World of Warcraft fan fiction; Matrix comic books; Warhammer novels; Transformers movies. It's fairly standard for a toy to become a film, or a game gets a book, or a book spawns a film trilogy which then spawns a game and a computer game. Anything can happen in this day and age.
For fan fiction though, the big hitters (Halo, Warhammer, Dungeons&Dragons, Star Wars) all seemed to offer the same thing: fairly standard, low-quality, mass produced paperback books, with spin-off characters and repetitive plots. The world itself was more engaging than the characters or plotlines. World of Warcraft books seem to be doing ok and that must be in part due to those obsessive fans (and we know warcraft collects them) who immerse themselves in the world so that even when no longer gaming they still want to read WoW.
Eve is a book of a game. This time, the game is Eve Online and the book took as its mission to write something of comparable depth and complexity as the game. The game, set in New Eden, an alternatively galaxy separated from Earth, allows the complete growth of a character within a space-age society that is both ruthless and demanding. The author, Tony Gonzales, has taken this futuristic universe, complete with pirates, warring factions, governments and mega-corporations, and woven a thread of three different stories into it. In some sense it is following the standard package for fan-fiction, by using the universe of the game as a starting point, and then adding characters, but it differentiates itself in terms of both character and plot.
As the book progressed, I was concerned that this triple-weave plot might wind up with a cliched ending, some kind of easy resolution, as Amarrian lord meets Minmatar fleet meets Caldarian revolution in some kind of 'closure' device. Instead, it became apparent that tragedy was the order of the day, and in fact the plots of Eve were leading to a fateful future (perhaps even the future in which the game is set, one in which Amarr and Minmater, Caldari and Gallente, battle endlessly). To try to pitch his book as some sort of pre-history to Eve Online rather than as a selected episode from the game gave a purpose to his tale and a freedom to narrate events in a manner of his own choosing. In fact, it almost appears as if Eve Online was merely used as a starting point for Gonzales, rich as the game is in history and immersive detail, and in fact once in that universe he made it his own, building upon already gleaned information to provide a level of authenticity and attraction to his tale.
Eve is not remarkable in using a computer game as its main influence; however, it goes further and achieves more from that standpoint than others I have encountered. Furthermore, it seems to glean the best elements from the sub-genre, while discarding the worst. Plot and characters are involving and well-drawn, and the prose is not bogged down with a undue amount of game references. In fact, the game heritage to the book is most noted in the meticulous attention Gonzales shows to naming each class of spaceship, displaying an impressive attention to in-game detail.
*****
by Tony Gonzales
Friday, 10 July 2009
Tuesday, 7 July 2009
Sunshine Cleaning
The only thing that really plagues this film is the title. Proper, professional reviewers have already said it. I still like to imagine the board room meeting where someone from 'film marketing' sits down with all the actual moviemakers and says:
Everyone else says, "No, that's a really stupid idea". Yet somehow, marketing exec person managed it. (I'm predicting it'll turn out that this film was written way before LMS and these comments will be proved useless)
Alan Arkin is a joy, but plays pretty much the same character he always plays. An older figure, somewhat comical, oft-ignored, but displaying some inner streak of compassion that shines through at the odd moment. Still, I'm a big fan of his and I'd be happy just watching him performing every day tasks with his trademark dry, frustrated delivery and twinkling eyes. I think my favourite line of the film came from him:
Amy Adams is infinitely watchable, while her chemistry with Emily Blunt is a bold attempt at sororal relations on screen and it seems to work. The soundtrack is ideal, it's a well put-together and well-told story, and enjoyable and touching in equal parts.
Perhaps the best bit? It manages, in time-honoured indie tradition, to shirk the obvious closure so often sought in (particularly) North American cinema, and instead provides a great ending that leaves the viewer hopeful, but also open to the future, as Adams herself is by the close of the film. Excellent choice of finality, and a bold move, especially if Sunshine Cleaning is supposed to be a "break-through hit".
I look forward to the DVD release!
***
2009
Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, Alan Arkin, Jason Spevack
Dir. Christine Jeffs
"Hey, I've an idea, let's market this film as though it's
the new Little Miss Sunshine, you know, indie break-through hit that's
funny and touching, and based in Arizona/New Mexico and shows the emptiness of
the landscape and real, human stories."
Everyone else says, "No, that's a really stupid idea". Yet somehow, marketing exec person managed it. (I'm predicting it'll turn out that this film was written way before LMS and these comments will be proved useless)
Alan Arkin is a joy, but plays pretty much the same character he always plays. An older figure, somewhat comical, oft-ignored, but displaying some inner streak of compassion that shines through at the odd moment. Still, I'm a big fan of his and I'd be happy just watching him performing every day tasks with his trademark dry, frustrated delivery and twinkling eyes. I think my favourite line of the film came from him:
"Who wants to share a combination platter with me?"
But dismiss the Alan Arkin Little Miss Sunshine shtick for a moment, and one's left with a film that's touching, that really stands well on its own two feet, and shows off the talents of Adams and Blunt admirably. They're sisters trying to make good against poverty, exes, feeling trapped in their lives and the unbearable heaviness of day-to-day life. As school mates have married money and jump through the usual hoops of childbirth and purchasing that second car, Adams is a single mum just trying to make ends meet. She hits upon a scheme - crime scene clean-up - which pays well and is fairly exclusive, and ropes in her lazy, hapless sister (Blunt) to help carry soiled mattresses and gag at the stench of the homes of the deceased.Amy Adams is infinitely watchable, while her chemistry with Emily Blunt is a bold attempt at sororal relations on screen and it seems to work. The soundtrack is ideal, it's a well put-together and well-told story, and enjoyable and touching in equal parts.
Perhaps the best bit? It manages, in time-honoured indie tradition, to shirk the obvious closure so often sought in (particularly) North American cinema, and instead provides a great ending that leaves the viewer hopeful, but also open to the future, as Adams herself is by the close of the film. Excellent choice of finality, and a bold move, especially if Sunshine Cleaning is supposed to be a "break-through hit".
I look forward to the DVD release!
***
2009
Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, Alan Arkin, Jason Spevack
Dir. Christine Jeffs
Thursday, 2 July 2009
Angles - dan le sac vs Scroobius Pip
So since when did I listen to british hip-hop/trip-hop/rappity-rop? Since rarely. Since never. But I was taken with Scroobius Pip's lyrics from my first hearing of The Beat That My Heart Skipped. Fortunately for me, that's also the album opener on Angles, an album that claims to be the standard rap battle/mash-up between mc and dj. However, like every track on the album, a second listen (or sometimes just a first listen) suggests that dan (lowercase, please) and Scroobius are more than meet the eye.
They make a bold claim in the spoken intro to the album:
But perhaps where the beat, the sampling and the language gel best is as the record begins to draw to a close. A Letter from God to Man brings Radiohead into the scene, while Thou Shalt Always Kill, the most straightforward and amusing attack on modern popular music, and attitudes towards it, is hummingly catchy and makes you want to tell all your friends that Scroobius Pip pointed out that all those bands we love and worship are just bands, nothing more! It's great balloon-popping fun, and it certainly gave me that child-like excitement of hearing something said by someone else strike a chord within you.
The album closer, Waiting for the Beat to Kick In, is worth the wait...although if you are going to go by the song title, you'll wait a long time: dan le sac and the Pip manage to hold off that all important beat until you feel yourself physically thirst for it, while weaving a dreamscape of didactic encounters and tips for the future.
In keeping with the album's title track though, it's not pure refutation of failing hip hop standards or undiluted attempts to open the mind of the listener. There is some good new-fashioned fun in there too, as the beats and rhymes suggest a reformation from within: dan and Scroobius want to influence the scene from within, not without, with a mastery of language and sound that I've rarely heard recently.
They make a bold claim in the spoken intro to the album:
"We ain't pushing the boundaries, we're blowing them up! We ain't trying toIt's not about fitting in or playing along, it's about creating new sounds, new lines and a new meaning, about revitalisation. Fixed has the same grand theme, as they chirp "dan le sac? scroobius pip! fi-fixing hip-hop....as best we can" before exploding into a mind-numbing electro-bippity-thumpbeat track.
expand the scene; we want the scene to erupt. So make some room on the floor and
somebody bolt the doors cos tonight we ain't seeking applause. Tonight, well
gee? we're just looking to have some good new-fashioned fun, y'all."
But perhaps where the beat, the sampling and the language gel best is as the record begins to draw to a close. A Letter from God to Man brings Radiohead into the scene, while Thou Shalt Always Kill, the most straightforward and amusing attack on modern popular music, and attitudes towards it, is hummingly catchy and makes you want to tell all your friends that Scroobius Pip pointed out that all those bands we love and worship are just bands, nothing more! It's great balloon-popping fun, and it certainly gave me that child-like excitement of hearing something said by someone else strike a chord within you.
The album closer, Waiting for the Beat to Kick In, is worth the wait...although if you are going to go by the song title, you'll wait a long time: dan le sac and the Pip manage to hold off that all important beat until you feel yourself physically thirst for it, while weaving a dreamscape of didactic encounters and tips for the future.
"If you can't forgive and forget, how's this? forget forgiving, and justis perhaps most the striking line that trips off Pip's tongue, and certainly the most stark attempt at enforcing an attitude of tolerance, and letting bygones be bygones.
accept that that's it"
In keeping with the album's title track though, it's not pure refutation of failing hip hop standards or undiluted attempts to open the mind of the listener. There is some good new-fashioned fun in there too, as the beats and rhymes suggest a reformation from within: dan and Scroobius want to influence the scene from within, not without, with a mastery of language and sound that I've rarely heard recently.
"Thou shalt always remember that guns, bitches and bling were never part of the four elements, and never will be"
Thursday, 18 June 2009
Requiem For A Dream
I thought trying to write about Once Upon A Time In The West was hard. That time, it was because I am so utterly taken with the film that I struggled to write anything more coherent than pure, gushing praise. With Requiem I knew I was in for a tougher time. Here's why:
I should have guessed from the title. Really, one should take the title as an obvious warning that we are going to watch the death and celebration-in-death of a dream/hope/chance/ideal/escape. Yet when I started to watch this film, I didn't pause to think "hang on, this one could get really sad", I just settled in and let it roll. I'd watched Pi already, and I have good friends who rate both Aronofsky films highly. Like Pi, Requiem entices with a killer soundtrack, solid acting, and Aronofsky's trademark disjointed cinematography. In fact, some of the key players were really made on this film (I'm thinking Connelly and Leto here) as it was a semi-indie film that got widespread acclaim. Anyway, I'd loved Pi (review to follow anon). But the word 'love' cannot come anywhere near a review of Requiem because the negative emotions that this film conjured for me still leave me feeling awkward and...depressed? hurt? fragile? Fragile is probably closest.
I've finally got around to writing this because I finally figured out what was so shocking and upsetting about the film.
It's a fairly simple set-up. As Sara (Burstyn) decides to lose weight as she is desperate to be on TV, she ends up taking uppers to fight her appetite, leaving her a wreck. Meanwhile her son Harry (Leto), his girlfriend Marion (Connelly) and friend Tyrone (Wayans) spend a summer dealing drugs and getting high. Their addictions are manageable because they are doing so well out of it. By the autumn things sour: Sara is a shred of her former self, and starting to hallucinate wildly; the police crack down on drug dealers and Harry, Tyrone and Marion find themselves strapped for cash and a hit. As the film builds to its climax, it becomes apparent that there is no way out for these people - their dreams of the summer had been exactly that. Sara is taken in to hospital and given shock therapy to battle her addiction; Harry's infected injection wound leads to his arm being amputated; Tyrone is arrested and sent to prison; Marion's increasing desperation to score has led her to prostitution. All carefully spliced together into a brutal montage of shots in the closing minutes of the film.
It's Marion's position that messed with my mind the most, and here is the key to why I was left so thoroughly pained by watching - her humiliation is before a group of suits, who mock and goad her to perform for them. By watching, the viewer is implicitly made a part of that group. It was only now that I realised why I was left with such a bitter taste in my mouth: I was a part of her degradation to score. If I'm honest, it still bothers me now.
A fantastic film, and a brilliant follow-up to Pi, as Aronofsky branches out as a director and elicits some excellent performances from his actors. But NOT FOR THE FAINT-HEARTED.
***
2000
I should have guessed from the title. Really, one should take the title as an obvious warning that we are going to watch the death and celebration-in-death of a dream/hope/chance/ideal/escape. Yet when I started to watch this film, I didn't pause to think "hang on, this one could get really sad", I just settled in and let it roll. I'd watched Pi already, and I have good friends who rate both Aronofsky films highly. Like Pi, Requiem entices with a killer soundtrack, solid acting, and Aronofsky's trademark disjointed cinematography. In fact, some of the key players were really made on this film (I'm thinking Connelly and Leto here) as it was a semi-indie film that got widespread acclaim. Anyway, I'd loved Pi (review to follow anon). But the word 'love' cannot come anywhere near a review of Requiem because the negative emotions that this film conjured for me still leave me feeling awkward and...depressed? hurt? fragile? Fragile is probably closest.
I've finally got around to writing this because I finally figured out what was so shocking and upsetting about the film.
It's a fairly simple set-up. As Sara (Burstyn) decides to lose weight as she is desperate to be on TV, she ends up taking uppers to fight her appetite, leaving her a wreck. Meanwhile her son Harry (Leto), his girlfriend Marion (Connelly) and friend Tyrone (Wayans) spend a summer dealing drugs and getting high. Their addictions are manageable because they are doing so well out of it. By the autumn things sour: Sara is a shred of her former self, and starting to hallucinate wildly; the police crack down on drug dealers and Harry, Tyrone and Marion find themselves strapped for cash and a hit. As the film builds to its climax, it becomes apparent that there is no way out for these people - their dreams of the summer had been exactly that. Sara is taken in to hospital and given shock therapy to battle her addiction; Harry's infected injection wound leads to his arm being amputated; Tyrone is arrested and sent to prison; Marion's increasing desperation to score has led her to prostitution. All carefully spliced together into a brutal montage of shots in the closing minutes of the film.
It's Marion's position that messed with my mind the most, and here is the key to why I was left so thoroughly pained by watching - her humiliation is before a group of suits, who mock and goad her to perform for them. By watching, the viewer is implicitly made a part of that group. It was only now that I realised why I was left with such a bitter taste in my mouth: I was a part of her degradation to score. If I'm honest, it still bothers me now.
A fantastic film, and a brilliant follow-up to Pi, as Aronofsky branches out as a director and elicits some excellent performances from his actors. But NOT FOR THE FAINT-HEARTED.
***
2000
Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, Marlon Wayans
Dir. Darren Aronofsky
Based on the book by Hubert Selby Jr.Once Upon A Time In The West
Where do I really begin with this film? I've watched it now maybe three times, and loved it each and every time, for pretty much every second. I just can't really find anything wrong with it: it sums up perfectly the mood of the 'classic' western - slow-paced, bubbling with intensity, gritty, brutal - but it's also Leone's exploration, as he put it, of death. Cheyenne (Robbards), trying to explain Harmonica (Bronson) to Jill (Cardinale), says: "People like that have something inside... something to do with death". Leone conjured up not one but two characters completely intent on death, Frank (Fonda) and Harmonica, and some of the most memorable exchanges in the film are from when these two meet.
1968
Henry Fonda, Claudia Cardinale, Jason Robbards, Charles Bronson
Dir. Sergio Leone
Music - Ennio Morricone
Frank, the ruthless gang-leader, is out to stop anyone in his way; Cheyenne works as a part-time lackey to him, but his heart isn't in the work; Harmonica is something of a mystery, but is intent on reaching Frank. So the plot plays out, step by step, frame by frame, as they pace towards a final confrontation.
It's something with everything being in its right place in this film that makes it all the more chilling: each element, each scene, slots together so neatly that there is a sense of inevitability, of destiny built into the film. And walking hand-in-hand with that, Morricone's score rivals The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. It is absolutely haunting, and as a mood-influencer, used to perfection. Simple refrains, anchored to the characters, come back time and again, fluctuating and changing, signalling the mood and pace. In the second scene of the film, when Jill's stepson runs out of the farm door to find Frank (you'll know the scene I mean if you've seen the film; if you haven't, I'm trying not to spoil it), the explosion of sound that greets him enhances the ensuing action wondrously and chillingly.
I'm struggling with this because it is hard to write about something one loves without sound so overly enthused that it seems unbalanced. But in short, it's a wonderful film, because it tries to tackle a very complex question (death) and does so in a stripped-down, chilling manner, where mood is all. It drew me in so completely and provided me with something utterly involving and moving. Perfect cinema.
*****1968
Henry Fonda, Claudia Cardinale, Jason Robbards, Charles Bronson
Dir. Sergio Leone
Music - Ennio Morricone
Mission statement? Matement....
It's simple. I've had some time out of work (let's call that a "gap" "year") and I got to watching some good films (thank you lovefilm), listening to some great music and reading some brilliant books. I wanted to write about them, as a record. Not for anyone else really, just because I enjoyed them and liked them and wanted to remember my own thoughts and opinions about them.
Disclaimer: my opinions are in no way more important that yours. I'd never think that. I'm fully aware my opinions count for squat, but I just wanted to get 'em down anyway...
Disclaimer: my opinions are in no way more important that yours. I'd never think that. I'm fully aware my opinions count for squat, but I just wanted to get 'em down anyway...
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
READ THIS BOOK! It is beautiful and moving and poignant and funny and epic and destructive and emotional and wondrous and uplifting and crushing and brilliant and excellently-researched and absorbing and monstrous and great!
The book charts the rise to success of Josef Kavalier, a Czech Jew who escapes persecution prior to the Second World War to New York, and his American cousin Sam Clay. They are both 17, and combine Sam's imagination with Joe's artistic talent to start making comics. Their first success is with The Escapist, a comic that Chabon invented in keeping with those that abounded at the rise of the graphic novel in the 30s and 40s. (The book did so well that a real life version of The Escapist was written)
The plot is rife with twists and turns, and both Joe and Sam share a fair amount of ups and downs as they go from naive, idealistic cartoonists to powerful creative forces in the American graphic novel market. There's more than a fair share of heartbreak as well; any story that is bookended by the Second World War comes with a liberal dose of pathos. It's here that Chabon manages the story best. While his research of New York of the 30s and 40s is astounding, and one really starts to wonder if The Escapist did not in fact exist as a comic, it's the little details and the emotions of his characters that evoke a smile and more than once, a tear. Ultimately it's a heart-rending story about so many things it would be trite to start listing them. But it leaves one with the calm of a post-emotional breakdown and the joy of the resilience of the human spirit. Uplifting.
"that was totally wicked!"
*****
by Michael Chabon
The book charts the rise to success of Josef Kavalier, a Czech Jew who escapes persecution prior to the Second World War to New York, and his American cousin Sam Clay. They are both 17, and combine Sam's imagination with Joe's artistic talent to start making comics. Their first success is with The Escapist, a comic that Chabon invented in keeping with those that abounded at the rise of the graphic novel in the 30s and 40s. (The book did so well that a real life version of The Escapist was written)
The plot is rife with twists and turns, and both Joe and Sam share a fair amount of ups and downs as they go from naive, idealistic cartoonists to powerful creative forces in the American graphic novel market. There's more than a fair share of heartbreak as well; any story that is bookended by the Second World War comes with a liberal dose of pathos. It's here that Chabon manages the story best. While his research of New York of the 30s and 40s is astounding, and one really starts to wonder if The Escapist did not in fact exist as a comic, it's the little details and the emotions of his characters that evoke a smile and more than once, a tear. Ultimately it's a heart-rending story about so many things it would be trite to start listing them. But it leaves one with the calm of a post-emotional breakdown and the joy of the resilience of the human spirit. Uplifting.
"that was totally wicked!"
*****
by Michael Chabon
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)