Author: Sonic Rob

Sonic Monty

Starting off with a reference none of the audience could possibly get is probably not the best way to lead into a post, but I do not care.

Like my sister I am a total sucker for a ridiculous deal, especially one that offers instant gratification from the comfort of my computer chair. The Goddamned Steam holiday sale ate me alive; I am completely ashamed at how easily and utterly they manipulated my will. Full editions of 2 year old games for under $2? Damn you people to Hell. The absolute worst part was buying S.T.A.L.K.E.R. for a piddling $2, and then realizing that for the type of experience the game offers I would much rather play Far Cry 2, and buying that game as well for only $10 more. It was like wandering into a discount humiliation emporium and being unable to resist the prices.

My shame is only tempered by my secret glee at not biting on Torchlight til it was $5. All you $10 Torchlight players are bustas.

The new pile, which joins the old pile, follows:

Far Cry 2

Torchlight

Zombie Driver

Defense Grid: The Awakening

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

The Witcher: Enhanced Edition

Sins of a Solar Empire

Samurai Warriors Empires 2

I’m excited at the idea of Fyre and I putting up collaborative reviews of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Torchlight, but that’s actually kind of unlikely for reasons that will become clear next week. For the time being, these games will have to be consigned to the status of mere trophies, a gallery of pouting and untouched beauties gathered together under the roof of a negligent master. For me, it is enough to have them.

I hate myself.

-ssr

I Wish Jennifer Connelly Had Been in Nine Instead of 9

But you can’t have it all. That said, the female cast of Nine are all very attractive women. While watching the ominpresent trailer once again last weekend (in the warmup for Sherlock Holmes, of all things), something caught my eye. I scooted home after the film, put the Baker to bed and fired up IMDB to check some numbers. Lo:

Stacy “Fergie” Ferguson
3/27/75

Kate Hudson
4/19/79

Nicole Kidman
6/20/67

Penélope Cruz
4/28/74

Marion Cotillard
9/30/75

And, of course, there are also Dame Judi and the lovely Ms Sofia Loren, whom I am too much of a gentleman to inquire after. My point being that this movie is banking on the attractiveness of a cast of women who are all over the age of 30.

Now, you and I can easily shrug our shoulders and say “Well, of course women over 30 can be attractive. That isn’t remarkable.” The remarkable thing to me isn’t that you and I know it, but that the Weinstein Company knew it and didn’t push for, say, Kristen Stewart to be shoehorned in as a draw to the CW crowd. Megan Fox. Scarlett Johansson. Hayden Panettiere. Just writing this list makes me wish I were dead.

In a perfect world, age wouldn’t be an issue. Good actors would get high-profile roles. It would be a point of nonsensical obviousness that each of the many phases of life has its virtues and attractions. Everyone would accept that glamour is available to anyone who wants to work at it.

Boring, shitty actresses who strive to achieve the Prettiest Common Denominator would achieve nothing.

But, until that world comes to pass, I’m going to feel a happy little thrill when talented women with unusual looks, a normal body, or a birthday before the commonly accepted leading lady cutoff date are cast in roles that airily, defiantly presuppose their ability to be desired.

?

Achievement Unlocked: Film Century 1.5

It’s been quite a task to slog through, but we persevered and here we are. So now that it’s over, what did this all prove? I don’t really know what I was going for with this little experiment. 150 movies was sort of an arbitrary sum; I picked it because it was somewhere between “impossible” and “unimpressive”. The 1-sentence limitation started out as an afterthought to the actual watching of the films, just a way to get any left-over reaction out of my system and prove I’d actually watched it. These days it sort of seems like the important part of the experiment. I guess the quickie reactions are reminiscent of movie-poster pull-quotes or those little subheadings on movie reviews. They reek with the musk of my great enemy, Metacritic. I think that we have found ourselves swamped with so many options for how to divert our attention that a single sentence is all that can be spared to base a judgemnet upon before we need to look elsewhere or risk falling behind. It’s likely that some of my reviews completely bought into this habit we have developed of attempting to boil every cultural product down into a 1-line sales pitch. I like to think that some of them were more like satires or inversions of that tendency.

Let’s finish this:

Dec. 29 Law Abiding Citizen – Sports more icebox logic than Spock’s Frigidaire. 148/150
Dec. 29 Fanboys – Nerd camp; not as in chess camp, but as in gay camp. 149/150
Dec. 30 Zatôichi – Probably the best ultraviolent samurai slapstick musical I saw this year. 150/150

I think I’ll go watch TV now.

Film Century 1.5

Well here we go, down to the wire.

Dec. 22 The Simpsons Movie – There are probably movies with more jokes per minute, but few with as many good jokes per minute. 142/150
Dec. 23 Red Dragon – Sometimes more of the same just isn’t the same. 143/150
Dec. 23 The Silence of the Lambs – The difference between these movies is one of emphasis, I think: is Hannibal Lecter a hissing maniac who happens to be brilliant, or an impossibly perceptive mind without any moral center? 144/150
Dec. 26 Sherlock Holmes – Rocky Balboa and the Case of There Is No Goddamned Case 145/150
Dec. 27 Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle – Producer Drew Barrymore is proud to present Drew Barrymore’s Ass: A Drama in Two Parts. 146/150
Dec. 28 Brazil – There are several accounts of Kafka reading his stories to friends in which both author and audience are forced to stop, wiping tears of mirth from their eyes and clutching sides that ache with laughter. 147/150

New Nerd Law

My socially awkward, imagination-oriented compatriots: your attention, please.

You are forthwith commanded to immediately and irrevocably cease the public use of fake profanity that was invented for your favorite sci-fi TV shows and movies. This includes childish faux-insults such as “laser-brain and “nerf-herder”, made-up “fuck-lite” terms like “frell” and “frak”, and insults or profanity in Chinese, unless you also speak the rest of the language.

These ridiculous fauxfanities were made up in order to cope with the fact that sci-fi characters must swear to impart a sense of gravity and humanity to their actions, but must not violate the rules of the MPAA and FCC. Such restrictions do not apply to you while you are not being broadcast on TV or shown in a film. You are an adult; you can use the profanity that God and our ancestors handed down to you as appropriate. If you hammer your goddamned thumb, just yell “fuck”. If you are in an environment where you are not allowed to use the word “fuck”, such as while babysitting or at your job, be an adult and just don’t swear.

A special exemption is amended for Fyrehaar, who is mentally ill and cannot stop quoting Dawn of War space marines. Are you not Fyrehaar? Then no exemption for you!

That is all.

-ssr

Michael Moore Should Stick to Documentaries

Via Primer, came across Slashfilm’s compilation of reactions to Avatar from various nerd-film leading lights. Many are pleasantly gushy, though I’d frankly be more interested to read them when

A) The 3-D IMAX dopamine rush has worn off of these poor fellows and a few months’ time has restored some perspective and

B) The Oscar-quote/poster-quote/get-on-the-internet-hype-train vibe has worn off a bit.

Still, these are professional nerds who make nerdy movies for the entertainment of nerds, and perhaps their initial reaction is valuable if only to make an estimate of the immediate sensation the film might grant another nerd (i.e. me) should he choose to see it. That is to say, if all these guys are excited, maybe that’s a good sign.

But then, halfway through the list, Michael Moore (who apparently counts as nerdy based on his girth and glasses) lets loose this glistening nugget of a tweet:

“Go see Avatar – a brilliant movie 4 our times. Don’t worry if theater doesn’t have 3D – the 2D is awesome & it’s all about the story anyway!”

It kind of speaks for itself, but if you need it spelled out: the plot in Avatar is not what it’s all about. I already know the plot – without having seen the film – because it was delivered in its entirety in every trailer for the film. The plot is a contrivance that allows for the effects to be delivered. The plot is a cellophane-thin culture on which the visual trickery is grown. The plot is a familiar, slender bouquet of tropes on which you may comfortably hang your sense of understanding in order to anchor it in the face of a punishing visual assault.

I am not being mean or judgmental when I say these things; I don’t even mean it as a criticism, really. It’s just that kind of movie. Hell, it’s being marketed as that kind of movie. But if Michael Moore thinks that a $300 million 3-D sci-fi remake of Dances With Wolves is a movie for our times thanks to its story, he is off his ass.

-ssr

Abu Gaga

Did anyone else come across the video for Bianca* Knowles’ “Video Phone” (song far inferior to decade-old precursor “Picture Phone” by the Sub Debs; so ya know) and choke on their Pepsi when the writhing Abu Ghraib prisoners appear, grinding their bodies against the curvaceous young singer’s supple form like so many Boschian incubi? I know that what’s really going on with the blue-hooded, dark-skinned men is that they were supposed to have their heads blue-screened out and replaced with cameras (as seen elsewhere in the video), but apparently they ran out of time, forgot to do this bit, or couldn’t figure out a good way to transition from the naked skin of the dancers to the CG camera. Hell, for all I know the director saw the effect and liked it. But there’s no way anymore to see an image like that and not flash, for a moment, to the guy standing on the box with the wires on his hands.

Combine that with the constant imagery of guns in the video and the presence of Lady Gaga who, like Saddam Hussein, is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Kurds, and you can’t help but see the whole piece as a teasing commentary on the repressed sexual desire that America sublimates into violence in general and news coverage of the Middle East wars in particular.

No idea what’s up with the weird homage to Tarantino at the start, tho.

Here is the video, embedded in much the same way that Geraldo Rivera was during the invasion of Iraq. Concidence? I think not:

-ssr

* I know what her name is. “Beyonce” looks to me like a phonetic spelling of how someone might pronounce “Bianca” if they had no idea how it’s actually meant to be said. Ha ha.

Film Century 1.5

Dec. 19 Monty Python’s Life of Brian – It’s a damn shame that the Santa Clause gets played on TBS every Christmas and this doesn’t. 137/150
Dec. 19 6ixtynin9 – Sort of a peanuts and lemongrass version of Jackie Brown. 138/150
Dec. 20 Up In The Air – Imagine what would have happened to Jack if Tyler Durden never showed up. 139/150
Dec. 20 LA Confidential – A glittering, ticking Rolex of a film. 140/150
Dec. 21 Wild Zero – OK, so Alex Cox, Ryuhei Kitamura, and Link Wray walk into a bar… 141/150

In A Shocking Turn, Sony Attempts to Solve a Problem Via Overpriced Hardware

SPARROW

In what Rachel Maddow might label a “holy mackerel” story, news broke a wee way back about Sony finally launching a new PlayStation console in Brazil. Well, new to Brazil, anyway. At launch the console will cost $445 and have “over 14” (i.e. 15) games available to play.

Oh, did I mention? This isn’t the launch of the PS3; this is the PS2 launch in Brazil. Remember when you got your PS2? I got mine with a college financial aid check, back before anyone in the US had ever heard of Al Qaeda.

It’s weird that Sony would be trying to do this now. Legitimate game sales in Brazil tanked back in the 90s when massive sales taxes were laid on game sales. Game companies fled the market, pirates swept in to fill the void, and now over a decade has passed without any serious non-pirate presence in the Brazilian games stores. I honestly don’t get why Sony thinks that this is going to work out well for them with how far things have slid. It’s not like things have turned around lately in some way that makes a console launch auspicious.

I suppose the question is: if Brazil has gone as long as it appears to without a culture of buying games legitimately, how do you change the paradigm there, given that an entire generation grew up with no non-pirate means of playing current-gen games. The Escapist pointed out in March that you can get games for $5-10 at pirate mini malls, and nobody has ever played a PS2, PS3, Xbox, or 360 game in Brazil that wasn’t pirated. What’s worse, Brazil still has a brutal tax on games that’s close to 100% (which probably accounts for at least some of that PS2 launch price). Good luck keeping your game costs competitive with pirate copies while that’s in effect.

I’m sure that game and console makers would like to break the grip of the pirate market in South America, but I’d be really surprised if they manage to do it anytime soon. In our current gen here in the US, they are using a carrot and stick approach. You start by removing value from pirated games: you create DLC that they can’t access, or you make it hard to use them, for instance by requiring games to log in to a server every time they are played a la Steam/EA Online/MMOs. Second, you add perceived value to legitimate copies by lowering their prices competitively (way more common with PC than console games, but I’d be really interested to see a chart that relates Pirate Bay game crack seeder numbers with price levels for individual games over time) or by adding free content that only works once with a legitimate copy (DragonAge and probably many more to come). The download/online based solutions aren’t really viable in South America right now: Brazil is near the head of the pack in regional internet usage, but only 5% of Brazilian households have a broadband connection. For comparison, the US has around 60% broadband penetration, and that puts us behind 19 other countries. ElectroMegaVideoGameopolis (aka South Korea) boasts a broadband connection in 95% of all households; the rest presumably are presently on fire and cannot connect to the internet for the moment. My point being, there is a way to go before Brazil, and the developing world in general, will have the infrastructure to support the copy protection strategies that have been finding success in the US in the wake of wider broadband support.

And as for competing on value, well… How do you compete with a $5 bootleg copy of FIFA 2010? Especially when tariffs mean you can only charge $2.50 retail for your version, and you can’t even offer any free DLC because hardly anyone has a fast internet connection. Oh, and you haven’t released an internet-friendly console yet. Oh, and your customers have been buying games from the pirate mall down the street for the last 15 years because the sales tax on your product drove you out of the country back when Clinton was president.

I’m not saying Sony shouldn’t try here. Maybe they have some strategy that will help; maybe all this time and effort have been used to develop a more pirate-resistant PS2. Even so, they’ve set themselves a tough row to hoe here. If I were them and wanted to break into markets in developing countries, I would work on lobbying governments and telcos in those markets to encourage the spread of broadband and drop taxes back to the other side of the Laffer curve.

Film Century 1.5

Dec. 11 Fantastic Mr. Fox – Spend a charming hour watching Wes Anderson play with his dolls. 133/150
Dec. 12 Say Anything – So does Lloyd Dobler grow up to be Dale Cooper, or is the universe just fucking with me? 134/150
Dec. 14 The Botany of Desire – I never thought domestication was a one-way street where humans do all the exploiting and none of the getting-exploited: I’m a cat owner. 135/150
Dec. 16 Good Night and Good Luck – George Clooney delivers a black and white movie that is – not coincidentally – shot in monochrome. 136/150