So, I'm proud to say that I've finally watched my first Blu-ray movie. Pretty cool, huh? I probably could have gotten around to watching it a couple days earlier, but I kept getting distracted. But, I'm distracted no longer.
Anyways, I watched this anime movie called Paprika. If you haven't heard of it, all I can say is that it's about dreams, I think. There's also some weird plot about stopping this evil old dude from taking over both dreams and then reality too (I think). I think there might be some themes involving being true to yourself and maybe even some sort of questioning science as a tool for understanding philosophical endeavors.
In short, this was way too intelligent for me. I'm tempted to try to watch the commentary, but I'm not sure I really want to know what the filmmakers are going to say. It seems like the type of movie that both demands someone to explain it to you and requires you to form your own opinions at the same time.
Visually, of course, it was stunning. I get the feeling that watching movies in high definition, while not bothering to wear glasses or contacts, might be kind of a waste of time. On the other hand, it looked really good, so I assume the high definition stuff was doing it's job. On the other, other hand (we're back to the right hand), this is animated so there isn't as much detail anyways. I'll probably need to wait until my first live action Blu-ray movie gets around to arriving at my doorstep (err, mailbox, but you get the idea) before making a final decision on whether watching stuff in HD requires my eyesight to be at 20/20 for me to enjoy it (and, if it is, then I'll finally have to find the motivation to go out and get my prescription checked for the first time in, like, 4 years).
Ironically, I think I was most impressed by the sound in the movie. The music during the dream sequences (which were the majority of the movie, especially once reality and dreams started getting blurred... and no, I'm not really sure when that happened since the line was pretty blurry from the beginning) really captured sound in dreams. Personally, I think dreams are really noisy. Many times, I will actually wake up from a dream because the cacophony of noise in my head simply got to the point that I had to wake up just to make it shut up. And the moment I open my eyes, suddenly all that noise is gone. But, since of course none of it was real noise, I could never hope to describe the noises that were overpowering me only a second earlier.
The music in the dream sequences is the same way. Except that it's music and not just noise. The two pieces of music we hear most in the dreams are this heroic anthem and parade/marching music. The anthem has a fun little J-pop beat going on while the marching music has lots of drums and horns. That would be the music part of it. The dream part is the voices. The voices are really short samples of different singers singing completely unrelated songs, but when put together it somehow magically works fits with the instruments. I'm sure it helps that I don't actually understand the language, but the result is this sense of confusion as I can't explain exactly what I'm hearing. While I'm hearing it (and I've got it on repeat right now while I describe it to you...I think I'm going to go crazy), I can almost piece together the variety of different voices I'm hearing, but the moment they go away, they're gone, just part of the beat. So, yeah, it's dream music.
That's impressive to me.
Well, in summary, I liked it. It was pretty good and it wasn't as weird as I was worried it was going to be. That Richard Linklater movie, Waking Life, was definitely not nearly as good as this. On the other hand, that movie might have been even more intelligent than this one (albeit, with about a quarter of the plot, which is extra impressive considering that I'm not totally clear on how much plot this one even had). So, yeah, I'm happy that Blu-ray is working out. It looked good.
That is all.
Francis
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
PS3
So, I guess it's time I admitted that I've finally entered the next generation of the video game consoles. I bought a Playstation 3 last week. It's funny since as recently as a month ago, I would have told you that of three consoles, the last one I was considering was the PS3.
And, well, it's not hard to see why. It currently has no good exclusive games. It costs more. It typically gets the crappy version of games that come to both the 360 and the PS3. And, it's not made by Nintendo.
But, then something happened. Something that I couldn't have foreseen, even a month ago. I bought a super awesome big HDTV (okay, I could probably see that one coming, but bear with me). Upon buying this beautiful TV and watching stuff on it, I realized something. I really wanted to watch Blu-ray movies. And, with that tiniest of realizations, the PS3 was suddenly the only option I was considering.
So what if it had no exclusive games I cared about. I could watch Terminator, in HD. So what if costs more, I could watch 3:10 to Yuma, in HD. And, hey, it at least gets a version of most games that come to the 360, and, if it comes out months later, who cares since they typically make up for it by adding content (and it's not like I was going to buy it the day it came out anyways...it's not like these games are Super Smash Bros or anything).
So, maybe, Sony's strategy isn't crazy. Maybe they made the right call. Or, more likely, I just hate Microsoft and was looking for any excuse not to buy their console, but whatever. Seriously, Sony's strategy is totally misguided. It's not like I'm ever going to actually buy a Blu-ray movie (although I'm happy to rent them from Netflix). And the same can be said for someone who's buying the console just to watch movies, too. We're different markets and Sony's hoping to capitalize on both of us with the same box. Good for them, but that's not going to turn us into the same market, no matter how much Sony wishes it were true.
Admittedly, Microsoft's brilliant idea of releasing the HD-DVD add-on for the 360 is significantly stupider (Aah! Every time I type the word "stupider", I feel even more stupid...er). They are basically trying to reach the fraction of the console gaming audience that also really wants to watch movies in high definition, which probably isn't non-existent, but it gets a lot smaller when you realize that it's only the fraction that already owns an Xbox 360 (it's only of value for those who already have a 360 and decide they want a high-def player, since a consumer could buy a stand alone player for only slightly more than the cost of the add-on). This means, of course, that the add-on can't help them sell more consoles, but I guess it does at least help them reach more HD-DVD consumers (potentially).
But, to make a long story short, I have a PS3. And, my thoughts? It's pretty decent. Graphics are nice. DVDs look pretty beautiful on it. It's quieter than my ancient PS2. The controller is really nice. I think I like it more than the Wiimote. The Wiimote is cool because it let's you sit basically however you want while playing a game (since your hands aren't tied together by the controller). This controller almost feels the same way since it's so light you barely even realize you're holding it. And, since I primarily play nice, slow, turn-based RPGs, I can get away a fair amount of the time with just one hand on it. I like that.
So, yeah, I'm pretty happy with it. We started off on the wrong foot (since it takes forever to get this thing actually ready to do normal things, like play games or watch movies). But, once all the set-up was done, it's been pretty satisfactory.
And, well, Disgaea 3 comes out soon. And, well, let's be honest here. I'm pretty confident that trumps all the 360 exclusives I can think of (Halo 3, shmalo 3, Bioshock, Bioshmock, Mass Effect, Smash Effect...hehe, that was fun). Admittedly, I'd rather be playing the new Fire Emblem game for the Wii, but I'll get around to it. Seriously, I will. It's just a matter of time before I break down and buy one of those.
And note that this matter of time is entirely dependent upon the release date of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, which keeps getting pushed back. I have to admit, it does just boggle my mind how much money that game is worth to me. Pretty much, $300. I mean, Rock Band is struggling to convince me to fork over $170 and then smash bros can just kind of walk down the street oblivious to me and I'll still drop whatever I'm doing to worship it. I'm honestly not sure what my price cut off for that game is. All I can say is that I'm glad it's not 2000 dollars, because I would hate to be forced to choose between my rent and that game. Or, more accurately, I'd hate to try to explain why my rent was late whichever month smash bros. finally came out if it was that much.
Sigh. I sit here with a PS3 in front of me and all I think about is my dream of someday owning the next smash bros game. I think Nintendo owns my soul.
That is all.
Francis
And, well, it's not hard to see why. It currently has no good exclusive games. It costs more. It typically gets the crappy version of games that come to both the 360 and the PS3. And, it's not made by Nintendo.
But, then something happened. Something that I couldn't have foreseen, even a month ago. I bought a super awesome big HDTV (okay, I could probably see that one coming, but bear with me). Upon buying this beautiful TV and watching stuff on it, I realized something. I really wanted to watch Blu-ray movies. And, with that tiniest of realizations, the PS3 was suddenly the only option I was considering.
So what if it had no exclusive games I cared about. I could watch Terminator, in HD. So what if costs more, I could watch 3:10 to Yuma, in HD. And, hey, it at least gets a version of most games that come to the 360, and, if it comes out months later, who cares since they typically make up for it by adding content (and it's not like I was going to buy it the day it came out anyways...it's not like these games are Super Smash Bros or anything).
So, maybe, Sony's strategy isn't crazy. Maybe they made the right call. Or, more likely, I just hate Microsoft and was looking for any excuse not to buy their console, but whatever. Seriously, Sony's strategy is totally misguided. It's not like I'm ever going to actually buy a Blu-ray movie (although I'm happy to rent them from Netflix). And the same can be said for someone who's buying the console just to watch movies, too. We're different markets and Sony's hoping to capitalize on both of us with the same box. Good for them, but that's not going to turn us into the same market, no matter how much Sony wishes it were true.
Admittedly, Microsoft's brilliant idea of releasing the HD-DVD add-on for the 360 is significantly stupider (Aah! Every time I type the word "stupider", I feel even more stupid...er). They are basically trying to reach the fraction of the console gaming audience that also really wants to watch movies in high definition, which probably isn't non-existent, but it gets a lot smaller when you realize that it's only the fraction that already owns an Xbox 360 (it's only of value for those who already have a 360 and decide they want a high-def player, since a consumer could buy a stand alone player for only slightly more than the cost of the add-on). This means, of course, that the add-on can't help them sell more consoles, but I guess it does at least help them reach more HD-DVD consumers (potentially).
But, to make a long story short, I have a PS3. And, my thoughts? It's pretty decent. Graphics are nice. DVDs look pretty beautiful on it. It's quieter than my ancient PS2. The controller is really nice. I think I like it more than the Wiimote. The Wiimote is cool because it let's you sit basically however you want while playing a game (since your hands aren't tied together by the controller). This controller almost feels the same way since it's so light you barely even realize you're holding it. And, since I primarily play nice, slow, turn-based RPGs, I can get away a fair amount of the time with just one hand on it. I like that.
So, yeah, I'm pretty happy with it. We started off on the wrong foot (since it takes forever to get this thing actually ready to do normal things, like play games or watch movies). But, once all the set-up was done, it's been pretty satisfactory.
And, well, Disgaea 3 comes out soon. And, well, let's be honest here. I'm pretty confident that trumps all the 360 exclusives I can think of (Halo 3, shmalo 3, Bioshock, Bioshmock, Mass Effect, Smash Effect...hehe, that was fun). Admittedly, I'd rather be playing the new Fire Emblem game for the Wii, but I'll get around to it. Seriously, I will. It's just a matter of time before I break down and buy one of those.
And note that this matter of time is entirely dependent upon the release date of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, which keeps getting pushed back. I have to admit, it does just boggle my mind how much money that game is worth to me. Pretty much, $300. I mean, Rock Band is struggling to convince me to fork over $170 and then smash bros can just kind of walk down the street oblivious to me and I'll still drop whatever I'm doing to worship it. I'm honestly not sure what my price cut off for that game is. All I can say is that I'm glad it's not 2000 dollars, because I would hate to be forced to choose between my rent and that game. Or, more accurately, I'd hate to try to explain why my rent was late whichever month smash bros. finally came out if it was that much.
Sigh. I sit here with a PS3 in front of me and all I think about is my dream of someday owning the next smash bros game. I think Nintendo owns my soul.
That is all.
Francis
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Cloverfield Thoughts
So, I actually waited until Saturday night to see this movie. Late Saturday night, in fact. So, clearly, I was only somewhat excited about this movie (nowhere near I Am Legend caliber excitement...or even 30 Days of Night excitement, but moving on).
I was excited about this movie for a couple reasons. I felt that the advertising campaign had been quite admirable. I respected this as a cool pet project of J.J. Abrams and I thought it was awesome that he was taking advantage of his new found golden child status to do something cool that nobody would typically consider actually doing. I also felt that it was a cool idea that had some pretty decent potential.
As many people bring up, the typical situation where handheld cameras are used for filming is either in independent movies that are using it as a gimmick along with an opportunity to save money or used in action movies that want to hide the fact that their actors can't actually fight (or choreographers can't actually stage a fight). Clearly, neither of these two reasons is a particularly good reason to use handheld cameras. However, Cloverfield has a different reason. It's clearly not an independent movie trying to save budget, nor is it an action movie that can't choreograph a fight (in fact, I think it's action scene choreography is really impressive). It believes that this is a viewpoint worth watching from.
Crazy, huh?
That, maybe, the people who have to run and hide from the giant, freakish monster attacking the city are worth caring about. That, maybe, they have a story. And not just a story that involves running and hiding from the monster, but a story that lets them be heroes too. Maybe even a story where they get to prove their worth to the people they care about. And, you know, that might be a story worth telling too.
Obviously, I didn't know that's how it was going to be. I just knew it would be a like the Blair Witch Project or whatever, except with an indescribable and destructive monster (as opposed to sticks and pet rocks). And, well, I felt that could be a fun jumping off point.
And, you know what, it was. I actually didn't intend to write a post about this little fact, though, because after seeing the movie, I had kind of assumed that everyone who saw it liked it. I mean, if you were excited about it, you were probably excited about it because you thought the idea of some good-looking twenty-somethings running away from the craziest looking monster ever put to screen would be fun to watch for an hour and half. If that wasn't interesting to you, I would hope you didn't bother to see it, because then you'd just be giving yourself motion sickness for nothing, which sucks.
So, I assumed that everyone who saw it then saw the same movie as me, which basically totally delivered on that rather bare premise with decent, if not particularly memorable, characters, great production values, and, well, 90 minutes of good-looking twenty-somethings running away from the the craziest looking monster ever put to screen. So, I kind of assumed there was no reason to write a post about it.
But then I went online and I found all these comments all over the place from people basically saying that they felt they totally threw away their money on a crappy movie that just had good advertising. These people seemed offended that the advertising had gotten them excited about the movie, but that it somehow didn't give them what it promised.
This bothered me.
I mean, honestly, I can't think of how it could have been much better. I don't think anyone can complain that we didn't see enough monster. We got plenty of good long looks at the creature and it is still quite burned into my memory. If I had to describe it, I would try to have the reader imagine a really gross, wrinkly old man moving around doing a crab walk thing, except his head is where his crotch should be and there's a long tail where is head should be. Also, his head looks like a worm with a gaping mouth perfect for eating innocent twenty-somethings trying to run away.
So, there's plenty of monster and the action is really well done (even if you often have to try to piece together exactly what happened afterwards since it typically happens too fast to really comprehend with the limited view the camera provides). The characters are decent, but we shouldn't be going in expecting to care about the characters all that much. So, how can people be dissatisfied? I don't know. I honestly don't.
I mean, clearly, this movie isn't for everyone. But, if you like monster movies, I can't fathom disliking this one. It's good. I'll be honest. I like that we're following people who have no idea what's going on. It seems like we always follow the characters who happen to be the heroes that figure out what the monster's weakness is (think Jeff Goldblum in ID4) and heroically manage to inform the right people (who we've also been following...think Bill Pulman in ID4, or Jeff Goldblum's character's ex-wife) so that it can be exploited by some specialist (who we've also been following...think Will Smith in ID4) and save a bunch of random innocent people (who've we've checked in on at least one other time...think crop dusting family in ID4). This movie's promise was to not do that. That it's about the normal people who have to deal with this catastrophe.
And it delivered on that promise. Absolutely delivered.
Does it matter if the monster was killed or not? In all honesty, if this was a typical monster movie, it would be defeated, but then the audience would stay until after the credits to find out that secretly there's another one coming...or it's mommy...or Elvis or whatever, I don't care. So, basically, the only difference is that we don't get to know. It's up to the audience to decide for themselves (and the writers once they start working on the sequel, of course...really, it's more up to the writers, now that I think about it, but for now the audience gets to decide). And, seriously, that's not a bad thing.
You could complain that the characters make stupid decisions (like trying to go back and save each other rather than just getting the hell out of there). But this is a lame complaint. You could make that same complaint about most heroes in other monster movies (admittedly, those dudes are typically setting their sights a little higher, but that just makes them stupider, really...or is it more stupid? Grammar can be tough, sometimes.). So, I don't think that counts either.
So, really, this is about expectations. I don't know what the expectations were that the movie wasn't able to meet, but apparently there were some, and this made people unhappy. For reasons that are hard to explain, this makes me think of my intense dissatisfaction with Transformers. The typical argument for liking it was that it promised to have robots fighting and it was able to deliver on this promise and so how can you complain that a stupid summer blockbuster was painfully stupid. My answer would be that it promised robots fighting, but we don't get to watch robots fighting each other. We get to watch jumbled masses of unintelligible moving parts fighting against the military. And a robot peeing on John Turturro. These items, amongst others, would be well below what it promised and what I hoped it would deliver.
In summary, Cloverfield promised to play around with the monster movie genre by doing it entirely from the perspective of those on the ground. In doing so, it also made it clear that it had a budget and the monster would be awesome. I believe it met these promises and so it's almost unreasonable to dislike the movie unless you weren't actually interested in that initial premise. Transformers, on the other hand, promised to have an awesome sized budget so that they could stage some of the coolest special effects and battles using characters and toys from our childhoods (well, somebody's childhoods, but whatever). I don't believe Transformers met these promises because they wasted the awesome budget and special effects on making fun of Transformers and the actors and just everything. They then didn't even deliver any intelligible action sequences (At least while watching Cloverfield I could figure out what just happened if I pieced it all together in the moments after the action. With Transformers, I didn't even know where to begin because everything looked the same and too much was happening at the same time and none of it seemed to make any sense).
So, yeah. I liked Cloverfield and I honestly can't understand why anyone who was excited about this movie at all didn't actually like it as well. I can only conclude that people are stupid.
That is all.
Francis
I was excited about this movie for a couple reasons. I felt that the advertising campaign had been quite admirable. I respected this as a cool pet project of J.J. Abrams and I thought it was awesome that he was taking advantage of his new found golden child status to do something cool that nobody would typically consider actually doing. I also felt that it was a cool idea that had some pretty decent potential.
As many people bring up, the typical situation where handheld cameras are used for filming is either in independent movies that are using it as a gimmick along with an opportunity to save money or used in action movies that want to hide the fact that their actors can't actually fight (or choreographers can't actually stage a fight). Clearly, neither of these two reasons is a particularly good reason to use handheld cameras. However, Cloverfield has a different reason. It's clearly not an independent movie trying to save budget, nor is it an action movie that can't choreograph a fight (in fact, I think it's action scene choreography is really impressive). It believes that this is a viewpoint worth watching from.
Crazy, huh?
That, maybe, the people who have to run and hide from the giant, freakish monster attacking the city are worth caring about. That, maybe, they have a story. And not just a story that involves running and hiding from the monster, but a story that lets them be heroes too. Maybe even a story where they get to prove their worth to the people they care about. And, you know, that might be a story worth telling too.
Obviously, I didn't know that's how it was going to be. I just knew it would be a like the Blair Witch Project or whatever, except with an indescribable and destructive monster (as opposed to sticks and pet rocks). And, well, I felt that could be a fun jumping off point.
And, you know what, it was. I actually didn't intend to write a post about this little fact, though, because after seeing the movie, I had kind of assumed that everyone who saw it liked it. I mean, if you were excited about it, you were probably excited about it because you thought the idea of some good-looking twenty-somethings running away from the craziest looking monster ever put to screen would be fun to watch for an hour and half. If that wasn't interesting to you, I would hope you didn't bother to see it, because then you'd just be giving yourself motion sickness for nothing, which sucks.
So, I assumed that everyone who saw it then saw the same movie as me, which basically totally delivered on that rather bare premise with decent, if not particularly memorable, characters, great production values, and, well, 90 minutes of good-looking twenty-somethings running away from the the craziest looking monster ever put to screen. So, I kind of assumed there was no reason to write a post about it.
But then I went online and I found all these comments all over the place from people basically saying that they felt they totally threw away their money on a crappy movie that just had good advertising. These people seemed offended that the advertising had gotten them excited about the movie, but that it somehow didn't give them what it promised.
This bothered me.
I mean, honestly, I can't think of how it could have been much better. I don't think anyone can complain that we didn't see enough monster. We got plenty of good long looks at the creature and it is still quite burned into my memory. If I had to describe it, I would try to have the reader imagine a really gross, wrinkly old man moving around doing a crab walk thing, except his head is where his crotch should be and there's a long tail where is head should be. Also, his head looks like a worm with a gaping mouth perfect for eating innocent twenty-somethings trying to run away.
So, there's plenty of monster and the action is really well done (even if you often have to try to piece together exactly what happened afterwards since it typically happens too fast to really comprehend with the limited view the camera provides). The characters are decent, but we shouldn't be going in expecting to care about the characters all that much. So, how can people be dissatisfied? I don't know. I honestly don't.
I mean, clearly, this movie isn't for everyone. But, if you like monster movies, I can't fathom disliking this one. It's good. I'll be honest. I like that we're following people who have no idea what's going on. It seems like we always follow the characters who happen to be the heroes that figure out what the monster's weakness is (think Jeff Goldblum in ID4) and heroically manage to inform the right people (who we've also been following...think Bill Pulman in ID4, or Jeff Goldblum's character's ex-wife) so that it can be exploited by some specialist (who we've also been following...think Will Smith in ID4) and save a bunch of random innocent people (who've we've checked in on at least one other time...think crop dusting family in ID4). This movie's promise was to not do that. That it's about the normal people who have to deal with this catastrophe.
And it delivered on that promise. Absolutely delivered.
Does it matter if the monster was killed or not? In all honesty, if this was a typical monster movie, it would be defeated, but then the audience would stay until after the credits to find out that secretly there's another one coming...or it's mommy...or Elvis or whatever, I don't care. So, basically, the only difference is that we don't get to know. It's up to the audience to decide for themselves (and the writers once they start working on the sequel, of course...really, it's more up to the writers, now that I think about it, but for now the audience gets to decide). And, seriously, that's not a bad thing.
You could complain that the characters make stupid decisions (like trying to go back and save each other rather than just getting the hell out of there). But this is a lame complaint. You could make that same complaint about most heroes in other monster movies (admittedly, those dudes are typically setting their sights a little higher, but that just makes them stupider, really...or is it more stupid? Grammar can be tough, sometimes.). So, I don't think that counts either.
So, really, this is about expectations. I don't know what the expectations were that the movie wasn't able to meet, but apparently there were some, and this made people unhappy. For reasons that are hard to explain, this makes me think of my intense dissatisfaction with Transformers. The typical argument for liking it was that it promised to have robots fighting and it was able to deliver on this promise and so how can you complain that a stupid summer blockbuster was painfully stupid. My answer would be that it promised robots fighting, but we don't get to watch robots fighting each other. We get to watch jumbled masses of unintelligible moving parts fighting against the military. And a robot peeing on John Turturro. These items, amongst others, would be well below what it promised and what I hoped it would deliver.
In summary, Cloverfield promised to play around with the monster movie genre by doing it entirely from the perspective of those on the ground. In doing so, it also made it clear that it had a budget and the monster would be awesome. I believe it met these promises and so it's almost unreasonable to dislike the movie unless you weren't actually interested in that initial premise. Transformers, on the other hand, promised to have an awesome sized budget so that they could stage some of the coolest special effects and battles using characters and toys from our childhoods (well, somebody's childhoods, but whatever). I don't believe Transformers met these promises because they wasted the awesome budget and special effects on making fun of Transformers and the actors and just everything. They then didn't even deliver any intelligible action sequences (At least while watching Cloverfield I could figure out what just happened if I pieced it all together in the moments after the action. With Transformers, I didn't even know where to begin because everything looked the same and too much was happening at the same time and none of it seemed to make any sense).
So, yeah. I liked Cloverfield and I honestly can't understand why anyone who was excited about this movie at all didn't actually like it as well. I can only conclude that people are stupid.
That is all.
Francis
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