…Fox News after midnight repeats the same crap so often it's worse than being forced to count the Coke Logo's for the 43rd time while you wait for your movie to start.
...the Google "current" channel is comprised of the trifecta of softcore porn affectionately labeled "National Geographic-type nudity", newslike segments singing the praises of group sex, and animated cartoons so offensive that they make Southpark look like the Care Bears.
...how to perform maintenance on a Compaq 1850-R server using a letter opener, my fingernails and a pocket knife.
...someone has developed (I am not making this up) a urinal that functions as a video game controller.
...Reggie Fils-Aime is not only a member of Nintendo of America, he's also the president. (Well he is now, anyway.)
...No one really knows what the new 2007 Camaro will look like.
...That it's okay to delete the contents of /var/tmp/portage and /tmp.
...That Microsoft almost bought Ebay.
...Not to always listen to what the Haynes repair manual tells you - especially if the guy at the parts store tells you otherwise.
Sunday, May 28, 2006
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Movies!
I saw two movies this weekend, but I'm only writing a review for one of them. A local theater specializes in obscure and older movies and was playing the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. That was the most fun I've had at a movie since the Lord of the Rings trilogy night. 99% of the audience already knew the movie forwards and backwards, there was cheering and shouts of "We love you Master Splinter!" Someone started humming Darth Vader's theme music when Shredder made his dramatic entrance, and Chief Sterns was immediately compared to Chief Wiggam from the Simpsons - half of the audience shouted a nasally "Nyaa" every time he was on screen. It's a classic that still holds its own - which is more than I can say for its sequels.
But on to the other movie I saw: The Davinci Code
This movie was somewhat of a disappointment in numerous respects. On several occasions, people have recommended the book to me, but I never got around to reading it. After the awful Omega Code movie I was leery of anything that involved both the Bible and secret codes. I warn you now, this review is pretty much entirely a spoiler - normally I would hold back for the sake of those who might want to see this movie, but in my opinion, no one should need to waste their time in such a way. The story, according to the author's laughable re-write of history is basically this:
Jesus married Mary Magdelene and fathered children - this somehow indicates that he was not God's son, but just a really charasmatic mortal. The holy grail is not actually a cup, but a symbolic reference for Mary Magdelene herself - the cup (her womb) didn't catch Jesus' blood, it caught his blood-line. In 300 or so AD, Constantine - a consumate pagan until his death, organized a rally of "Christian" scolars to sit down and have a rap session to hammer out the details of this new ficticious Christianity religion thing. At that point they were sterilizing the gospels of anything that would make Jesus look like a mortal, and throwing out the gospels they couldn't clean up (including one written by Mary Magdelene herself! lol). After this, they covered their tracks and just went on pretending that Christianity had always been that way. But the catholic church had to erase Jesus' heirs from history, because somehow all of their power and influence was based on the premise that Jesus was immortal and somehow having children makes him mortal. The Knighs Templar was apparently a secret society with the hidden agenda of protecting Jesus' living descendants against the extremist Catholics (that's practically a contradiction in terms.) So flash forward a couple of thousand years, and the battle of Templar vs. Catholic rages on. Caught up in this are Robert - a symbologist that specializes in obscure interpretations of common symbols and Sophie - a cop, and the unknowing descendant of Jesus. The movie unfolds somewhat like National Treasure as one clue is followed to the next, however it was not nearly as intriguing or mysterious. The obviousness of the plot killed most of the suspense for me - I was able to guess what was going to happen next with accuracy that surprised even me. Even the double-crosses were badly botched. There was one sequence in particular that made me laugh out loud at is ineptitude. The butler that just double-crossed the heroes has a conversation with a man who is purposly obscured from the camera and does not speak - the butler even makes reference to the fact that his identiy is supposed to be a secret - the exposition couldn't have been more obvious if the actor had faced the audience directly and spoke. Now, it was pretty obvious to me who the mystery man was just by deductive reasoning, but the scene switches to something that is pretty much unrelated for a few minutes then jumps back and the mystery man's identity is revealed. It was a complete waste of intrigue. When you use intrigue on an audience, you have to give them a reason to want to know the secret. This was just bad film making. Anyway, our heroes jet-set across europe and at the end discover that Sophie is one of the last living descendants of Jesus (they use Christ like it was his last name, lol). According to the author, revealing this fact to the world will utterly destroy the catholic church, which is, evidently, the sole source of racisism, classism, oppression, hunger, war, the author's bad childhood, and pretty much everything in the general category of evil. So now Sophie has to make the decision to go public, she makes a cutesy little visual gag where she tries to walk on water and then says she's going to go try the water and wine trick. As an epilogue, Robert follows the exact same clues that led him elsewhere earlier in the story, but this time they lead him to a pyramid inside the police station where the remains of Mary Magdelene a.k.a. the holy grail are now enterred. He kneels respectfully to pray to the corpse.
Firstly the core of the underlying story - that Jesus married Mary Magdelene and fathered children is a very old, very un-biblical theme. There has never been any evidence to support it, nor much of an effort to directly disprove it because it's absurd. The idea that this, if true, necessitates that Jesus was mortal is a stretch for even the most atheistic philosopher. The author clearly needed this to be true in order to construct the antagonist's (the Catholic Church) motivation, however it is also clearly motivated by some personal vendetta the writer has - there is no logic behind it. The un-biblical part of this was explained away by the council called by Constantine to sit down and do an ISO-ish re-write of the Christianity standard. For the rest of this review, I'll call it ISO 001.1. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not defending the Catholic Church. I think the Catholic Church has done more harm to Christianity than any other person, entity, or assembly that has ever existed - their doctrine is largely fabricated by men with secular motivations, they openly contradict the Bible in public favoring idol worship and papal dispensation over the scripture. I'm personally sick and tired of Catholicism being regarded as the authoritative organization in Christianity. As far as I'm concerned, they ceased being Christian as soon as they began referring to priests as "father." They have even gone so far as offering to sell passage into heaven for money all in the name of Christianity. It is not difficult to understand why people like Dan Brown (the author) would become resentful and vindictive, or why so many would flock to believe what he says when this bastion of Christianity is so clearly full of deceit. And again, I want to clear up that I am not defending Dan Brown, merely attempting to lay open his motivations in order to explain why this movie was so bad.
Story-wise, it was poorly paced, badly conceived and executed. The plot was basically a badly performed and less interesting version of National Treasure. It is obvious that the director was counting on the noterity of the name to sell tickets, and not any inherent quality of the movie. Many of the characters had a 3D introduction followed by a distinctly 2D role. I've seen a lot of book-to-movie adaptations and they usually do a much better job with this - either the charcater is shallow and mostly unimportant or he is part of the main plot, not a little of both.
Special effects were basically confined to ghostly overlays as Robert explained or thought through something - his imaginations would appear on screen as translucent objects. Some of the camera work was very good, proving sweeping and often interesting views of the exotic backdrops.
Tom Hanks' acting was somewhat below par on this one. It seemed like he was trying to stretch the boundaries of his repitore and he ended up looking a little rough around the edges in terms of delivering a believable performance. Ian McKellen on the other hand, was on top of his game. Jean Reno also gave a very good performance, for what the director allowed him to do.
Philosophically this film is complete and utter heretical and blasphemous crap. It is obvious that the author is a bitter ex-member of catholicism and this was born of some personal vendetta.
I would recommend against wasting time or money on this.
But on to the other movie I saw: The Davinci Code
This movie was somewhat of a disappointment in numerous respects. On several occasions, people have recommended the book to me, but I never got around to reading it. After the awful Omega Code movie I was leery of anything that involved both the Bible and secret codes. I warn you now, this review is pretty much entirely a spoiler - normally I would hold back for the sake of those who might want to see this movie, but in my opinion, no one should need to waste their time in such a way. The story, according to the author's laughable re-write of history is basically this:
Jesus married Mary Magdelene and fathered children - this somehow indicates that he was not God's son, but just a really charasmatic mortal. The holy grail is not actually a cup, but a symbolic reference for Mary Magdelene herself - the cup (her womb) didn't catch Jesus' blood, it caught his blood-line. In 300 or so AD, Constantine - a consumate pagan until his death, organized a rally of "Christian" scolars to sit down and have a rap session to hammer out the details of this new ficticious Christianity religion thing. At that point they were sterilizing the gospels of anything that would make Jesus look like a mortal, and throwing out the gospels they couldn't clean up (including one written by Mary Magdelene herself! lol). After this, they covered their tracks and just went on pretending that Christianity had always been that way. But the catholic church had to erase Jesus' heirs from history, because somehow all of their power and influence was based on the premise that Jesus was immortal and somehow having children makes him mortal. The Knighs Templar was apparently a secret society with the hidden agenda of protecting Jesus' living descendants against the extremist Catholics (that's practically a contradiction in terms.) So flash forward a couple of thousand years, and the battle of Templar vs. Catholic rages on. Caught up in this are Robert - a symbologist that specializes in obscure interpretations of common symbols and Sophie - a cop, and the unknowing descendant of Jesus. The movie unfolds somewhat like National Treasure as one clue is followed to the next, however it was not nearly as intriguing or mysterious. The obviousness of the plot killed most of the suspense for me - I was able to guess what was going to happen next with accuracy that surprised even me. Even the double-crosses were badly botched. There was one sequence in particular that made me laugh out loud at is ineptitude. The butler that just double-crossed the heroes has a conversation with a man who is purposly obscured from the camera and does not speak - the butler even makes reference to the fact that his identiy is supposed to be a secret - the exposition couldn't have been more obvious if the actor had faced the audience directly and spoke. Now, it was pretty obvious to me who the mystery man was just by deductive reasoning, but the scene switches to something that is pretty much unrelated for a few minutes then jumps back and the mystery man's identity is revealed. It was a complete waste of intrigue. When you use intrigue on an audience, you have to give them a reason to want to know the secret. This was just bad film making. Anyway, our heroes jet-set across europe and at the end discover that Sophie is one of the last living descendants of Jesus (they use Christ like it was his last name, lol). According to the author, revealing this fact to the world will utterly destroy the catholic church, which is, evidently, the sole source of racisism, classism, oppression, hunger, war, the author's bad childhood, and pretty much everything in the general category of evil. So now Sophie has to make the decision to go public, she makes a cutesy little visual gag where she tries to walk on water and then says she's going to go try the water and wine trick. As an epilogue, Robert follows the exact same clues that led him elsewhere earlier in the story, but this time they lead him to a pyramid inside the police station where the remains of Mary Magdelene a.k.a. the holy grail are now enterred. He kneels respectfully to pray to the corpse.
Firstly the core of the underlying story - that Jesus married Mary Magdelene and fathered children is a very old, very un-biblical theme. There has never been any evidence to support it, nor much of an effort to directly disprove it because it's absurd. The idea that this, if true, necessitates that Jesus was mortal is a stretch for even the most atheistic philosopher. The author clearly needed this to be true in order to construct the antagonist's (the Catholic Church) motivation, however it is also clearly motivated by some personal vendetta the writer has - there is no logic behind it. The un-biblical part of this was explained away by the council called by Constantine to sit down and do an ISO-ish re-write of the Christianity standard. For the rest of this review, I'll call it ISO 001.1. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not defending the Catholic Church. I think the Catholic Church has done more harm to Christianity than any other person, entity, or assembly that has ever existed - their doctrine is largely fabricated by men with secular motivations, they openly contradict the Bible in public favoring idol worship and papal dispensation over the scripture. I'm personally sick and tired of Catholicism being regarded as the authoritative organization in Christianity. As far as I'm concerned, they ceased being Christian as soon as they began referring to priests as "father." They have even gone so far as offering to sell passage into heaven for money all in the name of Christianity. It is not difficult to understand why people like Dan Brown (the author) would become resentful and vindictive, or why so many would flock to believe what he says when this bastion of Christianity is so clearly full of deceit. And again, I want to clear up that I am not defending Dan Brown, merely attempting to lay open his motivations in order to explain why this movie was so bad.
Story-wise, it was poorly paced, badly conceived and executed. The plot was basically a badly performed and less interesting version of National Treasure. It is obvious that the director was counting on the noterity of the name to sell tickets, and not any inherent quality of the movie. Many of the characters had a 3D introduction followed by a distinctly 2D role. I've seen a lot of book-to-movie adaptations and they usually do a much better job with this - either the charcater is shallow and mostly unimportant or he is part of the main plot, not a little of both.
Special effects were basically confined to ghostly overlays as Robert explained or thought through something - his imaginations would appear on screen as translucent objects. Some of the camera work was very good, proving sweeping and often interesting views of the exotic backdrops.
Tom Hanks' acting was somewhat below par on this one. It seemed like he was trying to stretch the boundaries of his repitore and he ended up looking a little rough around the edges in terms of delivering a believable performance. Ian McKellen on the other hand, was on top of his game. Jean Reno also gave a very good performance, for what the director allowed him to do.
Philosophically this film is complete and utter heretical and blasphemous crap. It is obvious that the author is a bitter ex-member of catholicism and this was born of some personal vendetta.
I would recommend against wasting time or money on this.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
My Video Game Archive Project: Finished!
It's been six days with nowhere to sit down in my house. My feet are still sore from standing up for 10 hours at a stretch. I've gone through 16 AA batteries to take nearly 1200 pictures. My dog and cat probably want to kill me for completely disrupting the order of my household. Thankfully my wife was just as excited to see just how much video game crap I have accumulated over the last 11 years as I was.
I had no earthly idea how large and time-consuming that this project would become when I first decided to do it last week. But it sure feels good to get it done. Here are a couple of highlights of my collection.
My complete collection of Working Designs games:
My PS2 Linux Kit:
My Grandia Cloth Map:
I'm writing a database to archive my collection in OpenOffice.org Base, but for a little instant gratification, I put up a simple php gallery viewable here: Paladin's Game Collection
It's not on the fastest server in the world, so please be patient while the images load.
I had no earthly idea how large and time-consuming that this project would become when I first decided to do it last week. But it sure feels good to get it done. Here are a couple of highlights of my collection.
My complete collection of Working Designs games:
My Final Fantasy VII Launch T-Shirt:
My PS2 Linux Kit:
My Grandia Cloth Map:
I'm writing a database to archive my collection in OpenOffice.org Base, but for a little instant gratification, I put up a simple php gallery viewable here: Paladin's Game Collection
It's not on the fastest server in the world, so please be patient while the images load.
Saturday, May 13, 2006
My Video Game Archive Project
I saw a contest over at luv2game.com where users were encouraged to post pictures of their game collections. I saw one or two of impressive size, but I found myself thinking "that's pretty big, but mine's bigger." I've been collecting games since around 1995. I actually got my first game system back in 1989 but for reasons I won't get into, I started at basically 0 in 1995. I've been amassing this collection for some time, but I realized that I had never actually seen it in one place at one time, so I had this brilliant idea - my wife and I would create a visual archive of the collection.
Three days into the project, I realize that it was much easier said than done. I have stashes all over the house, intertwined with Pokemon and Transformer collections. My back is sore, I've lost sleep three nights in a row; man this is hard work!
Here is the state that my theater room finds itself in:
Three days into the project, I realize that it was much easier said than done. I have stashes all over the house, intertwined with Pokemon and Transformer collections. My back is sore, I've lost sleep three nights in a row; man this is hard work!
Here is the state that my theater room finds itself in:
Monday, May 08, 2006
Mission Impoissible III
With all of the recent publicity Tom Cruise has been getting over his choice of fiancees and his aggressive pursuit of the futuristic Scientology religion, I thought it would be hard to separate Tom Cruise from the role he plays as Ethan Hunt. But once the action started...Tom Who?
Gone is the stylized ultra-slick Metallica rendition of the Mission Impossible theme from MI:II, Ethan Hunt's cavalier attitudes about women, and motorcycle kung-fu. I couldn't help but be reminded of Lethal Weapon 4's approach to a maturing franchise, as the story opens with Ethan trying to finally settle down and start a family, taking a back seat at the IMF as a trainer. And of course, this is not to last.
This movie really packs a lot of punch, bombarding you with intense action scenes as well as gut-wrenching drama. You'll hate the bad guys and cheer the good guys - provided you can figure out who is who. As any fan of the series should expect, it's filled with plot twists and false clues to keep you guessing about the end. The tech takes a back seat in this movie - no more scenes with their own special version of "M" (ala James Bond) giving an inventory of all of their little toys. They seem to realize that the audiences today aren't fascinated by futuristic gadgetry the way they were in the last four decades. The tech is there and it works, and that's all anyone ever need know. I can only see this as a good thing, because, although I really like knowing the particulars of a clever piece of technology, I don't need a break in the action to learn about it. That's what websites, comentary tracks and DVD extras are for. The action sequences, while still mindblowing, were not as "impossible" as those in the previous movies. There are no half-inch-short-helicopter-blade-to-the-throat run-ins, no motorcycle kung-fu. The action was all believable, and that made it somewhat more fantastic. In my opinion, this was the best of the three movies in terms of action, drama, character development, suspense and story.
It is not without its cheesy moments; I had to laugh at the not one but several times Ethan found himself dangling horizontally on the end of a string, mimicking one of the most well-known scenes from the first movie. The ability of a script-writer and/or a director to allow the movie to sort of make fun of itself goes a long way toward instilling a sense of matured confidence on the audience.
After his run-in with South Park and the tabloids, it's difficult to know what to think of Tom Cruise these days, but I will say that I'd like him a lot more if he'd stick to his job and act, because he's extremely good at it.
Gone is the stylized ultra-slick Metallica rendition of the Mission Impossible theme from MI:II, Ethan Hunt's cavalier attitudes about women, and motorcycle kung-fu. I couldn't help but be reminded of Lethal Weapon 4's approach to a maturing franchise, as the story opens with Ethan trying to finally settle down and start a family, taking a back seat at the IMF as a trainer. And of course, this is not to last.
This movie really packs a lot of punch, bombarding you with intense action scenes as well as gut-wrenching drama. You'll hate the bad guys and cheer the good guys - provided you can figure out who is who. As any fan of the series should expect, it's filled with plot twists and false clues to keep you guessing about the end. The tech takes a back seat in this movie - no more scenes with their own special version of "M" (ala James Bond) giving an inventory of all of their little toys. They seem to realize that the audiences today aren't fascinated by futuristic gadgetry the way they were in the last four decades. The tech is there and it works, and that's all anyone ever need know. I can only see this as a good thing, because, although I really like knowing the particulars of a clever piece of technology, I don't need a break in the action to learn about it. That's what websites, comentary tracks and DVD extras are for. The action sequences, while still mindblowing, were not as "impossible" as those in the previous movies. There are no half-inch-short-helicopter-blade-to-the-throat run-ins, no motorcycle kung-fu. The action was all believable, and that made it somewhat more fantastic. In my opinion, this was the best of the three movies in terms of action, drama, character development, suspense and story.
It is not without its cheesy moments; I had to laugh at the not one but several times Ethan found himself dangling horizontally on the end of a string, mimicking one of the most well-known scenes from the first movie. The ability of a script-writer and/or a director to allow the movie to sort of make fun of itself goes a long way toward instilling a sense of matured confidence on the audience.
After his run-in with South Park and the tabloids, it's difficult to know what to think of Tom Cruise these days, but I will say that I'd like him a lot more if he'd stick to his job and act, because he's extremely good at it.
Friday, May 05, 2006
Silent Hill
A little more than seven years ago when the first Silent Hill game was released for the Playstation, curiosity and hype drove me to to rent it. As a rule, I don't generally go in for "survival horror" games. Resident Evil had failed to capture my interest in all but the most technical aspects.
I remember being told by magazine reviewers that this game was extremely frightening and unnerving at times, but I didn't really believe it until I sat down and started playing it. The first 10 minutes of the game were some of the most mortifying that I have ever spent with a controller in my hand. The developers of this game really knew how to get under your skin and keep you jumping at shadows.
I finished Silent Hill in one night - eager to bring the whole thing to some sort of closure so I could sleep a little easier. I have never picked up any of the Silent Hill sequels, but if they're anything like the first one, I'm sure they're intimately frightening.
When I saw the trailer for the Silent Hill movie for the first time last year, I identified it instantly from the foggy atmosphere and the abandoned car on the mountainous highway.
As with any game-to-movie review, I feel obliged to mention all of the awful game-become-movies that have proceeded it like Super Mario Bros. movie, the Street Fighter movie, to tell you how much better this one is by comparison blah blah blah. Instead, however I'm using this as an opportunity to bag on the horribly awful pseudo-director Uwe Boll. Any film he touches usually ends up being crap because he has a deeply rooted fundamental misunderstanding of what video games are all about, and seems to have read the Cliffs Notes of film making instead of employing any actual talent. Thankfully he had nothing to do with Silent Hill, and it shows in the fact that it's actually a good movie.
Firstly I would recommend against anyone under the age of 17 seeing this film, and even then, don't go see it alone.
The Silent Hill movie only deviated from the story of the game in minor respects, and then it was obviously because of the time limitation. Even so it weighed in at just over 2 hours. It's a little slow to get started, but when it does, you're thrust into a confusing and horrifying tour of the ghost town Silent Hill.
The special effects were top-notch but never became the focus of the film. It seems that Hollywood is learning that special effects are supposed to help the movie not be the movie. Filled with visceral imagry, gore and unnervingly remorseless bad guys, no horror fan should be disappointed. Some of the sequences seem to employ the same techniques as recent Japanese horror films like Ringu and Juon, where the undead are made to move in ways that your brain tells you on some subconscious level just isn't right. This unsettling effect is coupled with unabashed carnage for a well-rounded scare. To top it all off there is an underlying tale of secret sin, retribution and a very confused commentary on the nature of good and evil.
A couple of aspects that detracted from my enjoyment were the fact that all of the principal characters in the movie were female. I suppose it's my male-centric mind making something out of nothing, after all there are plenty examples of movies where all of the principal characters are male, and they don't even make me bat an eye. It just seems odd to me.
I was delighted, however that the filmmakers resisted the urge to include sexuality in this story. The main supporting character is a busty blond policewoman with with a buzz cut that just screams out that she's as buch as a lumberjack, but this was all window dressing as far as the story went.
The story attempts to tell a morality tale from a decidedly secular point of view. When agnostics start getting preachy, it's hard not to laugh as they make comically flawed moral judgements based on absolutely nothing. One line in particular still makes me laugh when I think about it "Your faith leads to death." the main character says to the crazed psychopathic cult/church leader. It is clearly intended to be a profound and powerful revelation, and indeed the cult leader responds as such as though she is momentarily shaken by the statement. Any person with actual faith understands this as a fundamental tenet of faith. Any true faith can lead to death - the nature of faith requires the possibility. For Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Catholics, the story of Abraham and Issac is probably the best example of this. As I often say, writers shouldn't write stories about things that they clearly do not understand because they generally just end up looking stupid to anyone who does understand the subject. I expect the vast majority of people who go to see this movie will pass by that dialogue without much notice, or may even find it as profound as the writers obviously think it is.
Bottom line:
This movie will potentially scare the crap out of you. There are plenty of scenes that will unsettle even the most stalwart of horror afficianados (whether they'll admit it or not). Fans of the game will enjoy the mostly faithful storyline. The story caters both to the gory and psychological sides of horror. The movie mostly sticks to what it's good at and doesn't have any sexual references of any kind. The morality aspect is deeply flawed and silly, and should by no means be taken seriously. The casting was decidedly feminist.
I remember being told by magazine reviewers that this game was extremely frightening and unnerving at times, but I didn't really believe it until I sat down and started playing it. The first 10 minutes of the game were some of the most mortifying that I have ever spent with a controller in my hand. The developers of this game really knew how to get under your skin and keep you jumping at shadows.
I finished Silent Hill in one night - eager to bring the whole thing to some sort of closure so I could sleep a little easier. I have never picked up any of the Silent Hill sequels, but if they're anything like the first one, I'm sure they're intimately frightening.
When I saw the trailer for the Silent Hill movie for the first time last year, I identified it instantly from the foggy atmosphere and the abandoned car on the mountainous highway.
As with any game-to-movie review, I feel obliged to mention all of the awful game-become-movies that have proceeded it like Super Mario Bros. movie, the Street Fighter movie, to tell you how much better this one is by comparison blah blah blah. Instead, however I'm using this as an opportunity to bag on the horribly awful pseudo-director Uwe Boll. Any film he touches usually ends up being crap because he has a deeply rooted fundamental misunderstanding of what video games are all about, and seems to have read the Cliffs Notes of film making instead of employing any actual talent. Thankfully he had nothing to do with Silent Hill, and it shows in the fact that it's actually a good movie.
Firstly I would recommend against anyone under the age of 17 seeing this film, and even then, don't go see it alone.
The Silent Hill movie only deviated from the story of the game in minor respects, and then it was obviously because of the time limitation. Even so it weighed in at just over 2 hours. It's a little slow to get started, but when it does, you're thrust into a confusing and horrifying tour of the ghost town Silent Hill.
The special effects were top-notch but never became the focus of the film. It seems that Hollywood is learning that special effects are supposed to help the movie not be the movie. Filled with visceral imagry, gore and unnervingly remorseless bad guys, no horror fan should be disappointed. Some of the sequences seem to employ the same techniques as recent Japanese horror films like Ringu and Juon, where the undead are made to move in ways that your brain tells you on some subconscious level just isn't right. This unsettling effect is coupled with unabashed carnage for a well-rounded scare. To top it all off there is an underlying tale of secret sin, retribution and a very confused commentary on the nature of good and evil.
A couple of aspects that detracted from my enjoyment were the fact that all of the principal characters in the movie were female. I suppose it's my male-centric mind making something out of nothing, after all there are plenty examples of movies where all of the principal characters are male, and they don't even make me bat an eye. It just seems odd to me.
I was delighted, however that the filmmakers resisted the urge to include sexuality in this story. The main supporting character is a busty blond policewoman with with a buzz cut that just screams out that she's as buch as a lumberjack, but this was all window dressing as far as the story went.
The story attempts to tell a morality tale from a decidedly secular point of view. When agnostics start getting preachy, it's hard not to laugh as they make comically flawed moral judgements based on absolutely nothing. One line in particular still makes me laugh when I think about it "Your faith leads to death." the main character says to the crazed psychopathic cult/church leader. It is clearly intended to be a profound and powerful revelation, and indeed the cult leader responds as such as though she is momentarily shaken by the statement. Any person with actual faith understands this as a fundamental tenet of faith. Any true faith can lead to death - the nature of faith requires the possibility. For Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Catholics, the story of Abraham and Issac is probably the best example of this. As I often say, writers shouldn't write stories about things that they clearly do not understand because they generally just end up looking stupid to anyone who does understand the subject. I expect the vast majority of people who go to see this movie will pass by that dialogue without much notice, or may even find it as profound as the writers obviously think it is.
Bottom line:
This movie will potentially scare the crap out of you. There are plenty of scenes that will unsettle even the most stalwart of horror afficianados (whether they'll admit it or not). Fans of the game will enjoy the mostly faithful storyline. The story caters both to the gory and psychological sides of horror. The movie mostly sticks to what it's good at and doesn't have any sexual references of any kind. The morality aspect is deeply flawed and silly, and should by no means be taken seriously. The casting was decidedly feminist.
The End of Oblivion
After 125 hours of playtime, 450 saves and 20+ XBOX lockups, I can honestly say I'm done with Elder Scrolls IV. I've collected the entire 1000 points for my XBOX Live gamerscore, completed the main quest, become head of the Mages Guild, Fighter's Guild, Theives Guild and the Dark Brotherhood, become Grand Champion of the Arena, and acquired every house in the game. After all that the game still has a smattering of quests that I haven't completed such as the ridiculously tedious Nirnroot quest, not to mention a dozen or more dungeons that aren't tied to any quests but contain some great loot. There is still plenty of room for improvement of my stats. Add to that the fact that I've only played through as one gender of one race, and you can start to see how enormous the replay potential for this game is. That being said, I probably still won't pick it up again until an expansion or "Game of the Year" edition is released with additional quest lines etc...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)