Sep 29 2009
1996 / rodriquez / tarantino / keitel / clooney
so much fun it should be part of every family’s friday night get-togethers. unapologetically gruesome, fierce deadpans, and a corpse guitar that has brendan fraser’s head (swear!).
it starts off rather mundane. yieah yieah, a pair of bank robber brothers take a family hostage. a lot of swearing, tension between bad guys and cops, blah blah blah. the only things that kept me awake were clooney rattling off lines like he actually was a hip bank robber and the teasing tail wisps of a tentacle tattoo that graced his neck. even harvey keitel’s emo couldn’t keep me glued.
then BAM. fucking vampires. wtf? wtf fucking vampires!? completely left-field. sure salma did a hot dance number but, hey, imma girl. i could care less about seductive female jiggling. i do care about vampire juice gushing outta rotting orifices and the undead going up in flames. awesome. pure camp, pure undistilled pulp. the second half of the flick is the best fight-to-stay-alive rush ever. ever.
and surprisingly enough, you get character development without any soulful close-ups or them dreaded heart-to-heart dialogue exchanges. cuz it’s so obvious — when faced with a situation wherein your entire belief system gets one-upped by wtf vampires(!!!), then yer ass changes tune whether the writer puts it in the script or not. i liked that clooney’s over-the-top perfomance made for a nice contrast with juliette lewis’ low-key vibes.
and oh yieah. mayan ruins. Best. Idea. Evar. dusk till dawn is the type of gruesome camp i lurves. the gorey imagination of my youth come alive. ja baby.
Sep 23 2009
1984 / robin mckinley
possibly the only story where beating the big bad is not a super-major plot point; when the big bad shows up, he still manages to stay sidelined and then zips out after just a few cuz he got his ass whupped over-easy. and it’s ok(!). the hero and the crown is about the hero (aha!) and her crown (way!). her journey is why you stay reading through till the end.
possibly the only novel where run-on sentences are okay and, in fact, add immensely to the flow and tone of story. dialogue is not the primary vehicle for character development so the author uses a lot of exposition. run-on sentences then become so fun to read — a stream-of-thought view into each character’s brain. each eventual dialogue exchange then becomes loaded with meaning. makes for excellent immersion.
i love me a good description (which means i oughta love dickens but man he can be a chore sometimes). hero and the crown has exactly enough description to give you oohs and ahhs but not enough for you to lose sight of the plot. a black dragon so hawtly evil that dust from the earth eddies around his corpse. a lake that’s not quite a lake and reminds me of the abyss.
non-perfection is endearing — even for a big meanie like me. aerin is clumsy, nerdy, obstinate, without much self-confidence. by the end, all her success is hard-earned. she walks into walls to learn things. however uncomfortable to admit, that is pretty much me. it could be one reason i keep re-reading this novel. i just don’t like to, urm, actually admit that.
Sep 21 2009
1998 / graphic adventure / simon & schuster (!?)
sole influencing factor in purchasing this game — shiny 3d done in art deco. from linear repititions to shiny smooth metal to glorious muted color palette. pretty much the lure of wandering about a luxury spaceliner done up in deco was the only excuse i needed to buy starship titantic. i figured that, even if it sucks in gameplay, the visuals will more than make up for the lack.
thank goodness doug adams was deliciously wonky. not only did gameplay not suck but the plot dripped with dark humor. to this day, i don’t understand why people think the story fell short. the setup to starship is just like myst — you get dropped in the middle of nowhere so you start figuring stuff out. plot unfolds as you dig around. and there is totally a plot just in the middle of your face. one that’s so reeking of simple human greed that it spills out into the ship itself. i love the slightly off-the-edge insanity that pervades. every few minutes or so, the ship announcer rattles off inanity (attention all passengers! afternoon prayer has been cancelled until further notice!) that pushes the boundaries of laughing with the ship and being laughed at by the ship itself. at least, that’s what my over-active imagination tells me. balance the off-kilter silliness with the fact that your game mission is to wander about and pick up the dismembered body pieces of the main computer, which, creepily enough, has a female name and is totally just a glowing blue female form in the ship control room. a bright-blue lawnmower man type of body.
my favorite bot? the succ-u-bus. damn that thing is so cute.
this game is fantastic. storytelling through game immersion. not all graphic adventures achieve that even though there are, you know, graphics to help a body out. it’s all in the presentation and starship titanic does that whole staging thing pretty damn well.
Sep 18 2009
1986 / christopher pike
so-called convential wisdom tells us that teenagers will always be teenagers. which is why when a guy writes a story and actually Gets It about human emotions, it’s a restorative for my faith in humanity. the tachyon web pits the all-too-familiar teenage angst against a fantastic, futuristic plot. you get sucked into the story because you, like, either are a teenager or, odds on, you were even actually once a teenager.
what makes tachyon web such a great read is pike’s genius in never once belittling the teenage angst. yes they’ve crushes, greed, and an abundance of self-entitlement. yet. they are also simultaneously curious, caring, resourceful, and ultimately, honorable in a way only the young can be. the open-ended conclusion still satisfies because you know that this group of teenagers will be okay — they have proven themselves to be Good People.
pike doesn’t skimp on details for the adult cast either. the general in particular is understandably more complex after having lived through tragedy. this contrasted with eric’s naivete makes for some amazingly tense scenes. that eric’s untried sense of nobility ultimately affects the decisions of the adults around him is a wonderful message. a reminder that teenagers can present those disarmingly honest observations about life that we old fogeys may have forgotten.
i’m not a science nurd so i’ve no clue if the scientificky terms and technologies throughout are realistic. fun to read about though. particle streams, tachyon travel, holograms, centrifugal gravity. sounds fabulous. i wouldn’t mind living in the world that pike dreamed up.
this story screams to be made into a film. just the world-building alone is enough to warrant a lavish cgi budget. novas, space ports, and alien motherships are tossed about without a blink to the eye…would love to see that splashed onto a giant screen. with a non-stop pace, humor, and that amazing heart-twist of an ending. drool-worthy.
Sep 16 2009
translated from arráncame la vida, ángeles mastretta
had no expectations whatsoever with this book. i’d bought it during my must-expand-my-reading-to-more-contemporary-fiction phase. out of the New Fiction (!) shelf, i selected tear this heart out because 1) the cover art was pretty and 2) it was tradeback. i’ve an inordinate love for tradebacks.
first time through i really didn’t get anything that happened. i’m rather slow at picking up the point sometimes and this was certainly one of those times. it took me about three times through before i found the rhythm of the plot and prose. mastretta doesn’t write the way i’m used to reading, she definitely has her own pace and lyric. it’s unique, and now i can’t see this story written any other way. changing the words and phrasing would completely alter the weight of the storytelling, diminish how i’ve come to so admire the heroine.
our modern culture is prone to simplying complexities so the greater audience can grasp a concept. feminism in the popular media is girl power, women who one-up the men in her life, women who physically fight for her right to be powerful. it’s not a bad message per se, it’s just not a good enough message. one-upping anyone doesn’t mean you earn the right to equality. how did you get to your position of power? is it power by force or power stemming from self-worth? the journey there should be what girl power perpetuates.
tear this heart out is one long journey. i can’t relate to the historical background because i’ve yet to read up on mexican history, but it’s not necessary to know the politics in order for the story to take hold. catalina is altogether brutally honest about life and love, capable of seeing humor in the dark and in herself. her sense of self-worth, from birth to nurture to maturity, is a heckuva ride to witness. always, at the end, i cry her same tears of joy and hurt. because i’ve also been there, done that, and know women who have too.
susan kay
can’t recall where i bought this book. i keep thinking it was a cheap purchase ($5 bin) and that i picked it up only because its one-worded title and gilded victorian cover tugged at the part of me who slaves for romantic drama.
drama in its current incarnation is So Damn Annoying because writers tend towards melodrama but call it drama. you get emo stories that consists of men who brood about the injustices of mankind and/or women who weep inconsolably over lost love. add some tragic twist and this is mostly what is considered attractive dramatic storytelling these days. it’s shortchanging the listener/reader is what it is. presuming that we are not capable of understanding dramatic themes unless it’s thrown into our face. maybe that’s true in a one-hour telly show but not so if you have at your disposal the breadth of a novel. kay’s phantom is not a novel of harry potter length and yet it delivers within an amazing cast of characters exquisitely varied in disposition, motive, and (in several) emotional growth. the title leads you to believe that it’s only about erik (the phantom of the opera), yet in attempting to fully explore the background of this one person through the eyes of people he meets, kay has so fully fleshed out the so-called “supporting” characters that this novel becomes their story too.
a first person narrative may seem easy (i’m just writing exactly how my character thinks!) but it’s not. switching from one point of view to the next, examining the same scene but from different angles — consistency is the key to keeping believability. phantom has no flaws in consistency, at least none i’ve detected and i’ve read this book umpteen times. that no character is flawless is another touch of reality. superficially, phantom is a romantic tragedy. but kay has turned erik’s story into an examination of humanity and all the heartaches and bittersweet triumphs that come with living as we do. this is the kind of story that stays with me because i crave emotional depth, love at its most elemental level twined through the complexities that come with mature self-knowledge. stories about life itself, regardless of the setting, are the only kind of stories worthy of being re-read, over and over again.
1997 / luc besson / mila jovovich / bruce willis / ian holm
i want to live in a place where thai food comes to my window in the form of a giant floating junk. the shower/fridge combo is a bit iffy but hey, if i wanna escape i can sleep my way to a planet that is just one giant beach for vacay. yieah, not bad at all.
caught this gem in my second year of college when i was actually sick of movies because there just wasn’t anything new that captured my imagination. then some time late one night, i flipped into chris tucker saying “super green” while dressed like, urm, dressed crazy. hooked since then. loved it since then.
aside from gazing at the hawtness that is miz mila (and the hawtness of bruce willis WTFBBQ), you also get what is, imo, the best chris tucker performance ever. actually, one of the best performances by an actor onscreen ever. where in great googly moogly did he dream up those voice ticks?! i done seen him in those rush hour flicks and it’s totally not just a high-pitched voice at work — tucker tucked (haha) in an elastic physical performance to enhance the crazy. better than jim carrey. maybe you watch the first half of the film for the chase sequence through new york but you definitely stick around for the second half because wtfbbq with ruby rhod?!.
every two seconds, a familiar actor’s face pops on screen (luke perry?! ian holm?!) or else every three seconds there’s a static character showing up dressed as only gaultier can style. and, of course, the sets. besson (and his concept artist gurus) imagined it epic and epic is how i like it. new york is high and new york is low. attack of the clones was made a decade later with better graphic technology but it in no way conveys the realistic sleeze and grease of a living metropolis.
soundtrack is, just, love. it’s such an eclectic mix, from reggae to techno opera, but it all works. there were sequences where dialogue is at the minimum because the visuals are played up by the music alone. it gave the film a rhythm and you rolled with the beat until the end. spacey, techno beats. like a whole buncha people, the opera bit ranks high with me.
everybody and their dawg likes to throw around the good vs. evil theme. most end with the hero conquering evil once and for all. i much prefer whedon and besson’s version — evil is never truly vanquished. it comes back (maybe even at regular 500 year intervals!) and it must be defeated anew each time. otherwise good could not become good unless they knew and fought evil. the fifth element simplifies this (buffy had to go through seven seasons to get it) but that’s what make fifth element work. it’s not necessary to channel the eternal struggle of good vs. evil through a tortured hero for a story to carry emotional depth. it’s a lot more fun to be smart and snarky (i’m saving your ass so you can save the world!). punctuate the snark with occassional dark emo and it’s a film i won’t fall asleep watching. plus, well, the sparkly cgi makes me happy.
Sep 14 2009
1996 / graphic adventure / barracuda
i’m about twelve years behind in playing timelapse. it was on my “must have” ever since i found a magazine ad of it where they’d used a ray-traced screenshot of the atlantis set — it was turquoise, it was shiny, and i totally wanted to go there. had to wait years for various reasons before i got my hands on a copy of this game. even though i played it way after its initial 1996 release, timelapse is as much responsible for my salivating over graphic adventure games as is myst and zork nemesis.
after waiting twelve years to play this, my conclusions?
1 – somebody, anybody, needs to remake this game using today’s graphic technology. syberia the hell out of it PLEASE. take the gorgeous shiny stuff and make it anti-aliased. i would die of happiness.
2 – dammit, where’s timelapse 2?? i’d like to return to that homeworld already!
timelapse is classic graphic adventure gaming. hopping around worlds and solving concentric-set puzzles. everybody and their mom harp about wanting puzzles that are logical to the environment. in that respect, timelapse is totally like riven. you get a journal that provides some clues but then that’s it. just you and your noggin figuring stuff out. pretty much the only two puzzles that drove me nuts were the picture-slide puzzle and the number wheel puzzle. interestingly enough, both are in the mayan world.
and oh yes, the worlds. visually gorgeous (as previously mentioned) and the designers didn’t futz around with research. many puzzles were culturally based. the only other game that did these types of puzzles super well was journeyman project 3. take that, logical hounds. timelapse worlds are vast and there was plenty to explore. the mayan world in particular Would Never End. temple after temple. it speaks a lot about the game immersion if my response to the vastness of the mayan world was that the mayans were crazy builders. and not that the game designers went wacko all out.
i can forgive the lack of plot urgency in this game because, well, i’m a sucker for pretty pictures. the professor guy i’m supposed to be rescuing? eh, who cares about him. if he were as smart as me, he would’ve gotten out as i did. leave him. i’m taking flight to the homeworld thanks.
Sep 13 2009
2006 / graphic adventure / nucleosys
have been looking for a good spook as of late so picked up scratches. bottom line spook factor wasn’t all that, except maybe for anything involving that damned basement furnace. poking around the mausoleum gave off a decent ick factor too. there were a few moments here and there where creepy vibe was well set up (it helps that you’re the only person poking around this drafty place). but the charm wears off when you have to plonk around the rooms back and forth for puzzle solving. and you know what? too bad there wasn’t ever anything jumping out at you when you “got a bad feeling”. it just told you about the creepy and then…that was it. boo.
my usual lust for amazing graphic imagery was not sated. maybe it’s because i’ve been spoiled with lush environments and fantastic designs in adventure games. but then, when the set is supposed to be this grand mansion, i wanted something i can fully dive into — and not rather static backgrounds that didn’t react to my clicks. whoever was the interior decorator for the rooms needs to be smacked. god-awful victorian gilt. ew.
user-friendly though. no hunting for pixels (much) and quite logical puzzle design. i think the only part i detested was dialing on the phone all the time and hearing the guy yap on and on forever.
the story? well, i guess it says a lot about the game if the story is something i mention three paragraphs into the rant. i get what they were going with the story and it’s a decently sophisticated take on curses, voodoo, and all that. but aside from (again!) that damned basement ending, nothing about the story really made me give a damn what happened to whom. just clicking from task to task so i can finish it and get it over with.
despite being rather blah about the game (most likely will not be revisiting anytime soon), i did shell out the cash when i found out there’s a director’s version. something about polished graphics, which i’m all for, and an extended ending. since the original basement ending did carry a nice twist, one of these days i’ll play the director’s cut to see if they’d added more juice to it.
Sep 11 2009
1993 / martin scorsese / michelle pfeiffer / winona ryder / daniel day-lewis
when i was fifteen and watched this for school, the only plotline that stuck out was ellen and newland not quite hooking up. when i caught this flick again at twenty-five (after having schlepped through an inglorious college career because i never quite jived with the rest of society) the only plotline that mattered was newland’s emotional awakening and eventual maturity. may no longer seemed a papercut foil. ellen is not quite so whiny. and, how fabulous(!), granny kicks arse. amazing what a difference ten years can effect. through the lens of an adult, this film captures so exactly my feelings of isolation, of life regrets, and of bittersweet acceptance. there’s no overly dramatic plot twist to bring out the emo. the low-key approach is much, much appreciated.
this is a scorsese film?! never knew until i wiki’ed it just now. which is so awesome because my usual raison d’etre for watching a scorsese flick is for the stylistic explosions of violence. age of innocence is so different from, say, gangs of new york. nothing hurried at all. obviously nothing blows up. everything spoken, from exposition to veiled menace, is given enough airtime so the viewer can really savor the words. which makes sense since the film’s based on a novel.
my only possible complaint? newland’s icky fake old person makeup in the end. so…stage drama-ish. like, ew!
1980 / m.m. kaye
unabashed fairytale with a one-eyed wink on the traditional princess types.
fairy godmother?
check.
a crochety old lady who loves ya anyway and speaks common sense.
handsome prince?
check.
eats ice cream straight from the tub (egads!) but will send bothersome family members packing in the face of twue lurve.
charming princess?
check check.
freckles on her snub nose and no need for frills to be special.
a short but bouncy read. thirty minute dose of happy feelings — better than watching friends. it’s easy to dismiss the book because the language is so fluffy. but the story lingers because there’s such a strong streak of common sense throughout. whyever should a girl wait around to be rescued by some hapless knight in shining armor? when did pretty determine anyone’s worth? but of course kings get tired! they work all the time!! and so on and so forth.
and the illustrations! oh my! all by m.m.kaye herself. flowing princess dresses, inquisitive squirrels, barefoot kitchen maids. nobody draws this style anymore. curves of art nouveau. absolutely love.
Sep 10 2009
2006 / graphic adventure / white birds productions / benoit sokal
there’s one thing that benoit sokal games will always be — a Visual Orgasmo. all imagery matches the story theme, down to the color palette and tone. paradise is about loss, war, social and emotional turmoil. so every set you step into is an amazing array of muted neutrals occasionally punched up by lush greenery. rain drifts, pools ripple, mosquitoes flit all about. love them visual details. my favorite? hopping around on the lily pads. just…so cute(!!).
story? should’ve amped up the emo earlier on. instead, all the angst is crammed into the last third of the game. took me over two years to finish this game compared to the all-nighter spent with syberia because i just couldn’t get worked up over what happens next. nothing happens next! except wandering around desolation and performing monkey tasks that make no sense. why why why do i need to traipse around the hated tree-house maze to gather a bajillion items for trapping that damned leopard who doesn’t ever stay put?? which, by the way, the leopard wandering off does nothing to forward the plot. no great twist revealed, no significant change to the main character affected. bah.
but i do love the ending. however left-field it was.
one of the buggier graphic adventures i’ve played in a while. ann doesn’t always go where you click. cursor transforms are on a slight delay. cursor has trouble transforming when in tight corners. she’s walking up stairs but her feet are shoving right into the steps! characters walk through one another (geez, old skool glitch!). etcetra. i actually don’t mind that there’s no indicator to scroll into the next screen unless you click in the specific direction. adds to the world building experience. i just, you know, would like it if i didn’t have to click in one direction several thousand times just so ann moves in that direction. srsly.
unlike syberia i have no memory of the soundtrack. and the only really memorable character is the elephant. i felt so bad for that elephant. who cares about the leopard. he’s always running off and getting lost anyway.
keep comparing paradise to syberia but that’s how it is when one is so much the superior of the other. paradise could have been so much better. not really paradise. more like purgatory.