The Integrated

In “Double Feature,” I take a brief look at two films I’ve seen recently.

The Film: Hellboy II—The Golden Army (2008)

Director: Guillermo del Toro (Blade II, Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth)

Synopsis: An annoying German who resembles Robbie the Robot bosses the other characters around as they confront the evil machinations of a lithe, pasty swordsman.

The Lowdown: Oh, where to begin? This film had such potential. Hellboy has always had potential. The first film was average, an entertaining enough hook to draw the viewer in to the world and characters, as first films in genre franchises often are. Hopes were high for the second film to build on that promise and deliver an experience truly worthy of the concept, as second films often do. Not so, I’m afraid to say, with this film. Hellboy II manages to just even up with its predecessor. For sure, you’ll find the characteristic dark and fantastical creature design and imagery of Guillermo del Toro on display here, and for that alone, it merits a viewing.

On other levels, however, it falls flat. Early on, a plot thread is introduced about Hellboy “coming out” to the world, and his relationship to a world that previously filed him and his pals in the same category as Bigfoot and UFOs. This has real potential, building on Hellboy’s discomfort expressed in the first film with being segregated from regular folks, and exploring how the character copes with the reality that people will hate and fear him even as he puts everything on the line to help them. After reaching the point of Hellboy experiencing the public’s fear and mistrust of him, though, the film dumps this storyline and never calls back, instead barreling straight into a purely conventional end battle with the pasty swordsman and the titular CGI Army.

And then there’s Krauss. I remember hearing buzz before Hellboy II was released in theaters about how great Krauss was, that he was sure to become a fan-favorite character, and so on. I can’t imagine what would have compelled anyone to say such a thing. He’s some kind of formless “ectoplasmic being” residing in a suit with a glass dome for a head, and he spends most of the movie barking and bossing around the other characters, which gets old really fast. The other characters hate him, and so did I. At one point, Hellboy smashes the glass dome on his helmet and he appears to die, and I thought that was the high point of the film. Then he—meaning the ectoplasmic crap that’s actually “him”—appears floating in the room, outside of the suit. Dammit. (I don’t recall that there’s an explanation of what he needs the suit for if he can float around and manipulate things without it.)

None of this ought to suggest that Hellboy II is a horrible film, just a lot less than what it could’ve been; as always, a glimpse into the imagination of Guillermo del Toro is worth a couple of hours of your time, even if that’s all you get out of it. (Though you’re honestly much better off watching his masterpiece, Pan’s Labyrinth.)

Where You Can See It: DVD/Blu-ray.

Verdict: If it interests you in the slightest, go for it. If not, rent Pan’s Labyrinth.

· · ·

The Film: Speed Racer (2008)

Directors: Andy & Larry Wachowski (The Matrix trilogy, V For Vendetta)

Synopsis: A vicious army of bright colors violently assault your optic nerves.

The Lowdown: Oh, where to begin? *cough* I should say that I don’t necessarily have a problem with a bright color palette, or even with the visual overload on display here. If nothing else, Speed Racer looks like absolutely no other film you’ve ever seen, and while I may be accused of awarding points for novelty alone, I mark that as a good thing. I like seeing filmmakers take risks and do absolutely crazy shit, because it’s not terribly often that they do. Especially in a big commercial product like this. But yes, this is a big commercial product, and that’s where my gripe with it lies. You see, the film mainly revolves around conflict between the old-fashioned, home-grown mom-and-pop business of the Racer family, who build their own cars and field them in the races, and the major corporate interests and sponsored teams that dominate racing. Young Speed Racer has his innocence shattered in learning just how far the tendrils of coporate power and corruption reach in the racing world, even so far as to fix the outcome of the biggest race of the year, the Grand Prix.

There’s two problems that arise with this. First of all, the anti-corporate message on display here is never delved into beyond the hammy, cackling caricature provided by Roger Allam as the CEO of Royalton Racing. “See! Corporations are EVIL, just like this guy! They ruin the beautiful purity of things to make money, and Royalton’s totally being a dick to Speed Racer about it!” That’s about as deep or well-argued as it gets. Second, and more importantly, railing against corporatism really, really rings hollow when coming from a major motion picture, produced for over $100 million by Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. ($11.7 billion in revenue in 2007), with promotional support totaling over $80 million, including General Mills, McDonald’s, Target, Topps, Esurance, Mattel, and LEGO. Hypocrisy at its finest.

Oh yeah, and the characters are all thin as a sheet of paper, the dialogue stilted, and the humor flat. But that’s what you expect from an adaptation of a shitty children’s cartoon, right?

Where You Can See It: DVD/Blu-ray.

Verdict: If you have the chance to see it in HD, just skip to the end and watch the Grand Prix for a taste of its unique visual overload. Sitting through the whole thing is a waste of time.

Essentially: As underwhelming as expected.

Hugh Jackman did a fine job as host, though I could’ve lived without the cornball musical numbers. The disappointing results were a function of the disappointing nominees, and there were few major surprises. The mediocre Slumdog (undeservedly) swept most categories it was nominated in. I would’ve gone for The Wrestler, which of course was not nominated. Neither was my favorite film of 2008, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, nominated for Best Foreign Film. Like I said, disappointing nominees lead to a disappointing set of awards.

The biggest surprise of the night for most people was probably Sean Penn upsetting Mickey Rourke; honestly though I think they both deserved it and Penn gave a better acceptance speech than I would have anticipated. Aside from that my biggest shock was at The Dark Knight winning Sound Design over Wall·E. I tweeted last night that that was bigger BS than the Slumdog lovefest, but I’m not sure that’s true; it was just more of a shock than the predictable heaping of statuettes upon the Boyle flick. I’ll call it the biggest robbery of the night, how about that?

Here’s hoping for a better year of films in 2009.

UPDATE: It’s come to my attention that 4 Months… is technically a 2007 film, and ineligible this year, although it apparently was shut out of the Oscars last year anyway, so my disappointment at its snub still sort of holds.

UPDATE: Well, it looks like this never actually happened—Last.fm’s people are calling bullshit, claiming that TechCrunch made the whole thing up, and, in accordance with their privacy policy, do not give out personally identifiable information to third parties under any circumstance. Heartening to hear, my point still stands though. In principle I laud Last.fm’s stance on privacy, but if they were to breach it in the specific situation described below, I wouldn’t care to hear the illegal downloaders crying about it.

So there’s a new U2 album coming out. I personally couldn’t care less, but a lot of people are still into this band and are anticipating its March 3 street date. As is par for the course these days, the album has been leaked onto BitTorrent and downloaded many, many times. Naturally, the RIAA is sticking with its usual response of attacking its customers. Tired of simply hiring third parties to troll BitTorrent looking for offenders, the RIAA had a novel idea: ask Last.fm who among their members has been listening to the new tracks. Last.fm said sure, here’s the list.

And people are upset about this.

There seems to be some kind of confusion here, so allow me to clarify. Last.fm is a social networking site. The entire point and purpose is to get new music recommendations by sharing your listening habits with the universe. It’s not hard to disable the scrobbler. Hell, even if you forgot and realized later that you shouldn’t have scrobbled the tracks, you can permanently delete any track from your listening history with just a couple of clicks.

You can piss and moan about personally identifiable information which is normally hidden being handed over. You can decry the RIAA even seeking such information in the first place for a failed, destructive strategy of suing their customers. Both are valid points on their own. But when the only possible way for the new U2 album to be on your profile is if:

1. you obtained it illegally; and
2. you allowed it to be scrobbled,

all your arguments are completely undermined.

If you illegally downloaded No Line On The Horizon and scrobbled it to Last.fm, you deserved to get caught. Sorry.

The ever-reliable guys over at [H]ard|OCP have put Quad SLI and CrossfireX to the test, checking out whether it really offers any performance gain over just one dual-GPU video card. The answer is completely unsurprising, given SLI’s history of scaling problems in actual games. This is what I’ve been telling people all along, and it’s nice to see it vindicated in snazzy graph form: any configuration past two GPUs is a waste. Its only purpose is  for benchmark nuts (a legitimate use, to be sure, but a tiny sliver of PC enthusiasts), and for people with more money than sense. If you were thinking about a three- or four-GPU setup for your next computer, why not put that cash elsewhere in the rig? Get a top-of-the-line motherboard, if you hadn’t picked one out already. Get more RAM—always a useful upgrade for heavy multitaskers and folks who work with very large files. A better or additional monitor, perhaps? I guarantee you you’ll get more value for your dollar out of having a gorgeous dual-display setup on your desk than out of having four GPUs instead of two.

Or, hell, why not drop the cash you save in a savings account? That’s a better use for it than any unneccesary upgrade. But please, don’t brag to me about your killer $1k+ video card setup unless you’re LN₂-cooling them and breaking 3DMark world records.

Well, I don’t know if M-W-F is going to work. I don’t know what is. In the infancy of this thing I’m going to have to experiment to find the format that’s most comfortable to me. I’m thinking of trying a weekly or biweekly podcast—everyone’s always told me my voice is perfect for radio anyway. I think I’ll at least give it a go once and see what turns out! Stay tuned, friends!

In “Double Feature,” I take a brief look at two films that I’ve seen recently.

The Film: Revolutionary Road (2008)

Director: Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Road to Perdition)

Synopsis: 1950s suburbanite couple Frank and April have an American Dream, followed by a Parisian Dream, followed by waking up and yelling at each other a lot.

The Lowdown: This is a Serious Film. It has Relevant Social Commentary. The American Dream maybe isn’t all it’s made out to be, you know? Sadly, Revolutionary Road’s commentary and themes are shouted from the characters’ mouths just so superficially as that lead-in, so verbosely and on-the-nose, that the film is simply wearying and uninsightful. It violates the maxim of “show, don’t tell” continuously throughout its runtime, from a script that reads like a parody of a movie that’s equally superficial but far more subtle.

The good news is that in spite of its script problems, the movie is very well directed and the cast deliver laudable performances with the crap they’re given to work with.

Where You Can See It: It’s opened up to over 1,000 screens now, so check your local theaters. Otherwise, wait for DVD.

Verdict: Skip it.

· · ·

The Film: 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (2008)

Director: Christian Mungiu

Synopsis: An emotionally punishing few days in the lives of two friends, as one of them helps the other get an illegal abortion in late 1980s Communist Romania.

The Lowdown: If Revolutionary Road is on the “tell” end of things, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days is the epitome of “show.” Without feeling overtly documentary, the camera is pointed at these two young women as they go through their ordeal, and barely flinches or turns away from the grit and horror of it. In this way, the film wisely avoids taking sides in the abortion debate. We are, very deliberately, only passive observers to the unfolding of these tragic and disturbing events—left to ponder them, debate them, and draw our own conclusions. And anyone, regardless of their stance, will be floored by the experience and left with much to grapple with in the days after seeing this film.

Where You Can See It: It’s out on DVD.

Verdict: I can’t recommend it highly enough. So far it’s the best 2008 film I’ve seen. (I still have several left to get through, though. My goal is to post a list & ranking for every 2008 film I saw, sometime before the spring.)

Quick, answer this: How many times have you typed your name into a form on a webpage? Dozens? Hundreds? How about your e-mail address? Home address?

The madness is gradually—very, very gradually—waning as more and more sites implement OpenID and/or Facebook Connect for their login systems. But a universal authentication system doesn’t go far enough. I’m not just tired of having 1,000 different sets of credentials for 1,000 different sites; I’m tired of having 1,000 different sets of information on 1,000 different sites. We need an extension of OpenID that acts as a total information repository. You should enter your personal data once, and store it securely on the OpenID server. When you log in to a website with your OpenID, it would request whatever personal data it thinks it needs, and the OpenID server would prompt you to allow or deny access to any individual piece of information, on a one-time or recurring basis. The key here is that you have total control over how your information is collected and used. Nothing leaves the OpenID information vault without you expressly authorizing it, and just like OAuth implementations, you’d be able to see all sites you’ve given any level of permission to and modify or revoke that permission at any time.

Some people would worry about a server devoted purely to storing personal data; what if it’s breached? Yet, I’d point out that this is much better than having that data scattered across the whole Internet, on many different sites with widely varying levels of security. Hell, this very minute, someone could be hacking into a site I don’t even remember I ever signed up for, harvesting my e-mail address to feed to a spam botnet.

Ultimately, I would say that the solution should be an open standard, complementary to OpenID. Screw Facebook Connect and their “walled garden”. Ahem.

I’ve decided to commit myself to posting every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I’d like to eventually post five days a week, but I’m going to ease into it since I’m still very new at this.

Every gamer has a few games they grew up with, games that got them hooked. Many people would name titles like Super Mario Bros., Sonic, Asteroids, or any number of other early console games. I never got a new home console; I eventually got a used NES (after the SNES was already out), and I had a GameGear for road trips, but the locus of my gaming experience as a kid was the PC. I got my first computer at a young age—I can’t recall exactly—and aside from learning DOS commands, tweaking Windows 3.1, breaking the thing, and fixing it again through experience and trial & error, naturally I dove right into the world of DOS shareware games. I kept a modest library on floppy disks. Here’s the six games that, to this day, are the most memorable:

6. Indianapolis 500

Indianapolis 500

Those 3D graphics you’re looking at above? Mind-blowing. So mind-blowing, in fact, that I was willing to drive for hours in this game despite the plain gray oval of Indy being the only track. It had damage modeling (making it superior to the latest Gran Turismo on Playstation 3—natch), with crude polygonal bits flying everywhere. So of course, I logged more laps backwards on the track crashing head-on into other vehicles than actually racing.

5. Duke Nukem Trilogy

Duke Nukem

No, I am not talking about the crass, juvenile FPS that made Duke Nukem famous. Never played it. I mean the original trilogy of 2D platformers. These games followed much the same pattern as the first three Commander Keen games, where your goal in each level is to collect a series of items allowing you to access the exit and progress. However, it lacked an analogue for Keen’s innovative pogo-stick mechanic. Still, the graphics were impressive—better than Keen 1-3—and the gameplay tight and challenging.

4. 688 Attack Sub

688 Attack Sub

If you’ve ever played a simulation with a manual inches thick and enjoyed the hell out of it, you’re a PC gamer at heart. This one put you in charge of an American or Soviet submarine. You could control the engines, targeting, torpedoes, sonar, periscope, and so on. Keeping your noise level down to avoid being detected by enemy warships’ sonar was of utmost importance. 688 was the first game I owned that featured online play—via direct modem-to-modem call. Too bad I never knew anyone else with 688 and a modem.

3. The Secret Of Monkey Island

The Secret Of Monkey Island

The point-and-click progeny of text adventures, Monkey Island had some of the best-designed puzzles I’ve ever seen. Add in top-notch artwork, music, and rapier wit (literally, in one of the game’s most memorable sequences), and you’ve got a true classic on your hands. This is also the first game I ever played co-op, as my sister and I worked together to crack many of the hardest puzzles.

2. Commander Keen 1-4

Commander Keen 4: Goodbye, Galaxy!

Following the adventures of technological genius Billy Blaze, alter ego Commander Keen, these platformers were cutting-edge for their time with detailed graphics, great use of the PC speaker for memorable sound effects, and an actual story! Yes, that’s right, they actually came up with a character (as opposed to a simple avatar) and a storyline. They may not have been very deep or insightful, but there’s still more to be spoken for here than can be said for Super Mario Bros., in which the designers apparently drew all their inspiration from a crazy acid trip. To top it off, Keen carries a pogo stick with him that can be toggled at any time and used for super high jumps and other maneuvers.

1. Civilization

Civilization

Civilization requires no introduction. At a minimum, it’s the best strategy game of all time. It’s arguably the best game of all time. Between the original, Civilization III, and Civilization IV, I’ve sunk innumerable hours into this series. Whenever they come out with Civilization V, I’m there. Even if all they do is dress up the graphics.

There seems to be much yelling and wringing of hands over the announced editions of Windows 7 today. “There’s SIX versions! Horrifying! Consumers’ brains will melt!” At first glance, it does look ridiculous:

• Windows 7 Starter
• Windows 7 Home Basic
• Windows 7 Home Premium
• Windows 7 Professional
• Windows 7 Enterprise
• Windows 7 Ultimate

Thing is, not one person looking at buying Windows 7 will be making their choice from six options. The truly relevant list is the answer to “What will Joe Consumer see on the shelf at Best Buy if he’s thinking about upgrading?”

• Windows 7 Home Premium
• Windows 7 Professional

Just like XP, in other words. The Home/Professional split worked out more or less alright in that case, although if you ask me, they chose a pretty stupid set of features to excise from XP Home. In this case, Win7 Pro will add filesystem encryption, the ability to join a Windows domain, network-based backup, the ability to RDC to the box, group policy capabilities, and so on. Not a bad feature set for a geek/poweruser, especially if you’ve got a home server.

And what about all the other editions? Starter and Home Basic are “for emerging markets” and won’t be sold in the U.S. Enterprise is self-explanatory. So far, the only information I can find on Ultimate vs. Professional is that it adds BitLocker driver encryption. Whoopee. It’ll also apparently have a small footprint, probably not even available on brick-and-mortar retailers’ shelves, since Microsoft is well aware that pretty much the whole Windows-using community except for a sliver of PC enthusiasts laughed in their face at the sky-high price for Vista Ultimate.

As a gamer and a web geek who uses Photoshop CS4 64-bit on a regular basis, I’m essentially locked in to Windows, for better or for worse. Truth is, Win7 looks like the upgrade Vista ought to have been. I’m digging the new taskbar, the peek feature, and other improvements—video demonstrations are all over the web by now if you haven’t installed the beta and seen for yourself. For actually pushing the OS forward with fresh ideas, and putting more effort into fixing the features that Vista introduced and botched, this is a release that deserves to be supported. (In contrast, when Vista came out, the only reason to upgrade that mattered to me was the promise of games that would take advantage of my new DirectX 10 hardware—and then the games never materialized with a noticeable difference between DX9 and DX10 graphics.) I just cringe a little at the prospect of buying Windows again so soon. Gizmodo has a great point here: let me send you proof of my Vista Certificate of Authenticity/product key, and send me back a coupon or mail-in rebate on Windows 7. It’d garner huge respect from customers who are really down on Microsoft and Windows after the last few years’ debacle.