The Journey Begins

If I wasn’t posting much before, I’m TWICE as not posting much now.

I’ll fore go my usual gamer’s dignity and associate with Disney toons any day of the week when Squenix is involved. It’s Kingdom Hearts 2, it’s Final Fantasy + Disney, it’s a hell of a ride and it just got started. Going into the hole again, so keep expecting those posts to be short, unfun and largley there only to cover the daily requirement for posting.

Guess What

Still playing Suikoden V, to the point that I forgot to finish Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, and in theory, Kingdom Hearts 2 should be in the store for pick up tomorrow.

All of which translates into, “Gaming continues, posts are uninspired because I’m focused on playing.”

Yeah. I’m a nerd. I’ve made peace with that, so you must too. But in my defense, the Wife is actually better at configuring armor and tweaking weapons and skills in RPGs…

The Blog Is Back To Normal

And I am still playing Suikoden V like a son of a bitch.

It’s still early in the year, but if there were a contest for best story in an RPG, I’d say this game is a contender. It’s like playing through a really good Fantasy novel.

Still More Technical Difficulties

But at least it got cleared up today. The blog is now working, but all the pictures have been lost. Oh well…

Right. Back to gaming.

Technical Difficulties

The blog is being moved over to the Wife’s new host for her online portfolio, so things will take a while to clear up.

You Know You Married The Right Woman When

You spend an entire weekend playing a video game and not only is she okay with it, she frequently takes over. Then when you go to the office and think to yourself, “I can’t wait to play some more,” you meet up with her and she tells you, “I grinded the party up a few levels and killed a boss. I saved it just before the story developments though, so you can still watch them play out.”

Right. Back to gaming.

We Apologize For The Inconvenience

Due to an uprising in the Falena queendom, the shattering of the matriarchy and the scattering of the surviving members of the royal family, your regularly scheduled daily post will not be appearing at this time. Regular posting will resume at the resolution of this crisis once homeland security has been restored and those who would do evil have been caught and punished.

In short, the story in this game is kicking at least three separate kinds of ass and I need to find out how it all turns out.

The Konami Double Feature

Only other gaming geeks will care, but this weekend was good to me in that I got:

Suikoden V, the latest entry into the classic PS1/2 series, which so far has some extremely annoying problems (Like loading all the damn time and no maps to navigate) but otherwise redeems the series from the nadir that was Suikoden IV. The characters and story are GOOD, and the Wife and I are getting sucked in.

The other Konami title, picked up at a drastically reduced price (For non-Singaporeans, games here typically weigh in at anywhere between $75-$120) of only $39 is:

Rumble Roses, the all-girl wrestling game. I really don’t need to go into much detail about this since the above picture says it all; outrageously dressed sluts grabbing and pawing at each other and frequently falling onto one another in a writhing mass of sweaty, female flesh. At your discretion it can also happen in mud. Does the fun ever stop?!?

It was one of those games I was always curious about, but just could not justify at $70+, but seeing it on sale finally made me decide maybe now was the time. It also helps that the Wife was curious about it as well after commenting that the Xbox 360 version actually doesn’t look that appealing. Taking the original PS2 version for a spin confirms it. Somehow, the more stylized, classically anime look of the girls seems a little more pleasing than the more photoreal approach the Microsoft version has embraced. Only finished the Reiko ending with tons more to go, but first there’s the little matter of getting through Suikoden V, which I had harbored some doubts about, but after playing it for a few hours, I can definitely say to fans of the series who were disappointed by the previous entry that this one makes up for it. It’s a little clunky mechanics-wise, but all the things you’ve loved about the previous games actually made it to this one.

Back to gaming…

Just Like A Dream. Too Much Like One, In Fact.

It’s a strange thing how supposedly “irrelevant” artists in other fields such as comics are actually getting more and more prominence as Hollywood looks for more areas to mine in its ceaseless, never ending appetite for new properties to present on the screen. However, the genesis of Mirrormask is probably one of the happier circumstances as it’s not exactly a voracious Hollywood meat-grinder that came across Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean so much as the strangely comforting, felt covered embraced of the Muppet Factory, The Jim Henson Company.

But I think it’s a good thing–which of course is rife with the potential for abuse, just look at any video game based movie by Uwe Bolle to see what I mean–although I think it’s pretty clear that what there’s a reason most people aren’t Leonardo DaVinci; it’s extremely difficult to be that good at so many things, even when they’re interrelated.

That’s what I thought when I watched Mirrormask which is original and engaging in many, many ways, but trips up somewhat at the fundamental level of narrative in film. It is, all things considered, an amazing first effort by Dave McKean as director who up until this point had only directed his short films, so the fact that it comes off as enjoyable but flawed speaks much of his potential as a director; if he did this well when he was basically clueless and learning the ropes, his work will be much more powerful as he becomes an assured hand at it.

The visuals themselves… well, there’s no getting around it, this is like wandering around inside the cover of an issue of The Sandman. It’s a pretty safe bet that viewers will see things they have never seen or imagined every three minutes. The originality of McKean’s vision shines through and through. The same holds true to a lesser degree for the narrative, written of course, by Neil-O. For people who follow his writing faithfully, the are a few Neil-isms to be recognized here and there, but writing for film is a different beast from writing for comics or novels and I think the inexperience of Neil-O in this area shows somewhat.

There are many parallels between this and the Henson’s other famous “girl in another world” film, Labyrinth; both films feature a troubled girl, uncomfortable with her life and “normal” world, wishing to escape it, and, by thoughtlessly uttering a phrase, placing a loved in a peril that necessitates traveling to another world largely composed of objects familiar to the girl blown up into strange, dreamlike context, from which she learns more about herself and lessons about life even as she undertakes her quest with friends that end up betraying her and then redeeming themselves.

However, the predecessor, Labyrinth though no match for Mirrormask in the visuals department, edges it out slightly in terms of structure and pace. I think the chief problem for me is that although both Labyrinth and Mirrormask have “vignette” events–strange, unexpected situations and characters the show how off kilter the world is–Mirrormask seems almost too random in its events. It’s an odd thing to say, because while in both movies these random events do push the story forward, Labyrinth’s strangeness feels more organic, more natural, and the consequences that result from those encounters also feel logical within the context of the story. Mirrormask on the other hand seems to occasionally feel like the incredible sights and characters were thought of for their own sake, and then had narrative devices cobbled onto them to justify their existence in the film. It also feels sometimes like there’s much more to the film that we’re not seeing. The film flows for the most part, but occasionally, the cuts between events feels as if we’ve missed something as if in the journey from point A to B, there was an event we might have benefitted from that we missed out on.

In the end it almost feels as if Neil-O had gone a bit too overboard on the dream logic in the narrative and presented a series of events that, like a dream, dont’ necessarily connect to each other in a smooth and meaningful way, but when you’re talking a movie, especially one for children of all ages, that arbitrary, unexplained nature of dream events doesn’t always carry over so well.

Still, the performances were good, with not a single bad actor in the lot, though I hesitate to say that anyone was really amazing. The character of Valentine stole the show, though if I would have to pick out anyone/thing as a favorite, it would have to be Sphinxes and Griffens. All the winged, cat-like creatures with human faces were some of the most unsettling things I’ve seen in years, and the fact that they had varying levels of speaking ability made them that much creepier.

Serenity & How I Overhyped Myself

And now it is well and truly over.

I have watched everything there is to watch relating to Captain Malcolm Reynolds and the crew of the Firefly class frigate Serenity, consumed every extra and hung on every word of wisdom that escaped Joss Whedon’s lips on his commentaries.

I’m sorry to say that I think I overdid it on the expectations for Serenity, which I just watched today.

Having heard of it, and, more importantly, read the reactions by fans of the show in regards to it, I went into this film with extremely, extremely, extremely high expectations. I went into it not expecting anything short of The Greatest Movie, Nay, The Greatest Single Experience Of My Entire Life And Perhaps That Of Our Species And Possibly Plane Of Existence, Rewriting Our Very Notions Of Good.

Instead, what I got was a really great, enjoyable movie, which was enormously disappointing because I was convinced I would be transformed as a human being after watching it, and instead was highly entertained, a far cry from experiencing a shift in consciousness so profound it pushes you up a couple of rungs on the evolutionary ladder.

It’s really a shame, because I do like the movie, but I feel slightly let down by the fact that it wasn’t mindblowing beyond all reason as I’d been led to believe. I think I’ve discovered one of the major dangers of Believing The Hype in this sense, because what I was hoping for, really, was the same sense of delighted surprise I first got upon watching Battlestar Galactica, where I went into it mostly blind, having only heard a few positive responses here and there. The show itself convinced me, not the buzz surrounding it. Unfortunately, having trolled through the Battlestar Galactica forums–and other forums–in the mean time, everything I’d heard about this movie made it out to be quite possibly the most important event in human history, and in the end, I foolishly went into the film expecting it to be just that, rather than what it is; a damn good film.

Perhaps it’s because I’m a writer and not a “dedicated audience” member. Or maybe I’m just getting too jaded and cynical in my old age, or perhaps once again, it’s just being old. But the movie didn’t change my life for the better as so many have claimed it did for them. My experience of it, while positive was a shallow thing; simple enjoyment. I’ll always appreciate it for that, and I certainly treasure some of the lines, some of the moments, and in particular some of the shocks (I mean come on, Wash? Why, Joss, WHY?!?) but for whatever reason, I can’t count myself among the Browncoats or other fans that can point to this as a juncture and life-altering point in their lives. I either lack the vision, courage or faith to let this film take me to that place.

And though this is probably a blasphemy as far as True Fans are concerned, I actually still prefer the television series. It seemed to me that the events of this film were key moments that Whedon–had Firefly not been cancelled–would have ladeled out sparingly, making them far more effective as key points over the course of an ongoing narrative, rather than compress them all into the span of a feature length film. Despite the fact that this had a bigger budget, better lighting and some truly insane steadi-cam one takes, the overall impact of this story would have been better served in an episodic format, giving everyone more time to develop and giving the audience more time to really get dark with Mal and then cheer him on when he finds his purpose.

So for me the lesson learned here is whenever possible, go into a film with minimal to no expectations. Getting caught in the wave of hype will create an expectation in your head no movie can possibly live up to. I like this movie. I really like it. But I’m still pissed it didn’t bring me to Nirvana as I’d been led to believe.