This isn’t a spoiler but a funny story I wanted to share. My dad has been staying with me since his apartment got flooded and they found asbestos. His normal TV viewing is procedurals like NCIS or The Rookie, or westerns.
When Fallout on Amazon Prime came out earlier this week, I showed him the trailer to see if it’s something he’d like to watch and his response was “I’m not a big fan of cartoons.” He is entirely unfamiliar with the games.
So I started watching it anyway and now, three episodes in, he’s just as hooked as I am. I think he likes the dark humor and ultraviolence.
That being said, I, too, like the tone of the show as well as the fact that they’ve spared no expense in making the digital world of recent Fallout games into real actual props. Seeing T-60 power armor in action is amazing. There’s a scene near the end of the first episode where someone is being interrogated and they just have the power armor pacing back and forth menacingly. You don’t even see the whole thing, just what passes behind the person being questioned, and the sound effects. Just amazing. Yeah, I imagine that would be intimidating as fuck.
I’ll write a fuller review when I’ve finished it but so far it’s great. I hear the people who whine about things whining about this and The Lore but fuck ’em. I’m not a slave to the lore and neither is Bethesda. Just tell a fun story, that’s all I ask.
“I probably shouldn’t be out at night in a snowstorm. Pleasant Valley is a killer.”
I died today. Permanently. While hiking towards safety, hungry, cold, and tired, a wolf attacked me. I ran to the nearest shelter, an abandoned church, chased by a whole pack of wolves. Inside, I realized I had no bandages, nothing to stop the blood loss of my painful bites and scratches. Woozy, fading, I tried to tear up my socks and staunch the bleeding.
I was too late. After 106 days in the northern wilderness, I faded into the long dark.
I laughed and then started a new game.
Death in The Long Dark Survival Mode is permanent. There’s no going back. You can only begin anew, on Day 0. The game, from Hinterland Games, is meditative, methodical, and I find it compelling and immersive.
We Do What We Must
The game is survival. Your character is dropped somewhere on the fictional Great Bear Island, the victim of a plane crash, with only the clothes on your back and a handful of items. If you’re lucky (or on lower difficulty levels), you have matches and a hatchet or knife. If not, you’re nearly naked in the snow and ice, far from any shelter. The only score that matters is how many days you can live, looting abandoned human structures or hunting and killing the abundant and often aggressive wildlife.
There are four needs you have to watch and maintain: rest, warmth, thirst, and hunger. Every one of them responds to the actions you take, as well as the environment in which you find yourself. For instance, warmth goes down slower when you’re bundled against the cold, or when you’re inside a house, it goes down faster if your clothes are soaking wet or if the wind is blowing. The game gives you plenty of options to manage all four needs bars—except they’re scattered across the map and randomly placed, with very few exceptions.
Every tool you can find has a purpose. Can opener? You can get more calories from the cans of soup or peaches you scavenge. Prybar? Great for breaking into car trunks or lockers—or for beating up an attacking wolf. You can use the charcoal from burned-out campfires to map your surroundings. Oh, right: you don’t start with a map. Learning the layout of the various regions is part of the learning process of playing the game.
Some tools can be crafted, but only at workbenches or, for the more critical items, at one of the three forges. When you can’t repair your machine-made clothing, you should have been curing hides and guts that are needed to make animal-skin replacements.
It’s long stretches of silence, just the wind, and your character’s footsteps and breathing, punctuated by bursts of intense action as you stab and try to dissuade a predator from making you a meal. The games’ vistas are beautiful; seeing another sunrise after enduring a long cold night in a blizzard is just as rewarding in the game as it probably is in real life. Many of the elements I enjoy from games like Skyrim and the Fallout series are here distilled down to one compelling narrative and milieu: resource gathering and crafting, exploration, management of opposing needs.
Death Is Always An Option
My first real survival mode playthrough was on the second-easiest difficulty level, called “Voyageur.” I wanted to learn the layout of the various regions in the game and see how far I could get. I expected to die much sooner than 106 days, to be honest, even on that level. And there were several points where I very nearly did.
Once, I was trying to reach one of the aforementioned forges by crossing a frozen lake when I attracted the attention of a wolf. I didn’t have a rifle with me (too heavy for this trip); all I could do was light a flare, hoping the flame would keep the wolf at bay. I didn’t want to turn my back to the creature, so I walked backward, waving the flare, only occasionally turning to make sure I was headed in the right direction.
Except… I hit some thin ice, which cracked and plunged me into the frigid water below. I was instantly at risk for hypothermia (on a greater difficulty, it wouldn’t have been only a risk), but the salt in the wound was that the wolf opportunistically savaged me as soon as I was able to climb back out. That time, however, I survived by running carefully across the remaining ice to reach my goal, the forge barn.
What’s The Story, Morning Glory?
It’s OK to loot all these houses and shops because you’re all alone. It’s just you against the environment. If there’s an answer to why no one is there, it’s found in Story Mode, called Wintermute. In the two episodes that have been released, “Do Not Go Gentle” and “Luminance Fugue,” you play as Will, a bush pilot. You find out your plane crashed due to a massive electromagnetic pulse, accompanied by the strange behavior of electrical items when the Northern Lights are in the sky., and your goal, on top of survival, is finding your passenger, Astrid, your ex. Both characters are voiced by veteran actors Mark Meer and Jennifer Hale (also the voices of male and female Commander Shepard from the Mass Effect trilogy, another series of games I love.)
The third episode, “Crossroads Elegy,” follows Astrid’s adventures after the plane crash, and it will drop in less than two days, on 22 October 2019. I can’t wait to play it. The beauty of the game, the thought, and care that the developers have obviously put into balancing all the interconnected systems, and the talents of the writers and actors will make for compelling storytelling.
It might be difficult to tear myself away from struggling to survive in the sandbox, though. This time I’m playing on a harder mode—but not the hardest. Not yet.
Cross-posted from my Amazon review of the book, because I felt the best way to start was with something by the instigator of the idea.
Shamsee is clever, charming, and great at working the problems of being poor, which is to say, he’s been known to steal, or trade sexual services for, the things he needs. But what else can he do? His sister’s the one with an actual job. Shamsee is job-averse; at least the kinds of jobs where they expect you to show up on a regular basis indefinitely and actually get sweaty and dirty.
Because of his job-averse-ness he owes money to Blighter, and Blighter is not amused. Blighter wants to put all this behind him; he knows that Shamsee will never pay him back the money he owes him, and it might just be more fun to watch his dogs, Hands and Faces (named for the things they most like to bite, I think) eat Shamsee. Certain satisfaction in that.
Shamsee is nothing if not charming, though, and manages to buy some time to avoid being dog food. That’s where the story starts.
Tristan Tarwater’s dialogue sparkles and she drops in place names, swears to new gods, and other tidbits that set this story and these characters in a fully realized fictional world, Tarwater’s The Valley of Ten Crescents. The characters’ motivations and personality are built on a solid foundation, and then Adrian Ricker illustrates them with a deft hand and helped by an assist from Michelle Nguyen’s gorgeous colors, expanding the world even further. That world has a subtle tilt to it, one that I found intriguing and left me wanting to learn more.
The comic is a brisk, delightful read, and I was glad to have backed this project on Kickstarter. Both writer and artist are locals in my hometown of Portland, and I could not be happier to support creators of this caliber.
All I knew going in was that it starred Ben Stiller and that I had heard positive things about his performance. I wasn’t sure if it was a serious role for him, or a comedy. I like Ben Stiller, generally, but about the most serious role I’d ever seen him in was the excellent (and filmed in Portland) “Zero Effect”, playing straight man Steve Arlo to Bill Pullman’s autistic and zany private investigator.
So last weekend, ignoring the awesome weather, I bought a ticket for a matinée showing of “Greenberg” to escape for a bit.
I was the only person in the theater.
Have you ever watched a comedy by yourself? You know a movie is funny when you laugh out loud and there’s no one else around. For some reason, our being in a group of people makes laughter more likely; likewise, being alone seems to make laughter less likely.
As I sat in the theater, alone, and watched Greta Gerwig as Florence, housekeeper/assistant to a rich and apparently high-strung couple, I wasn’t sure of the tone. It all felt so natural and understated. There were no laugh lines. Just people going about their business.
When the Greenberg’s leave for their vacation to Vietnam, and Florence gets a call from her boss’ brother, there’s no indication of trouble. But… it was Ben Stiller. And he was being very Ben Stiller-esque.
But was it funny? Or was it dramatic?
As the story progressed, and the 40-something Roger Greenberg displayed familiar entitled nice-guy behavior towards 25-year-old Florence Marr, I felt awkward and creeped out. Greenberg’s advances seemed predatory and both amply telegraphed and yet hidden. His passive-aggressive actions towards Florence, as well as towards his closest friend, Ivan Shrank (sad-faced Rhys Ifans), made me wince.
Around halfway through the film, I had the realization that this awkwardness is similar to what I feel watching Steve Carell on The Office. And that sometimes, it makes me laugh.
Is that what they were going for? I still can’t tell.
As a movie, I enjoyed it, though maybe “enjoyed” isn’t the right word. Stiller’s performance of a man who has deep issues with self-esteem and emotional expression was spot-on, though painful to watch – a pain that I sometimes express as laughter, because why not? I can’t believe he just did that!
I sought out the trailer after the fact, to see if I could discern if the movie was being marketed as a drama or as a comedy or something in-between, a “dramedy”. But given the generic trailer, I still could not tell.
I am not a Baker Street Irregular; I have no detailed knowledge of the life and adventures of the consulting detective Sherlock Holmes. I only know the basics. I know he lived on Baker Street in 19th century London; I know his friend and companion was one Dr. Watson; I know his lifelong enemy was Professor Moriarty; and I know Holmes valued logic and observation above all else, taking such to extremes that we find almost supernatural today. Bits and pieces, here and there. Drug abuse. His brother Mycroft.
But I know enough to identify some creative additions in Guy Ritchie’s and Robert Downey Jr.’s interpretation of “Sherlock Holmes”.
First, in the modern movie, he’s far more physical than I recall him being in the past. A rough-knuckled, manic-depressive, substance abuser. Can’t remember the last actor who had to have a six-pack to portray the detective.
Second, from what I remember, Watson was nearly always much older; a harrumph-ing white mustached sort of chap. So having Jude Law play him feels like a change. A change for the better, I think. It puts the two characters’ friendship into the realm of bromance.
I gotta be honest with you, Marge, I would watch Robert Downey Jr. in anything. He’s one of a handful of actors that I find captivating. So it was a forgone conclusion that I would enjoy “Sherlock Holmes”.
But Guy Ritchie’s direction gives London such a gritty, realistic look, and the proper bantering between Holmes and Watson, and even the addition of a love interest for Holmes, the scandalous Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams)… The movie was great fun, even if the actual mystery, involving a Satan worshipping nobleman, was a bit of a letdown.
Still, if you dig brass-and-glass fittings, and Victorian clothing, and cobblestone streets, this is the movie for you.
In 2009 I saw 30 different films. I attended showings of two movies multiple times: Star Trek got my money three times, and Away We Go got it twice. And this year, for the first time in memory, I had friends accompany me to more showings than in a very long time.
I think that I saw fewer movies this year because I spent more time with friends, actually. And that’s not a bad thing. I want to be social and be around people I like, and who like me.
The following star ratings, from 0 to 5 stars, are given on the basis of the other movies I’ve seen this year, and are not meant to be compared to other years or other, older movies. I try to rate the movie based on my enjoyment, and how well it worked as that type or genre of movie.
Oh, fuck it, don’t make me justify my star ratings. I like lots of different kinds of flicks, so I’m pretty generous when handing out stars. Sue me.
The films’ title links to the IMDB page for the movie; the star ratings link to my blog post about that movie. Note that there are seven films on the list that I didn’t blog about; if I write about them in the future, I’ll update this list. Probably. If I think about it.
People often use the term “arc” as a metaphor for the changes a character in a story goes through. Writers, mostly. And I’ve always pictured said arcs as a parabola, starting at one point, going up, up, up, peaking, then dropping down. Think the shape of the St. Louis Gateway Arch.
Watching “Up in the Air” reminded me that not all arcs go up.
Am I being ironic and cute? The title of the movie describes, after all, someone flying high over ground, looking down on all the rest of us. The “flyover states”. George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a seasoned traveller who feels most at home when he’s in an airport or on a plane. He travels from place to place across the country and fires people for a living. This is the kind of soulless profit-driven job that has become a familiar starting point for emotional change in our movies. 60 years ago it was the traveling salesman who epitomized empty work; now we see lobbyists, contractors, day traders; they work for the minor corporations that serve the externalized needs of the major corporations, and actual human lives are just currency to them. Clooney’s charm made me feel uneasy about identifying with such a corporatist; I almost felt sorry for him, even before the story, and Bingham’s arc, began.
Bingham’s tidy, process-driven wandering is interrupted when a young, eager kid, Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick, who manages to embody the inner turmoil and exterior calm of many a corporate drone with just a tight purse of her lip or almost imperceptible roll of her eyes) comes up with the idea to use video conferencing to fire people and save traveling costs. This means the end of Bingham’s massive accrual of frequent flyer miles, and right as he’s about to reach his nearly meaningless goal: ten million “points” as a reward for his “loyalty” to a legal contract.
Of course, his “loyalty” has been paid with other people’s money, his expense account at the company, and not out of his own savings; Bingham is just a feeding tube through which passes abstracted value from one non-person to the next. And to earn those points, all he’s had to do is be the bearer of bad news and sit with each actual flesh-and-blood person while they break down, burst into anger, plead for another chance, pretended this isn’t happening, and, rarely, simply accept that their services are no longer required. His constant exposure to human emotion has made him sympathetic enough to realize that abstracting it even further with a computer screen may well be the breaking point. Or so it seems to me. Maybe Clooney’s charm won me over? After all, Bingham had a selfish reason to continue facing down his fellow corporate workers; his pointless goal of “loyalty” which will earn him status as one of only seven people to earn that many points.
This movie resonates with my growing passion against corporate institutions. Can you tell? I could deconstruct this movie for days, I think. And there may be some of you who find that interesting. But it’s also a movie, telling a story. And even though the director, Jason Reitman, is not a newbie director (he directed “Juno” and wrote and directed “Thank You For Smoking”, among others – that last one also about corporatist politics, though played as satire rather than straight drama, as in “Up in the Air”), he made some odd (to me) choices.
When I originally saw the trailer for this movie, it featured Clooney, as Bingham, giving a motivational speech. Here, let me show you it:
The monologue, with the sparse piano over it, and the flash of images, set a tone. Somber, serious, contrasting Clooney’s charisma with the sociopathic message of the words. To me it felt like a confession in a downtown bar on a weeknight, spoken over a drink or two – enough to get a buzz but not enough to really let go.
In the early part of the movie, when we first hear Bingham give this speech (he gives it, or a variation, three times by my memory throughout the course of the film), the music is much more upbeat. It’s a subtle difference but I noticed the change. It felt wrong, sitcom-like. The mood was off. I wondered if I had been tricked by the trailer and my man-crush on George Clooney into the wrong kind of movie.
When Bingham meets his female counterpart, frequent flyer Alex Goran (Vera Farmgia), spellbindingly beautiful and confident, a terrific match – again, with the tone-deaf music.
When Bingham flies back to the home office and has a meeting with his boss, and his boss is Jason Bateman, again I felt the tone was off. I love Bateman, but I love him for his comedic timing and snarky anger, which jarred, just a little, with what I hoped to be the intent of this movie. I felt a bit betrayed, and hoped that this wasn’t a comedy in the conventional, and classical, sense. I hoped for a deeper meaning and more mature tone to emerge.
Emerge it did, in the final half. Perhaps Reitman was aiming for contrast; I think I would have preferred a more consistent tone. This is a dark story, a classical tragedy, and, eventually, it arrived there.
And the movie left me wanting more. Mainly, how did Quentin (Bill Nighy) come to own and operate the boat/radio station? He seemed an unlikely entrepreneur. Was he the station manager, the captain, the owner, or some combination of all three?
But in the end, it was just a cute little comedy that plays very well on my internal anti-authoritarianism.
Still, I can’t imagine it being 3 hours long, as Wikipedia claims. Glad they edited it down for US release. But I’d probably watch every deleted scene if I buy the DVD.
At about 45 minutes in to “The Box” I was pretty sure I could see the ending.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, especially for a suspense/horror flick. As the master of the genre, Hitchcock, explained, suspense is built when the audience knows something’s going to happen but the characters don’t.
The question is, is the journey there a satisfying one? Does the end make sense for these characters?
Well, I thought so. Mostly. I didn’t entirely feel that the punishment fit the crime, but… OK.
But some of the odd turns and plot points seemed superfluous. Mars? The wedding? The creepy student? Waiting through all that made the movie a bit tedious. Just a tad.
These aren’t real Jedi that Bob Wilton (McGregor) are finding out about, but members of a secret group within the United States Army, who are practicing and honing their psychic warrior skills, like instant complete awareness of their surroundings (Level 1), intuition (Level 2), and invisibility (Level 3). George Clooney as Lyn Cassady, doing his most earnest, deadpan reading, patiently explains all this to Wilton, on a road trip from Kuwait into Iraq during the early stages of Iraq War 2. It isn’t until later that we learn about Level 4, the ability to stop a goat’s (or other living animal’s) heart simply by staring at it.
The tales are told in flashback, as Cassady describes how a New Age guru, Bill Django (played by Jeff Bridges), a loving, peaceful kind of warrior, passing out daisies and smiling beatifically, becomes a force for good within our military, giving training exercises in dance and handing out psychedelic drugs to unleash the soldiers’ inner children. All of which is a response to spy reports that the Soviets are working on developing their own Jedi, which they started in response to false reports that we were working on it. Which explains why it all needs to be kept secret; can’t have the Soviets finding out that the project they falsely learned we were developing was in fact, not a secret.
The serpent in this new camo-colored Garden of Eden is Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey, who makes a great Dark Sider), a former sci-fi writer who tries, but just can’t seem to get all this crazy empathy stuff, and who works to undermine the unit. It’s he who introduces Level 4 – which causes Cassady to balk.
Every time Clooney tries to explain psychic warfare to McGregor, he appears oblivious to the fact that he’s wrapping a bit of magic around a balls-out crazy physical attack; the way he talks about getting into an enemies’ mind to dissuade him from attacking, before giving the punch-line of stabbing the enemy in the neck with a pen to create a fountain of blood. Uh, wouldn’t the stabbing part be the effective part? Clooney tacks that on almost as an afterthought.
And McGregor, playing an emasculated and cuckolded reporter for a small-town paper, buys into it all. Eventually. He wants redemption for losing his wife to his boss. And given Clooney’s charm, I very much could see someone overlooking the crazy to see the message underneath.
But then, I’m one of those crazy dirty fucking hippies who hate war in the first place. Of course, I’d buy it all.
But I’m not going to leap into a fight without even a knife, trusting in the Force to guide me though. That’s just nuts.
