I Actually Watched This, Pt. 2

"The Punisher: War Zone"

"Sometimes, I'd like to get my hands on God."

-Frank Castle AKA The Punisher

If that above comment offended you, you are not part of that precious "core audience" for this movie. If you get queasy at the sight of wholesale, morally-bankrupt slaughter, this movie is not for you. If the idea of a man, who after losing his entire family to a senseless mob shoot-out, decides to take it upon himself to wage a one-man war upon all forms of organized and disorganized crime in New York, sounds remotely appealing, then... hmmmm. Do or do not watch this movie. There is no try, because fuck it, you have to be a certain type of person to enjoy, let alone get past this kind of movie.

Punisher: War Zone is an ugly, disgusting movie. I read a review somewhere where the critic appropriately described the movie as a "slasher-film with guns." This is true, and accurate to a fault, on so many levels. The movie possesses within it's bones a sadistic and sociopathic nature in which the numerous slayings in the film are shown. Heads are lopped off, the main villain takes a ride in a glass crushing machine, and at one point, a man's kidneys are eaten. You can actually see that shit.

There is a difference between stylized violence and meaningless violence. P:WZ doesn't just straddle the line between the two, it takes it's sweaty palms and grips the silicone-injected tits of both sides while banging it's head to Lamb of God. There are numerous scenes in which the Punisher and the many villains the movie is attempting to make us hate splatter heads with automatic weapons and leave various edged weapons in the bodies of their victims, but the one scene that made me pay the most attention and, in some ways, sum up the entire movie in a few seconds, takes place when Jigsaw, the aforementioned main villain, breaks into the house of a former undercover FBI agent and threatens the wife and her daughter with all sorts of promised violence. When Jigsaw fails to obtain money or something or other in the house's safe, he screams "Fuck" a couple of times, where he proceeds to storm to the daughter's bedroom, and riddle her stuffed toys and dolls with bullets.

That scene, after witnessing murder after murder in a saturated glow of yellow and red, made me perk up, because it's so specific in it's purpose and so graphic in it's specificity. Here is a movie that is so shameless and conspicuous in its hatred of mankind, even a little girl's belongings, vestiges of an innocence that subconsciously struggles to remain pure in an ugly world, is spared no quarter. Clearly, the filmmakers thought of everything.

I said before there is a certain type of person that will be interested in this movie, and there is a certain type of person that will enjoy this movie, or at least make it to the credits. What type of person am I, then? I'm a fanboy. Obviously. And here's the tricky part: Punisher: War Zone, in all of it's hateful violence and disgusting acts of murder, acts as a perfect counterpart to Garth Ennis' (in my mind) definitive depiction of the character on Marvel MAX's comic, simply titled "The Punisher."

"The Punisher" comic book, under the imprint of Marvel's for-mature-audiences-only MAX line, is quite possibly one of the most fascinating comic books I've ever read. In it, Ennis' Frank Castle is a war-hardened, ruthless killing machine, and I emphasize "machine." The first issue of the comic perfectly sets up the type of person Frank is: after luring a convention of mobsters out into an open yard of a mansion, he opens fire on the hundreds of goons with a Squad Automatic Weapon, or SAW machine gun. After Frank's barrage is done, he then proceeds to fire his second belt of rounds into the field of corpses, pointing the barrel of his gun in any direction where the faintest sound of a moan or whimper can be heard, effectively grinding the lifeless bodies into hamburger. One can't be too careful, after all, and Frank is a perfectionist in his art of death. It is this type of cold precision and logic that dictates Frank's every move and action.

Reading Ennis' origin story on the MAX version of Frank Castle, titled appropriately enough "Born", provides further insight as to who Frank Castle is. During his stint in Vietnam, Frank, a ranking officer, catches one of his men raping a female Viet Cong sniper. To make an example to the rest of his men, he drowns the soldier to show he will not tolerate this kind of behavior. By the logic of any rational human being, this is extreme behavior. What is even more cold and ruthless is the fact that prior to his "example" being made, Frank executes the female sniper. While she's being raped. As a prisoner of war who has been violated in the worst and most demeaning of ways, the sniper would've received a fate far worse than a bullet in the head. This, at least, is Frank's logic.

Earlier, I mentioned the "precision and logic" that "dictates" the Punisher's actions. While I was writing that, I nearly ran into the danger of using an appropriation of the word "justification." As the Punisher, Frank needs no sort of justification for his actions. He is an embodiment of the id, driven by his base desire to serve as both executioner and witness to the eradication of all criminals across the world, or at least the ones he can get his hands on. There's no redemption to speak of, either. As far as Frank is concerned, he has committed no act that requires redeeming. "The Punisher" is a nihilistic, dark, and savagely funny portrait of a man who is monomanicism given form. At the same time, because of who he is, Frank can never attain the status of a "tragic figure." Rather, he is born out of tragedy, a common comic book trope, but instead of adopting the Batman approach, he uses his enemies' weapons and tactics against them: slaughter, mayhem, and destruction. Scorched earth policy to the extreme. As he states in the conclusion of the futuristic tale"The Punisher: The End," after slaughtering the last remaining scientists and bureaucrats who can restore earth's population post-apocalypse:

"Mankind. You've seen what it leads to."

"The Punisher" is a nihilistic, dark, and savagely funny portrait of a man who is monomanicism given form. Punisher: War Zone, then, is perhaps as accurate a portrayal of the comic book as possible. There are some genuinely funny, or at least chuckle-worthy moments, but these arise out of how ridiculous and over-the-top the methods the Punisher uses in dispatching his foes sometimes are. But it stays true to the comic, and furthermore, stays true to the character of the Punisher in that he will use anything at his disposal to kill anything that requires killing. It doesn't matter if he fires one .45 round through a mobster's skull or kills the same mobster with an ground-to-air missile (as demonstrated in the movie), a kill's a kill and he is one step closer to reaching his never-ending goal.

Why, if the comic's so damn good, do I label this movie as disgusting and offensive? Because of the differences in two mediums. Comic book series exist, perpetuate, and thrive on continuity. Before Frank gunned down hundreds of mobsters in Garth Ennis' run, there was already thirty years of established continuity on who the character was, and who's he's killed in the past. Also, Ennis' comic is clever in its executions, using everything from grenades to polar bears to take out some of the more overconfident mooks in the comic, each one of them guaranteed a come-uppance in the form of horrible, horrible death.

The movie, however, is not stylized in its killings; just wanton, only. Punisher: War Zone is a commercial Hollywood movie based on a very niche hobby in America. As such, it's schizophrenic in it's deciding what it wants to be. For all it's violence, there is a subplot in the form of that "redemption", namely, Frank's guilt in accidentally shooting an undercover FBI agent. Uh-oh. Like I said before, this is where the identity crisis of the medium comes in. The movie wants to play it straight, but it's obvious it's influences and source material is unrepentantly nihilistic in it's view of the human race. Any movie or perhaps television series based on The Punisher either needs to play it straight or completely push that envelope as much as they can.

Punisher: War Zone gets a lot of things right over it's earlier incarnation starring Thomas Jane. The Thomas Jane vehicle did many things wrong: the setting in Miami, the little Rube-Goldberg series of events and mishaps the Punisher sets up as his revenge against Howard Saint, and well, Thomas Jane. Tom Jane is a comic book fan, and he's likable enough, but he's too damn pretty to play someone as ruthless and unflinching as Frank Castle. Maybe that was the point, in showing how an act of tragedy can push even the most wholesome of individuals to the realm of indiscriminate slaughter, or maybe I'm just reaching too far. There was also a scene that totally rubbed me the wrong way, in which Spacker Dave says to Frank, "You stood up for me. Not too many people have done that for me, before." No, no, no. This version sees our Punisher stationed in New York, where he belongs, gritty cinematography, plus one hell of an actor in Frank Castle. Seriously. Ray Stevenson FUCKING IS Frank Castle. If you disagree with me on this, you're wrong.

So, the ultimate verdict on this movie? If anything I said above was of relevant comprehension to you, go see it. The rest of you? Eh. I'd say no.

Taking Aim At Teh Haterz

"Why can't I aim while moving?"

"I should be able to aim and shoot while I move."

"They aim and shoot in the cutscenes. WTF?"

"Aim. Moving. Wah."

Resident Evil started off as a fixed camera-angle third-person action game. At the time, there wasn't a term for the genre that RE and games that would soon follow in spirit and philosophy, which is the survival horror genre.

According to Wikipedia, which is the greatest website in the world, because anyone on the internet can edit the information on it:

Survival horror games are distinct from action games or other horror games, where the player is unable to fully prepare or arm himself. In order to create feelings of suspense, the game is designed to leave the player feeling vulnerable, and thus powerful weapons such as rocket launchers are rare [...] As such, survival horror games are usually single player, in order to create the feeling of being alone in a hostile world. This experience is often magnified by giving the player an avatar who is more frail than the typical action game character [...] survival horror games involve gameplay that emphasizes vulnerability and a lack of preparation.

<sup>Because Resident Evil is a Japanese-made game, this means many things. First of all, it adheres to many conventions of Western horror/slasher films, as well as many Asian misconceptions of Western protagonists and their values. Then there's also the other stuff that's involved with the creation of any Japanese video game; ie. the child worship and, let's not forget, the super-Saiyan form seemingly every boss has, as well as every single character being some kind of acrobatic, kung-fu fightin' ninja, their every move accompanied by a 300-esque stop-and-go camera shot, as they decide to reload their pistols by tossing clips into the air, ax-kicking a zombie in the face, using the hole in the zombie's face as a kind of stepping-block, and then flipping through the air with their pistol behind their back and tilted upwards as the gravity-affected clip falls precisely where the character's pistol is and, lo and behold, locks into place. All that instead of just simply, you know, reloading.

That last part especially is what creates a cognitive dissonance in the minds of many a player, especially someone who has never bared witness to the utter genius and fun that is the Resident Evil series. There's been many complaints about the upcoming RE5's control scheme, these complaints surfacing as early as the announcement of the game. Longtime RE fans said, "another Resident Evil? Starring Chris Redfield? Yes, please." Even more hardcore RE fans said, "erm, excuse me, but I believe the game is called Biohazard, or '</sup>バイオハザード ,Baiohazādo', " as they fondled their anime pillows and turned up the volume on their PC blaring tunes from Naruto: Shippuden.

But the non-RE fans and nowadays potential Western audience all said: "I can't strafe? Or fuckin' aim and shoot? Fuck this fuckin' game, I'm fuckin' sticking with my fuckin' Gears, yo! Gimme another Bawls, dawg, I'm gonna fuckin' game as hard as I fuckin' can before Nate comes to pick me up to fuckin' go see Breaking Benjamin! Whoo!"

Or, at least, that's what I imagined their outpour of verbal wisdom sounded like. Which is odd. Given the vastly competitive scene gaming has become thanks to Xbox Live, I'd imagine that most of the Halo / CoD4 / Gears players would welcome that extra bit of challenge in not being able to strafe or run-and-gun, as we would say nowadays. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I take these gripes somewhat personally, because Resident Evil 4 is quite possibly my favorite game of the last generation. Yes, I liked it more than any of the Final Fantasies and more than any of the Metal Gear Solids. It is, still, in my mind, the best-made, most satisfying experience in games I've ever encountered, putting it possibly (depending on my mood) past Call of Duty 4 or Bioshock in terms of games I was absolutely absorbed in. And for all intents and purposes, Resident Evil 4 should not be something that qualifies as "favorite game" caliber. I died quite possibly at least thirty times in finishing the game on Normal, Ashley is quite possibly the only life-size tampon with the ability of speech I've ever seen, and then there's that control thing.

But let's get one important thing out of the way: If there was no Kill.switch, there probably wouldn't have been a Gears of War. If there was no Resident Evil, there definitely wouldn't have been a Gears of War. Which means the XBL kiddies would be shit out of luck in their ways to kill time prior to inevitable rejection from state colleges and inevitable employment at Jiffy Lube in less than five years. Wow, that's kinda mean. Anyway, what I said is true. RE4 is, correct me if I'm wrong, the first game to entirely take place in the "over-the-shoulder" format, with the "zoom" being provided by the laser sight prevalent on every single ballistics-based weapon. Cliffy B (which he was known as at the time) even cited Resident Evil 4 as a huge inspiration on Gear's mechanics, feel, and tone.

I understand the accusations of Resident Evil 5 not being a "relevant" game, due to it's now-seemingly odd control scheme. But hey, Capcom did include a "strafe" option in one of it's control set-ups. And let's look at Resident Evil 4 and compare it to Gears, the one game that's receiving the love of so many a pimply-faced teen across the US. Gears of War is an action-based, military shooter, with the prime focus of strategy being involved in the cover-system, a mechanic that will never get old or less fun to play around with, as far as I'm concerned. Strategy and tactics lies in positioning and knowing when to lay down cover fire for your co-op partner, knowing when to split up and flank, and knowing when the best option is to stay together and pound a similar target with a barrage of gunfire. Delta Squad is bad-ass, but they're quick-witted and quick-thinking badasses, and that's the key; making split decisions to save not only yourself, but your partner's skin, as well. The 'Horde' mode in Gears 2 only reinforces this idea.

Resident Evil 4 is a completely different game. Survival horror games are each their own miniature lessons in economics. Economics is not just the study of the way money flows or the study of consumer behavior; there's a term, "thinking like an economist", which implies a person understands cost versus benefit. Resident Evil 4 is a prime example of that. Although ammunition is comparatively plentiful compared to earlier iterations, pumping your enemies full of rounds is a quick way to completely deplete your ammunition and leave yourself open to enemy attacks from all sides. The cost-benefit ratio also rears its ugly head in your item management, a huge factor in survival horror. Do I want to carry all these medicinal herbs, or should I ditch them in favor of grenades and ammo? Do I want this piece of body armor? It might soak up some damage I take, but is the reduced damage really that noticeable, or is it neglible? The rocket launcher kills pretty much anything in one shot, but I really like the TMP, too. Should I ditch the permanent weapon in the form of the TMP in favor of the one-shot-one-use rocket launcher? Decisions, decisions. Should I use my limited funds to upgrade my sniper rifle or my Blacktail pistol? I do use that pistol alot, but upping the damage on the rifle would save on the number of precious rounds I normally use.

All these difficult decisions you have to make are all elements that successfully make the survival horror game what it is. It's the feeling of vulnerability, lack of preparedness, and your character's ultimate weakness, that creates the tension in RE4. Sure, that magnum's powerful as shit, but you're not going to find that many rounds for it. The key, then, is using your pea-shooter pistol carefully, using the environment, and setting yourself up for damaging special attacks in the form of a sweeping kick on a stunned enemy. RE4's "tank controls" is perfect for these kinds of combat situations; namely, you are always fixated, even on the apex of your victory, on your limitations or what you can't do, as opposed to your strengths and what you are able to do. The guns pack a punch (in some cases, as the shotgun, a huge punch), and it's so satisfying to get a good punch in on a Ganado, but at the same time, it's disheartening as hell to shoot one of the chainsaw-wielding sisters in the face with a shotty, only to see her stand up while more Ganado's rush you from all sides. Because you are unable to sidestep, this results in your active and functional paranoia setting in everytime you encounter a new batch of enemies or prepare to cross that waterfall. The "tank controls" serve to reinforce your frailty in the game, despite your arsenal and supply of healing items. RE4 constantly throws all sorts of challenges and, concurrently, rewards at you, sadistically baiting you towards that inevitable conclusion. The tension that builds and forces you to enthusiastically choose "YES" when prompted whether or not you want

The worst thing a game can do is become self-conscious and inconfident in it's trying to please as many people as possible. People with personality disorders aren't that fun to be around, and neither are games. Resident Evil's control scheme, despite how many "g4m3rz" deem it as "antiquated" or, more appropriately, "fuckin' old as shit, what is this, 1999?" is something that should be appreciated and applauded rather than condemned. Like the game itself, perception of a game is all about perspective. My perspective stems from Resident Evil 4, a game I still regard as in a caliber of it's own. It's also what makes strafing, for me, at least, a "take it or leave it" type of thing. Personally, I don't care about the strafing option that Capcom included for 5; I'm looking forward to the intense combat that having or not having strafing will undoubtedly provide. That Capcom has maintained their steadfast decision on keeping the "tank-like" controls (they did provide strafing, again) means two things, both of which make me very optimistic for the quality of gameplay RE5 will no doubt possess.

First, Capcom understands the oh-so important concept of active restraint when making a game. Like a painter, one should use their negative space as effectively as the subject of the painting, two parts of a whole. Capcom has heard the complaints and concerns of this new generation of game enthusiasts, which, by the way, seem to get younger and younger as time goes on, and I don't mean relatively compared with me. But Capcom has a clear picture on the kind of game they intend to make and the kind of game they would like their fans and potential audience to enjoy. The Gears control scheme, plus or sans cover option, has become so standard, any third-person action game I pick up, I almost immediately expect to play like Gears. However, standard does not necessarily mean "correct" or "most appropriate." Control and the strengths and weaknesses of a character are a factor amongst many equally important factors that determine whether the action of the game is a hyper-stylized, adrenaline-fuelled romp through waves of bad guys, or whether the action in the game builds to a slow burn, until everything goes to shit. RE5 is a prime, masterful example of the latter.

Second, on a more theoretical note, I commend Capcom for sticking with this control scheme, something that like Blizzard's art choice for Diablo III, has received numerous criticisms and complaints. One thing many gamers fail to forget is that our dollars and spending of said dollars in the purchase of games is that we are paying for access to the developer's vision, not the other way around. Certainly, game-killing bugs and UI-based difficulties are something a developer needs to address in sequels or patches, but for the most part, the vision and and execution of the game needs to stay consistent when the developer makes those tough game-building-or-killing choices. There will be times creators will listen to their fans (did anyone notice how Marcus never teamed with Cole in Gears 1? In Gears 2, they're like fucking BFFF!), but the key is in knowing when listening to fan complaints are a justification that you're doing something right.

Games are something that should be approached with an open mind. Subject matter is one thing, but our preconceptions and preconceived notions about the way we think things should be is a completely different, other thing. Likewise, I hope the Resident Evil Team at Capcom reaps the benefits of their hard work, and is congratulated by the gaming populace for their "unconventional" approach to third-person action rather than punished.

On the same note, I finally played the RE5 demo two days ago. I died within the first five minutes by being molested by a group of dirty, dirty not-really zombies. Needless to say, Resident Evil 5 really can't come out any sooner. I cannot wait.

More with the games, GAWD

While I was taking a break in between classes of listening to students go on about how they picked their weird-ass English names or why they didn't want English names as they felt it was a form of betrayal towards their Chinese culture, I read up a little on an old issue of 游戏机, or "Video Game Console" magazine, commonly referred to amongst those in the know as "UCG", due the similarity of pronunciation in the English letters and the actual pronunciation of the Chinese characters.

This issue, along with strategy sections, something I haven't seen since EGM started covering N64 games, has a lot of their picks for their best games of 2008. Which was an interesting read.

Chinese gamers are stuck in this weird, fantastic middle ground of gaming, or what I'd like to refer to as the East/West divide. Put very succinctly, with a lot of generalizing going on, Western gamers prefer straight-forward action, diving instantly into the action, and lots of first-person slaughter. This is evidenced in the obligatory inclusion of tutorials in almost any action-oriented game, the ability to move freely and interact with the environment during any cutscene or key event (if the game even has it), and the ability to sign-on-drop-out in multiplayer competitive gaming. Western gamers tend to have a shorter attention span, but why I don't know. Blame it on Myspace, I guess. Eastern gamers, on the other hand, enjoy item management, love their old-school platformers, and have lots of patience when dealing with the pace in which a game moves, as evidenced by the number of unskippable cutscenes and fifteen minutes straight of "bloop-bloop-bloop" dialogue bubbles between two static characters.

It's interesting to look at some of UCG's choices for best games of 2008, and it's even more interesting to see the chasm between the editor's choices and the reader's poll.

Some similarities with critics on our shores are present. GTAIV, as expected, receives a 5 out of 5 rating and is unanimously considered to be the best multiplatform game available, period. Metal Gear Solid 4 also receives the coveted 5 out of 5 rating, voted by the readers and deigned by the editors as a masterpiece of cinematic gaming. Other games, such as God of War: Chains of Olympus, Little Bigplanet, Fallout 3, Gears of War 2, and surprisingly enough, Dead Space all receive similar accolades.

But the differences, while somewhat negligible on any other day, are glaring. Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Band, two games that both hold an 85 or perhaps on Metacritic, all receive a resounding "meh", both scoring a 3 out of 5 by the editors, and receiving little to no attention from the readers. The editors, in a quarter-square blurb of paper, state, in both reviews, they don't "understand the point of these kinds of games." They don't get into that "learn to play an instrument" thing of hobknobbery, either; they just don't get it.

In the reader's poll, Devil May Cry 4 came out on top as their choice for best game of the year, with Metal Gear Solid 4 coming in a close second. I bought DMC4 when it came out, and I loved it. It's fun as shit, in case you didn't know. But, ultimately, my view of Dante's latest adventure boiled down to a "eh" in light of 2008's other offerings. While the game is fun, it doesn't do anything new. That's not to say that innovation is the key deciding factor in determining whether or not a well-made game is, in fact, well-made. But there were plenty of games this year that made innovation their selling point, and most importantly, made that innovation damn fun.

As expected, Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G makes it into the Top Ten games of the year. No comment.

Compared to the quarter-page blurb for Rock Band 2, the latest iteration of Dynasty Warriors: Gundam receives a 4 out of 5, an editor's choice award, and noticeable support from readers and editors alike. If you've ever played any of the DW games, you know what I mean when I shudder, gasp in shock, and then probably die. If you haven't, imagine being forced to watch Jeffrey Dahmer rape a cow, reduce the tremorous, emotional shock of seeing said act by about 2.6%, and you basically have an idea of how the game functions.

Reading a Chinese gaming enthusiast magazine is an interesting experience to say the least. This being China, there are no corporate sponsors and PR representatives the magazine runs in danger of angering, as I don't think Chinese gaming press attends E3 or GDC on a regular basis. However, most of their games (barring the simplified star system they used for the year-end issue) are rated on the infamous 7-9 scale, with the truly horrendous crap of the rest receiving the rarely-grazing-in-the-open 6. Chinese gamers are, to sum it up in the simplest of terms, Japanese gamers with a love for FPSes, a love conditioned through years of Counter-strike 1.6. Because of the relative easiness it is to find entire libraries of Manga for rent, there's that video game / anime assocation with characters, rather than IPs themselves. Full wall-scrolls of Squall from Final Fantasy VIII are available for purchase at just about any retailer that dare refer to themselves as a game store.

I mention all of this, because it's important to note a few things. First, China has yet to establish itself as a global powerhouse in next-gen gaming, much in the way (hate to say it, but it's true) America and Canada have, and the way Japan was in the past. One look at these gaming publications displays a cross-section of a specific but hardcore niche audience here in China. They can't read or understand the text on 80% of these games, but they play the hell out of them anyway, and well, might I add. I got thwomped by a 13 year-old kid at Zhongguancun, China's Silicon Valley and loaded with purveyors of all things tech and maybe otaku, in a match of Gears 2, and I was using Dizzy, with my lucky cowboy hat and bad stereotyping in tow. This is a genuine love for games that transcends any kind of cultural differences or language barriers, and Chinese people being some of the most unpretentious people I've ever come across, this is a good thing. Rather than being overly critical, much attention is paid to only the positives of a game, which is constructive on it's own merits. So, with all this in mind, then, is where I make a statement that makes me somewhat sad to say it: China, by the looks of it, will never make anything gaming-wise of international acclaim.

Because of the rampant piracy that makes living in China such a wonderland of decadent digital lunacy, Chinese game developers have no plans to move their prospects towards consoles just yet. 90% of Chinese triple-A titles are free-to-play, microtransaction-based MMORPGS that are more or less rehashes of WoW, an example of "sticking with what you know" in heavy motion. Any other choice in development spells early financial doom for any game company that endeavors to invest the time and budget required to developing for consoles. Piracy is also the major prohibitive factor that prevents Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo from providing infrastructure and support to China, excepting Hong Kong and Taiwan, which, depending on your definition, do or do not constitute this "China" we speak of. Speaking of which, consoles are fucking expensive; it's doubtful that many Chinese PC gamers, many of them not quite enjoying that standard of life the decadent West so takes for granted, find it economically feasible to switch from a gaming platform that affords them a keyboard and mouse to a platform that forces them to score headshots with their thumbs.

Chinese console gamers, then, are stuck in this unique, observational position, where piracy allows them to absorb the best and oftentimes worst of gaming cultures from both sides of the Pacific, all at the price of an extra-value meal at McDonald's. Because gaming here is comparatively infantile in relation to Western countries and Japan, Chinese gamers have concepts and ideas that are mutable, and flexible, due to that aforementioned observational standpoint. There is a huge amount of talent here, as I've seen firsthand in my numerous visits to Zoe's office. But what does this piracy spell for China's aspiring game designers, fresh with ideas from playing Fallout 3 or Little Bigplanet? Sadly, not much. According to Zoe, game producers are rated at the bottom of the producer/art/programming hierarchy, meaning they earn the least and are considered to be the least important, aesthetically and financially, in production of a game. Why would a company pay top dollar to a group of planners, developers, and conceptualizers to come up with maybe five small variations on the WoW or, in some cases, Perfect World (完美世界) formula?

This is not to say that China needs to start upping the ante and producing huge, big-budget, morally-guided games like GTAIV or Mass Effect, but there needs to be some kind of forward momentum in terms of innovation. The role of the producer here in China serves as a huge contrast to other countries such as America, where we're provided with countless interviews with Cliff Bleszinski's tattooed biceps, or Japan, where we get thirty different posed photos of Tomonobu Itagaki, in sunglasses and leather trench, learning against thirty different walls in Shibuya. Games, like movies, are now sold on a few things, like established IPs and graphics. Those are givens. But like that radical paradigm shift in the comic industry amidst the waning popularity of Image Comics, where the role of writer was suddenly emphasized over the artist to heavy degree, games are now more and more being sold on the strength of their production and creative teams. Take Bayonetta, and the crew at Platinum Games, for instance. Why do we care about yet another third-person stylish action game in the vein of Devil May Cry? Because of the name: Shinji Mikami, a producer responsible for some of the biggest and most popular franchises in gaming of all time. This is what separates Bayonetta or a game like Mad World from another Ninja Blade, which really, after playing for a bit, I've come to realize isn't all that bad.

China is, then, currently stuck in a position of comfortable staticity. There are enough people (a few billion, to be exact) here that there is never a concern as to whether a market will reach saturation point; logic dictates there will always be a potential audience for any product. As China is not an officially supported region for the Big Three, game piracy that takes place here is theoretically, and in the loosest sense of the word, a victimless crime. Victimless, that is, unless one day Chinese gamers of all shapes and sizes stand up in unison and declare a pox on microtransaction-run MMOs. Then we're all fucked.

All's fair

This is interesting. I found a link on Kotaku to boingboing.com, which touts itself as a "directory of wonderful things."

And indeed, it is.

A blog entry details an interesting relationship between a man named Hugh Spencer and his son Evan, who is a (shudder) "gamer", and loves shooting at things in Call of Duty.

Hugh is, based on the snippet I read, a pretty insightful person. He understands the need of balancing his desires versus his sons, and he's realistic about them as well. In order to reach some kind of balance, Hugh had his son read about the Geneva Conventions prior to playing the game. Afterwards, Hugh and Evan discussed it and reached an agreement that when Evan plays Call of Duty online, he and his teammates should play accordingly to the laws and bylaws of the Geneva Conventions. Should Evan fail to meet this requirement, the game has to be taken away for a while.

Naturally, any medium that allows a person to essentially point at and unload virtual bullets into a living, breathing (for the sake of the argument) organism, with realistic portrayals of exit wounds and gore causes all sorts of alarms to go off in a person's head.

I have no doubt in my mind that when my son is about 13 years of age, first person perspective-based shooters or adventures will still be a relevant and no doubt fun genre of gaming. But even as an enthusiastic fan of all things first-person, and obviously a lover of video games since Mega Man 2, I've debated as to whether or not I'd allow my son or maybe daughter to play these games before he reaches the intended age of 17+, as stated on the box.

Sheltering a child is one thing, but completely immersing a child, inundating his senses in an act of forced recognition... that's something completely different. Another fact that I have no doubt of is the difficulty of reconciling these kinds of situations as a parent, as someone who has faced similar forms of censorship and protection from their parents, later understood why, but has continued to grasp at the fine line between, as I stated above, full-on sheltering a child and presenting a child with the cold, hard reality of this violence we've all come to relative terms with.

I do believe games are, for the right person, a therapeutic outlet in many ways. Although many critics and parental watchdog groups vilify video games as a form of "murder simulator," I think there's a difference between someone who loves games and someone who plays games for specific reasons. There's a difference between someone who will play Katamari Damacy as a goofy way to waste time, then switch to Prince of Persia to lose themselves in an epic yarn, and then play the "Don't Call Me Shirley" stage in Call of Duty 4:MW on Veteran difficulty as a test of their reflex and skill, and someone who plays first-person shooters as a way to curb their innate desire to shoot at living things with families and aspirations. The latter is what we call mentally unbalanced.

As therapeutic as they are, however, I do believe video games are a distortion of reality. In order for that first hypothetical someone to fully enjoy these virtual worlds so painstakingly crafted to exude some semblance of reality, a person should first be well-grounded, or as well-grounded as possible at their age and emotional maturity, in the truths about their world and the society they live in. I don't mean "truths" as in a full-on 300+ years worth of socially just education on the class struggle or anything like that. I mean "truths" as in action versus consequence.

There is something about the FPS genre, something profoundly visceral about the empowering ability to soak up as many bullets as humanly possible in a short span of time and issue out ten times the amount of pain and damage. FPSes, then, are perhaps the greatest distortion of reality available in game form, because of the way the games are played out. In Monolith's latest F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, the entire game, from cutscenes to major events, play out in the eyes of the protagonist, namely, the person playing the game. As Monolith's effort is a supernatural / horror-based game, perspective and total possible immersion is important, and an FPS is an ideal genre to express the scares and shocks Monolith hopes to attain from the gamer. FPSes will always remain violent, because there's that perspective and that crucial presentation of reality that makes a good FPS just that.

Games will attempt to morally justify the gamer's slaying of potentially hundreds of thousands of virtual enemies. Maybe the enemy is part of an imperialistic army. Maybe the enemy torched your home to the ground twenty years ago. Or, the enemy's an alien. Fuck it. Go wild. This happens sometimes, but most of the time, the justification for slaughter boils down to "kill or be killed." This is the case with on-line competitive FPSes, where the sole reason for violence is violence itself. This is also where that distinction between reality and entertainment needs to be drawn. To go back to my opening example, Hugh Spencer hasn't exactly nailed that proverbial head, but he's engaged his son with an intelligent proposition. His son may have learned something useful about the Geneva Conventions, which may help him in his cultural geography class someday, but most importantly, Hugh is actively involved in fostering the idea of principles, moral guidance in his son.

Any parent who either has not educated their child to be a socially responsible individual or actively shelters their child from any form of violent video game is, I think, missing something in the big picture. I won't go as far as to say they're bad parents, as that's way too presumptuous, even for my tastes. Parents, amidst their busy schedules, try to do the best job possible in raising their child and educating them according to their own morals and values. But sometimes, realistic measures need to take place. It's interesting how Hugh's method of educating his son on the values of principle, even in something like an on-line shooting game, as pragmatic and realistic as it is, is labelled as "fresh", or perhaps "innovative." This either means, long story short, that many parents are missing the mark on that happy little divide, or we're not doing enough coverage on parents that are doing their jobs.

To go back to the previous examples, we are not defined by the games we play. Rather, our likes and dislikes define the games we play. More importantly, our personalities define the ways we play our games. Chances are, if you're a decently grounded person, a round of Call of Duty will not make you want to hunt down Russian ultranationalists in the dead calm of a snowy plain. As someone who has yet to even come to grips with the concept of potentially one day perhaps, maybe, possibly raising a child, Hugh Spencer's method is somewhat of an inspiration, and an important reminder to myself as to, when I'm that theoretical parent, what's really important when educating my kid.

Pattern Recognition

My previous two posts have focused on, what the observant have undoubtedly noticed, movies and my experiences/critiques of them.

Roger Ebert is someone whom I model my writing style after. Seriously. If you can get past the lampooning he received in the shortly-lived television series "The Critic," and can actually force yourself to summon up an ounce of interest in the shitty movies he's forced to review these days, you're in for a treat in the form of an excellent writer and thinker. Ebert is fair, sarcastically sincere, and he can express in a simple paragraph a thought or observation that might take a lesser writer such as myself an entire page, however ill-defined that might be in relation to html.

I'm not sure if film critique would be something I would be interested in. There's that whole thing about the "ivory tower", and my lack of interest in having to even waste my time and breath in critiquing the latest Jessica Simpson shitstain on the human consciousness. If I'm going to watch a shitty movie and then make fun of it, I'd like that to be on my own accord.

Rather, I have found myself in the position of a cultural observer of many things American, far removed from the environment and society that engenders such byproducts of culture. Being here in China provides me with a unique position, whereas I am both integrated and removed from this landscape of creativity that I both abandoned and simultaneously missed.

It's weird: watching all these Oscar movies, and other cultural events such as witnessing Barack Obama being sworn in... weird. It doesn't feel like my culture, and at the same time, it does. This is perhaps the first time I've found myself almost completely immersed in an entirely different culture, as my wife and perhaps the only person I talk to on a regular basis is unmistakably Chinese, and the only language I find myself speaking is inevitably Chinese.

Movies, then, are those little slices of life back home in America that no force here in China can hope to take from me. My escape. All those insecurities about modern life, those fucked-up inconsistencies that only Americans can master, that decadence that arises and possesses close association with depression. And all the bad things that go with American culture, too. Sure, it's fucked up. But it's what I know. I've since become comfortable in the fucked-upness of it all.

I can safely say with certainty that China, although a fun place, is not somewhere I'd like to settle down for the long haul. I get along with everyone here, but at the same time, I'm tired of meeting the cultural expectations of everyone I meet, that is, being the good American and the good Chinese boy. I'm tired of being the uncultured traitor who's turned his back on his own people. It's not to say that many of the people here are culturally blind, or even more harshly, insensitive, to the plight of their overseas brethren. Rather, there's no foundation for them to base their assumptions and preconceptions on. That's fine and dandy, but it's not my position to put up with it, either.

My return back to China has dispelled, for the most part, many to most of my pangs of romantic longing and emptiness that I felt after returning back to America. There'll always be a special association I carry with me, and lots of unforgettable memories. But, ask me truthfully and honestly?

I can't wait to get out of this place.

I Actually Watched This

"Nick And Norah's Infinite Playlist"

In honor/homage/shameless rip-off of better and more skilled writers than myself at The Onion's "AV Club", I have taken it upon myself, nay, made it my moral and spiritual imperative to write about that little thing we all like to mention from time to time, that obligatory half-crooked smile hanging on our face like a badge on a member of Starfleet: it's an officiating sign of position, something that makes it okay for us to do or take part in whatever it is we, as human beings possessing intelligence and standards, should not normally want to. That is, the guilty pleasure.

Really, what's wrong with "guilty pleasures"? Aside from sounding like either a fragrance sold for two-fifty at a Wet Seal (remember that shit?) or a chocolate product, guilty pleasures are about the greatest thing known to man. They're a reaffirmation to us, a reminder that life isn't as serious as work, family, and taxes commonly try to enforce to us day after day. They're a medium that work on their own plane of existence, always ready for us to come back for more. Our guilty pleasures help us through our darkest phases, much in the way a Bible kept on the nightstand remains steadfastly vigilant, ready to spread to anyone who's willing to believe (ie. someone who's not a total spiritually-vacant dickface) the gospel and spiritual truths that mean to soothe us and nothing else.

Guilty pleasures, and I say this to you, average pretentious American obsessed with this mutable, very ill-defined concept of "individuality", are your friend. This has nothing to do with that counter-culture nonsense, lounging in local indie record stores and soapboxing for about three hours straight on why Jean-Claude Van Damme's Street Fighter, is, in fact, the greatest movie ever made, a statement made in perhaps half self-conscious irony and half-histrionically-grounded attention whoring. No, there's none of that.

I acknowledge my love of American-made martial arts films, those special blends of obscured fighting moves and shitty hip-hop that they are. As someone who loves martial arts films of all shapes and sizes, I find these amalgamations of two vastly different cultures fascinating. I paid money to watch Exit Wounds, starring Steven Seagal and DMX, in the theatres. Fucking money, dawg. I was high school student at the time, where my money would've been better spent on In-N-Out Double double's and three-day trials at porn sites, but no. I saw a trailer for the movie, most likely during an equally shitty movie, and watched DMX do a backflip towards his dropped revolver, and my first reaction was, "I'm am so fucking THERE." Subsequently, something in me, something floating in that area between my ego and superego, something innate and on a very primalistic level, prompted me to call my friends and ask them with zero self-consciousness if they'd be interested in paying their retail-job-obtained cash in watching Exit Wounds with me, opening weekend no less. Most likely it was the same primal force at work that prompted my friends, also with nary a tinge of irony their voice, to respond with a hearty "hells YES." My guilty pleasures also include third-person action games that involve nothing more than running in a straight line and pressing "fire", and perhaps, from time to time, female-fronted goth metal bands that sing about dragons and that "darkness" thing with the kind of honest sincerity only possible when one's neighbor is, well, a dragon, or the darkness. Whichever.

So, after my long-winded introduction, I make the transition to this week's, or month's extension of guilty pleasure-mongering. Or, maybe not. Because, as a movie, I'm not sure where Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist falls. Basically, I'm not sure if this movie qualifies as a "guilty pleasure."


On a surface glance, Nick & Norah has all the trappings of a movie that should rightfully find it's way into my shoebox of guilty pleasures, gracefully tucked between "episodes of 'V.I.P.'" and "strawberry-banana yogurt smoothies". High school romance. Check. Hot up and coming young actors. Check. Decent soundtrack. Check.

But, wait! Let's go back to that last bullet point for a second, now. Nick & Norah, much like basically anything Cameron Crowe has touched in his life, is a movie very much grounded in this little thing called "music." It's obvious in the movie's title, and it was very obvious in the marketing for this movie, in which the trailer promised select tracks from bands and artists such as Vampire Weekend, Devendra Banhart, and Bishop Allen, et al. See your local Pitchfork.com for more bands I could've potentially named in that segment. The year was 2008, where soundtracks were less and less becoming selling points, and a trend essentially died out after Bad Boys 2 had that P.Diddy and Nelly reworking of that Atlanta Braves' fight song. A throwback to the days of movies such as Kids and Empire Records, maybe? No, hardly. Nick & Norah, right from the ground up, feels like a very carefully manufactured product, with no mistakes and zero cases of happenstance.

I'll start off by saying Nick & Norah is quite possibly, for reasons I've just elaborated on and for reasons I will soon get into, one of the most obnoxious movies I've ever seen. The opening title screen, when introducing the actors and crew involved, takes place on a yellow steno pad with the names of almost every single band featured on Myspace's front page for the last two years getting a shout-out in the margins of the pages, much like the way a high school student with a short attention span will do so during Geometry class. Not me, that's for sure. During Geometry class, I came up with ideas for fake Magic: The Gathering cards and rules, complete with their own backstory and everything. But that's a sad story for another sad day.

In the movie, Michael Cera plays Michael Cera (the king of awkward-cool, and yet another reason I'm finding it difficult to reconcile this movie as a guilty pleasure) under the alias of Nick, and has just been dumped by his hot girlfriend, played by this diminutive blonde chick I've never seen before, but probably someone who would never go for someone like Michael Cera in real life. Norah is played by Kat Dennings, who my wife is absolutely in love with because she has humongous breasts. Norah's never met Nick before, but there's this kind of indirect infatuation going on. Here's how: in a disturbingly familiar gender-swap of roles, blonde girlfriend doesn't appreciate Michael Cera for the lovable dope that he is and will throw out his mix "tapes" that he lovingly and painstakingly crafts on his WHITE MACBOOK, complete with album art and everything. Norah then salvages these mixes, telling her friend that what she's doing isn't stalker-y, and it's no big deal: "They're just songs I can put on my IPOD."


Long story short, after a series of ridiculous circumstances, ie. Norah kissing Nick to make blonde girl feel awkward, Norah's best friend remaining drunk longer than any bipedal creature I've ever seen committed to either film or literature, Nick playing with his band and stuff, Norah and Nick soon embark on a midnight journey, jaunting from one area of New York City to the next in search of an elusive band called "Where's Fluffy?", a band so wrapped in the enigma of it's own cool that it refuses to announce the location of it's live shows. Normally, a band like this would be, with the exception of painfully cool and in-the-know hipsters, labelled by pretty any sane person as "wankers." But, this is a movie, with Fluffy primarily functioning as this total dickhead McGuffin to drive along the action, and, as expected, the already burgeoning romance of Nick and Norah on their first night of acquaintance, no less.

Let's fast forward a bit: Blonde girl isn't happy Nick and Norah are traipsing about New York with each other on a grand adventure, tries to get Nick back, fails, Nick does something un-PG-13 to Norah in Electric Lady Studios (which Norah's dad happens to own), they find Fluffy but rightfully say "fuck it" and go about their business. And yep, they (spoiler alert) fall in love. Like, hardcore in love. End movie.

Like I said, this movie is one in which I am struggling to decide whether or not it is worthy to of "guilty pleasure" status. Because I'm prone to mood swings much like a 16 year-old hormonally unbalanced teenage is apt to at this point in their life, this opinion might change, but as of now, I remain certain that this movie is not, in fact, a guilty pleasure. The movie is too damn self-conscious for it's own good.

Also mentioned before, everything feels very manufactured and very carefully constructed. Nick & Norah tells the story of a fateful night that two indie kids fall in love and find their connection, but the movie is very insistent on reminding us the indieness of the two title characters. On the back of the DVD box, the synopsis of the movie is very, very careful to point out that Nick plays in a Queercore band called "The Jerkoffs." But, then, here's the thing: The movie is so carefully marketed, in fact, that for all its referential dialogue and shameless plugs of Pitchfork-endorsed bands, it never comes off as smug or pretentious. This is an example of a product serving a very specific audience and viewership, namely this scenester, indie-emo band of angsty-but-not-really eleventeen year olds who thrive on their Myspace accounts for any semblance of interaction, a culture that, as someone who's too nosy and observant for his own good, I understand ever minute detail of but would prefer that I didn't understand it at all. Imagine if Rounders was released around 2005, during the apex of the Poker craze, instead of in 1998, before Chris Moneymaker trudged onto the final table, as it was. It would've received a markedly different response and box office turnount. Nick & Norah, to me, feels like the cultural equivalent of that example: Rounders released during the height of Poker-mania.

That's what I mean when I refer to this movie as neither pretentious nor smug, but healthy in it's obnoxiousness. Everything is so carefully planned and deliberate, the movie never feels offensive, but then it never risks anything, either. For a movie predicated on the unpredictability of youth culture today and the common bonds found in mutual love for musicians that operate on the fringes of what one might consider acceptable, Nick & Norah plays it safe. Moreover, it plays it conventional.

I can't say I hated the movie, but I can't say I liked it, either. I haven't found a word, either real or fake, to express my emotion towards this movie. "Meh" doesn't quite cut it in this regard, either, because here I am, writing about this shit as you read it. I've always found teen movies to be the best, albeit subtlest, barometer for the hopes and fears of the generation they were released. One could say that, given my above descriptions and criteria on which I judged Nick & Norah, a movie such as Pretty In Pink, or maybe The Breakfast Club, or maybe even Heathers, is just as carefully constructed. These movies all featured very familiar 80s tropes and character archetypes, with Heathers going as far as lampooning these characters. Moreover, the culturally insensitive material in Pretty In Pink and that search for identity amidst a seemingly totalitarian, thought-controlling society all scream, in hindsight, for me at least, the culturally decadent turbulence of the Reagan era. And let's not forget those first two movies, making Karaoke staples out of OMD's "If You Leave", and Simple Mind's "Don't Forget About Me." Ugh.


What about Nick & Norah? While it's a given that any teen romance will feature some kind of soundtrack featuring prominent musicians, Nick & Norah's focal point seems to be that of the music rather than the plight of the characters themselves. In contrast to the aforementioned movies, Nick & Norah is a reflection of a time where the internet reigns supreme as a must-have for any young American, and where mp3 players and DRM are very real things. No matter how cliched any of John Hughes' movies were, none of them felt as safely conventional as Nick & Norah. Perhaps this movie represents a cultural changing of the guard, with me, rapidly tapping away at my wilting laptop keyboard, representing that old guard that refuses to heed the call of time. Or maybe Nick & Norah, for it's careful execution, represents a shift in values, and new methods of marketing a product through the usage of preestablished products. It's a sad truth that nowadays, one's individuality largely and primarily hinges on the choice in tangible items, with one's own cultural relevancy predicated on perceptions from others. This includes philosophy, those nuggets of truth packed into tiny volumes awaiting your purchase. There is always that untangible state of mind, which we like to say that no one can violate or confiscate, but what young person growing up in America today actively defines their uniqueness through the way they think?

For someone like me, someone who's at this phase in their life, maturity-wise and maritally-wise, Nick & Norah was a movie I was expecting to tug at the ever-so-prevalent dwindling ropes of that thing we call nostalgia. I did manage to connect with the movie on some base level, but then again, I'm able to do that with any non-action or science fiction film (see previous entry, where I touch on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button). Nick and Norah's romance is forced, hackneyed, and destined, in the most realistic cases, to not last. In other words, a perfect high school romance. That was the fucking great thing about our high school years: that uncertainty that felt like nothing but guarantees, every small inconsequential step we took filling us with optimism and prospects for that unforeseeable future we only wanted to welcome with open arms. That's what we used to call idealism, before the indie kids came and stole the innocence of that concept away from us.

I think ultimately, I was a little sad after watching Nick & Norah. A movie that should've, by any right, qualified as a guilty pleasure was eventually brought down by it's own self-awareness and lack of confidence in it's own product. I'm beginning to wonder if this strange, tech-driven and image-bolstered culture will ever subconsciously provide us, those dragging ourselves through the depressing finality of life and freedom, with those guilty pleasures we so need. Maybe it's a good thing, perhaps, that our culture no longer grants us access to these nuggets of artistic drugdgery, indicating a, no matter how artificial or fake, rise in standards. But what are standards if but another alien concept if we have nothing to judge them by?

Or, maybe, I really am that out of touch with youth today. Growing up should be a refreshing fact to face, not something that horrifies me enough that I write a pointless blog entry about it.

Aw-scars

...And new shit is here.

I remember I was about 15 or 16 years old when Titanic won Best Picture at the Oscars. Now, my high school years, up until about the end of my senior year when I really got into Tool, is a period in my life I commonly refer to as my "awkward years", or the years that "I had no standards", meaning, I listened to that boyband shit and I watched fucking terrible B-rate shit-flicks with no semblance of guilt in my chest.

Nowadays, I'm someone whom I'd like to consider as having standards, that is, in taste in movies, books, music, and politics (moderate-to-left-leaning Democrat ftw). You know, the stuff that matters. I am a product of the decadent 80s, where Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reigned supreme, my values and senses engendered by the mid-90s, where The Smashing Pumpkins were, at one point, considered by and large to be the biggest band in America, and I am currently feeding off the residual noxious fumes of the Myspace and Pitchfork generations, straddling a love-hate divide for these things that so actively promote this notion of "individualism" but frowns upon true creativity and expression. Naturally, I'm a difficult person to please. And my taste in movies is no different.

Cinema is one of the laziest hobbies/quasi-passions I have. By "lazy", I mean the amount of effort expended in savoring said hobby. Oddly enough, or rather, not odd at all, living in China has provided me a cheap means of watching almost every single Oscar-nominated movie that's received any kind of mention in popular entertainment outlets. I love bootleg DVDs. This is quite possibly the first time I've been able to do so, as I was previously unable to due to work, school, as well as the prohibitive price of buying a movie ticket.

So far, I've seen Frost/Nixon, Milk, The Wrestler, Slumdog Millionaire, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Revolution Road, The Reader, Doubt, Changeling, Frozen River, and etc, etc., all in the comfort of my own home, to boot.

My summation of all these movies in one fell exasperation? Meh.

Don't get me wrong; I enjoyed, to a degree, and obviously some more so than others, almost all of these movies. But I can also say with no irony that I've seen The Rock, the movie that unfortunately put Michael Bay on the proverbial map, about seven times already, and I've enjoyed it every single time I've watched it.

Maybe it's a combination of me being too jaded for my own good, or maybe I've seen too many good movies in the past that my personal scale has been skewed, but I remain unimpressed. Once again, that's not to say these weren't good films. But Oscars?


I think my lack of interest in this year's Oscar Awards might be entirely and subsequently unfairly directed at one film in particular: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. This might've been the film I enjoyed the least out of all the movies I watched, and this includes the sometimes-misguidedly preachy but ultimately enjoyable The Visitor, because, and I say this politely, the movie fucking meanders.

Let's get some things out of the way: Brad Pitt is really good in this movie. So is Cate Blanchett. The best acting job in the movie probably goes to Taraji Henson, very much deserving that Oscar nod. What people tend to get mixed up, though, is that good acting does not necessarily make the movie itself good. Benjamin Button strikes me as one of those movies that is so in love with it's own premise, production values, quality acting, soundtrack, and set design, that it feels content in simply swaggering about the room, with it's mighty wang of quality swinging to and fro pendulously like a grandfather clock. And swagger it does, at almost three hours of cinematic pacing that feels like an extended series of unrelated vignettes and montages.

Essentially, the titular character, who so heretofore be referred to Ben, has this weird condition where the older he gets in years, the younger his body becomes. Okay. So, he's born in the form of an old man, and that comes with all the frustrations and difficulties one might face. He's small in stature, naively innocent to the point of (gasp) senility, and he faces difficulty in walking. Alright, I see the parallel. As the movie progresses, Ben starts to become more and more spry, young, and oh-so-dreamy. Based on the logic of the condition Ben has, it's easy to guess what happens when he reaches the almost-predetermined age of 80+ years. Okay.

At the end of the movie, when the (spoiler alert) infantile Ben of 80 years closed his eyes one last time and then faded away into a slumber of death... I'll be honest, I shed tears. Appropriately enough, I cried like a baby. Because I don't like seeing babies, in their infantile state, shuffling off their mortal coil, their span of life equalling the chronological equivalent of a whisper. That makes me sad on a very base level. But my outpour of emotion wasn't based on what I had seen in the film. This brief five minutes was probably the only moment I truly connected with what I was seeing, and this was more based on the fact that I'm a softie at heart. Again, unrelated to the movie.

So, my problem with the film is, what's the point? I hate, hate, hate it when authors and writers leave their works open-ended and make that bold lazy, prententious statement that, "my work can mean whatever the viewer wants it to mean." No, no, no. As an author, it is your job to provide us with context, with some kind of palpable direction. As an author, you are obligated to provide some kind of emotional, if not satisfaction, then closure to the audience who has paid you both time and money to immerse themselves in your work. I can't stand it when people hide behind that all-encompassing badge of "post-modernism." It's lazy and unconstructive.

Now, I don't need someone to spell out the theme or meaning of a movie for me. Nor does any average filmgoer in America today. We as an audience are so familiar with the tropes commonly employed by filmmakers that we are mentally and emotionally prepared for what the filmmaker has to show us. And I say show, because a good director, like any author or artist, shows rather than telling. At the risk of sounding ignorant by comparing two vastly different films, let's take a look at No Country For Old Men as an example. No Country was a movie that I felt warranted a repeated, back-to-back viewing. I knew there was something, hidden beneath the narrative layer, that the Coen Brothers, or rather, Cormac McCarthy, wanted to say. I could feel it in the select choice of camera angles, the lines of dialogue at the end, and (quasi-spoiler) the sudden change in character focus in narration that stems from Josh Brolin's character's untimely demise. The second time I watched the film, the underlying message of the movie hit me faster than a nerd at an anime convention rushing towards the stand of free energy drinks.

Benjamin Button neither shows nor tells. I earlier stated that the movie ultimately feels like a series of unrelated vignettes, and that's what it is. The movie hopes we make some kind of connection with Ben, but how can we? We can feel sorry for an earthquake survivor, or a refugee who has just lost his or her entire family, but we cannot for a second fathom the amount of pain and hardship they have just experienced. The only thing we have are our shared experiences, namely the pain of losing loved ones, or the harrowing tugs of survivor's guilt. Likewise, we can feel sorry for Ben in the movie's final moments, but we cannot connect. The movie is told in a series of montage-like, Forrest Gump-esque sequences that show the experiences Ben has with his strange condition. But there are no shared experiences. We can marvel, but we're spectating from a distance.

Is this intentional? Is Ben meant to be a blank state in which we infuse with our own fears and hopes? Maybe Ben desires, above all things, to live a normal life as hinted at in his relationship with Cate Blanchett's character, but this is never explored nor explained either through narrative or dialogue. Watching the movie, it feels like Ben's just going by the numbers. He does one thing, moves onto the next, and then so on. Nothing is ever explored nor explained in the movie. What's with the Katrina connection? Why Katrina? Something that could've been thematically powerful ultimately ends up becoming a gimmick, most likely exploited for some kind of critically prententious acknowledgement of skillful obfuscation, which, it isn't. The only thing I gathered from this movie is that the film itself is a meditation on life and death, but I mean meditation in the strictest sense, meaning you just think and, y'know, kind of think about it. "Live life to the fullest"? Maybe that's the message, but do we need a three-hour movie to tell us this?

I wanted to like this movie so much, I really did. Brad Pitt, as I said, is excellent in the film, and Alexandre Desplat's score is one of the best I've heard this year. But, in this case, the parts do not add up to a whole.

Now, mark my words, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button will win the Best Picture Award. It is destined, written in the stars. It will win. Do not dispute this fact with me, because I'm right, and you're wrong.

I'm still on the fence on whether or not I want to watch the Oscars in all it's edited glory (remember, the broadcast will be shown on China Central Television, an organization that prides itself on "harmonious programming"). I really thought this would be the year that a comic book movie, ie. The Dark Knight, would win or at least receive an Oscar nod, but it looks like that ain't happening anytime soon. If not The Dark Knight, then probably never. Ah well.

In comic book-related nonsense, Mr. Wolverine himself, Hugh Jackman, will be hosting.

On second thought, no longer on the fence. Boycott in full procession. Unless Hugh Jackman pops out a set of REAL adamantium claws and proceeds to reenact a "Wolverine Vs. Sabertooth" stand-off with Mickey Rourke, then that position ain't changing. "Street Fighter IV" on Oscar night it is, then.

Update... in a way

As can be gathered from the lapse of time from this, my most current entry, to my then-most recent entry on December 5th, it's been a goddamn long time since I've written in this thing.

Obviously, much has happened since then. I entertained the company of a good friend and my brother in a non-sexual menage-a-tois of OC manly goodness, and of course, I got married.

Take a moment for that to sink in, non-existent reader that wouldn't know.

I realized that in the past, when I had long lapses in updating a blog, ie. something I should be doing if I take writing half as seriously as a I claim, I would choose not to update at all. Scrap, rinse, and repeat in the form of a new page. The reason is, I hate recap. Although I've maintained, or at least tried to maintain a politically-correct edge in all my entries, blogging has always felt like a very personal activity to me. There is that hypothetical "reader" I'm writing to, but it's always been more of a "dear diary" type of thing as opposed to an actual reader I'm "selling my craft" to. So, no recapping. From where I'm standing, it's counter-productive. Onwards to the new shit.