Grey Matter

Megamind is worth seeing. It's not particularly revolutionary, but it's funny, mildly inspiring, and well done. If your kids are very young there are definitely a number of scary moments.

That's my "yes I'm still alive, really" moment of the month.

Movies: Knight and Day

The Bourne Trilogy of spy thrillers rank among my favorite films. It is probably their influence which makes Knight and Day, a romantic comedy/spy thriller hybrid, so amazing.

Knight and Day has all of the elements of an excellent spy thriller. There's the dashing secret agent, resourceful and clever, fighting against larger forces by himself. There are car chases, massive gun fights, intrigue, betrayals, and double crosses. Then, just to totally mess with the formula, instead of throwing in a femme fatale they inject a fairly normal woman who is totally unprepared for anything that is about to happen to her in the movie.

The twist on the formula not only works, it's simultaneously hilarious and engaging. While almost everything in the film can be mapped to various cliches from both genres, the combination of the two reminds me of such films as To Catch a Thief or How to Steal a Million. Knight and Day catches that classic up to the present day beautifully and seamlessly.

I highly recommend this film. It's only PG-13, it's over the top, and it's absolutely enjoyable.

Suspense

So, Portal 2 is on its way this Christmas. At the same time, a sequel to Tron is on its way this Christmas. Oddly enough, the former prospect excites me while the latter prospect frightens me.

I think this is largely because the worst case scenario for Portal 2 is that it tries to be Portal. In such a scenario, you'll have the charm of the mind-bending puzzles, though perhaps you won't experience a plot that's quite as original, creepy, and involving. I can live with Portal 2's worst case scenario, and the potential jubilation the best case scenario represents is off the scale.

Tron Legacy is very different. The worst case scenario is an absolute disaster. The movie is clearly trying to be two things at once, a call back to arcade nostalgia and a flashy special effects film. Those are two very different beasts, and yoking them together will take a great feat of directorial and editorial strength. I suppose the best case scenario is that Tron 2 becomes the Starcraft of 3D special effects films, perfecting the formula and setting standards for decades to come. I'd definitely enjoy that, but I don't harbor a shred of hope that's what will happen.

Surprising

I went to see Watchmen today. This is not surprising, except maybe that it took so long for me to do so. It was a good movie, also not surprising. In fact, I'd call the movie almost perfect, the issues so tiny and minute they can hardly be said to have occurred at all.

The conversation that the usher had with the couple behind me wasn't surprising either. Apparently some people bring their kids to R rated movies (if you didn't know this, you missed the 80s and 90s), some people also leave movies halfway through due to explicit sex scenes, and if you make a Venn diagram the two have significant overlap.

The surprising moment came immediately after the very explicit sex scene in the movie, and bloomed fully once the movie ended. It's not the scene itself that was surprising or anything that came before it, but rather that parents waited until that moment to decide to leave.

It's not that there are sex scenes beforehand, but that there are scenes of such horrific violence I would pause before I let someone in college watch them. In fact, I can think of many college friends who would be shocked at and cross with me were I to subject them to such barbarity. Many of those moments were truly gruesome.

It is, I think, indicative of the state of our culture that a bloodstain on the ceiling including a dangling, half-exploded arm followed immediately by scenes of women showered in blood doesn't warrant a quick exit for the sake of the children, but a couple of people engaging in an activity practiced by offendees themselves (I mean, they do have kids) is somehow worthy of their ire. It's nonsense.

I'm not advocating Japanese-like acceptance of sexual deviancy, but I am saying that we have our priorities utterly backwards. Everyone should recoil violently when someone is brutally murdered, not just during sex.

Grayscale

This is another interesting comparison between movies and video games. As is par for the course, video games lose.

I must thoroughly contest the author's point, as he's making the same mistake every critic and skeptic of the video game has made since Space War. They're comparing an established media form to a nascent one. It's akin to complaining that a toddler doesn't stack up to a valedictorian. Seriously, that three year old needs to get his act together.

I state it's an unfair comparison, and I mean so because people have forgotten that the same complaints being levied against Super Mario Bros can be turned upon many early but unequivocally important films. Take, for instance, the french film Le Voyage dans la Lune. Youth viewing it today will not, by far, have any reaction similar to that of those who viewed it back in 1902. Viewed through today's lens it's completely outdated, overcome by films that took its principles and surpassed it. So why do we even still know its name?

The truth ignored in the article is that films such as Le Voyage dans la Lune are breakthroughs, as is Super Mario Bros for video games. Eighty years from now people will still know about the intrepid plumber's first adventure even if Nintendo hits game over. The platformer's platformer may be completely outdated, but it's a snapshot of the progress of a media form whose importance can not be ignored.

So how many films from the first thirty-five years of cinema are recognized today as timeless? Looking at IMDb's top 250 films, I found all of six films that fall into that time period, ten if you boost it a couple of years. In fact, it's only when we fudge the range that we even get a film in the top 100.

This isn't to say that all films before the 1930s or 40s were bad, but that they suffer the same problems outlined in the article. They were the natural products of a young media form, and we remember those films not because they were timeless but out of nostalgia or recognition of achievement.

All of the video games today with few exceptions will feature similarly on the lists next century. People will recognize Super Mario Bros as a landmark title important to the development of the industry, but as little else. They'll laugh at Oregon Trail the same way we ridicule the old PSAs. Even the blockbusters of today, such as Spore, will occupy spot #217 on the lists of tomorrow.

It's a fair argument to say that at this exact point in time video games are still an undeveloped art form, particularly when compared to present day cinema and theater. That's perfectly reasonable. However, to misunderstand this as meaning that video games today are uninspired, or that video games in fifty years will continue the trend, is turning a blind eye to the nature of young media.

What about the bullocks?

I find this extremely humorous. While there's interesting stuff you can do with black and white or pure silence, ultimately it's helped the medium to change those from arbitrary to voluntary restrictions.

I'm sure that in 60 years, I'll be looking back on the video games industry with similar contempt.

Azkabomb

With people at home raving to me about how they'll be watching the upcoming Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire movie, I decided to finally watch the third installment.

I'd been turned off from the movies because the second film had been somewhat disgraceful. Simply too little time had been spent developing the characters, expecially the exceptionally narcissistic Defense against the Dark Arts professor. I can't say it was horrid, just disgraceful.

The Prisoner of Azkaban started well, with the usual "Behold the Dursley's and their insistance on being wordly fuddy-duddies" that starts nearly every book and film. However, the warning bells should have been blaring when I noticed the first in what became a flood of very small things that deviated from the books. Harry left home without Hedwig, something I don't believe happened in the book.

It was early in the film, and I was ready to forgive. There's only so much time, and there's only so much one can do therein.

For a while yet, the movie was good, enjoyable and fun. However, little things like the Hedwig incident kept happening, and a dread of larger things being cut grew larger and larger.

I came to this movie with a clean slate. I had cast away my prejudgements, cast away any thought of this movie would be anything like the second. I sat down and I let myself be entertained. In the end, the battle of Entertainment vs Hollywood Stupidity was won by Hollywood.

Quite simply, some of what I considered to be the best and most important elements of the story were simply cut entirely, even giving rise to possible reprecussions in the next movie. The Marauder's Map is taken by Snape, but at no point does he insinuate anything about Messers Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs. Never does Lupin reveal the truth about the map, the shrieking shack, and the Whomping Willow. Never do we find out how Lupin knew anything about the map, how Snape, Lupin, and Sirius knew about the shrieking shack, what the purpose of Trelawney's mysterious prophey was (or that she was even remotely hackish in the first place) and worse things too.

In the books, when Harry sees Lupin for the last time, they have a discussion concerning the events of the night before. Here the greatest and most Christian message of the Harry Potter books is completely omitted. In the movie, Lupin and Harry discuss how Harry's saving of an innocent man made all the difference. In the books, the biggest and most greatest thing Harry did was not save an innocent man, but spare a guilty one. One who was clearly undeserving, unrepentant, and only concerned with his own self. Harry displayed the one trait that the terrible dementors lacked entirely, and he displayed it towards one no one else would have spared.

And this was lost.

I could go on about how the new actor for Dumbledore failed to portray the character in even the faintest similarity, how Harry's Patronus's resemblence to Prongs failed to be discussed. How vital elements of the story were replaced with an extended scene of a purple bus screaming through London. But really, none of that matters compared to the sheer travesty of changing the very nature of the story. Both the major points of forgiveness and how people live on within us are maligned for the sake of saying "Saving innocents is important!"

I think that any shred of my faith in Hollywood to produce a film based on a novel with any accuracy has been long lost. I'm looking to New Zealand from now on, and if that means I won't find out about excellent films until five years after they leave the theatres, so be it.