The Integrated

Netflix notified me today that my disc to activate PS3 streaming is in the mail. I was hoping Netflix wouldn’t be an Xbox-exclusive feature among the consoles. It’s nice to see them expand support. How long will it be now before basically every new HDTV, BD/DVD player, game console, or video device of any kind comes with Netflix built-in? I was a subscriber and a big fan of Netflix before they had streaming service at all, and now I’m just waiting for the day that I can turn off disc shipments altogether because everything is available on Instant Play.

For now, though, I’m using my computer monitor as my PS3 monitor on an HDMI switch, so it won’t be that different than loading up an Instant Play movie via the website; it’ll be interesting to see if there’s a difference in picture quality. But someday, I’ll have an actual TV.

I recently saw Tron for the first time, and I’m struck by the ways in which it reminds me of Speed Racer. Both are technological marvels of their day, consisting almost entirely of colorful computer graphics. For both films, that is their only asset. “Ham-fisted” is a terribly inadequate term to describe either of them. Both feature superficial commentary about the hijacking and spoiling of the little guy’s noble endeavors by corporate overlords. At least Tron has a cult following; I imagine it’s mostly people who saw it as children when it came out, and are blinded by nostalgia. I’m not sure Speed Racer will ever enjoy the same kind of niche reverence. Perhaps there’s a group of kids today who will revere it as adult geeks 20 years from now. I shudder at the thought of it. Tron Legacy will most likely have the same result. Very, very pretty to look at. Not much in the way of substance. I am open to other possibilities. Having Flynn become the new MCP, as suggested in the trailer, is a logical next step for the story, but maybe they have somewhere interesting to take it.

And then point at Steam.

[Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia] noted that GameStop’s management “has been monitoring and studying the capabilities of digital downloading and its potential adoption over the last several years” and they’ve recently “conducted the most thorough study to-date on its capability.” The study provided the following key takeaways (as outlined by Bhatia):

• An addressable market (due to technology rollout) will not exist until 2014 – at that time approximately 25% of population will have access to the technology required to download full games.
• Users would still face issues of price (could cost ~$100/month) and storage capacity.
• Consumers are willing to pay ~$39 for downloadable game so publishers will be less incentivized than some in the industry think.

Source: “GameStop Says Addressable Market for Digital Distribution Won’t Exist Until 2014″, IndustryGamers, 6/19/2009

How could the “most thorough study to-date” on digital distribution of games conclude that there’s no market for it until 2014? There’s a market for it now. I don’t know a single PC gamer who hasn’t bought a game on Steam. Not a single one. Digital distribution is here already. Sure, the consoles are lagging behind as usual, with plenty of smaller, arcade-style titles available for download but very few AAA titles yet. To think that a majority of 360/PS3 games going digital distro is five years off, however, is just crazy. In five years, the market will cannibalize retail. If GameStop treats this change like they’re safe for the next five years, they’re toast. They’re probably toast anyway, but they’re hastening their own demise.

Only 25% of the population will have the tech required for digital distribution, in 2014, because it’s being rolled out? Broadband penetration in the U.S. is 60% today. Guess what? If you’ve got a broadband connection, you can download a full game. It’ll take a few hours, maybe, depending on the game, but you can do it, and many PC gamers do on a regular basis without finding it too much of an inconvenience. Faster connections will only make it easier and explode the market. Again, if you’re a brick-and-mortar outfit and you’re waiting for that point before you start changing your strategy, you’ve already lost.

Finally, storage capacity is definitely a concern with one console—the Xbox 360—but the PS3 is designed with a user-replaceable, standard laptop hard drive, and obviously a PC user can upgrade their hardware anytime they want. You can get a 500GB laptop hard drive for about $100, and a terabyte desktop hard drive for the same price. Storage capacity is hardly a significant roadblock.

Digital distribution is already making waves on the PC. The PSP is set to go all-download this fall. The PS3 will likely follow suit before 2014. And GameStop is going to be in serious trouble. Good riddance to them. Who ever liked going in there and getting hassled by the employees about reserving games or upselling crap like strategy guides and magazine subscriptons anyway?

The Film: Watchmen (2009)

Director: Zack Snyder (Dawn of the Dead, 300)

Synopsis: Deconstruction of traditional superhero stories and thesis on human nature, set in alternate-history 1985.

Warning: Spoilers ahead.

To begin, I should note that I’ve never read Watchmen. Therefore I approach this film as if it were original—because it is, to me—and I won’t be speaking to its strengths or weaknesses as an adaptation of the source material. It’s clear, however, that there is material missing here, given the frantic, often disjointed pacing and announcement (already) of a coming Director’s Cut. Frankly, I can’t wait. The theatrical cut of Watchmen is a treat, the capstone on a decade of resurgent superhero films.

Read the rest of this entry »

While in captivity, werewolves are forced to undergo yearly medical exams.

The Film: Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009)

Director: Patrick Tatopoulos

Synopsis: (Spartacus + Romeo & Juliet) * (vampires + werewolves) + (½ * budget) = movie

This is a movie that was slightly unintelligible to me, because I haven’t seen the first Underworld and I don’t remember the second one. It begins with a brief voiceover just so you’re not totally lost, but for the most part assumes you’ve seen the previous films and are watching this prequel because you want to see the backstory fleshed out. Naturally, I can’t comment on whether it succeeded at that, but I can tell you that it more or less succeeds as a weekend afternoon B-movie. That’s not to say that it’s an especially good movie. You could easily sit in the theater with a Moleskine notebook and jot down a few pages’ worth of bad lines, nonsensical moments, plot holes, and so on. The gist is that Middle Ages vampires hold “lycans”—that’s werewolves—in slavery, with spiked metal collars that would impale them if they tried to shift. A fine plan—except that they’ve allowed Lucien, the first of this breed of lycans who can control when they shapeshift, and who they’re aware has incredible fighting prowess in human form, to learn to work with metal.

He makes a key.

Truly, this belongs among the annals of Great Moments in Supervillainry. In fact, Lucien uses a key to remove his collar three or four times during the film. At some point you’d think the vampires would just replace the collar with one that has no lock, and must be cut off to be removed. It’s not like they plan on ever releasing him anyway, right? So what we end up with here is a literal scrappy underdog story—call it Diet Spartacus—with Lucien eventually passing keys around and inciting a revolt. The werewolf uprising comes entirely because the vampires enslaved them and forced them into hard labor; many scenes of Lucien and other werewolves getting whipped are presented, but there’s never any deeper contrast of the two groups or of ideology. I’m not saying that enslavement is insufficient justification for a group to rise up against their oppressors; but Rise of the Lycans never makes an effort to reach any further for insight or allegory when the opportunities were clearly present. That’s not a travesty—this is just a B-movie, after all—but it’s the case nonetheless.

Arwen rea—erm, Sonja—readies her sword.

Ah, but of course, no Underworld film would be complete without Kate Beckinsale, right? Or, in this case, a vaguely Kate Beckinsale-esque female vampire played by Rhona Mitra. Most of the actors’ performances are passable, even surprisingly good at times (for a B-movie). While there were certainly some cheesy moments courtesy of the script, there were only a couple of times in Lycans’ compact 92-minute running time that I found myself rolling my eyes. No Oscars will be won here but I’ll say that on the whole, the cast was better than I expected. Bruce Nighy has a tendency to start chomping on the scenery a bit, but even he has some pretty good moments. Mitra, however, spends most of the movie looking bored, a sentiment I occasionally shared, so I can’t blame her.

With Rhona Mitra’s vampire heroine Sonja running around in Hollywood faux-medieval armor, and Lucien the werewolf taking center stage in the uprising plot, the stage is set for a riff on Romeo & Juliet, and they waste no time in getting to a steamy vampire-on-werewolf sex scene early in the film, which left me a little puzzled. It raises some obvious questions, which are further reinforced at multiple points later in the film when characters express shock at Sonja consorting with “an animal” or “a beast.” It’s really bizzare, and that’s all I’m gonna say on that.

I have to concede that Underworld: Rise of the Lycans surprised me and kept me mildly entertained for most of its running time, with occasionally earnest performances and some decent action scenes, given its relatively low budget. Room for improvement abounds in all areas—it certainly shows that you get what you pay for these days with CGI—and I doubt this is a film I’ll ever return to, but if you’ve got nothing better to do on a Saturday afternoon, there are worse ways to kill a couple of hours.

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.

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.)

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.