This is a roundup of stuff I didn't write about during 2012. Between the first and second part of the year, I started cataloging and writing (sometimes incredibly slowly) about pretty much all the movies and comics I saw. I barely read any books, but the few I did are on here. I didn't write much about video games besides Mass Effect 3 last year, so that's what a big chunk of this is. I prefer doing them one at a time rather than a big round up like this, but this will allow me to purge everything. I still have a big backlog of stuff to post, which is all done on my tumblr now. This was way too big, so I put it here. Separate wrestling post to possibly follow. Personal stuff is at the end, beware.
Skyrim developed by Bethesda Game Studios - The first time I'd ever played an Elder Scrolls game or really any of the huge open world RPGs Bethesda makes, not counting about five minutes with Fallout 3. I enjoyed it through some major frustration spells. I should mention I only played for about 30 hours (yes, ONLY 30 hours), during which I barely advanced the main story. The frustration largely stems from a realization that a friend made to me about how I play games. I am a pseudo-perfectionist when it comes to games. I want to do everything possible in them, but only up to a point. I've never made it through a sandbox game, because there's often so much to do I get overwhelmed. Skyrim is like this to a preposterous degree. Where before there were multiple missions and activities in games like GTA or Red Dead Redemption, here there is a gigantic map that must be navigated, at least initially, on foot, with omnipresent substantial things to do everywhere you turn. It intimidated me to a point where I had to stop playing. That's a shame, because everything here is quite nice. The scope is nuts, the graphics are gorgeous, and the exploration is part of the fun, even for an irritable OCD doofus like me. I had some moments unlike any I've ever had in video games. There are tough decisions to make in this game, for which there is no corresponding metric or rating that leads to any sort of known reward at least. That leads your decisions to carry weight that they don't in other games that try the alignment mechanic. I had a guy who was hunting shoot an arrow past me at an animal as I was coming into a clearing, and thinking he was attacking me, I charged and killed him immediately, not realizing the mistake until afterwards, which is simulation of a type I've never had in a game. Lastly, I once marveled at the beauty of the landscape near a waterfall for so long, I barely had time to react when a chameleon-type enemy walked right out of the trees and almost killed me. I also was fascinated how the game rarely takes control away from you. There are no cutscenes or cinematics. It reminds me of the Half-Life games in that sense. The game does all storytelling through standard player perspective. It's not the greatest thing ever, it leads to glitches, all kinds of unintentional hilarity, and it's almost impossible to get any storytelling or emotional weight through, but I dunno. It kind of reinforces the control you have and the immersion level. On the other hand, they hired maybe three voice actors for the whole game? Maybe having everyone talk is not the way to go, because immersion gets immolated. And the combat is just not for me, pausing to load in setups and configurations and spam items from inventory. I guess I just like games where I press a button and win. Inventory management is tedious, though I know a lot of people feel different. I'm just not into RPGs anymore. Getting old and cranky without my beat up EGM with the FF7 walkthrough I read a million times before I ever played the game.
Arkham City developed by Rocksteady Studios - I really like these Batman games made by Rocksteady. The whole environment aspect and how they treat the story and characters is odd, though. They want to retain the goofy aspect by including everything about Batman they can, but then they try a lot of stuff to try and seem edgy and it comes off painfully childish and bad (kind of like those Nolan movies, running away). So just forget the story. An open world game that focuses on hand-to-hand combat lets them refine that system to a point where I just wanted to fight huge groups of enemies repeatedly. Whoever designed the combat for this deserves some recognition. You feel so powerful, but you're also quite vulnerable and if you start getting overconfident or lackadaisical, you end up getting beat down fast. It's easy to get the hang of and not too difficult to get very good at, but that makes you really want to be perfect and never be hit while growing your combo meter ever higher, so there's always a good challenge while not being overbearing. There are enough new wrinkles added on to the basic template of Arkham Asylum, and the massive open areas let them create all kinds of setpieces and optional objectives that can be tackled from a variety of angles. Catwoman and Robin mix things up enough without having to relearn the entire system, and there is tons of replay through the challenges and campaign modes. I very well might play this one on the harder difficulty, and I don't replay many games.
Bastion developed by Supergiant Games - A fun little action RPG. A mildly intriguing story grafted onto the idea of the levels constantly revealed around you and a narrator that tells the story depending on how you perform. If you wreck house, he tells you you're a house wrecker. If you barely pull it off, he tells you you're a barely puller-offer. The novelty wears off pretty quick, and it seems to disappear in the middle of the game if I remember correctly, but the first few times it makes you set up and take notice. The combat is fun, you can take any of the two weapons you've unlocked (one melee, one ranged) into a mission with you. They're balanced well and totally different, so while you can probably stick with the first two, it's a lot of fun to figure out good combinations and make yourself change your play style and therefore think about how other combinations would work. Good template for getting your money's worth from an Arcade title (I paid half-price, but it's worth $15).
The Orange Box developed by Valve - I picked this up for cheap and played through everything again. I had never beaten Half Life 2: Episode 2 because the ending had me so frustrated I gave up to save years of my life. I managed to get through it this time by micromanaging and saving practically every 20 seconds. Half Life 2 is still one of my favorite games ever. The music cues are so good throughout those games. That's what I took away this time. The levels are so well designed, and the gravity gun is still amazing years later. I wish I had a good PC so I could play that Black Mesa remake of the first one.
The Witcher 2 developed by CD Projekt RED - I might get back to this one day. My growing distaste for RPGs reared up again sometimes. Skyrim plants you in a word where tons of stuff is happening and has happened, but it's okay if you don't give a shit. This game is the same, except the game makes you care, whether you really want to or not. It reminds me some of Game of Thrones, but with a heavier focus on magic. It's all about that "Adult Fantasy" nonsense, which can go either way. It's not designed like a standard game, especially at first, which is both good and bad. Real-time combat with a power wheel like Mass Effect, but you can't use potions or items in combat, which is a twist that makes you think. Instead, you prepare with potions and things ahead of time and they last a set period of time. It leads to some poor planning and a lot of deaths and then planning correctly. A common complaint I've heard is that the game is brutally difficult in the prologue, when you're supposed to be learning, which I will vouch for. I just rented this, and by the time I had the difficulty and combat figured out I had to return it. Also like Skyrim, tough choices, and some are timed, which is a neat feature that makes sense. Great graphics, and the colors? Wow, this game is vibrant and beautiful, like a French BD album. Stupid quick time events. Can we put a moratorium on those now? I liked God of War a lot too, but that wasn't the main reason why. Inventory management GAH! Did I mention how pretty this game is? Because wow it looks great, and I wasn't even playing it on PC.
Bioshock 2 developed by 2K Games - I don't even rememer if I played this during 2012 or not. I think I started it in 2011. Should be Bioshock 1.5. Doesn't really advance or live up to the massive world building of the original. Playing as the Big Daddy isn't any different from being a guy, which is weird. If that was their sell, they missed big time. The story is all about the dangers of collectivism rather than objectivism and gets nowhere near the interesting dynamics of the first one (and I hate both beliefs). Still, you know what? I paid eight dollars for this and had a good time playing it. I like the customization, I love the world, and the design of Rapture is still a highlight. If I had to pick, I'd choose the first one, but that doesn't mean this is completely without merit.
Borderlands 2 developed by Gearbox Software - Still in the early stages of this. It's fun like the first one. They tried to add in some more story, but thankfully you can still ignore it and just shoot things with your friends. The humor overload is back, it works most of the time. You can now pick up things by walking over them. And really...that's about it as far as improvements. The graphics are about the same. There's still the weird difficulty spikes. The formula isn't stale yet, but they might want to mix it up some next time.
Dredd directed by Pete Travis - I didn't get to see this in 3D, which makes the parts that were shot to use that technology a bit...odd, I guess? How about mundane in a peculiar way? It seems dumb to think of this as a fun movie, but I feel that way. It's a buddy cop movie that nails how the humor of Dredd and his world is so double-sided. This is not the Dredd that makes us think while thrilling the shit out of us. In fact, if you're a hardcore Dredd purist, there are plenty of bones to pick here. But forget those people, because Karl Urban is awesome and Judge Anderson is written so much better than you would expect for a movie of this ilk. The conviction is there in how Dredd acts and thinks, and I thought the part with the corrupt Judges and how he talks to them was pointedly hilarious and the film's real point of satire. And lots of extreme violence. Thank God. And creator credits in huge letters first thing in the credits.
The Raid: Redemption directed by Gareth Evans - Whoa this is about as good as they come. It's like Tony Jaa movies if they were actually good movies and not just choreography and a really great tracking shot every now and then. The action in this is so brutal and so well captured. It's funny to remember the moment in time years back when martial arts movies were proclaiming "NO WIRES" and showing injury reels in their special features. All that's here, but there's no point in proclaiming or showing anything besides what's happening on screen, because you can infer everything just from that. Eventually it's just one man who can function stripped of everything except his limbs, a desire to survive and return home to his pregnant wife, and something else you don't find out about until deep in the movie. But none of this takes precedence or gets bludgeoned into you with melodramatic sequences that go off the rail before they even get started. Instead, it's all tied to immediate and visceral action. We get started off with guns and explosions, but then the shootouts get tossed in favor of guys packed into sardine cans of rooms and hallways beating the shit out of each other, the building a gigantic level that must be cleansed. The characters are there just enough to where we know them when we are supposed to and nothing more. It's a mix that works so well and seems so simple you wonder why they all aren't like this. But even if they were, this one would still be special. Please watch this.
The Grey directed by Joe Carnahan - Liam Neeson in a movie that uses him to his fullest. The plane crash sequence is the most terrifying thing I've seen in a theater and a valid example of why the theater experience can be unrivaled. The movie hits the beats that you expect, but then turns them against you, revealing what you really knew but didn't want to believe. Memory, faith, fate, perseverance, and man's relationship to nature all get examined in such a way that leads you to the realization of how the wolves in this movie are just a distraction, a metaphor for life itself and it's savage fatality. Through it all, a cast of characters are portrayed as humanly realistic, never more so than with their mortality. They do all they can with what little they have, rising to heights we as the audience expect, only for the results to not be enough. The film reverses expectations, but never just for a cheap hit. Neeson's survivalist leader character is the apex, the best available, but his successes only lead to failures and then there's nothing left to succeed at. And then when he breaks, well, you'll know a captivating performance, a man who is pouring his soul out while claiming to be acting.
Stray Dog directed by Akira Kurosawa - This gets a bit too pointed with "post-war" young male angst, but not surprisingly, it has some amazing shots and Mifune and Shimura are so good, who cares?
High and Low directed by Akira Kurosawa - It's a siege film where no one is directly coming and the protagonists can't defend themselves. This is probably the worst comparison in history, but the focus on the single set of the house reminds me of Dial M for Murder. I'm sure there are a million other, better examples, but I've only watched about two movies in my life. This movie is written well and shot incredibly. When the addict slowly pulls her hand into frame onto a structure to pull her body up into the frame, while the antagonist looks on in the background, unflinching? Chills. And the final shot of this movie, with it's booming anti-climax, Mifune's reflection in the metal screen after he gets nothing and everything from the guy tormenting him for the whole movie? Wow. I think this also might be a template for people who want to write films that have social commentary but aren't terrible.
LA Confidential by James Ellroy - Ellroy firing on all cylinders. I love the guy so much, he's my favorite author ever. This may not be his best, but it's so good, who cares? He even busts out some amazing action sequences, which I don't recall from any of the previous LA books or the Underworld Trilogy.
Neuromancer by William Gibson - Re-read. Gibson gets environment so right in these books. Some of the later cyberpunk stuff is so concerned with tech deluges that it all becomes pointless. Gibson never falls for that. You could argue that later authors are just building upon what he started, and that's fair, but his restraint here is commendable. Peter Rivera...goodness what a character. The fragility of real memory and synthetic memory, technical oligarchy, societal replacement and readjustment, and the military-industrial complex are all examined without preaching, without ever replacing the story and without removing Gibson's young voice, equally confident and unsure, a young kid doing the work and putting the gauntlet down. Corto relapsing into incoherence is such a horrifying and real event, and the sequence with Case inside the AI speaks to the the question of whether or not reality is worse off than one we construct favorably for ourselves. Outstanding.
Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein - The thing I despised the most all year. Disappointing because the first and last chapters are excellent sci-fi war writing. Everything in between is social and political wish-fulfillment garbage that is terrible not because of the belief, but because that's literally all it is. Fiction that wants to be non-fiction so bad that it eclipses everything else that could be interesting or entertaining. "I want to write about how crappy the world is but how much potential the future has for society." If this wasn't so few pages I wouldn't have gotten through it. When I finished it, I swore I would never read another Heinlein book again, but now I kind of want to, just to see if they're all like this, because I hate myself.
Star Slammers by Walt Simonson - Track this down for the part where Simonson uses the mentally-linked nature of the protagonists to overlay grids onto pages that have no panels but still have separate images. Best way to show hive mind and shared consciousness on a comics page. Simonson is your new God.
The Eyes of the Cat by Moebius and Alejandro Jodorowsky - Moebius is better than your favorite artist. Jodorowsky can't work family into this, which is a shame, but Moebius guys. Moebius.
Grandville by Bryan Talbot - Talbot somehow makes washed out computer coloring look good and delivers a ripping counter-factual anthropomorphic beatdown. I need to get the rest of these.
Deathzone! by Michel Fiffe - Fiffe pores his love onto the pages of this bootleg Suicide Squad comic. The art is so attractive, it's easy to gloss over how he's mixing color, layout, design, and various lines to create a comic that you can't help but cherish. He transmutes his adoration into a comic and imbues it with contagion of the finest kind. Best final panel of any comic last year by light years.
Weather Systems by Anathema - Favorite album of the year, nothing else is even close. Absolutely beautiful. It's not perfect because the last track lapses too much into some random dude talking about his out of body experience and, well, I just don't care. Sorry man, you're interrupting the good stuff, but at least they threw it on at the end. The rest is an album of songs that slowly build and build until they explode. Anathema gets recognition in metal circles because of their death/doom roots, but they have maintained a metal attitude despite their almost total retreat from heavy guitars and growls. They still want to take your head off, just in a mellow and melodic way, and then gracefully return su cabeza onto your body. They remind me of Katatonia if they were much more progressive, with the ability to write songs that are structurally different while maintaining a core sound. Nothing flows the same, but it all melds together seamlessly. Any of these songs can be heard independently and have incredible effect, but played together they resonate equally. Discovering this album and band was similar to finding Porcupine Tree, Opeth, and Cormorant. Bands that play music in I always wanted to hear, that I assumed on one would made. I'm glad to have been proven wrong again.
March of Progress by Threshold - Another new discovery, and a lesser experience like the one with Anathema. Both bands have been around for years and have went through tonal changes. Threshold is progressive metal that is reigned in. They're Porcupine Tree if they were heavy all the time or OSI if they were less avant-garde. They sound insanely mainstream but you'd never hear them on the radio or in any popular music discussion. They keyboards are a massive part of the sound, but they integrate rather than dominate. They show off, but not like Dream Theater or Fates Warning. They write big goofy choruses that you singalong to. They make the music I would if I could.
Personal by Cletus Van Damme - 2012 was okay. It didn't suck as bad as 2011, but it wasn't as good as 2010. All other years are meaningless, sure, why not? Mom got cancer and then beat the shit out of it, which was a harrowing process but we really got off easy compared to what so many others go through. There were few complications and she's doing well. The worst part was probably our dog getting killed by a pitbull the day she was able to finally be around him after she got out of the hospital. Pitbulls suck, I don't care about your facts that prove otherwise. Almost flipped a tractor and died. Turned down a graduate assistantship position and decided not to go back to grad school at Murray State. I want to be 100% if I go back that it's what I want to do, but I won't quit after I start, so I had a tough decision to make. I moved to Nashville instead and then back to Paducah in three months. Never felt comfortable where I was living, never found a job better than the one I thankfully was able to come back to, and the location wasn't rewarding enough to make me want to stick it out. Still need to get out of the basement. It sucks ass in the winter. Mom and dad are getting older and like having me around, but I can't stay here forever. Started shaving my head so I wouldn't look like a methhead troglodyte. Now I'm just a troglodyte. No major setbacks, but no major progress. Yikes.
Monday, January 14, 2013
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
RAW is Cape Girardeau
So Friday afternoon I roll out of K-9 land for the last time to be joined by B and CDubTDub for a trip to the Raw SuperShow in Cape Girardeau. After two minutes of trying to get my dog out of the car (WOOF WOOF WOOF), we get on the road. Cape Girardeau is about an hour and half away and I haven't been there in over ten years, so we're depending on GPS/signs. We end up taking a wrong turn in a small town and onto a "highway", which was one of the worst roads I've ever been on in my life. It was paved through an insane route, hills that would bottom out so low the front of my car would scrape the road, no yellow line needed because it wasn't wide enough for two cars, and pavement so splotchy and uneven it had to have been dropped in Tetris-style over the course of centuries. I'm used to driving in sparsely populated areas, but this was cropland and cropland only. At the start we ran into some people riding their bikes and asked if we could get to Cape Girardeau this way, and he assured us we were going to the right way. I appreciate the help, but a better response would have been, "Yes, but you don't want to" or "Get back on the road you were on dumbass". Thankfully I had CDubTDub to tell me about the signs he was going to make but couldn't because all he could find was cardboard to write on. The highlight was one for Eve, who was not even announced for the show, that read, "Eve, you've found your Adam." If only we had time to stop by Wal-Mart to grab some poster board.
We finally get off the highway of doom and get to Cape Girardeau. I get the tickets, we get in line and move in no problem, I was pretty surprised at how seamless the whole process was. Here is where we were sitting:
(The few photos in this report are awful. B had a proper camera so his are much better, but I just had my phone, so apologies.)
I hold the seats down while B checks out the merch stand and CDubTDub pulls two $5 Miller Lite drafts. They dim the lights, everybody goes nuts and then Justin Roberts comes out. I guess this is as good a time as any to mention this is the third live wrestling event I've attended and the first WWE show. So I didn't know what to expect, more on that later. I bring that up to note that I was surprised Roberts was there. I wasn't expecting a local guy, but I figured they had somebody else to run everybody out that they hauled around with them. In my feeble brain, Justin Roberts is too Hollywood for house shows, apparently. He starts with the obligatory hype stuff, then we get to the first match. Unknown moment #2: I wasn't sure who was going to be here outside of the big names. The WWE page and the event page conflicted on the lineup, with the tantalizing "And Many More" listed at the bottom. I knew Daniel Bryan had been removed from the card earlier, which was a bummer as he's the guy that got me back into wrestling and is a demi-god. Other people like Sin Cara, The Miz, Santino, and Rey Mysterio were no-shows also (I know Mysterio had a concussion, and the others I don't feel strongly about either way). So I'm sort of excited/worried to see who is coming out.
Tensai gets announced and lumbers down to the ring, Sakomoto not in tow. He's fine, but didn't get much of a reaction. Unknown moment #3: I wasn't sure how the chants and crowd participation would work at a house show. There wasn't much outside the local wrestling norm, which was kind of disappointing, as I really wanted to get in on the "CENA SUCKS!" chant, but you can't win em' all. I say that to note there was no "Albert!" chant. Tyson Kidd gets announced as his opponent. Kidd has charm, I'll say that, he's exuberant as hell. I'm sure he's technically damn good, but I don't know because he's never shown. Tensai controls the whole match except for spurts, where Kidd gets to show off his agility. It ends just like their Raw match, Tensai misses and Kidd rolls him up for the 3 count and hauls ass to the back. Tensai gets on the mic and starts screaming about how nobody can beat him twice, the loss was a fluke, and he wants anyone in the back to come out. I still am pissed my dreams were crushed and Carlito was nowhere to be found. Anyway, some guy, who I have to apologize to because I don't remember his name, comes out. I've never seen him before, but he is the WWE's type to a hilt. He's built like Cena on roids, and his gimmick is he chants "WOOF" (see, my dog wanted to go for a reason). So uhh...yeah, that's it. I don't remember much about what happened, he managed to get Tensai to the ground after a hundred clotheslines and then hit a move for the finish. This made me think we might see more developmental guys from FCW or something, but he was the only one. (After some research, I found him: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ettore_Ewen).
An aside: This report was written for one person, who was unfortunately unable to attend because he's got to work to get hurt. As such, after each match I will be updating a running tally for the number of times "TO THE TOP!" was screamed during each match.
TO THE TOP TALLY: 1 (Tyson Kidd)
The next match is announced and the recently returned David Otunga rolls out. He does his poses in the ring, which goes on way too long. Finally his opponent gets announced and it's Alex Riley. I've seen Otunga in the ring maybe once and the only thing I know about Riley is the commentators basically relegated him to dogshit before he rolled up Dolph Ziggler in that awesome Jericho moment on Raw a few weeks back. Otunga controls the action and does poses after every...single...move. This one dragged pretty bad, though it did get the crowd on Riley's side pretty well. Unfortunately, the end was anti-climactic, as Riley just hit a clothesline off the top and got the pin after being behind the whole time. I'm assuming Otunga is a bit rusty, as there was one point where Riley hit an arm toss and Otunga was not nearly close enough and had to compensate by launching himself into Riley's arm as it was coming down. I bring up botches because I am a heartless douchebag writing this shit on the internet.
TO THE TOP TALLY: 2 (Alex Riley)
We got some RawActive stuff next, to decide if the tag match would be 2 out of 3 falls or a street fight. Then we got the Divas match, with Aksana coming out first. This is a good time to point out that CDubTDub was a big, big fan of Aksana, and everybody in close to a twenty row radius knew he was a fan. Layla comes out next and gets a big reaction and puts one right on some guy in the front row B knows. I wish I was him. Unknown moment #4: Something I had heard (or thought I heard, who knows) about house shows was that they were more off-the-cuff, since nobody really thinks the belts are going to change hands in the gymnasium of the Redhawks of Southeast Missouri State. Unfortunately this was not the case, which I gathered at least a bit from the announcement that the main event would be for the title, but I was hoping everything else would be a little bit crazier, a good incentive to go to these things since they don't have to worry about the storyline and can make awesome/ridiculous matches. Oh well. So we know Layla is going to win, but at least the match can be good right? Hell, it's not tough to figure out whose going to win in wrestling sometimes. Unfortunately, if Aksana can wrestle, she didn't show it tonight. Maybe she's still getting there or they just didn't get it going in the match. Either way, this whole match was Layla trying every different pinning maneuver on Earth, before Aksana turtled on her knees and Layla spanked her. Aksana's whole offense was hair grabs and a few kicks. Layla hit her with a falling neck breaker for the pin.
TO THE TOP TALLY: 2
The tag match was up next, and the decision shockingly came back that the fans had voted for a Street Fight. I was curious to see what they would be able to do with that in the limited format they had. Turns out not much, they had a kendo stick with a few smacks. 2 out of 3 falls would have been more interesting, but what real wrasslin' fan is going to vote for that garbage? The Prime Time Players have a universal pre-cut promo that airs where they go to the heel well and talk about how much of a dump "this town" their in is, which predictably gets the crowd against them. R-Truth comes out to his own intro, which I had never heard and gets the crowd fired up, Kofi comes out last. The "Kobe Bryant" chant almost got started going strong, but then petered out. Titus tries to drown out R-Truth's "What's Up?!" chant with his "What's Happening?!" which goes nowhere. R-Truth is in almost the whole match, excluded from Kofi, until near the end when Kofi gets tagged in and starts cleaning house. The momentum reverses and Darren Young gets a cover, Kofi puts his foot on the ropes but Titus throws it off and the Prime Time Players come out on top...UNTIL AJ COMES OUT AND RESTARTS THE MATCH, THIS SHIT IS BONKERS! It's worth noting AJ got a huge pop when she came out, was there for five seconds and then left never to be seen again. Good gig if you can get it. I guess people like more as the GM than I do. Titus and Darren are so distracted that they immediately get hit with big moves and get pinned, putting the titles back with Kofi and R-Truth. Afterwards R-Truth got the crowd to scream in unison at Kofi to believe in Little Jimmy and he bowed to the pressure. That's a gimmick that's really grown on me.
TO THE TOP TALLY: 3 (Kofi Kingston)
The intermission was up next and I noticed that they were showing tweets people had sent about the event. I immediately tweeted, "Where is Heath Slater?" I didn't have time to think about tweeting, "When is the Damien Sandow merch going to start showing up?"
Wade Barrett came out next, I've never seen this guy but have read about him and seen the promos they've been running, so he's getting the ring rust off. He led with a line about how no one had any manners, which helped me to establish him as the heel (sometimes wrestling's simplicity is it's biggest strength) to jeers from the crowd. He said he had went back to England and his fighting roots and was the best fighter ever to step in the ring. CM Punk might let that slide since he didn't use the term wrestler. Curt Hawkins came out as his opponent to a lukewarm reaction even though he was the face. The match itself was pretty forgettable and I hardly remember any of it, the crowd was into this one probably the least. Barrett has a bruiser style and controlled most of it.
TO THE TOP TALLY: 3
Antonio Cesaro came out next with Aksana. This guy is growing on me. I love that he reacts to the What? chants and that "foreign guy who speaks perfect English but can speak other languages" just gets heat out of this world and he's a better wrestler than I'd initially given him credit for. CDubTDub still liked Aksana. His opponent? Zack Ryder, bitches. Long Island Iced Z got a huge pop and the crowd had Ryder chants going throughout the whole match and plenty of Woo Woo Woo action. The match itself was great, it was refreshingly back and forth and both guys had good spots, hell Ryder even got to hit some of his signature moves. I love how dignified Cesaro's elbow drops are, too. Ryder went for his finisher but missed and Cesaro hit the Neutralizer for the pin. The crowd was really into this one.
TO THE TOP TALLY: 3
Next up was the main event. Cena came out first and the place exploded, there would be no "Cena Sucks!" chant tonight. B and CDubTDub go nuts and I remain seated. The non-ring highlight of the night occurred during this part, as CDubTDub decided to accost the woman in front of us, demanding to know why she was not standing up. He overlooked me, as I was not standing up either, but whatever. The woman is taken aback and says, "I don't even watch this!" Her kids were there, so I get it, but she was wearing a current CM Punk shirt, and WWE clothing isn't exactly budget conscious, so who knows. I still got a huge laugh out of that exchange. Next up is Big Show, who gets some good heat and a good laugh from myself when he acts like he's going to throw his beanie into the crowd and instead just dumps it on the floor. CM Punk comes out finally, which gets me out of my seat for the first time all night. If anyone ever needs to blackmail me for any reason, if this event was filmed, acquire the start of his entrance and find the part where I completely mark out and scream "IT'S CLOBBERIN' TIME" in unison with Punk. My travel mates were more conflicted with Punk than I was. The match was an Extreme Rules triple threat. It was a stripped down version of the Summerslam match. Show started the beatdown early until Cena took him out with the steps. Later Show took out Cena and CM Punk got to deliver three straight running knees in the corner. That move never gets old because he can do it so well. Punk whiffed on the follow up bulldog and got choke slammed but Cena stopped the pinfall. Cena hit the Five Knuckle Shuffle but had his AA stopped by Punk, who hit the Savage elbow drop from the top. Cena removed Punk again and hit the AA, but Punk came in with the belt and took out Cena and then pinned the Big Show. Show headed to the back while Punk grabbed a mic and repeated his respect spiel, once again offering a handshake to Cena. Punk had got a big response earlier, but the crowd turned on him big time after the match. Cena considered for a good while and then bluffed the handshake into the AA. He celebrated and then busted out, while Punk eventually limped back to the locker room. B didn't even get to see that part because he was truckin' ass to the merch stand to buy all the Zack Ryder gear. CDubTub decided that however many hundreds of dollars was too much for the replica belt and we rolled out. I was annoyed they didn't have merch from the superstars that weren't there, as I was planning on getting a Dolph Ziggler shirt, but I got to keep my $25.
FINAL TO THE TOP TALLY: 5 (CM Punk x2, because B and I both yelled it at the exact same time without planning it; see part about blackmail above)
We took the highway straight through on the way back and avoided the pathway to hell from earlier. CDubTDub kept us entertained with stories about how strippers have no souls, he really hates one of his brother's friends, and about how his other brother is the cheapest person on Earth.
All in all it was a blast and hopefully we're at Raw in a couple months in Nashville.
We finally get off the highway of doom and get to Cape Girardeau. I get the tickets, we get in line and move in no problem, I was pretty surprised at how seamless the whole process was. Here is where we were sitting:
(The few photos in this report are awful. B had a proper camera so his are much better, but I just had my phone, so apologies.)
I hold the seats down while B checks out the merch stand and CDubTDub pulls two $5 Miller Lite drafts. They dim the lights, everybody goes nuts and then Justin Roberts comes out. I guess this is as good a time as any to mention this is the third live wrestling event I've attended and the first WWE show. So I didn't know what to expect, more on that later. I bring that up to note that I was surprised Roberts was there. I wasn't expecting a local guy, but I figured they had somebody else to run everybody out that they hauled around with them. In my feeble brain, Justin Roberts is too Hollywood for house shows, apparently. He starts with the obligatory hype stuff, then we get to the first match. Unknown moment #2: I wasn't sure who was going to be here outside of the big names. The WWE page and the event page conflicted on the lineup, with the tantalizing "And Many More" listed at the bottom. I knew Daniel Bryan had been removed from the card earlier, which was a bummer as he's the guy that got me back into wrestling and is a demi-god. Other people like Sin Cara, The Miz, Santino, and Rey Mysterio were no-shows also (I know Mysterio had a concussion, and the others I don't feel strongly about either way). So I'm sort of excited/worried to see who is coming out.
Tensai gets announced and lumbers down to the ring, Sakomoto not in tow. He's fine, but didn't get much of a reaction. Unknown moment #3: I wasn't sure how the chants and crowd participation would work at a house show. There wasn't much outside the local wrestling norm, which was kind of disappointing, as I really wanted to get in on the "CENA SUCKS!" chant, but you can't win em' all. I say that to note there was no "Albert!" chant. Tyson Kidd gets announced as his opponent. Kidd has charm, I'll say that, he's exuberant as hell. I'm sure he's technically damn good, but I don't know because he's never shown. Tensai controls the whole match except for spurts, where Kidd gets to show off his agility. It ends just like their Raw match, Tensai misses and Kidd rolls him up for the 3 count and hauls ass to the back. Tensai gets on the mic and starts screaming about how nobody can beat him twice, the loss was a fluke, and he wants anyone in the back to come out. I still am pissed my dreams were crushed and Carlito was nowhere to be found. Anyway, some guy, who I have to apologize to because I don't remember his name, comes out. I've never seen him before, but he is the WWE's type to a hilt. He's built like Cena on roids, and his gimmick is he chants "WOOF" (see, my dog wanted to go for a reason). So uhh...yeah, that's it. I don't remember much about what happened, he managed to get Tensai to the ground after a hundred clotheslines and then hit a move for the finish. This made me think we might see more developmental guys from FCW or something, but he was the only one. (After some research, I found him: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ettore_Ewen).
An aside: This report was written for one person, who was unfortunately unable to attend because he's got to work to get hurt. As such, after each match I will be updating a running tally for the number of times "TO THE TOP!" was screamed during each match.
TO THE TOP TALLY: 1 (Tyson Kidd)
The next match is announced and the recently returned David Otunga rolls out. He does his poses in the ring, which goes on way too long. Finally his opponent gets announced and it's Alex Riley. I've seen Otunga in the ring maybe once and the only thing I know about Riley is the commentators basically relegated him to dogshit before he rolled up Dolph Ziggler in that awesome Jericho moment on Raw a few weeks back. Otunga controls the action and does poses after every...single...move. This one dragged pretty bad, though it did get the crowd on Riley's side pretty well. Unfortunately, the end was anti-climactic, as Riley just hit a clothesline off the top and got the pin after being behind the whole time. I'm assuming Otunga is a bit rusty, as there was one point where Riley hit an arm toss and Otunga was not nearly close enough and had to compensate by launching himself into Riley's arm as it was coming down. I bring up botches because I am a heartless douchebag writing this shit on the internet.
TO THE TOP TALLY: 2 (Alex Riley)
We got some RawActive stuff next, to decide if the tag match would be 2 out of 3 falls or a street fight. Then we got the Divas match, with Aksana coming out first. This is a good time to point out that CDubTDub was a big, big fan of Aksana, and everybody in close to a twenty row radius knew he was a fan. Layla comes out next and gets a big reaction and puts one right on some guy in the front row B knows. I wish I was him. Unknown moment #4: Something I had heard (or thought I heard, who knows) about house shows was that they were more off-the-cuff, since nobody really thinks the belts are going to change hands in the gymnasium of the Redhawks of Southeast Missouri State. Unfortunately this was not the case, which I gathered at least a bit from the announcement that the main event would be for the title, but I was hoping everything else would be a little bit crazier, a good incentive to go to these things since they don't have to worry about the storyline and can make awesome/ridiculous matches. Oh well. So we know Layla is going to win, but at least the match can be good right? Hell, it's not tough to figure out whose going to win in wrestling sometimes. Unfortunately, if Aksana can wrestle, she didn't show it tonight. Maybe she's still getting there or they just didn't get it going in the match. Either way, this whole match was Layla trying every different pinning maneuver on Earth, before Aksana turtled on her knees and Layla spanked her. Aksana's whole offense was hair grabs and a few kicks. Layla hit her with a falling neck breaker for the pin.
TO THE TOP TALLY: 2
The tag match was up next, and the decision shockingly came back that the fans had voted for a Street Fight. I was curious to see what they would be able to do with that in the limited format they had. Turns out not much, they had a kendo stick with a few smacks. 2 out of 3 falls would have been more interesting, but what real wrasslin' fan is going to vote for that garbage? The Prime Time Players have a universal pre-cut promo that airs where they go to the heel well and talk about how much of a dump "this town" their in is, which predictably gets the crowd against them. R-Truth comes out to his own intro, which I had never heard and gets the crowd fired up, Kofi comes out last. The "Kobe Bryant" chant almost got started going strong, but then petered out. Titus tries to drown out R-Truth's "What's Up?!" chant with his "What's Happening?!" which goes nowhere. R-Truth is in almost the whole match, excluded from Kofi, until near the end when Kofi gets tagged in and starts cleaning house. The momentum reverses and Darren Young gets a cover, Kofi puts his foot on the ropes but Titus throws it off and the Prime Time Players come out on top...UNTIL AJ COMES OUT AND RESTARTS THE MATCH, THIS SHIT IS BONKERS! It's worth noting AJ got a huge pop when she came out, was there for five seconds and then left never to be seen again. Good gig if you can get it. I guess people like more as the GM than I do. Titus and Darren are so distracted that they immediately get hit with big moves and get pinned, putting the titles back with Kofi and R-Truth. Afterwards R-Truth got the crowd to scream in unison at Kofi to believe in Little Jimmy and he bowed to the pressure. That's a gimmick that's really grown on me.
TO THE TOP TALLY: 3 (Kofi Kingston)
The intermission was up next and I noticed that they were showing tweets people had sent about the event. I immediately tweeted, "Where is Heath Slater?" I didn't have time to think about tweeting, "When is the Damien Sandow merch going to start showing up?"
Wade Barrett came out next, I've never seen this guy but have read about him and seen the promos they've been running, so he's getting the ring rust off. He led with a line about how no one had any manners, which helped me to establish him as the heel (sometimes wrestling's simplicity is it's biggest strength) to jeers from the crowd. He said he had went back to England and his fighting roots and was the best fighter ever to step in the ring. CM Punk might let that slide since he didn't use the term wrestler. Curt Hawkins came out as his opponent to a lukewarm reaction even though he was the face. The match itself was pretty forgettable and I hardly remember any of it, the crowd was into this one probably the least. Barrett has a bruiser style and controlled most of it.
TO THE TOP TALLY: 3
Antonio Cesaro came out next with Aksana. This guy is growing on me. I love that he reacts to the What? chants and that "foreign guy who speaks perfect English but can speak other languages" just gets heat out of this world and he's a better wrestler than I'd initially given him credit for. CDubTDub still liked Aksana. His opponent? Zack Ryder, bitches. Long Island Iced Z got a huge pop and the crowd had Ryder chants going throughout the whole match and plenty of Woo Woo Woo action. The match itself was great, it was refreshingly back and forth and both guys had good spots, hell Ryder even got to hit some of his signature moves. I love how dignified Cesaro's elbow drops are, too. Ryder went for his finisher but missed and Cesaro hit the Neutralizer for the pin. The crowd was really into this one.
TO THE TOP TALLY: 3
Next up was the main event. Cena came out first and the place exploded, there would be no "Cena Sucks!" chant tonight. B and CDubTDub go nuts and I remain seated. The non-ring highlight of the night occurred during this part, as CDubTDub decided to accost the woman in front of us, demanding to know why she was not standing up. He overlooked me, as I was not standing up either, but whatever. The woman is taken aback and says, "I don't even watch this!" Her kids were there, so I get it, but she was wearing a current CM Punk shirt, and WWE clothing isn't exactly budget conscious, so who knows. I still got a huge laugh out of that exchange. Next up is Big Show, who gets some good heat and a good laugh from myself when he acts like he's going to throw his beanie into the crowd and instead just dumps it on the floor. CM Punk comes out finally, which gets me out of my seat for the first time all night. If anyone ever needs to blackmail me for any reason, if this event was filmed, acquire the start of his entrance and find the part where I completely mark out and scream "IT'S CLOBBERIN' TIME" in unison with Punk. My travel mates were more conflicted with Punk than I was. The match was an Extreme Rules triple threat. It was a stripped down version of the Summerslam match. Show started the beatdown early until Cena took him out with the steps. Later Show took out Cena and CM Punk got to deliver three straight running knees in the corner. That move never gets old because he can do it so well. Punk whiffed on the follow up bulldog and got choke slammed but Cena stopped the pinfall. Cena hit the Five Knuckle Shuffle but had his AA stopped by Punk, who hit the Savage elbow drop from the top. Cena removed Punk again and hit the AA, but Punk came in with the belt and took out Cena and then pinned the Big Show. Show headed to the back while Punk grabbed a mic and repeated his respect spiel, once again offering a handshake to Cena. Punk had got a big response earlier, but the crowd turned on him big time after the match. Cena considered for a good while and then bluffed the handshake into the AA. He celebrated and then busted out, while Punk eventually limped back to the locker room. B didn't even get to see that part because he was truckin' ass to the merch stand to buy all the Zack Ryder gear. CDubTub decided that however many hundreds of dollars was too much for the replica belt and we rolled out. I was annoyed they didn't have merch from the superstars that weren't there, as I was planning on getting a Dolph Ziggler shirt, but I got to keep my $25.
FINAL TO THE TOP TALLY: 5 (CM Punk x2, because B and I both yelled it at the exact same time without planning it; see part about blackmail above)
We took the highway straight through on the way back and avoided the pathway to hell from earlier. CDubTDub kept us entertained with stories about how strippers have no souls, he really hates one of his brother's friends, and about how his other brother is the cheapest person on Earth.
All in all it was a blast and hopefully we're at Raw in a couple months in Nashville.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Mass Effect 3
Mass Effect 3 - They should not change the ending and screw that DLC. But the ending was awful. Now that that's out of the way, this is a complete lateral move on Bioware's part and maybe even a step back. I liked the first two games quite a bit, especially the second one. This is me trying to work out why. In no way is the game bad, it just bored me and by the time it started getting close to the end I just wanted to finish it.
One of the problems is I think is that a lot of what Bioware stakes the series on just cannot hold up this late in the game. The morality system has no basis when it is tied to a bar. At least you can't wipe it out or change it like you can in other games, and they at least came up with a way to often remove what you say from carrying some sort of "nice" or "not nice" connotation by using neutral reputation. Still, there's that gauge to show you just how you stack up, like some goofy arbiter of whether you are the good guy or the not so good guy. And that's the rub. The gauge reinforces the notion that you need to play the game a certain way, and it also doesn't help that, sure enough, every single choice you make is obvious because paragon is on top and renegade is on bottom, same as always. So instead of making a choice that you might actually want to make, the game pushes the notion that you should make the choice that corresponds to "how I'm playing this guy" which is generally either straight one way or the other, which is just dull. Games like Skyrim and The Witcher 2 instead force you to make excruciating decisions that can backfire on you and have vastly different outcomes. And there's no stupid bar to influence what you do. Instead, you evaluate based on what you've seen and then see what happens. I felt way more invested in those games from a personal perspective for the short while I played both of them than the entire time I played Mass Effect 3 and it's two games worth of back story! Another element to the problem is that it is easy to game the system, so to speak, in the Mass Effect games. If you pump your conversation skill and don't just run straight through the story, you can basically resolve any situation in a way that eliminates the "bad stuff" (probably interesting stuff) from happening, or at least I was able to throughout each game. That takes a lot of the tension out and removes you from the experience. It also lowers the stakes in a way that revokes supposed core features of the game. And while I always say I'm not a graphics guy, LA Noire's conversation choreography and facial modeling crush this game. That's minor, but I kept thinking about it because it's what drives the game.
Outside of that area, a few other things bugged me. The side-quests have been integrated with the planet-scanning activity, but instead of minerals or natural resources you're scanning for stranded forces or groups you can use in your fight against the Reapers. It's an interesting idea that makes sense, but is just as tedious as the sections before, though at this juncture I assume that's the point. There's also no way to track which quests you've finished and need to turn in or where in most instances they're turned in outside of a general area. That is simply a bewildering design flaw. The controls still are not very tight, especially in the ever-crowded land of cover shooters. You feel heavy and weighted while walking and rolling but then immediately become a speed demon when running, able to spin three hundred and sixty degrees on a dime. The cover system still has problems "recognizing" you, leading to frustrating deaths where you constantly roll into a barrier or can't move out of cover or keep moving from side to side when you want to move out. The other big thing is a personal annoyance, but I have to bring it up. The game just cannot bludgeon you with enough heroic motivational speeches, glorifications of heroic sacrifice and determination, and bravery and courage in the face of overwhelming odds because damn it we are going to succeed! Cliche doesn't get even close and it all gets old after a while. I get that Mass Effect as a series is as far from subversive or deconstructive and that the stakes can't get any higher at the end. The whole thing falls apart in places because each time it's a gigantic repetition (a tying metaphor to the Reapers themselves????????????????????????? I kind of doubt it). Lastly, the characters of your squad don't get fleshed out nearly as well as before. The loyalty missions are gone, replaced with some interactions that do grant a sense of development and closure, but don't have the same kind of impact. I thought the personal missions were some of the best parts of the Mass Effect 2 because they got to the heart of the characters and had an impact on your game. How development plays out in Mass Effect 3 seems more trite and expected, like the developers knew they had to go through the motions and just slogged it out to resolve things.
So did I actually like anything? Yeah, I did. The combat is still very good and the squad AI is very helpful, only prone to the occasional frustration. Raising the default difficulty was a good move, as the previous games felt a little too easy at times. There are some challenging encounters in the game that force you to use all your weapons, ammo and powers to survive and the new enemy types, particularly the Banshee, put the pressure on something fierce. Additionally, there several encounters where the environment, while not directly impacting the action, adds to the feeling of being in combat very well and creates an involving atmosphere. The story makes the best it can out of fighting a faceless and comically overwhelming enemy by showing the conflicts between the races of the galaxy and how old grudges and misconceptions permeate everything when they should be forgotten. The Reapers get counterbalanced with Cerberus and the Illusive Man, which is certainly more interesting than going against massive bug machines that have to be developed by pull-out-the-rug exposition at the end. Having to gather forces and broker alliances works well within the huge scope of the story. Keith David and Martin Sheen are still awesome. After being disgruntled by Bethesda apparently hiring about five voice actors for the entire game in Skyrim, it was refreshing to witness the variety and depth of full voice acting on display. And if I had to single out one character I thought was well done, it would be Mordin, whose arc throughout the second and third game was one of the high points of the entire series. Wrex was another strong figure, the story of the krogan being one area where I thought the games really worked well. Wrex's growth across the games and the struggles he and his race endured were where I thought the games really showed their potential, in taking a figure and letting him grow into someone that you trusted and wanted to help because you felt like he was sincere and you knew him on a personal level.
The fact that these characters might not even be in your game speaks back to the interest to be had initially in Mass Effect 2 when you realized that your choices carried over and shaped your game. It gave a screen of individuality to your experience that defined Mass Effect. It's too bad Mass Effect 3 often pulls back the screen, especially in the ending, and removes those modifications. Your story gets boiled down to numbers on a board that plod into the ending and then disappear. In general some of my misgivings have been with the series from the start and just caught up with me and I also think Mass Effect 2 was the pinnacle of the series and that colors my reaction to Mass Effect 3. In the end, I'm kind of glad the mass relays are done.
One of the problems is I think is that a lot of what Bioware stakes the series on just cannot hold up this late in the game. The morality system has no basis when it is tied to a bar. At least you can't wipe it out or change it like you can in other games, and they at least came up with a way to often remove what you say from carrying some sort of "nice" or "not nice" connotation by using neutral reputation. Still, there's that gauge to show you just how you stack up, like some goofy arbiter of whether you are the good guy or the not so good guy. And that's the rub. The gauge reinforces the notion that you need to play the game a certain way, and it also doesn't help that, sure enough, every single choice you make is obvious because paragon is on top and renegade is on bottom, same as always. So instead of making a choice that you might actually want to make, the game pushes the notion that you should make the choice that corresponds to "how I'm playing this guy" which is generally either straight one way or the other, which is just dull. Games like Skyrim and The Witcher 2 instead force you to make excruciating decisions that can backfire on you and have vastly different outcomes. And there's no stupid bar to influence what you do. Instead, you evaluate based on what you've seen and then see what happens. I felt way more invested in those games from a personal perspective for the short while I played both of them than the entire time I played Mass Effect 3 and it's two games worth of back story! Another element to the problem is that it is easy to game the system, so to speak, in the Mass Effect games. If you pump your conversation skill and don't just run straight through the story, you can basically resolve any situation in a way that eliminates the "bad stuff" (probably interesting stuff) from happening, or at least I was able to throughout each game. That takes a lot of the tension out and removes you from the experience. It also lowers the stakes in a way that revokes supposed core features of the game. And while I always say I'm not a graphics guy, LA Noire's conversation choreography and facial modeling crush this game. That's minor, but I kept thinking about it because it's what drives the game.
Outside of that area, a few other things bugged me. The side-quests have been integrated with the planet-scanning activity, but instead of minerals or natural resources you're scanning for stranded forces or groups you can use in your fight against the Reapers. It's an interesting idea that makes sense, but is just as tedious as the sections before, though at this juncture I assume that's the point. There's also no way to track which quests you've finished and need to turn in or where in most instances they're turned in outside of a general area. That is simply a bewildering design flaw. The controls still are not very tight, especially in the ever-crowded land of cover shooters. You feel heavy and weighted while walking and rolling but then immediately become a speed demon when running, able to spin three hundred and sixty degrees on a dime. The cover system still has problems "recognizing" you, leading to frustrating deaths where you constantly roll into a barrier or can't move out of cover or keep moving from side to side when you want to move out. The other big thing is a personal annoyance, but I have to bring it up. The game just cannot bludgeon you with enough heroic motivational speeches, glorifications of heroic sacrifice and determination, and bravery and courage in the face of overwhelming odds because damn it we are going to succeed! Cliche doesn't get even close and it all gets old after a while. I get that Mass Effect as a series is as far from subversive or deconstructive and that the stakes can't get any higher at the end. The whole thing falls apart in places because each time it's a gigantic repetition (a tying metaphor to the Reapers themselves????????????????????????? I kind of doubt it). Lastly, the characters of your squad don't get fleshed out nearly as well as before. The loyalty missions are gone, replaced with some interactions that do grant a sense of development and closure, but don't have the same kind of impact. I thought the personal missions were some of the best parts of the Mass Effect 2 because they got to the heart of the characters and had an impact on your game. How development plays out in Mass Effect 3 seems more trite and expected, like the developers knew they had to go through the motions and just slogged it out to resolve things.
So did I actually like anything? Yeah, I did. The combat is still very good and the squad AI is very helpful, only prone to the occasional frustration. Raising the default difficulty was a good move, as the previous games felt a little too easy at times. There are some challenging encounters in the game that force you to use all your weapons, ammo and powers to survive and the new enemy types, particularly the Banshee, put the pressure on something fierce. Additionally, there several encounters where the environment, while not directly impacting the action, adds to the feeling of being in combat very well and creates an involving atmosphere. The story makes the best it can out of fighting a faceless and comically overwhelming enemy by showing the conflicts between the races of the galaxy and how old grudges and misconceptions permeate everything when they should be forgotten. The Reapers get counterbalanced with Cerberus and the Illusive Man, which is certainly more interesting than going against massive bug machines that have to be developed by pull-out-the-rug exposition at the end. Having to gather forces and broker alliances works well within the huge scope of the story. Keith David and Martin Sheen are still awesome. After being disgruntled by Bethesda apparently hiring about five voice actors for the entire game in Skyrim, it was refreshing to witness the variety and depth of full voice acting on display. And if I had to single out one character I thought was well done, it would be Mordin, whose arc throughout the second and third game was one of the high points of the entire series. Wrex was another strong figure, the story of the krogan being one area where I thought the games really worked well. Wrex's growth across the games and the struggles he and his race endured were where I thought the games really showed their potential, in taking a figure and letting him grow into someone that you trusted and wanted to help because you felt like he was sincere and you knew him on a personal level.
The fact that these characters might not even be in your game speaks back to the interest to be had initially in Mass Effect 2 when you realized that your choices carried over and shaped your game. It gave a screen of individuality to your experience that defined Mass Effect. It's too bad Mass Effect 3 often pulls back the screen, especially in the ending, and removes those modifications. Your story gets boiled down to numbers on a board that plod into the ending and then disappear. In general some of my misgivings have been with the series from the start and just caught up with me and I also think Mass Effect 2 was the pinnacle of the series and that colors my reaction to Mass Effect 3. In the end, I'm kind of glad the mass relays are done.
Friday, May 18, 2012
Why I'm Done with Marvel and DC
There's no real point in making this too long, I just need to purge this out of my mind so I can walk away. I work some at a comic shop. Since practically all they order is Marvel and DC, I could and have read any of their published comics for free and put them back on the shelf. No revenue generated for Marvel or DC. Since I can get into movies for free, I could and have seen movies with their properties in them. No revenue generated for Marvel or DC. But beyond all that, I could just pirate all their stuff. No profit generated for Marvel or DC. The thing is, pirating is too easy. It's a false justification that I thankfully don't even have to apply in this situation. Because when I looked at the stuff that I was reading for free from Marvel and DC, there wasn't much there. Daredevil and Wonder Woman, that's it. Criminal if and when it comes back (maybe Brubaker and Phillips will play the long game and take it to Image). Not much to drop, but I was still hesitant. I mean, boycotting them doesn't really solve anything. Besides them not getting any of my money anyway, the comics exist solely for the merchandising and movies. That's where the real money is made and why these companies can barely be bothered to admit that the market is cannibalizing itself and losing readers consistently.
The whole process of thinking about this started when the Kirby family's attempted lawsuit didn't even go to court because the contracts are airtight. Sure, I knew Kirby and the vast majority of the old guard didn't get shit for all the groundwork they laid. I knew Alan Moore had been boned extensively by DC. But it was all out of my hands. I just wanted to read comic books. But then the snowball got rolling. Frank Santoro says goodbye to Marvel. Steve Bissette calls for a boycott of Marvel. James Sturm says he won't go see Avengers. The Gary Friedrich debacle where they singled out a guy, who by the way has no health insurance and is struggling to survive, for practices which all kinds of fucking hacks and wannabe company-men pull off on a regular basis. "Marvel's" The Avengers. Before Watchmen. Excellent posts by Sean Witzke, David Brothers, and Abhay Khosla and a series of tweets by Tom Spurgeon. But what really did it was the message implied in an idea of good will, the idea to donate money to the Hero Initiative or the Jack Kirby Museum Fund if you went to see the Avengers. I remember thinking it was a good idea that was unfortunately going to produce lackluster results, but what I took from it the most and what really finalized my decision was this part:
"Plus, of course, you - the collective “you”, representing comic book fans all over the world - want to see this movie. And you’re going to, most likely, right? Even though you know of the morally shady practices of Marvel towards its creators, they’ve got you hooked. Don’t be ashamed, they’ve had you hooked for years. It’s what they do."
I don't think this is what was intended, but that is the most damning and truthful thing ever written about comic fandom. The general public don't give a shit and shouldn't be bothered. But comic fans should know and respond better. We know about Bill Finger, Siegel and Schuster, about how Stan Lee somehow is elevated to godhood for only partial contributions, and about Steve Gerber. Certainly comics are not alone in this regard, you don't have to look hard to see where older creators were treated terribly in the world of films, music, and movies. This is not an ethical industry, but more importantly and why it is so damning, it is so arrogantly public and nonchalant about it still to this day. There also is no desire to change. Before Watchmen is the zenith of this, taking something that once stood to represent steps towards improvement and tossing it aside. Still, let's clarify: I don't think any of the people that consume Marvel and DC's products are evil. I don't think anyone who works on their products is evil. Certainly the industry pays relatively well and making a living being a cog in the wheel is far from isolated to comics. That reads passive aggressive, but I don't know anyway else to put it. Harlan Ellison manifesto, etc...
But "they've got you hooked?" Marvel and DC put out some decent to good stuff, sure. But what happens if you don't see Avengers or read the umpteenth incarnation of Daredevil? You maybe miss some good work, but why not read stuff that doesn't have a moral stain all over it? If you really like comics, there's plenty of stuff out there. If you only care about reading about superheroes, well, you've got to make up your own mind. I haven't read that many superhero comics relative to a ton of people, but I've read plenty of all levels of quality. There's still things to say about superheroes, but there's been enough to sate me. I'm good. So I'm officially unhooked. I have around 10 older Marvel and DC comics I'm going to get and then I'm riding into the sunset on Fury MAX, which looks to be an exit of incredible greatness. Who knows, maybe not just making a clean break here and now is proof that I'm even worse than the people who want to fuck all these people over so they can keep reading 100 Superman comics a month, because they're at least honest while I'm here puttering on about this garbage.
A specific point: the Before Watchmen row, unlike everything at Marvel, has made me go personal, which is kind of petty, but fuck it, it's my decision. This will not affect Marvel or DC in the absolute slightest. I just feel like I'm doing the right thing. It's invigorating in a way, like I'm moving forward positively. Pathetic? Yes and no, once again who cares, this is what I'm feeling, I'll be in the bathroom. So some people I'm done with period, specifically the ones who have said a bunch of stupid shit surrounding Before Watchmen. Stracynzski has always sucked, so no loss there. But Azzarello? That guy has written some damn good comics and is clearly a smart guy. Unfortunately, "There really is no controversy" and "Comic fans don't like new things"? Sorry, you lose. Just shutup and don't say anything OR just say, "I'm doing it for the money" or "I don't care." Darwyn Cooke? Jesus, just click on that Abhay link above. Hell, here it is again. We're all hypocrites, but you just took the prize! So I dumped all the comics of theirs that I had and won't be buying anymore, no matter if they're from Marvel or DC or not. Nobody point me towards something dumb by JG Jones, I've still got this Marvel Boy sketch that is awesome.
So no more Marvel or DC. Too long, apologies.
The whole process of thinking about this started when the Kirby family's attempted lawsuit didn't even go to court because the contracts are airtight. Sure, I knew Kirby and the vast majority of the old guard didn't get shit for all the groundwork they laid. I knew Alan Moore had been boned extensively by DC. But it was all out of my hands. I just wanted to read comic books. But then the snowball got rolling. Frank Santoro says goodbye to Marvel. Steve Bissette calls for a boycott of Marvel. James Sturm says he won't go see Avengers. The Gary Friedrich debacle where they singled out a guy, who by the way has no health insurance and is struggling to survive, for practices which all kinds of fucking hacks and wannabe company-men pull off on a regular basis. "Marvel's" The Avengers. Before Watchmen. Excellent posts by Sean Witzke, David Brothers, and Abhay Khosla and a series of tweets by Tom Spurgeon. But what really did it was the message implied in an idea of good will, the idea to donate money to the Hero Initiative or the Jack Kirby Museum Fund if you went to see the Avengers. I remember thinking it was a good idea that was unfortunately going to produce lackluster results, but what I took from it the most and what really finalized my decision was this part:
"Plus, of course, you - the collective “you”, representing comic book fans all over the world - want to see this movie. And you’re going to, most likely, right? Even though you know of the morally shady practices of Marvel towards its creators, they’ve got you hooked. Don’t be ashamed, they’ve had you hooked for years. It’s what they do."
I don't think this is what was intended, but that is the most damning and truthful thing ever written about comic fandom. The general public don't give a shit and shouldn't be bothered. But comic fans should know and respond better. We know about Bill Finger, Siegel and Schuster, about how Stan Lee somehow is elevated to godhood for only partial contributions, and about Steve Gerber. Certainly comics are not alone in this regard, you don't have to look hard to see where older creators were treated terribly in the world of films, music, and movies. This is not an ethical industry, but more importantly and why it is so damning, it is so arrogantly public and nonchalant about it still to this day. There also is no desire to change. Before Watchmen is the zenith of this, taking something that once stood to represent steps towards improvement and tossing it aside. Still, let's clarify: I don't think any of the people that consume Marvel and DC's products are evil. I don't think anyone who works on their products is evil. Certainly the industry pays relatively well and making a living being a cog in the wheel is far from isolated to comics. That reads passive aggressive, but I don't know anyway else to put it. Harlan Ellison manifesto, etc...
But "they've got you hooked?" Marvel and DC put out some decent to good stuff, sure. But what happens if you don't see Avengers or read the umpteenth incarnation of Daredevil? You maybe miss some good work, but why not read stuff that doesn't have a moral stain all over it? If you really like comics, there's plenty of stuff out there. If you only care about reading about superheroes, well, you've got to make up your own mind. I haven't read that many superhero comics relative to a ton of people, but I've read plenty of all levels of quality. There's still things to say about superheroes, but there's been enough to sate me. I'm good. So I'm officially unhooked. I have around 10 older Marvel and DC comics I'm going to get and then I'm riding into the sunset on Fury MAX, which looks to be an exit of incredible greatness. Who knows, maybe not just making a clean break here and now is proof that I'm even worse than the people who want to fuck all these people over so they can keep reading 100 Superman comics a month, because they're at least honest while I'm here puttering on about this garbage.
A specific point: the Before Watchmen row, unlike everything at Marvel, has made me go personal, which is kind of petty, but fuck it, it's my decision. This will not affect Marvel or DC in the absolute slightest. I just feel like I'm doing the right thing. It's invigorating in a way, like I'm moving forward positively. Pathetic? Yes and no, once again who cares, this is what I'm feeling, I'll be in the bathroom. So some people I'm done with period, specifically the ones who have said a bunch of stupid shit surrounding Before Watchmen. Stracynzski has always sucked, so no loss there. But Azzarello? That guy has written some damn good comics and is clearly a smart guy. Unfortunately, "There really is no controversy" and "Comic fans don't like new things"? Sorry, you lose. Just shutup and don't say anything OR just say, "I'm doing it for the money" or "I don't care." Darwyn Cooke? Jesus, just click on that Abhay link above. Hell, here it is again. We're all hypocrites, but you just took the prize! So I dumped all the comics of theirs that I had and won't be buying anymore, no matter if they're from Marvel or DC or not. Nobody point me towards something dumb by JG Jones, I've still got this Marvel Boy sketch that is awesome.
So no more Marvel or DC. Too long, apologies.
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
We Got Arrested at Night
Recent thoughts...
Voice of the Fire by Alan Moore
Expectations can be weird. I had heard that this book told a continuing tale that stretched across centuries, and that is technically true but not the whole picture. Moore tackling similar spanning agendas in works like From Hell and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen fixated my mind a combined tale of resounding mythological and mystical significance with allusions to everyone and everything that happened within those time periods.
But that's not how it plays out, even if what happens is related. In From Hell, Moore was talking about the 20th century through his version of Jack the Ripper. But Voice of the Fire starts out in 4000 BC and ends up in the 1995 AD. Each of the 12 chapters moves the story forward into differing time periods. However, far from making the story more grandiose, it instead makes it more personal. In From Hell, all the stops were pulled out to show this single period in time and how it was manifested, along with Moore showing off, which he does all the time. Voice of the Fire is like the greatest hits of Moore's hometown and residence of Northampton. Each vignette takes on the air of meaning solely for the people affected within the story. Those occurrences and meanings certainly resonate later, but not in a cause and effect way. Unlike League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, where Moore really wants you to know he's being clever while throwing around his commentary, there is a not a need and/or desire for annotations. Instead, all the references are as blatant as can be. Moore often calls attention to them vividly that I wondered what was going on. But as I said before, this is due to the expectation that Moore's previous work had left me with. Before the last chapter, I wasn't sure what I had read. I got that Moore was looking at myths, psycho-geography, and to put it too simply, how things change but still stay the same.
But then I got to the final chapter and things coalesced. Removing the writing from the story and into Moore's own life (apparently, as it's obvious Moore is working subjectively with parts throughout the whole book), Moore finishes wrapping up Northampton, filling in the details from the previous chapter's endpoint of 1931, up to 1995. It's a depressing endpoint, Moore laying out a ruined, wasteland-esque town of inadequate council housing, faceless corporate-enveloping sprawl, random acts of deadly violence, and several occurrences relating back to the previous chapters, the town still progressing through time by spinning its wheels. In effect, Moore's book functions as a history of Northampton, prosed up to provide a record of how the town developed into the morass he sees today. His tone in the last chapter is a mix of caring elitism and incredulous scorn. Moore makes sure to mention the laborious nature of the research put into the book, tomes and records dug up that have lost all relevance in their obscurity. But at the same time, Moore goes to ask his uncle about a certain historical event, in of all places, a bingo hall. But then he maintains that he cannot really describe the book to him. Is Moore saying that all the information he dug up is really contained within the unsuspecting people of the town? Yet, somehow they do not have the capacity to understand or utilize it? Does he connect this back to how the denigrating town, and by extension the modern world, has no room for the supernatural or the occult? Or is Moore even talking about any of this? Outside the explanations and recounting, how you feel about the end probably speaks to your ability to tolerate good old fashioned bitching, none more so than when Moore tunes into the television broadcast to crucify all the content it can conjure. Then again, if I had written through Northampton's cycle, fueled by death, deceit, subjugation, misery, decapitation, limping, loss, razing, and burning, I might bitch a little myself. Moore is trapped between revealing the wonders inherent in his environment while being able to manage the horrifying traits of the people, places, and things manifest. I'll let him blow off some steam.
Oh, and the first chapter is written from the perspective of how Moore thought a caveman would process his thoughts. It's equally enlivening and frustrating, and the book has a hard time ever reaching that level of insanity thereafter.
Vanishing Point, directed by Richard Sarafian
Not a whole lot to say. Good car chases, some potentially interesting character dynamics get annihilated by retreaded and awkward exposition dumps, and the landscape of the early 1970s gets equally handled and fumbled, as the movie uses the functional tabula rasa of the main character to throw current events at him. Props to Barry Newman still, who plays the lead like the manufactured and purposefully decent megalomaniac he is, smiling straight into California on Benzedrine, making sure he gives them a hell of a challenge if they're going to grant him his way out.
Elektra: Assassin by Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz
Take a trip back in time to a period in comics you might have thought you had figured out from reading Watchmen and Miller's own Dark Knight Returns. Those works are far from the insanity on display here. The book is clearly a tug of war between the creators. You have the steady capsule-gridded panels that Miller flooded Dark Knight with on one page, opposite the functional splash images Sienkiewicz packs into all the panels, splash page or not. Miller often bluntly describes what is happening or what will happen on the page with the narration. It leads to an admirable quality of comprehension mixed with the frenzied metal of Sienkiewicz, but possibly a less interesting comic in the end? I mean, it reads well but Sienkiewicz almost feels throttled, even when he's speeding, like he's on rails. Which makes sense, he's drawing at some basic level from a script, no matter how he develops and presents it. Not to remove Miller's contributions, but Sienkiewicz's style is one that screams for his singular output (yet he's mostly been a collaborator, so what do I know). Then again, the comic is often at it's best when Miller begins to drop in manic, staccato narrative information in disjointed bits that Sienkiewicz distills into images of crushing weight and impact. Two hundred miles an hour is still two hundred miles an hour, no matter if the path is preset or not. Ostensibly chocked with "meaning" given the setting and particulars (Cold War, military industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, US intervention, governmental misconduct), the whole thing instead is a gigantic indictment that never went to trial because all the particulars would've rigged the system if they hadn't blown it to hell beforehand. Forget relevance, says Miller, and look in wonder at how gloriously hatefucked the world is. Revel in the glory and ridiculousness before man initiates judgement day.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, directed by Steven Spielberg
The Nazis are back ya'll and we threw the Satan slavers to the curb. This is a reboot film for a series that never had any real continuity, following Temple of Doom, which in hindsight went a little too far into brutality according to Spielberg. All because George Lucas got dumped. Way to go George Lucas's wife, you ruined it for us all! Not really, because this is still pretty solid. It unfortunately comes across as a compromise that might even be the right one, sure, but not the best one overall. Nothing here can match the aforementioned misanthropy and organ removal of Temple of Doom, nor the airplane fight scene or the swordman shooting "gag", or really any scene from Raiders. Connery is fine but the familial dynamic is Spielberg ramming how these guys are the same person yet hate each other yet love each other eventually down your throat. See George, don't give up yet! *back slap* Still, the opening sequence is excellent and the Nazi turncoat woman's name is Elsa, which is close to Ilsa, which is a non-turncoat Nazi woman's name in Hellboy, which an awesome comic series that I need to re-read daily. The Last Crusade is good on it's own, but can't hold up to what came before.
Akira Volume 3 by Katsuhiro Otomo
It's a ballsy move when you're close to 600 pages in to basically drop the clear focus of the series in Tetsuo. But that's what Otomo does here. Maybe it suffers a bit, as there's no real mystery over whether or not Tetsuo is dead, but that's not what Otomo is really going for. Instead, every other character gets pushed ahead and motivations are revealed, culminating in the back half of the book being a a meeting point of everyone involved through lots and lots of violence. Unsurprisingly, the storytelling and the action sequencing are excellent, with Otomo solidifying his ability to perfectly lead the eye across the page. But it's the climax that makes it. After spending such a huge amount of time hyping the potential of Akira up, with plenty of moments that were already insanely powerful on their own, Otomo had a lot to deliver on. So he responds by going off for about 20 pages with nothing but wholesale destruction on a city-wide level, splashes and huge panels only. Each page is a pinnacle for him to supersede on the next, until there's nothing left. Except for Tetsuo to show back up on the last page now that Akira is awake. Delivered.
Ghostbusters II, directed by Ivan Reitman
Everyone always talked about Murray as Peter Vankman, but where the hell is the love for Rick Moranis? Ghosts show up and get busted and the writing is good enough to where everyone can be consistently funny and sometimes downright hilarious. And these guys are still having a hell of a time acting this shit. But Rick Moranis? Not a line wasted. These movies are funny and entertaining and there's plenty of room for that.
Akira Volume 4 by Katsuhiro Otomo
Volume 3 dropped Tetsuo and this volume drops Kaneda, which means a huge part of this massive story loses its two main characters for large periods of time but this is different. You always knew Tetsuo was coming back, but when he did it wasn't necessarily what was expected, but that's to Otomo's credit, and it's crystal clear why it's that way when Akira's magnitude is finally revealed. Likewise, it's easy to see that Kaneda is coming back, but he doesn't have the resilience of Tetsuo. So when he reemerges in the supernatural/out of body method, it's...odd, with no indication. When Tetsuo came back, Otomo didn't need to say anything yet ended up just off enough. Further, Kaneda's absence made me realize how much I missed the guy. I've never been a big fan of non-stop wisecracking characters, especially in something as ridiculously catastrophic as Akira. But it turns out Otomo was better off with Kaneda because of the levity he brings to the proceedings. That is the biggest cliche as I'm looking at it on the page, but it rings true because he's such a ludicrous contrast to everyone else that he grounds everything. Instead, lackluster ciphers like Chiyoko get more attention, her entire character being that of a resilient he-woman on the journey of killings. The start of the book is still really strong, as the story jumps forward and everything is just a bit off-kilter, owing to Otomo holding back details that later get fleshed out. Despite the bombastic art being the real draw of this comic, Otomo can nail the smaller moments, like he does with the Colonel throughout the whole volume. And the art is as amazing as ever. While previous editions showed Otomo drawing a dilapidated and degrading cityscape, the constant backdrop to his intimate action sequences, here we have the aftermath of cataclysmic destruction of a whole city. It's a whole new form of architecture porn and Otomo is the tenth dan. This volume wraps up with a classic "storm the castle" scene that alternates between ragtag machine gunners, heat seeking missiles, and the always welcome psychic showdowns. But, Kaneda? Yeah, I miss the dude and this volume drags some because he's MIA. It's not like I'm going to pack it in without getting to the finish, but I could use a re-up.
Voice of the Fire by Alan Moore
Expectations can be weird. I had heard that this book told a continuing tale that stretched across centuries, and that is technically true but not the whole picture. Moore tackling similar spanning agendas in works like From Hell and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen fixated my mind a combined tale of resounding mythological and mystical significance with allusions to everyone and everything that happened within those time periods.
But that's not how it plays out, even if what happens is related. In From Hell, Moore was talking about the 20th century through his version of Jack the Ripper. But Voice of the Fire starts out in 4000 BC and ends up in the 1995 AD. Each of the 12 chapters moves the story forward into differing time periods. However, far from making the story more grandiose, it instead makes it more personal. In From Hell, all the stops were pulled out to show this single period in time and how it was manifested, along with Moore showing off, which he does all the time. Voice of the Fire is like the greatest hits of Moore's hometown and residence of Northampton. Each vignette takes on the air of meaning solely for the people affected within the story. Those occurrences and meanings certainly resonate later, but not in a cause and effect way. Unlike League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, where Moore really wants you to know he's being clever while throwing around his commentary, there is a not a need and/or desire for annotations. Instead, all the references are as blatant as can be. Moore often calls attention to them vividly that I wondered what was going on. But as I said before, this is due to the expectation that Moore's previous work had left me with. Before the last chapter, I wasn't sure what I had read. I got that Moore was looking at myths, psycho-geography, and to put it too simply, how things change but still stay the same.
But then I got to the final chapter and things coalesced. Removing the writing from the story and into Moore's own life (apparently, as it's obvious Moore is working subjectively with parts throughout the whole book), Moore finishes wrapping up Northampton, filling in the details from the previous chapter's endpoint of 1931, up to 1995. It's a depressing endpoint, Moore laying out a ruined, wasteland-esque town of inadequate council housing, faceless corporate-enveloping sprawl, random acts of deadly violence, and several occurrences relating back to the previous chapters, the town still progressing through time by spinning its wheels. In effect, Moore's book functions as a history of Northampton, prosed up to provide a record of how the town developed into the morass he sees today. His tone in the last chapter is a mix of caring elitism and incredulous scorn. Moore makes sure to mention the laborious nature of the research put into the book, tomes and records dug up that have lost all relevance in their obscurity. But at the same time, Moore goes to ask his uncle about a certain historical event, in of all places, a bingo hall. But then he maintains that he cannot really describe the book to him. Is Moore saying that all the information he dug up is really contained within the unsuspecting people of the town? Yet, somehow they do not have the capacity to understand or utilize it? Does he connect this back to how the denigrating town, and by extension the modern world, has no room for the supernatural or the occult? Or is Moore even talking about any of this? Outside the explanations and recounting, how you feel about the end probably speaks to your ability to tolerate good old fashioned bitching, none more so than when Moore tunes into the television broadcast to crucify all the content it can conjure. Then again, if I had written through Northampton's cycle, fueled by death, deceit, subjugation, misery, decapitation, limping, loss, razing, and burning, I might bitch a little myself. Moore is trapped between revealing the wonders inherent in his environment while being able to manage the horrifying traits of the people, places, and things manifest. I'll let him blow off some steam.
Oh, and the first chapter is written from the perspective of how Moore thought a caveman would process his thoughts. It's equally enlivening and frustrating, and the book has a hard time ever reaching that level of insanity thereafter.
Vanishing Point, directed by Richard Sarafian
Not a whole lot to say. Good car chases, some potentially interesting character dynamics get annihilated by retreaded and awkward exposition dumps, and the landscape of the early 1970s gets equally handled and fumbled, as the movie uses the functional tabula rasa of the main character to throw current events at him. Props to Barry Newman still, who plays the lead like the manufactured and purposefully decent megalomaniac he is, smiling straight into California on Benzedrine, making sure he gives them a hell of a challenge if they're going to grant him his way out.
Elektra: Assassin by Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz
Take a trip back in time to a period in comics you might have thought you had figured out from reading Watchmen and Miller's own Dark Knight Returns. Those works are far from the insanity on display here. The book is clearly a tug of war between the creators. You have the steady capsule-gridded panels that Miller flooded Dark Knight with on one page, opposite the functional splash images Sienkiewicz packs into all the panels, splash page or not. Miller often bluntly describes what is happening or what will happen on the page with the narration. It leads to an admirable quality of comprehension mixed with the frenzied metal of Sienkiewicz, but possibly a less interesting comic in the end? I mean, it reads well but Sienkiewicz almost feels throttled, even when he's speeding, like he's on rails. Which makes sense, he's drawing at some basic level from a script, no matter how he develops and presents it. Not to remove Miller's contributions, but Sienkiewicz's style is one that screams for his singular output (yet he's mostly been a collaborator, so what do I know). Then again, the comic is often at it's best when Miller begins to drop in manic, staccato narrative information in disjointed bits that Sienkiewicz distills into images of crushing weight and impact. Two hundred miles an hour is still two hundred miles an hour, no matter if the path is preset or not. Ostensibly chocked with "meaning" given the setting and particulars (Cold War, military industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, US intervention, governmental misconduct), the whole thing instead is a gigantic indictment that never went to trial because all the particulars would've rigged the system if they hadn't blown it to hell beforehand. Forget relevance, says Miller, and look in wonder at how gloriously hatefucked the world is. Revel in the glory and ridiculousness before man initiates judgement day.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, directed by Steven Spielberg
The Nazis are back ya'll and we threw the Satan slavers to the curb. This is a reboot film for a series that never had any real continuity, following Temple of Doom, which in hindsight went a little too far into brutality according to Spielberg. All because George Lucas got dumped. Way to go George Lucas's wife, you ruined it for us all! Not really, because this is still pretty solid. It unfortunately comes across as a compromise that might even be the right one, sure, but not the best one overall. Nothing here can match the aforementioned misanthropy and organ removal of Temple of Doom, nor the airplane fight scene or the swordman shooting "gag", or really any scene from Raiders. Connery is fine but the familial dynamic is Spielberg ramming how these guys are the same person yet hate each other yet love each other eventually down your throat. See George, don't give up yet! *back slap* Still, the opening sequence is excellent and the Nazi turncoat woman's name is Elsa, which is close to Ilsa, which is a non-turncoat Nazi woman's name in Hellboy, which an awesome comic series that I need to re-read daily. The Last Crusade is good on it's own, but can't hold up to what came before.
Akira Volume 3 by Katsuhiro Otomo
It's a ballsy move when you're close to 600 pages in to basically drop the clear focus of the series in Tetsuo. But that's what Otomo does here. Maybe it suffers a bit, as there's no real mystery over whether or not Tetsuo is dead, but that's not what Otomo is really going for. Instead, every other character gets pushed ahead and motivations are revealed, culminating in the back half of the book being a a meeting point of everyone involved through lots and lots of violence. Unsurprisingly, the storytelling and the action sequencing are excellent, with Otomo solidifying his ability to perfectly lead the eye across the page. But it's the climax that makes it. After spending such a huge amount of time hyping the potential of Akira up, with plenty of moments that were already insanely powerful on their own, Otomo had a lot to deliver on. So he responds by going off for about 20 pages with nothing but wholesale destruction on a city-wide level, splashes and huge panels only. Each page is a pinnacle for him to supersede on the next, until there's nothing left. Except for Tetsuo to show back up on the last page now that Akira is awake. Delivered.
Ghostbusters II, directed by Ivan Reitman
Everyone always talked about Murray as Peter Vankman, but where the hell is the love for Rick Moranis? Ghosts show up and get busted and the writing is good enough to where everyone can be consistently funny and sometimes downright hilarious. And these guys are still having a hell of a time acting this shit. But Rick Moranis? Not a line wasted. These movies are funny and entertaining and there's plenty of room for that.
Akira Volume 4 by Katsuhiro Otomo
Volume 3 dropped Tetsuo and this volume drops Kaneda, which means a huge part of this massive story loses its two main characters for large periods of time but this is different. You always knew Tetsuo was coming back, but when he did it wasn't necessarily what was expected, but that's to Otomo's credit, and it's crystal clear why it's that way when Akira's magnitude is finally revealed. Likewise, it's easy to see that Kaneda is coming back, but he doesn't have the resilience of Tetsuo. So when he reemerges in the supernatural/out of body method, it's...odd, with no indication. When Tetsuo came back, Otomo didn't need to say anything yet ended up just off enough. Further, Kaneda's absence made me realize how much I missed the guy. I've never been a big fan of non-stop wisecracking characters, especially in something as ridiculously catastrophic as Akira. But it turns out Otomo was better off with Kaneda because of the levity he brings to the proceedings. That is the biggest cliche as I'm looking at it on the page, but it rings true because he's such a ludicrous contrast to everyone else that he grounds everything. Instead, lackluster ciphers like Chiyoko get more attention, her entire character being that of a resilient he-woman on the journey of killings. The start of the book is still really strong, as the story jumps forward and everything is just a bit off-kilter, owing to Otomo holding back details that later get fleshed out. Despite the bombastic art being the real draw of this comic, Otomo can nail the smaller moments, like he does with the Colonel throughout the whole volume. And the art is as amazing as ever. While previous editions showed Otomo drawing a dilapidated and degrading cityscape, the constant backdrop to his intimate action sequences, here we have the aftermath of cataclysmic destruction of a whole city. It's a whole new form of architecture porn and Otomo is the tenth dan. This volume wraps up with a classic "storm the castle" scene that alternates between ragtag machine gunners, heat seeking missiles, and the always welcome psychic showdowns. But, Kaneda? Yeah, I miss the dude and this volume drags some because he's MIA. It's not like I'm going to pack it in without getting to the finish, but I could use a re-up.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Grow Up
Sports blogging isn't something I ever planned on doing outside of general MMA stuff. And really this is more hate blogging. Here's the question: when did sports become laughably serious?
Yep, this is coming from a lifelong Kentucky resident who threw off his Tasmanian Devil UK shirt and cried in the floor when the Wildcats lost in overtime in the 1997 national championship. Fortunately times have changed at least a smidgen, and while I rarely miss a UK game, I've become more and more disgusted by the sports landscape. After UK blows a team out by 20 points and I hear endless bitching about how we won but played like shit I start wishing for the return of Billy Gillespie. At least then we had halfway legitimate claims to bitching. If UK doesn't win the national title the whole year is a failure and the team and coaches should be lucky they aren't executed. But that shit is small potatoes compared to this latest greatness from Rodney Harrison.
The short story is at the Patriots post-Super Bowl party, Rob Gronkowski and Matt Light decided to do a little dancing. This is apparently unacceptable because the Patriots lost, DAMN IT! Wallowing in misery is the only acceptable response and if you act in contrast, no matter your other successes, you are misguided at best and offensive at worst. Listen to this garbage:
"When we lost the Super Bowl, any of my Super Bowl losses, I was so devastated the last thing I ever wanted to do was party, let alone dance or take off your shirt," he added. "It's just immaturity. It's not right. He made a mistake and I'm sure he feels absolutely stupid about it at this point. There's a time and place for everything."
Apparently a jovial attitude after a hell of season and a close game doesn't cut it. I feel weird talking about this, because I do think sometimes I take sports too seriously in general. I think that a majority of the disdain shown towards sports fans is sad, insecure elitism. That said, come the fuck on Mr. Harrison. Professional sports players work hard and make sacrifices in return for making damn good money and playing a game for a living. Rob Gronkowski just had one of the greatest seasons a tight end has had in NFL history. I'd say that guy's got a few reasons after the season is over to exhale and bust a move for a bit if he feels like it.
Harrison again:
Yep, this is coming from a lifelong Kentucky resident who threw off his Tasmanian Devil UK shirt and cried in the floor when the Wildcats lost in overtime in the 1997 national championship. Fortunately times have changed at least a smidgen, and while I rarely miss a UK game, I've become more and more disgusted by the sports landscape. After UK blows a team out by 20 points and I hear endless bitching about how we won but played like shit I start wishing for the return of Billy Gillespie. At least then we had halfway legitimate claims to bitching. If UK doesn't win the national title the whole year is a failure and the team and coaches should be lucky they aren't executed. But that shit is small potatoes compared to this latest greatness from Rodney Harrison.
The short story is at the Patriots post-Super Bowl party, Rob Gronkowski and Matt Light decided to do a little dancing. This is apparently unacceptable because the Patriots lost, DAMN IT! Wallowing in misery is the only acceptable response and if you act in contrast, no matter your other successes, you are misguided at best and offensive at worst. Listen to this garbage:
"When we lost the Super Bowl, any of my Super Bowl losses, I was so devastated the last thing I ever wanted to do was party, let alone dance or take off your shirt," he added. "It's just immaturity. It's not right. He made a mistake and I'm sure he feels absolutely stupid about it at this point. There's a time and place for everything."
Apparently a jovial attitude after a hell of season and a close game doesn't cut it. I feel weird talking about this, because I do think sometimes I take sports too seriously in general. I think that a majority of the disdain shown towards sports fans is sad, insecure elitism. That said, come the fuck on Mr. Harrison. Professional sports players work hard and make sacrifices in return for making damn good money and playing a game for a living. Rob Gronkowski just had one of the greatest seasons a tight end has had in NFL history. I'd say that guy's got a few reasons after the season is over to exhale and bust a move for a bit if he feels like it.
Harrison again:
"The leadership has to step up and someone has to pull [Gronkowski] to the side and say, 'Look young man, this is inappropriate, this is not the time nor the place. You need to grow up,'" Harrison said. "And that's what it comes down to. I like this kid. I think he's a good kid, works hard, is unselfish. But he made a mistake ...
Grow up? I know that competition at the highest level is going to be taken very seriously. Maybe if Gronkowski had been remixing the Super Bowl Shuffle during a close game on the sideline somebody somewhere might have a point (then again I remember the Derek Anderson debacle from a while back, so yeah, nevermind). Unfortunately for Harrison making any sense is the fact that the game and the season were over! Is there some mandatory grief period where the fun machine is temporarily deactivated? This isn't the followup to a funeral. Grow up? No thanks if this is what's in store, somebody bust out that giraffe and that dumbass song we all sung until they quit running the ads.
Harrison to play us out: "There's a certain way of representing yourself and your family and that's not the right way."
WHAT THE FUCK DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH LIGHT AND GRONKOWSKI'S FAMILIES? Oh no, pro football has absorbed the UFC/boxing standby of invoking family every second so we can over saturate your brain to the point where when you hear family, the only one you wish you were a part of is the Mansons. I think at this point we've taken the "Team as Family" concept way too far! "This guy is dancing! I KNOW SOME KIDDOS THAT AREN'T COMING TO THE NEXT SLEEPOVER! HIS WIFE WAS ALWAYS GANGBANG FODDER!"
Just quit, please.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Fun Formalism
(FYI, it's not that formalism is intrinsically not fun, it's just that it's formalism)
So Brandon Graham posted a link to the torrent of his recently-concluded comic series King City from Image. It's really good and has been written about by plenty of people better than me. There are plenty of memorable moments, but the one that stuck with me the most was from a backup story in the second issue. Check out these first two panels.
So Brandon Graham posted a link to the torrent of his recently-concluded comic series King City from Image. It's really good and has been written about by plenty of people better than me. There are plenty of memorable moments, but the one that stuck with me the most was from a backup story in the second issue. Check out these first two panels.
They knocked me on my ass. Formalism is a slippery slope. I remember the sequences from Asterios Polyp where Mazzucchelli was screaming COMICS on the page so loud that sometimes I just wanted to tune him out, despite the mastery on display. Graham substitutes screaming with subdued effortlessness. While Mazzucchelli wanted to make sure you knew about all the tricks the medium was capable of, Graham cares only about using those tricks to do cool shit. When I read this sequence, it took me straight out of the flow of the story and the panels, just like when I read the Asterios Poly sequences, except the above gave me a huge grin, while Asterios Polyp left me staring at the page. Both are showing off in a sense, but Graham comes off like a guy you could talk to about ridiculous comics stuff all day, while Mazzucchelli would be too busy presenting a research paper at an academic conference.
Is there anyone out there making comics having more fun than Brandon Graham? If you're up for a fool's chase, start looking.
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