Random memory #1

One of my earliest memories of Video Games

The earliest memory I have cemented into my brain of gaming is something I'll talk about in a future post, but for now here is the one that I hold dearest to my heart (sad, a gaming memory held so closely with such passion and love.)


So, I'm 8 years old, maybe 7, and I've just returned home from some field trip that my class attended; I remember that as the field trip came to a close the skies grew grey and drizzles of rain began to pidder down onto all the people there; I think it was some kind of -fest, Native American Fest or Indian Summer or something like that; I don't remember.

So, my mom comes to get me from school after the yellow bus returns us and I walk into the house, make my way through the kitchen and dining room to enter the living room and I see that the TV is on, the Super NES sitting in front of it, and on the screen is the screen that you see in the first Mortal Kombat game when you're moving from one enemy to the next; I don't remember what character he was at, but my dad had gone out to rent it and was playing as a fellow I would come to know as Sub-Zero.



I don't remember if I took over or if I waited for him to come back from the bathroom, everything after that was a haze of blood (well, not any blood, there was no blood in the SNES version, fucking Nintendo) and death and kicking and punching and gloyven!....ahem, anyways, thus was the beginning of a long, long love affair with a series that change what kind of content could be found in a game; no Mortal Kombat, no Grand Theft Auto, boys and girls.....think about it.

YAY MORE CRITERION RELEASES OF JEAN-LUC GODARD FILMS

Two or Three Things I Know About Her

Made in USA

Haven't seen either of these yet, so I'm excited for their release; also pretty excited for the Human Condition, Last Year at Marienbad and the Imamura boxset.

Laid to Rest (2009)

A big breasted woman, severely lacking in any form of intelligence, is running from a masked killer who will do anything to see her dead, including all of those who get in his way; sound familiar? Of course it does, but a tired, boring and predictable plot can still churn out a good film. Unfortunately that wasn't the case here.

I was exposed to the film due to flipping through a copy of the severely overpriced Horror mag. Rue Morgue (a magazine that's pretty inaccurate and unreliable when it comes to recommendations and the accolades they hand out, but, whatever, I was looking for something to watch.)

Well, I watched it; sat through the whole thing and when it was over I felt triumphant like a little kid who just had 4 teeth pulled without wincing once; yes, it's that bad and unbearable.



Chrome Skull was a decent idea, but was poorly executed, one of the main points of proof that the film just wants to gore you to death before it tries to either interest or entertain you. It's supposed to be a throwback (but what isn't nowadays?) to the "old school" films like Maniac (which I think is a near masterpiece), but unlike Maniac there's no real investing in any of the characters like you do with Joe Spinell's warped sociopath. There's just a dude in a mask and some broad running and some other dudes trying to help her.

The funniest part about the whole film isn't in the film, it's in the "Making of..." featurette where the director attempts to bring some sort of intellectual justification to his schlock; "oh, the camera on his shoulder represents our dependence on technology." at that point both my girlfriend and I laughed like two wild Hyenas, truly pathetic.

My idea in regards to gore is that it's supposed to effect you; doesn't happen here, it's too obvious, too plastic and fake (now, you can call me out on Maniac which doesn't have the BEST effects, but you have to take it for the time that it was made in.) so, there's another notch on the belt of flaws in this film.

Lately a lot, not all, "horror" films are all about simply satiating gorehound's hungers; well, they've all (Laid to Rest, Inside, Frontier(s), High Tension) failed in my eyes; gore is fine when applied correctly (like Audition or Dead Alive) but this recent wave is just far too full of cro-magnons.

GRADE: F

Slumdog Millionaire (2008, Danny Boyle)

Winner of 8 Oscars at the 2009 ceremony, Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire deserved not only none of the awards it received but also none of the tons of accolades that rained down upon it.

It won best picture, something that the Academy tends to fall flat on their face in regards to handing the award out to films that do not deserve any kind of recognition; they saved a little face last year with No Country For Old Men, but now their hands are stuck in the cookie jar, and this cookie jar is filled with shit and menstrual blood. The film that should have been given the award, but wasn't even nominated, was:

But personal preferences aside, Slumdog is still a retched pile of cinema, on par with E.T. or Fight Club. It's pandering to the audience is so sickening that it makes Amelie look subtle and intelligent; it's editing and cinematography are so lazy and obvious that it's downright offensive; and let's talk about the subtitles; why are they done the way they were done? More pandering to the idiot masses who hate to look down a bit at the screen to read what was just said in a language they didn't understand, so hey, put it in the shot.

Boyle is a hit and miss film maker, there's no question about it; his claim to fame, more or less, was Trainspotting, which is a forgettable film full of cliche and mundane characters; 28 Days Later works, but only to an extent, and is nowhere near a masterpiece. Everything else the man's done has been completely forgettable and bland; he's, in a sense, Britian's Spielberg; predictable, safe, pandering and heartless cinema for the award shows; look at something so coated in sweet like Millions for more obvious proof that the man should be blacklisted from film making.

More on the film; the characters are people I could never care about at all in any way, shape or form whatsoever. You're supposed to cheer for Jamal, but all the time I never felt like I was on his side, or even remotely sympathetic towards him, the only thing I cheered for was when the film ended.

I'd write more, but what's the use going on and on about a film you loathe?

GRADE: F

The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008, Scott Derrickson)

More like The Day My Asshole Bled From Boredom

Grade: F

Observe and Report (2009, Jody Hill)

So many will hate it, so few will love it, and even less will truly get it:

There truly is nothing better than going into a film and getting something that you did not expect. I know, at the risk of sounding pompous, that I am among the few Americans who enjoy this, but it's just a fact; and Observe and Report is exactly the opposite of everything most people will expect going into it.

Observe and Report could very well be Seth Rogen's "the Cable Guy", meaning that it could possibly make a fairly big, dark dent in his career for the time being, but in years to pass people will see it for what it truly is; it's not a comedy in the sense of Knocked-Up or the 40 Year Old Virgin, this is more on par with something Todd Solondz, think Happiness: a film filled to the brim with unlikeable characters, would do if he wasn't so neurotic.

I bring up Carrey's black sheep of a film because it's basically the exact same set up; Rogen is America's new favorite goofball / sweetie pie / whatever, the film is, more or less, being advertised as a simple comedy; he plays a mall security cop who thinks he's going to save the world, tee hee hee hee, right? Wrong.

It's a dark film, and those going in with expectations of a few crotch jokes won't be pleased with some of the content and the manner they perceive it to be shown in; one scene, between Rogen and Faris in particular has garnered some attention for it's presentation as being comedic when in fact it isn't at all, but what can you expect from the MPAA & other assorted moral do gooders.

Rogen's character is interesting because of his actions, his beliefs; he's a funny guy, but his character is far from funny. A man, obviously, suffering from delusion and some degree of narcissism, thinks that he knows what is right and only his idea of right is the right one (that's a lot of rights, 'ey?) His actions will make most cringe, and his ideas and, most of all, dreams will make others unbearably uncomfortable, but that is where the genius of the film is. You can identify with Rogen's character, but why do you? Why don't you? It's a comedic film that expects viewers to think; there in lay the problem.

The comedy of the film isn't blatant and it's not served to you on a platter in a veil of obviousness; I can't quite grasp how to describe the comedy of the film. There are laughs, no doubt about it, but it's more about the character that Rogen plays than about getting you to laugh; and if it does get you to laugh you usually end up questioning exactly why you would laugh at that circumstance.

It presents scenarios that could be interpreted as either disturbing or funny, it mixes drama and comedy with ease, but, unfortunately it will just go over most people's heads.

GRADE: A

The War Zone (1999, Tim Roth)

"you've got some of Dad's lovejuice on your chin, brother."

My first review on my first blog; well, well, well. It's an unfortunate circumstance that it can't be for a film that absolutely blew me away or a film that's long been a strong favorite of mine. No, instead it's dedicated to a film that simply left me thinking "Meh; predictable and not particularly convincing incest story that was supposed to disturb me but instead almost put me to sleep."

Tim Roth, more notably known for his acting than his directing (which he's only attempted once, with this film) does a fairly good job with the material, but this hand cannot save this film from being mundane and obvious.

The main problem that I had with The War Zone was that in order to feel repelled, to feel absolutely disgusted by part of the story, that of incest & child abuse, I need to feel like the actors, none of whom are actually related, are really a family. Unfortunately, none of the actors involved were capable of pulling this off; in one of the most pivotal scenes all I could think to myself was not "oh, this is sick and repulsive" but instead "oh, ok, that's Ray Winstone pretending to have sex with some actress who is pretending to be his daughter."

The performances, for the most part, were top notch (which I know seems to contradict my previous statement that they didn't seem like a family; well, they didn't but the individual performances were admirable) save for the son, Tom; the actor was so unbearably bad that I found myself frustrated with his inability to make the character seem like something more than someone who goes from point A to point B. The idea of non-acting, as is most prevalent in the work of Bresson, is a spectacle to behold when done by the right model in the hands of a capable director. I understand he's depressed and feels alienated, but I don't care. I could not sympathize with him or even objectively observe him with any kind of compassion.

All in all, not a horrible film, but pretty forgettable and, worst of all, obvious.

GRADE: C -