Brave

Saw this movie long ago, and didn't quite like it. Rewatched it recently because I wanted to make sure I wasn't just in a bad mood that day and didn't give it a decent shot.

And um. Let's get the feminist crap out of the way. Set aside the idea that a strong female lead is a girl *super*-doted on by her man-child father, who gets reasonably sporty and doesn't want to marry whichever dude. Also that the only women in here are A) main character, B) her mother who handles all the paperwork with calm feminine grace and acts like her husband's mother, and C) servants who exclusively scream and run away, carry cloth and hang out in the kitchen. And all men are brainless cavemen man-children or worse (the only point where male characters get to be any deeper than a pizza plate is when the clan heirs agree with Merida's request that they should all get to choose their partner). Also lose any notion that this would be an adventure movie similar to adventure movies with reasonably sporty boys as main characters. Each time Merida shoots her bow at a live target, it does absolutely nothing, and I hope you don't imagine she's the one who defeats the bad guy. Welcome helpless heroine.

Alright then, on to review. This script is, let's say, all over the place. There's several stories going on a once here, and sure that's fine, but at least one is just forcefully shoved into random dialogue for the first part, and then provides a timely easy way out from the final confrontation. The focus seems scattered, with sequences of scenery and beautiful shots that look more like graphic showing-off than any form of story exposition. I will expand on these two problems below.

1) Script. My favorite piece of writing here that for me comes to symbolize this movie is an early exchange between Merida and her mother. Slightly paraphrased, but far less than you might think, Merida goes to her mother and says "why do I have to marry", and her mother responds by saying "long ago there was a kingdom where one son wasn't satisfied with sharing with his brothers and the kingdom fell". End of conversation.

2) Nature Photography. In Brave, you get a long sequence of Merida shooting arrows from her horse and climbing a mountain to drink some water, to later tell her father that she did, and he goes "hey good job", and mom goes "sigh". In Pocahontas, you get not only the text of a song to progress the story while she and John Smith frolics in the forest, but what they do while frolicking also symbolizes how she brings him to see the beauty of nature and taking him deep into the forest where only the natives go, forming a bond between their characters over sped-up time. Compared to the much more story-progressing sequence of Merida playing in the river with her mother, the initial sequence of climbing the mountain is very near pointless. And there's more of these random shots of "forest" that fails to establish any sense of progress or wonder or setting beyond "forest".

One could easily say that 2 is a consequence of 1 (as in bad scripts, not greedy brothers). In How To Train Your Dragon, you very quickly get a feeling that the conflict between the boy and his father is about their difference in base personality and skill; the boy is an inventor, the father a hands-on warrior. But in Brave, the conflicts are scattered. Is it about Merida being too "boyish"? Too rash? Too selfish? Too childish? About her mother being too responsible, stuck-up, too traditional, too perfectionist? For much of it, it just seems to be a woman shouting "I want!" and a girl shouting "I don't want!", for a confusing number of reasons. Is Merida opposed to the marriage because it will limit her in any way? Will she not be allowed to shoot arrows or frolic in the forest when she's married? Or is she opposed to the duties? But surely she won't be queen until the old is dead, no? She hasn't met the boys before she starts protesting, so clearly she's already set up the stop sign irrespective of their personalities. Is she opposed to it solely because her mother tells her to?

I could ask, but the answer is apparently "long ago there was a kingdom where one son wasn't satisfied with sharing with his brothers and the kingdom fell", but I don't feel like cleaning up chessboard pieces, since neat perfectionist mother gets a touch of major drama queen whenever she tells that story. Woo character consistency.

Movie Review: X-Men First Class

Saw X-Men First Class and, boy, do I like it better than those other three X-Men movies... actually, let's forget all about those and pretend they never existed. For all intents and purposes this will vastly improve your quality of life, I promise. It still has its flaws and stuff, but this movie actually manages to feel more like the comics, which is good. It wouldn't be impressive, only to expect, if it weren't for those three non-existing movies that you've forgotten that had directors that knew nothing about the comics. Possibly the first one is watchable, if it existed. So in the shadow of things that do not exist, this movie is impressive. On its own, it's merely a good action movie, that I enjoyed watching. Also because the actors don't suck and actually fit their respective characters, as opposed to... okay I'll stop talking about things you're trying to forget.

I was hesitant at first. Through the first 20-30 minutes I was basically holding my breath, watching the movie do a delicate balance act without safety net where I expected it to fall off and land on its face, and saw its feet trembling. What kept it standing was Kevin Bacon and the Angel of Hope. Then it stabilizes, pretty much as soon as Charles and Eric meet. The two of them balance out like the long stick rope walkers have. Suddenly you have cool X-Men with cool powers that they actually use in sensible and intuitive ways (such as Eric using his body and magnetic powers to press Charles against the floor of the plane when it goes down), as well as character depth (the big one of course being the clash of experience, upbringing, nature and idealism between Charles and Eric - something both actors manage to convey with feeling). And even humor, that doesn't feel milked out of a cow's ass. Woo. Since everything is new and raw to the characters as well it's a lot easier to take in and understand than Magneto and Professor X shouting "you never understood anything" at each other forty years into the future.

*SPOILER WARNING*
A part of my approval might lay with the choices of mutants to appear. Banshee, Havok, Angel (the wasp girl not the bird guy), Emma Frost... they're all cool people, who opposed to people like Phoenix and Wolverine carry a little less iconic baggage which makes them easier to portray and let people focus on who they are rather than who they think they should be. The one thing I dislike about the casting is that they do the good old "only the black guy dies" thing, which feels very old by now, and especially since the black guy in question is a fairly obscure character - taken in only to have a black guy? Being also a noble character with interesting powers, I believe Darwin deserved a better cinematic fate. Rather do what you want and forget about token people. As an Asian, I can just as well go "where's my token Asian person?". Eventually people like that would control your movie. Considering this is set in the '60s, it'd be neither offensive nor unrealistic to have an all-caucasian cast.
*SPOILER OVER :D*


Summary:
This movie could also be called:
Kevin Bacon and the Mildly Annoying Good Guys - but stealing the show is very in character for Sebastian Shaw; it's pretty much been his character weakness all along :D
How Magneto Got His Silly Helmet - and just to be sure he sillifies the reasonably unsilly helmet as soon as he gets it.
But what I really want to call this movie is:
Better. 

Movie Review: Ninja Assassin

Welcome to the movie review of Ninja Assassin, also known as "A 90 Minute Study of Rain's Abs".

Let me make something clear first; this is not a deep story movie, and those who expected it to be are in for a well-deserved disappointment. However with decent acting and beautiful filming, it flies safely over the dark abyss of porn-quality. Some official or other starts digging into the truth behind a rumor of a secret ninja organization. So we leave the story, because it's standard, and neither contributes greatly or ruins anything.

We have established that it's an action movie. It's also, obviously, a martial arts ninja movie. Let me make another thing clear: this is not a realistic movie. Those who expect that past the first five minutes are also in for a well-deserved disappointment. Ninjas move in darkness like in that horror movie called, oh right, Darkness, and obey the ninja trope of "the more ninjas in one place, the worse they get".

However, taking the movie at face value, I enjoyed the action a lot! Almost all of it is blade-based, very little fists or firearms, and they've done the most of it, with dark moody settings where the glimmering blades and the exaggeratedly red blood are the only focal points. Think Sin City and replace American noir with ninja manga dismemberment á la Blade of the Immortal. I think the stylistic yet semi-realistic violence balances between beauty and grotesqueness in a fascinating way, and I love the blade-on-a-chain weapon and the visual effects it produces.

The Rain (aka Jung Ji-Hoon) whose abs we study is a Korean actor/singer and the reason I saw this movie in the first place. While I openly admit bias, I think he really is a good actor, a better actor than singer, and he's gotten a few awards and remarks from high places. Obviously his acting is hardly put to the test here, but I think what keeps the story together and on level is the performance from him and the big boss, Shô Kosugi.

In summary: I greatly enjoyed watching this movie, and I think all the bad reviews are a little unfair. It's not trying to get the Nobel prize in philosophy, neither is it trying to accurately depict ninjas. I like it a great lot better than many other brainless action movies that have gotten a much more favorable reception. While watching it in complete darkness certainly helped, the way they played with shadows was exciting, and the style of the action as well as the acting quality were very positive surprises considering what I'd heard about it. Together with the added bonus of "A 90 Minute Study of Rain's Abs" (and trust me, heterosexual men, they are a bonus for you as well), it is hovering in the top50-borderlands of Totally Enjoyable Friday Night Movie.

PS. Also don't whine at that all the ninjas speak English. It falls under the "take at face value", together with "how the hell did they get armored vehicles from Europe into the Japanese mountains".

Comic Opinions: Deadpool #13-22

Deadpool: X marks the spot and Deadpool: Monkey Business collects Deadpool #13-22, and are the first steps of my "let's be a serious comic geek and not a leech and start buying good shit" campaign. For safety I will not divulge how I got to read #1-12. It's a personal campaign, of course, worry not, I'm not going to go righteous bitch on you.

I loved the earlier Deadpool series by Priest and Simone, especially the one that connected with the Agent X series, and I was at first unconvinced by the new writer mr. Daniel Way and the "inner voices" (Deadpool has two more or less consistent "extra selves" that he has conversations with). Although I found Deadpool's role in Secret Invasion (a big, global "Event" in Marvel Universe) to be brilliant and in a way properly introducing him into the big boy game by throwing him in with Norman Osborn, anyone can shoot a pony once, and the inner voices deal was still bothering me.

I've always felt that the difficulty in writing Deadpool has been to balance his good-vs-evil. Insanity implies randomness, and randomness doesn't know good or evil; it hardly knows consequence. How to get a coherent character with interesting storylines with that in mind? It's a deadly balance act.

I'd say that Way has now proven his pony-shooting abilities to me with these two collections. X Marks The Spot has Deadpool out to become a pirate, and through a series of events has him helping rather than hurting the islands he set out to rob. What follows next is what impressed me most; a sort of looking-glass peek into a darker part of Deadpool that no one else seems to have paid any attention; namely, immortality itself could serve to drive a man insane, so what will a man do with it who is already insane? This philosophical bout with himself brings him to the fever-dazed conclusion that he'd rather be a hero, and he makes an attempt at becoming an X-Man. The story from there is a lot more complex than one first realizes, and the balance act can be summed up with one of the lines from the book: "He may be insane, but I'm starting to think he may not be crazy".

Monkey Business picks the story right up as Deadpool continues on to New York to try and soak up some hero-moves from Spider-Man, and suddenly finds himself on the best seat of the house as Spider-Man has to protect him from a mercenary-hunting monkey hitman. Again, Deadpool proves himself as much a hallucinating lunatic as a man with a plan, turning Spider-Man's life upside down in the process. The writing impressed me still, in this case because it is skillfully focused on Deadpool. What Spider-Man thinks about the whole thing can most often only be read from what he says and does, so as a reader I get the feeling of watching the frustrated hero rub his forehead through a camera stuck on Deadpool's suit, that bounces a little as Deadpool chuckles to himself.

The art is good in the two "main" stories here, the X-Men and Spider-Man stories. As for the pirate story as well as a short extra as Deadpool leaves New York, they have more looney cartooney or caricature style drawings. I can appreciate different styles of drawing, I think, but especially in the case of Deadpool I'm for a more "realistic" style because although he himself is like an mad bugs bunny, he is real in the Marvel Universe, he is in fact brutally real as many who have tasted his bullets have had to realize. A conversation with him should perhaps never be taken literally, but he as a force, an immortal man with amazing weapon skills, should always be taken very, very seriously, and that is the tragedy and the comedy. A cartooney style marginalizes the violence he does upon others, but that is a part of what makes the character complex and fascinating. Reading Deadpool should always bring along a tint of disgust, a wince where you go "what the HELL man" as he cracks a joke and a skull at the same time; just seeing him as a funny guy does not embrace all that the character is.

I always feel like I walk away from reading Deadpool having learned something subtle and difficult to pinpoint, which is also part of the charm. As when Deadpool spared Killbrew's life in the earlier series, I now await Way's followup with hesitant enthusiasm. Deadpool's chase for heroism allows a bit of creative ballet on the delicate balance of good and evil, now I can only cross my fingers and hope Way doesn't overstep and break a toe.

Spider-Man goes, as usual, for the anvil-to-the-head kind of life lessons: "It's always easy being what you are... what's hard is being what you want to be."

Dragon Age 2

38 hours over three days later, I was done with my first playthrough of Dragon Age 2 and could begin on the two other necessary to explore how much freedom of choice you actually have and how much is set in stone with the illusion of choice. My impression is that it's a very well thought-out game with an engaging story and very fun game mechanics. If a little... overzealous at times.

There are a few questions. With the perceived size of the city, where the hell do they get the one hundred raiders and bandits and hunters and thieves that your group murders every night? Admittedly only a dozen nights every three years, but still. Considering the Blight, the common conflicts, and supposedly the victims of these raiders and bandits and hunters and thieves, one wonders just how large a population would be necessary to sustain them, and to breed new ones quickly enough to sate the next three years. And the same can be said of mages, somehow. There are very many mages. So many I'm wondering why they don't prance off and claim a little country of their own instead. Oh yeah, maybe because if they're all as crazy as the ones you get joining you, they'd be gnawing each others toes off within a year. No but seriously, in a normal encounter the game would throw around twenty people at you, ten of which are only there as cannon fodder, but usually there's even more. Fun maybe, but... where the hell do they all come from? And why do they keep running at you after fifteen of their sturdier friends have already tried and died?

But overall the story is good, and have successfully made its point; humans are complicated, dirty, easily breakable things that are right in many things and wrong in others, unfortunately about different things so they insist on fighting over everything.

I do miss the dialogue of the first DA, because this is Mass Effect style and a little too short-hand; I feel more like I'm playing 1-X-2 than having a conversation. Also the elves look like tiny non-blue Avatars. Do they have bones in those skinny little bodies, or just twigs? There are talents that are so obviously, incredibly much better than others that you wonder why you'd ever use a different build. The Exiled Prince DLC gives you another friend that isn't mind-numbingly crazy, contributes to a more complex choice of combat tactics, and that I'd rather have had in the base game. If you set your mind to it, every melee boss can be soloed by ranged characters running about, because melee can't hit and move at the same time and have three-second hit-animations, which feels a little silly when a dwarf with a crossbow run around a pole for fifteen minutes killing a dragon bolt-by-bolt. Or when a mage has an "honorable" duel with a badass warrior by pewing him with his staff, then running away, then pewing him again, (because sensible spells have too long cast animation) in front of an awed public. And again the Spirit Healer rocks the boots off of everything else, but that doesn't make a huge difference since it's kinda satisfyingly easy on normal, and equally fun playing all classes.

There have been laughs, but no tears, which sufficiently illustrates my level of involvement. Specifically two peak quotes that I was going to share but realized they're much better if you hear them in context, so: do Avaline's personal quests, and bring Isabela and Fenris at the same time in your party for a while. I know, Isabela is kinda useless gameplay-wise. But you shall not be dissappointed.




Wow this post is beautifully structured! Look at it! Wicked sick! I'm awesome. (Viewer satisfaction not guaranteed; depending on your screen resolution.)

The Movie of 2009 Award

Movies seen lately (not in any particular order):

Ice Age 3 - <3 <3 <3 - it is very impressive of a no.3 in a series to be as good as no.1 in the series, especially when no.1 was very good too. But I like no.2 best, still, maybe because it was the first one I saw. Still, dinosaurs charm me. Throw in a t-rex and I clap and nod, give me a triceratops and I'll forgive you anything.

District 9 - <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 - I always find it easier to sympathize with animated cricket-like green aliens in terribly unfashionable clothing tearing humans limb from limb than I do with humans. I am completely serious. But aside from that, amazing movie, with amazing actors that I've never heard of before but deserve fame and fortune. It's just right with the gore to make it stay with you, and just right with the story to make you feel with the characters, but not mindlessly cheer for them. And I insist the alien was named Christopher! That's what I heard!

Beowulf (the semi-animated one) - <3 <3 - not much to say. It's fun trying to look through the legend and try to find the man and the actual story. Haven't seen any other Beowulf movie either. It has swords and kings and dragons and a naked Angelina Jolie. Blah blah blah.

Coraline - <3 <3 <3 <3 - dunno if this is actually for children or not, but it's a stop-motion doll movie in kiddie style, kinda Nightmare Before Christmas. Something about this one just freaked me out to no end. It gave me nightmares where my mom cut off the limbs off some poor animal she made me hold, and then started digging into my hand.

Sherlock Holmes - <3 <3 <3 - and one of those hearts is solely for Jude Law, whom I otherwise don't like so much but who is great in this movie. It's entertaining, but wasn't worth going to the cinema for, and Robert Downey Jr made such a perfect Iron Man than seeing him anywhere else is like it would be seeing Tony Stark putting on a pig tail and chasing zebras around a ballroom. Not good, and not funny. Also way too hollywoodized for my tastes.

Pandorum - <3 <3 <3 - I am a relative noob at horror, and especially space horror. This movie might hold lot of clichés that I missed since I haven't seen any other of them. But it was well made, and paced very nicely, and managed to have a plot not entirely predictable which is very good for a horror movie. It also had Norman Reedus, very briefly, I rest my case.

Avatar - <3 <3 <3 <3 - I would give it five hearts, but the harsh and honest truth is that the story leaves you lacking in every single way. The CGI is amazing, and see it in 3D, and I really recomment seeing it. There was true potential of a very, very epic movie here. But the moment you see the first of the alien race, you know the story. They do a reasonably nice take on it, but that can't hide the fact that it borderlines plagiarism, if that can still be applied to something that's been done over 9k times before. That it still manages to be one of the best movies ever says something about how good everything else in it is.

The Happening - <3 <3 <3 - I didn't see the whole movie, missed the start, so I can't give it a fair score. Some ppl think it's silly, I think you gotta stop looking for silly and just close your eyes and listen to the wind and let him tell you the story. Open your mind. I liked it.

I was going to give my Movie of 2009 Award to Inglorious Bastards. It's the first time I've seen Quentin Tarantino return to the genius of Pulp Fiction, instead of fillers like Kill Bill or Death Proof, or I-don't-know-what's like From Dusk till Dawn. But District 9 gave it a good fight. I think the Bastards bring it home thanks to the extra points of Christoph Waltz, despite a few weak moments in the cinema with Brad Pitt (a flaw of the script rather than the actor), because I have to pull a few points from District 9 for making me biased by involving cute baby alien. Still, the two are as close to equal as you can get without actually being it :P

That's all for the Movie Review Corner for tonight. Over and out.

The Value of a Good Story

I just finished inFamous and... wow.

Wow.

I did not see that coming.

I mean... yeah.

And... well, I suppose...

but...

Wow.

Dissidia - First Impression

Well, this was a promised post, so here it is. I've played Dissidia for approximately 3-4 hours in one sitting (exactly as long as my psp battery lasts me :P) and I have to say I'm impressed. It's not just a fighting game, it has a load of smaller features, and it seems well worth playing again and again.

To begin with: Chaos vs Cosmos, a concept as old as storytelling is probably. Both sides gathered some warriors and the balance was... well, balanced. Then the chaos side did something odd and things went out of shape, and well, I dunno if I'll get a better explanation down the road but Cosmos went poof and now the ten heroes have to save the day. The story is kind of vague, but I realized it could really be seen as if all the final fantasy games were their own world's version of Chaos vs Cosmos and that they all ended exactly simultaneously at the point where Dissidia begins, in a sort of dimension-spanning timeline. Deep shit.

Centerpiece: This is a fanservice game, there is absolutely zero doubt about that. There's dozens and dozens of references to different ff games and characters and items and summons and... yada yada yada. The more ff games you've played, the more you'll like Dissidia, but that's not to say that someone not interested in ff would get nothing from it.

On to the fleshy part: The gameplay is actually very good. There's tons of equipment and bonuses and shit all around, but when it comes down to one-on-one on the battlefield it really feels as if it's you, the player, that makes the biggest differece; your skills and how well you know to use all that crap you've gathered. It also pays a lot to take a step back, think, and be a bit tactical about when to strike, and not just charge straight in. But! and here's the beauty of it, that also varies a bit between characters. Some make better for charging, some should rather stop and think. There is a real difference between how they play. Cloud has some fast, small attacks to keep enemies busy and then a few real close-range nukes to take them down quickly. Cecil is harder to handle and deals less damage but has more ranged attacks and a few tricks up his sleeve. Terra and Ultimecia are spellcasters. There's also several modes and lots of reasons to play stages over again to collect better stuff, but not in the sense of grinding. In story mode the heroes have a story each, and I've played two so far and liked the way they've built individual storylines too.

And of course the most important: Characters. But what do I need to say, it's Square. If it's one thing Square knows how to do, it's to make excellent jrpg characters. They've done an very nice job bringing characters from NES games into modern technology and graphics.

Final points: Music from the ff games, excellent, and the voiceovers are agreeable. Although... Cecil, from ff IV, who I liked in that game, has for some reason earned the voiceactor of ultimate emo that made the emo Prince of Persia... which ruined some. I also discovered that in contrast to the other, older characters (or from older games and more fantasy settings), Cloud's sometimes drawling american accent suddenly seemed very appropriate.

Complaints: mainly towards Cecil so far. Aside from emo-actor no1, there's also the strange fact that because he's an jrpg hero his Dark Knight armor has to be skin-tight and ugly instead of the massive impressice Dark Knight armor his evil brother sports. Strange. Because the hero line-up might have benefited from not being quite that effeminate... especially since they outfitted Bartz like a teenage gay escort. And why the hell did you steal fashion tips from Cloud's Advent Children outfit, Squall? As if broody lonewolf 1 and 2 needed to look like each other too... Anyway, gameplay-wise, not much.

I think that's it...

Yes, and also: I love that chocobo! <3