Wilcox vox.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

2008-09-25T11:30:00.008-05:00

Since “Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith” concluded George Lucas’ film saga, a 20-year gulf between the original trilogy and its three prequels remained ripe for exploration.

“The Force Unleashed” bridges that gulf with a wholly original story centered around Starkiller, the secret Sith apprentice of Darth Vader. Under Vader’s tutelage, Starkiller ventures to the far reaches of the galaxy to finish off the last vestiges of the Jedi order decimated by the Emperor. But because of the Sith edict that only two may exist at a given time, Starkiller must keep himself a secret and destroy anyone — even Stormtroopers — who discovers him.

The canonical cut scenes benefit from a lifelike look and the absence of the recent three “Star Wars” films’ all-around hokeyness. The scenes are the highlight of an otherwise mediocre action-adventure game that gives players access to Force powers far beyond any Jedi mind trick. One of the highest points of hype for the game was a set piece in which Starkiller pulls a Star Destroyer out of the sky. In theory, there’s no way such an awesome act of near-omnipotence couldn’t be fun. But wielding that power doesn’t equate to enjoyable game play.

Players inhabit the walking iron lung that is Darth Vader in “The Force Unleashed’s” first level. As the Dark Lord of the Sith, they are free to Force choke Wookies, slay them with a single lightsaber slash or fling them off the high bridges over Kashyyyk’s forests. This experience forecasts Starkiller’s progression as he passes through each level and accumulates Force powers and combos.

But the game can’t steer clear of overpowering Starkiller with those powers and, in turn, demystifying them. The bulk of the game’s enemies can be defeated by whisking them into the nearest abyss with a touch of the “R2” button and an analog stick. If “A New Hope” shared this approach, Obi-Wan Kenobi would have dropped every Stormtrooper in the Death Star down a bottomless pit. Where’s the fun in that?

Players are free to make their own fun by creatively wiping out scores of Stormtroopers and other planetary natives. But they’re discouraged by leaden lightsaber controls that slow the pace of the battles and clunky dual-analog stick Force gripping that sucks the joy out of hurling droids and cargo containers at foes. Because of the poor targeting system, players may spend half their Force bar electrocuting an inanimate object instead of an attacking enemy.

The game’s faulty mechanics extend to the double jump, which sometimes staggers Starkiller in midair to mar any attempt at a precise leap across platforms. But he stops completely dead in the air if the player tries to attack, so any sort of diving strikes are out of the apprentice’s arsenal as well. Maneuvering Starkiller is further plagued by an inert camera that demands frequent manipulation.

The combat is slightly redeemed by the diversity of foes — some of whom can only be killed by a single attack style — and the inclusion of a dash button. The latter technique can lend battles a hyperkinetic feeling when Starkiller rushes through blaster fire in starship hallways or hurdles down a cavern chased by foes native to the fungal planet of Felucia. Hulking enemies like AT-STs and rancors can be finished off with fun quick-time events, as can the boss battles, which sometimes turn into technically lacking wars of attrition with fellow Jedi.

Hosting the action are a series of masterfully presented levels. The game’s oft-discussed three physics engines are evident in each swaying mushroom stalk on Felucia, each dangling tube of carbonite on Nar Shaddaa and each railway bent by the body of a flung Stormtrooper. “The Force Unleashed” boasts only a few skillful feats of level design — namely the vibrant passages through Felucia’s vegetation and the towering infrastructure of the game’s final level, which I’ll keep secret. But each environment is rendered in stunning detail and John Williams’ unmistakable score seals their magical aura.

Most fans of the films will find other small facets of “The Force Unleashed” to savor. In my case, it was the chance to stack AT-ST heads to reach high ledges and battle a few familiar faces in familiar locations.

But almost no “Star Wars” devotees will enjoy the downing of the Star Destroyer, which went from the game’s ultimate “wow” moment in previews to a nightmare of faulty prompts and annoying difficulty in reality. I found the lack of fun disturbing.

If you play
Game: "Star Wars: The Force Unleashed"
Score: C+
Parental rating: T for violence
Publisher: LucasArts
Developer: LucasArts
Platform: PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, PSP, Xbox 360, Wii, Nintendo DS, iPhone, N-Gage
Price: $59.99
Play: Single
The final boss: "Star Wars" fans should flock to "The Force Unleashed" for its impressive story, but watching every cut scene requires them to play through some rough stretches of Force-powered melee combat.

(Published Sept. 25, 2008 in The Citizen)

PixelJunk Eden

2008-08-14T10:38:00.003-05:00

Ask any video game console owner when downloadable games earned their respect. You'll get several different answers.

Some may say it happened when “Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved” was released through Xbox Live Arcade. Others may claim it was the success of Nintendo's Virtual Console on the Wii that sold them on the concept.

There is no right answer. But saying the arrival of “PixelJunk Eden” on the PlayStation Network certainly isn't wrong.

This stylized platform game places players in gardens as a tiny creature called a Grimp. Players control the Grimp's trajectory with the left analog stick and propel it in that direction - like a jump. This action is the crux of the Grimp's ascent up the plants of the gardens in order to obtain Spectra, which signal the completion of a garden stage.

As the Grimp jumps into plants, it sticks to them regardless of the angle at which it hits the curvaceous structures. From there, the Grimp can either jump toward another plant, or swing in a circular motion at the end of a short-lived strand fixed to a point on the plant. It is with this swing action that the player can collide with aimlessly floating foes, who are turned to pollen upon impact. Nearby seeds absorb the pollen and, once filled, blossom into additional stalks along which the Grimp can climb.

As these plants waver in the air, they steadily complicate the platforming with exacting physics friendly only to the most well-timed jumps. In later stages, the Grimp encounters floating enemies that actually attack it by bouncing it across the screen or severing its swinging strands.

Speeding the pace of the action is the game's synchronization meter, a life meter that automatically counts down as the Grimp swings and jumps through the garden. The meter can be replenished by collecting crystals in the same swinging manner as the Grimp collides with enemies. Though the meter can frustrate in a player's first few “Eden” go-rounds by cutting the action short, learning to manage it comes naturally. Without that obstacle, the game would simply be too easy and, as a result, rather fruitless.

Once players master the deceptively simple controls, there is a kinetic grace to behold in the Grimp's movements. With well-timed swings and jumps, the Grimp can weave its way through the baroque garden landscapes in a balletic manner reminiscent of Spider-Man. The action's balance of accessible controls with a deep play dynamic will likely addict many a player.

Accentuating the spectacle are the flourishes of light and color that accompany collisions with foes and the filling of the air with pollen. The game's whole aesthetic is a breathtaking collage of layered patterns, ornate plants and intensely warm and cool shades. Drawing players in further is a trance music soundtrack so organic to the pace and look of the action, it's faintly noticeable.

Some players may feel tedium as they revisit gardens to collect all five of their Spectra. But with cooperative play and a point system contingent on completion time, seed pollination count and other factors, “Eden's” replay value fades little. Players not content to compete against themselves can compare their scores to the game's online leader boards, and the PlayStation Network's new trophy system provides another batch of challenges.

There are more than enough apples in “PixelJunk Eden” to not only delight players, but convince any remaining doubters that downloadable games will compete with their pricier physical counterparts in quality.

If you play
Game: PixelJunk Eden
Score: A
Parental rating: E for everyone
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment of America
Developer: Q-Games
Platform: PlayStation 3 (PlayStation Network)
Price: $9.99
Features: 1 player, multiplayer
The final boss: With its vibrant and addictive platform play, “PixelJunk Eden” may ultimately prove a key moment in the popular acceptance of downloadable games as a legitimate delivery system for the medium.

Gazing gamers

2008-08-11T12:31:00.001-05:00

The cinematic scale of "Metal Gear Solid 4" shames previous attempts to merge movies with games - even Director Hideo Kojima's own. The sharp script is realized by Hollywood-caliber voice acting, particularly from Christopher Randolph as Hal and Khari Payton as Drebin. The facial animations and body language of characters like Snake and Meryl convey emotions with amazing subtlety. Images of the scenes Kojima conceives - namely the boat showdown in Eastern Europe and the balletic fight between Raiden and Vamp - overwhelm with their scale and linger long past the game's conclusion.

As a game successfully woven within a grander movie, "MGS4" ripens for criticisms geared at both mediums, including the rich body of theory birthed by film studies over the last century. I couldn't help applying one of those theories to one of the game's most lasting images: The female body.

Kojima's camera captures a lot of it: Naomi and Big Mama's wide cleavage, the Beauties' skin-tight camo suits and even Mei Ling's shapely Navy uniform. But the game derives its sexuality from more than just the female character design; it also stems from the prominence these characters' enticing features enjoy on screen. Several shots leave the females' heads out of the frame to focus on their curvy figures. Others, especially the post-boss battle Beauty shots, take stylized angles to accentuate the women's contours. Often the characters are animated in such a way that flaunts their bodies, even at the expense of the internal logic of the script. Mei Ling bends over to pick up her pointer, but then, for no apparent reason, she remains in that position - on all fours, her butt arched up - and continues briefing her crew as they stare.

Then there are the moments when Kojima enables the players' lascivious eyes. He gives them the options of leafing through the Playboys Snake uses to bait enemies and shaking the Sixaxis controller to jiggle Rose's breasts during codec conversations. In fact, the chests of almost all the females in the game improbably bounce at least once.

Kojima seems to go out of his way to ensure that his mostly male players will gorge themselves on sexual eye candy. Whether he intended to or not, this aspect of his authorship presents a striking example of the male gaze, a concept introduced by Laura Mulvey in her 1973 essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Mulvey suggested that film narratives often frame the action from the (heterosexual) male point of view and focus on them as the causative forces of that action, while females are traditionally pleasure objects relegated to the fringes of it. And perhaps the most noticeable visual trace of this cinematic trend is the camera's emphasis on the female body.

Whether "Metal Gear Solid 4" falls in line with the other tenets of Mulvey's theory is certainly worthy of debate - but another debate. For now, let's limit the discussion to the B-movie-degree prominence of female curves in Kojima's camera. There is precedent for this symptom of the male gaze in video games, both in Kojima's own series (Big Mama in "Snake Eater") and as far back as the NES days (when players could speed-run "Metroid" for a glimpse at Samus in a bikini). You could stick to the surface explanation that gamers are mostly male, like to look at females, and game designers know this. But what else does this persistent trait of video games say about the medium?

- From www.8bithacks.com, a new video game blog I'm co-authoring with some friends.

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

2008-06-19T09:13:00.005-05:00

“War has changed,” warns Solid Snake.

But in Snake's swan song, “Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots,” change is good - almost flawlessly good.

With wary eyes the game imagines nations waging proxy wars through private mercenary companies in the not-too-distant future. As battles rage, businesses reap the rewards of this “war economy” like players in a slaughterous stock market.

The (supposedly) last chapter of Hideo Kojima's mythic stealth action series places an older Snake on battlefields across the globe in this grim future. With little time left until his weakening body fails him, Snake sets out to eliminate the boss of these war-mongering businesses: Liquid, Snake's fellow clone and arch-foe of “Metal Gear Solid,” who plots to topple the U.S. government.

Tracking Liquid across the Middle East, South America and other diverse war-torn locales takes Snake to their front lines, where Liquid's forces face off with rebel troops in chaotic scenes of explosions and dying screams. As a third party passing through the combat, Snake can complete his missions in myriad ways. “Patriots,” like previous “Metal Gear” titles, lets the player choose how badly they bloody their path.

Sneaking past soldiers and leaving them alive demands patience and alertness, but the inherent thrill of successful stealth in “Patriots” rewards every second spent lying in wait for the coast to clear. This tactic is aided by a few new toys, such as Snake's OctoCamo suit, which can automatically adopt the colors and patterns of its surroundings. It does so when Snake presses up against a surface, an action that was cleverly mapped to its own button. This control removes a small trouble of previous “Solid” games, where trying to perform context-sensitive actions like climbing and hanging off ledges would sometimes line Snake's back against a surface instead.

While playing dead - another fun new trick - players can sprawl on the ground, faintly visible, and stick up a patrolling soldier as he approaches. The Close-Quarter Combat controls are tweaked with tremendous success. Manipulating a captured enemy - sticking him up, interrogating him, knocking him out or killing him - is far more manageable than in previous “Solid” games. Foes lying in wait around a corner are also susceptible to the Metal Gear Mk. II, a tiny wheeled scout robot that can not only electrocute enemies but also provide Snake a helpful picture of the path before him. The last of these welcome stealth upgrades is the Solid Eye, a mechanized eye patch that empowers the player with night vision and binocular views to ease Snake's scouting. This tool also strengthens the parallels between the older Solid Snake and his father, Naked Snake, the one-eyed protagonist of “Metal Gear Solid 3” who would become “Metal Gear” foe Big Boss.

Other new game play facets include Drebin Points, a deep but slightly superfluous form of currency for purchasing and customizing firearms, and the psyche meter, a measure of Snake's mental well-being. When exhaustion, discomfort or depression siphon this bar, the player experiences the effects in the form of slowed movement and unsteadied aim. This elegiac substitute for the hunger system of “Metal Gear Solid 3” expresses the deterioration of the elderly Snake even during game play to heighten his pathos with the player.

The other strategic option players face in “Patriots” is mowing down the soldiers who would do the same to Snake if they spot him. Pushing up the body count poses a more direct risk to the hero's health, but it spares the player the time-consuming process of careful sneaking. With a new first-person perspective that allows movement while aiming, the gun play of “Patriots” achieves remarkable smoothness that mirrors the vast improvements to its stealth play. Finding parity between these two tactical approaches to the game in terms of both accessibility and pure fun is an astonishing feat on Kojima's part.

His masterful design of “Patriots” widens the player's range of possible ways to advance through it. The maps - particularly those in the Middle East, South America and Prague - are much larger in scale than those of previous “Solid” games. In countless patterns players can weave themselves within their brilliantly varied topography, whether it's the tiered cliffs and sinuous streams of South America or the roofless maze of homes in the Middle East. Snake may ignore about 80 percent of an area in a single play-through, even though these environments invite players to savor every splendorous detail. Kojima thus uses the beauty of the game against the player, as lingering to look exposes Snake to enemy eyes.

Another new wild card in the game play is the battling armies occupying Snake's surroundings. He may ally himself with the rebel soldiers by killing their mercenary foes, and in doing so free himself of danger in the native forces' presence. The firefights between the sides have their advantages, such as the muffling of Snake's footsteps and the plentiful items left on fallen soldiers. But the action can also disrupt the play. A player may take time carefully positioning themselves to pounce on an enemy when the soldier is suddenly cut down by gunfire. In addition to its frustration, this dynamic of “Patriots” can rob Snake of his agency and almost cast him in a supporting role in his own game. In the midst of the Middle East chapter's undeniable resonance with an at-war American public, this particular aspect of the game echoes the absence of control the playing audience may feel for its soldiers abroad.

When players aren't engaged in the trademark tactical espionage action of “Patriots,” they're placed in wonderfully imagined action set pieces that range from third-person shooting in an abandoned and blown-apart Middle Eastern hotel to a rail shooter aboard a motorcycle in Prague. Even the stealth creatively shifts in tone when Snake tracks a kidnapped ally through the labyrinthine South American hills, and later trails a fellow trench coat-wearing gentleman through the misty streets of Prague in a scene strikingly reminiscent of film noir classic “The Third Man.”

The exciting pace of the action sustains itself with excellent boss battles, most of which pit Snake against the thunder-voiced shellshock victims of the Beauty and the Beast Brigade. Their animalistic metal exoskeletons encase females whose sex appeal is eclipsed only by their madness. All four fights achieve a mixture of frenetic strategizing and modest terror, but puppeteer psychic Screaming Mantis ably tops her cohorts in both of these areas.

Like previous “Solid” tales, the story of “Patriots” unfolds between bouts of game play in several lengthy (some top an hour) cut scenes chronicling a dizzying amount of double-crosses and secret agendas. Despite the indigestibility of all its details about nanomachines and artificial intelligence, “Patriots” succeeds at building sympathetic characters whose relationships form a weighty emotional touchstone in the story. By the time Snake lifelessly crawls toward the game's climax in a beautifully desperate moment, players will surely rally him on as they beat on the triangle button to continue his advance.

To much delight, “Patriots” reintroduces major players from previous “Metal Gear” games like a reunion TV special. But their roles feel organic to the plot, not indulgent or superfluous. At least one gasp or cheer at the sight of a character is likely to sound from the living room of “Solid” fans during their first time through “Patriots.” Players new to the series may find themselves less swept up in the mythos, but the skillfully directed scenes should leash their attention while they wait to continue.

“Patriots” also leaps far beyond its predecessors in the pure cinematic quality of its cut scenes. A fight between “Metal Gear Solid 2” foes Raiden and Vamp shames any big-screen showdown in the ingenuity and kinetic beauty of its choreography. A shootout between “Metal Gear Solid” characters Meryl Silverburg, Johnny Sasaki and hordes of enemy soldiers harkens back to the screwball comedies of Tracy and Hepburn with their sharp repartee in the face of mortal danger.

Such filmic moments are helped by facial animations that betray the subtlest of emotions, be they Dr. Naomi Campbell's ambivalence about her dashed alliances or Otacon's sorrow at seeing his friend Snake age away. The Hollywood caliber voice acting finds its finest example in the nomadic arms dealer Drebin, who speaks with a salesman's relaxed charisma in a role that could easily have been sunken by overacting.

Gorgeously next-generation graphics and a score of epic scale - highlighted by Snake's poignant stringed theme - polish off the overall package of “Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.” “Metal Gear Online” extends the game's endurance with its robust shooting play. As arguably the first major exclusive title for the PlayStation 3, “Patriots” provides the mightiest of anchors and should weigh heavily on the minds of any prospective system buyers. Kojima's brilliant design and direction ensures that Solid Snake doesn't merely sneak into video game history, he passes on with all the glory befitting his iconic place in that history. His exit is the one change in “Patriots” players may not be quick to embrace.

If you play Game: “Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots”
Score: 98 out of 100
Parental rating: Mature for blood, crude humor, strong language, suggestive themes and violence
Publisher: Konami
Director: Hideo Kojima
Platform: PlayStation 3
Price: $59.99
Features: 1 player, online
Life span: 20 hours
The final boss: “Guns of the Patriots” lands “Metal Gear Solid” on the next console generation with numerous improvements to its well-imagined stealth and shooting game play, as well as a spectacle of a story laden with rich characters and stunning action.

(photo courtesy of Kotaku)

(published June 19, 2008 in The Citizen)

Okami

2008-05-08T08:58:00.002-05:00

When Capcom ported "Resident Evil 4" to the Wii, it seemed likely that "Okami" was next in the publisher's line of last-generation games to find new life on the Nintendo system.

The highly praised PlayStation 2 game met with meager sales due to its arrival during the system's twilight years. On the Wii, a new and more attentive audience could discover "Okami" and give the game a rightfully warm reception.

But what really beckoned "Okami" to the Wii was the game's unique style of play. Fewer game play elements are better suited to the Wiimote than the game's Celestial Brush - a directionally controlled ink brush with which players can slash at enemies, turn night into day or plant bombs simply by drawing on screen. On the PS2, these actions were accomplished by pushing an analog stick with one's thumb. So one would suspect that miming these strokes with a Wiimote would be much more fun.

But "Okami's" controls don't work on the Wii quite as beautifully as the game's breathtaking art. Players can accomplish most brush commands with ease, but every so often an action takes half a dozen attempts to execute. The slash command in particular is sometimes a pain to achieve due to the difficulty of precisely waving the Wiimote in a straight lateral motion across a tree or an adversary. Most players will adjust to this problematic control within an hour of starting the 40-hour game, so it ultimately presents a minor hassle.

Another control downgrade arises during combat, when wolf deity Amaterasu must rid the Japanese countryside of the demonic beings that haunt it. The hero's attack and dodge actions have been mapped, respectively, to flicks of the Wiimote and nunchuk. This scheme slightly slows the pace of the game's frequent battles - sometimes to the point of mental and physical tedium - from the button-mashing frenzy they became in the PS2 edition.

These downsides to the Wii edition of "Okami" don't detract too heavily from what is otherwise a brilliantly inspired game. As the white wolf sun god Amaterasu, players must use the Celestial Brush to stop a plague of darkness that has beset feudal Japan. The muted Amaterasu travels the countryside with the motormouth Issun, a microscopic guide, to aid villagers and add new powers to the Celestial Brush in hopes of slowly repelling the curse of the eight-headed demon Orochi.

The story is advanced with occasionally boring cut scenes - namely the 10-minute-plus opening - but the playful dialogue and absorbing characters that occupy Amaterasu's adventure liven up the interludes.

"Okami's" Japan is presented in endlessly vibrant cel-shaded color that vivifies the setting to the point where players may feel content to simply run around as Amaterasu and take in all the graphic splendor. In this area "Okami" benefits from its adaptation to the more powerful Wii, which depicts the game's swirls and explosions of color and light in sharper graphic detail than the PS2. The wall of flame that encircles Amaterasu in battle is saturated with billowing textures and brilliant hues, while the water bodies and skies cool the screen with tranquil waves of blues.

Between the aesthetic and the mythic sweep of "Okami," players may feel like they're participating in an epic cartoon of the finest artistic quality. Though the PS2 edition offers a somewhat easier control system, the game's glory is preserved well enough on the Wii to warrant another play-through. And those entirely new to the game would greatly enjoy picking up the brush.

"Okami"
Score: 92 out of 100
Parental rating: Teen for blood and gore, crude humor, fantasy violence, suggestive themes, use of alcohol and use of tobacco
Publisher: Capcom
Designer: Hideki Kamiya
Platform: Wii
Price: $39.99
Features: 1 player
Life span: 40 hours
The final boss: The Wii incarnation of the PlayStation 2 masterpiece "Okami" deserves another play, despite trading smoother controls for more pristine graphics.

(photo courtesy of www.ign.com)

(published May 8, 2008 in The Citizen)

Metal Gear Solid 3

2008-05-01T10:47:00.003-05:00

Like its hero, Solid Snake, the "Metal Gear Solid" series appeared cornered after its second chapter. But, like Snake, it made a cunning escape with "Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater."

The 2004 installment of Hideo Kojima's landmark stealth series (revised in 2006 as "Subsistence") was a potent shot of adrenaline after "Substance" left players exhausted by puzzling storytelling. "Subsistence" not only reinvigorated the series with a more digestible and scaled back plot, it drastically refined its game play as well.

As Naked Snake - the genetic predecessor of long-time "Metal Gear" protagonist Solid Snake - players parachute into the Russian jungle in the early 1960s to rescue a nuclear researcher from the Soviets before he can complete a doomsday weapon for their army. From the time period to the soulful, if over-the-top opening song to the curvy charms of femme fatale EVA, the game has all the makings of a James Bond movie.

Many of the cutscenes are marred by the voice acting of David Hayter as Naked Snake, which sounds like he swallowed gasoline before he spat his lines. It's still somewhat tough to absorb the tale due to its abundance of secret agendas and double crosses between the U.S. and Soviet sides. But lacking the philosophical musings of "Substance" and their intolerable length, "Subsistence's" story plays out with much more intrigue.

The game play receives a major refreshing due to the introduction of a camouflage system. In Snake's arsenal are several outfits and face paint color schemes with which he can blend into the game's assortment of environments, from the overgrown foliage of the jungle to the copper-colored mountainside.

Replacing the map players used to keep Snake out of his enemies' sights is a percentage index at the top of the screen indicating Snake's degree of invisibility. The result of this switch is a stealth dynamic that slows Snake's advance and requires more attention to his surroundings in order to discern the proper path through them.

Simply running through the minefields of patrolling guards is no longer possible, players must often lie in wait and survey the scene from a safe hiding place as soldiers loom inches away. Though this game play model may test one's patience at first, it ultimately rewards in heavier doses through its heightened realism and suspense.

The camouflage system of "Subsistence" is also to be credited for its most exciting boss battles. The first finds Snake in a sniper fight with an elderly master marksman simply named The End. Spanning three massively detailed forest maps, the battle can take more than an hour to complete as players scour that landscape for signs of their well-hidden foe. Snake, meanwhile, must cloak himself in the lush forest or fall under the fire of The End's tranquilizing darts.

The resourcefulness, calm and strategy demanded by this duel easily ranks it among the finest boss battles in video game history. As the fight ensues players may curse The End and the game itself, but they'll probably want to face off again they've conquered him.

The second standout boss battle is at the game's actual end, against Snake's mentor and paramour, The Boss. On a much smaller battlefield blanketed by white lilies, Snake must evade the hand-to-hand attacks of his more skilled enemy by hiding in the massive flower bed and catching her off guard. The remainder of the game's boss fights are a bit too easy and unimaginative, but mildly fun at a minimum.

Another plate to balance in the boss battles is Snake's health, which is handled in an entirely new way in "Subsistence." Players must remedy each wound with proper care through a medical interface. The game also adds a stamina meter, which Snake must replenish through food captured in the Russian wilderness or else face dizzied aim and coordination. The relentless doting on both life bars is another dose of realism that livens up "Subsistence" with its new difficulties.

By reinventing the "Metal Gear" series' stealth play and paring down the prominence of its story, "Subsistence" surpasses its immediate predecessor but still comes up a bit short of the ingenuity and brilliant design of "Metal Gear Solid." However, the third "Solid" leaves plenty of hope to subsist on prior to the June release of "Metal Gear Solid 4."

If you play
Game: "Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence" (part of "Metal Gear Solid: The Essential Collection")
Score: 93 out of 100
Parental rating: Mature for blood and gore, partial nudity and violence
Publisher: Konami
Director: Hideo Kojima
Platform: PlayStation 2
Price: $29.99 (collection also includes "Metal Gear Solid" and "Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance")
Features: 1 player
Life span: 15 hours
The final boss: "Subsistence" scales back the bloated storytelling tendencies of previous "Solid" titles and breathes new life into the series' stealth game play.

(photo courtesy of www.gamepro.com)

(published May 1, 2008 in The Citizen)

Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance

2008-04-17T11:46:00.004-05:00

“Metal Gear Solid” merged movies with video games almost perfectly. Director Hideo Kojima balanced exciting stealth action with episodes of a grand story of government espionage that explored themes of identity, bondage and fate.

But in “Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance” for the PlayStation 2, that balance is lost. And the spill isn't too pretty.

Solid Snake returns in the game's prologue to infiltrate a ship transporting the newest model of Metal Gear, the walking nuclear tank with the power to wipe out nations. After that mission concludes in chaos, the player continues the remaining bulk of the game two years later as Raiden, an androgynous upstart spy for Snake's old unit, FOX-HOUND. Raiden provides a stubborn, emotive and - in the eyes of some players - girly complement to the grizzled resolve of Solid Snake.

But considering the overblown story surrounding him, Raiden's behavior is suitably bewildered. In “Substance,” he is plucked from virtual training missions and sent to Big Shell, a massive water purification plant, to rescue the president from another host of terrorists threatening to unleash a nuclear holocaust.

That's the premise. But the plot that follows would require every page in this paper to recount. For every 10 minutes of game play, there seems to be another 15 of cut scenes and radio conversations chronicling enough double-crosses, hidden agendas and secret bloodlines to weary Tom Clancy. Raiden learns that the terrorists who kidnapped the president are targeting the Patriots, a shadow government with designs of world domination through digital censorship.

Keeping track of the allegiances of the president, mercenary Olga Gurlukovich and arch-villain Revolver Ocelot may prove the most puzzling challenge in the game. By the time of its finale, even the internal logic connecting its events is gone due to a Manhattan destruction scene's removal during the game's post-Sept. 11 completion.

Much of the dialogue is plainly boring and bloated by philosophical musings about the elusiveness of truth and the democratization of information - issues you may not be willing to pontificate on while parked in front of a TV. Snake and Raiden's frequent one-word question responses to others' ramblings are further signs of faulty writing.

When “Substance's” story isn't unraveling like an overcooked spy thriller, players can enjoy the refined stealth action of an otherwise pleasant game. Enemy soldiers, cameras and mines again dot the hostile territory Snake and Raiden must cross to complete their missions.

But the protagonists are aided by several new abilities. Through a new first-person aiming system, enemy soldiers can be held up at gun-point for ammunition and health items. When a soldier spots your character, you can snipe his radio to stop him from calling for backup. If you subdue the soldier, you must carry their carcass out of sight should more soldiers show up when their comrade doesn't check in.

The direct result of these new facets of game play is heightened realism and a more rewarding stealth dynamic. There are still moments when a soldier will stare in your direction from 20 yards away without detecting you, but they are otherwise more plausibly alert to your presence. The new skills of “Substance” - which also include leaping forward mid-sprint, climbing atop boxes and clinging to catwalks - challenge a player's resourcefulness while checking their patience like previous “Metal Gear” games.

The infiltration segments of the game do not balance with its boss battles as masterfully as in “Metal Gear Solid,” but the battles themselves are mostly well-imagined. There is another surface-to-air missile showdown with an aircraft, and another struggle against the mammoth Metal Gear - many of them.

Raiden must tend to ticking explosives while trying to stop the roller-skating mad bomber Fatman with precision shooting, then later provide cover fire in a sniper challenge that cleverly twists the duel with Sniper Wolf in “Solid.” But terrorist leader Solidus Snake is beaten too easily in the final battle through swordplay abruptly introduced late in the game.

No part of “Substance's” play tops the ingenuity of the clash with psychic Psycho Mantis in “Metal Gear Solid,” but the fourth wall collapses more often in the sequel. At one point, Raiden's superior tells the player to press the reset button. The “mission failed” screen is flashed mid-fight in a later set piece. Lacking the ingenuity and dark humor of Mantis' antics, as well as the context of an absorbing story, these moments instead feel gimmicky and frustrating.

Only a few other issues pop up in the play mechanics. The game's cameras, which usually pan along one axis in three-quarters bird's eye position, sometimes obstruct a critical view of Snake or Raiden as they prepare to pounce on or sneak past a foe. Climbing atop boards and leaping over railings may require a few attempts because the character tends to lean his back against the surfaces when close.

As part of “Metal Gear Solid: The Essential Collection,” “Substance” includes some throwaway bonus missions and skateboarding side quests onto the disc as distractions. With substantial story editing, the game itself could have earned its “Essential” status, instead of sneaking away with it.

If you play

Game: “Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance” (part of “Metal Gear Solid: The Essential Collection”)

Score: 85 out of 100

Parental rating: Mature for blood and gore, partial nudity and violence

Publisher: Konami

Director: Hideo Kojima
Platform: PlayStation 2

Price: $29.99

Features: 1 player

Life span: 10 hours

The final boss: “Substance” recaptures most of the excitement in its predecessor's stealth play while overstuffing its cinematic side to the point of ridiculousness.

(Published April 17, 2008 in The Citizen)

Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles

2008-03-06T11:44:00.002-05:00

The main chapters of the "Resident Evil" saga have been about solving puzzles, navigating labyrinthine environments and playing target practice with legions of zombies by pumping them full of lead.

"Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles" is all about the target practice. This first-person rail shooter places players in settings from "Resident Evil 0" through "Nemesis" and beyond, where they must gun down zombie after zombie after mutated dog after tentacled monster. There are no Spade Keys nor Moon Crests to uncover, no electronic doors to unlock and, best of all, no five-second door opening load screens to sit through.

The events of "Umbrella Chronicles" are narrated by Albert Wesker, the all-purpose snake in the grass bad guy of several "Resident Evil" games. His story will be all too familiar to fans of the series. The Umbrella Corporation creates a mutagenic virus that turns people into zombies and animals into really frightening animals. The virus then breaks loose, first in a mansion testing facility and then in the surrounding Raccoon City. As a different law enforcement officer or do-gooder in each installment of "Chronicles" corresponding to an original game, you must survive the zombie hordes with sharp eyesight and a sharper trigger finger.

"Umbrella Chronicles" plays like fellow zombie rail shooter "House of the Dead." Players travel through environments along a pre-determined path as enemies pop out along the way. The Wiimote is pointed at the screen like "Dead's" light gun and the "B" button serves as the trigger. Re-loading your weapon (accomplished with a shake of the Wiimote) is a crucial point of strategy; firing an empty chamber as a baddie descends on you could spell death.

The inclusion of motion controls and quick time events adds massive depth to the point-and-shoot play in "Chronicles." Zombies who grab hold of you can be shaken off with a shake of the Wiimote, while charging bosses can be dodged by quickly pressing the button indicated by an on-screen prompt. Another button cycles through several weapons in the player's arsenal and yet another can be used to swipe their knife when leeches or spiders leap at them. These facets of the game keep players on their toes by preventing them from getting too comfortable pulling only the trigger "B" button with their index fingers.

The acute targeting provides steady difficulty in the form of enemies who don't fall down and die (again) whenever you shoot within a foot of their bodies. As in "Resident Evil 4," the zombies react depending where your shot hits. Their knees buckle from a leg shot and their heads jerk back from a head shot. Sometimes vanquishing an enemy requires an almost frustrating degree of precision, particularly the mutated version of Umbrella scientist James Marcus at the conclusion of the "0" chapter. But the challenge is never too steep, and the degree of strategic targeting required to defeat bosses like Marcus and the Tyrant monster can be quite rewarding.

As players move through each level they can acquire ammunition and health items by pointing at them and pressing the "A" button. Shooting at breakable objects in each environment uncovers additional treasures. The well-crafted levels levy wave after wave of foes at players, each more menacing than the last, with mild pauses in between that permit exploration.

As demonstrated by "Metroid Prime 3: Corruption," "Medal of Honor: Heroes" and now "Umbrella Chronicles," the Wiimote and nunchuk is an ideal and fluid set-up for shooters that make use of the Wiimote's infrared pointer. The Wii Zapper peripheral's uselessness is only further demonstrated by a game like "Chronicles," which demands use of the "A" button - positioned at the top of the Zapper gun - and motion controls, which are awkward to perform with the two-handled gun.

In the beautifully creepy environments of the "Resident Evil" series," "Umbrella Chronicles" brings multi-dimensional action to every player who has ever wished for less puzzles and more zombies. And after the pulse-spiking thrill of blasting through corridors full of zombies, the calm of the puzzles may seem a little less boring.

If you play
Game: "Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles"
Score: 80 out of 100
Parental rating: Mature for blood and gore and violence
Publisher: Capcom
Platform: Wii
Price: $49.99
Features: 2 player
Life span: 6 hours
The final boss: "Umbrella Chronicles" streamlines the action of "Resident Evil" games, but the thrill of the series' survival horror remains intact.

(photo courtesy of http://www.trustedreviews.com/)

(published March 6, 2008 in The Citizen)

No More Heroes

2008-02-21T12:50:00.006-05:00

Quentin Tarantino would love “No More Heroes.”

Like “Kill Bill,” “Heroes” features a protagonist - young anime enthusiast Travis Touchdown - out to eliminate a list of assassins. Together, these targets comprise the United Assassins Association's top 10 members. Touchdown is number 11.

Unlike Tarantino's Bride character, however, Touchdown seems to be knocking his targets off for nookie. With teenage lust in his eyes, he is led through his conquest by Sylvia Christel, a blonde femme fatale with a silly foreign accent that falls somewhere between MadTV's Miss Swan and Famke Janssen in “Goldeneye.”

This swordplay sandbox title for the Wii also wears its pulpy influences on its slick leather sleeve in the same manner as the lovably self-indulgent director.

Perhaps the most unmistakable influence is that of “Star Wars.” Touchdown dispatches his marks with a “beam katana” that happens to look, sound and slice like a lightsaber. Any self-respecting “Star Wars” fan should relish the chance to maim rooms full of foes with the mythic weapon - especially once Touchdown upgrades to a five-bladed sword that he can swing through enemies like an electric whiffle ball bat.

“Heroes” is also rife with references to professional wrestling. When Touchdown isn't trimming limbs from his opponents, he's fracturing them with German suplexes and other staples of the squared circle. Players add moves to their arsenal by picking up Mexican lucha libre masks and watching videos of matches.

While thick with inspiration, “Heroes” achieves addictive depth in its hack-n-slash game play. Once a foe is ready to be finished off, an arrow is flashed on the screen to signal which way you must wave the Wiimote to strike the final blow. The system isn't quite precise, as players can sometimes pull off death blows with delayed or even incorrect motions. Still, there's a lot of fun in making frenzied hand movements to keep the blood flowing. Your strikes also vary whether you aim the Wiimote up or down; an enemy with his sword raised, for instance, is vulnerable to low slashes.

Further fleshing out the combat is a slot machine that runs at the bottom of the screen following each kill. With a row of sevens or any other icon, the player is rewarded with a short-term super attack, such as one-hit kills or a first-person point of view from which you can eviscerate foes with projectile energy.

Each kill is punctuated with a red X streaking across the screen, an erupting geyser of blood from your victim's neck and a stream of coins filling your pockets. Along with the superfluous profanity in the game's script, the violence goes a long way to mark the mature gamer's territory on the Wii.

As the meat of the game, the fight sequences prove savory. Once you've mastered your moves and taken on long corridors, parking garages or even a baseball diamond full of foes, the bloody ecstasy of the action rarely dries out. The boss battles with the UAA members add a strategic dimension to the action by asking you to memorize - and evade - their deadly attack patterns.

The other portions of “No More Heroes,” however, don't come close to matching the excitement of the combat. When he's not hunting down UAA members, Touchdown must raise the funds required to enroll in the fights. He does so through mundane minigame tasks, like collecting garbage with a flick of the Wiimote or pumping gas by pressing the ‘B' button until the tank hits a precise level. Only by performing this grunt work can you open up assassination missions that pay you significantly more money.

There's plenty else to do in Touchdown's hometown of Santa Destroy, such as purchasing stylish clothes for your hero or lifting weights with Wiimote gestures to power up. But traveling from place to place in Touchdown's white motorcycle makes such tasks a frustrating chore. It awkwardly bounces off surfaces and throws Touchdown from the seat at the slightest collision. The sandbox environment of Santa Destroy also lacks the living, breathing aura you could chew on in a game like “Grand Theft Auto 3,” so players may find themselves hurrying along the sterile highways to track down their next kill.

Along with the furious combat, the look of “No More Heroes” is another source of redemption for the game's faults. A cel-shaded graphic style casts harsh shadows over Santa Destroy and its colorful denizens. Menus and on-screen icons are pixelated in the manner of old Atari games, and a “Space Invaders”-style minigame even helps you pass the time during a bus ride to a boss battle. This sort of nerdy self-indulgence serves “No More Heroes” well and greatly strengthens what would otherwise be a solid swordplay title.

If you play
Game: “No More Heroes"
Score: 80 out of 100
Parental rating: Mature for blood and gore, crude humor, intense violence, sexual themes and strong language
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platform: Nintendo Wii
Price: $49.99
Features: 1 player
Life span: Ten hours
The final boss: Over-the-top gore and delicious sword play make “No More Heroes” an ideal game for devoted fans of its several junk culture influences.

(Photo courtesy of http://www.nintendolife.com/)

(published Feb. 21, 2008 in The Citizen)

Super Mario Brothers 3

2007-12-09T23:52:00.001-05:00

You can beat "Super Mario Brothers 3" one of two ways: The short way, or the long way. But you'll want to beat it the long way, over and over again, until you've memorized the spectacular landscape of every level and the melody that accompanies it. Therein lies the brilliance of the crown jewel of the NES.

You can dash through a few levels, find the warp whistles and trounce Bowser within 20 minutes. Or you can spend a day digging up every white mushroom house, finding every Tanooki suit and juggling yourself off the backs of infinitely spawning goombas until you earn a 1-up with each jump.

In between these two paths are secrets that beckon you at every turn, and although they bear little importance on the outcome of the game, they offer challenges too fun to ignore. Skip Water Land and you'll miss the pulse-pounding thrill of Boss Bass trying to swallow you whole. Skip Sky Land and you'll miss the chance to shitkick Koopas in Kuribo's shoe.

Then there's treasures like the hammer suit in World 6-10, which you could only find by: (a) Thawing a set of frozen munchers with fireballs, (b) Backtracking to a vine and scaling it, (c) Hitting a high-in-the-sky P-switch and (d) Clearing the coins from above the pipe leading to the suit in the seconds before they switch back to munchers.

You could easily do without the suit. But it's a grand reward easily worth the relatively grand challenge. This principle applies to the game as a whole: The more you engage it, the more you enjoy it.

The range of play invites new gamers, who may have enough trouble navigating donut lifts, as well as the hardcore types who may pull their hair out trying to locate the coin ship. But, chances are, both will take pleasure in playing the game to the end.

"Super Mario Brothers 3's" triumph is all the more impressive with respect to "Super Mario Brothers," itself a phenomenal game whose mechanics were blown wide open by its 1988 successor, "SMB2." At the core of "3" is the same platform dynamic with myriad new dimensions. New lifts zig and zag and fall out from under your feet. You can grab hold of koopa shells and kick them toward blocks or goombas whenever you please. And perhaps most memorably, you can gain enough speed to leap across the screen and, if sporting the raccoon suit, fly.

The widened cast of enemies enriches the play as well. Thwomps can pancake you, fire-chomps and boos can follow you through the air and giant-sized hammer brothers can earthquake you into a fleeting standstill while their projectiles fall on your helpless head.

There's much more than I can list, but every last detail of "Super Mario Brothers 3" demands to be enjoyed. And that's why I consider it the greatest NES game of all time.

"White Light/White Heat" by the Velvet Underground

2007-10-14T01:48:00.001-05:00

I feel cool when I listen to the Velvet Underground.

Not because it means I can name-drop them like a bottomless hipster credit card. Which, mind you, they are. The group has shaped more musical genres than any other, save for the Beatles. But the Velvet Underground is guaranteed vanguard status in the hearts of the vinyl intelligentsia because in addition to being so goddamn good, relatively few know it - even 40 years removed from their first album.

But again, that's not what I meant. And disregard the glib reverence for the Velvet Underground as proto-alternative deities from New York City, with their eyes cloaked by sunglasses, their minds spoken through the drug-loving street poetry of Lou Reed and their name trumpeted by Andy Warhol at the apex of his pop-art revolution.

Behind the Velvet Underground's now-iconic image and the hipster hero worship they've cultivated, their music conveys its own cool. It's the bold vision of a band that just wanted to fuck everything up and have fun doing it.

That confidence to experiment enlivens everything they created, and "The Velvet Underground and Nico" captures just how far they could extend themselves without compromising it. Nico glides through "I'll be Your Mirror" as gracefully as an avant-garde German vocalist can, and John Cale's see-sawing electric viola on the subsequent "Black Angel's Death Song" lacerates the ears she left at ease.

Their debut was the landmark that launched a thousand bands, as Brian Eno once noted, but it is "White Light/White Heat" where the Velvet Underground - sans Nico, sans Warhol - set out to melt everyone's ideas of how music should sound.

It's barely a record at six songs stretching 40 minutes and 13 seconds. Almost half that time is taken up by the closer, the sprawling free-jazz-inspired fuckfest "Sister Ray," which you may have heard over the end credits of "Brick." Reed leads the one-taked track with his doped-up and deadpan tale of transvestites shooting smack before he and Cale fire off improvised guitar and organ lines to create a climactic noise orgy for an album full of foreplay.

The band's endorsement from Vox empowered them with the amps and pedals to warp the guitars to their fuzziest potential. They sound like they want to break every piece of that equipment on "Heard Her Call My Name," which abruptly begins in the middle of a burst of squealing feedback. Reed sings the verses with freewheeling touches of scat and falsetto as raggedy guitar chugs toward the echoed chorus. Then he shoots off a duo of murderously noisy solos that hit notes so high, some would find a straightened paper clip ear exam preferable.

The middle of the album is anchored by the slightly more subdued "Here She Comes Now" and "Lady Godiva's Operation." Reed substitutes for the soothing vocal role of Nico on the former song, while Cale sings the latter. The listener settles into the groove of the Welshman's gently muttered lyrics about the chic titled character, but Reed - much louder in the mix - interrupts to collapse the calm when her operation starts. Cale continues singing about the botched surgery, in which Lady Godiva is lobotomized, while Reed and Sterling Morrison vocally mimic the buzz of the instruments in a heavy bit of black humor.

"The Gift" also features Cale's vocals. Here he matter-of-factly recites the story of a college boy who mails himself to his cross-country girlfriend, only to receive a scissor blade through the skull as she tries to open the box (that's two characters who die of head trauma in back-to-back songs). The story feeds one speaker while a steadily fraying rock tune fills the other.

And at the beginning of "White Light/White Heat" is the title track, which - I'll be honest - I first heard of when John Cusack included it on his 'top 5 side ones, track ones" list in "High Fidelity (hipster worship strikes once more). If you watched last year's MTV Video Music Awards, you probably heard Reed play a substandard rendition of it with Jack White's Raconteurs. The song was written about stepping into the morning sun strung out on amphetamines, and Reed romanticizes the sensation with soulful words like "White light, it lightens up my eyes; don't you know it fills me up with surprise?" Cale pounds on the piano accompanying Maureen Tucker's rhythm to start the album off already racing toward its dissonant wreck of an end.

So why is this cool? It's honest, it's daring, it's unrepentant and it wants to challenge you on an unconscious level. While other bands were perfecting the pop song, the Velvet Underground was deconstructing it and, inadvertently, inspiring punk, metal, noise and countless other permutations of rock music. Most of all, their songs charge toward those then-new directions padded by a mighty self-assurance on the part of Reed, Cale, Morrison and Tucker that is palpable in each note. And if you don't find that cool, then the Velvet Underground couldn't have cared less.

The X-Files: Season One

2007-07-30T18:54:00.002-05:00

PILOT
(air date: 9/10/93)

By: David

Not ten minutes into the first episode of “The X-Files,” we see the real reason why this show would grow into one of the premiere series on television. And it’s not an alien. It’s the contrast between Mulder’s determination to believe in the fantastic and Scully’s undying faith in the dogma of science.

This contrast provides the foundation for countless wordy give-and-takes between the two FBI agents. Most unfold in a simple two-step manner: Mulder finds an explanation for an unsolved case that hinges upon paranormal or extraterrestrial forces, and Scully rules it out on scientific principle.

Each argues from a sympathetic frame of reference. Scully is also a medical doctor whose senior thesis discusses Einstein’s Twin Paradox. To her, the only explanations for unsolved cases are those that can be quantified and proven with evidence.

Mulder is no academic slouch himself; he completed a psychology degree at Oxford and graduated from Quantico at the top of his class. But the mysterious disappearance of his sister when they were both children - which he believes was an alien abduction - fuels a near-desperation for proof of the paranormal. “I WANT TO BELIEVE,” says the iconic poster in his office.

That desire first clashes with Scully’s skepticism in “Pilot” at the start of their first case together, which concerns a series of unexplained deaths in the Oregon woods.

After Mulder acquaints Scully with the scant facts of the case - sets of red bumps on the lower backs of the victims and an unidentifiable substance found on the bodies - she asks if he has a theory.

Mulder: I have plenty of theories. Maybe what you can explain to me is why it’s Bureau policy to label these cases as ‘unexplained phenomena’ and ignore them. Do you believe in the existence of extraterrestrials?

Scully: Logically, I would have to say no. Given the distances needed to travel from the far reaches of space, the energy requirements would exceed a spacecraft’s capabilities, th-

Mulder: Conventional wisdom. You know this Oregon female? She’s the fourth person in her graduating class to die under mysterious circumstances. Now, when convention and science offer us no answers, might we not finally turn to the fantastic as a plausibility?

Scully: The girl obviously died of something. If it was natural causes, it’s plausible that there was something missed in the post-mortem. If she was murdered, it’s plausible there was a sloppy investigation. What I find fantastic is any notion that there are answers beyond the realm of science. The answers are there. You just have to know where to look.

Mulder, in what would become a trademark wiseass tone, responds: That’s why they put the 'I' in 'FBI.'

Few first episodes of long-running TV shows nail its concept so squarely without any noticeable changes in subsequent episodes. In addition to the exquisite dialogue between Mulder and Scully, “Pilot” establishes several other staples of the “X-Files” formula:

- Sketchy government higher-ups. We open the show with Scully meeting Section Chief Blevins, his assistant and some creepy old guy lighting up in the corner of the office. By assigning Scully to the X-Files and asking her to, in essence, spy on Mulder, they are immediately cast as his enemies and, by extension, ours. Our suspicions are strengthened when we see that same Cigarette-Smoking Man at the end of the episode carrying a piece of evidence collected by Mulder and Scully in Oregon.

- Mysterious deaths with only a few puzzling forensic clues. In “Pilot,” one key clue to the murders is a metal implant - a common symptom of alien abduction. It’s extracted from a victim whom Mulder and Scully exhume (another common procedure on the show) and Scully autopsies (a VERY common procedure on the show).

- Interviews with frightened locals. Mulder and Scully interview Theresa Nemman, a high school classmate of both the murder victims and the man Mulder suspects of killing them, Billy Miles. While her answers to Mulder and Scully’s questions advance their investigation, her visible dread darkens the atmosphere. The suspense spikes when, mid-conversation, blood jets out of her nose like juice out of a tightly rolled crepe. The blood pours during a ¾ shot of Theresa, so the effect required a slyly placed pipe running down her face instead of an internal blood supply or a simple cut to the blood already flowing. Along with the CG leaf vortex scenes that bookend the episode, this scene with Theresa set a high standard of effects work for a TV show in the early ‘90s.

- Corrupt local law enforcement. Not as frequent a fixture of “The X-Files”; inept local law enforcement is much more common. But every so often Mulder and Scully must work with a sheriff or policeman who wants to protect the interests of the people they investigate. In “Pilot,” that official is Detective Miles, whose work with the FBI agents is motivated by his worry for the suspected murderer - his son, Billy.

The fact that the formula would remain as it was laid out in “Pilot” could be interpreted as series creator Chris Carter being stubborn to change. But for at least a few years, the show’s popular and critical success would prove his decision to stick with this set-up to be a wise one.

Still, Carter didn’t have the direction precisely set from the beginning. One key deleted scene from “Pilot” is the introduction of a love interest for Scully, with the plan at the time being to balance her romantic relationships off the job with her growing connection to Mulder on it. Instead we see only select portions of Scully’s personal life in the course of the series. The rarity of these scenes serves a key theme that the show would often revisit: Scully’s commitment to the X-Files - and Mulder - at the expense of her desire for a relatively normal life.

And who can blame her for being less than blissful about her new assignment? There would be little normalcy in nine years of aliens, vampires, liver-eating mutants, phantom quadriplegics, talking tattoos, psychics, cosmic power surges and old men with weird names. But Scully, like millions the world over, would soon learn to love “The X-Files.”

DEEP THROAT
(air date: 9/17/93)

By: David

The name of this episode refers to the government informant - the first of several - who would assist Mulder in his search for the truth. This benign gentleman would later be dubbed Deep Throat, as an obvious homage to the government employee who leaked clues about Watergate to Woodward and Bernstein. Jerry Hardin plays Deep Throat with the warm charm of a grandfather who can frighten you with many a scary story while still making you feel somewhat safe and secure.

In “Deep Throat,” Mulder and Scully venture to an Idaho Air Force base to investigate UFO reports and the possibility of alien technology being used in the development of new U.S. aircraft. Before they depart, Deep Throat introduces himself to Mulder with a warning not to pursue the case for fear of “unnecessary risk.” But Mulder dismisses the stranger’s advice.

He and Scully make little progress in interviews with the townspeople, including a test pilot who suffered psychosis, amnesia and a severe rash from flying one of the experimental aircraft. But harassment from stone-faced G-men and surveillance by a base employee posing as a reporter suggest that the agents are on to something.

They find help from a stoned stargazer (played by a young Seth Green), who leads them to the best viewing spot in town for UFO activity. Unfortunately that’s not close enough to the action for Mulder. When he sneaks onto the base, he learns the hard way not to mess with the military-industrial complex - just as Deep Throat warned him.

SQUEEZE
(air date: 9/24/93)

By: David

The first non-alien episode of “The X-Files” introduces one of its more beloved monsters: Eugene Victor Tooms, liver-eating mutant and all-around creepy little dude with yellow eyes and a monotone whisper. Mulder and Scully encounter him while investigating a series of murders in Baltimore involving liver extraction. All took place in locked spaces with no apparent means of entry.

Although only Scully was brought onto the case by a Tom Colton, a career-obsessed friend from the FBI academy (Donal Logue), Mulder jumps aboard as well. He suggests that the killer for whom they’re searching is more than 100 years old - based on 30- and 60-year-old murders with a similar M.O. - and that he can stretch his limbs in order to enter those locked spaces.

After Mulder and Scully arrest Tooms during a stake-out of a murder scene, he fails Polygraph questions concerning his century-old age and the murders from decades ago. Colton is so opposed to Mulder’s theory that he lets Tooms go in spite of the suspect’s lies. But, if Mulder’s theory is correct, Tooms only has one more liver to collect before he disappears for another 30 years.

“Squeeze” easily succeeds at expanding the scope of the series beyond aliens and government conspiracies to stories of pure horror and suspense. The repulsive Tooms would prove a popular character to early fans of the show, so he would return later in the season.

CONDUIT
(air date: 10/1/93)

By: David

We discovered in “Pilot” that Mulder believes his sister was abducted by aliens, but it’s in “Conduit” that we see how deeply the experience has affected him. When a teenage girl is taken from her mother and younger brother while camping on a lake, Mulder and Scully look into the case.

Mulder is bent on believing she was abducted by aliens, but Scully feels Mulder may be taking the case too personally. The case’s parallels to his own life are strengthened by the girl’s younger brother, who appears to have buttoned up in the wake of his sister’s disappearance. However, he communicates by cryptically scrawling sequences of 1s and 0s on paper while watching the dead signal of his TV screen.

As the most dramatic episode for Mulder to date, Duchovny excels at conveying his character’s desperation to find the missing girl, and by doing so, to sustain his hope for finding Samantha. That desperation even leads Mulder to a most unlikely place at the end of this episode.

THE JERSEY DEVIL
(air date: 10/8/93)

By: Andy

New Jersey, 1947. After a tire blows out, a man is dragged off into the woods right in front of his family. The search party follows the trail to a cave, where it has something cornered in a cave.

Washington D.C., 1993. A report of a homeless man half-eaten in the woods in Jersey leads Mulder to believe its linked to an old, unsolved case from 1947. The agents travel up there to check things out. After getting nowhere, Scully needs to head back home but Mulder decides to stay for the weekend. He believes the thing responsible is something called the “Jersey Devil” and he follows its trail from the woods all the way to the slums of Atlantic City.

Mulder and Scully, along with a park ranger and a professor on folklore, track down the “beast” with the police not far behind. If word of a “beast” from the forest gets out, it would damage tourism to the area and effect the casinos. The area law enforcement wish to eradicate this thing as quickly as possible, yet the agents would rather help the “beast.”

An entertaining episode that is “The X-Files’” take on urban legends such as Sasquatch, Big Foot, etc. We also get to see some interesting character development as Scully deals with still trying to maintain a personal life outside of work, while at the same time Mulder’s life is his work.

SHADOWS
(air date: 10/22/93)

By: David

Mulder and Scully investigate two men with ties to a Middle East terrorist group when both are killed by unexplainable means. The agents eventually trace the men to Lauren Kyte, a timid young secretary whom the men attempted to kidnap in front of an ATM machine. But with a residual electrical charge still emanating from their dead bodies, Mulder and Scully are at a loss to explain how the meek woman dispatched both men.

Along the way, Mulder and Scully must contend with a couple of black ops agents investigating the case due to its terrorist connections. They want all the information the FBI can offer, but they’re less than willing to share their own findings.

“Shadows” is somewhat of a lesser episode in season one due to the lack of any lasting special effects or suspense. It is a personal favorite, however, purely for this quote from Mulder: “I would never lie. I willfully participate in a campaign of misinformation.”

GHOST IN THE MACHINE
(air date: 10/29/93)

By: Andy

Not one I’d mention in my list of favorites. But as they say, on with the show…

An ex-partner of Mulder’s comes to him for help on a case. The cause of death looks to be an electrical malfunction when the CEO of the company Eurisko was killed in his suite. After piecing together the evidence which points to one suspect, computer programmer Brad Wilczek, Mulder doesn’t believe he’s the one behind it.

I actually liked it more the second time around, which was made better thanks to Mulder’s dry wit and a suspenseful scene when Scully is trapped in an air duct. The camera angles used by the episode’s director, Jerrold Freedman, enhance the tension making you feel cramped and cause your palms to become clammy, as if you’re in there with Scully. One of this episode’s final scenes is great as well:

Mulder: I talked with Congressmen Klevenaugh and the Department of Corrections subcommittee. I even petitioned the Attorney General’s office.

Deep Throat: You won’t find him.

Mulder: They can’t just take a man like Brad Wilczek without an explanation.

Deep Throat: They can do anything they want.

ICE
(air date: 11/5/93)

By: David

Duchovny once called this “Our first rockin’ episode,” and I’m more than inclined to agree. A dead ice core drilling team sends Mulder and Scully to their Arctic base to investigate how they perished. They go with a team of scientists (including Steve Hytner, a.k.a. Kenny Bania from “Seinfeld“) and learn that the first team murdered each other under the control of a worm that fosters aggression in its host. But once the isolation mixes with suspicions that members of Mulder and Scully’s team are infected, everyone is seeing red.

The mystery of who is infected - and whether Mulder or Scully carries the worm - is the exciting crux of this episode. Amid the suspense, the agents point guns at each other for the first time in “The X-Files.” But be certain it’s not the last.

SPACE
(air date: 11/12/93)

By: Andy

Just as Mulder is telling Scully about an anonymous note he received from someone inside NASA, a lady approaches the agents. She shows them an X-ray that reveals evidence of a possible attempt to sabotage a recent shuttle launch. They witness a successful launch and Mulder even meets a childhood hero of his, Col. Marcus Belt.

They receive word that something has happened to the shuttle and from there things progressively get worse. The agents and mission control are battling against the clock to find a way to bring the astronauts home, while Mulder questions the honesty of one of his heroes.

I will admit that I haven’t seen this episode until now. It's not that I have been avoiding it, but I did notice that it was mentioned quite a few times on IMDb in a thread about what was the worst “X-Files” episode. It reminded me of a few episodes from the original “Outer Limits” and “Twilight Zone” series. No matter how far we get and how many times we launch another shuttle into space, there are still a considerable amount of mysteries yet to be solved.

FALLEN ANGEL
(air date: 11/12/93)

By: David

Mulder’s defiant attitude toward his superiors in the government threatens his job and his life in this episode, which is named after the military code for a crashed UFO. When it goes down in the Wisconsin woods, Deep Throat leaks the location to Mulder. He sneaks through the forest and gets a glimpse of the crash scene, but he is greeted with a rifle butt to the nose after snapping only a few photos. In military detention, Mulder meets Max Fenig, a textbook UFO-chasing neo-hippie nutcase who claims to have been abducted multiple times.

When Scully bails him out, Mulder returns to find that his hotel room has been ravaged by Max, who, as it turns out, worships Mulder and “the enigmatic Dr. Scully” for their work on the X-Files. As they grow acquainted with Max, the extraterrestrial that escaped the crash starts microwaving the hell out of any soldiers that try to stop it. But Mulder soon learns that the proof of alien life he so desperately seeks may actually lie in Max.

“Fallen Angel” communicates for the first time just how severely Mulder will endanger himself on his quest for the truth. And his insolence during interrogation by military and FBI authorities endears him to us even further. But by this point, we already can’t help wondering how much longer he can defy them before something really bad happens.

EVE
(air date: 12/10/93)

By: David

Two creepy twin girls are the subject of this episode that revolves around a human cloning experiment. The girls are united when their adoptive fathers are slipped a paralyzing toxin and bled dry at the exact same time on opposite sides of the country. The twins are then kidnapped by a middle-aged woman cloned from the same genes as the girls. All are code-named Eve.

Deep Throat leads Mulder and Scully to a mental institution housing another clone - named Eve 6 (that’d make a GREAT band name, no?) - who tells the agents that her and her genetic ilk carry ten extra chromosomes, including the one for insanity. With this knowledge, Mulder and Scully are even more motivated to find the kidnapper before she harms the girls - or the girls harm her.

“Eve” is an above-average episode that touched upon a still-relevant issue in society. And the young twins who play the Eves are the strongest part of it. Even at 9-years-old they act with subtlety to touch us with their urge to stay united, yet our affection turns to fright when their gleefully murderous genetic instincts surface.

FIRE
(air date: 12/17/93)

By: Andy

This episode starts off with great banter between Mulder and Scully, which is a trademark of the series.

Scully: I forgot what it was like to spend a day in court.

Mulder: That’s one of the luxuries to hunting down aliens and genetic mutants. You rarely get to press charges.

After getting into Mulder’s car, they notice an odd cassette tape on the dashboard, to which Mulder quips, “10 to 1 you can’t dance to it.” He pops in the tape and a woman tells him about a British bureaucrat who’s car exploded, which was triggered by a cassette tape in his car. Just then the same woman whose voice they heard opens the car door. It turns out she’s an old college friend of Mulder’s and she wants his help on a case; which seems to be a theme this season. However, it is a great vehicle for friction in the Mulder-Scully relationship and it allows us to learn a little more about Mulder’s past. While I don’t particularly care for the villain in this episode or the Phoebe Green character, it is saved by the tension created between the agents.

BEYOND THE SEA
(air date: 1/7/94)

By: David

The most personal “X-Files” episode to date takes us into the death row cell of Luther Lee Boggs (Brad Dourif). He plays Hannibal Lecter to Scully’s Clarice when he offers to lead her and Mulder to a killer who kidnapped two college students. Of course, Boggs wants a life sentence in exchange.

Normally Scully wouldn’t be so gullible, but Boggs’ offer comes days after her father dies. Boggs, a professed psychic, gains Scully’s trust by claiming to communicate with him. Boggs later calls her Starbuck, which was her father’s name for her; she called him Ahab in an obvious “Moby Dick” reference based on his life as a U.S. Navy ship captain.

Mulder, meanwhile, isn’t as quick to believe Boggs. As one of the agents who helped apprehend him, Mulder is content to let the inmate march to the chair in a few days. Mulder even mocks Boggs’ supposed ability to see dead people when he asks him to infer information about the killer from a blue rag he tells Boggs he found at a crime scene, only to reveal to the inmate that the cloth was torn from his New York Knicks T-shirt. But when Mulder is shot in the femur while pursuing the killer, Scully must decide whether to trust Boggs enough to let him lead her to the killer.

“Beyond the Sea” handily tops “Conduit” as the most dramatic episode of season one. Gillian Anderson expresses Scully’s conflict between her skepticism and her feelings for her deceased father as an emotional sea storm under her usually stoic exterior. The best part of the episode is when it erupts on the surface during a scene in Boggs’ cell. After a dozen episodes of nagging Mulder, we finally witness our first fully human moment from Scully.

GENDERBENDER
(air date: 1/21/94)

By: David

“The X-Files” confirms a long-held belief among anyone who has ever encountered an Amish community: They’re so weird, they have to be aliens.

When club-going men and women in the northeast are found dead due to coronary arrest, with an abundance of human pheromones in their systems, Mulder and Scully are on the scene. At the most recent murder they find a unique white clay used by the Kindred, an Amish-like community of potters in the Massachusetts woods.

The viewer learns that these uptight conservative folk also happen to be an alien race with humanoid features, save for the ability to switch sexes at will and secrete seductive pheromones. Their latter power is so potent that when Mulder and Scully visit the Kindred’s compound, one member almost has the typically frigid Scully in the sack before Mulder cock blocks him (from his porn addiction it’s clear he’s not getting any, so he has to spoil it for everyone).

While the Kindred is content to stay shut-in, the agents learn that one member got a hold of some naughty magazines (e.g. “People”) and wanted to explore the outside world. And get laid a lot. Unfortunately he/she is oh-so sexual that no one can survive the experience. Hence his/her murdering spree, which Mulder and Scully must stop.

This slightly above-average episode also marks the debut of Nicholas Lea in “The X-Files,” though not as Alex Krycek, Mulder’s eventual replacement partner and foil for years. Instead Lea is cast as a club patron who barely manages to escape the sexual clutches of the genderbender. He would be asked to read for the role of Krycek based on his work in this episode.

LAZARUS
(air date: 2/4/94)

By: Andy

The episode opens with Scully and FBI Agent Jack Willis at a bank, ready and waiting to catch a bank robber in the act. During the process, Willis takes a bullet but Scully manages to hit the criminal before he can shoot anyone else. After being rushed to the hospital, Warren Dupree is pronounced dead but Scully tells the technicians to keep working on Willis. He manages to survive, but doesn’t seem quite right.

He disappears from the hospital after severing Dupree’s fingers and removing his wedding ring. Scully thinks his odd behavior is due to post-traumatic stress yet Mulder, living up to his ‘Spooky’ nickname, thinks there may have been a ‘soul transference.’ Willis returns and asks Scully help him track down Dupree’s wife. However after cornering her, Willis takes Scully hostage. Scully tries to snap Jack back to reality, but is there any part of Jack Willis left in his own body?

In “Fire” we learned more about Mulder’s past, now its Scully’s turn. She had an affair with Jack Willis back when she was at the FBI academy. Mulder also has some great moments in this episode as well, who doesn’t even seem jealous at all, unlike Scully in “Fire.”

Mulder: How well do you know him?

Scully: We dated for almost a year. He was my instructor at the academy.

Mulder: The plot thickens...

An excellent episode with some suspenseful turns and a great performance by Christopher Allport, as Jack Willis.

YOUNG AT HEART
(air date: 2/11/94)

By: Andy

Mulder and Scully are asked to join the investigation into a series of violent bank robberies by Mulder's former boss, Agent Reggie Purdue. We learn that the same thing happened years ago when Mulder was working for the Violent Crimes Unit. Last time, the robberies were committed by John Barnett, who killed an agent before being shot by Mulder. Mulder blamed himself for hesitating, even though he was following FBI protocol.

Barnett died in prison years ago, yet notes are being left at the crime scenes for Mulder which match Barnett’s hand writing. After talking with one of Barnett’s fellow inmates who disputes the claim that Barnett died of a heart attack, the agents discover that the prison’s former doctor was conducting in age-reversal experiments. Could Barnett have been one of his guinea pigs and is now back for revenge?

A very creepy and suspenseful episode. More of Mulder’s background is learned as well. We are told he was being groomed for big things in the FBI, before he moved onto solving X-Files. I really liked the make-up done in this episode, as well as its ending.

E.B.E.
(air date: 2/18/94)

By: David

E.B.E.: extraterrestrial biological entity. So you know where this episode is going.

An Iraqi fighter pilot shoots down a UFO that the U.S. recovers, and Deep Throat sets Mulder and Scully on its trail as the wreckage is shipped across the country. They interrogate the man driving the truck and see that he has symptoms of Gulf War Syndrome. They discover that the truck weighs much more than declared on its cargo manifest. But they also learn that someone is watching them.

Scully finds a listening device in her pen, which Mulder runs by the debuting Lone Gunmen: Three UFO-chasing geeks who publish a newspaper of government conspiracy theories naturally called “The Magic Bullet.” Scully scoffs at their claims that the government tracks people through $20 bills, but even they are taken aback by Mulder’s suggestion that low-flying UFOs in Iraq are to blame for Gulf War Syndrome.

The agents make little headway as they track the truck across the country, and Mulder begins to question Deep Throat's motives when he disproves the authenticity of a UFO photo the informant gives him. The elder’s response to Mulder’s allegations: “A lie is most convincingly hidden between two truths.” When Mulder catches the scent of the ship - and its pilot - once again at a government facility in Washington, he proves once more that he will disregard his job and even his health in his journey toward the truth.

Mulder and Scully really don’t get anywhere by the end of “E.B.E.,” but the excitement is in the chase. At this point in the show, with the conspiracy still in its infancy, the paranoia and mystery was more potent because the audience still hardly had a clue what truth was out there. As Mulder rips his apartment to pieces in search of a listening device - which he eventually finds - we are still only frisking the power of the forces aligned against him and Scully.

MIRACLE MAN
(air date: 3/18/94)

By: Andy

A young man who supposedly has the powers to heal people, is charged with the death of a woman whom he recently healed. Twenty minutes after being “healed” she was pronounced dead on arrival. The area law enforcement has been trying to prove that Reverend Hartley’s Miracle Ministry is a scam and now they finally have the proof. Mulder begins having visions of his missing sister; while at the same time, another woman dies after being touched by Samuel. After Scully performs an autopsy on the most recent victim, she discovers traces of arsenic. Did Samuel poison the victims or is the local law enforcement setting him up?

I watched this episode twice when writing this review and I like it a little more each time. I’m not sure what the writers had in mind, but the way I interpreted was maybe it is a dig at all those TV evangelists. Overall, I thought it was a fun and suspenseful episode.

SHAPES
(air date: 4/4/94)

By: Andy

When father and son ranchers in Montana shoot and kill an animal that has been attacking their cattle, they suddenly realize that what they shot wasn’t an animal at all. The agents are brought in to question Mr. Parker and his son, who happen to be in the middle of a legal battle with the Trego Indian Reservation. Jim Parker says what he shot was not human, yet others feel he purposely killed Joseph Goodensnake due to the bad blood between the reservation and the Parkers.

Mulder believes there is more than meets the eye here after finding a scrap of shredded skin and that Goodensnake has elongated teeth, similar to that of an animal. However the investigation is cut short when the local sheriff refuses an autopsy, which goes against his Native American beliefs. With the case closed and the reservation having a funeral for Goodensnake, suddenly Jim Parker is found dead and Gwen (Joseph’s sister) is missing. If her brother could somehow shape shift into an animal, does she have that same ability?

An interesting werewolf episode, which is the only one in the series. The highlights of the episode are the scenes shot at night, which this show was always good at capturing.

Notable Mulder quote: They told me that even though my deodorant is made for a woman, it's strong enough for a man.

DARKNESS FALLS
(air date: 4/15/94)

By: Andy

Thirty loggers have disappeared and Mulder and Scully are sent to investigate along with a park ranger and a representative from the logging company. On the way, a tire blows out, so the group must hike the rest of the way. While Steve (from the logging company) works to fix the generator, the agents and the ranger find a giant insect cocoon with one of the dead loggers inside. Back at the camp, Steve finds a “monkeywrencher” looking for food in their cabin. The monkeywrenchers are the term the loggers have for environmentalists who try to sabotage their attempts to cut down trees. Not only does the group have to watch out for these bugs, can they trust monkeywrencher Doug Spinney?

Chris Carter’s best stand-alone episode of the season. More proof the best “X-Files” episodes are the ones which are mostly at night or out in the wilderness.

TOOMS
(air date: 4/22/94)

By: David

The liver-eater is set free from his incarceration, thanks to a sniveling social worker who plainly ignores every indication that the creep has been killing people and gobbling down their bile for more than a century. A frustrated Mulder sets out to stop Tooms from collecting the fifth liver that will give him sustenance for another thirty years of hibernation. Mulder even harasses Tooms on his route as an animal control worker by asking the yellow-eyed weirdo to find his moose-hunting Norwegian elk hound named Heinrich.

Meanwhile, we are introduced to the most important supporting player in the next nine years of “The X-Files.” Assistant Director Walter Skinner asks Scully into his office and sternly explains to her that she and Mulder must use more conventional methods of investigation in their work on the X-Files. The Cigarette-Smoking Man also returns in a role he would assume for the next few seasons: As a fixture in the background of Skinner’s office. And he even gets a line this time.

Later in the episode, Tooms responds to Mulder’s surveillance by sneaking into the agent’s apartment and using his sneaker-prints to frame Mulder for beating him nearly to death. Skinner advises Mulder to stay away from Tooms, but the agent manages to track the mutant down to his papier mache lair. The result is one of the most suspenseful action sequences of this season.

BORN AGAIN
(air date: 4/29/94)

By: Andy

A young girl is the only witness to a detective falling to his death out of a second story window. She claims to have seen another man in the room at the time. From her description of the man’s appearance, the agents have determined it to be deceased police officer Charlie Morris. He was killed, gang execution style, nine years ago. Now his former colleagues in the force are dying one by one, which Mulder suspects the girl is somehow involved. One man, Tony Fiore, is left. Can Mulder and Scully get to him first, or will the girl kill him too?

Another episode dealing with reincarnation and psychokinetic abilities. Its somewhat similar to the episode “Shadows” from earlier this season, but “Born Again” adds its own unique spin. I especially like the ending to this episode with all the objects flying around the house.

ROLAND
(air date: 5/6/94)

By: Andy

Several scientists working at a jet propulsion lab have wound up dead. The only suspect is a mentally challenged janitor by the name of Roland. Despite his handicap, he is a mathematics whiz. Mulder and Scully soon discover that work is being done on Dr. Grable’s files, even though he died six months ago. Mulder thinks that Roland is completing the doctor’s work, yet another force could be at work here.

The plot is rather weak, yet I think the performances bring it up to being an average episode. The score used as “Roland’s Theme” is a nice touch.

Notable Mulder quote: I don’t think they’ll be performing this experiment on “Beakman’s World.”

THE ERLENMEYER FLASK
(air date: 5/13/94)

By: David

Deep Throat advises Mulder to tune into police coverage of a car chase in Maryland. The driver, William Secare, flees the car at a dock and jumps into the water, but not before being shot several times and spilling a green substance from his wounds.

Mulder and Scully trace the man’s car to a colleague, Dr. Berube, whose lab contains an odd amber liquid the agents take for analysis. When the results come in, Scully is confronted for the first time with proof of alien life. The substance, code-named “Purity Control,” is linked to alien gene therapy experiments Berube was conducting with six terminally ill subjects.

Deep Throat later tells the agents that the therapy empowered the six with superhuman strength, toxic blood and the ability to breathe underwater. But the project’s success necessitated a government clean-up, as no human-alien hybrid could possibly live in public without exposure. Berube warned Secare of the target on his back before the clean-up could start, but a government assassin is on the hybrid’s trail. Mulder and Scully must find him first in order to salvage the evidence of alien life that was woven through Secare’s DNA.

In season two we would learn much more about the extent of the government’s human-alien hybridization experiments, and a few inconsistencies in the “X-Files” canon would crop up along the way. Still, this important case will weigh heavily on Mulder and Scully’s future in the X-Files, and its life-or-death atmosphere makes for the most suspenseful installment of the show to date. Before the episode ends, Deep Throat gives Scully three words of advice that would become synonymous with “The X-Files”: “Trust no one.”

Nine Inch Nails - "Year Zero" review

2007-04-18T19:57:00.000-05:00

You've been to "Year Zero" before. Whether it was when you watched "The X-Files" or read "Brave New World," you've already acquainted yourself with the same themes of inescapable surveillance and subcutaneous control perpetrated upon an unwitting populace by its government.

What such previous works of dystopian fiction haven't done, however, is pull you into their mythologies as forcefully as Nine Inch Nails' newest album. Many layers of detail have been woven into this fictional world 15 years in the future, but the gist goes like this: The far-right administration freely invokes a religious authority to rule over its citizens by pumping mind-control drugs into the water and implanting computer chips in their wrists, global warming has sunken coastal cities and spawned a new drug after spoiling the cocaine crop, and citizens have frequently claimed to see five giant fingers grazing the horizon that may or may not be from the hand of God.

Nine Inch Nails' sole creative force, Trent Reznor, said of the inspiration for the album's setting, "If you imagine a world where greed and power continue to run their likely course, you'll have an idea of the backdrop. The world has reached the breaking point - politically, spiritually and ecologically."

The Year Zero alternate reality game (ARG) slowly sculpted this not-so-distant future from a Web site written in highlighted letters on a tour T-shirt. Song-bearing USB sticks left in bathroom stalls during the band's European tour threw new ropes to the diehard fans who so eagerly climbed aboard the developing mythos by piecing together Web page backgrounds to reveal book text, running the leaked songs through spectrographs, and collecting a series of numbers whose purpose has yet to be deciphered.

The temptation may be to cry "marketing ploy!," but when the artist in question is Reznor, commercial appeal plummets down the list of possible motives. Instead, it seems the Year Zero ARG underscores a sincere attempt by Reznor to raise his still influential voice against a world that repulses him. We've witnessed him increasingly politicize his music since May 2005, when he refused an MTV performance because the network would not permit it to take place with an image of George W. Bush in the background. During the North American "Live: With Teeth" tour, Reznor repeatedly cried the "Kill me!" climax of "Eraser" as images of combat in Iraq played on a projection screen hanging before the band.

"Year Zero" marks the first album Reznor has written with an outward focus. By using his music as a pulpit rather than a personal diary, he has regained much of the very thing he has mocked other popular musicians for missing: relevance. The revolutionary storytelling form of the ARG could further strengthen his connection to the casual music fans that flocked to him as "Closer" rode its sexed-up pulse beat to mega-hit status in 1995.

The diehard audience that crowded Reznor's iconoclastic industrial rock altar in the mid-90s decayed over the next ten years. Many left while waiting five years for "The Fragile" to follow up his landmark 1994 mix of industrial abrasion and pop accessibility, "The Downward Spiral." The double-disc length and single-lacking landscape of the 1999 release reaffirmed his demigod status among core fans but cut loose scores of fairweathers. "With Teeth" started to lure them back in 2005, but the album's streamlined rock sound did little to please Reznor's most rabid followers.

"Year Zero" hits just below "The Downward Spiral" and the seething 1992 EP "Broken" on the hierarchy of Reznor's work. Its sixteen songs return him to the fore of industrial pop with few live drum or guitar tracks to be found. The stampeding rock crescendo of "Hyperpower!" and "The Beginning of the End's" head-bobbing "My Sharona"-esque drum beat gradually give way to laptop-generated blips and synthesizer sounds that threaten to buzzsaw straight through your speakers.

Electronically filtered horns bring the funk on "Capital G" (a rhythmic cousin of Michael Jackson's "The Way You Make Me Feel") and "Vessel's" deliberate beat is driven by a death ray-like fuzz. The digital hardcore soundscape culminates with the second half of "The Great Destroyer," when a synthesizer meltdown seems to record a desperate battle between Reznor and his equipment from which neither combatant escapes alive.

Behind all "Year Zero's" brusque edges are hooks as sharp as those that earned Reznor lengthy placement on the Billboard charts. The swinging beat of "Capital G" will seduce listeners into singing along with the track's callous right-wing narrator, who declares: "Don't give a shit about the haves and the have nots; have some personal accountability." The wisest choice for the next single, "God Given," marries Reznor's lyrics of religious entitlement and exclusivity with a menacing club beat that could be the soundtrack to the best sex of your life.

With conservative politics squarely in his crosshairs, the onus falls on Reznor to outfit his compelling music with equally compelling lyrics. On "The Fragile" and "With Teeth" his words drew criticism for wallowing in teenage melodrama, but on "Year Zero" they speak current sentiments with varying degrees of strength.

The protagonist of first single "Survivalism" insulates himself against a defiled planet and police state with "violence in hi-def ultra realism" and rationalizes his selfishness by reminding you that "you'd do the same thing in the circumstance." "In This Twilight" finds its Year Zero character scouring a nuked nighttime landscape for meaning as he notes, "Ashes in your hair remind me what it feels like ... and I won't feel again." "The Good Soldier" struggles to make sense of the death and chaos surrounding him in the desert, but his meditation is bogged down with silly rhymes like "How can this be real? I can barely feel."

"Year Zero's" lyrics are best understood within the computer-driven context of the album, but grasping its back story could take days. Reznor's smarts are revealed by the songs' ability to stand, threateningly, by themselves. They may lacerate ear drums with crackling electronic sounds, but their contemporary themes will last even longer in a listener's mind. And the science fiction-inspired story they serve may not reek of ingenuity, but the way Reznor tells it reasserts his artistry when the world needs it most.

(photos courtesy of http://www.wikipedia.com/ and http://www.usatoday.com/)

Blogging the best of the year

2006-12-08T19:12:00.000-05:00

As if my job didn't require me to write enough, I've decided to restart my blog for no reason known to me at present. I'm going to baby-step my way back into things with the blog topic that comes easiest: BotY lists. Subject to change, naturally.

Favorite albums of 2006:

1. Mastodon - Blood Mountain
2. The Rapture - Pieces of the People We Love
3. Decemberists - The Crane Wife
4. Beck - The Information
5. TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain
6. My Chemical Romance - Welcome to the Black Parade
7. The Roots - Game Theory
8. Killswitch Engage - As Daylight Dies
9. Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
10. Tool - 10,000 Days
Honorable mention: Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Show Your Bones

Favorite movies of 2006:

1. Brick
2. Little Miss Sunshine
3. The Departed
4. Babel
5. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
6. Casino Royale
7. The Science of Sleep
8. A Prairie Home Companion
9. United 93
10. An Inconvenient Truth
Honorable mention: The Prestige

(photos courtesy of www.laminated.org, www.ropeofsilicon.com)

Superheroes on Screen: What's the Appeal of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends?

2006-06-15T13:31:00.000-05:00

Midway through "X3: The Last Stand," Magneto (Ian McKellen) and Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) exchange tense glances in a forest outside Vancouver. Genetic mutations have granted them such superhuman power over their environment that a duel between the two would uproot every last lumbering fir tree surrounding them. Magneto, however, has a different agenda. He sees Grey's power to mentally control objects as an asset to his looming assault on the humans that hate them both. To convert her to his cause, Magneto floats an ultramodern gun before Grey’s eyes and tells her, "I can manipulate the metal in this, but you - you can do anything you think of." Seeing through his flattery, Grey telekinetically strips the gun of its metallic casing and infrastructure to reveal the ammunition - four weaponized syringes that she excitedly aims at Magneto’s face.

“X3,” released May 26, and “Superman Returns,” hitting theaters June 30, are two of 16 major films released within the last five years that plucked their heroic characters from the pages of comic books. The next five years will bring even more superheroes to cinemas. In 2007 alone, Ghost Rider will blaze his hellish trail across the silver screen, Spider-Man will web his way back into theaters and the Fantastic Four will once again clobber its weekend competitors. Since 1978 - when the late Christopher Reeves donned the familiar red, yellow and blue spandex of Superman - the comic book hero film tally has totaled 28. Most of the characters stretch back several decades but their current popularity has resulted in rich box office profits. Of the 28 films, 15 (over 50 percent) have grossed more than $100 million domestically. In any given year, less than five percent of all released films make that much money in theaters. Comic book hero films are clearly hefty cash cows, but understanding why they appeal to audiences requires a measure with greater depth than dollars.

The multilayered appeal of comic book hero films parallels the structure of the dart gun Jean Grey dissects before Magneto’s eyes. The values embodied by the heroes themselves lift our spirits with the potency of the drug filling the syringes. Gallant DC Comics characters like Batman and Superman rally readers to their causes of truth, justice and the American way. The human elements of Marvel Comics characters forge an altogether different rapport with the people who pick up their pages. When we see Peter Parker (Spider-Man) stumble over his words around his lifelong crush, Mary Jane Watson, we remember striving for our first date or first kiss. By seeking welcome in a world that hates them, The X-Men appeal to any teenager stigmatized by uniqueness. These characters encourage us to tackle our own troubles by suggesting that even superheroes struggle with the same situations.

“The heroes have super-strength and the vulnerability and sensibility of teenagers and that’s where so much of the audience comes from, which means that they’re insecure and horny,” said Jules Feiffer, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and author of “The Great Comic Book Superheroes.”

Although teenagers may constitute the weightiest portion of their fan base, comic book heroes on screen speak to a far wider audience than that of adolescents with fragile self-esteem. Adult viewers often select comic book hero films at the cinema because they thrill, reassure and inspire us - just as people take Prozac because it pulls them out of a funk. This movie-going dynamic was canonized by communication scholars Jay G. Blumler and Elihu Katz, whose Uses and Gratifications theory explains that we select comic book hero films by weighing the benefits they offer against those promised by other films. We purchase a ticket for “Spider-Man” or “Daredevil” because most of us expect the onscreen adventures of these characters to fulfill our need for escapism or, simply, a hero. That need has been heightened by historical circumstances at various points over the last half-century.

“I think people always want escapist entertainment, but the chances are that they want it (and need it) more than ever in times of crisis and turmoil,” said Stan Lee, Chairman Emeritus of Marvel Entertainment, Inc. and co-creator of Spider-Man, X-Men and countless other popular Marvel Comics characters.

The golden age of comic books collided with World War II to spawn Captain America - a genetically enhanced super soldier whose original enemy was the Axis Powers. The cover of “Captain America Comics #1” depicts the red, white and blue costumed hero walloping Adolf Hitler with a right hook while the caption reads, “Smashing thru, Captain America came face to face with Hitler!” The comic’s release in March 1941, nine months before America even entered the war, underscores Captain America’s representation of a collective American wish - to fight the evil overseas and knock it square on its ass. By reading the comic, readers got their wish.

The early 1960s ushered in the silver age of comic books, whose heroes - specifically Lee’s string of co-creations at Marvel Comics, such as Spider-Man, Hulk, and Daredevil - reflected another historical concern: nuclear energy. These iconic heroes were empowered by a radioactive spider bite, gamma ray bombardment, and a splash of toxic waste in the face, respectively. The widespread fear of nuclear proliferation was subconsciously woven into the tales of the heroes’ origins - especially Hulk, whose mutation made him more of a monster than a superhero. Their adventures, however, reassured readers that regular people like Parker, Bruce Banner (Hulk) and Matt Murdock (Daredevil) can harness the unwanted effects of nuclear power for the good of mankind. This humanistic message provided comic book readers with a refreshing antidote to the deterministic doom of nuclear annihilation.

With Jean Grey at his side, Magneto and his “brotherhood of mutants” target Alcatraz island, where geneticists have engineered the gene-suppressing mutant “cure” that fills the dart gun. The Golden Gate Bridge provides the mutant legion with transportation. After halting every vehicle traveling on the bridge, Magneto and his hordes march down the middle of the road. The elderly mutant uses his vast magnetic powers to rip away a half-mile long section of the bridge and lift it into the air. As onlookers stare in terror and disbelief at the awesome show of mutant force, Magneto directs the bridge section over the bay and towards the island. He lowers it to connect Alcatraz with the San Francisco mainland. Preparing to attack, Magneto levitates to the front of the bridge and makes eye contact with a woman in the passenger seat of a stopped car. Calmly but warily, she locks her door.

A subtle terror underscores the image of Magneto using a landmark like the Golden Gate Bridge as his own personal Lego piece. The humor in the commuter’s futile door-locking relieves the terror at a time when the destruction of American landmarks still occupies the movie screens in our minds’ eyes. The September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon provide the historical milieu from which today’s comic book hero films offer psychological shelter. The astronomical popularity of “Spider-Man,” released nine months after the attacks, suggests that the film assuaged traumatic wounds inflicted upon the collective American psyche. As producers pulled the trailer depicting Spider-Man catching a helicopter full of criminals in a web net tethered between the two towers, writer David Koepp added the scene featuring New Yorkers rallying on the bridge to toss debris at the Green Goblin, screaming “You mess with one of us, you mess with all of us.” While these alterations to the film reflected superficial shifts following September 11, seeing the web-slinger purging New York City of crime and terror was medication for the deep-seated vulnerability and despair still reverberating from that day.

“You see superhero figures climbing buildings and flying out of them, and on 9/11, one of the most horrific and lasting images was of people jumping out of the buildings to their deaths. In that respect superhero movies provide a source of wish fulfillment to save oneself from his historical circumstances,” said Susan Willis, author of “Portents of the Real: A Primer for Post-9/11 America.”

Willis believes that the events of September 11 amplified cultural changes set in motion by the end of the Cold War. The Soviet Union’s collapse - concurrent with the rise of terrorism and ethnic cleansing campaigns in Europe and Africa - resulted in the loss of the “us vs. them” mentality to which Americans had grown accustomed over the previous 50 years. The small spate of comic book hero films released in the 1990s - including “The Crow,” (1994) “Spawn” (1997) and “Blade” (1998) - contrasted the pure “good vs. evil” narratives that saturated the “Superman” franchise. The heroes of these films were fueled by dark sources of power - primal vengeance, the Devil himself, and vampirism, respectively.

“The portrayal of the enemy in films after 9/11 just got a little murkier,” said Willis.

The success of the “X-Men” films, beginning in 2000, can also be attributed to the way its narratives eschew black-and-white struggles between good guys and bad guys. Seeing the eventual villain, Magneto, as a young Jewish boy in a German concentration camp at the beginning of “X-Men” plants seeds of sympathy for his cause. As soldiers escort him away, his magnetic rage literally rips apart the large metal gate separating him from his parents. The films also remove the “evil” from the comic book title of Magneto’s backing alliance, “The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants,” to further blur the moral line between his mutant faction and the X-Men.

The philosophical divide between Professor X and Magneto in the “X-Men” trilogy has often been compared to that which separated Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. The former mutant believes there can be peace with humans and the latter wholly disagrees. Meanwhile, humanity plays an equally culpable role in this three-pronged conflict - especially in “X2: X-Men United” (2003), where Colonel Stryker’s (Bryan Cox) plan to extinguish the mutant race resembles nothing less than a modern-day Final Solution.

The creation of the mutant cure in “X3” prompts Halle Berry’s Storm to ask, “Since when did we become a disease?” Meanwhile, militant mutants like Magneto invite the audience to sympathize with the humans who fear and yearn to tame their genetic superiors. The absence of a conveniently delineated enemy in the “X-Men” film franchise mirrors the reality faced by the American audience, for whom world affairs are underscored less by self-righteousness than self-doubt.

In addition to the morally ambiguous climate resulting from the Cold War, 9/11 and the subsequent War on Terror, comic book hero films have tapped into the rising popularity of Christian entertainment. Although they are typically devoid of overtly religious content, films like “Spider-Man” and “Batman Begins” (2005) tell stories and depict characters friendly to the droves of Christian audiences that made box office successes of films ranging in religiosity from “The Passion of the Christ” to “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” and “March of the Penguins.”

“Superheroes are about saving the world and about inspiring others, which is the essence of the gospel message,” said Greg Garrett, who authored the book “Holy Superheroes! Exploring Faith and Spirituality in Comic Books.”

The market for religious content in media has been steadily growing over the past 20 years, as illustrated by the vast popularity of books like Tim LeHaye and Jerry Jenkins’ “Left Behind” series and music from artists like Amy Grant, P.O.D. and DC Talk. In 2004, Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” provided convincing proof of the power of the Christian moviegoer by taking in $370 million at the domestic box office.

The submersion of their Christian-friendly themes enables comic book hero films to appeal equally to secular audiences. Jean Grey’s sacrifice to save her teammates from a frigid deluge in Alkali Lake at the conclusion of “X2” invites Christian interpretation but doesn’t demand it. The image of her splitting the flood of icy water resembles Moses parting the Red Sea, while Grey’s hinted resurrection in “X3” parallels the path of Christ. Both Christian and secular audiences will also extract meaningful value from “Superman Returns,” which features archived footage of the deceased Marlon Brando as Jor-El, sending his only son to Earth to rid it of evil. As suggested by Uses and Gratifications theory, Christian viewers can decipher these films to meet their own spiritual needs - just as they interpreted the Antarctica-based documentary “March of the Penguins” as a triumph of family values and the concept of intelligent design.

Despite the near-universal appeal of comic book heroes, throughout most of the 20th Century they have lacked the technology - Magneto’s advanced gun - to reach mass media audiences in a convincing manner. Refined modern movie-making practices, from CGI (computer generated images) and wire work to costume design and advanced fight choreography, have granted filmmakers the means to realize superheroes on screen as vividly as on the page. Without that technology, the appeal of comic book heroes on TV and film was only as powerful as the arm throwing the darts.

Popular superheroes like Batman and Superman have received the big and small screen treatment since the 1940s, but crude special effects and production values hamstringed the possibilities for action. The first “Superman” serials (1948), with Kirk Alyn as the Man of Steel, featured animated shots of Superman in flight. “The Batman” (1942) outfitted Lewis Wilton with Caped Crusader attire as hokey as a homemade Halloween costume. The film’s spot in history was further compromised by Robin (Douglas Croft) yelling “You’re as yellow as the color of your skin!” at the Dynamic Duo’s Japanese arch-enemy, Dr. Daka (played by the very Anglo J. Carroll Naish).

“The Adventures of Superman” TV series, (1952-58) starring George Reeves, the self-parodying “Batman” series (1966-68), starring Adam West, and “The Incredible Hulk” (1978-82) series with Bill Bixby provided many of the thrills of the comic books but still failed to convincingly realize the superheroes as believable fixtures of their worlds. Other superheroes took animated form on television in shows such as “Superfriends” (1973-85), “Fantastic Four” (1967, 1978), and “Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends” (1981-83), which enabled their characters to perform the same unbelievable feats on the TV screen that captured readers’ imaginations on the page.

The tagline of Richard Donner’s 1978 “Superman” film - “You’ll believe a man can fly” - directly addressed the unrealistic quality of past live action Superman incarnations. At the time of “Superman’s” premiere (one year after “Star Wars”), cinematic technology had finally evolved to a point where superheroes could be fully realized on the screen. Although Christopher Reeves’ Kryptonian presence indeed felt more realistic than that of Alyn or George Reeves, in retrospect the film’s production values still limited the dynamism of the hero’s feats. We believed Superman could fly, but the stationary shots weren’t nearly as exciting as the hyperkinetic CGI tracking shots of this summer’s “Superman Returns.” Nevertheless, audiences turned out for “Superman” in large enough numbers to encourage producers to release an additional three movies (in 1980, ‘83, and ‘87) featuring the Man of Steel. Notwithstanding the limitations of the effects, suspending disbelief proved easy with a good-looking guy like Christopher Reeves wearing the famed red and yellow ‘S’ on his chest.

Though the “Batman” series spanning from 1989 to 1997 coincided with great leaps in special effects technology, the films hardly required their magic touch. Physical effects and costume design, which had developed a great deal since Adam West’s heyday, provided more crucial assets. Michael Keaton’s thick rubber costumes in “Batman” and “Batman Returns” (1993) put to shame the grey spandex numbers donned by Lewis Wilton and Adam West. The believability of the films benefited from Batman’s more mundane mythos - depicting the Caped Crusader using grappling hooks and batarangs didn’t require the degree of CGI needed to convincingly portray Spider-Man shooting gobs of webbing or Mr. Fantastic stretching his neck ten city blocks. Gun-toting super-vigilante The Punisher, subject of the eponymous 1989 film starring Dolph Lundgren, was also brought to the big screen at this time because his story resembles an urban gangster film more than a comic book hero tale. He returned to theaters in 2004 anyways, amidst the flock of fellow Marvel superheroes coming to film.

During a training session in the Danger Room, their holographic combat simulator, the X-Men of “X3” - Wolverine, Storm, Colossus, Iceman and Shadowcat - square off against a Sentinel, the towering robotic menace of the comic book series. Fire-scarred buildings and toasted cars dress the post-apocalyptic landscape of the battle. The Sentinel draws closer to the mutants and Wolverine coolly tells Colossus, “Throw me.” As his metal membrane pours over his skin like sterling silver paint, Colossus grabs Wolverine by the back of his leather jacket and heaves him 200 feet into the air - in the direction of the Sentinel. Dense smoke momentarily obscures the clawed mutant’s battle with the robot until we see its ten-foot-tall head crash to the ground like a toppled statue.

Attempting to depict this scene from “X3” with the effects technology of the late ‘70s would have severely hindered both the film’s realism and the quality of the action. The audience reaction would mix laughter with boredom and disbelief. To immerse audiences in the fables of characters somewhat less popular and more otherworldly than Batman or Superman - like the X-Men and especially Blade or Spawn - a heightened level of realism is needed and special effects technology at the turn of the century weaves even more seamless illusions than those of “Superman” 20 years earlier.

“Twenty years ago Spider-Man couldn’t have web-swung the same way he does now,” Lee said.

The realistic aesthetic offered by modern special effects has spread to other characteristics of recent comic book hero films. The X-Men received a leather makeover, replacing their comics’ psychedelic collage of costumes that Cyclops mocks when he asks Wolverine, “What did you expect - yellow spandex?” in “X-Men.” The re-telling of Batman’s origin in “Batman Begins” grounded the hero’s arsenal in state-of-the-art military technology. Actually building the revised Batmobile to take sharp turns at 60 miles an hour - and reach that speed in six seconds - bolstered the film’s believability.

A massive irony surrounds the necessity of special effects and realistic production values to fully pull audiences into the worlds of the superheroes on screen. The most financially successful and critically well-received of the recent comic book hero films - namely “Spider-Man,” “Spider-Man 2,” and “Batman Begins” - actually focus more on the human alter-egos than the heroes themselves. The day-to-day lives of Peter Parker and Bruce Wayne receive far more screen time than the web-slinger and the Caped Crusader.

“(‘Spider-Man 2’) demonstrates what's wrong with a lot of other superhero epics: They focus on the superpowers, and short-change the humans behind them,” wrote film critic Roger Ebert in his four-star June 30, 2004 review of the film.

The filmmakers behind those “other superhero epics” run afoul of faulty storytelling by forgetting that special effects are a means to an end - the souls of the stories reside in the heroes themselves. Their human personalities stick to audiences’ hearts.

“Hellboy is a guy who would like to hang out with his cats and have a beer and a pizza and go visit his girlfriend, but unfortunately he has the baggage he carries along that he’s red and has a tail and comes from Hell and is the only person that can save the world, so that’s a little bit of baggage for a guy who just wants to be a normal Joe,” said Mike Richardson, President of Dark Horse comics.

Once we connect with the heroes’ human sides, they inspire us by transcending the limits of their human potential and embodying the noble values of superheroes. Watching Spider-Man battle Dr. Octopus provides compelling action. Watching Peter Parker - burdened by his adjustment to adult life, romantic woes with Mary Jane and tensions with his best friend Harry Osborn - under the mask of Spider-Man in the same battle provides compelling action while fastening our hearts to the outcome.

“When he was doing ‘The Crow,’ [producer] Ed Pressman told me that one thing comic book movies have that most other movies don’t is name recognition,” said David Sterritt, Chair of the National Society of Film Critics.

Because most comic book heroes are recognizable names, they appeal to filmgoers with a familiarity that most other movies cannot match. The current crop of comic book hero movies could therefore be considered an outgrowth of the same adaptation craze that has led producers to bring big-screen versions of “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Chronicles of Narnia” to cinemas. Comic book heroes provide even more natural candidates for films than the fantasy warriors with which they’ve shared screen time over the past five years.

“The form of comics themselves are borrowed from screenplay form. And so the writers and illustrators try to make the movies on paper,” Feiffer said.

The recognition provided by popular names like Batman or Superman ensures an ample audience, which in turn ensures money and therefore makes comic book movies wise business investments for Hollywood studios. The more recognizable the name, the bigger the bank.

“A certain amount of money is guaranteed if they just have the thing in focus,” said Sterritt.

Comic book fans will almost assuredly purchase tickets to fulfill their basic urge to see a living, breathing version of their beloved hero onscreen. Although today’s comic book readership pales next to that of the books’ golden and silver ages, anyone who has ever picked up an issue of “The Uncanny X-Men” or “Fantastic Four” can ride the wave of nostalgia straight into a movie seat.

But the popular appeal of a comic book hero movie stems from a far wider range of factors than mere name recognition. After all, not everyone could tell you the colors of Spider-Man’s costume - let alone that of Hellboy’s ember-red skin. To truly cross over to the mainstream, comic book hero movies must succeed at providing more than just a living, breathing version of the hero. Critical success in particular hinges upon possessing the same merits as any other successful action film. In addition to a steady string of explosions and flawless fight scenes, many successful comic book adaptations delight audiences with an x-factor that heightens its appeal.

“The ones that interest me as a grown-up moviegoer are the ones that bring something extra. The quirky, strange dark humor of ‘Hellboy,’ (2004) the surrealistic visual touches of Tim Burton’s first two ‘Batman’ movies (1989, 1993), or the romantic subplot especially of the first ‘Superman’ movie,” said Sterritt.

Comic book hero movies provide not only the escapist fare of any other action movie but also a genuine glimpse of a world where the most humanistic values ultimately rule the land. Unlike many of the villains they battle, superheroes don’t become enslaved or corrupted by their powers. They provide rousing testaments to the strength of free will and the depth of human potential for good. American audiences crave these reminders of their capacity for virtue when historical circumstances demand them. Only recently - coinciding with perhaps the greatest crisis of America’s self-confidence following 9/11 and the War on Terror - has technology enabled comic book heroes to reach mass audiences with the same inspiring messages they have been delivering to readers for decades.

These films have become such prevalent and predictable fixtures of movie theaters that the makers of “Scary Movie 4” recently announced plans to release their own send-up of the comic book hero movie in 2007 - “Superhero!” The recurrent formula of these films indeed provide a basis for comedy. Almost all focus on a hero born from a bizarre accident involving technology gone awry, who awkwardly chases a girl yet rejects her with a stoic devotion to his cause, before vanquishing a villain in an overwrought battle that results in the destruction of large buildings and landmarks. The film will lampoon the superhero genre and its tried-and-true conventions, but for all its humor, “Superhero!” will not explain the vast appeal of comic book hero movies or their colorful subjects.

(photos courtesy of www.eclipsemagazine.com, www.comicbookmovie.com, www.pressian.com)

Resident Evil 4

2006-05-06T18:09:00.000-05:00

No one said it’d be easy to rescue the President’s daughter from a Spanish village populated by parasite-infected monsters - but “Resident Evil 4” damn sure makes it fun.

As U.S. Agent Leon Kennedy, you must shoot your way through chainsaw-wielding maniacs, outrun rolling boulders a la Indiana Jones and slay a sea monster the size of a 747 - with a harpoon. But that’s only the first of five chapters. Leon’s search for the first daughter takes him deep into a splendorous medieval castle, where he battles a small army of robed religious fanatics wearing skull masks and brandishing maces. Top that, Chuck Norris.

The sky-high suspense quotient of “Resident Evil 4” makes the game an unwise choice for pregnant women or men with a genetic history of heart disease. You could be comfortably strolling through a castle hallway, pondering your next move, when bam! - an unseen monster thrusts one of its razor-sharp tentacles through the wall and at Leon’s torso. A screen will flash that prompts you to press a particular button to avoid getting impaled, but a split-second delay could cost you your life.

Leon can be maneuvered through his environments with remarkable precision - you can even weave him through a swarm of enemies and emerge unscathed. Mastering these controls in “Resident Evil 4” requires no longer than half an hour of play. The only annoyance is the absence of a jump button, but an all-purpose action button enables you to hop over fences or crates with no difficulty.

Combat controls are equally adaptive. Every firearm in the game projects a laser onto potential targets, which makes aiming a ridiculously easy task. But the articulate targeting system provides a fun challenge. If you shoot an enemy in the knee, it buckles and he falls down. A shot to the arm can disarm him. Shoot him in the head, and it explodes - naturally.

Anyone familiar with the “Resident Evil” series might scratch their head over one small absence in “Resident Evil 4” - the zombies! Instead of the undead, Leon faces hordes of Ganados - Spanish farmers infected with a parasite that looks like a tailed sea crab. Although they have the same vacant stare as zombies, the Ganados also talk and swing pitchforks at you. They’re far more terrifying than zombies - and it’s this abundance of terror that makes “Resident Evil 4” triumph.

"Resident Evil 4"
Score: 5/5 stars
Parental rating: Mature for intense violence, language and blood and gore
Manufacturer: Capcom
Platforms: PlayStation 2, GameCube, Windows XP
Retail price: $39.99
Features: 1 player
Life span: Approximately 25 hours to complete
The final boss: The best-looking game yet in the “Resident Evil” series delivers the heart-stopping suspense and action-packed adventure for which the franchise is known.

(photo courtesy of www.thenextfuture.nl)

"Crash" - my last comments, I swear...

2006-04-23T17:55:00.000-05:00

From my new column at www.411mania.com/movies, titled "The Critic's Critic"...

This column is devoted to movie critics - and skewering them for writing what I feel are off-base, misguided or entirely idiotic opinions of films past and present. While I will attempt to remain committed to logical argument and avoid infantile name-calling, I must caution you - some critics really deserve it.

Perhaps the most fitting first target of this column is the king of kings amongst mainstream film critics, Roger Ebert, and his review of the 2005 Best Picture Oscar winner, Crash. Like many critics, Ebert overwhelmingly loved Crash and awarded it four stars in his May 5, 2005 review.

To summarize, Ebert lauds the film’s suggestion that racial conflict will inevitably produce progress towards a more harmonious multi-cultural existence. Decent enough message, I agree, although I feel the film’s success at projecting that message was greatly compromised by writer/director Paul Haggis’ blunt-as-a-medieval-anvil storytelling. Therefore I feel Ebert’s praise is largely undeserved.

Ebert begins his review by summarizing the film’s plot, in my opinion structured as MTV-meets-Shortcuts, before adding the first observation that prompts me to choke on my Chinese food:

Haggis writes with such directness and such a good ear for everyday speech that the characters seem real and plausible after only a few words.

Directness? Yes. Real and plausible? Not even close, precisely because the dialogue is too direct. The racial slurs arrive with the force and frequency of a gatling gun, almost reaching hyperbolic levels with Sandra Bullock as the wife of Brendan Fraser’s district attorney. Her heavy-handed opening salvo of racist dialogue was an immediate blow to the film’s believability.

She screams of a Hispanic locksmith working in her home, “Tell them next time we’d appreciate it if you didn’t send a gang member…the guy in there with the shaved head, the pants around his ass, the prison tattoos…and he’s not going to sell our keys to one of his gangbanger friends? Your amigo in there is going to sell our key to one of his homies.”

Now on to Don Cheadle’s character, who wonderfully sustains the film’s detachment from reality by calling his Hispanic girlfriend a Mexican. She responds, “My father's from Puerto Rico. My mother's from El Salvador. Neither one of those is Mexico,” and he then replies, “Well then I guess the big mystery is, who gathered all those remarkably different cultures together and taught them all how to park their cars on their lawns?” Must every character in this film take every opportunity available to spit out any racial stereotype or slur that comes to mind? Is that how contemporary middle- and upper-class Los Angeles really functions?

At these moments I didn’t feel like I was watching characters existing in the same world as me. Rather, Crash plays like the ham-fisted result of a screenwriter who’s too afraid of being subtle because he’s too cynical towards what he apparently feels is an oblivious audience - one that won’t understand after the first fifty racial slurs that his movie is about - yes, racism.

Next on Ebert’s review:

For me, the strongest performance is by Matt Dillon, as the racist cop in anguish over his father. He makes an unnecessary traffic stop when he thinks he sees the black TV director and his light-skinned wife doing something they really shouldn't be doing at the same time they're driving. True enough, but he wouldn't have stopped a black couple or a white couple. He humiliates the woman with an invasive body search, while her husband is forced to stand by powerless, because the cops have the guns -- Dillon, and also an unseasoned rookie (Ryan Phillippe), who hates what he's seeing but has to back up his partner. That traffic stop shows Dillon's cop as vile and hateful.

But later we see him trying to care for his sick father, and we understand why he explodes at the HMO worker (whose race is only an excuse for his anger). He victimizes others by exercising his power, and is impotent when it comes to helping his father. Then the plot turns ironically on itself, and both of the cops find themselves, in very different ways, saving the lives of the very same TV director and his wife. Is this just manipulative storytelling? It didn't feel that way to me, because it serves a deeper purpose than mere irony: Haggis is telling parables, in which the characters learn the lessons they have earned by their behavior.

Here Ebert actually gets it somewhat right where other critics and viewers fail. He realizes that Dillon saving Thandie Newton - the same woman he molested on the side of the street - from a car crash is not senseless irony yet not a clean-sweeping act of moral redemption either. But Ebert seems to buy into Haggis’ suggestion that because Dillon has a crummy home situation we should at least reconcile his vile behavior towards Newton. However, the moral scales just don’t balance. It takes much more than deep-seated frustration with your home life to act with that kind of cruelty towards a complete stranger AND her husband. In this respect I couldn’t help perceiving Dillon as anything more than an inherent monster aggravated by circumstance. And saving Newton from the crash? It’s his job and people were watching. Any genuine interest he had in saving her life felt entirely undeserved after the malice he showed forcibly finger-banging her roadside. If Haggis did desire to depict Dillon as Ebert interpreted - someone who overcompensates outside the home for the powerlessness he feels there - then the writer/director chose a sickeningly heavy-handed way of doing it. Furthermore, if Dillon’s character was truly a decent man he wouldn’t have intimidated his partner into keeping his mouth shut about the incident. Next:

(Crash) shows the way we all leap to conclusions based on race -- yes, all of us, of all races, and however fair-minded we may try to be -- and we pay a price for that. If there is hope in the story, it comes because as the characters crash into one another, they learn things, mostly about themselves. Almost all of them are still alive at the end, and are better people because of what has happened to them. Not happier, not calmer, not even wiser, but better. Then there are those few who kill or get killed; racism has tragedy built in.

The ham-fisted poetic nonsense of “crashing into each other” aside, Ebert once again fails to truly engage the film. Did the characters really earn their emergence from its - oh, I’ll buy into it - wreckage as truly better people? The transformation of Sandra Bullock’s character comes about with so meager an impetus that in her story, the film continues to abandon any attachment to reality. No one is that damn fickle. So yes, she is an undeservedly better person by the end of the movie.

For Matt Dillon’s reprehensible character, saving a life as a consequence of doing his job is perhaps one degree of moral improvement - about as significant as a one degree rise in Antarctica’s temperature. And Dillon’s partner, played by Phillippe, probably emerges from the film the worst off. If he had truly been “bettered” by his experiences with his partner and Terrence Howard’s character, he wouldn’t have acted so coldly towards his African-American hitchhiker or blown him away out of baseless suspicion. Oh, but there was a base of suspicion - a stereotype of black people as gun-toting, cold-blooded killers. When he discovers that his passenger was reaching not for a gun but a guardian angel medallion similar to the one he carries in his car, Phillippe’s character doesn’t learn from or atone for his tragic misjudgment. Instead, he hides the body and fails to own up to his crime. Real moral improvement there.

Ebert concludes:

Not many films have the possibility of making their audiences better people. I don't expect “Crash” to work any miracles, but I believe anyone seeing it is likely to be moved to have a little more sympathy for people not like themselves. “Crash” is a film about progress.

No, “Crash” is a film about hopeless stagnation. The film is more a circle than a straight line - or even a zigzagged one that ultimately ends up ahead of its beginning point. It’s a hyperkinetic cross-section of multi-directional racism in contemporary Los Angeles with vogue photography marked by an oversaturated color key. It fails to say anything about the issue of prejudice except for brilliantly pointing out that we’re all subject to it. Well of course we are - it’s human nature and evolutionary. If I wasn’t prejudiced in some way, I’d have no qualms about walking down dark and smoky alleys at night or opening the bank door for men in ski masks. Although this message is indeed lost on people sometimes, Haggis is too busy with his sledgehammer-strength manner of storytelling to express it with any artistic subtlety. No, Paul, really - there were BLANKS in the gun? No f’n way!

As for Ebert’s remark that the film will move viewers “to have a little more sympathy for people not like themselves” - if anything, Crash inspires less. The film’s caricatured depiction of the racist and prejudiced invites much more scorn towards those people than sympathy for their targets. In other words, Crash breeds intolerance for the intolerant. Even Roger Ebert fails to crash into this truth.

(photo courtesy of www.hollywoodjesus.com)

V for Vendetta (warning: here be SPOILERS)

2006-04-13T09:43:00.000-05:00

Viva la revolucion, bollocks to everything else. "V for Vendetta" fizzles with subversive rhetoric about as empty-headed as the lobotomy wing of your local insane asylum. For all its compelling images, swift fight scenes and breakneck pacing, the film fails to realize itself as little more than a stylized battle cry of "we're not gonna take it; no, we ain't gonna take it anymore."

Since I'm by no means compelled to write with any element of originality in here blog, I'm just going to paste the plot synopsis from www.VforVendetta.com and add commentary here and there:

Set against the futuristic landscape of totalitarian Britain, V For Vendetta tells the story of a mild-mannered and elf-eared young woman named Evey (NATALIE PORTMAN) who is rescued from a life-and-death-and-rape-in-a-grimey-alley situation by a masked man (HUGO WEAVING) known only as “V.” Incomparably charismatic, fatally long-winded, and ferociously skilled in the art of combat and deception, V ignites a revolution when he urges his fellow citizens to rise up against tyranny and oppression through his all-too-quotable and alliterative aphorisms. As Evey uncovers the truth about V’s mysterious background, she also discovers the truth about herself – she's a non-sexual masochist, and emerges as his unlikely ally in the culmination of his utterly selfish and idiotic plan to bring freedom and justice back to a society fraught with cruelty and corruption and a long-suppressed hard-on for explosions.

With their screenplay - adapted, transposed and/or inspired by/from Alan Moore's graphic novel of the same name - the Wachowski brothers unabashedly rape the gloomy dystopia of Orwell's "1984" while Saussure and other semiologists jerk off in the corner. Of course by extension perhaps Moore is just as accountable for the film's unproductive mishmash of ideas, but alas, I have not read the novel or comics. This film didn't boost my motivation to do so either.

In "V for Vendetta" the Wachowskis take Orwell's oppressive England of the future - including the government's media manipulation and historical re-writes - and then replace Big Brother with Chancellor Sutler's (John Hurt) barking head. Next, they throw in some exhausting monologues from V that frisk the idea of sliding signifiers and meaning as a product of interpersonal construction. Of course these concepts are delivered in a "Saussure for Dummies" format through phrases like, "Behind this mask is an idea, and ideas are bulletproof."

Being the progenitors of the wretched "Matrix" sequels, the Wachowskis and director James McTeigue (1st AD on "The Matrix" films) must also deliver an action quotient. Therefore V is not only a carnivalesque demagogue but also an expert with explosives and knives - then again, that's kind of carnivalesque of him as well. Thankfully the wire-fu is kept at a minimum, which makes for some appetizing fight scenes in "V for Vendetta." It's the main course of glib political rabble-rousing that induces the film's nauseating aftertaste.

V defines his ideology in opposition to those of Britain's ruling party; he doesn't seem to embrace any cause of his own. In other words, he's kind of like today's Democrats - no true agenda, but you can be damn sure it's far away from that of the Republicans. But bollocks to the hordes of critics who label him a terrorist with whom sympathizing is impossible. The government V attempts to overthrow is indeed vile and venal and all those other v-words. Although he doesn't seem to pretend there'll be no "collateral damage," he is no mass murderer. He doesn't attempt to terrorize the citizenry, but to rally them.

Yet V's insurrection and theatrics thinly mask what V literally stands for: vengeance. As a subject in a bioweapons test gone awry, V is out to get the government for torturing and disfiguring him. The fact that his enemies are part of an evil totalitarian regime is convenient, because it makes it easier for him to garner allies. But would V wear the likeness of Guy Fawkes (the Briton who attempted to blow up Parliament in 1605's "Gunpowder Plot") and start the all-too-romanticized revolution if he wasn't so pissed off that the government damaged him dermatologically? Probably not - and that makes for one selfish, tunnel-visioned revolutionary with no cause, but rather an anti-cause.

The likely retort to my criticisms will be that V's lack of an agenda stems from his desire to empower the populace to start their own government and rule themselves fairly. While an admirable goal - hey, down with dictators - it's too bad V seems to forget something: that NEVER works. The revolutionary spirit will persist after the revolution, the inevitably unhappy will continue to revolt, and stagnation will ensue. Leaders - however democratic but by necessity authoritative - are needed.

V would be the most likely candidate - hell, by the end of the film half the country is wearing his garb like 4th graders on Halloween. But V seems to foresee the chaos that will ensue after Parliament is blown to bits and true to his irresponsibly revolutionary and selfish spirit, he effectively commits suicide after etching the names off of his "To Kill" list. Because vengeance is his, V doesn't stick around and lead the masses through the wreckage of the revolt he started. We aren't left to worry about that wreckage either, because in "V for Vendetta," all that matters is revolution for revolution's sake.

(photo courtesy of www.palmbeachpost.com)

Fake Blood, "Blair Witches" and Low Budgets: Independent Horror Films

2006-04-10T21:40:00.000-05:00

Independent horror films are among the scariest, funniest, and most disturbing works of cinema ever to meet the eyes and ears of an audience. The clever and uncompromising "do it yourself" (DIY) ethic of independent horror filmmakers has resulted in a massive, self-perpetuating body of work that continues to thrive today in films like "Hostel" and "Shaun of the Dead." But what defines an independent horror film? What sets one apart from a conventional, "studio" horror film? An examination of "Night of the Living Dead," "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," "Evil Dead," "Dead Alive," and "The Blair Witch Project" will highlight defining characteristics of independent horror films as well as the pattern of growth that this category of films has experienced over the last forty years. These five films have been selected on the basis of their pervasive influence, widespread popularity, and exemplification of key traits of independent horror cinema.

Although silent films like Wiene’s "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" and the hokey science fiction movies of the 1950s indeed laid the groundwork for horror cinema, George Romero’s "Night of the Living Dead" (1968) was a watershed of independent horror movies for multiple reasons. Romero’s film depicts a zombie infestation of a pastoral town. Surviving humans are bottled together in an isolated old house, where they argue over how best to stay alive as they ward off their undead would-be devourers. The end of "Night of the Living Dead" is wholly in the vein of independent film and similar to that of "Easy Rider" - the protagonist is killed, but not by zombies. In a not-so-subtle example of racial profiling, the rescuing law enforcement brigade shoots the sole black survivor of the zombie onslaught without first checking to ensure that he wasn‘t a zombie. Romero denies that the ending was intended to communicate any social messages and insists that the actor (Duane Jones) was cast not because he was black, but because he was the most qualified man for the part. The director’s point is believable; given Romero’s tight budget, it is difficult to imagine that he had hundreds of actors to choose from. But the decision to write the zombies as cannibals, made because of the shock value of eating human flesh, was indisputably an anti-mainstream move on the filmmakers’ part. Therefore this quality of "Night of the Living Dead" and the film’s bleak conclusion - ostensibly devoid of all hope for the human race - comfortably position Romero’s film within the canon of independent cinema.

"Night of the Living Dead’s" meager budget of $114,000 certainly tied Romero’s hands, but he proved to be an unparalleled escape artist by using many of the film’s crew to serve as actors in the film. Their performances are indeed awkward and stunted, but they do what is necessary: they scream, bicker, and in the case of the actors performing as zombies, groan and stumble. Writer John Russo portrayed a zombie and also assumed the duties of a stuntman - he volunteered to be set on fire when no other cast member would do so. Karl Hardman, who played a survivor languishing in the basement of the house, also served as the film’s makeup artist and sound engineer. Pulling double duty in this manner underscores the devotion of the crew to their project and, by extension, their similarity to other independent filmmakers.

The zombies in "Night of the Living Dead" exhibit the "DIY" approach of independent horror cinema to the fullest. Their make-up is indeed sparse and the black-and-white photography likely was an asset to the filmmakers in this respect by sparing them the difficulty of working with a color palette. Playing the role of bloody flesh was fried ham covered with Bosco chocolate syrup, and a local butcher provided authentic blood and guts where necessary in exchange for his own small role in the film. The house was lent to the filmmakers by an owner who had intended to bulldoze it after production, so Romero and company were free to destroy it to their liking. The dissonant music score was borrowed from the Capitol/EMI Records stock music library (the copyright of which was in the public domain) and thus cost the filmmakers only $1,500 to use.

Filmmakers tried, and failed, to reach distribution deals with Columbia and American Independent Pictures, who passed because the film was black-and-white and not upbeat or romantic enough, respectively. "Night of the Living Dead" was ultimately distributed by the Walter Reade Organization, who publicly advertised taking out a $50,000 insurance policy for any viewer who died of a heart attack while watching the movie. At its 1968 premiere in Pittsburgh, the film received a standing ovation only to suffer from a subsequent Christian backlash for what conservatives perceived to be Satanic themes. But the strongest influence of "Night of the Living Dead" was felt by filmmakers in the following decades who would draw inspiration from Romero’s film in order to make their own contributions to independent horror cinema.

One of those filmmakers was Tobe Hooper, who along with Kim Henkel would write "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" in 1974. There would likely be no Freddy Krueger or Michael Myers without this film and its psychotic Ed Gein-inspired terror, Leatherface. For this reason the film is almost equal to "Night of the Living Dead" in the magnitude of its influence upon subsequent horror cinema. It depicts a group of college students heading through scenic Texas to visit the desecrated grave of one of their grandfathers. After being horrifically slashed by a deranged hitchhiker, they stop at a dilapidated house nearby, wherein resides Leatherface, his psychotic cannibal relatives, and a ghastly interior pieced together from the family’s human trophies.

The cannibalism in "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is even more appalling than that depicted in "Night of the Living Dead" because the cannibals are not dead or devoid of human consciousness. Indeed, Leatherface and his relatives are biologically - albeit not necessarily psychologically - human beings. A living human conscionably killing another human and devouring their flesh is much more difficult to wrap one‘s head around than a zombie infestation. The characters’ roots in the true life story of serial killer Ed Gein make the cannibalistic elements of the film even more horrifying, because audiences familiar with Gein’s story are having their faces rubbed in the disturbing figments of the film’s truth. Hooper’s disregard for the audience’s comfort level is indicative of the type of intractable vision and anti-mainstream attitude that marks many independent filmmakers.

Unlike the majority of mainstream film stars, the cast of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" truly suffered for their art and placed their well-being in the hands of a slipshod crew. While being chased outdoors by Leatherface, actress Marilyn Burns suffered enough cuts from shrubs and tree branches to visibly stain her clothes with blood. Another actress who appeared to be strung up with a meat hook by Leatherface was actually placed in a great deal of pain by a nylon cord that was tightly wrapped between her legs. And Gunnar Hansen, who played Leatherface, repeatedly banged his head against doorways and other raised objects because his peripheral vision was so limited by the prosthetic mask he wore. The interior of the house was adorned by dead animals, rotting food, and real human skeletons imported from India - all of these ingredients combined to make for a putrid and unbearable smell on the set. Vietnam veteran Edwin Neal, who played the hitchhiker, claimed that filming conditions on "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" were worse than those he had experienced during the war - so miserable and wretched that he would kill Hooper if he ever saw them again.

The film’s mainstream reception, or lack thereof, is also the stuff of which independent cinema is made. Sneak previews were met with numerous walk-outs, while censors in Britain and Australia wouldn’t allow the film to screen until years after its initial release. But the film’s weighty influence has been felt universally, in the barrage of imitative slasher films, the parade of sequels, and the recent remake produced by James Cameron.

Sam Raimi’s "Evil Dead" (1981) and its higher-budgeted revision, "Evil Dead 2" (1987), would expand upon the independent horror film formula devised by "Night of the Living Dead" and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" by crystallizing their inherently humorous elements and bringing them to the fore. Meanwhile, the films’ bloody excess reaches a pitch not even hinted at by its independent horror predecessors. Like "Dead" and "Chainsaw," "Evil Dead" occurs in a small deserted cabin and its surrounding desolate wilderness. When a group of twenty-something vacationers happen upon a crusty old book labeled the "Necronomicon," they blithely recite its contents and unwittingly raise literal hell in the process. Suddenly undead creatures attack the cabin and convert its residents into fellow soldiers in the army of darkness. These brutal events force the sole survivor, independent horror icon Bruce Campbell in the role of Ash, to take action against the evil engulfing him.

The independent spirit of "Evil Dead" is evidenced in Bruce Campbell’s frequent busting out of his lead actor credit to assist director Sam Raimi with ornate camera movements, such as the creature point-of-view shots that careen across the ground and water. Like "Night of the Living Dead," the majority of makeup effects in "Evil Dead" are culinary in substance. The unsightly white liquid bled by the maimed dead is actually 2% milk; creamed corn was dyed green and used as zombie guts. The actors were by no means in the hands of the most professional makeup artists - Betsy Baker, who played Linda Williams, lost her eyelashes when she removed her "zombie face." The opaque white contact lenses Baker wore while battling Campbell with a dagger rendered the actress effectively blind. These consequences of "Evil Dead’s" production could be expected on its measly $50,000 budget.

"Evil Dead" and, to a much larger degree, "Evil Dead 2," were two of the first independent horror films to demonstrate the humorous elements of the genre. But they were by no means the very first: the 1978 sequel to "Night of the Living Dead," "Dawn of the Dead," also contained some Swiss Family Robinson-like humorous elements in its mall location. In "Evil Dead 2," Campbell’s battle with his possessed hand ranks with Buster Keaton’s movies as some of the greatest physical comedy caught on film. Replacing his severed hand with a chainsaw was not only a nod to "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," but another hilariously absurd moment in "Evil Dead." The sheer volume of blood and guts spilled in each version of "Evil Dead" eventually numbs the audience to the gore and leaves them with no other option than to laugh. Despite the levity, Raimi did not neglect to include the type of horror that marked "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" in "Evil Dead." A sequence featuring a female vacationer being bound, lacerated and raped by tree branches was excised from the film by order of censors in some countries.

"Evil Dead" and "Evil Dead 2" reinforced the ghastly qualities of independent horror cinema while cementing its capacity for horror. Peter Jackson went even further than Raimi with "Dead Alive" (1992) by upping the fake blood ante to record-setting levels while including enough humor to bring the film to the verge of a comedy classification. The film tells the story of a milquetoast young New Zealand man named Lionel whose mother is bitten by a rabid "rat monkey" at the local zoo. As Lionel attempts to pursue a romance with an attractive woman named Paquita, he is forced to confine his raving blood-thirsty mother to their basement. Despite his efforts, mum manages to infect a growing number of neighbors. The rising tide of the undead living below him brings Lionel to overcome his reserved instincts and take action against the crowd of zombies infesting his basement.

"Dead Alive" is perhaps most notorious for its conclusion, when Lionel confronts the zombie hordes in the lobby of his house and uses a lawnmower (lifted up and used like a buzz saw) to decimate them in a brutal orgy of blood and guts. The fake blood was pumped at 5 gallons a second to bring the total tally of blood used in the film’s final moments to 300 liters. True to the DIY ethic, maple syrup was used as the crimson substance, while pork fat, latex, polyfoam and human hair were combined in varying degrees to create fake guts and limbs. On the whole, the film is believed to have used the most fake blood in movie history during its production, but an accurate measurement of this statistic is no easy task.

Like many independent horror directors, Peter Jackson’s filmmaking was full of both passion for his film’s schlocky story (written by Stephen Sinclair) and taut efficiency while making it come to life. The final cut of "Dead Alive" featured no deviations from Jackson’s original screenplay and the film even finished $45,000 under its budget of $3 million. Jackson used the remaining money on a two-day shoot in the park that featured Lionel and Paquita.

The hilarity of "Dead Alive’s" absurd surplus of gore was indeed lost on censorship boards. In Germany and the U.S. the film was cut from 104 minutes to 85, while Australia and the United Kingdom exhibited the film in full. In Jackson’s native New Zealand, where "Dead Alive" was filmed, the film grossed more per screen than "Batman Returns," the box office smash of that year. Aside from its financial success, "Dead Alive" demonstrates both the comic zenith to which independent horror can ascend and the influence of "Evil Dead" and other independent horror films in areas as removed as New Zealand.

After Jackson and Raimi pushed blood and guts to the limit, "The Blair Witch Project" (1999) represented a redirection of independent horror film by committing to an ethos of "less is more." Indeed, after Raimi and Jackson’s torrential bloodbaths, writer/directors Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick’s depiction of the horror you can‘t see was far more frightening than any rotting zombie or chainsaw-wielding maniac. In fact, the scariness of "Blair Witch" can be demonstrated by comparing two shots from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," one of which features Leatherface fully lit while the other depicts only his silhouette. Indeed the silhouette is scarier - mystery trumps gory detail. "The Blair Witch Project" demonstrates just how scary mystery can be.

Shooting for eight days on a $22,000 budget likely made the minimalist approach all the easier. It worked. "Blair Witch" doesn’t look cheap or humorous. Indeed, as a "home movie" depicting the forest journey of three college students the film looks uncannily realistic. The film begins in Burkittesville, Maryland, where filmmakers Heather Donahue, Michael Williams, and Joshua Leonard interview townspeople about the legend of the Blair Witch. Young children have been disappearing into the Black Hills Forest since the 1940s and residents of the small Maryland village have blamed the Witch for the unexplained phenomena. The three inquisitive students take cameras and camping materials deep into the forest only to discover piles of stones whose arrangement is altered every time the campers see them. Unending passages of unusual noises accompany the night sky. As Donahue, Williams, and Leonard grow increasingly distressed, their chances of escaping the Black Hills Forest grow dimmer. A year after their trip, the students’ video cameras are found and their footage is pieced together to form the movie.

The documentary aura surrounding "The Blair Witch Project" is perhaps its scariest quality - although documentaries are not the exclusive property of independent cinema, the type of ingenuity that would give birth to such an idea is the mark of a independent filmmaker. Myrick and Sanchez were so committed to the authenticity of their idea that the actors actually filmed the movie. Further, "The Blair Witch Project" was filmed with spontaneity that runs counter to the rigid planning of Peter Jackson. Donahue, Williams, and Leonard improvised all of their lines and their preparation for the film came solely in the form of a 35-page outline of the Blair Witch mythology. They entered the woods unaware of what phenomena they would experience and thus their reactions to the eerie noises and bizarre occurrences are entirely extemporaneous.

Unbeknownst to the actors, Myrick and Sanchez were the ones who shook their tent. The townspeople interviewed by the students were planted by the directors, and their responses to the students’ questions were met with surprise by the unprepared actors. To make the them genuinely agitated while filming the later days of their journey in the woods, the directors gave the actors decreasing quantities of food. Although Donahue, Williams, and Leonard didn’t experience much physical pain while filming "The Blair Witch Project," the psychological torture they endured is easily on par with that sustained by any cast in the history of independent horror.

In addition to their sadistic treatment of their actors, Myrick and Sanchez’ devotion to their subject is evident in the way they presented it. Namely, they claimed the Blair Witch legend was true. Even the actors wouldn’t learn until after the film’s release that the legend was pure confabulation on the part of Myrick and Sanchez. The myth extended into the internet, where the three actors were listed as "missing, presumed dead" on the Internet Movie Database.

"The Blair Witch Project" represented a redefinition of independent horror. Eschewing buckets of blood and armies of zombies, it instead reaches for the real as its source of horror. As the cheapest of the five films examined in this analysis of the genre, it is also perhaps the most independent. Yet it is the most successful: the film grossed $240.5 million. Still, Myrick and Sanchez’ film is somewhat rooted in the traditions of independent horror - it is experimental, its filmmakers possessed a bold and determined vision, and it was wildly popular with audiences.

So what defines an independent horror film? After analyzing "Night of the Living Dead," "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," "Evil Dead," "Dead Alive," and "The Blair Witch Project," many criteria immediately arise as defining characteristics. Perhaps most salient is the low budget: even the most expensive of the five films, "Dead Alive," was made with such an efficient DIY ethic that it finished $45,000 under budget. A humorous detachment from macabre subject matter is also common, but not as ubiquitous as humor prompted by the film’s exposure of its cheap means of production. Physical and psychological actor punishment stemming from the low budget is another recurring feature of these films. Also, independent horror shares with independent cinema at large a disavowal, conscious or not, of mainstream conventions. The happy ending and the euphemistic glossing over of nature’s darker elements have no place in independent horror cinema. Lastly, perhaps the most trenchant fixture of independent horror cinema is the cultish appreciation these movies have engendered in audiences. The tradition of independent horror has been self-sustaining in this manner - members of those cultish audiences have often been the ones who would go on to contribute their own films to independent horror cinema.

(photos courtesy of www.follow-me-now.de, http://images-eu.amazon.com, http://images.amazon.com, www.voodoovenue.com)

Star Wars: Battlefront II

2006-04-05T20:16:00.000-05:00

This is a "try-out" review I wrote for Rochester's insider weekly, and it's probably not going to go anywhere else, so here it is:

"Star Wars: Battlefront II" takes players through the galactic civil wars of the saga's history as soldiers laser-blasting their way through the trenches of planetary conflict. But this is not another storm trooper in the army of "Star Wars" video games - "Battlefront II" is as mighty and majestic as Darth Vader himself.

Like its 2004 prequel, "Battlefront II" features more than a dozen classic "Star Wars" locations, including the ice world of Hoth and Luke Skywalker's home planet of Tatooine. Their graphical resemblance to the films is tighter than Chewbacca's grip. The lush, sun-sprinkled forest landscape of Endor is even more breathtaking in "Battlefront II" than in "Return of the Jedi." The size and detail of the environments is nearly endless - in the midst of battle one can stop at Yoda's tree trunk cabin on Dagobah or visit the detention blocks on the Death Star. But there's battle to be done and Rebel scum to destroy (or defend, if that's your thing).

Leading the charge are Jedi Knights and other major film characters such as Princess Leia. "Battlefront II" improves upon its predecessor by allowing players to strap on Boba Fett's jetpack or Han Solo's holster and play as the films' heroes. You can't play as those cuddly Ewoks, but you certainly can blast them into the next star system.

"Battlefront II" also features space combat - another feature criminally absent from "Battlefront." Unfortunately - with the exception of different nebulae and nearby planets - each space level is pretty much the same. But what do you expect, it's space.

Characters and locations from the recent "Star Wars: Episode III" film bring a completeness to "Battlefront II" that the first game didn't possess. The result is added battlegrounds like the Hellish volcanic world of Mustafar and new characters like General Grievous, the droid Jedi slayer. Indeed the saga is complete in "Battlefront II," and that includes Grievous' non-stop wheezing.

Completing the levels in "Battlefront II" is like shooting your way through a flurry of TIE Fighters. The computer is no easy opponent but it never puts up too tough a fight to win. The controls require a few minutes of adjustment but once you learn to run and shoot at the same time, "Battlefront II" becomes as addictive as death sticks.

Playing "Battlefront II" is like playing through the "Star Wars" films themselves. John Williams' unmistakable orchestral score likewise serves as the soundtrack to your planetary conquests. And if there's any piece that should accompany "Battlefront II," it's Vader's menacing "Imperial March."

Star Wars: Battlefront II
Score: 5/5 stars
Parental rating: Teen for mild language and violence
Manufacturer: LucasArts
Platforms: PlayStation 2, Xbox, PlayStation Portable (PSP), Windows PC
Retail price: $49.99
Features: Up to 24 players with a Network Adaptor
Longevity: Roughly six hours to play through every level in the game, 20 minutes each
The final boss: "Battlefront II" is an absolute blast of galactic combat and a thorough video game player's guide to the "Star Wars" galaxy

(photo courtesy of http://interviews.teamxbox.com)

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls - full review.

2006-03-30T22:07:00.000-05:00

“Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock n’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood” by Peter Biskind offers a reader everything he would expect from a 452-page gossip column. Its chronological account of Hollywood’s changing of the guard during the late ‘60s and ‘70s comes with a 100 gallon goodie bag of stories about Dennis Hopper’s lunacy, Faye Dunaway’s absence of charm and the unabashedly nerdy George Lucas. Contrary to the spirit of gossip, however, “Easy Riders” actually pierces the superficial skin of its subjects, although Biskind’s obsession with the juicy facts ultimately limits just how tightly he frisks the artistic ambitions of the harbingers of Hollywood’s second golden age.

The book begins with the journey of “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967) to the big screen as a result of star Warren Beatty’s collaboration with his longtime sycophant scriptwriter Robert Towne, director Arthur Penn, and screenwriters Robert Benton and David Newman. Biskind amusingly recounts Beatty’s difficulty getting Warner Brothers titan Jack Warner to finance “Bonnie and Clyde,” then and even now a ragingly anti-Hollywood film with an ending about as good-natured as a NAMBLA convention. Rumors persist that in order to get the deal, Beatty dropped to his knees and said “Colonel, I’ll kiss your shoes here, I’ll lick them.” Aghast at Beatty’s desperation, Warner yells “What the fuck you doin’? Get OFF THE FUCKING FLOOR!” Equally hilarious is the weak-bladdered Warner’s statement to Beatty after seeing the two-hour and ten-minute cut of “Bonnie and Clyde”: “That’s the longest two hours and ten minutes I ever spent! It’s a three-piss picture!”

But Beatty - and his ‘70s resume of films such as “Shampoo” (1974) and “Heaven Can Wait” (1978) - is only one of Biskind’s recurrent subjects. Dennis Hopper takes the distinction of being the most drugged up, unstable gun-loving lunatic ever to set foot in Hollywood, rivaled closely by suicidal “Taxi Driver” writer Paul Schrader. Perhaps the most amusing Hopper tale involves John Wayne, who flew his helicopter onto the set of “True Grit” and exited the vehicle with a holstered .45 and the “Easy Rider” star in his sights. Biskind explains that Wayne regularly scapegoated Hopper for any New Left or communist stirring happening at the time. In this instance Wayne exclaimed, “Where is that pinko Hopper? That goddamn Eldridge Cleaver’s out there at UCLA saying ‘shit’ and ‘cocksucker’ in front of my sweet daughter. I want that red mother fucker! Where is that commie hiding?” In actor Glen Campbell’s trailer, according to Biskind.

Hopper’s “Easy Rider” (1969) marks the next portentous step in Biskind’s tracing of the New Hollywood genesis, followed by such classic American cinema as Robert Altman’s “M*A*S*H” (1970), Francis Ford Coppola‘s “The Godfather” (1972), William Friedkin’s “The Exorcist” (1974), Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” (1975), and Lucas’ “Star Wars” (1977). Meanwhile the rise - and in some cases fall - of directors such as Peter Bogdanovich, Martin Scorcese and Hal Ashby are told with dramatic punch and no compromise on the lurid details - namely those pertaining to Scorcese and Ashby’s self-destructive lifestyles and Bogdanovich’s fawning hero worship of Hawkes and Ford.

The anecdotal quality of Biskind’s writing makes for a devouring read. Savory dialogue in the screening rooms, mansions and awards ceremonies tells the stories of “Easy Riders’” subjects with a furtive flow. For a cinephile there is a bombastic thrill in not just reading but experiencing, as a third party, candid conversations between Hopper and Peter Fonda, Coppola and Lucas or DeNiro and Scorcese. The dialogue-driven tale of Robert DeNiro and his girlfriend quarreling over a swatted-dead bee at a restaurant in Cannes is among the most delightful stories in “Easy Riders” precisely because of its triviality.

A familiarity with the characters of Biskind’s book considerably enhances its readability. Someone who couldn’t care less about Hollywood history may read about Hopper’s fiesty altercation with Rip Torn at Serendipity in New York City with unmoved apathy. Thus “Easy Riders” is firmly indoctrinated in the cult of celebrity - it assumes we care about its subjects enough to read with profound interest about Bogdanovich’s infatuation with Cybil Shepard or Bert Schneider’s platonic love for Black Panther leader Huey Newton. For film lovers and industry insider-wannabes these stories will provide guilty pleasures galore. But at the other end, fanatical film purists who especially care about the films themselves and little else may get anxious reading about all the extraneous gossip.

Despite all its delightful detail, Biskind’s book glosses over a massive tidbit: the films themselves. Because “Easy Rider, Raging Bulls” focuses primarily on the economic and social conditions of Hollywood in the late ‘60s and ‘70s its focus on the artistic merits of key films of the period is a bit shallower. With abundant detail Biskind depicts Hollywood as a parasitic playground of greedy egos but its products are treated as just that - products. In “Easy Riders” their grosses and distribution patterns take precedence over their contribution to the American cinematic canon. He doesn’t ignore their artistic merits, but it is clear throughout “Easy Riders” that Biskind is concerned more with product than art. Iconic New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael receives a smattering of Biskind’s attention but her role in the New Hollywood genesis is mostly confined to an economic one - most notably, her weighty role in the box office success of “Bonnie and Clyde.” The space devoted to her actual responses to films is somewhat smaller than Biskind’s account of her critical clout and her personal relationships with filmmakers like Beatty.

“Easy Riders, Raging Bulls” reads like cotton candy tastes. But between its compelling tales of Hollywood careers gone awry and those gone aflame, Biskind’s book teases a taste of the artistic essence of the New Hollywood renaissance. Nevermind asking why we care about the subjects of the book; the true question arising after every chapter of “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls” is why we care about the films. As an inevitable consequence of recounting the raunchy drama of New Hollywood Biskind comes pretty damn close to answering these questions, but its clear throughout the book that he’d rather explain why Dennis Hopper is a psychopath.

(photo courtesy of http://images.greencine.com)

Ratings crash.

2006-03-07T09:09:00.000-05:00

Search my February archives for my thoughts on this year's Best Picture Oscar winner. Search my January archives for a list of 15 films that were more deserving of that award than "Crash" (and I can recite an additional 15 films upon request).

It seems the common explanation for this Oscar upset is that Hollywood is trying to set the American social agenda - telling people that "Crash" is good, they should see "Crash," they should soak in its strike-a-melodramatic-pose visuals and its muddled message that people hate, but also love, but also hate, ad infinitum. "Oooh, we're such numb and lost souls that we crash into each other - that's awesome stuff, man. That's what we'll call the film. And hey - let's include a car crash just to make our fists all the hammier." And when it comes to the movie's leave-no-questions-asked, squash-the-imagination-like-a-fucking-bug storytelling, don't get me started on the revelation that there were blanks in the gun.

I attribute this madness to the Academy's desperation for ratings. Indeed, this year's ratings appear to have slipped 8% from 2005. Next year the sloganeering for the show will be sure to include something to the effect of, "You never know what's gonna happen at the Oscars! We may just go completely loony and give the Best Picture award to 'Mission: Impossible 3!' Even though it's not nominated!"

If this tomfoolery does result in a ratings spike, it will come at the expense of a significant chunk of the Oscars' credibility. I'm sorry Academy, but the sky just isn't purple this time.

(photo courtesy of www.cbsnews.com)

Gross, Faye Dunaway, gross.

2006-02-27T17:14:00.001-05:00

"Easy Riders, Raging Bulls" by Peter Biskind is pure raunchy awesomeness. This 439-page tabloid-esque chronicle of the emergence of "New Hollywood" in the late '60s contains some of the most hilarious and horrifying stories about key figures in American film, all while chugging forward with a gripping narrative of the downfall of the classic studio system and the fleeting power enjoyed by famed auteurs like Marty Scorcese, Robert Altman and Francis Ford Coppola. Get all this now.

I'm not even supposed to be here! - "Clerks" as comfort

2006-02-24T01:02:00.000-05:00

Being straight-edge in college doomed me to a lot of lonely nights. I spent many of them parked in front of my television set watching “comfort movies,” which carry a much different definition for males than for females. I couldn’t take solace in maudlin romantic comedies or hopeful rags-to-riches stories. “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” doused me in sap and “Love, Actually” made me choke on it. Instead, light-hearted films that contained conspiring fun-loving friends trading incisive barbs - “buddy comedies,” basically - were where I hung my psyche’s hat. “The Big Lebowski” and “Bottle Rocket” were among my most gratifying films to watch.

So I spent my first night in college watching “Clerks,” notoriously potty-mouthed writer/director Kevin Smith’s 1993 film debut. I had seen it once before, but I wasn’t looking for any bold new viewing experiences. With the usual burdens of entering college pinning down my thoughts with the strength of industrial staples, I couldn’t afford to think. In fact, I needed something to help me pluck out those staples - something to alleviate my qualms over choosing the right major, trying out for the lacrosse team, and forging new friendships. “Clerks” - and its depiction of two convenience store clerks waging a mean-spirited war against their customers - was just the right tool.

Of course I was not the only “Clerks” fan on any college campus. A tour through any ten dorm rooms in America will likely produce at least one “Clerks” DVD or poster (or its more popular but cruder younger brother, “Mallrats”). The film’s resonance with college students is indeed massive, but not without reason.

Quick Stop cashier Dante Hicks (Brian O’Halloran) and RST Video clerk Randal Graves (Jeff Anderson) appeal so mightily to college students precisely because they didn’t go to college. They are the road not taken. They have, willfully or not, bypassed the lengthy commitment of a “proper” education. Instead, they slum it in the service sector, where they are subjected to the fury of America’s middle class. Every day for Dante and Randal is another brow-beating, another encounter with someone who tries to remind them of their inferiority.

Randal defensively burrows into the “I didn’t go to college because I already know everything I need to know” persona. He’s perfectly content lambasting customers who unwittingly amble into RST Video to rent a movie for their children. Randal’s store is like a war zone where he plays enough mind games to confuse a seasoned criminal psychologist. He’s rude as hell, but like any great athlete, you’d love to have him playing on your team.

Meanwhile, Dante grapples with the prospect of finishing school in order to please his girlfriend. His happiness is a bit more elusive. Unlike Randal, Dante has connections - people who lament his wasted potential and urge him to leave his minimum wage gulag. Dante, as the name implies, is journeying through Hell - but not one to which he is forever banished. He’d like to escape, but he can’t decide whether he should indulge the hollow perks of his job at the Quick Stop or flee the store for higher ground. The ambivalence causes Dante to alternate between bouts of misery and bursts of joy. Yet, to the viewer, his life doesn’t seem so terrible with a friend like Randal constantly around to amuse him.

Despite veering off the course to happiness and propriety prescribed by their elders, Dante and Randal are ostensibly happy - or at least well-adjusted enough to make light of their plights by filling their days with surliness and scorn toward their customers. They treat the stores that employ them like their homes - they come and go when they please, swipe drinks from the cooler like it was their personal refrigerator, and annex the roof like it was their backyard to host a roller-hockey game with their friends. They encounter eccentrics like gum representatives who incite small-scale riots within the store's smoking patronage and foul-mouthed drug dealers who are dying to be slapped with a sexual harassment lawsuit. All the while, Dante and Randal make convenience stores look like temples of serenity and mirth - relative to most other places of employment. Corporations be damned!

The rebellion of “Clerks” thus lies in its evisceration of “established” people as a witless and bored social stratum. It not only subverts their doctrine of “go to college, get a job, be happy” but also pokes fun at them for being inept and utterly dependent on social servants to meet their menial, everyday needs. Because I had just entered college - when I felt pressured by its “necessity” more than ever - “Clerks’” message hit me like a hammer in my spine. Suddenly college didn’t seem so “do or die.” After all, I could just work at a convenience store for the rest of my life, meet some wacky dude like Randal, and savor the happiness that comes with our hijinks.

The triviality of Dante and Randal’s discussions about popular culture is another hook in the gut of the college audience. These two were clearly reared on a steady diet of Spielberg and Lucas. Yet they don’t have traditionally “nerdy” discussions. They aren’t fan boys who argue that Batman would kick Superman’s ass because he’s that much cooler. Their argument about the explosion of the second Death Star as an injustice against independent contractors mirrors the type of mindless chatter that my suitemates and I would ease into after classes. It’s foolish and moot, but fun to ponder nonetheless.

Not long after seeing “Clerks” for the second time, my suitemates and I would watch it ad infinitum, to the point where endless quotations and even a Halloween masquerade as the cast would define the first few months of our freshman year. We didn’t tire of it. Some of my friends unsuccessfully tried to argue away the movie’s appeal. They just didn’t understand why I loved watching “Clerks” repeatedly. If they did, maybe they would have been able to predict that my obsession would subside once my confidence in “the college life” strengthened. Even I didn’t realize until years later that for those first few months of college, “Clerks” wasn’t just fun, it was comfort.

(photo courtesy of www.affichescinema.com)

Myfavoriteband'sspace

2006-02-15T22:22:00.000-05:00

Sordid tales of stalking and gawking on myspace.com are all over the local and national news. Parents everywhere are concerned that the online friend network is going to pluck their adolescent children from their protection and send them tumbling into the arms of weirdos waiting in the wings.

But I don't have kids and I think myspace is a bore, so I don't pay the matter much mind. Instead I'm becoming more interested in the way bands are using myspace more than their regular websites. Nine Inch Nails, for instance, posts videos of live performances regularly on their myspace site, while updating nin.com perhaps once a week. Further, people searching for new music are becoming accustomed to the myspace format, which makes browsing and listening all the easier and more accessible. The value of band websites evaporates every time one makes a new myspace page. It's not far-fetched to suggest that band websites may become obsolete entirely.

It seems myspace is on its way to becoming a microcosm of the entire web. Soon everyone - every commercial entity, every non-profit organization, and every religious institution (yes I'm stretching) - will have their own myspace site. And then we can stalk them too.

(photo courtesy of www.myspace.com)

I listened to too much Beastie Boys as a child

2006-02-09T20:11:00.000-05:00

There's a scene in Stephen Frears' 2000 romantic comedy for music snobs, High Fidelity, in which self-effacing record store clerk and Moby look-alike Dick (Todd Luiso) enters his boss Rob's (John Cusack) apartment to discover Rob's gargantuan vinyl record collection scattered across the floor. Agape and intrigued, Dick tries to decode the madness.
"It looks as if you're reorganizing your records, what is this...chronological?"
"Nope."
"It's not alphabetical."
"Nope."
"What?"
"Autobiographical."
"No fucking way."
"Yup...I can tell you how I got from Deep Purple to Howling Wolf in just 25 moves. And if I want to find the song 'Landslide' by Fleetwood Mac, I have to remember that I bought it for someone in the Fall of 1983 pile, but didn't give it to them for personal reasons."
"That sounds..."
"Comforting. It is."

This scene absolutely nails my feelings towards music. When I listen to a song - "Siberian Kiss" by Glassjaw, for instance - the first thing that comes to mind is not its pummeling guitars, the Tazmanian Devil-like unintelligibility of the lyrics, or its debt to New York City hardcore and the vocal style of Faith No More‘s Mike Patton. Instead I am immediately reminded of the time I first heard it - at a poker party in the basement of a high school friend. The imagery is indelible - the card table was here, two couches there, while so-and-so was sitting in front of the TV playing Nintendo 64 and "that guy" was laying down on the floor because he had taken too many Sudafed. In cognitive psychology this phenomenon is known as spreading activation - one bit of information (song) reaches associated bits (when I heard it, who I heard it with, etc.) through the neural network, bringing to conscious awareness a plethora of associated memories.

In this manner music serves as a sort of index of various scenes in my life. I always associate Foo Fighters' "The Colour and the Shape" and Blur’s self-titled album with my 8th grade trip to Washington, D.C., during which I bought the first album and listened to both non-stop on the Birnie Bus. The Flaming Lips' "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" conjures memories of leaving New York City in the wintry nighttime on a similar bus, while "Psychocandy" by the Jesus and Mary Chain will forever be associated with mowing greens at Monroe Golf Club at 6 a.m. But perhaps my strongest song associations are intertwined with the first album I ever listened to completely through, over and over, until I had memorized every lyric and could anticipate every note.

In 1994, my older cousins lent me a copy of "Check Your Head" by the Beastie Boys to go with my first CD player. Their gift was prompted by my remarking to them how much I loved watching the Spike Jonze-directed video for "Sabotage," and even though "Sabotage" wasn’t on "Check Your Head," I was overflowing with glee when they handed me the album.

At the time, I enjoyed rehearsing the comedic elements of "Check Your Head" almost more than listening to the songs. "Professor Booty’s" opening - "Professor, what’s another word for pirate treasure? Why I think it’s booty!" - was a riot to recite with friends. The fatigued off-key crooning of keyboardist Money Mark in "Mark on the Bus" and the opening dialogue to "The Maestro," set over an upper-crust party ambience, were our other favorites. These humorous portions of "Check Your Head" immediately bring to mind the faces of my childhood friends, crowded together with me around a CD player and laughing hysterically as we endlessly rewound the tracks to hear them again.

The standout songs on "Check Your Head," such as "Pass the Mic" and "So Whatcha Want?", were what ultimately stapled the album to my brain. The opening track, "Jimmy James," which samples Hendrix’s opening feedback to "Foxy Lady," provided me with a fun soundtrack to playing video games like "TIE Fighter" and "Sonic the Hedgehog." The feedback sample warps from the familiar cacophony into a scratching passage that sounds like a schizoid dentist’s drill before Ad Rock, MCA and Mike D storm in to take control.

I could recite every word of "Pass the Mic" with the shortest notice. From the trumpets-blaring, dawn-is-arising-so-take-heed! opening, this third song on "Check Your Head" flows seamlessly, amalgamating threatening guitars with titanic drums and an indecipherable sample of some guy’s panicky voice. Even though the Beastie Boys are not commonly considered the most prolific rappers - their flow falls far below that of the Jay-Zs and MF Dooms of the world, even Eminem - their verses on "Pass the Mic" are gorgeous and intimidating. They sound like gangly white Jewish monsters standing atop the highest perches in their native Brooklyn who should be filmed from menacing low angles as they spit boastful rhymes about rocking block parties and exploding on sight like Jimmy Walker ("Dyn-o-mite!"). It’s the type of song I’d listen to before stepping on the field for a lacrosse game - one that made me feel that I, like the Beastie Boys, was purely untouchable.

Although I also enjoyed "So Whatcha Want," its one of those songs whose personal value has depreciated in light of its hijacking at the hands of the masses. Though the sentiment is silly, it’s one few music fans can deny experiencing. We just don’t like to share. "So Whatcha Want’s" hammer-on-the-anvil rhythm and fragmented vocal filters (a Beastie Boys tradition) are tied together by an organ sample that sounds like it should play between batters at an afternoon baseball game. It’s another song I recall listening to prior to lacrosse games, but for a different reason - it’s aggressive, but the music just makes you want to enjoy yourself.

My undying love of the Beastie Boys‘ "Check Your Head" and its irreplaceable connection to my late childhood can best be illustrated by one fact: I still haven’t given the CD back to my cousins.

(photo courtesy of http://home.antdickens.com)

Take that, Utah!

2006-02-09T13:42:00.000-05:00

A new awards season trailer for Brokeback Mountain boasts of the film's warm reception in "all 50 states." Never heard that one before.

Grizzly Man

2006-02-06T00:31:00.002-05:00

The Discovery Channel isn't known for premiering heavily buzzed-about films. But when there comes a documentary about a grizzly bear enthusiast's death at the claws of his beloved beasts, the cable network widely known for depicting fornicating mammals wastes no time laying claim to it.

Veteran German director Werner Herzog's 2004 documentary "Grizzly Man," which won an Alfred P. Sloan feature film prize not one year ago at the Sundance Film Festival, first aired on cable TV last Friday. Appended to the 106-minute film was a 30-minute round table comprised of friends of the film's referent subject, blond mop-headed animal rights activist Timothy Treadwell.

The haste with which the film journeyed from the big screen to the small one demonstrates not only "Grizzly Man's" smooth fit within the Discovery Channel's programming canon, but also the mesmerizing power of the tale Herzog crafts from Treadwell's life and death.

The documentary itself is flawless. Herzog deserves infinite praise for refusing to play the audio of Treadwell and girlfriend Amie Huguenard's savage demise by a surly grizzly bear. The roundtable of Treadwell's closest friends and associates lament the morbid fascination with which viewers inquire about this record of Treadwell and Huguenard's deaths. Although it's easy to join in the condemnation of humanity's fixation with violence, it's difficult to deny harboring any curiosity about the soundtrack to two people being slaughtered by a grizzly bear. Ultimately, Herzog's sensitivity to Treadwell's former girlfriend (who possessed and refused to listen to the audio) and the nature activist's surviving loved ones is worth far more than the fleeting thrill of listening to limbs being ripped from torsos. But what was his and Huguenard's death like, you ask? Just use your imagination.

Herzog attempts to shift the focus from Treadwell's tragic death to his life as a frequent summer vacationer in Alaska surrounded by grizzly bears and foxes. Here, Herzog uses bits of the 100-plus hours of footage Treadwell shot in the lush locale that depicts him admiring bear behavior from not so afar and even stopping to marvel at their mounds of feces. All the while, interviews with Treadwell's friends and family are used to help Herzog demonstrate that Treadwell not only earnestly longed to live among the bears, but also to become one.

Herzog even provides a philosophical counterpoint to the chipper Treadwell. The director remarks in his minimally clunky German accent that nature is not the beautiful utopia Treadwell perceived, but rather a harsh realm ruled by primal instincts and brute force. Still, his commentary is offered only as an aside and not an encompassing frame for Treadwell's tale. Herzog is respectful enough a documentarian to not make "Grizzly Man" into his film. We have Michael Moore to pull that kind of stunt.

While Herzog's filmmaking is beyond reproach, Treadwell himself is not. At first glance his tremendous passion for bears and all wildlife is admirable - a captivating portrait of a deep, star-crossed love - but upon examination, his behavior reveals a swollen ego stemming from fragile emotional soil. Almost all of Treadwell's video diaries of his adventures in the Alaskan terrain feature him prominently; he occupies the foreground while his beloved bears lumber about behind him. His appearance is a top priority to him - every jacket he wore in Alaska contained a comb and mirror in the front pocket. Even his friendship with Alaska's animals takes a backseat to his vanity when he shrilly berates a fox for stealing his "important" baseball hat.

Then, in a subtle display of obliviousness, Treadwell alters the rock arrangement in a stream so that salmon may run it and fill the bellies of starving bears. Though benevolent on its own, this gesture betrays a hypocrisy within Treadwell, who frequently cites the absence of human intervention as a raison d'etre for his love of the Alaskan wilderness.

Treadwell's most egregious behavior is captured when the bear activist boasts about his survival skills in the "Grizzly Maze." Poisoned by pride in his life's work, Treadwell challenges viewers to make the journey to the Alaskan wild. With the taunting tone of a schoolyard dare, he declares that no one could survive the experience. And a "survival of the fittest" contest in grizzly bear territory is relevant to the preservation of their beautiful species how? Here Treadwell comes off more as a pompous thrill-seeker whose death is not so much tragic as inevitable. "Grizzly Man" thus inspires both sympathy for Treadwell's colossal love of nature and disdain for his eagerness to let the world know about it.

(photo courtesy of www.henrykaiser.net)

Drawing swords...

2006-02-02T09:52:00.000-05:00

On the Oscars...

"Crash," Paul Haggis' visceral dissection of racial discord in Los Angeles, has been frequently appearing on the "Best of 2005" lists of critics and IMDB rats alike. It was even awarded an Oscar nomination for Best Picture of the Year. Given this mountain of praise, someone who hasn't seen the movie would probably be led to believe that "Crash" must immediately be Netflix-ed, discussed, and cherished. I can't bring myself to agree.

Watching this mediocre mosaic piece felt like being walloped upside the head with a flaming brick and then being forced to solve a calculus equation. Its caricatured multiethnic characters abrade each other to the point of unbelievability, propelling into the stratosphere our anger with their bigoted actions, until we are compelled to wonder why their hatred dissolves when they discover each other in perilous situations or discover themselves friendless.

The message was astonishingly superficial - people of all ethnicities in LA are angry, anger leads to hate and then suffering, but instead of suffering leading to the dark side, it sometimes leads to self-reflection and a fleeting change of heart. But all it takes is one day, one harmonious, beneficial, or even non-threatening encounter with a member of your targeted outgroup, to foment that change. And yet, sometimes, the anger or prejudice at our cores is so strong, so wildly aflame and irrepressible, that we revert to bigotry instinctively (see: Ryan Phillippe's character). In other words, we're bound to act just about any which way in any given combination of circumstances. Gee, that sort of sounds like...human nature, no? Mail letters of gratitude for this revelation to:

Paul Haggis
Somewhere in Canada

Here is an example: embittered cop who nurses his UTI-afflicted father molests black woman in front of her black husband, then rescues her from a car wreck days later because...he's just Mr. Magnanimous? No, it's because it's his job and there are dozens of witnesses. Yes, you could argue the other way - that his reprehensible actions during the traffic stop were spawned not by malice but stress. But even assuming that he was in fact a "good guy" under the astronomical level of pressure required to drive such a "good guy" to sexually molest a woman in front of her husband on the side of the road, the question remains: what's the point? That we should forgive people who intentionally traumatize us? That racists aren't really such bad guys at heart?

Very little more than self-interest and instinct lurk in the hearts of "Crash's" characters. The truth (or, as a former social psychology student, the truth as I see it) that prejudice is instinctive may be "Crash's" most trenchant point, even if it beats that point into our heads with enough brute force to crush an elephant skull. The difference between stereotyping and racism, however, lies in the persistence of prejudice - whether or not that initial, evolutionary tendency to group and generalize is overcome by consciously acknowledging that you are in fact stereotyping and should open your mind to possibilities. If the mind remains closed, it eventually becomes afraid and the seeds of racism are sown. Lecture over.

As it turns out, the most racist character in the film (as I remember) was also the only character who really changed - Sandra Bullock's Jean. And the shedding of her racist skin was brought about by a truly soulful epiphany: being racist sure makes it tough to make friends.

"Crash" is such a great film because "it makes you think," or so I've been told...frequently. Sure the movie inspires one to reflect on its material. But any idiot can film a movie dealing with abortion, gun control, or racism and inspire someone to discuss the topic with a viewing buddy after exiting the theater. "Crash" is slightly more accomplished than that, but its duel with the issue of racism amounts to two parries before it reaches for its machete and goes for the thematic kill.

The ensemble cast in "Crash" has also attracted raves, but again I'm mostly unmoved. Matt Dillon was a perfectly fine creep, but his performance just wasn't memorable enough to rise above any of his fellow cast members, namely Don Cheadle or Ryan Phillippe. If anything, either of those two gentlemen deserved the Best Supporting Actor nod ahead of Dally Winston (while all three bow to Ed Harris in "A History of Violence"). Lastly, the meddling with the saturation of reds and blues in the photography was uninspired and fashionable (see: Tony Scott). But at least Haggis didn't go for the greater insult and use black-and-white photography.

What irks me most of all is that "Crash's" nomination for Best Picture of the Year comes at the expense of an Oscar nod for my favorite film of the year, "A History of Violence." Ironically, in 1996 "Violence" director David Cronenberg made a movie called "Crash" that was way fucking better than this one.

I'd have to see "Crash" again to truly qualify my opinions of it, perhaps even alter or change them, but I'm afraid a second viewing would compel me to punch my TV screen out of sheer frustration with its caveman-like treatment of as complex a social psychological issue as racism.

(photo courtesy of www.tildemark.com)

Favorite films of 2005

2006-01-09T01:00:00.000-05:00

Favorite films of 2005:

1. A History of Violence (see below for review)
2. Munich
3. Sin City
4. The Constant Gardener
5. Serenity
6. Batman Begins
7. Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (see below for brief review)
8. Me and You and Everyone We Know
9. Match Point (see below for brief review)
10. Brokeback Mountain
11. The Squid and the Whale (see below for brief review)
12. King Kong
13. Capote
14. Good Night, and Good Luck (see below for review)
15. Paradise Now

(photo courtesy of www.amazon.com)

Match Point

2006-01-08T23:00:00.000-05:00

At the beginning of "Match Point," Woody Allen's 40th directorial feature and first set in London, Chris Wilton (Jonathon Rhys-Meyers) declares, "The man who said I'd rather be lucky than good saw deeply into life." While Chris' story and that of "Match Point" are deeply rooted in the play of luck and incidence, the triumph of Woody Allen's "Match Point" has little to do with either.

A failed tennis pro, Wilton lands a job as a country club instructor. He quickly finds a passage into the upper crust of English society when he befriends Tom Hewett (Matthew Goode), a tennis pupil. Wilton's affinity for the Hewett family balloons when, in a reveal that screams to be revered, he meets Tom's voluptuous girlfriend Nola (Scarlett Johansson). Although he entertains the affections of Tom's sister Chloe to the point of marriage and employment with her father (Brian Cox), Wilton's lust for Nola draws him into a never-ending juggle of comfort and passion.

Although Johansson's sexpot sheen demonstrates why Allen has claimed he discovered a new muse in the young actress, Myers' performance is less convincing. His line readings sound hurried and stiff. The young actor's guilt-ridden expressions, however, convey Wilton's growing agitation deftly.

The heritage of Wilton's character is quickly made explicit by Allen. Early in the film, Wilton is shown reading Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment" on the sofa bed in his cramped loft. The parallels between Wilton and Raskolnikov (the novel's psychologically tormented central character) aren't completely laid bare until later in the film, when Wilton ends his balancing act with some buckshot and spends the remainder of the film learning to live with his massive guilt.

As luck invades the criminal investigation into Wilton's actions, Allen not only masterfully manipulates audience expectations concerning Wilton's fate but also invites one to ask: is luck something we should wish for? In the case of the accomplished Allen, the answer is a firm 'no.'

(photo courtesy of www.wikipedia.com)

Spamalot

2006-01-08T12:38:00.000-05:00

Although Broadway patrons are currently raising their medieval chalices in a toast to Monty Python's "Spamalot," those who have yet to visit the Sam S. Shubert Theater to see the unruly musical may be best advised to rent the musical's cinematic source material, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."

In a disappointing lack of ingenuity, the bulk of "Spamalot's" best jokes are directly lifted from "The Holy Grail." "In the know" audience members who have seen the film greeted familiar bits by rapturously applauding the appearance of "Holy Grail's" most beloved moments, such as the Knights Who Say Ni and the homicidal bunny rabbit.

Hank Azaria, as the French Taunter (among other parts), took advantage of the room for improvement upon "Holy Grail" offered by "Spamalot." His depiction of the rowdy castle-dwelling annoyance launched the audience into a comedic coma. Furiously delivering his lines and spitting buckets while doing so, Azaria was a delight to behold. The lines themselves weren't even that audible.

The "Black Knight" bit deeply suffered from the film-to-theater transition. Using crimson paper tassles instead of geysers of fake blood to signify the Knight's hacked limbs greatly spoiled the bit's humorous value. In "Holy Grail," the Black Knight's calm refusal to surrender his duel to King Arthur in the face of lost limbs was hilarious in contrast to the raging action of his rapid loss of blood. Without that key ingredient, the bit seemed undercooked.

The feature additions to "Holy Grail" in "Spamalot," the musical numbers, were largely ho-hum. "Not Dead Yet" was an amusing expansion upon one of the film's best jokes, but the Lady in the Lake's self-referential numbers (such as "Once in every show there comes a song like this...") were fleeting goofs that couldn't last far enough to keep the songs fresh and fun. Of course any freshness or fun in "Spamalot" is limited if one has already seen "Holy Grail," and a cost analysis would certainly point to the better option.

(photo courtesy of www.footlightsgallery.com)

The Squid and the Whale

2006-01-04T00:19:00.000-05:00

Divorce is hell. In the case of Frank and Walt Berkman, adolescent sons to Joan and Bernard in Noah Baumbach's "The Squid and the Whale," the tailspin following their parents' rancorous separation produces far more troubling consequences than two homes and frequent commutes between them.

Set in sunny 1980’s Brooklyn, Frank (Owen Kline) and younger brother Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) enjoy a financially modest but leisurely life as sons to two writers. As mother Joan’s (Laura Linney) literary success balloons and father Bernard’s (Jeff Daniels) prospective book deal falls through, so too does their marriage destabilize and dissolve. Piled onto their problems is Joan’s extramarital affairs and Bernard’s unrelenting intellectual pig-headedness. His ultra-competitive approach to the film’s opening familial tennis match - though initially in the vein of co-producer Wes Anderson’s brand of dry humor - ultimately adopts a dark and distressing significance when the plights of his children take hold and his corrosive influence upon them is revealed.

Walt represents the loyalist child archetype in divorce cases by unflinchingly siding with his father (Jeff Daniels) and embarrassingly recycling his every spouted bit of literary wisdom about Kafka or Fitzgerald. His doomed march down his jerk of a father’s path is sorrowful to behold. The divorce has even darker and immediate effects on Frank, whose stated dream to become a tennis star are repeatedly shot down by the overly pragmatic Bernard. Rendered emotionally crippled and aimless by his parents’ split, Frank plunges into binge drinking, endless profanity, and public masturbation.

“The Squid and the Whale” is acted with self-possession and restraint, especially by the prickly Daniels and the irrepressible Linney. It ably balances the humorous idiosyncrasies of the Berkman family members with the psychological lacerations inflicted upon them by the divorce. Baumbach’s film will especially resonate with children of divorce, who are befittingly portrayed in a manner akin to victims of an emotional car crash learning how to walk again.

(photo courtesy of http://thecia.com.au)

Favorite albums of 2005

2005-12-22T19:58:00.000-05:00

1. Sleater-Kinney: The Woods - Totally self-indulgent and totally awesome. The gorgeous instrumental sprawl of "Let's Call it Love" encapsulates the unrepentant attitude fueling Sleater-Kinney's approach to The Woods: strip it down, shake it up, and lay it bare. The blustery low-fi acoustics of "The Fox" immediately shatter any memories of the all-female trio's relatively more polished and accessible discography (think "Milkshake and Honey," "Rock and Roll Fun"). While the sonorous vocal hooks that beat at the core of Sleater-Kinney's body of work are plentiful across The Woods' eclectic landscape, grinding "What's Mine is Yours" to a halt mid-song in favor of a menacing and raggedy guitar solo is the kind of welcome surprise that catapaults this album ahead of past works.

2. New Pornographers: Twin Cinema - This Canadian musical monolith turned a pair of the most solid and consistently engaging pop albums of the past five years, Mass Romantic and Electric Version, into a triad with Twin Cinema. Though not a radical departure from the sound of either album, the life-affirming vibe of "The Bleeding Heart Show's" extended coda and the bare balladry of "These Are the Fables" allude to New Pornographers exploring ancillary musical areas outside of the high-octane pop of "Letter From an Occupant" or "All For Swinging You Around." Still, their M.O. remains: if it's catchy, it works - and on Twin Cinema, they don't try fixing it.

3. Decemberists: Picaresque - Being somewhat of an outsider to the indie rock scene, I didn't quite know what to make of the Decemberists prior to downloading Picaresque on a whim. The cannons-a-blasting charge of "Infanta" quickly drew me into their charming Romantic sensibility and led me through a collection of some of the most wistful ("Of Angels and Angles"), dour ("Eli the Barrow Boy"), and culturally incisive ("Sixteen Military Wives") songs of the year.

4. Bloc Party: Silent Alarm - Hype surrounding these British boys led me into Silent Alarm expecting more homogenized new wave revival dance pop a la The Killers. Then I heard the instrumentation. The drumming on Silent Alarm alone is worth the price of admission. Rather than serving the hooks, the rhythms stand on their own and frequently plunge into violent overdrive at will. Throw in some spacey guitar arrangements and the wails of vocalist/guitarist Kele Okereke (who sounds not unlike Damon Albarn of Blur), and you have one of the most lively albums of 2005. The best part is, you can still dance to it.

5. Mars Volta: Frances the Mute - I love the way the critics respond to their work. It seems Rolling Stone didn't bother to make sense of the complexities of Frances the Mute and merely stated, "A brilliant album doth unintelligible complexity make." Pitchfork dove into their usual esoteric nonsense of a review, gleefully pursuing every tangential angle from which they could slam the album before plastering it with a pitiful rating. Not that I can do much differently. I just love listening to Mars Volta and this sophomore album is no exception.

6. Kanye West: Late Registration - Not as immediately charming as The College Dropout or as thematically consistent (The "Broke Phi Broke" skits proved little more than a desperate attempt to shoehorn another collegiate theme into the album), West nonetheless continued to outwit, outsell, and outstyle his peers in 2005. However, I'm still a bit turned off by the leftist media's ongoing blowjob to West resulting from his mawkish remarks directed at President Bush on the Katrina telethon. And by leftist media, I'm especially looking at you, Rolling Stone, you partisan whores. Please remind me once more that The Rolling Stones wrote an anti-Bush song, I don't think I absorbed the information the first eight dozen times you mentioned it. Rant over.

7. Queens of the Stone Age: Lullabies to Paralyze - (review written 4/05) Queens of the Stone Age has never so much been a solidified band as a freewheeling assortment of musical transients tethered together by Kyuss alumni and stoner rock demigods Josh Homme and Nick Oliveri. Though short-lived members such as Mike Johnson (Dinosaur Jr.) and Dave Grohl (that band with Kurt Cobain) have casually come and gone over the course of Queens’ stunning first three albums, Homme and Oliveri have always been the true monarchs in the band.

In the months leading up to Queens’ fourth album, Lullabies to Paralyze, Homme had the bands’ fans anxiously biting their nails when he bitterly ousted Oliveri from the group, citing the bassist’s hard-partying lifestyle. Thus, the $64,000 question swirling around the release of Lullabies was whether Homme could keep Queens’ hard-rocking brilliance intact without Oliveri’s assistance. The answer: pretty damn definitely.

From "Medication’s" machine-gun buzz straight through the colossal swagger of "Someone’s in the Wolf," Homme single-handedly waves the Queens flag with a wholly self-assured ferocity, but not without a few helping hands. ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons and recurring guest vocalist Mark Lanegan provide "Burn the Witch’s" spiraling bridges and black-lunged raspy sing-along lyrics with a warped strut. Featured assistants Troy Van Leeuwen (A Perfect Circle) and Joey Castillo (Danzig) enrich "Little Sister," "Everybody Knows That You’re Insane," and "Tangled Up in Plaid" with the qualities that have always distinguished Queens’ music: amply carnivalesque, tolerably abrasive, and enough pop sensibility to super-glue the choruses inside your skull.

At "The Blood is Love," however, Homme’s focus begins to soften and the album suffers accordingly. The track’s enervating redundant grind and melodic rigidity, lightly reminiscent of portions of the band’s self-titled first effort, depletes Lullabies’ energy until the bobbing striptease soundtrack "Skin on Skin" offers a drastic, though only mildly refreshing change of pace. It’s not until "Broken Box" that Queens return to its stoner-rocking bread and butter, adorning a mud-stomping bar band rhythm with a piano accompaniment not unlike that of "Go with the Flow."

However, the return to form is as short-lived as the fleeting humorous thrill of the next track, "‘You’ve Got a Killer Scene There, Man…’" With barely noticeable support from The Distillers’ Brode Dalle (also Homme’s publicized squeeze) and Garbage’s Shirley Manson, "Killer Scene" quickly comes off as an esoteric inside joke to Homme et al., a flurry of falsetto vocals and lurching bass lines that fails to translate into fun for the listener. Lullabies’ sincere yet restrained coda, "The Long Slow Goodbye," once again deflects the album from its downward path but nonetheless pales in both poignancy and depth to the earlier ballad, "I Never Came."

The strength of Lullabies to Paralyze deflates with every degree to which Homme deviates from Queens’ loud and fast guitar-driven formula and shifts the music’s emphasis to either glib comedy ("Killer Scene" ) or dawdling ambience ("The Blood is Love"). Regardless, the overall strength of Homme’s songwriting bolsters this effort to a level roughly on par with that of Queens’ prior releases. The only noticeable aspect of Oliveri’s absence is the loss of his raging two-minute scream-a-thons ("Millionaire," "Tension Head"). With only Homme helming Queens, however, the band maintains its status atop the mountain of modern rock with this faulty masterpiece. 7.5 out of 10.

8. Gorillaz: Demon Days - Replacing Dan "The Automator" with Danger Mouse proved not nearly fatal to Damon Albarn's colorful dance-pop side project. In point of fact, the energy level on Demon Days feels much more elevated and consistent than on Gorillaz. No enervating slow-burners here. Instead, the bouncy knife-attack of "O Green World" and the swanky crawl of "Every Planet We Reach is Dead" keep Demon Days fresh and funky up through the dystopian triad of "Fire Coming Out of a Monkey's Head" (narrated by, of all aged psychos, Dennis Hopper), "Don't Get Lost in Heaven," and "Demon Days." It is a stellar batch of lyrically bleak but musically extravagant songs from the hardest working cartoon band around.

9. Beck: Guero - Continuing the schizophrenic/sulking alternation in style that has encompassed every Beck album since the landmark Odelay!, Guero finds Beck stagnating. He lacks the bravery that made Odelay! such a hit and Midnite Vultures such a, well, mis-fire. Although he plays it safe, Guero nonetheless stands as a solid collection of pretty decent songs. The unhinging party atmosphere of "Que Onda Guero" and "Hell Yes's" robotic funk vibe are among Beck's finer moments on the album, but the rest of Guero is merely one of the better cruise control listens I can recall.

10. NIN: With Teeth - Still begs the question of why it takes Trent Reznor five years to make an album, especially one as inconsistent as this. Some of the music is as sharp and blistering as ever, but some of his lyrics couldn't win Reznor an A in 9th grade English class. "The Hand That Feeds," "Only," and "Getting Smaller" allude to him pursuing more promising directions in the future...if anyone still cares about NIN in 2010.

(photos courtesy of www.allmusic.com)

Nine Inch Nails (and a $449 15th floor hotel room overlooking Lake Ontario) in Toronto

2005-11-11T18:32:00.001-05:00

Gas + **** hotel room in the Westin Harbour Castle + ticket to see Nine Inch Nails, Queens of the Stone Age, and Death From Above 1979 in Toronto = $83.

Fuck yeah.

Nails' set was brilliant. They sounded deliciously crisp yet wielded the raw energy of an atom bomb. The new lineup played like pros, with Aaron North on guitar, Allesandro Cortini on keyboards, Alex Carapetis on drums and Jeordie "Twiggy" White on bass. North in particular was aflame, frenetically twisting and flinging his guitar while never missing a note of his scabrous solos. True to NIN form, he busted his guitar into kindling at the end of the set.

The arrangements on many of the songs were altered; "The Only Time" was appropriated during the bridge of "Closer," which fit surprisingly well in stripping the song down to an even more danceable beat. "Burn" was especially altered, the textural layers were stripped down during the verses to make the song less abrasive. Should a bootleg surface, I demand a copy. Every song sounded at least a bit tweaked from the studio version. The results were gorgeous.

NIN's set was also visually brilliant. During "Eraser," they returned to using the projection screen in front of the band, against which they displayed a video montage of the evolution of life on Earth (which naturally concluded with images of the war in Iraq and thus begging the question, how long does life on Earth have left?). The screen's viscous imagery during "Beside You in Time" made the band look like they were playing in an aquarium. And, lo and behold, the image of Bush onscreen during "Right Where it Belongs" received a suppressed chorus of 'boos.' I think the Canadian citizenry has grown largely indifferent to his violent sham of an administration.

Queens' set was a bit disappointing; I really, REALLY didn't like their set choices (omitting "Go With the Flow," "Someone's in the Wolf," and "Monsters in the Parasol"). Homme was his usual strutting awesomeness and the new bassist was a tremendous asset on backup vocals.

DFA 1979 really rocked it out, but no one really cared.

NIN set list (approximate):
Pinion/Love is Not Enough
Don't You Know What You Are?
Terrible Lie
The Line Begins to Blur
March of the Pigs
Something I Can Never Have
The Frail
The Wretched
Closer
Burn
Gave Up
Eraser
Right Where it Belongs
Beside You in Time
The Collector
Wish
Only
Dead Souls
Suck
Even Deeper
Hurt
The Hand that Feeds
Head Like a Hole

Queens set list (approximate):

Feel Good Hit of the Summer
The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret
(Some Desert Sessions song)
Mexicola
Everybody Knows That You Are Insane
Regular John
Little Sister
The Long Slow Goodbye
Broken Box
Song For the Dead
Burn the Witch
No One Knows

DFA 1979 set list: pretty much every song from "You're a Woman, I'm a Machine."

(NIN photo courtesy of www.nin.com; QOTSA photo courtesy of www.rollingstone.com)

Good Night, and Good Luck

2005-11-07T18:55:00.000-05:00

Though masterfully filmed and acted, George Clooney's second feature is thinly veiled hero worship that substantially manipulates historical facts in order to exalt the bravery and erudition of seminal CBS news personality Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn).

The decision to use black and white photography in "Good Night, and Good Luck" is kind of a no brainer. Follow the logic: archived footage of Wisconsin senator Joe McCarthy was to recur onscreen. This footage is in black and white. Thus the options were to either a) colorize the footage, b) refilm the footage altogether in color and with an actor portraying McCarthy, or c) film the rest of the movie in black and white in order to correspond to the McCarthy footage (as well as that of the humorous commercials that occasionally appear in the film). Option B was most unviable, as it would have eroded the documentary aura engendered by the presence of the McCarthy footage. Option A was a similar, though less drastic step from the authenticity of the footage. Thus, in choosing Option C and using the unadulterated McCarthy footage, Clooney is bringing the audience directly into the milieu of McCarthy, Murrow, and the fearmongering political climate of America in the early 1950s.

The smokey interiors and lithe jazz interludes set the scene with style, even averting the pitfall of desperately screaming, "Hey look, we're in the '50s!" The smoke especially underscored the oppressive insularity of the newsroom, which more closely resembled a war room wherein deadlines, factuality and clean records carried life or death ramifications (literally in the case of redbaited CBS anchor Don Hollenbeck).

Despite Clooney's wise stylistic decision-making, his truthfulness is a bit dubious. Here it is worth noting the actor's long-standing beef with resident Fox News Channel bully Bill O'Reilly. The actor's father being a news anchor is also of note. Clooney has stated that he is simply a Murrow mark, but in "Good Night, and Good Luck," it is difficult to separate his journalistic idolatry from his political leanings. Does Clooney simply quarrel with O'Reilly and love Murrow because, having been raised by a news anchor to appreciate the craft, he knows good journalism when he sees it? Is it just a coincidence that McCarthy and O'Reilly are right-wingers?

My first major problem with the film is its ostensible suggestion that Joseph McCarthy's downfall was largely fomented by Murrow's episode of "See it Now" in which the renowned newsman challenged public acquiescence to the Wisconsin senator's bullying of the baselessly accused and violations of their Constitutional rights. In fact, McCarthy mostly self-destructed. 'Ol Tailgunner simply made one high-profile accusation too many until the Army said, "Okay asshole, you done fucked with the wrong guy!"

Secondly, the conflict between Murrow and McCarthy is simply too black and white. Especially in today's terrorist climate, it should be easy to understand the hysteria that fostered the red scare of which McCarthy was more a symptom than a cause. Murrow acknowledges this fact briefly in the movie, but otherwise, no context is given for McCarthy's motives. His actions are indeed inexcusable, and if he was purely hungry for publicity, then so too are his motives. However, with Alger Hiss, the Rosenbergs, and any untold number of Soviet spies at work at the time, Tailgunner's motives deserve more qualification than that given by Clooney.

Lastly, although Murrow was perhaps the most high-profile of McCarthy's critics, he was by no means either the first or the last. The senator had been up to his red-baiting tricks long before "See it Now" took to criticizing his cause. In this respect I felt the film overly exalted CBS' bravery. Notwithstanding substantial personal and financial risk, they were merely sounding their voice higher than that of the small chorus already challenging the Wisconsin senator's tactics.

The most laudable theme in "Good Night, and Good Luck" is that of journalistic politics. Murrow's boredom while talking to celebrities, as well as the bookend speech about the state of news in America, help to underscore what may be Clooney's most imperative point: good journalism suffers as commerce. When ratings and advertisers are factored into the equation, the courage and vision of men like Edward R. Murrow are rendered moot. The audience doesn't care about political bickering as much as they do about saccharine puff pieces that aggrandize their favorite celebrities. This unfortunate aphorism of journalism is one Clooney clearly laments, as do I.

David Strathairn, as Murrow, is a work of stone-faced brilliance. With little more than a steely glance and a deadpan delivery, he exerts a tight command on the audience's sense of urgency.

My biggest gripe about "Good Night, and Good Luck" came in the form of the Robert Downey Jr./Patricia Clarkson storyline (two married employees of CBS news forced to hide their union from co-workers due to anti-nepotism rules). The vitality of the film absolutely flatlines when their flaccid subplot takes the screen. Though adroit in their own rights, the two actors have minimal chemistry together. The subplot's relevance to the film's story is highly tenuous; the strands are tied together by the act of hiding information about yourself in order to avert discrimination or prejudice. Whoop-de-whoop. The scenes still belong on the proverbial cutting room floor.

(photo courtesy of www.thezreview.co.uk)

A History of Violence

2005-10-17T20:52:00.000-05:00

The title of David Cronenburg's "A History of Violence" has two connotations. The first involves the bloody past of protagonist Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen), a former mobster whose middle-aged life in bucolic America is an attempt to escape that history. The second connotation pertains to the film's thematic thrust, which deals not so much with a historical account of violence (which would originate with Cain and Abel), but with the manifold effects of its occurrence.

That said, there was no better choice to portray Tom Stall than Mortensen. Perhaps no actor in Hollywood is better equipped to convincingly melt away a timid and laconic exterior to reveal the most primal of instincts burning within (see: Aragorn).

The film proceeds like a psychology experiment. During the first 20 minutes or so, we see our baseline condition: Stall's tranquil town, his wife Edie's (Maria Bello) sexual desperation, his son's milquetoast response to a school bully, etc. Then, the element of violence is introduced via two icy killers who lecherously attempt to rob Stall's diner at closing time. Stall leaps into action, stealthily dispensing of the two armed men with only a knife wound in the foot for a receipt.

From here, Cronenburg skims over what he knows is a somewhat tired issue in public discourse: the media's sycophantic relationship with violence and the worship it inspires. Awaiting Stall's return from the hospital is a TV reporter; gracing the front page of the next day's paper is Mortensen's unassuming face. Stall's son's adulation for his father skyrockets, and Stall's diner receives an ample boom in the volume of its clientele. Though Cronenburg doesn't dwell on these effects of Stall's heroic act, the director doesn't ignore that this is indeed a film about violence, and you can't have violence without inspiring intrigue.

But intrigue is not all violence inspires in this movie. As a facially disfigured mobster from Stall's past (Ed Harris, complete with hammy East-coast accent) begins insisting on knowing Stall from Philadelphia and claiming he is actually a man with mob connections named Joey Cusack, Cronenburg begins to explore the other corollaries that stem from violent acts.

First, contagion. Tom's son suddenly takes it upon himself to kick the high holy fuck out of his pestiferous bullies, shrugging off the legal ramifications of his actions by noting to his father that he only beat up his tormentors, he didn't kill them. Tom promptly slaps the saliva out of his son's mouth, shocking them both. The plot continues to chug along at its brisk pace...

Tom confronts mobster in front yard. Kills mobster and cronies. Admits being Joey Cusack, distrust ensues.

Second, sex. The film's most powerful scene arrives when Tom and Edie Stall turn a domestic scuffle into a fiery sexual encounter in the middle of a wooden starway. Though perhaps a bit obvious (which made it all the more surprising when I found out some people thought this was a rape scene), Cronenburg is elucidating the inextricable connection between sex and violence. Both acts thrive on excitation, thus when you have one the other is not far behind. The scene also derives its power from its contrast with Tom and Edie's earlier, far more awkward sexual encounter.

Tom goes home to Philly. Kills mobster brother in self-defense; stellar choreography. Maintains stoicism.

Ultimately though, Stall returns to his family and is set a place at the dinner table by his daughter. Equilibrium restored. Like the pulling back of a pendulum, the act of violence at Stall's diner displaced everything around it until the violence subsided and everything settled back into a rest position.

Cronenburg manages to include a few signature visuals in the film; namely that of the goat-teed robber's blown-apart face resting on the floor and the anonymous mobster's squished tomato of a nose after a few brutal elbows from Stall.

My only criticisms of the movie involved the son's storyline. The letter jacket-wearing bully was far too stereotypical and the son's response to learning of his father's mob-related past was way too unbelievable ("So are you gonna wack me now?" ugh).

(photo courtesy of www.efavata.com)

Wallace & Gromit

2005-10-09T22:59:00.000-05:00

Hooray for Wallace & Gromit! Ever since my cousins Adam and Christian showed me "A Close Shave" and "The Wrong Pants" many Thanksgivings ago, the winsome camaraderie between that cheese-lovin' Englishman and his industrious mute of a canine best friend has claimed a tiny, albeit tireless place in my heart. "The Curse of the Were-Rabbit" was phenomenal.

(photo courtesy of http://mario.lapam.mo.it)

Other actors who shouldn't touch musical instruments

2005-09-20T13:27:00.002-05:00

From a comment by fellow Goldringer Art Ryel-Lindsey...

Unlike the adverts above, I did read your Blog, Dave.

Excellent review.

Don't forget Kevin Bacon, Bruce Willis, Dan Akyroyd (sp?), John Goodman, and -- dare I unsanctify it -- John Belushi for actors-become-rockers.

Given the level of acting talent and fame among that list, does Leto really measure up, though? He's notable amongst the teen-magazine crowd, no doubt, but was he ever that well known of an actor, comparatively?

I don't think his level of fame is as relevant to the band's situation as the fact that a lot of the attention they attract is due to Leto's acting career. In that respect, I think it's fair to say that the band is as much an ooh-there's-an-actor-in-the-lineup band as any other.

It is an interesting point though; I think an example that doesn't measure up to that standard is Rilo Kiley, which has attracted a ton of attention by way of its musical strengths, while the former acting careers of two of the members serve as kind of an afterthought.

30 Seconds to Mars

2005-09-18T23:19:00.000-05:00

Actors suck as musicians. See Russell Crowe’s lousy 30 Odd Foot of Grunts or Eddie Murphy’s fatally innocuous song “Party All the Time” to confirm this apparent rule of show business.

It seems Jared Leto (“Fight Club,” “Requiem for a Dream”) missed the memo when he formed 30 Seconds to Mars in 2002. Packing a walloping post-grunge sound coated in a waxy layer of electronic flourishes, the band’s self-titled debut generated considerable buzz amongst both music critics and modern rock fans. A tour with Incubus and a stint aboard Lollapalooza in 2003 bolstered both the band’s name and Leto’s credibility as a rocker. It appeared that the actor-turned-musician curse had been successfully defied.

Three years later, 30 Seconds to Mars returned with “A Beautiful Lie,” a decisive step backward for Leto and company. The singer/guitarist traded meditations on dystopia, transcendence, and personal growth for break-up songs delivered in an uninspired yet vogue “screamo” style (see first single “Attack”). Leto’s melodramatic delivery is all the more embarrassing given the utter banality of some of his lyrics. “This is the story of my life, these are the lies I have created” represents the extent of his soul-searching in “The Story. “The Fantasy” features a peculiar jungle-like call-and-response passage that begs to be excised from the otherwise decent song.

“A Beautiful Lie” boasts a few jewels scattered among the wreckage of the band’s squandered potential. “Was it a Dream?” is a catchy if obviously derivative child of the gloomy new wave of Depeche Mode and New Order. Beginning with a calming U2-esque guitar ambience, “From Yesterday” explodes into an ominous chorus propelled by Leto’s soaring vocals within a monumental canyon of guitars.

The album ends, however, with perhaps its most downright egregious track: a carbon-copy cover of Bjork’s “Hunter,” which serves no apparent purpose other than to exhibit Leto’s vocal chops. Though the actor can indeed sing and scream well enough to justify his excursion into the world of music, the Icelandic songstress is no standard against which to measure one’s voice and not expect to come out sounding like prey to “American Idol’s” Simon Cowell.

On Wednesday, September 7, 30 Seconds to Mars came to Club Tundra in support of their sophomore album, which was released a week prior. Leto’s reputation as a Hollywood hunk permeated the audience. One young female fan exclaimed, “He’s one of my favorite men – and I actually like the band, too.”

Opening with the faulty epic of a title track from “A Beautiful Lie,” 30 Seconds to Mars immediately seized the attention of much of their audience through sheer presence alone. The first few rows were occupied by members of the band’s congregation-like fan club, the Echelon, to whom Leto would later dedicate “Fallen,” a fan favorite.

As a frontman, Leto passes the muster. Though he despises associating his acting career with the band, he is not stupid enough to think people don’t make the association anyways. Thus he doesn’t carry himself on stage like the singer of a band trying to make a name for itself by desperately vying for the audience’s attention. Instead, Leto plays into the enigmatic aura his name carries with it while actively engaging the audience on occasion by introducing songs in the manner of a preacher, extolling their virtues and encouraging fans to follow the band’s ingenious philosophy of…not conforming. How bold.

Not surprisingly, the majority of highlights of the band’s set came during the songs from their self-titled debut. Leto circled the audience perimeter during “Buddha for Mary,” even engaging in an impressive balancing act atop the barrier separating the lower and upper floors. His being so up-close-and-personal inspired both fervent singing along and frenzied groping by many of the females in the audience.

Solid performances of “Capricorn” and “Edge of the Earth,” two of 30 Seconds to Mars’ strongest songs, both came early in the set, which weakened the three-song encore severely. The acoustic rendition of “Was it a Dream?” gave the females in the audience a chance to light up their cell phones and collectively wallow along with Leto’s honed pathos.

“Battle of One” and “The Fantasy” rounded out the performance. The former song, though generating the first mosh pit of the night through the song’s sheer intensity, was a late addition to “A Beautiful Lie” (due to leakage) for a reason made more obvious by Leto’s apparent indifference while performing it. Finally, performing “The Fantasy” enabled the audience to participate in the song’s primal call-and-response section. Even live, the passage still sounded awkward and unmotivated.

It remains to be seen whether 30 Seconds to Mars will reclaim their now-vacant throne atop the ugly mountain of failed bands that feature popular actors in their line-ups. Provided Leto can shed the insularity that deluded him into thinking “A Beautiful Lie” was anything but a spotty waste of potential, the band certainly appears to have the best chance.

(photo courtesy of www.zvuki.ru)

Lord of War

2005-09-18T20:59:00.000-05:00

Kind of appalling. Can't decide whether to be a black comedy, a condem-nation of the arms industry/ government buyers, or an exploration of the downfall of a man who, personally, couldn't commit to the moral vacancy that he espoused as a businessman. Though it decently swerves between each, "Lord of War" is weakened each time its purpose shifts.

Ultimately, the key flaw of the movie is attempting to attract the audience to as morally reprehensible a character as Cage's. His eluding of Ethan Hawke is structured like a "haha, fuck THE MAN because I'm a gangsta" escape, and his opening statement to the audience - "1 out of 12 people in the world owns a gun. My question is: how can we arm the other 11?" - invites a Tony Montana-like fondness from the outset.

But when the audience stares down what Cage is escaping to - greasing the wheels of the war machine - they just can't reconcile their empathy with their disdain for him. Director Andrew Niccol invites the ambivalence with his opening sequence, chronicling the journey of a bullet from the factory floor to an indigenous boy's skull. Is a gun-runner absolved of the immeasurable damage his products do simply because he enjoys selling them and never uses them? The question is indeed compelling - well, maybe at first. But Orlov sees firsthand the lethal fruits of his labor and, quite clearly, is a plain greedy and despicable man, notwithstanding his transparent charms and moral ambiguity. His losses - personal and monetary - do not inspire sympathy but more contempt and disappointment when they fail to deter him from continuing his deadly trade.

Still worse is Cage's defense - one of absolute recrimination of both governments and car/tobacco dealers, and deferral of guilt to the people that actually fire his products. In this respect the film attempts to adopt a political consciousness by depicting governments as the greater of two evils. Especially at film's end, it works, but not nearly enough to exonerate our protagonist to the point of actually, you know, liking him.

Bridget Moynahan passably fulfills the role of the wife who just doesn't wanna be lied to anymore, goddamnit, while Jared Leto's antics as the fuck-up younger brother are adequate comic relief. The coke-outline of Ukraine was a definite hoot. Ethan Hawke, sporting the righteous fury of a by-the-book Interpol agent pursuing Orlov, provides the moral yardstick against which Cage just crumbles into ash and goes straight to Hell.

I enjoyed the scene where the Liberian dictator shot Cage's competitor (a business-as-usual Ian Holm). Excellent, if slightly obvious metaphor for Cage's Eichmann-esque philosophy about gun-running. The shot of Cage chatting on his cell phone while sitting on a toppled statue of Lenin against the backdrop of an endless row of Russian tanks was another delight.

(photo courtesy of www.darkhorizons.com)