My Wii Obsessions: Warioware and Zelda

My right arm is aching this morning. I believe that I am suffering from the Wii equivalent of tennis elbow. The culprit is a game I picked up a couple of weeks ago called Warioware: Smooth Moves. I know that Morgan and I haven't been entertaining very many guests over the years, but never has that been so acute as right now.

This game is meant to be played with others... many others... preferably under the influence. The game supports 12 players and is a frenzy to play even in single-player mode. Hundreds of mini-games reside beneath the hood. I have been squatting and waving and punching and shimmying to the tune of a frenetic and catchy (EVIL) soundtrack. I got the Wii because I wanted something fun to do with people who weren't gamers. Too bad the system didn't come with neighborhood friends.


The other game that's taking up too much of my time has been the Epic known as The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. This game is HUGE. I have been playing it for 2 months and I'm still not finished with it. The save screen logs the number of hours you put into it and I'm somewhere around 59... if only I got paid for such commitment. Normally, this sort of gaming activity would be a deal-breaker with my wife, but fortunately the game is beautiful to look at and the puzzles are so much fun, Morgan has spent more than an idle hour or two helping me work through some of the more-challenging levels.


The plot of the game is pretty stock but the execution is fantastic. Rather than subject the gamer to another hack-and-slash fest, Zelda is provided with a fantastic array of tools and weapons that allow him/her to swing from claws, smash ice blocks, capture objects with mini-tornados and walk along the bottom of lakes. The first 2 hours of the story are terminal as the game tries to teach the in-and-outs of the movement and combat systems, but when the story picks up it's fantastic. I have played dozens of fantasy games and this quickly became my favorite. If you own a Wii, you should own this game.

Venus

I understand that it is self-flagellating to watch the Academy Awards every year. The movies I love are rarely nominated and the winners are frequently the least-deserving- I don't know what the hell Academy members were thinking last year with Crash. I'm going to be good, though, and not bitch about this year's performance. There are plenty of snarky comments to be found on the Internet and in print. My issues with this institution go so far back, it's not worth the breath. I've got a friend-of-a-friend who is an Academy member, however, and that means that for 2 weeks of the year, I get to watch half the films I kinda wanted to see but wasn't interested enough to pay $10.75 for the privilege. This year, the movie I heard the least about was the one I enjoyed the most - Venus.

I knew that Peter O'Toole was up for an Academy Award for his role in Venus but heard little about the film. Peter O'Toole plays Maurice, an aged actor in the twilight of his career. Remembered mostly for his glamorous past and forgotten by the younger generation, he spends his twilight years playing dying grandfathers in films and wandering to the theater or the diner with actor-friends of his generation. The film has a smart, touching plot between Maurice and a young, street-smart woman who he calls "Venus", yet that is the least-interesting aspect of the film. Venus is a portrait of being old - how it feels to be old, how old people are treated and the roles that the elderly are expected to fulfill.

It never fails to amaze me how American culture (or most Western cultures, for that matter) treats it's elderly population. They are stereotyped in film and television as less-than-human children who shuffle, complain and fear change. Reality is that families and the culture largely ignores them or panders to them in condescending ways. What was natural and expected at earlier ages becomes lecherous and sinister in the later years. Somehow, elderly people are supposed to become softer, safer and less of whatever they were in their prime. I suspect it might have something to do with a contemporary fetishizing of youth combined with a terror of growing old.

Peter O'Toole does a spectacular job as the aging actor whose mind is still sharp, whose passions are still potent even as his body slowly gives way. Forrest Whittaker might have given the performance of his life in The Last King of Scotland- his Oscar acceptance speech was passionate and inspiring. However, Peter O'Toole performed an act of courage in exposing himself to the potential ridicule as a dirty old man by an audience that no longer sees him as Lawrence of Arabia or Henry II. He serves up his persona and our memories of him as a passionate, vigorous soul and uses it to expose our assumptions of what a human being should be in his/her later years. In a business based upon vanity, Peter O'Toole continues to both challenge and unsettle. He stood and delivered and I hope that I will carry half that that boldness into my later years.

Onibaba

I am a lifer. I was an enthusiast throughout my childhood. I studied them in college. I even subjected myself to the machina of the Dream Factory during the mid 1990's in the hope of making them. Motion pictures have profoundly moved and shaped me. So, it was no small event when enthusiasm turned into cynicism a few years ago. The art form that gave me so much suddenly felt like a shallow, corporate shell of what I once loved. Sometimes I begin to wonder whether there are no longer inspiring surprises to be found. Though I have not seen every movie made, I have seen thousands of films- enough to believe that there is little out there to amaze me... then, something comes along that kicks my ass, rekindles my love of cinema and reminds me that no matter how long I live, there will always be surprises. This week, I sat down and watched the 1964, Japanese cinema classic, Onibaba.

Onibaba is one of the creepiest movies I've seen in years. Set during a civil war of medieval Japan, an old woman and her daughter-in-law live in a small hut amongst a sea of tall grass. They eke out a living by selling the armor and weapons of unsuspecting soldiers who unwittingly stumble into their grassland trap. With aid of halberds and a deep well, the women murder and salvage for millet and sake. The film is sparse on dialogue and instead fills the narrative with expressionistic cinematography and a minimalist sound. In an age of John Williams, Hans Zimmer, and Howard Shore it is a blessed release to watch a film that doesn't try to relentlessly steer me with orchestrated Muzak. The wind and clacking of the the long, grass stalks create an unnerving environment where death appears and disappears with startling swiftness.

What most struck a nerve with me was the primal quality of the storytelling- this is not Kurosawa's Japan. The characters are primal in their desires. Starvation, lust and violence drive the narrative from the start. The opening sequence of the film follows the women as they kill a pair of soldiers, strip their bodies, dump them into a hole, scarf a quick meal in their hut, then collapse on bamboo mats. The younger woman's lust for a man sends her racing through the tall grass at night into his arms, despite the terrifying possibility that a demon lives amongst the grass. All the characters are unsettling with their voracious, relentless appetites. A major part of the film's hook is that one never knows who to root- each character is fatally-flawed in more than a few, unpalatable ways. Onibaba reminded me that it is not spectacle that makes memorable movies- it is character. This film has it in spades.

Pan's Labrinth "Payback"

As I am sure we are all aware, the democratic country we live in is a boon to free speech that we all enjoy taking for granite every day. So, I want to give my appreciation for free speech by not erasing Brian's blog about Pan's Labyrinth. By holding back and NOT destroying an opinion that one may not agree with or just happens to be WRONG we all benefit by opening our minds just a bit more and letting new misguided ideas in. And with that I say "RISE UP people of the world and see Pan's Labyrinth."
O.K. so Brian is not "wrong" because of course how can an opinion BE wrong but still... As you might suppose I enjoyed Pan's Labyrinth much more than Brian. Now to be fair, I read his blog and he mentioned that he had maybe "bought into the hype" of the movie. He had heard a lot about it in advance about it's originality. Now my good friend Brian is based out of New York, a regular movie mecca. I am conversely based out of Omaha.. that city in the bastion of cutting edge art and free thinking. Yoga classes are held in the park while coffee houses speak of new eastern philosophies. I feel sorry for Brian in his po-dunc, back-water, small-minded, hick town that he likes to call "The Big Apple" no thank-you I much prefer my cosmopolitan, eco-friendly, muti-cultural Omaha, Nebraska. Why just today my boss showed me a "funny" Internet clip of a re-arranged Kentucky Fried Chicken sign that read "HILARY SPECIAL, 2 fat thighs, 2 small breasts, and 2 left wings" I chuckled heartily about his keen insights on the Democratic senator. ha ha ha 2 left wings indeed! so clever. The point is that I did not get ANY information on Pan's Labyrinth before I saw it because... well... you know I live in a film gulag. In all fairness we do get some independent movies here in Nebraska the last one was called "Happy Feet".
I was thinking of writing about how much I enjoyed Pan's Labyrinth but now I think I'll just whine about the lack of good film here. No, no I'll stay focused.
Me and Brian just felt differently about that film. I found the back and forth between reality and fantasy extremely well done. The representation of Franco's Spain as seen through the fantasy world of a young girl was very compelling, creating conversations that were provocative. I also found the "reality" story just as good. the suspense of the whether the rebels will be found out or not. I didn't even know they used CGI, that is how good it was. I thought it was all dude's in costumes. O.K. I knew they CGed the legs a few times but all in all a bit of quibble if you ask me.
I can sympathise with Brian. I know what it is like to be expecting greatness and not have it happen, that is why all movie fans should move to Omaha, where you quickly learn to expect nothing, and are always pleasantly sup prised to find you were right. I'm off now to the latest indi film coming out here. I think it's from France, I believe it is pronounce "Grid-loc Gang" hmm I'll let you know.
late

Pan's Labyrinth

Morgan and I decided to take advantage of New York's movie matinees ($6 before Noon) and schlepped down to 67th and Broadway for a flick. The critics had been gushing about this film since it was first released at the end of last year and we were eager to see something fantastical. I have been obsessed about macabre children's stories (i.e. Alice in Wonderland, the Oz books, anything by Dahl), and this film seemed to fit the bill.

The film is slicky-made- everyone is lit in that even, one-hour television drama style. The CGI scenes were generally effective, but there were a few moments where I couldn't help but notice how artificial they looked. In one scene there was a beautifully-rendered, writhing, mandrake root while another shot had a Spanish Captain staring through binoculars at terrible, CGI campfire smoke.

The story is strong in formula but there are some nice plot twists to be found. The film contains a significant (and somewhat indulgent) number of squirm scenes. I like the idea of a dark, dreadful fairy world but most of the gore is used to redundantly underscore the evilness of the Captain. Although many images are striking and effective at establishing tone, after a while it felt like they were more for the filmmaker's amusement than the story's needs. Though Ofelia's faun and faeries are interesting, they are simplistically rendered and do little to reflect upon either Ofelia's past with her dead father or her escapist perception of the world. I have seen enough magical beings in my filmic lifetime so their mere presence wasn't enough to induce a "wow" from me.

Writing fantastical stories is not difficult. I can let my imagination run wild and concoct wildly fantastical creatures and worlds. With the help of special effects artists and scenic sculptors, I could readily make a convincing world that is completely unfamiliar from our own. What makes great fantasy, however, is when those images are wrangled into the service of a specific, tangible equivalent. The Wizard of Oz (the film) showcases Dorothy's need to escape the mundane, American plains and learn that the world is cruel and one needs family to endure those trials of life and those characters (the witch, the scarecrow, the tin man) arise from the people and life around her. Roald Dahl's tales choke with the challenges of growing up amongst the cruelties of peers and adults and his villanous characters are often extreme representations of those personality types. The Brothers Grimm collection of folk tales are moral tales given fantastical vehicles to express them.

The most compelling character of Pan's Labyrinth was a strange, unnamed creature who kept his eyes in his hands. There is a brief shot where Ofelia enters his room and sees paintings along the ceiling that depict him killing and eating little children. Although the moment was brief and never referred to again, it intrigued me and, unlike nearly every character in the film, made me want to know more about this creature's story and Ofelia's relationship to him.

I enjoyed an opportunity to see a film that looks at World War II from a small corner of the world, à la For Whom the Bell Tolls, but I would have liked for the fantasy elements of this film to carry my perspective of such times to a new place rather than to showcase untethered imaginings. Still, if you like watching bugs turn into faeries, books whose pages morph from empty to ornate, or brief snippets of gore then this is probably the film for you.

Fun With Airlines

So this year for Christmas I went to Sweden with my wife (who is Swedish). We have spent the last few years right here in Omaha, Nebraska for Christmas but it was time to spend a Christmas with the Swedish side of this marriage.

To get to Sweden from Omaha you have to catch a connecting flight in Chicago. It may be shocking that there is no direct Omaha-Stockholm flights, but it turns out that is not a financially viable line. Once I entered the Chicago airport, I noticed a subtle change- subtle as in jump right up into your face and say “NOTICE ME NOTICE ME”. The people who work at the airport have a bit of an attitude. As I walked to my connecting flight I could hear around me courteous airport staff helping passengers. “Did I SAY you have to go through security again” one annoyed, rage-filled staffer told a quivering old lady.

In this world of mass travel via airplane there are a lot of obstacles to sanity and comfort. For some reason when I overheard this conversation it made me reflect on the wonderful world of airplane travel. I have broken this up into a few different parts.

Tickets: About ten to fifteen years ago airlines finally took the leap into electronic tickets. Kicking and screaming, the whole industry took a leap they should have taken twenty years earlier- a leap that not only makes travel easier on the passengers but saves the airlines huge amounts of money and time. I bring this up first because I see the ticket as the hallmark of airline progress.

Take something that benefits EVERYONE and drag your feet for years. If this is something you personally engage in, watch out- you might be an international airline.

Putting your flight, seat, and gate number in a clear-to-see and find area of the ticket is NEW. In the 90’s my airline tickets resembled numeric crossword puzzles, with gate, flight and seat information scattered indiscriminately across an ocean of random numbers that have meaning only to airline workers or some pagan airline. You would have to forsake your own personal faith and pray should you ever want to decipher your ticket and find your gate. Let me say that again, making the word SEAT big and placing YOUR seat number next to it is a NEW invention of the airlines. Somebody came up with that just ten years ago and that guy got a big raise, and robust men patted him on the back, and said things like “Johnson- ticket make good read. Me CEO, me big man, now I make plane go zoom zoom hee hee.” Some of you might notice that I didn’t say a woman invented this concept and that must be true. There is no way a woman was involved because a woman would have figured out tickets should be easy to read on the FIRST DAMN ONE EVER PRINTED.

I am not going to obsess on the walk through security because everyone knows how ridiculous it is and I just…it just hurts my head. But I will note that because I remove my shoes, take off my belt, stripped off my dignity and submit to random acts of searching stupidity I no longer have to be asked the dumbest questions created by man i.e. “are you carrying any weapons?” When my wife went through the final step to getting her green card I had to go in with her and prove we were married. Here are some of the questions they asked her. “Do you have any relatives you are bringing with you into the U.S.?” Fair enough, a question worth asking I suppose. This was followed up with “Are you a terrorist?” I kid you not, that was a real question. There was also, “have you ever been or are you currently involved in the trafficking of illegal drugs?” Maybe these are not stupid questions maybe our jails are so packed because questions like these catch criminals all of the time. Maybe this is the greatest invention in crime fighting since Batman- I doubt it, but I digress.

The most interesting thing I have found out about airport security is the differences that occur country-to-country. If you are at an airport in the good old U.S.A. well, be prepared to have your grandmother strip searched and tasered for having a pair of knitting needles. Are you leaving Sweden? Well, expect a polite, non-rushed security check that might also resemble a line at the grocery store. Did you just get done vacationing in Laos (yes, Laos has an airline, called Lao Air, Fun Fact: Lao Air is one of only two airlines in the world that does not make public it’s safety record….yea) Walking through security in Laos is a lot like just walking, there is not much of a check. Now I have to think this is because A. Laos has never had a terrorist problem. OR B. Even terrorists who are going to blow themselves up are afraid to fly Lao Air. O.K. now I’m not even digressing I’m just wandering around the landscape of airline security.

queing for the new Wii

I did it. I didn't think that I was gonna do it. I had convinced myself that I had exactly Zero chance of getting my hands on one. I saw the lines outside Circuit City and Best Buy on Thursday as rabid enthusiasts stood in pouring rain for the privilege of dropping $650 on a Playstation 3. I, on the other hand, was interested in the less-than-half-the-price Nintendo Wii, which was set to go on sale on Sunday. I knew, however, that I had neither the time nor inclination to stand hours outside a storefront in the hope of buying a game console. Was the Wii launch going to be a similar zoo? Did I have any chance of getting one? I hoped to find something online, but Amazon's promise of pre-orders never materialized. Sunday came and went and I was resigned that I was out of luck. Still, Morgan suggested that I should stop by Nintendo's store before work on Monday and see if there were any left.

That's right, folks... my WIFE wanted me to get a gaming console. She is not a gaming enthusiast. In fact, I'd go so far as to say she is gaming enthusiast Kryptonite. Still, there was something about the Wii that caught her eye. Maybe it was the promise of an intuitive interface. Maybe it was a desperate attempt to find a game that we could play together. Maybe she recognized that shortened days and cooler temperatures meant a VERY long winter for two New Yorkers who would not be able to afford to go out on the town and escape the bell jar that is the New York City apartment dwelling.

Maybe it's best that I not ask too many questions.

So, I schlepped my ass out of bed, and 50 minutes later, found myself on line and indoors with a cup of coffee and donut in my hands. A dozen people stood in front of me in line including a pair of execs who barely knew what they were standing in line for except that their kids wanted one. Behind me was a late 20-something who told me he worked at Best Buy and wanted to get a Wii for his girlfriend, but they'd already sold out. Over his shoulder, I could see a couple of guys, shadowboxing in front of a plasma t.v. with Wiimotes in their hands. A couple cameramen videotaped their antics and interviewed marketing execs.

Ten minutes later, I was standing outside the NBC Studios (one door down from the Wii store) as screaming fans shook cardboard messages for the Today Show cameras. In my hand, I held a shopping bag with a Wii, a copy of the newest Zelda game, and a couple of extra joysticks. I had just enjoyed, perhaps, the most-positive shopping experience I've ever had. Seriously.

A good day in the City... how odd.

My wife and I busted out the system while our 2 cats sniffed and spread out on the packaging. I undertook the dubious task of hooking the Wii. The space behind my "Entertainment Center" is a gnarly mass of cables that took me a good 10 minutes to navigate. Plugging in a piece of electronics is always a challenge in a pre-War-built apartment. It looks like the father's electrical outlets in A Christmas Story and is about as stable. Still, we were up and running relatively quickly. The Wii had no problem finding my Internet router and after a couple download updates, it was ready to roll.

The first half hour was spent just getting used to the new controllers. The Wiimotes are comfortable in the hand and fun to use. Morgan and I took turns making "Mii" characters- little avatar characters you can save in your Wiimote, share with others and appear in games like the included game, Wii Sports. Morgan isn't terribly comfortable with joystick gaming and it took her a little while to get comfortable with the interface, but soon she was creaming me at the bowling and golf challenges. The game tracks your stats and there are fitness test games that allow you to track your improvements over time. A couple of the games were inexplicably awkward to play. Boxing quickly degenerated into a flailing mess as few of our movements seemed to be accurately reflected in the game. Golf was also difficult to control. I couldn't get an accurate gauge of swing strength. Bowling, tennis and baseball were all a blast, particularly the baseball game. I can't wait to have a real baseball game simulation on this sucker.

We were exhausted from all the swinging and throwing so we didn't try Zelda out except for the first few minutes of the introduction. Frankly, what had excited me about the Wii was the multi-player potential and although I did want to play Zelda, I wanted to save it for the winter months when it becomes too cold to go outside and I can't afford to get out of the house.

LANDMARK MOVIES

O.K. I will bite for the biggest WOW films that made me sit up and take notice of the finer points of actual film making. To give credit where credit is due, before I took notice of the more amazing films out there, my film discrimination started with realizing all movies were not good. That may be a whole different blog, but the first movie I realized was bad was…. “Johnny Be Good” it was a vehicle for Anthony Michael Hall, and also featured Robert Downy Jr. Even at that young age I thought “This is not funny, this is horrible.” Since then I feel ripped off all the time and still believe Lucas personally owes me money for that second Star Wars trilogy, but there is nothing like the first time.
But, on to the blog, the five films that really changed my perceptions of film and sometimes of life and you should go out and rent them right now. Do it for your country to it for yourself, you deserve it, you work hard and life is too short for bad films.
#1
Evil Dead II
BACKGROUND: Come back with me my friend. Come back to the late eighties, to a place in the mid-west, Nebraska to be specific. At this time in this place there was a video store called Applause Video. A store at the cutting edge of technology, not only did Applause carry VHS but they also rented the shockingly advanced BETA tapes. But this video world only had room for ONE format of tape and Beta was not it. Everyone on earth owned a VHS machine, everyone that is except my Dad. A smart consumer, my father did his research and found the technologically of the more advanced Beta machine to be the smart buy, a little reluctance to admit defeat, he owns said machine to this day, but I digress. Like a Rumsfeld after a landslide Democrat election, the Beta was doomed. Applause Video had a fire/obsolescence sale, all Beta tapes, only two dollars each. I bought about fifteen Beta tapes, throwing in Evil Dead and Evil Dead II as an afterthought, what the heck they were only two bucks a pop.
A few weeks later, my friend Ian was over and we watched the first Evil Dead movie. Average, pretty gory, but nothing special. Then we put in Evil Dead II.

THE MOVIE: While in film school, frequently, as we WERE in film school, the question of favorite, film, director, scene, ECT…. would come up. “Hal Hartley” one pretentious art student would say, “Hartley, he’s O.K. but Kieslowski with his Color trilogy is amazing” another film snob would pipe up. “The Evil Dead II is the best movie EVER” I would state with pure conviction. You see, I was ‘keeping’ in it real’. Hartley and Kieslowski are fantastic and I could write a whole entry on both of them but Evil Dead II was the first time I noticed the creative ways a person could use a camera, and I don’t mean in a porn way either.
The first Evil Dead is about a bunch of teen age kids who go to a cabin in the woods and awaken evil spirits who posses the living. Evil Dead II takes up where the last film left off: Ash, the only survivor from the first film basically re-lives the first film with a slightly bigger budget and a lot more ambition.
Watching Evil Dead for the first time was shockingly fun. I had no idea what I was in for. The character of Ash acts like one might in a horror movie. His first instinct is to get the hell out of there, that was cool; no one EVER acts like they SHOULD in horror movies. The evil spirits will not let him leave and chases his car. Once he hit the tree and got thrown threw the windshield, I thought he was done for, but Ash got up and started running, he runs into an unbeleveably, big on the inside, cabin. His hand gets infected with evil and he ends up cutting it off with a chainsaw while yelling “who’s laughing now!” That was my; “you had me at hello” moment. Or it might have been the fact he uses duct tape to bandage the hand. Really, it is the creative use of camera that got me started loving this film. The “monster”, for ninety percent of the film is POV shot of the monster, this same ‘monster’ shot was used later when Raimi worked with the Cohen Brothers on their crime masterpiece Blood Simple. There is a tight close-up shot that shoots out to the tops of the trees vie crane shot. This is not a deep film, there is NO subtext. What it is, is a wink, nudge, hugely creative, fun film. The first Evil Dead was very gory with a little humor, Evil Dead III or Army of Darkness has no gore and a ton of humor, but me and my friend Goldie Locks both agree Evil Dead II is just right.

THE RESULT: I went to film school


#2
Razor’s Edge

BACKGROUND: Had to be around 1990, my sister was dating a guy who read a bunch of philosophy books, he was quiet, intense, and all punk rock. He really liked this movie so I ended up watching it because in his quietness I always believed he was thinking something deep. Turns out he just didn’t know how to talk to people, go figure, but he turned me onto this film.
THE MOVIE: This version of the Razor’s Edge is a re-make of a 1950’s movie, which is an adaptation of a book, all by the same name. The film is about a man who is living in high society Britain, he enters into service in WWI, and has a life changing experience. When he comes back to his rich life style he puts off the high paying job to go figure out life. He works in a coal mine and eventually goes to India to speak with monks. When he comes back he tries to reconcile his new found spiritual beliefs with those of the very materialistic life he left.
This film was Bill Murray’s first venture into ‘serious’ film territory. Razor’s Edge bombed at the box office, putting off for years another attempt by Murray to try a role like this. The mind reels to think of what might have been if the movie had done well, Lost in Translation, and Broken Flowers would have to wait a scant ten years or so. I think his next movie after Razor’s Edge was Ghostbusters II.
Fun Fact: Duran Duran’s Wild Boys was on the soundtrack of this film. Mercifully it was only in the credit, still…… what the hell?!? Because I know when I think “1920’s melodrama about a man weighing the questions of existence, and enlightenment”, I think- Duran Duran.
THE RESULT: Aside from a very few attempts to shoehorn some Bill Murray ‘humor’ into a drama, this is a great film. I respect it just for taking a stab at something deeper than a wading pool, but not so deep as to loose the audience. This was the first film I saw that made me realize there was more to movie life than 16 candles and Die Hard. “Ahhhh Refreshing”

#3
MANHATTAN
BACKGROUND: Somewhere around 1992-93 I started getting into Woody Allen movies and since my co-blogger Brian, took Annie Hall, I get stuck with the ugly step-sister, Manhattan. This is actually a big movie for my friend Rocky, I remember seeing Manhattan and then going over to Rocky’s trailer at the trailer park (we weren’t making all that much money back in the day) and saying “let’s watch this” I remember Rocky being really impressed with Manhattan and going on and on about it, he of course, was right.
THE MOVIE: Woody Allen made ten years of slapstick, funny, but let’s be honest not THAT funny films, then the huge light-year leap forward with Annie Hall. Yes it is a fantastic film but I contend that Manhattan is an equally far jump forward. There is more emphasis on the drama, and that beautiful black and white photography. The lies people tell each other and the lies they tell themselves are all shown here and with great wit. It’s just like real relationships except I have never been that funny when someone is breaking up with me, well, I might have looked funny to other people but trust me it’s not the same thing.
THE RESULT: I gush about Woody Allen films all the time, except, you know, the last 13 films he made. But he had a great run for about 20 years there. So, go watch Manhattan already.

#4
RAVENOUS

BACKGROUND: It had to be about 1998, I went to a movie, and it was this one.

THE MOVIE: Guy Pearce plays a civil war solider that is sort of dishonored and sent to a remote camp with a bunch of screw ups in the mountains in new California. Robert Carlyle plays an army office who leads a small wagon train that winds up becoming a second Donner Party; Carlyle is the only survivor and wanders into camp. It turns out he ate all the other people and wants to keep eating people because it is his road to eternal youth and great strength.
Have you ever seen some strange, weird animal that everyone but YOU thought was strange. Something like a squid, or pug dog, or hairless cat, well, maybe not a hairless cat those things can’t be loved, it’s a scientific fact. Anyway, Ravenous is my ugly mutt that no one loves. ; <> Ravenous had problems from the start. In production they switched directors, then there was a flood that swept away half of the set, and all that wasn’t half as bad as the marketing. Ravenous had the largest drop of audience from opening week to second week of any movie EVER. I think since then that honor has been given to The Real Cancun. I think Ravenous does not deserve this, as a matter of fact I think Ravenous is a great film. Extremely well acted, with subtext about the consumption, greed and sense of entitlement that has grown in this country from the start. Alas, it was not the ‘right kind’ of gross out for the horror audience, and way too much raw carnage for the art house crowd.
THE RESULT: I’m a bitter bitter man who snarls at people whom happen to disagree with me. Art house crowd you are on notice, Ravenous is better than Life is Beautiful and has more to say about the human condition. You horror clone babies should watch something more challenging than Hostel, or the latest gorography flick, watch something good for once, and leave my puppy alone. Sniff…. Sniff….


#5
Network

BACKGROUND: 1991 or so, at my friend Rocky’s apartment with his nutty room mates and they were watching this film. I loved that place that we affectionately referred to as ‘The Palace’, it was not like a cozy warm place to hang out at. In fact it was the opposite of that, sort of strange and a little tense all the time, it was great. Anyhoo, they would watch a movie rarely and when they did it was not the typical movie for our age group.

THE MOVIE: A network anchor man gets fed up and starts to say what he feels. Famous for the line “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore”. Network is a satire of the media and the drive for ratings at any cost, released in 1976, at the time it probably seems a bit overblown, now it seems par for course. Super watchability.

THE RESULT: This was the first film I saw that was ‘old’ and was still sharp. A bunch of old actors I had never heard of: Peter Finch, William Holden, Robert Duvall, and an old people story about the media and I loved it. I had no idea, at the time that a movie that had not come out last week could still be good. Apparently if you have a great script, and good acting it doesn’t matter how old your film is, who knew?

Movies That Fucked Me Up- The Top 5... no, 6! (arrgh)

In order to stretch our blogging muscles and get a few entries under our belt, I'm gonna try another Top 5 List. I know this runs the danger of making us a High Fidelity knock-off, but I laugh in the face of cliché. Besides, nobody's reading us so it's not like we're pissing everybody off- that's for later.

Today, I want to lay out the movies that Fucked Me Up. I'm not talking about gross-out flicks or movies that sport The Usual Suspects-style plot twists. I'm talking about movies that seized my Expectations, nailed them against the wall and slapped them around. That's right. These movies knocked me out of the Tree of the Mainstream and showed me there was more to movies than bullwhip-wielding archeologists, aliens in the suburbs, or romantic comedies where pretty women mate with men too witty to survive Real Life.

NOTE: I kinda fucked up and wrote descriptions for six movies instead of five and now I can't bear to part with any of them. So, you're stuck with a bonus film... lucky you.

#6... no, 5 (ack!)
Desperate Living
Background: No matter how many movies a person watches, he'll never see them all. I read a profile on Quentin Tarantino and the gazillion movies that he's watched at the rate of something like 3 or 4 a day. It's no frigging wonder that his movies are references-of-references-of-references nowadays. His daily exposure to Real Life has got to be about 15 minutes, tops. I gave up trying to be the Film Know-It-All. It's too damn exhausting. I haven't watched more than a couple Fellini films. I never "completed" Scorsese by tracking down a copy of Boxcar Bertha. I still haven't seen Pandora's Box. So, there. Deal with it.
Until a couple years ago, I hadn't watched a single John Waters film except Pink Flamingos-- the perfunctory, shock-film that every first-year, film student has to watch the second he moves away from his parents. A friend of mine gasped in horror when I confessed this dirty little secret and immediately lent me every DVD of John Waters that he owned.

The Movie: The John Waters film that rocked the hardest was Desperate Living. Made five years after the infamous Pink Flamingos, this movie feels almost relaxed in its offensiveness. This is, perhaps, the most quotable movie on the planet. Where else could one possibly hope to find such memorable lines as "Go home to your mother! Doesn't she ever want you? Tell her this isn't some communist daycare center! Tell your mother I hate her! Tell your mother I hate you!" The opening credits are over the serving of a cooked rat on a dinner platter. One character cuts of his/her penis with a pair of scissors. As for the Queen Charlotta... well, I don't want to spoil it for you.

What it Did: Desperate Living blew me away because of how comfortable and casual John Waters' ensemble cast pull it all off. Fuck Sid & Nancy. This movie IS Punk- absolute freedom. This movie looks like the most fun a filmmaker could hope to have with no budget (a.k.a. every film I've ever made). It felt like I was peeking in on this degenerate ensemble of misfit filmmakers having the time of their lives... and I longed to be a part of it.

#5
Nashville
Background: This film came in the end of my film school years. About this time, my fellow students and I were scampering along the streets of Iowa City with a Bolex in one hand and a Nagra recorder in the other. We were blowing wads of cash on film processing and learning the fundamentals of filmmaking. We learned how it's standard practice to start a scene with an establishing shot, then shot/reverse shot setups and a medium shot for transitions. As for sound editing, the One Thing you didn't want was overlapping dialogue- you can't get consistent volume levels, it limits your editing options, etc.

The Movie: Robert Altman throws 13 main characters into the city of Nashville. Characters talk over one another. Long, establishing shots are held through entire scenes. An audience often has to decide which conversation to listen to, then filter it from the one or two other conversations going on at the same time. The story had characters wandering from one meeting/party/encounter to another with no, clear, establishing incident or rising tension. Only the drama of Barbara Jean's nervous breakdown tried to carry an escalating plot.

What it Did: Showed me that I'd wasted a ridiculous amount of money on film school. Here's your film school, right here-- 1) Story dictates style, 2)Look at the world around you 3)Now, go make a movie - $20,000, please. I've watched this movie a dozen times and gotten something different out of it Every Time.


#4
Annie Hall
Background: Any movie nominated for an Academy Award should be automatically disqualified from this list, but fuck it. Before Annie Hall, I had seen Bananas, Sleepers, and Take the Money and Run so this might explain why I was completely confused when the the pratfall guy in glasses suddenly started talking like an adult.

The Movie: Best-written movie. ever. It's staggering to believe that the man who wrote this was the same person who befouled celluloid with The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. Annie Hall is a staggering series of narrative rule-breaking. Alvie Singer (Woody Allen) steps in and out of the narrative. He talks to other characters (in and out of the context of the scene) . He speaks directly to the camera. He effortlessly switches from present tense to past, then back again. He takes characters on tours of his character's memories. He's all over the fucking place and even falls into animation for one scene. This is the Unteachable Script. It violates just about every rule of screenwriting and Sensible Filmmaking.

What it Did: There are great novels and plays out there and better overall films, but there is no equal from a writing standpoint. If one's passion is strong enough, all the rules can go fuck themselves. This is a singular effort of vision. I don't care if he married his step-daughter and tanked his career in the late 90s-- this is a Great movie.


#3
Trainspotting
Background: I was living in Los Angeles at the time and I was dreaming of being the next Hal Ashby/Orson Welles/Kurosawa (I was young). This was a couple years after Pulp Fiction when Hollywood was in the midst of an embarrassing attempt to replicate the coolness of Pulp Fiction (Tarantino included), but what they were producing was pap next to this.

The Movie: It's slickly-made, has a perfect-- and APPROPRIATE-- soundtrack, and the best opening sequence in cinema. Ewan McGregor could do nothing but shitty films the rest of his career (Star Wars what?) and I would still admire the fuck out of him. Irvine Welsh's novel is brilliant, but I don't know what crazy fuck thought that it could be made into a movie-- thick, Scottish accents, drug abuse, AIDS, underage sex, and a baby death. And the movie still manages to end with something resembling a happy ending. Are you fucking kidding me? Robert Carlyle's turn as Begbie is as good as it gets.

What it Did: Made me realize that I was in the wrong fucking country for making movies. It tore through innumerable clichés of drug abuse by showing druggies as people, why they do heroin and why the fuck they would keep doing it. It put four fantastic actors and a great novel on my radar and showed me that even the most insufferable characters are likable if you've got the right actor and a personal-enough story. I could sit down and watch this movie Any Time/Any Day. It's hardwired to my film sensibility, now.

#2
Liquid Sky
Background: I watched this movie at the Bijou Theater- the University of Iowa's tiny, movie theater and the polar-opposite environment of this movie. I went because I liked the name of the title but stayed for an absolute head-fuck, particularly for a film student who was living in the heart of the American Midwest.

The Movie: There's nothing like a transsexual, NYC, early-80's, science fiction film directed by a Russian filmmaker to fire the imagination. Liquid Sky is one of those typical, underground movies that wallows in it's terrible plot and odd characters but works because there's something real, pushing beneath the surface and making it come together. It also has the best lesbian rape scene ever.

What it did: It floored me to realize that there was this amazing, dark, heroin-based, music culture in New York City that I'd heard nothing about and a it took a movie like this to show it to me. The acting is terrible, the special effects are laughable, but it got made. The sucker got made. It was also sported the angriest, most-nihilistic characters I'd ever seen. Unlike John Waters' menagerie of Cult, I found that I DIDN'T want to join this group of bitter folks, but I loved to watch.

#1
Requiem for a Dream
Background: I had just moved to New York City and was eager to see a film that took place near my new home. I remember thinking, "Oh, cool! It takes place in Coney Island- that's at the end of my subway line here in Brooklyn! It's from that guy who did Pi and has that hottie from Labyrinth! This should be fun!"

The Movie: If Lou Reed wrote a crystal meth version of "Heroin", set it to the musical cacophony of Oasis's "Champagne Supernova" then convinced Iggy Pop to perform it, then that would be a musical equivalent to this movie. It is brutal, unrelenting, and incredibly-written. Jennifer Connelly pulled a performance that's on par with McGregor's in Trainspotting. When she goes to see Big Tim (Keith David) and he gives her the line "I know it's purty baby, but I didn't take it out for air", you can feel the bottom drop out. Ellen Burstyn is the engine that drives this baby, though, and she pushes it hard and right off the cliff.

What it Did: This is a Breen-era, cautionary tale with no brakes and no censorship. It's a tale with virtually no hope from the beginning, then it gets worse, and I couldn't stop watching it. I still pull it out just to watch some of the phenomenal scenes. I was one of the first to buy it on DVD, but I've never been able to watch it a second time in one sitting. Not since Schindler's List have I seen a movie that I enjoyed more yet never wanted to see again.

4 Relationship Hurting Games and 1 Savior

My Co-blogger has gone through his past of game playing and it plays out very much like my own. I am amazed to see the name Zork after all of these years. My God, did we really play an all text game!
I think Brian has tapped into a topic that is little covered in the news. How many of us have relationships that are strained just because we only want to get to the next level? I am up to the challenge to name such games.

Relationship and Games for better or worse: For Better:1 For Worse:4


#4
GIANTS
This is a fun arcade style game where you play some sort of outer space humanoid cat in a space suit with a British accent. It is creative with good game play and very funny. Actually I never got in much trouble over this one. It is timed out pretty well and the obsessive factor is only medium. But, Brian had five and even with this one I only have four so I had to fill out my list a little and it's a great game so pick it up. Plus I only got in trouble for playing it like once or twice, and that was really because of some other stupid thing I did.

#3
ANY FIRST PERSON SHOOTER
"No One Lives Forever", Return To Castle Wolfenstien", "Quake Arena","the new DOOM", Metal Of Honor", "Call Of Duty", "Red Faction". I could go on but then I start to have a real sense of self realization about the time I have wasted playing these things and I start to feel a little sick.
Be it space alien, Nazi scum, or shambling zombie, and SOMETIMES Shambling Nazi zombie scum, (someday they will finally have a Nazi space zombie, and the world will be complete) I love to shoot them all with a big gun. I have wasted more time feeling like I'm saving the world than actually doing anything at all . My wife may say "Craig it's a beautiful day why don't we go outside and read while we sit in the hammock." to which I respond "Honey, as we speak there are Nazis trying to bring the dead back to life, France has already fallen under their iron fist. It is my responsibility, neh my DUTY to kill Nazi scum today, Hammock be damned!" She shrugs, with a slight rolling of the eyes, and gos outside.
What she does not understand is that I am a man of variety when it comes to these games, a Renaissance man if you will. Sometime I come home and I need to kill aliens with the plasma canon, or maybe it's time to stay back from your enemy and go the way of the sniper, and every now and then but not often you just have to see how far you can get with that stupid knife they defaulted you with at the start of the game (not very far, in case you were wondering). One of the big problems with these games is not only am I not doing anything but I'm not learning anything either. Brian may have amassed a huge amount of useless statistics but he is also a wiz with computers in general. i.e. he got this blog going, he build a computer, or more to the point he put the covers of the games he played on his list next to their number. Just getting into this blog and making this post was a huge challenge for me, akin to a dog licking peanut butter off the roof of its mouth. Sure, the dog can do it, but it takes a LONG time, it's frustrating and it looks funny. Well, I made my titles red so there. Other than that I won WWII and saved the universe a bunch, but not really.

#2
BALDUR'S GATE
O.K. so I can be cheap. see, thrifty. I don't really keep up with the current games. It is my only real discipline, by now owning a game I will not play that game. But, if I can buy a game that has been out for years it's really cheap, but then of course I play it and that is where the problem is.
Baldur's Gate is a dungeon's and Dragons adventure game. Form a party kill monsters go on quests. I get caught up in checking out the game world. So many things to get your group, so many places to go and I'll just check out one more thing. Once the wife has told me she is going to bed I know I have about thirty minutes of good faith game play left. As in, if I am in bed half an hour, after she has told me she is going to bed everything is fine. If I push it to one hour, it's still O.K. but there is a distinct chill in the air. So, when I started playing Baldur's Gate and my wife told me she was hitting the sack. I said "I'll be down in a bit." Five hours later I learned that five hours is not "a bit". I can play first person shooters for a while now and then put them down. The same thing can not be said for Baldur's Gate. Damn you Baldur's Gate I shake my tiny fist of rage in your general direction.

#1
GRAND THEFT AUTO III
This time sucking, relationship hurting game was made by a pack of divorce lawyers and marriage counselors who needed to drum up some biz. How dare they make a game so cool. And the wife does not understand. I played this game so much at a friends house one night that when I drove home I started to think "I bet those light poles will snap right off if I hit them with the car, hmmmm". I spent a whole hour flipping my car off the top of a parking garage just to see how far I could get, then taking different cars, trucks, buses up and jumping them off the edge too. I have abandon the mission of the game altogether and spent hours just going on a kill crazy rampage. Yelling over to my wife "Hey, check this out I'm going to shoot this guys leg off", and they say there is no more romance left in the world. Yes, I have to say GTAIII is my number one. They are all great games so please, if you want to stop enjoying real relationships with real people and blow off the many wonders and mysteries of this amazing world we live in, go and buy any of these and start your path to eye strain bliss.



#1
TIGER WOODS GOLF
My brother-in-law has this game on his system. I'm not sure what sister it is. PlayStation or something. This is the best game in the world. I don't even care about golf, but is is pure fun squeezed into a game. It is fun to play alone, but here is why it is in the "for better" category, it is a blast to play with other people too. Four people can play at a time. My wife loves to play it, THAT is how fun it is. a game with four takes about an hour and half, so bring on the cheese dip, get that case of beer, lets play golf. This game is a god send to people who like to game but are tired of trying to get their equal opposites into their game. Game on.

Top 5 Games Likely to Ruin My Marriage

For far too many men of my generation, computer games have been a way of life. My first non-arcade gaming experience was standing in front of a Commodore 64 in some remote corner of Sears, playing the Worst Adaptation of an Arcade Game EVER- Pac Man. Despite the heinous, flickering graphics and a maze that was bad, even by early 1980s standards, I was enthralled. My first gaming console was an Intellivision. It didn't have the brand popularity of the Atari 2600 or the Holy Grail that was Colecovision and their near-identical port of Donkey Kong, but Intellivision had a fantastic baseball game and a strange, world-domination game called Utopia which helped to fill the loneliness of having just moved thousands of miles from my friends (in Fairbanks, AK) to a suburb of complete strangers who loved to say "ain't" (Augusta, GA).

After the Intellivision, I upgraded to the Apple IIc and the butt-numbing addiction of the Ultima series, the text-based Zork series, Epyx's Summer/Winter Games and the 3-D block mazes of The Bard's Tale. Clearly, I had no life. But that didn't stop me from buying a Nintendo, then a Sega Genesis (for the Madden franchise) and eventually an old 286 PC wherein I could REALLY get to wastin' time in Ultima VI, Railroad Tycoon, Civilization and a succession of SSI titles like Phantasie III, Eastern Front, Pool of Radiance and numerous other titles too embarassing to mention. Fortunately, my endess pursuit of gaming bliss was interrupted by friendships, social engagements, a budding film career.

I purchased a new computer in 1998 and quickly re-discovered the time suckage that is computer gaming. Baldur's Gate, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Civilization 2, Quake, Doom, Red Alert and a host of sporting titles soon clogged the ol' hard drive. Despite this, I managed to find a wife, write a number of plays and muster the oomphta to move to New York City. I have no idea how I managed it. In 2002, I built my own PC and got sucked into a new generation of insanity. I have played many games over the years and endured some very rocky relationships. Universally speaking, I can't think of a single girlfriend who enjoyed the game playing but there are some particular gems in the game world that particularly grate. I consulted Morgan on her personal, pet peeves. Still, I had to factor in the obsessive nature of games and how likely I was to ignore the long, dirty looks and heavy sighs from by my Significant Other.

So, I present to you, my list of the Top 5 Games Likely to Ruin My Marriage:

#5
Rome: Total War
I have installed and uninstalled this game at least 3 times. That's the sign of an obsession that refuses to go away. I won the long campaign as a member of the Julii, but then I had to win as one of the other two Roman factions. Then I had to win as the Gauls. Then Germania. Brittania. Spain. Egypt. The major time-sucker is the stunning field battles. It's thrilling to take hundreds of troops, then align, charge, flank and re-group them against a huge army. And nothing cements a relationship like the sound of 50 screeching, barbarian women as 200 berzerkers charge a line of hasati warriors. Nope nothing like it. Then, when the roman general flanks me and sends my soldiers running for their lives then kill them one-by-one, my wife really gets to enjoy the thrill of me shaking my fist at the monitor and swearing like a sailor.

#4
Hearts of Iron II
Any authentic, board-style wargame would do in this slot, but this one is my most-recent favorites and is a great example of a game with just enough complexity to pique my obsessive nature and subsequently nullify any attempt at a social life. A good wargame is all about the statistics. I have printed out and poured over hundreds of pages of military analyses, unit rankings/ratings and game FAQs, only to get my ass handed to me two hours into the campaign. Of course, that only comes after hours of carefully delegating resources, building roads/factories, negotiating/trading with other countries. What does that mean for a perfection-obsessed person? That's right! One! More! Time! My wife has noted (and I cannot disagree here) that I have amassed an incredible library of detailed statistics in things that are Utterly Useless in the real world... And?!

#3
Civilization (any version)
I had an English-major roommate my Junior year of college whose only interests were books, the Chicago Bears and beer. His only connection to computers were through word processing. One afternoon, I introduced him to a game I'd recently bought called Sid Meier's Civilzation. I left him that afternoon and when I came back late that evening, he was still playing. I went to bed and the next morning, he was still playing. I went to classes and when I returned for dinner, he was still playing. Civilization is EVIL. Pure EVIL. It is a game that can be played for hours and at the end, the only thing you can think is about how you've immediately got to start a new game so this time you can get it right.

#2
Railroad Tycoon
Sid Meier has probably done more than anyone to fuck up relationships around the gaming world. His games are easy to start, addictive and endlessly replayable. Four sequels to this game have been made, but the first offers the a deceptively-simple interface, rewarding challenges and a high annoyance value. The game featured maps of the Eastern U.S., Western U.S., England and Europe. Resources and factories were randomly placed at the outset of every game, so no two endeavors were quite alike. It has all the addictive quality of Civilization, but what sets Railroad Tycoon high on this list is the sound effects. The Sound Blaster sound card would chime with all the subtlety of a 1980s arcade. A multi-pitched 'ding' of the cash register announces the arrival of a train into a station. Towards the latter half of the game, with 20 trains dinging away, it is a cacophony of irritation that can easily sever the bonds of holy matrimony.

#1
Madden Football (any version)
No contest. This game contains all the elements that make computer games annoying to my wife. The game is endlessly replayable, there are innumerable sound cues and effects that can are played over and over and over again, it's sports-related, the real-time aspect assures her that I have to play a game from beginning-to-end, and she knows that, at any moment, my mood can immediately be ruined by a bad play. I don't take defeat lightly and when I am beaten at the last second by a freak play where my corner is, inexplicably, wildly out of position, I have a tendency to lose my shit. My temper tantrums are self-contained affairs that only result in injury to myself. Still, they are loud and immediate enough to shock every person (or cat) in hearing range. Desks/walls are punched. Controllers are slammed on desks. At the divorce hearing, Morgan will attest to this and her accusation will be corroborated by my brother, my former roommates, and every person who lived in the University of Iowa dorms in the early 90s.

First Post

After ages of hand-wringing, it's time to get this party started. As soon as Craig accepts the invitation to co-author this newbie blog, the games can begin. We have a lot of ideas, but things are just getting underway so please be patient- bookmark us and come back in a week. I just took a newbie template to get the ball rolling, but it'll probably change a lot in the coming week.

It has begun...