WHY?!?

When North America finally gets to enjoy what I hope will be the first really good movie based on a video game, that is…

Silent Hill, one of the most twisted, profoundly disturbing experiences in the history of gaming… And Singapore doesn’t get it till FREAKIN’ JUNE?!?

I’ve always thought this was an amazing game. It was one of those cathartic moments in gaming where I suddenly realized that gaming was going somewhere. It was also one of the first video games to really scare the hell out of me and make wary of going to bed, and in a strange sort of way, it was one of these weird elements that helped bring me and the Wife together since up until that point, she’d thought that video games were stupid, pointless exercises in reflexes with nothing really going on, and I said, “Oh, man, you’ve never played Silent Hill,” and when I played through it with her, she got hooked.

Oh well… I guess when I DO finally get to see it, there will be a lengthy rant on her about the virtues/vices of the movie as both a movie and a crossover of a game series I am intimately familiar with and ferociously protective of…

Razors Are Getting Too Masculine

A couple of days ago while shopping for groceries with the Wife, I noticed once again that razors put on sale, in particular the Gillette brand, have the most tremendously turbo-charged, super-testosterone injected, hyper masculine names. I mean, we’re talking about a hunk of plastic that holds some sharp steel so you can remove pubic hair on your face. I’m sorry, but it’s true. Something like that hardly deserves the Uber Male moniker “Mach 3 TURBO” Razor or “M3 Power NITRO!” It kind of got me to thinking about the only logical place this kind of aggressive marketing can go…

SCENE:

EXTERIOR. A BATTLEFIELD WITH SOLDIERS, NINJAS AND WRESTLERS ALL ATTACKING EACH OTHER.

A Wrestler stops pummeling a ninja to address the camera.

Wrestler: Hi! I’m a straight, heterosexual male that just happens to love greasing up and touching other men! Because I’m straight and will only touch other men when paid to do so, I only shave with THIS.

[He raises his hand and camera zooms in on THE ANNIHILATOR, a new razor blade]

Wrestler: After shaving my face and armpits with this, I really feel like a REAL MAN! But don’t take my word for it, just ask this guy!

[A flamboyantly dressed hairdresser giggles and steps into frame]

Hairdresser: I was a gay as gay could be until I accidently shaved with the ANNIHILATOR! Now, I’ve decided to study to be a car mechanic, and I’m interested in girls! Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to go buy some 15 year old t-shirts with rips in them and get a barbecue going! Whoo hoo!

[A bald girl in army fatigues steps up. She holds a picture of what appears to be herself in a stunning evening gown, with lustrous blonde hair]

Bald Girl: I used to be an ordinary, beautiful, vivacious woman who was only interested in finding the right guy, until one morning, after a torrid affair with a rich executive, I needed to shave my legs and only the ANNIHILATOR was around to use! It turned me into a bull dyke lesbian and now I’m only interested in women, I hate dresses, and I’m going to join the army!

Voice Over: Yes, the ANNIHILATOR is the razor so masculine it can actually drastically realter your lifestyle and sexual orientation! Use it at your own risk! That is, unless you’re AFRAID TO BE A REAL MAN!!

Showing Off The Wife

Because she is incredibly talented and I really like this picture.

The really cool part is we also have this in poster size.

Tomorrow: Razors and how they are waaaay too macho.

It’s The Wife’s Birthday

So no post or remotely interesting things to do or say today.

Stephen Chow Weekend

Okay so yesterday it turned out that the weekend was devoted to Stephen Chow as this ended up being the movie of the evening…

Yep. Shaolin Soccer. While it’s a bit weird that the goalie was doing a cross dressing thing and wearing the outfit Uma Thurman wore in Kill Bill (KIDDING. Geez…) the movie sort of cemented for me the theory that perhaps Asian comedy, particuarly the stronger schools of cinema in Japan, Hong Kong and Korea, tends to be far less mean spirited than American comedy. For whatever reason the vast majority of American comedy tends to get its laughs by being cruel to its characters, whereas Asian comedy seems to like its characters and the laughs are usually gained from the way they overcome their obstacles.

Also, Asian comedy seems a little less reluctant to be emotional and even sincere. Like when the poor goal keeper is taking a pounding in Shaolin Soccer you actually feel bad for the guy, but that’s because you see the punishment he’s taking, and you see that despite it, he refuses to give up, he’s willing to “take one for the team,” and so despite the fact there’s a ton of hilarity in somebody catching soccer balls that fly so fast they erupt into flames and cause concentric shockwaves to ripple out from the point of impact, there’s also a certain nobility and dignity that’s given to the characters, unlike an Austin Powers or Deuce Bigalow movie where you’re not even sure whether you actually like the main character.

Once Again I Am Completely Behind The Times

In the ongoing name of one of the Wife’s jobs, there has been a sudden increase not only in the number of DVDs watched, but the fact that they are largely martial arts films. I’ve already written that we purchased Enter The Dragon a few weeks ago, but a couple of days ago we hit the local renter, known as Video-EZY, and picked up a slew of other chop socky films, so that she could look at the poses and use them as reference material. Among the old gems like Way of the Dragon (Which, amazingly, the Wife pointed out something I’d missed all these years where Bruce Lee with nunchaku and no special effects at all, knocks a knife out of mid-air as the guy is throwing is throwing it from one freakin’ hand to the other!) we picked up a few other things that we’d heard about, but until now had remained blissfully spoiler-free about, with little to no expectations about what we were in for, which is something that I am increasingly starting to become a much, much bigger believer in. Somehow when you don’t know about something and it turns out to be good, that makes the experience that much cooler. Unlike a trilogy of science fantasy movies that lived on the massive expectation its legendary previous trilogy created…

Anyway, the film in question is Stephen Chow’s Kung-Fu Hustle. It’s kind of a super-duper, steroid induced version of the kind of martial arts whackiness that Hong Kong used to pump out in the 90′s. It’s a strange, hybrid martial arts film like The Heroic Trio from that period that still had the requisite chop socky, but transformed it into something more than just historical action films or cop/gangster conflicts. Having only heard a few mentions here and there that this was a pretty good martial arts film, I was in no way prepared for just how insane and funny the actual film is. Drawing liberally both from Hong Kong cinematic history as well as Western, I was stunned into happy disbelief at references to everything from Bruce Lee’s Way of the Dragon, to The Shining, to The Matrix.

Of course the other thing that’s really cool about the film is how it has its own consistent, internal logic at work. What you see on screen is completely crazy in our reality, but in this parallel universe a couple of photon streams down from Universe-616, Newtonian physics turns a blind eye to Kung-Fu masters, and the action here is exactly the kind of thing that geeks have seen rendered only in the low frame count world of Japanese anime, or the super swirly lines of Chinese comics and Japanese manga. It’s pretty obvious that in his own way, Stephen Chow was junkie of his particular pop culture, inhaling all the usual Hollywood influences while keeping a steady eye on what his own side of the Pacific pond was putting out. All of which results in a film that is stupefyingly, wonderfully crazy. It lacks the technical polish of Hollywood films, but I’ll put this movie and its action sequences over the last two Matrix movies any day of the week.

Time For More Struggling

I keep wondering whether writing a kid’s book should entail sitting there and constantly “Remember to write it for kids” or just to trust that instinct and intuition and the unspoken knowledge that it’s for younger readers will keep everything in line.

Oh well, back to writing and gaming…

Still sick

The problem with me getting colds is that they tend to linger for days, never so debilitating that I need to just crash at home, but just annoying enough that working becomes really hard what with all the runny noses and coughing and sneezing and such. Bah.

The Sniffles

Bah, I’ve come down with a cold.

I’m going to blame this on the GameAxis office, since various people were dropping in and out of work over the last week or so catching the latest fashionable virus. I’m guessing it’s now my turn to be hip and trendy.

Oh well, time to sit in bed, constantly wipe my nose with Kleenex and play me some more Suikoden V…

How In The Sam Hill

Can you possibly have a World War II aerial combat game, complete with borderline offensive racial stereotypes insulting you over the radio and NOT have Japanese pilots screaming, “BANZAAAAAI!”

I mean really, if you’re going to go with cliches anyway, you may as well go all the way…