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Love on a Battlefield

I’ve been spending quite a lot of time with DICE’s Battlefield 1, more time than I usually would with a game like this. I will admit, when I play a game that I really get into, I tend to play it to death. I can’t even begin to count how many hours/days I’ve played The Orange Box and more recently, Doom 2016 (both excellent games). In Mass Effect 2 alone I’ve had 17 playthroughs, more than Mass Effect 1 and 3 combined. No small feat considering a basic playthrough without DLC takes around 30 hours. 

Have I played Battlefield 1 that much? No, not in the least, but it has been focused upon because I won’t be able to play it as much in the coming months. 

Here’s the rub: I’m away from home at college, where my internet access is unrestricted for the most part. At my house, I have a datacap, which any online play burns up pretty damn quickly. I live in the middle of a forest off the main road on a private drive. I have a wifi-hub, that’s all I can get without paying thousands of dollars for a cable hookup or satellite internet (which is spotty at best). 

So, if I’m going to play the multiplayer for Battlefield 1, I have to do it when I’m away. Or at least until I get absolutely sick of it, which so far hasn’t happened. Battlefield 1 is a good game. But not a flawless one. 

The big draw for me was the setting: Battlefield 1, as the name poorly implies, takes place during World War I (honestly if it used a roman numeral instead of the stupid number this title wouldn’t seem confusing), a setting that has been utilized in videogames, but the market hasn’t been oversaturated with. World War II videogames used to be king until around 2007 when Call of Duty started it’s Modern Warfare franchise. So in a way, it’s a return to a sort of historically based first person shooter with a setting that makes it more unique than its predecessors. To be honest, I’ve been longing for a classic WWII shooter, and while this isn’t exactly that. it’s something a little more interesting than that. 

However, it isn’t all that historic. The conflict and battles portrayed therein are true events, but the gameplay is a mixture of exotic and rare experimental weapons put in the hands of footsoldiers. Really, it’s no different than most FPSs around today, with soldiers charging with automatic weapons and bolt-action rifles are few and far between. Whatever, I can live with that. 

The second biggest draw for me was the fact that Battlefield 1 had a campaign attached to it. Most big multiplayer games include campaigns as either an afterthought or just ditch it and are multiplayer only. Such games do not interest me, because, like I said, I can’t always play the multiplayer portions and if I’m gonna play a campaign, I want it to be fun and interesting, not tacked on for the hell of it. And after hearing the campaign didn’t suck, I thought, why not, and bought the game. 

Does the campaign not suck? Well... sort of yeah.

You see, Battlefield has been at war with Call of Duty (how funny that is) and they’re basically fighting over who can be the top dog of the multiplayer shooter genre. The multiplayer is always polished to a mirror sheen but the campaigns- which used to be the main draw- have suffered. Battlefield didn’t even do campaign focused games until it released Bad Company and its sequel, both of which were unique because they were a lot more tongue in cheek about it. The characters were goofy and memorable and that made them fun. It wasn’t until Battlefield 3 (which came before Battlefield 1, see how stupid the name is?) that they decided to ramp up their competition with Call of Duty and essentially made a really stupid and boring campaign with tight multiplayer while Call of Duty made stupid but fun campaign with tight multiplayer. George Weidman of Super Bunnyhop made a really nice video describing why the campaign failed.

So now, they actually made a fun campaign, but it suffers from being really formulaic and despite its variety, kind of comes across as bland. There are six campaigns (more like five) that all focus on different theaters and armies during the war, from the trenches, to tanks, mountain combat, desert warfare, planes trains and automobiles. The campaigns are terribly short, however. Fun, but short. All in all, the campaign mode can be completed in about five hours if you put your nose to the grindstone and charge through it. The first two campaigns, which are vehicle focused, are the most conventionally fun. The last three are more conventional- charge that hill, take that outpost. They’re fun, but they’re short and it’s hard to really care when you’re only in their boots for 45 minutes. It also doesn’t help that these characters are underdeveloped compared to the first two protagonists- the tank driver Edwards and pilot Blackburn.

Edwards is a former chauffeur turned tank driver, still wearing his white driving gloves in the hell of the Western Front, a battlefield of mud and blood. There’s not much else to go off of, but it’s those little touches that really make the character seem somewhat believable. It also helps that his arc is basically the same one of Logan Lerman’s character in Fury, a fresh faced kid crammed into a deathtrap tank in the last days of the war who fights for his brothers in arms. 

Blackburn is a little more complex. He’s a self described pilot and gambler who lies his way into the British Royal Air Corps after stealing an officer’s identity. As he says, he’s “not a very honest person.” He takes part in a raid on a German ammo dump, gets shot down and is forced to sneak across No Man’s Land carrying his wounded gunner. He’s arrested as soon as he makes it to the British trench line and just before he’s about to be shipped out for stealing a plane, London is attacked in a bombing raid. He gets in a plane and has his shot at redemption by taking out the bombers and the zeppelins. But here’s the thing, this is all bullshit. At the very end, it’s hinted at that he did cross No Man’s Land, but he killed his wounded gunner (as he would have been dead weight) and he managed to escape trial during the chaos of a bombing raid on London. Admittedly, taking down a zeppelin single handed is far fetched, but that’s the point. As a viewer of the story, I was bamboozled and just went along for the ride. A very fun ride. 

The other characters don’t really stand out, with the exception of Zara, but that’s mostly circumstance. She’s a female bedouin fighting alongside Lawrence of Arabia. That’s cool and all, but I can’t really say anything else about her. It’s kind of clear that DICE wanted to at the very least insinuate that she might have been the real Lawrence, but realized there would be backlash and tacked on Lawrence himself without changing anything else really. It also doesn’t help that her campaign is stealth based, which is fine and makes sense, but it’s made boring since there was an abundance of stealth missions earlier in the game. Her first mission is also incredibly dull: take out this squad of ten Ottomans. They want you to do it silently, but there is a light machine gun on the map that can be used to blow them all away very quickly. Ten soldiers are basically pipsqueaks by the time people get to this mission so it can be finished in five minutes by anybody who’s even remotely competent.

Did DICE deliver with Battlefield 1? Yes. Could it have been better? Yes. Is it worth playing? I’d say so. In a world dominated by modern settings and future war, playing in the past is refreshing, even if it’s a flawed game. But with Battlefield 1, it’s kind of troubling that that’s the only element that makes it stand out. At the end of the day, though, all that counts is how fun it is to play.

And I’m playing it as much as I can.  

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Forget Your Head and Grab Your Balls

Ridley Scott is practically a household name as far as directors go, making such movies as Alien, Blade Runner and Gladiator. He is well known for making movies with a painterly sense of composition, often producing striking visuals. He has practically revived the classic Hollywood epic with the aforementioned Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven and Exodus: Gods and Kings. He has touched nearly every genre, from Drama to Sci-Fi to Comedy to Horror, and even at 78, he is still widely regarded as a man at the top of his game. His movies are unforgettable and instantly knowable.

Except for when they are not.

Despite directing numerous films that could easily be a magnum opus for any lesser director, Scott hasn’t always had such success. With exception to Thelma and Louise, the period after Blade Runner has produced few well known and equally few well regarded films until Gladiator. Ask someone about 1492: Conquest of Paradise, White Squall or Legend and you’ll likely find them scratching their heads. Looking at Scott’s filmography, his career post 2000 has been, for the most part, a serious hot streak.*

Which brings us to Black Rain. 

This was Scott’s follow up to Someone To Watch Over Me, produced in 1989, starring Michael Douglas, Ken Takakura, Andy Garcia, and Kate Capshaw. If you are not familiar with it, I wouldn’t be surprised. If AMC didn’t introduce the movie with some trivia about how Ridley Scott had a difficult time working in Japan and eventually filming the climax in California, I probably wouldn’t have paid much attention to it. 

The film follows Douglas as Nick Conklin, a New York street cop that might have fared better if he was played by Stallone. This isn’t to say Michael Douglas sucks, the character is written kind of over the top, constantly complaining about “suits” tying his hands with red tape and threatening to nail him to the wall for corruption charges. He’s coarse, xenophobic, hot headed and feels like a caricature. Stallone knows how to play this character- just look at Cobra. But Douglas tries. Garcia fares better as Charlie Vincent, his lively, womanizing partner. They are assigned to escort a Yakuza thug back to Japan after murdering Yakuza boss in a crowded restaurant. The thug, Sato, manages to escape during the handoff with the blame falling on Nick and Charlie, who then work with the Japanese to re-apprehend him. Osaka Detective Masahiro Matsumodo, Takakura, works with them as their police handler. Kate Capshaw, as Joyce, is Conklin’s guide to the Japanese underworld. 

As far as a movie goes, it’s well made, considering the difficulty Ridley Scott had directing the picture. There were many restrictions on when and where they could film, and even then there was little cooperation, particularly in the city. The sets really call in mind the imagery of Blade Runner: vast, smoky streets of neon lights. The action scenes are big and loud, just what you want in an 80′s action thriller. The only major spot where the movie fails is in the dialogue. Nick Conklin is an asshole, constantly making references to jerking off or telling people to fuck off. (The title of this piece is a bit of advice Nick gives to Matsumodo) Abrasive characters are fine, but the first fifteen or so minutes have set this guy up to be somewhat likeable. Rough around the edges, but likable. Once he arrives in Japan, he becomes particularly unlikeable, and his dynamic with Matsumodo is nothing but antagonistic until part of the way through. Andy Garcia as Vincent, however, is thoroughly likeable and seeing him goof around, get drunk and sing Ray Charles songs with Matsumodo is genuinely fun and interesting. 

The movie is a little too cheesy for its own good at times. As they chase Sato down through Osaka, he’s always just one step ahead of them, even at the scene of the crime, hiding away just as they arrive. The actual ending feels very dated in its execution, very traditional buddy cop movie stuff. Nick’s gung ho antics feel almost out of place. Again, Stallone knew how to play this character. Douglas struggles, but it’s a valiant effort. The idea of him not being able to carry his gun around in Japan gives him an extra sense of vulnerability, but when he does have the opportunity to carry one, we all know that the shit is going to fly. He’s a bull in a China shop. It’s almost as if Ridley’s dearly departed brother, Tony Scott** directed it. The only reason we know he didn’t is it has Ridley’s signature visual flair. 

Is Black Rain a good movie? Not really. But it’s not a bad movie either. It’s flawed and underrated and overlooked, to be sure. It’s a relic of the 1980s, when cops shot first and asked questions later, when Michael Douglas could play a misanthropic antihero and still be beloved, and when Ridley Scott was clawing his way back to the top. It’s a cop drama through and through, and if it’s flown under your radar, maybe give this one a look. This is not a guarantee that you’ll enjoy it, but every great artist’s lesser known works are still worth viewing. 

*The only misstep in the 2000s was A Good Year. His hot streak may have ended with Body of Lies, considering the responses to Prometheus, The Counselor and Exodus: Gods and Kings. The Martian, however, has been warmly received. 

**Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop 2, Man on Fire, Domino

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Trust is a Tough Thing to Come By These Days

Halloween is a special time, friends. Young men and women roam the streets at night, masked, not as they seem, their true colors shown brightly in the dark. Masquerades and Bacchanals beat to the drumming rhythms. Spirits flow. Sweets too. Pumpkins light the way home. 

Everyone has their traditions. Some go to parties, others trick or treat. But no matter what else I do, I curl up with a movie. The month of October is particularly a sacred time for me, because it’s the rare time when I really get in the mood for watching horror movies. And, given how selective I am with horror movies, it’s pretty easy to binge them and never feel horror-ed out. 

Before the 31st, I’ll watch the usual suspects: Alien, Aliens, It Follows, perhaps Day of the Dead, Sleepy Hollow, You’re Next, 28 Days Later, etc. 

All favorites. But the 31st is reserved for one movie in particular. One movie that still freaks me out, no matter how many times I’ve seen it, no matter how long it’s been in my memories and nightmares, no matter how old I am.

John Carpenter’s magnum opus: The Thing.

Now, some of you may be wondering, really? What’s so special about this movie?

I’m not sure if “cult classic” is the right description, but those who know The Thing, speak highly of it. In terms of special effects, it is a landmark. Here you’ll find Kurt Russell’s second best performance, right after Snake Plissken. It’s a story about isolation and paranoia, with tension as thick as ice. 

A small Antarctic research team discovers an alien life form at an abandoned station that used to be run by Norwegians. Soon they discover it has the ability to assimilate individuals and perfectly imitate them: personality, memories, flaws, quirks- you name it. After a while, not every one may be who they say they are. 

To say the least, it becomes a nightmare for those involved. No one trusts one another. It gets messy. 

Roger Ebert described it as “a great barf bag movie.” He’s not wrong, this movie is violent and pretty graphic, more so than most John Carpenter movies. When the Thing reveals itself, it rends the flesh, breaking out into otherworldly forms. The only way to successfully destroy it, is to burn it to a crisp. Handily, the men of the research station have flamethrowers in their arsenal. And in the age before CGI, all the creature effects are done for real. You can almost believe what you see, and frankly, you’ll wish you hadn’t. 

I know I did when I first watched it. The first time I had noticed The Thing, I had seen it in the video rental section of my local grocery store. The title, in bold letters with a mysterious figure, face obscured. The tagline: the ultimate in alien terror. I later saw it in a family friend’s DVD collection and was looking at it when he offered to let me borrow it, since he knew I liked horror movies and it was one of his personal favorites. I was only ten years old at the time, but my parents knew I was mature enough to handle it. So that night I stayed up late and watched it. I didn’t want to sleep after that. How could I? Even if I could put the sights of the things out of mind, the sounds stuck with me. There’s a particular noise used as a jump scare twice in the movie, and god damn, even thinking about it now gives me the willies. 

And that’s to say nothing of the main theme:

That primal beat makes my hairs stand on end. Much like the Jaws theme, you know to be on edge: something is coming for you. But with The Thing, it’s different: it’s already here. It might have already caught you and you don’t even know it.

The story itself is nothing particularly new, however. In fact, The Thing is a remake of The Thing From Another World from the 1950s, and both of which draw from Joseph Campbell’s short story Who Goes There. The 50s film, while it has its charms, is lacking, and a rather loose adaptation. Carpenter’s vision transcends the original short story, capturing it’s original tone, but managing to be bleaker and unflinching- there’s even shades of Lovecraftian horror, particularly from At the Mountains of Madness and the very idea of the things: they are formless masses that absorb and assimilate. One character, Blair, claims that “they want life forms on Earth.” It eventually drives him mad. 

The main hero, RJ MacReady, doesn’t think too much of it. He’s probably the least Lovecraftian character, mostly because he doesn’t care about what they want or what they are. He rationalizes their actions ‘because [they’re] different from us.” His ultimate rebuttal to the things is a big “fuck you” to them and it’s great, even though it’s futile. 

The Thing really is a masterpiece of horror. It’s unsettling to the nth degree, masterfully shot with great cinematography from the late, great Dean Cundey and features great performances from Kurt Russell, a Carpenter regular at this point, and from Keith David, who would later collaborate again with Carpenter in They Live. If you want a top notch horror movie, check it out. It’s well worth your time. 

PS Make sure it’s the 1982 film, not the 2011 soft reboot. 

PSS No I am not dead, I’ve just been busy for five months. Sue me (as if people read this crap)

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Ghost-ed

So James Rolfe of Cinemassacre posted a video about why he was not going to see- and by that extension, review- the new Ghostbusters movie. It was a short, sweet and understandable video that articulated my similar thoughts on the matter. And then twitter had a goddamn meltdown because of it. 

In case the image isn’t loading, people accuse him of being a whiny “man-baby” and make degrading references toward his wife for marrying him. What the fuck? It’s not like he’s attacking the movie because the main cast is women as opposed to men a la the original, but saying he just thinks it looks bad. That’s it. He doesn’t like the look of it so he’s not going to see it. Imagine that. He has an opinion and he’s sharing it. 

But the real thing that grinds my gears about this is if he said this about any other movie, say The Magnificent Seven remake, nobody would bat an eye. Somebody might disagree, but I doubt they would say his wife only married him because he had a gumball machine on his desk. People are being protective of the new Ghostbusters movie (herein referred to as GB 2016) to an anal degree and for one reason and one reason only: the female cast. 

Before anyone shits all over this post (ha, who am I kidding no one reads this!), riddle me this: did you actually watch the trailer? I did, and I didn’t like what I saw. Like how I saw the trailer for Batman v. Superman and concluded that I didn’t want to see it, because I didn’t like what I saw. That’s it. It just doesn’t look good to me. The cast is totally fine. Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones all cut their teeth on Saturday Night Live and have proven they’re talented comedians. Melissa McCarthy is also rather talented, and did a great job in St. Vincent. And I don’t care they’re remaking Ghostbusters. Remakes are not always bad, just look at The Thing (1982) and The Fly (1986), directed by John Carpenter and David Cronenberg respectively. They broke new ground in the horror genre and are generally considered classics today. If those movies weren’t remade in the 1980s, then the genre would be lesser. 

I think the problem is Ghostbusters has always been revered as a comedy classic. The talent is there: right off the bat you’ve got Bill Murray, Dan Akroyd and Harold Ramis, all actors and creators who know how to create a good comedy. Then, you’ve got Ivan Reitman, fresh off Stripes (which he made with Murray and Ramis) directing. Finally, the cast is rounded out with straight talent provided by Sigourney Weaver and Ernie Hudson. It’s just a real solid mixture of talent coming together to produce something great. GB 2016 has shades of that, with the aforementioned cast with Paul Feig directing with Chris Hemsworth in support. 

The thing is though, it just doesn’t look good to me. It’s trying to be the same thing, but perhaps overly so. There’s things they did right, for one, the Ecto 1, the proton packs and the uniforms. That all looks great and when I first saw that, I was becoming optimistic about the whole thing. Then the trailer dropped and there was the Slimer. Did we really need the Slimer? He’s iconic, but why not do your own thing? Plus he looks nothing like the other ghosts shown in the trailer so he becomes really jarring. And everything else just looks like a rehash. Ghosts are running rampant, okay, we got it, been there, done that. And you can clearly see a boom microphone in the trailer. Seriously. What is this, a porno? Couldn’t they digitally edit that out? It’s like they don’t care. Maybe the fact that the new Ecto 1 is a hearse this time out instead of an ambulance is trying to tell us something. Hmmm...

Ultimately, I don’t care. I’m not going to see GB 2016 because I think it looks bad. That’s what trailers are for, so people can form an opinion on something before they watch it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. If all of the sudden I get glowing reviews about GB 2016, I’ll see it. And if it’s good, it’s good, and then I’m wrong. I’m just getting sick of people rabidly defending the movie because of its cast and attacked James Rolfe because they didn’t watch his video. If this movie had Seth Rogen, James Franco, Jay Baruchel and Kevin Hart as the main cast and people lambasted it, no one would care. If you think I’m bullshitting about that, you’re living in denial. 

EDIT:

So I’m also going to leave this here, in case you want more info about GB 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNFzbC0Rjr0

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Darkness Consumed

It’s been awhile since I’ve written anything, and I was going to write something like this months ago, but I got sidetracked.

When I first heard about Dark Souls, I couldn’t understand the hype. A game that’s deliberately difficult to an almost unfair degree sounded counter-intuitive to me. It wasn’t until I played The Witcher 2, another game noted for it’s difficulty (though I was not aware of this at the time I bought it) that I started to wonder if I had seriously misjudged Dark Souls. It wasn’t until February when I finally decided to take the plunge. I wanted to play Dark Souls III because it looked seriously awesome, but I figured I ought to test the waters, so I purchased Dark Souls II because it had a next gen edition and it was on sale. So there.

Oh, how I was unprepared. I genuinely felt lost for the first few hours I played it, lost enough that I felt I was sure I was totally screwing myself in the long run so I scrapped my first character and made a whole new one. The first week I played it, I would only make it for a few hours before I ended up turning it off and venting my frustration by playing Counter-Strike, where I at least knew that if I was playing badly it was my fault. It wasn’t until the end of the first week that I found a boss. It wasn’t until the second week that I felt like I was actually making progress. 

Part of this frustration stemmed from the fact that the game doesn’t tell you that much. I knew the story was essentially non-existent (another feature that kept me from buying it earlier, despite it being somewhat false), but the game does not hold your hand for anything. It’s not so cruel as to not have a tutorial, but a lot of the key mechanics (healing via an estus flask, where to get an estus flask, how to level up, etc) were not told to you at all. I had to consult a guide for some of it. I imagine if I played the first game I might have had less trouble, but still I was like a pig in a stockyard. Clueless and butchered. 

It also didn’t help that the first and most obvious area I ended up in after I made it to the hub area was not intended for new players. Literally the first enemy I came across was twice my height and carried a sword of equal length. Needless to say, I died. A lot. Which brings me to another frustrating feature: when you die, you lose part of your maximum health. The more often you die, the easier it is for you to die. You can gain it back, but only through the usage of a seemingly limited resource known as human effigies. More often than not I would use most of them and only end up with one and I felt like I was totally screwed. Later I made it to the intended starting area and started to get better at the game. 

All together, I think it took me about a month and two weeks to beat Dark Souls II. A lot of it probably has to do with me fumbling around and grinding myself so hard in the starting area that I think when I finally started to progress I was a little overpowered for my own good. Still didn’t save me from getting my ass kicked, but whatever. Great things have mediocre beginnings.* So when I started kicking ass, boy I could not put the game down. I had to venture onward, trudging through dilapidated fortresses, underground cities and poisonous ruins, filled to the brim with a rogue’s gallery of undead knights, monsters and thinly veiled Berserk references (part of the reason I wanted to get into the series). 

I finished Dark Souls II about a week before Dark Souls III came out and damn if I wasn’t ready for it. I felt sharp, ready to take on whatever it threw at me. Naturally, the first boss in the tutorial handed me my ass several times. One thing I found out while playing II was a lot of fans dislike it because it wasn’t as balanced as the first game, namely, there were too many bosses and most of the difficult ones were difficult because they were deliberately made to be kind of unfair. I will admit, Dark Souls III had a lot more challenging bosses and there were only a handful I managed to defeat without summoning help. Probably because I’m a wimp, but whatever. 

Nonetheless, I managed to beat it in a week and a half. When I made it to the end and saw the prompt that told me it was the endgame, I was shocked. Could this be happening already? Part of me was disappointed there wasn’t more, but part of me realized that something else. If I had played Dark Souls III before the others, I probably still would be stuck in the Catacombs, getting destroyed by the skeletons stalking the halls. 

And unfortunately that’s where I am with the first game in the series, Dark Souls. Dark Souls III came with a free copy so I figured I’d give it a try. I defeated the first boss with ease and figured a lot of the game would be a piece of cake in comparison to the sequels. Not really. Part of the problem is the game doesn’t feel as responsive as the sequels. Most of the time I’m afraid to dodge an attack from a boss because I don’t think my roll would be able to get out of the way in time, plus bonfires really are few and far between in the Undead Parish. It’s really looking like it will take me a good month to conquer the game, which does raise the question: was I really getting better, or is Dark Souls III, dare I say, easy?

Either way, the Dark Souls series is truly unlike anything I’ve ever played but at the same time, it’s no different. You have a sword, you have a shield, there’s plenty of hack and slash games that are no different, but there is some undeniable quality here. I die, I dust myself off and jump back into the fray. Part of it seems to come from its presentation. There is no driving story. All the player knows is that they’re cursed to be undead and they’re searching for a cure (DSI, DSII) or the Lords of Cinder have left their thrones and it is your duty to replace them (DSIII). In all three games, the world is ending. By the time you near the end, it is your decision to keep the fire kindled and keep the world turning for a little while longer, or help snuff it out and embrace the darkness. That’s all you need to know. Any other elements of the story can be discovered via lore from items, characters and theories from the community. No one knows the whole story. The developers, From Software themselves, offered $10,000 for anyone who could properly explain what was going on and why, and ultimately, it isn’t important. You can try to piece it together, or march onward, unflinchingly toward death, permanent or otherwise. In a way, it’s much like life. None of us know truly why we are here, or why bad things happen in the world. No one knows what lies beyond in this life. We can try to figure it out, or we can get on with it and enjoy it while it lasts. For a game that is filled with hopelessness, madness and despair, it is rather optimistic. Who can say whether or not keeping the fire burning or letting the darkness spread is bad or good? Who can say whether or not going to work tomorrow will lead to a promotion or your termination? You are the one who chooses to get out of bed in the morning. You are the one who lives with your choices and ultimately it comes down to you to make them, for better or worse. 

It is also a game of perseverance. The gameplay reminds me of a story told about Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa. He picked up a pen that wouldn’t write at first. The man watching him said he would have asked for a pen that worked and that Kurosawa could have done that, he was Akira Kurosawa for Christ’s sake, but no, he kept trying and trying and trying, for a solid five minutes he tried using that pen until it started to write. You may not succeed, but that is not a reason to give up or quit trying. Die here, you can still get up and give it another shot, and ultimately that is what makes it so satisfying. Don’t feel limited by what may seem impossible. Try hard enough and you might be able to prove it otherwise. 

That sounds hokey, but it beats reading a self help book. And I’ll admit, no matter how hard you try, you’re not going sprout wings and fly. Let’s be reasonable here.

But I can say this, the past two months have seen me consume Dark Souls as a series. It became my obsession. I’m not going to say I am a different man because of it, but I do feel better about playing them. I do regret being afraid to play them sooner. Now, I tread darkness, and fear not death.

*This is most likely wrong. 

[jayhat-blog1]

Restricted

If anyone saw Deadpool in theaters, chances are, they saw children in the audience. And chances are, they saw them leaving after about fifteen minutes, right after the hobo sex joke. Probably. 

I kept hearing reports from people who kept saying that there were all these annoying children in the audience, screeching and talking the whole time, unless they left because their parents were shocked at the content. In fact, when I went out to buy tickets to see Deadpool- and to guarantee I got good seats- I saw an irate mother dragging her three daughters out the door, telling an employee that “they should have some restrictions on this sort of thing.” 

Really? Are you saying you didn’t notice the R rating on all the trailers? The R that stands for restricted? It’s a bit of a shock to me. I could never pass that by my parents, particularly my mother. My dad was rather lenient on these sorts of things, but my mom would drop the hammer. She rented Step Brothers for my brother and I and couldn’t make it past Will Ferrell masturbating to workout videos. Even when I was nineteen and watching Kill List at home once she turned it off on me because of the torture scene, although most of that had to do with her being unable to handle all the screaming.

To be fair, I understand the plight of the kids too young to see R rated movies. I was that age too, and there were all those movies I could never see, let alone buy them without parental guidance. But I was able to prove myself to my parents that I could handle movies with adult content. I was able to talk them into letting me see Watchmen in theaters and they trusted me to be mature about it, and I was. I’m not against kids seeing R rated movies, in fact I think they should be allowed to see them given the circumstances. Matt Zoller Seitz wrote a great article about screening Aliens for his eleven year old son and his friends. I related to that because I saw Aliens when I was around that age and turned out fine. Apart from maybe the language, there’s nothing there kids won’t be able to handle. Ultimately, the parents shouldn’t focus on the the fact that it’s restricted, but more on the fact that whether or not the child can handle it. 

That being said, I probably wouldn’t take a kid to see Deadpool. Not just because it’s violent and rather inappropriate for children, it’s mostly that I don’t think they would get that much out of it. A lot of the jokes are aimed at adults anyway, not because they’re all filthy, but mostly the references are to people kids wouldn’t know about today. I mean, what ten year old knows about Rosie O’Donnell these days? Or Sinead O’Connor? But anyway, if a parent thinks their children can handle it, I’m not sure I would stop them. There were children in my screening of Deadpool, but, to my surprise, none of them were shouting at the screen and being generally annoying. In fact, the most annoying patron in the theater was a thirty year old man who shouted at the screen and laughed at literally everything in the movie. 

There’s a lesson to be learned here. 

[jayhat-blog1]

Riddick-ulousness

People appreciate consistency. I found this out best when my Dad revealed that he wasn’t particularly keen on the music of David Bowie. “He’s changed his style a little too much for my liking,” he said when I played a bit of Sue (or In a Season of Crime) for him. He said something similar about Led Zeppelin as well, saying that he stopped listening to them after Physical Graffiti because their style was straying too far from the sound they cultivated on their first albums. Which is a shame, considering David Bowie did some remarkable stuff over his career and Presence was a pretty kick-ass album.

So despite its appreciation, it’s not necessary in art. Artists evolve, its a part of their nature. And sometimes, changing up the formula is a great thing. Take Alien, one of the greatest horror movies of all time, and it’s sequel Aliens, one of the greatest action movies of all time. These are the best movies in its franchise, yet they live on opposite ends of the spectrum. Alien was dark frightening. Aliens was loud and intense. If Aliens was a straight horror sequel, I believe it would have failed. Even if James Cameron was directing, it wouldn’t have had his real strengths as an action director and it probably would have relied too much on elements from the first movie. In a way, the two sort of compliment each other and it feels right as a continuation of the first movie. Some people would argue against this reasoning, citing that the sequel should have been more horror driven. To that, I say just go watch Alien 3, which is better than most people give it credit for, as far as the Assembly Cut goes.

But there is another franchise that tried the same thing yet failed. Why?

I’ll admit, the Chronicles of Riddick series is not particularly great. The only movie that is genuinely good is Pitch Black, and even then, it’s flawed. Pitch Black itself is a horror movie, where the survivors of a crashed star-freighter try to get off a desolate planet. The catch? The planet is orbited by three suns, all of which are about to be eclipsed as the planets in the system align, covering the landscape in total darkness. And then the nocturnal life forms wake up...

The standout character is Richard B. Riddick (Vin Diesel) a self proclaimed prison escapee and murderer, who was being transported by a bounty hunter - Johns. I hesitate to call him a protagonist because he’s a pretty un-developed. The ship’s pilot, Fry, makes a more compelling protagonist because she at least has an arc and develops a little bit. But Riddick is still more interesting in a way, in his animalistic way. He’s a means to an end for the survivors, because he’s a skilled fighter and he can see in the dark. He saves them, he gets to go free. Good deal, right? Needless to say, he survives the ordeal, although some others can’t say the same.

Cut to 2004, The Chronicles of Riddick is released. Like going from Alien to Aliens, there is a genre shift, but not quite in the way you would think. It’s action, to be sure, but there are heavy shades of fantasy? There’s legit space magic, in a sequel to a movie that was at least semi-grounded in reality. How many people would expect (or want) a sequel to a great horror movie to borrow from Conan the Barbarian? This shift is even apparent in the story, as it’s divided on two different planets. The first, Helion Prime, is more fantasy inspired, with people walking around in robes with ceremonial guard looking people hanging around. The second, Crematoria, is a prison, which looks like something from Pitch Black. The guards and mercs in the prison are all outfitted in military fatigues and combat boots. On one hand, this all kind of makes sense. Depending on how long these planets have been colonized and people have been engaging in space travel, it’s not so far fetched to think that some planets would develop their own aesthetics. It’s just that once the space magic stuff via the Elementals and Necromongers kick in, it’s a step too far.

The third movie, Riddick, is pretty quick to fix these changes by doing away with the Necromongers pretty quickly and becomes a movie that feels more like a fitting sequel to Pitch Black, much like Alien 3 was, except with 90% less nihilism. This is the kind of movie Riddick works as a protagonist in. The first 30 minutes are legitimately awesome, with Riddick stranded on a hostile planet, completely alone this time and broken from combat. If this was the entire movie, it’d be amazing. I was transfixed watching him use his wits to scrape on by. Eventually though, two rival merc teams arrive on the planet to hunt him down (one crew wants him dead, the other alive), and Riddick goes from hunted to hunter. Even though he disappears for a good chunk of he movie, he still works as a protagonist. He drives the story by striking from the shadows. It’s just a shame that the mercs are all poorly written. At least a pre-Guardians of the Galaxy Dave Bautista and Matthew Nable are able sell it. The other problem with Riddick is the last 30 minutes are a rehash of Pitch Black. Admittedly, it would have been a neat surprise, especially if they kept Riddick’s motivations for calling in the merc teams vague and the actual reveal of the creatures out of the trailers, but what can you do?

They’re not perfect movies, and they have no coherent style, but I still like the Chronicles of Riddick series. It’s problematic, but they’re fun. One’s a great horror movie, one has Space Conan, and the last has a perfect opening. It’s a decent sci-fi series, and I genuinely hope there’s a fourth movie. It’s just that when you watch them back to back, you might get whiplash.

Also, how could you hate a movie with this dialogue exchange? (starts at 2:33)

https://youtu.be/WY7UlwMSBUw?t=2m33s

[jayhat-blog1]

Undead Overload

I’m certain that anybody reading this knows what a zombie is, mostly because they are fucking everywhere. There’s zombie movies, TV shows, books, comics, clothes, backpacks, food, assault weapons- what have you. Let’s face it, the market is over saturated with this bullshit and I’m utterly sick of it. 

The bulk of these products existed long before The Walking Dead became a TV show, but they always seemed to exist on the fringe. If you wanted a special zombie killing tomahawk, you would have to look for it on the internet. Nowadays, you can find them in just about any sporting goods store in America. I remember getting breakfast at a cafe where they sold specialty zombie sodas, with names like “Shambler Soda” and “Necro-nectar” (maybe not exact, but you get the idea). They had not been there the week before. I started seeing magazines devoted to the idea of surviving apocalyptic scenarios. All last summer, I was slowly starting to notice these things creeping into my daily life. 

I’m not angry that these products exist, no matter how stupid they may be. People are entitled to like whatever they want, and I’m entitled to make fun of it. Which brings me to The Walking Dead.

The show is ridiculously popular, which is mind boggling because of how bad it can be. I fully admit, I haven’t watched a lot of the show, but I have seen the bulk of season five (largely considered to be the high point) and a little bit of season six. I do not get the appeal. Tell me, these characters are hardened zombie killing machines, right? They would have to be, to have survived as long as they have. Makes sense. And that’s what makes many of their deaths so stupid. Most of them could have been easily avoided. The biggest example I can think of is the death of John Carroll Lynch’s character. He was training Lennie Jones on how to kill a zombie with a staff, and when Jones freezes in the moment, Lynch pushes him out of the way and gets attacked by the zombie. If he had any brain at all, he would have just killed the zombie. He had plenty of time to do it too; they aren’t all that fast. 

And these zombies aren’t that hard to dispatch either, so when characters do get killed, it makes them looks so goddamn pathetic. And if they get swarmed, it’s their own dumb fault. At this point, they should have known better. I understand mistakes get made, but come on. These are rookie mistakes. And a lot of this problem comes from what really seems to drive the popularity of the show. 

If you look on YouTube, you can find videos of the zombie kills in a season. The first two seasons combined have a rough kill count of 200 zombies. Seems fair. Season 5 has nearly 400. Holy shit. Zombies are supposed to be threatening because of how difficult they are to dispatch. Shooting something in the head is not an easy task, and the survivors have it down pat. The fact that these people can kill that many in a season and still end up dying because of them is ridiculously stupid. Even then, these zombie kills are poorly done. The bulk of them are done with cheap VFX and it’s laughable. Putting them next to Greg Nicotero’s great designs and makeup is insulting. Now there is an easy fix to this: if they killed less zombies, they could have more money to spend on better gore and keep the zombies marginally threatening. 

Do you know why I know they won’t do this? A, those kill count videos exist, and B, I kept hearing the same complaint about the pilot to Fear The Walking Dead (which was actually interesting): they only killed one zombie. Jesus Christ.

The thing that sucks is I used to like zombie movies, at least when they were still good. The last good zombie movie was Shaun of the Dead and the best in the last 20 years was 28 Days Later. Even George A Romero’s Day of the Dead wipes the floor with anything The Walking Dead ever did. Any good zombie movie is not about the zombies. They just happen to be there. 

The Walking Dead is not going anywhere. And as long as it’s still there, we’re going to be seeing zombie sodas, t shirts that read “keep calm and kill zombies” and TV shows about zombie coroners (or some shit). I’m surrounded by zombies, and unfortunately for me, they won’t rip me apart and take me from this shitty world.

[jayhat-blog1]

All in a Name

Some of you might be wondering (who the fuck am I kidding, no one’s reading this shit) why this is called Jocular Wednesday. My answer to you is why is anything named anything? 

I could have called this Jordan’s Sex Shoppe if I wanted to (probably should have) but I chose Jocular Wednesday. For no reason though.

Okay, there is a reason. It’s mostly because I couldn’t think of anything better at the time. I had the idea to start this blog thing a while ago, but I originally wanted to do a podcast about movies and videogames (maybe music as well) with a couple of like minded friends. However, this is problematic since only one of us has any proper recording equipment ready at hand and we all live far away from each other for most of the year. College sucks, kids.*

Nevertheless, I thought about creating a blog so I could vent a little bit about things that bug me or gush about things that I like. 

What does this have to do with this names?

Nothing, really.

The reason I actually followed through on this blog is because I used to write in my free time. I actually ended up writing a short story to completion, which I’m still sort of proud of. This was three years ago, give or take. I’ve started a couple other things, but I haven’t had the same sort of creative drive. So this blog is a way to get my creative juices flowing and-hopefully- keep my shit from stagnating. 

So what does this have to do with names?

Names are stupid. Stupid, but helpful. And they’re one of the hardest things for me to write. I sat for a long damn while before coming up with Jocular Wednesday, and I probably should have sat down a little longer before settling on this one. I didn’t want something pretentious or obvious (like, The Film Blog or Critic’s Review).** At least Jocular Wednesday is kind of fun to say, even if it means nothing in the grand scheme of things. 

Which isn’t all that true. Jocular Wednesday was actually a throw away line in a highschool play I acted in (Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Christmas Carol- it’s actually better than it sounds). Basically I was talking about how meaningless holiday greetings were. And unlike names, holiday greetings are just stupid. Stupid. But kind of nice

*It doesn’t suck.

**It actually took me a long time to think of those for the essay

[jayhat-blog1]

Getting This Show on the Road

I managed to see The Hateful Eight last Wednesday at Chicago’s Music Box theater. The 70mm roadshow. It was cool.

Now, I could end this post right here, but I won’t, because this might have been one of the best movie experiences of my life. Which is pretty high praise, considering I was lucky enough to see both Interstellar and Star Wars VII in IMAX. I’ll argue that Hateful Eight is not the best movie I’ve seen, which isn’t to say it’s not good, but I’ve seen better (Sicario, for example). So why was this special?

For starters, it was how the movie was screened. Presentation is everything. Would I have enjoyed the movie if I just watched at home on my couch?  Oh yeah, definitely. But it is really not the same. Instead of being digitally projected, it was on film, honest to god film. The last movie I watched that was projected on film was Casino Royale (and the only reason I knew this was because at one point you could see some of the frames burn out at the beginning). If you looked closely, you could see the “cigarette burns” in the corners, indicating a reel change. Every once in a while, the change over wouldn’t be perfect and you’d see a frame of black. Now, this isn’t something to be happy about, really. You shouldn’t notice a reel change. But the fact that I did illustrated something to me, a sort of problem with digital projection: it’s too perfect.

Perfectionism isn’t a bad thing, but when it comes to digital projection, it feels artificial. You know there’s someone operating a film projector and that added to the atmosphere.

And none of that speaks to the wonder of 70mm. If you don’t know, 70mm refers to the size of the film that is being projected. Standard film reels are 35mm, and that alone can capture images in 4K resolution. 70mm can get up to 18K. Really, you’re getting a kickass image out of this film. Sure, a lot of the movie was in a cabin, but you felt like you were up close and personal with these guys. Perhaps uncomfortably close, in some cases. As the movie progresses, you’ll want to distance yourself from some of the characters. But just like them, you’re trapped in there. And you’re along for the ride.

The clearest comparison I could make with seeing this movie was like going to see a play on Broadway. The movie begins with an overture and has an intermission about 2 hours in. Everything about this felt special. Star Wars and Interstellar were special, but they were still movies. The Hateful Eight was so different. And it would not have been the same movie in a normal theater.

Anyway, my point is this. The Hateful Eight was a good movie. See it in theaters, definitely. Watch it in 70mm in you can. You’ll never forget it.

EDIT: Okay, if I had a complaint about the whole roadshow is they said you’d get a booklet about the whole 70mm process and stuff and I don’t think anyone got one at the theater. What the fuck, man?

[jayhat-blog1]

Incept Date

So, this is a blog. On tumblr. I never really expected to start something like this, but I’m this far in, so here goes. This is just going to be a space where I can prattle on about things I like- books, movies, music, videogames, what have you. These are most likely going to be in essay format, so if you don’t like reading, well, you’re fucked. Also, I tend to swear. If you don’t like that, well, you get the idea. 

This may be a good idea (it probably isn’t) or it will crash and burn (it probably will). Here goes nothing.