So I've been playing Diablo 2. It's fun but also frustrating as it doesn't support my 32MB video card, crashes occasionally and corrupted four of my characters. But I slog along.
If only I could play it online... it'd be like 2000 all over again, me with my 28.8 dialup.
Well, I just finished watching Die another day. As for Bond movies, it wasn't too bad. I think I'd rather see the movie of Nightfire on the PS2—but not that badly. Anyway, it seems that there is a checklist for making such movies. Line items I'm sure are included are:
...And so on. I could probably alliterate another couple entries but what would be the point? It's just a Bond movie, and in such situation all the above are expected, if not necessary. I'm willing and able to overlook all of them—to a point. Let's take the example of that last one: illogical science. Visible lasers and DNA resequencing I can accept, as their "existence" makes the story much more interesting. However, late in the film they crossed a line that was just too far afield of reality.
Just after James dispatched the villain (oops, I hope I didn't give that plot twist away) a pair of exotic supercars are dropped from very high altitude. They aren't forgotten, as they are later revealed to be stuck nose-first in the muck below. It's a good laugh, but bad physics. Think about it: nevermind the fact that they started falling rear-first, but the engines are in the rear of the car (or near the back, mid-engined some might say). Now unless these boots of these cars were filled with lead and mercury, they'd likely fall on their ends, not front-first.
And why does it matter? In a movie rife with in-jokes and homages it's just another throwaway joke, albeit an elaborately-plotted one, and it garners the laughs it should. Why does it bother me that they didn't stick the correct end of the cars into the ground? Did somebody on the set decide that it wouldn't be as funny the other way? Could it be Freudian in some sick form? Why does it bother me so?
It's amazing what you can find when you're not looking for it. Hearkening back to a couple days ago's hours of Googlewhacking (which was indeed successful with three recordable entries) and lacking any particular destination, I searched for a catchy sounding random pair that I knew would pull up a number of disparate links, "jigsaw gigolo". And lo, there at the top of the list I beheld The Jigsaw Lounge's review of A.I..
Now I've been looking for a new movie reviewer ever since Jeff Huston pulled the plug on his Believe-Me film ratings and review web site. So I quickly scanned the Lounge (run mostly by a guy named Neil Young) to see how closely my opinions matched theirs. With the exception of their treatment of the Michael Mann canon (I'm not one of his fans but I can understand their appeal, somewhat) and a couple others it seemed like I had finally found a reviewer I can take seriously. The reviews delve deeper into the pieces that interest me and the writing is all around intelligent. The archives are pretty comprehensive and cross-referenced. I'm happy.
Also this evening I had the "pleasure" of experiencing Sweet Home Alabama, starring Reese Whitherspoon and a whole raft of cliched stereotypes about New Yorkers and the South. Unfortunately Neil Young and company haven't found fit to tackle this one, so I'm afraid I'll have to give it a review. This movie elevates inoffensiveness to an art form. The whole production just oozes pleasant and safe, with hardly a discomfortable moment for anyone involved, except maybe the audience. I didn't care for it and felt bad for Fred Ward for being in such a production, though his scenes are generally pretty good, especially garbed in Civil War regalia.
I wouldn't say that I disliked the movie for being bad, but for being not good. To use a cliche myself, it didn't do anything for me. I like a movie that makes me think, not one that requires I don't. The whole plot was basically telegraphed from the opening couple minutes and DVD cover, and it turned out even less plotted than I had expected — I was expecting some sort of dark past revelation or other plot twist looming just as storm clouds hang overhead, but no such luck: the rain was merely a diversion played for a laugh and no further depth. Oops, I suppose that might've been a spoiler, so forget that last sentence if you care.
As if movies like that could be spoiled. They're bland, interchangeable, and yet they make millions. Why? Could it be that very inoffensiveness? It can't just be star power (and have you noticed how strange Reese's chin is starting to look? Or is it just my imagination) driving these fluff vehicles. There must be some deeper meaning, right? Or is sheer banality the aim, inoffensiveness the target? Their extreme defanging removes the bite entirely, as it were. It is that very unwillingness to offend that insults me, a stultifying and pedantic nose-thumbing to someone with more than the brains of a turnip. What next for the movieplex, two hours of cute puppies, kittens and smiling, gurgling babies to coo over and giggle? Then I'll really have to stick to reading, I guess.
I don't know if I've been seeing a decline in quality book writing corresponding to the general decline in book reading, or if I've just been reading disappointing books lately, but either way it annoys me. Being disappointed by a book is far worse than being disappointed by a movie, I'd say, because of the longer time commitment and greater effort of imagination. Not only do book readers have to turn the pages, but they also have to envision all of the action. And a decently-sized book takes at least twice as long to read as a corresponding movie does to watch (though Matchstick men by Eric Garcia took me approximately 90 minutes to read, the likely runtime of the upcoming film adaptation). So being let down by a book is a far bigger blow than watching Batman comes back again. And I've been let down twice in the last week.
First up was Jim Knipfel's The Buzzing, a sliver of a novel that could easily have doubled in size... in fact, another book's worth of material would be very welcome as the book just stops. The protagonist starts to unravel the unlikely and very sinister plot, and then the author gives up. Yes, the book's about conspiracies, Godzilla and general weirdness, but a book about paranoia should end with some sort of resolution, right? Or is that irony? I'd characterize the book as all rising action, though interesting, but without follow-through enough to call it a finished work. It reminds me of movies made ostensibly for the beginning of a long franchise that become the end of said franchise as well. So I was disappointed.
Literary disappointment number two came in the form of D. B. Weiss's Lucky Wander Boy, an engaging but uneven look at dysfunctionality and classic video games. Weiss brings up some brilliant points about society in general and geeks in specific, and also makes great insights on what makes a classic video game classic and the compelling but improbable mythological undercurrents within it. Two points struck me: first, in Frogger, the cars and whatnot are not determined adversaries but uncaring obstacles. It's not a frog vs. the traffic but a frog vs. the world. I'd like to make a good game like that, where somehow all of the "enemies" are more incidental than against you. His other, far weightier point is that the more caricatured or cartoony and less real that art is, the easier it is to experience more personally. To wit: Donkey Kong players can imagine themselves as Mario, overcoming obstacles and (almost) getting the girl. Why? Other than knowing he's a carpenter, he's a blank and up to our interpretation for the rest of his personality. Today's game characters, though, have very well-defined characteristics including back stories and well-fleshed relationships. Which does not leave much room for personalization and interpretation. This is one of the basic points that anime enthusiasts and graphic novel fans try to make. Weiss's knowledge of the fledgling arcade and home console industry is conveyed well though at times it does sidetrack the narrative (The same technique expertly used by Douglas Adams in the Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy). His pop culture insights and silver-dollar word style largely work, and the book is mostly an engaging read. My problems lie with the Wayne's World wrapup, with a number of 'replay' chapters tacked onto the end. None alone is the real ending, nor does any offer total resolution. And none of them is the Scooby Doo ending, either. It's a cop-out, a weaseling cheat of an ending for a book that deserves far better.
So I'm almost leery to talk about the book I'm midway through. I like it even more than the other two (at their best) because it seems like a book I'd write, or at least could. After all, the narrator and I had the same kind of doorknobs in our childhood homes. Not to say that this is the first guy with the same door hardware, but Nicholson Baker is the only author I can recall who mentions such a detail. Minutiae is his specialty, it would seem, as more than half of the pages I've read of The Mezzanine, so far have been either graced by footnotes or continuations thereof. His asides' footnotes beget more asides, and the whole story is one rambling mess. But in a good way. Baker revels in trivia, both in the sense of useless facts as well as unimportant matters. The narrator has an intimately detailed consciousness of everything he does, from breathing to tying his shoes and making facial expressions. His awareness is surpassed only by his articulate descriptions, making the reader sympathetic partners to his otherwise insignificant musings. I am loving this book. I fear that anything I try to write from now will unwittingly (in both senses of the word) emulate his style, if not his pervasive attention to the banal.
So I'm happy with that book, so far. On an unrelated note, I say "actually" far too much.
Someday I think I want a sign atop my bed that says "Mike Lietz slept here". I think that would be cool, in some over-the-top wacky, zany way. I'm of course inspired by a scene in The Emperor's New Clothes, a little film starring Ian Holm, Iben Hjejle (seen earlier in High Fidelity and equally good here), and Ian Holm. To give away no more than the DVD case, Ian plays Napoleon and a suitable duplicate, joined in a daring escape from his island exile. Once off the island, the little emperor journeys back to Paris by way of Waterloo, stopping to take a nap in a tourist trap house honoring him, despite his never being there. He awakens to see a sign above the headboard proclaiming "Emperor Napoleon Slept Here" and realizes that it is now true. A mere throwaway moment in an otherwise more serious film, it inspired me to have a sign of my own. I'm not going to buy the DVD of the movie, though, since it lacks any sort of extras at all, and I'd really like to have heard some filmmakers' commentary on this one. It was a good movie, full of whimsy and wonder and other things that start with 'w'. Well worth watching.