous books (this one, The Time Machine, and The War of the Worlds). And while a few of the remaining 47 pique my interest (like The Island of Doctor Moreau, The First Men in the Moon, The War in the Air, and The Shape of Things to Come, to name a few) my primary concern can't be acquiring more books I may enjoy, but instead finishing off the books I already own.

Amadeus

Here's a movie I ended up liking a lot more than I thought I would. (Love when that happens.) "Amadeus" was Wolfgang Mozart's middle name, but also translates to "gift from God." In the latter sense, it's an apt title for this film. I'm sure everyone reading this is aware that Mozart was an extremely talented composer from the later half of the 18th century. He was a child prodigy and indisputably a musical super-genius. He could look at a keyboard and just improvise amazing compositions. When writing music, he rarely ever had to scratch anything out of his rough drafts before they were finalized. The movie paints him as somewhat flamboyant and arrogant, but always in an innocent way. Mozart doesn't take pride in being better than every other composer; he just knows that he's better than the rest and refuses to take advice from anyone else. When told to change his music in any way, he shoots down the constructive criticism. "Why change something perfect?" is his rhetorically interrogative logic. It's easy to see how such a talented composer could be both envied and adored by virtually all other composers. And this movie isn't even so much about Mozart himself as it is about one of the other composers of the time and place - Salieri - and his obsession/rivalry/relationship with Mozart. Salieri is a very religious man. When Mozart shows him up in front of the king and all over town, Salieri interprets it as God mocking him for his musical mediocrity. I've always been a fan of good biopics, and even though this one takes place in the lavish and stuffy settings of 18th century music halls where everyone is in a powdered wig, there's a very modern feel to the characters' actions and dialogue that makes this film a lot easier to get through than I initially thought it would be. Here's a three-minute YouTube clip from early on in the film that serves as a great introduction to the entire movie. You see the very orderly Salieri composing a piece, and then giving that piece to the king (yep, the dean from Ferris Bueller) to play. A flamboyant Mozart enters, having never met Salieri or heard the song before, and immediately plays back the song while offering commentary on what parts work and what parts don't, ultimately rewriting the thing right in front of both Salieri and the king, smug as hell but forgivably so due to his apparent immaturity. The rest of the film is more or less the fallout from that crucial first meeting. I enjoyed it, and think you might too.

The Postmortal

Imagine what life would be like if scientists discovered a cure for aging. You've probably already done so, at one point or another, because frankly, who hasn't? We all know that death is an inevitable certainty, and what comes afterward is anything but certain. It's nice, sometimes, to fantasize about what it would be like to never die. But we also know, deep down, that it would probably end up being a fate worse than death all the same. This book - written by sports blogger Drew Magary - takes that thread and pulls on it for 360 pages, telling the story of a man named John who, like most people in the 21st century, will be forever young. I bought this book merely minutes after first hearing about it; the Amazon.com "Look inside!" feature allowed me to check out the first few pages, and I was hooked immediately. What really grabbed me was the direct "jump right in" style that the narrative had. Magary wastes no time droning over the specific science and legality behind the cure for aging, instead exposing such details in the background as John reacts to news reports and government statements. The repercussions in a world where nobody ages range from the monumental to the humorously trivial. One girl laments early on in the book that she'll always get her period now, and the all time home run record is shattered repeatedly since players can now remain in their prime indefinitely. Meanwhile, the world's population balloons to 20 billion and nearly every national government becomes a totalitarian regime. The story jumps forward ten or twenty years at a time and takes place in four distinct years, never really stalling until the fourth and final part. Unfortunately, by the end of the story it seems like Magary was focused primarily on using old dystopian tropes like famine, rampant crime, and nuclear holocaust. Because the first two thirds of the book were more "big picture" driven, telling the story not just of John but of the society around him, the final character-specific act kind of lags its way to a predictable and unoriginal finish. It was at this late stage in the story when The Postmortal stopped feeling like an amazing modern novel to me and ended up merely being "pretty good and worth a read." I really wanted to come away from The Postmortal with great comfort in the idea that I will die someday, but just when Magary had the chance to hammer home that sentiment, he abandoned it to let John go out in an action-movie-style blaze of glory, abandoning philosophical meaning in favor of simple dramatic flair. Maybe I just had unfair expectations for the ending; this is, after all, the guy's first novel. I'm sure I'll check out Magary's stuff again if he ever goes back for a second attempt. And in the meantime, I'll always have his weekly NFL preview column on Deadspin.

My Name Is Earl: Season 4

When I was in fifth or sixth grade, there were ads for a Nickelodeon show called 100 Deeds for Eddie McDowd. The concept was that a school bully had been turned into a dog - by God? Karma? - and that he'd resume his human form if he could do one hundred good deeds. Even back then, I was jaded enough to know that the show likely wouldn't last a hundred episodes, and that there'd be no "happy ending" so to speak. (I was right. A quick Wikipedia check reveals that there were indeed only forty episodes and that the series was canceled while Eddie McDowd was still a dog with sixty-odd good deeds left. Anyway, I couldn't help but think about that show as I dove into the fourth and final season of Earl, a show with a strikingly similar concept - Earl has a list of wrongs he needs to right - but no definitive endgame. Sure enough, when the fourth season drew to a close, Earl was nowhere close to finishing off his list. Clearly, the showrunners thought there'd be an order for a fifth season, as the series finale ends with a pretty gigantic cliffhanger. Don't you hate that? I'm not even sure why Earl was canceled. Though ratings had slipped from season to season, even Season 4 was pulling in 6.6 million viewers. For comparison's sake, the current show airing in the 8:00pm time slot on NBC's Thursday night line up, Community, gets about 4.5 million viewers a week. (Not that I'm complaining about the birth and continued existence of Community!) Of course, TV renewal and cancelation decisions are a strange thing, and whether or not Earl deserved to be canceled after 96 episodes, it was. As far as the fourth season is concerned, I think it was a huge improvement over the experimental and quirky third season. The writers took a back-to-basics approach and just allowed Earl to continue working on his list to set up humorous episode-long arcs while the other characters functioned as broad but lovable stereotypes of the lower-middle class. After Season 3, I was glad I was almost done with Earl. But after Season 4, I kind of wish there were just a few more episodes that could neatly tie a bow on the ending and give the people of fictional Camden County some kind of closure. But, hey. Far better shows have ended far more prematurely. (Speaking of which, have you guys heard that Arrested Development is coming back next fall for ten episodes?)

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow

Not much to see here. Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow provides some definite upgrades over the previous Harmony of Dissonance but plays almost exactly the same, so there's little for me to say. Substitute the outer space exploration of Metroid games for a more Gothic setting, and you've got the Castlevania universe. Fulfill your obsessive-compulsive needs by attempting to explore every square of a map, search for upgrades, and sidescroll, sidescroll, sidescroll. Aria of Sorrow's only real claim to fame in the series is its 'assimilation' techniques, similar to Brave Fencer Musashi where you can steal an attack from any enemy in the game. Other than that, it's the same old addicting gameplay as always. There's plenty of games left in this series, so full completion would be a long ways off, but there's potential here for that. We'll see.