Pirates of the Caribbean

Yeah I must be getting bored. I know it's a kids movie but I'd heard enough good things about it to give it a chance. Naturally as a Disney movie it's incredibly stupid. Every character is a tired cliché, and you can expect a whole lot of treacly true love bullshit (especially at the end). But hey, even Disney can't fuck up a movie about zombie pirates, and there's plenty of decent, not quite gory enough action.

Basically the movie is all about Johnny Depp, who hams it entertainingly up as a crazy pirate captain, who makes a very cool, charming anti-hero. Even though the film is fluff I couldn't help but feel that there was a better movie hidden somewhere inside. The villains, a crew of pirate zombies, have some cool lines about suffering from their curse, never able to enjoy the fruits of the treasure that incurred the curse by stealing. A real movie could have extended this into some sort of metaphor. A real movie could have also played up Johnny Depp as 'the worst pirate in the world'. As it is it has trouble deciding whether he's a brilliant pirate who's secretly a sham, or if he's a brilliant pirate who outwardly appears to be incompetent. Either option could have been cool, had the writers picked one and stuck with it.

Oh my god! I’m the pushy queen of Slut Town!

Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Season 7 Part 1

As I've said before I loved Buffy right up until the end of the sixth season, even though conventional wisdom holds that it started to suck from season five onwards. However even I am forced to admit that season seven, to put it delicately, sucks balls in comparison to the rest of the show. It certainly started out with a lot of promise, as some interesting plot hooks were introduced at the end of the last year. On one hand we have Willow, who as you probably recall went batshit crazy in the climax to the previous season and started killing people. There could have been a lot of dramatic potential in watching her come to terms with her actions and learn to keep her power under control, right? Spike has also just been granted a soul, completing his years long journey from villain to hero. Unfortunately it seems to have driven him mad, leading to a very cool scene at the end of the second episode in a church, when Spike collapses Christ-like onto a crucifix. (Rather painful for a vampire.) Finding out what happened to him, at the same time as he learns to deal with his rediscovered humanity, should be pretty compelling, right?

If the writers had just carried on from there they could have produced something really good, but knowing that it was the last season they preferred to hedge their bets. Firstly they introduced the biggest, nastiest, most overdone baddie they could think of: the First Evil, ultimate source of all pain and suffering. Secondly they tried to recreate the thing that made the first few seasons of the show so popular, the high school setting (slash painfully obvious metaphor). Unfortunately these calculated moves failed to pay off and in fact did more harm than good.

The First Evil is not an interesting character. Up until this season the show always did an excellent job of creating memorable, entertaining villains who were also genuinely well thought out characters with real motivations and personality. The First Evil is just a plain old clichéd cackling villain. Possibly the reason it never exhibits it's own identity is because it always manifests as another character. They could have gone in some interesting directions with this, as at times it seems to take on the personality of whoever it's appearing as, but I suspect that this is just bad acting.

The high school is reintroduced by having it rebuilt (after being blown up at the end of season three) and Buffy employed as a guidance councillor. Why they thought this would work is beyond me, as the central characters are all four years older. Just as in real life you can't go back to high school again, trying to wedge these characters back to where they came from is an exercise in stupidity.

A few of the standalone episodes are quite good. In 'Him' the female characters are enraptured by a love spell cast on the football jacket of a high school jock. This episode is arguably the best they do at a decent high school analogy in this season, and this is probably because it's played completely for laughs (the Charlie's Angels scene and Buffy trying to take out the principle with a bazooka are some of the most memorable things about the season). 'Selfless' is even funnier, showing flashbacks to Anya's transformation into a demon in first millennium Europe, complete with hysterical subtitles: “Her hips are wide and unattractive, like those of a baltic woman. Your hips are slender and arousing, like those of a baltic woman from a more arid region.”, “The troll is doing an Olaf impersonation, hit him with fruits and various meats!”

'Conversations With Dead People' is kind of stupid in a few ways (especially Buffy's long, pointless conversation with a vampire psychologist), but Dawn's plot thread, in which she is visited by her mother's tormented shade (who may or may not be the First Evil in disguise) contains some of the entire series only successful attempts at horror. It only took him seven years but Joss finally figured out that genuine horror isn't bought about by a scary monster hiding in a dark alley (unless you're a five years old), but by the subtle undermining of the familiar and comfortable by the disturbing and evil, in this case the threatening and sinister manifestation of a departed family member.

Aside from those three instances (and the first two episodes of the season) the show mostly just slowly drags it's way through the main plot, introducing new characters who add little (those Slayers in waiting are really annoying) and throwing in dramatic revelations that fall flat. The Watcher's Council gets blown up. Who cares? We haven't seen them for three years. Buffy has to fight a super powerful vampire from the dawn of time. Well that would have been cool if it didn't take three episodes for her to kill it. What is this, Dragonball Z?

Anyway, in conclusion I shall present the Buffy The Vampire Slayer Relative Hotness Table (all scores are out of 10):

Buffy: Season 1: 8, Season 7: 5

I have been accused of finding Sarah Michelle Gellar more attractive at the beginning of the show because then she was playing a sixteen year old schoolgirl, but I insist that that is not the case! It's because she has become another victim of the Hollywood 'starve yourself into a skeleton and tan your skin leathery' school of beauty treatment.

Willow: Season 1: 10, Season 7: 10

Nerd with a touch of goth. According to Joss the network execs tried to convince him to replace her character with a blonde cheerleader.

Anya: Season 3: 9, Season 7: 2

I'm not sure what happened to her, but the most probable baseless accusation involves drugs.

Faith: Season 3: 9, Season 7: 9

I think being evil automatically provides bonus points.

Cordelia: Season 1: 10, Angel Season 4: 4

Mostly just because of that haircut, and possibly the transition of her character from brainless but entertaining bitch to bland and boring love interest.

Xander: Season 1: 4, Season 7: 10

Man did that guy get macked fast.

Dawn: Season 5: 2, Season 7: 7

The only female character to get a higher score at the end of the show than when she was first introduced. This has nothing to do with her being the youngest. Next up on 'The Real Reason TV Shows Get Cancelled': The Golden Girls...

See also:

Buffy Season 5 Part 1
Buffy Season 5 Part 2
Buffy Season 6 Part 1
Buffy Season 6 Part 2

The Brain Eaters' Greatest Hits Part 1

Well seeing as I have all this time on my hands, I figure it's probably a good time to commit to paper (electrons?) a series of posts that I've had in mind for a while. This one is only two parts, so unlike the last time I did this it shouldn't take me a year and a half to finish.

I shall begin by introducing the titular Brain Eater. Millennia ago this ancient beast, a refugee from a far away interstellar war, crash landed on Earth. Weak and injured by its fall, it has been unable to return to his home galaxy and until this day has remained trapped on our planet. It has gone largely undetected in that time, as the brain eater is an energy being and does not have a corporeal form. However it has been moving among us, seeking the thing that it needs to restore it's strength enough to flee our lonely backwater of a solar system: human brains.

As an energy being the Brain Eater does not physically consume it's victim's brains, instead it merely drains them of all creativity and artistic talent. For this reason it seeks out the most talented artists in the world and feeds on their energy, leaving only shattered remnants of their former selves.

I shall illustrate with a few examples. If one were a fan of the band Metallica, one might say, “Boy, the Brain Eater sure made a messy meal of those guys after the black album!” However, it would be incorrect to say “Man, look at what the Brain Eater did to Gwen Stefani/Green Day!”, as to do so would be to imply that Green Day or Gwen Stefani at one stage had some degree of talent to speak of.

In this series I shall be looking at some of the most spectacular recorded instances of the brain eater ruining a formerly brilliant artistic career.

8. Korn

Korn were never a brilliant band, but they did at one time have a certain raw passion that allowed them to put out a few compelling albums with quality ranging from decent to pretty good. However their recent output has had such a dramatic drop in quality that it is only reasonable to conclude that the Brain Eater, desperate for sustenance after being subjected to three years of indie rock, concluded that Korn (having been around for over ten years now) must have at least something worth devouring in their heads. Lets hope that such a paltry meal is not enough to keep it alive long enough to find another victim.

7. Robert Jordan

The Wheel of Time series started out with a hell of a lot of promise. Jordan had a good writing style, an original plot and setting, and a clever knack for handling prophecies and internal references to both events in the book and in the real world, creating a large and detailed world that captured the imagination of many a reader. Sadly he drew the series out too long, and by the halfway point the Brain Eater had already done its messy work, leaving only the sad spectacle of five whole fucking seven hundred page books in which absolutely nothing happens. Curiously enough, he started receiving mainstream attention right about the time of the Brain Eater attack.

6. System of a Down

Their self titled debut album is a genuine classic, managing to be hard metal and have a quirky artistry at the same time. Their follow-ups, Toxicity and Steal this Album, sacrificed a bit of that for the sake of commercial appeal but were still very good. Then came Mezmerize and Hypnotize; in a few short years absolutely everything which made these guys stand out had been stripped away, leaving just another boring nu-metal band. Curse you Brain Eater!

5. The Writers of Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Like most people the Brain Eater didn't click on to Buffy for a few years, on account of the terrible movie it was based on. Fortunately for us we got four brilliant seasons before it did, at which point it began to nibble gently here and there. I suspect that the Brain Eater looks at situations like this as a kind of 'watering hole', where as long as it doesn't feed too greedily the show stays on the air with new writers coming on every year and providing it with a potentially permanent food source. It wasn't until the final, seventh season when the collective genius became just too tempting and the Brain Eater finally lost all self restraint, gleefully gorging itself on the minds of the writers in a grisly orgy of gluttony. (Fortunately Joss Whedon hid under a desk and was spared.) The seventh season was completed, but with half its plot threads unresolved and a completely nonsensical emotional arc. Afterwards the Brain Eater sat weeping, knowing that it had become an addict but unable to ask for help, having driven all its friends and family away by being emotionally unavailable. Don't be like the Brain Eater. If you or someone you know has an unquenchable desire for human brains, act now. Call Quitline to receive information about brain addiction and to learn how you (or your 'friend', you're not fooling anyone man) can get power back over your own life with the help of friends, whanau and a healthy government subsidy.

Funny Webcomic

Man do I know this feeling.

In Which I Learn That Some People Have Even More Time On Their Hands Than Me

Dominos in Oblivion

Final Fantasy: Advent Children

Short Version: The (barely comprehensible) story sucks. The voice acting is terrible. It retroactively wrecks the end of Final Fantasy VII. But hey, it's still worth watching.

Final Fantasy VII is one of the most popular computer games of all time, and even though it's a Japanese RPG (a genre legendary for it's confounding plot lines) it actually had a pretty decent story, if you paid enough attention to decipher it. In particular the ending was appealingly ambiguous (for the record, my interpretation was that the planet (with it's self-defence mechanism 'Holy' activated) purged itself of the thing that caused it all the problems in the first place, i.e. the human race). However a lot of people can't handle ambiguity and legions of fanboys were positively salivating at the chance of some sort of explanatory sequel.

So Square-Enix have followed up their last box-office flop The Spirits Within with this movie, which continues the story of Final Fantasy VII. It turns out I was wrong about the ending of the game, as the human race is alive and well. Mostly well anyway, a virus called the Geostigma is afflicting children all over the world, and a bunch of guys with long white hair are riding around on motorbikes fucking shit up. But never mind the plot, like ninety percent of Japanese imports it's nearly incomprehensible to our feeble, unenlightened western minds. The emotional arc is trite and stupid too; it can be summed up as 'Cloud has to learn to stop running away'. (Hey, didn't he learn that lesson in the game?)

While The Spirits Within was released in theatres worldwide and was designed with an international audience in mind, Advent Children is basically by the Japanese for the Japanese, with an international DVD release almost an afterthought. The difference is obvious just from the look of the character models, those in The Spirits Within have a deliberately raceless character to their faces, while those in Advent Children are definitely Japanese.

So why is it worth watching then? Firstly the animation is great, the backgrounds still look pretty fake, but some of the detail on the characters is amazing, especially the hair. Secondly the music is excellent, it includes orchestral and hard rock arrangements of the midi music from the game which was brilliant even in that format, but benefits greatly from a real performance. (There's a very funny moment when Tifa finishes beating the crap out of some guy and his cellphone starts ringing. His ringtone is the classic Final Fantasy 'battle over' bugle call.) Lastly the fight scenes are immensely entertaining, cheesy as fuck but definitely cool. The movie only really succeeds because it's ninety percent fight scenes. In fact the whole last half hour is simply nonstop action, and it's a jolly good time.

The movie is really just an excuse to see these well loved characters, locations and musical themes back in action again. By the end there's no avoiding that the plot is there simply to provide a pretext to resurrect Sephiroth for an over the top rematch with Cloud, enhanced by the latest advances in computer animation. There are heaps of references to the game thrown in for the enjoyment of fans (mostly special moves from the game performed during the fight scenes) and if you're a fan of the game and accept the movie as just a big blatant piece of fan service and don't take it at all seriously, it's a lot of fun.

In Which I Am Easily Amused

Captain Picard's blog.

1001 Albums: Help

So there's no way I'm actually spending money to buy 1001 albums, as that would end up costing me over 30 grand, so I'll be downloading these albums and then buying them if they turn out to be any good (I'm betting most of them won't be). However I'm having trouble finding a P2P service that has a decent selection of old stuff. I'm currently looking for Elvis' self titled album Elvis Presley, but I've had absolutely no luck. Can anyone recommend a program or website were I can download this sort of thing?

In Which I Find Out That I Am A Demographic

Ever hear of 'lad-lit' (chick-lit's opposing member).

Goddamn it! This is me!

"I may be 30, but I act 15. I am adrift in New York. I'm too clever by half for my own good. I live on puns and snide, sarcastic asides. I don't look too deeply into myself or anyone else — everyone else is boring or a phony anyway. I may be a New Yorker, but I am not in therapy. I have a boring job, for which I am overeducated and underqualified, but I lack the ambition to commit to a serious career. (Usually I have family money.) I hang out with my equally disconnected friends in many of the city's bars. I drink a lot, take recreational drugs, don't care about much except being clever. I recently broke up with my girlfriend, and while I am eager to have sex, which I do often given the zillions of available women in New York, the sex is not especially fulfilling, and emotions rarely enter the picture. I am deeply shallow. And I know it."

Emphasis added. The sentence about sex doesn't apply so much but hey, I'm in Hamilton, not New York. I'd like to think that I'm not deeply shallow either.

Secret Window

For some reason I got it into my head that this movie had a lot in common with The Ninth Gate, an absolutely brilliant satanic mystery movie from a couple of years ago. Turns out that they both star Johnny Depp, but that's where the resemblance ends.

Secret Window is based on a short story by Steven King, and it's a thriller rather than a horror with no supernatural aspects. If you didn't already know that it's written by King you'd soon guess from the premise. Depp plays a writer working on a new novel in a secluded location (probably somewhere in Maine) who is visited by a psychotic southerner who appears on his doorstep accusing him of having plagiarised a story.

It starts out pretty good, with plenty of mystery and tension but like so many thrillers it falls apart when it comes time for the big revelations. In this case the final twist is ripped straight out of a much better story, but has none of that tale's clever foreshadowing.

Johnny Depp is usually pretty cool, but in this case he's hamstrung by a lame story and too much vocalised internal dialogue. Nothing else is in this movie is exactly good or bad, but just uninspired. Mostly it just made me want to buy The Ninth Gate on DVD. That movie is fucking sweet.

The Dark Knight Returns

by Frank Miller

As I mentioned in my post about V for Vendetta, The Dark Knight Returns was one of the iconic comics released in the mid 80s that shook up the superhero genre. Miller's story is a 'Doomsday Myth' for the Batman series; set some unspecified time in the future, Batman has been retired for some years, Robin is dead and Two Face and The Joker have been safely locked away for some time. However Gotham City is plagued by a particularly nasty crime wave, and Bruce Wayne, despite being old and out of shape, is compelled to put on the costume once more.

The political overtones are nowhere near as overt as those in Moore's V for Vendetta or Watchmen, but they are present. The ultimate villain turns out to be Ronald Reagan, whose amicable but bumbling persona and hillbilly mannerisms could stand in for any incompetent American president du jour. Unlike Moore, Miller takes a few stabs at liberalism as well as conservatism, in the form of busy body TV personalities who condemn Batman's vigilantism and portray his enemies as the victims. Together his criticisms make a case against a lack of personal responsibility and sheeplike obedience to authority, contrasted with Batman's willingness to do what is right according to his own code of honour regardless of how anyone reacts to it.

Graphically the story is presented in a very chaotic fashion, with constant sudden scene shifts and frequent interspersals of TV footage featuring media reaction to the story's events. It can be distracting, but it's worth it just for The Joker's appearance on David Letterman.

Batman himself is a very morally ambiguous character in this story, especially at the end. Miller's treatment of him and other canonical DC characters (fascist Superman the useful idiot; fat, old Catwoman and others) is very jaded and somewhat demeaning, showcasing their flaws and taking a more realistic look at what these characters (who until this series was published were treated as more or less two dimensional heroes and villians) might actually be like. Most notable is the portrayal of Batman himself; haunted all his life by the murder of his parents his drive to fight crime borders on the psychotic, but at the same time he displays genuine moral superiority to his contemporaries. We are familiar with this take on the character from Tim Burton's movies, but Burton was basing his story on Miller's, which was published when Batman's persona was more like that of the infamous 60s TV show (”There's not a scrap of evidence Batman!"). Miller's Batman may be frighteningly intense, but at the same time he brings out the core elements that give the character it's resonance with today's world (as opposed to the idealistic, morally unambiguous Superman, a hero for the 1940s and 50s), which are well summed up in the introduction to the trade compilation:

“They talk about a Man of Steel. An Amazon Princess.
But they never talk about the mean one. The cruel one. The on who couldn't fly or bend steel in his bare hands. The one who scared the crap out of everybody and laughed at all of the rest of us for being the envious cowards we were.”

Rashomon

So I saw my first Kurosawa movie the other night. This unemployment gig is really helping me to catch up on my enculturising! I was really impressed although it wasn't quite what I expected. The ending was a little bit cheese but it was more than compensated by the excellent climactic fight scene, not excellent in a 'wow awesome coreography' way but excellent in that it's probably one of the most honest fight scenes I've ever seen in a film, two guys so shit scared of dying that they can barely hold their weapons for shaking. It's a welcome realistic antidote to my current diet of Steven Erikson and Angel. The movie's presentation of honesty, lies, good and evil is thought provoking too, although I feel somewhat unqualified to offer my own interpretation of such an iconic film. Plus I'm too lazy to write a long post today.

Quickies

Last week Einstuerzende Neubauten released the fourth EP in their Musterhaus series. This one contains a few live recordings of the band performing together with an orchestra. The first two tracks, 'Wueste' and 'Keine Schoenheit ohne Gefahr' are obvious choices for this treatment, as their compositions contained significant orchestral parts to begin with. The other tracks, 'Installation No. 1' and 'Negativ Nein' are harder, more industrial songs so their transition to this different format is more interesting. Overall the Musterhaus series has been pretty good, although it would help if they bothered to email subscribers when they released a new installment. I missed out on downloading the second one by a day. It's a bit expensive though so I don't know if I'll keep subscribing, although my attitude may well change when I start working again.

--

I also bought Sin Episodes Part 1 off of Steam last week too. Remember a time when Doom was the best computer game ever made, and all a game developer had to do in order to sell a product was to put in lots of gore and overdone PG13 sexuality? The original Sin came out in just this environment and despite being a terrible game they sealed it's popularity by putting a ridiculously proportioned woman in a kinky outfit on the cover. Developers Ritual have apparently not changed much over the years and have delivered more of the same with this sequel. To their credit the absurd plot, gratuitous violence and embarrassingly adolescent sexuality is presented completely shamelessly without taking itself seriously.

The plot is absolutely retarded. Apparently being a cop (A commando cop! Called John Blade!) in the future means that you drive around looking for suspected drug dealers, and whether they're in a warehouse, a cargo ship, or a big office building, you kick down the door and blow everyone inside to fucking pieces. The villain from the original Sin, the absurdly proportioned Alexis, is back in this series, now with even more polygons and featuring more realistic heaving animations. The developers are so proud of this technological achievement that they obligingly begin the opening cut scene with the most ridiculous cleavage shot ever. Even your partner, the obligatory cute, nice girl, for some reason has a police uniform that shows off her g-string.

That said they've found a fool proof way to package all this into a good game. Sin Episodes uses Half-Life 2's Source engine so it plays like a slightly more mindless action oriented Half-Life, it's a very fun game once you get past the stupidity. A nice addition is the dynamic difficulty, which adjusts itself automatically depending on how hard you are finding the game, and it works pretty well. The business model is a bit of a rip off however. Six or seven hours gameplay for $20 US doesn't seem like a bad deal, but when you consider that there will be nine episodes in all it means you'll be paying $180 for the whole game. I will probably splash out for the upcoming Half-Life Episodes but Sin Episodes will have to depend on how many other games are competing for my attention at the same time.

Air Babylon

by Imogen Edwards-Jones and Anonymous

Although presented as a work of fiction, Air Babylon is actually a fictionalised aggregation of the many stories told to the author by a large cast of airline crew and airport ground staff, collectively credited as Anonymous. The intention is to reveal the dirty secrets of the airline industry, with the emphasis on dirty. Although details about how the airport and airlines operate as businesses are included, the focus is more on the sexual, narcotic and criminal escapades of the airline staff and their customers. You can certainly tell that it's been written by a Brit, as the author's tone has a thin veneer of disapproval but tries little to conceal it's glee in relating the sordid episodes of the story. You can just imagine a bunch of middle aged soccer mums with their noses buried in the book tut-tutting “Oh, it shouldn't be allowed!” while their faces are lit up with vicarious delight.

It's a fun, breezy book to read and I recommend it without reservation. Just don't expect any incredible revelations; almost everything that happens in the book is exactly what you always suspected goes on anyway. If there's a moral to the story it's to be nice to every staff member you deal with from the moment you enter the airport, as they have to deal with obnoxious members of the public all day long and they're not paid much for it. They also have plenty of ways to get back at you: piss off the check in staff and they'll seat you next to the fattest person on the plane, piss off the flight attendants and they'll stick laxatives in your meal.

And to answer the question that occurs to 90% of males immediately upon reading the blurb for this book, flight attendants are usually pretty well behaved while on duty (unless you count drinking and drug taking), unless you're a celebrity. Off duty is another story, but then, we already know about that don't we...

News Flash

Myspace is full of idiots.

Elaboration

So the posts I linked to the other day have continued to stir discussion about how to get people interested in classical music, and I thought I'd share my own thoughts.

In my experience any unfamiliar genre of music will fail to leave an impression the first few times you hear it as your brain has to some degree be trained to know how to listen to it. We've all grown up with exposure to pop and (hopefully) rock music so it takes no conscious effort to appreciate these genres, whereas unless you've grown up with them jazz, blues or classical can take a little while before it too becomes familiar enough to appreciate easily.

I find the best way to listen to something unfamiliar is to put it on in the background while you do something mentally undemanding. Two memorable 'holy shit this is fucking good' moments happened for me this way, once when Ravel's Bolero came on the radio while I was driving home from work and again when listening to Debussy's La Mer while playing Civ 4.

I think classical aficionado's often don't really appreciate this. To them a certain piece's appeal is obvious and if anyone doesn't get it they assume there must be something wrong with them. And of course the snobbishness can go the other way too, someone with no knowledge of classical music might get told that Beethoven's seventh is the greatest piece of music ever written, but feel nothing when they first hear it themselves and write this whole 'classical music' thing off as an 'emperor's new clothes' type of pretentiousness, or just some old person thing to be classified under 'shit I don't care about' along with Coronation Street.

Funny Movie Trailer Remix

10 Things I Hate About Commandments

Funniest Music Video Ever

God bless the 70s. I don't know which is funnier, the keyboard player's dancing or his moustache.

Neil Gaiman Ruins My Life

If hypothetically I were to get off my arse and make it to Sydney by next week (prognosis: very unlikely) I could get to meet Neil Gaiman.

In the meantime I'll have to make do with his interview in the Sydney Morning Herald.

"I thought, 'If only I was a 70-year-old black man called Blind Melon Goodbody, I could wear a hat like that'."

--

Random pointless story: went into town today to run some errands (reluctantly pay car rego for another six months, mail Jacob's shirt back to him), and sure enough while I was there I popped into the comic book store 'just to have a look, not to buy anything though'. A resolution that immediately went out the window when I saw Gaiman's Stardust on the shelves, and of course you can't just buy one thing when you go comic book shopping, so $80 later... Damn you Neil Gaiman!

Appreciating Classical Music

Interesting discussion slash catfight on how to introduce classical music to the unwashed masses at Musical Perceptions, Sound and Fury and Uncertain Principles.

I'm just curious as to how all the posters involved would respond to my assertion that this is the greatest music ever written.