Anyone else watch this?: Zero Punctuation

Posted on August 20, 2008 by James

While the Angry Video Game Nerd banishes the gaming demons of the past, all is not well in the present day. Video Game companies have gotten larger than ever, with millions of dollars spent on advertising, processing power and celebrity talent to push out over-produced carbon copies of franchises that should have died back in the AVGN’s era. Ben Croshaw was just another freeware game designer/author when he decided to take his talent for MS Paint and droll witticisms to youtube and the video game industry at large. The result is Zero Punctuation.

The title Zero Punctuation refers to Croshaw’s rapid-fire delivery of his video game reviews. After the first two reviews hit youtube, the show was picked up as a series by the Escapist, an internet based video game magazine. The deal resulted in 400 percent increase in the site’s traffic. While the British-born-Australian-based wit of the reviewer offers a certain sense of class to the show, it’s no the only reason Zero Punctuation works. Croshaw achieves the holy grail of criticism in any media. He assails the unassailable, and he makes it work. Take for instance the Smash Brothers Brawl review embedded in the post. Personally, I own the game and love it, but the two characters that generated the most hype, Sonic the Hedgehog and Solid Snake, are only available after slogging through a single player story mode. You will have put in so many hours to unlock those characters that you’ll win every time against your friends who don’t have the game. Your dream of having weekly Smash Brothers parties is effectively dashed. Even if you love the game, the logic behind that observation is impeccable

The only gripe I could have with Zero Punctuation is that Croshaw has a few biases against certain types of games, like Japanese-style Role Playing Games. He admits this, and he’s very fair about it, but he’s never going to be able to do a proper take-down of games like the Disgaea or Suikoden series. He doesn’t understand why those games are crack cocaine in binary code for some people. He tried to comprehend this in his review of “The World Ends With You” with amusing results, but I think we’ll have to be satisfied that he mostly focuses on the hubris of larger, more popular game genres. Lord knows the industry keeps giving him material.

Olympics

Posted on August 10, 2008 by James

So the other day Sara and I were watching the encore presentation Olympic Opening ceremonies. As for the ceremonies themselves, they were fantastic. With over 15,000 performers, complex lighting effects and wire-fu to put the best action movies to shame, I doubt any country is going to top this kind of spectacle for long, long time.

The encore presentation on the CBC happened at about 3:00pm, but we were intrigued to find out how NBC handled their coverage. Rumor had it that ratings in the States depended on the victory of their athletes, and events that Americans did poorly in were simply ignored. We wondered how this way of thinking would carry over the coverage of the opening ceremonies and the parade of nations.

At first things were pretty similar to the Canadian coverage, although there was more explanation of the performance in the commentary. It took away some of the fun of interpreting the meaning of the performances, but it was interesting to hear some of the facts about what went into creating them. For example, the ceremonies involved creating images the coordinated movement of thousands of the performers. Amazingly, no markers were used to keep them in place as they created the fantastic designs on the stadium floor. However, as the parade of nations started, things started to get a little weird.

On the CBC, as the parade of nations went by, we heard the stories of the flag bearers, the athletes and how they got to be where they are. Stories such as how one of Japan’s equestrian athletes had been competing since the 1960s, or how the US flagbearer was a refugee from the Sudan.

Later on NBC, the first thing they mentioned about Canada was how we liked to pay people to compete for us and how we never won a medal during the Montreal or Calgary Olympics. Sara and I looked at each other and said: “Did Canada just get dissed?”

It turns out we weren’t alone in being talked about this way. For every nation that came around the track it was how many medals this country won, or how much they didn’t win, or how they’ve yet to win a medal. It wasn’t really offensive I guess, but it really shows off the priorities of the American coverage.

If the Olympics are a grand international society party, I guess the television coverage of these shows would be the impolite whispers spoken in hushed tones around the punch bowl. If only we could translate and consolidate all of the myriad interpretations of this event. We’d get some serious gossip and if we’re lucky spark a diplomatic incident.

On a related note, I hope Tokyo gets the bid for the 2016 Olympic Games. Just think of the events that can be inspired by Japanese game shows. Who would take the gold in an Olympic level competition of “Squishy-Squishy”?

Stuff White People Like

Posted on July 24, 2008 by James

While we’re on the subject of clichés, let’s talk about Stuff White People Like. You might have heard of it. It’s a blog dedicated to listing the likes of a curious race of people that are worried about the problems of the world, yet not actually worried enough to do anything about it. They will scramble to any type of product that will alleviate this long-standing guilt for whatever they’ve done in the past.

A recurring theme in the blog is a constant struggle to be unique from one another without actually doing the work of being unique. This is done by going to movies that may not actually be funny, plays that aren’t actually interesting, and listening to music that isn’t exactly played well. Being unique actually surpasses the need to be entertained, well-fed and most importantly having the money to be both those things.

White people certainly don’t have a monopoly on all of the foibles brought up in the “Stuff”. This is what happens when human beings put the problem of food and shelter so far behind them that we are absolutely stumped over what to do next.

Why do we have this soul-aching need to be unique? It wasn’t enough we were all given our very own genetic code to play with and it’s not enough that we get brought up in the richest and most advanced society in History. This probably has something to do with the knowledge that not too far in the past terms like “2,000 dead from starvation” wasn’t an atrocious statistic in our society and in some societies it is still par for the course. We need to be unique to calm our fears that we won’t be the next statistic in a plague, famine, or ethnic cleansing that happens by. We want to know that we’ll be missed, and that the world will be poorer from our passing. The fact that homogeneous manufacturing processes have created all this largesse doesn’t help.

The only remedy for this frantic search for the unique is that sometimes you can be unique for doing something well. Years of art criticism and University theses have gone into establishing the “revolutionary” idea that simply doing something well is bland, banal, and a threat to the future of the arts as we know them. This love of the esoteric bleeds into other creative disciplines turning out many jacks-of-all-trades but unfortunately no masters. However what is and isn’t esoteric changes from year to year, as is the rule with all fashion. In time, your turn will come up, and you too will be famous, if only for 15 minutes.

Watchmen Trailer

Posted on July 19, 2008 by James

The trailer for Watchmen just came out. All I have to say is: Holy Crap.

I loved the comic, and the movie looks like it wants to reproduce the immersiveness of the comic’s alternate 1980′s. I don’t care what anyone says, I’m catching this one in the theaters.

That being said, there is no way there can be a good GI Joe live action movie, but I’ll get to that in another post.

Wall-E, Al Gore, and the Fate of Civilization

Posted on July 18, 2008 by James

Sara and I finally used our Famous Players gift certificates to catch “Wall-E” just now, but with all the pandemonium surrounding “Batman: The Dark Knight” we probably could have snuck in for free. The film was, in a word, wonderful. Sure, the robots were cute, but the force of the ideas in that movie was something you would expect to find in a classic hard science fiction novel rather than a Disney blockbuster.

When the movie came out everyone wondered whether the conservative hate machine was going to go on a rampage the way they did with “Happy Feet”. There were those who passed off the film as leftist propaganda. But strangely, Wall-E started to become a hit among other conservative bloggers who were won over by the little guy’s crusade against a large oppressive organization and (even stranger) his love of showtunes. In fact, some left wing bloggers decided that they were really clever and decided to bash the film for the plastic merchandise that it generates or its linkage of obesity with environmental problems.

The director, Andrew Stanton, did a lovely job of sidestepping the issue in an interview with New York Magazine.

“I knew that I was going into territory that was basically the same stuff, but I don’t have a political bent or ecological message to push. I don’t mind that it supports that kind of view — it’s certainly a good-citizen kind of way to be — but everything I wanted to do was based on the film’s love story, the last robot on Earth, the sentence that we first came up with in 1994. I said, ‘I have to get everybody off the planet, and do it in a way that audiences get it without any dialogue.’ So trash did that. You look at it, you just get it. It’s a dump, you’ve gotta move it — even a little kid understands that.”

Classy stuff, but he’s not fooling anyone. Nor should he have to.

In British Columbia we’re a little more cognizant of the climate change issue than say, a place like Arizona. We have swathes of dead trees where the Winter has failed to kill off the pine beetle. The glaciers we like to ski on so much are shrinking. Stanley Park looked like a war zone after the wind storms of 2006. From our perspective, the time for being classy about the environment has passed. It’s not a controversy, it’s a real problem.

Yesterday Al Gore threw down a challenge for the United States to get off Carbon Fuels within 10 years. Sure, it seems like it’s on the border of daring and daft, but I would rather see the US fail at something like this than keep going on its present course. However in the comments section of every article on this issue there seems to be a league of twits pointing and laughing at Gore because he was a Democrat or his house sucks up enough juice to power Bangladesh. On the other side there’s the the “Gee-Whiz Mr. Gore, I’d love to help” articles where the commentator gleefully whips out a bunch of statistics about why it can’t be done.

I have had enough of people who would rather feed their own smug egos than do what must be done. People like the Wall-E animators make the case about why we should help the environment. People like Al Gore come up with plans on how to save it. I subscribe to their beliefs because the only constant I have lived with in my adult life is change. My life, and the life of everyone else on that planet will change over time because that’s how the whole concept of time works. In the past five years alone I’ve graduated University, worked for many companies, got another diploma and got married. Even their predictions don’t come true, it’s still not as foolhardy as pretending there is such thing as a status quo.

You can find out more about Al Gore’s Green Challenge Here: Link

Science Fiction, Double Feature

Posted on June 17, 2008 by James

At 6:30 this morning I said good-bye to my wife, who is going to camp on Gibson island with her school until Wednesday. Herding 150 kids onto a ferry may seem like a daunting task, but I’ve seen her handle a room full of kids. After 5 years of performing what they call “classroom management”, she carries herself with confidence and authority in situations where most of us would be hesitating and later cowering in a corner pleading the children to leave us alone. Nonetheless, I will at the ready Wednesday night with Sara’s favorite magazine and ice cream.

As the day drew on I realized that if I had to contend with an empty house much longer, I would be fashioning a life sized replacement Sara out of throw pillows and misplaced cashews. So I opted for a movie night out. Science fiction double feature, as the old song goes. The features in question being Indiana Jones and the Incredible Hulk.

If you haven’t seen the new Indy movie yet, for God’s sake go. It’ a fun ride and if you have problems digesting the paranormal stuff, it’s important to note that this is the movie franchise that chased for and found a fully functional Ark of the covenant, Holy Grail and Indian Sankara stones. After studying the Hollywood development process and being part of a few other development processes myself, I think I’m way less nit-picky about movies. And it feels great. I had a lot of fun tonight. I didn’t exactly leave my brain in the parking lot, but I forgave a lot of the missteps I would’ve called out at a different time in my life. In summary it’s Indiana Jones movie. Go and have fun.

In between the two movies I noticed a couple of things. Namely a couple with a newborn. Walking into the Incredible Hulk. It was like I was in the middle of some sophomore comedian’s joke routine in between the sticky floors and the guy yammering on his cell phone. However, that baby stayed silent throughout the entire picture. Perhaps the bass of the movie has a soothing effect, I don’t know. But if I didn’t see the kid myself at the end of the movie, I would’ve thought that the stroller and bassinet were merely an ingenious snack smuggling system.

Anyway, about the Incredible Hulk. You know, the original movie seems to get worse every time I hear about it. It won’t be long before there’s an article about how the original Hulk was so bad that people emerged from the theatre with their eyes bleeding and screaming in tongues. I enjoyed the original, and no amount of pompous hipster bitching is going to change that. So quit it already.

That being said, this is the better film. It starts off with Bruce Banner on the run, just like in the TV series and the better part of the comic series. This movie has a better grip on what it is to be Banner and the Hulk. Edward Norton is perfectly cast. His loneliness is portrayed as genuinely heartbreaking. When he turns into the Hulk, the smashing is fun and perfectly satisfying. And then there’s the integration with the Marvel Universe at large. Captain America! The Avengers! Tony Stark! Oh my God! I’m geeking out to eleven!!

Okay it seems I have issues, and I’m not talking about Amazing Spiderman #563. But the truth is, I wonder why the idea of cross-overs wasn’t brought up sooner in the process, like right after X-men and Spider-man were verifiable hits. We now know that such cross-overs would make money no matter what the quality of the actual movie is. Aliens vs. Predator is a good case in point. However, a quick imdb.com search reveals to us the tangled web (no pun intended) of movie rights attached to all of the major Marvel properties. Everything was held back by traditional corporate short-sightedness and the simple panicky nature of deals that are worth potential billions. Now, an Avengers movie would be a huge step forward, but I think a redefinition of the block-buster is in order, particularly for the digital age.

Imagine, if you will, a group of film school drop-outs who got sick of shooting dying flowers in time lapse and set out to re-engineer the summer blockbuster. Armed with the latest digital tools they are able to super-impose over reality with the skill of renaissance painters. Budgets are no problem when you can create whole cities within a computer the size of a large toaster. The scripts contain multi-layered story-lines that take trilogies to carry out, but the central conflicts are simple and read easy up on the screen. The actors are complete unknowns, but they have enough method training to meld completely into their blue-screen surroundings. The movies are distributed instantly over torrent networks at $10 a download. It’s played simultaneously in theaters in “road-show” style events, where the cast and crew can go on tour and meet their audience. Tickets to these shows are sold over social networking programs. With 200 of your closest friends, the premier suddenly becomes the event of the summer. Say, is anyone taking this down?

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Tag Archives: movies