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(Show notes below…)

……….

Most people have seen Inglorious Basterds already so hopefully we didn’t spoil the ending for anyone.

If you have your own thoughts on the Oscar nominees, please share them. We can always look back after the awards show and see how badly we underestimated the power of the Avatar machine.

(Seriously, if anyone else has gone back to see it a second time, back me up on how it really doesn’t hold up once the wow factor wears off.)

……….

The new Los Campesinos! album, Romance Is Boring, is out now on Arts & Crafts. They’re currently touring the UK, presumably with a whole truckload of quirky instruments.

Surfer Blood’s debut album Astro Coast is fantastic and everyone should get it. Hit up Kanine Records, your local store, your favorite digital outlet, or see them on tour this spring. Just don’t miss out. This is good stuff.

If you’re in more of a lounging and relaxing mood, you can’t beat the latest Beach House album Teen Dream on Sub Pop Records. So dreamy and beautiful. They’re currently gallivanting around Europe.

Music Breaks:
1) Surfer Blood - Floating Vibes
2) Los Campesinos! - There Are Listed Buildings
3) Beach House - Walk In The Park

It all makes the act of watching Avatar a race to simply process the wonders assaulting our eyeballs. There are certainly faults with the film, but the spectacle is such that most viewers will walk out of the theater feeling little else than awe.

On repeat viewing the wow-factor wears off somewhat. The high points are still high: Cameron crafts action scenes to beat the best of them, delivering huge aerial battles, massive disasters, and soldiers in robot suits fighting dinosaurs, which can’t help but be fucking sweet. Yet once you get over the high of that new-planet smell, the cheese factor starts wafting in. For one, the writing is incredibly trite, lacking even the charm of a willfully schlocky action blockbuster. Try a little test, if you’ve seen it. Attempt to recall a single memorable line of dialogue; any snippet worth quoting, repeating, or even remembering. Even after two viewings, it remains a challenge.

Then there’s the story as a whole, which does little more than pull together things we’ve seen before. Dances With Wolves and Pocahontas are popular comparisons — only more, you know, blue. He even borrows from himself with hints of Titanic, just short of having Sully scream “I’m king of the world!” while flying a giant dragon. The acting, though not offensive, is merely serviceable, though credit is due to Zoe Saldana for injecting some personal emotional moments into the film as the fetching native Neytiri (she represents nature, get it? Subtlety: also not Avatar’s strong suit). Of course, she’s also the only character with anything at stake, since it’s her world being invaded and her boyfriend trying to save it. Everyone else is only present to do their job, both as characters and, seemingly, as actors.

Overall, Avatar serves as a cross between a Disney movie and Terminator 2. Like T2, the action sequences are not only exciting, they’re ground-breaking. But let’s be honest, there are some really lame moments and a lot of the dialogue can’t be taken seriously. Like a Disney fairy tale, it’s a warm, fuzzy, overcoming-of-obstacles story where eventually some good guys beat back some bad guys so everyone can live happily ever after. Simple, broad, and too cut and dry to have much dramatic weight.

Without a doubt, both types of movies have something to offer. They’re loved and valued parts of film canon, as Avatar should be. More importantly though, neither are worthy of an Oscar for Best Picture, yet somehow Avatar finds itself in serious contention. Hence the problem.

……….

In theory, the Best Picture award should go to the movie that best brings together all the elements that make up the art of film-making. Writing, directing, and acting. Visuals and sounds and music. The winner should demonstrate everything that a film can be when films are at their best.

There’s no question that Cameron’s team deserves recognition for what they’ve done with Avatar. If they don’t win the visual effects category, the guys at Weta have full license to track down their ILM/Star Trek rivals after the show and beat them to death with Jar Jar Binks lunch boxes (or simply sneak into the break room and shit in the brown bags of their teammates who worked on District 9). Hell, Cameron himself may be about due for a lifetime achievement award, capping a career of repeatedly setting new benchmarks in Aliens, The Abyss, two Terminator films and Titanic.

There’s a much trickier question to be asked though. One whose answer could make all the difference in what kind of films are celebrated in the years to follow. That question being: Is expanding the field of ‘what a film can be’ through revolutionary use of technology as important, or more so, than showing proper care to all the disciplines that traditionally make up a movie? Does pushing the boundaries excuse a filmmaker from respecting what’s already within them?

The case could be made that by wrangling the complex camera rigs involved in making Avatar, and still getting any kind of decent performance out of his actors, Cameron deserves to win Best Director. Same with Best Picture; since he’s supposedly made a game-changing film in terms of 3D and digital effects, some might argue it’s the best by virtue of innovation. But this is dangerous reasoning.

Rewarding Avatar with a Best Picture award sends exactly the wrong message about where the value in film lies. It says to filmmakers everywhere that what matters most is the biggest, shiniest roller coaster ride of an event movie, and that we as an audience want more of that, please. It also says to those who bother with all those things Avatar passes over — sharp, original dialogue; subtle, complex stories; actors who portray difficult human emotions beyond “You hurt my tree, I’m angry, let’s fight!” — you know what, thanks, but no thanks.

There’s a reason so many of the other Best Picture nominees were also picked in categories for writing or acting as well as directing, and it’s because films like The Hurt Locker, Inglorious Basterds or Up in the Air aspire to greatness at every level, not just in scale and technical wizardry. They show a respect for the full range of talents required to make a truly great film. One that’s capable of wowing us and moving us, but also making us think and feel in ways we haven’t before (and haven’t already felt with Kevin Costner, specifically). In the interest of rewarding that respect for the art we all love, let’s hope the Academy sees the distinction. If not, may we all enjoy the pending IMAX release of the all-CGI, full-3D thrill ride that is Forrest Gump in Space.

Much of this is well-deserved, as Uncharted does a lot of things better than most. For example: action game dialogue tends to sound like it’s delivered by newly brought-to-life mannequins, forced to read scripts penned by nerds who substituted midnight movies for college composition. To Naughty Dog’s credit, the characters of Uncharted sound like humans talking to other humans. The central love triangle of Nate, Chloe and Elena even achieves a degree of on-screen chemistry, which is probably this game’s greatest achievement. If there were awards for Most Believable Humans of the Year, there would be no contest.

Uncharted 2 also offers several of the most memorable chase sequences of the year. It’s not giving away much to say that in an adventure game, you’ll spend time fighting atop moving vehicles, barely making leaps across yawning chasms, or running for cover from an oncoming military vehicle; those are all part of the United Nations’ treaty on required action game sequences. But through deft use of motion capture and camera angle — zoomed in tight on a flailing Drake just narrowly surviving each narrow escape — Uncharted 2 makes these sequences look as spectacular and feel as fresh as the first time you saw Arnold gun his Harley down the LA River in T2. If there were yet another award for Most Exciting 90 Seconds in a Single Player Game, Uncharted would have to be in the running for that too.

However, a game is made of more than just dialogue and short bursts of adrenaline (isn’t it?), so it’s only fair to look at the bigger picture. Never mind the occasional moments of cognitive dissonance (Has any man in history ever almost-but-not-quite fallen to his death, only to be saved by grabbing a friend’s hand at the last possible second, as often as Nathan Drake? Has any supposedly nice guy ever killed enough people over the course of a few days to fill a Tibetan mystery temple, and still come out the other end, not only not a psychological wreck, but chipper enough to make cute jokes and get the girl?). For better or worse, these are problems common to many games, and a topic for a much larger discussion.

No, Uncharted 2’s most troubling element is its approach to puzzles; the game has an apparent distaste for genuine problem-solving, or ever making the player stop and figure something out. And its an issue made even more troubling by the fact that many players may not see it as a problem at all.

To elaborate, let’s compare it quickly to a few other historical conspiracy adventures: fellow triple-A holiday release Assassin’s Creed II, and for argument’s sake, the wildly popular book The Da Vinci Code.

Taking the ten-thousand-foot view, Uncharted and Assassin’s Creed have a pretty similar setup. Both are action adventures, pit you as a hero uncovering a quasi-historical mystery, with the goal of preventing evil forces from obtaining a powerful magical artifact. Both feature locations so gorgeously rendered it’s like leaping Mary Poppins-style into a postcard. Both do a respectable job of fumbling toward a more honest and mature representation of sexuality in games, and both games propel you forward by emphasizing their well-realized characters.

And yet the prevailing sense seems to be that Uncharted was the more accomplished game. While it’s true that it looked shinier, played more smoothly, and above all was more tightly paced — an encouraging trend as we see more excellent ten-hour games and fewer padded-out twenty-hour ones — it’s important to remember the central strength of games over films or books: that’s control. Control lets you inhabit your character: sympathize with them as you (and they) struggle, or identify with them as you make choose their path through the world.

Control in Uncharted, an extremely linear A-to-B-to-C experience, comes down to not screwing up when fending off soldiers or jumping from ledge to ledge. But there’s very little struggle anywhere along the way. The supporting characters can’t die (unless they’re supposed to, in which case saving them isn’t an option either; sorry, buddy!). The next handhold when scaling a wall is always clearly marked with nicely exposed, laddery bricks. Even the puzzles and booby traps in each ancient ruin Drake visits are clearly spelled out in his handy journal. Though the journey through Uncharted 2 is a thrilling one, the game leads you through it like a child being lead through a zoo; it’s exotic and exciting, but takes little effort to get from “Ooh” to “Aah”, and without any danger of the snow leopard devouring your little brother.

At least Assassin’s Creed II makes you figure things out on your own. Searching for glyphs on Renaissance landmarks takes work, and solving the puzzles behind them takes brains. As a result, every little clue revealing the underlying conspiracy feels like a small victory, not just a cleared hurdle. Instead of the Uncharted approach of 1) enter room, 2) follow clearly laid out steps to open passage, 3) keep on jumping and murdering, in ACII there’s a sense of discovery and achievement in every step closer to the truth. For games that center around mysteries, one would hope that players would want to do more honest puzzle-sovling, and yet ACII probably gets dinged for its mental challenges (possibly the most interesting part of the game), as often as it gets praised for them.

That, in the end, is the troubling part. Everyone wants to feel smart without having to go through any of those nasty neural processes that might slow down the roller coaster ride. Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code is massively successful for its pop-anthropology and twisty turny plot, while frustrating any serious reader or critic for its terrible writing and manipulative mystery. Like Uncharted, Da Vinci Code doesn’t create pieces of a puzzle for the reader to put together, but relies on a protagonist able to pull just the right answer out of thin air at every crucial moment, spoon-feeding it to the audience before any dreaded head-scratching has to take place.

Before crying foul that “Uncharted isn’t about the mystery, it’s about the action and the characters!” relax for a moment and re-read the beginning paragraphs. There’s no question that those elements are the focus for this game, and on those terms Uncharted 2 is a huge success. A milestone, even, in terms of production value and characterization.

But in terms of the bigger picture — of what games are and can be as they evolve — maybe the fact that Uncharted gets so much praise for succeeding on those terms should be tempered with some reservations too. We already have Indiana Jones and his bookish offshoot Robert Langdon when we want to sit back and enjoy an adventure. Though we should thank the stars that Drake is almost as fun to watch as Indy, and miles better than the dreadful symbologist we watched Tom Hanks try to make likable, that’s exactly the issue. What we’re mostly doing is watching. Not analyzing problems, not exploring, not piecing together a mystery, but pressing buttons to get through to the next cool moment, letting the character do all the hard work for us and letting us feel smart without having to be smart.

So between the two (no one should read or watch The Da Vinci Code if they can help it), Assassin’s Creed II is the better game for all its rough edges. And though Uncharted 2 does some things spectacularly, and may make for a fun ride, it’s not a ride we’ll be much better for having gone on.

So at Under Culture we nixed the top tens, top fives, top nine of ‘09 or what have you. Instead, we sat down for an epic virtual discussion of our absolute favorites of the year — in every category we could think of covering movies, TV, games, books, comics, music, and more — and set about explaining why each one made the list. This way you know everything that shows up here really deserves it. If your favorite isn’t mentioned, maybe it’s because we didn’t get around to it. Or it came in a close second. Or you are simply wrong. If so, let us have it in the comments with your own choices.

Some of these we’ve probably discussed on our podcast too, but it helps to have all the best stuff collected in one place. If you’d like to hear about what we love on a monthly basis, why not subscribe to that while you’re here?

And because we can’t resist a bad pun, we’ve dubbed these awards The Undies. So here they are: three pages of our favorite shit from 2009, in the second annual Undie Awards.

WATCHING

Best Movie

Brian: This was a weird year for movies. So much garbage, and so many great films, yet there wasn’t one that hands down deserves to win Best Picture. So I’m gonna get a little controversial and go with District 9. More than anything else this year, that film impressed the hell out of me on several different levels. The visual effects were stunning. The acting was terrific, especially for a lead actor we’d never seen before. It had a meaningful story and killer action at the expense of neither. But most of all it was a sci-fi blockbuster with intelligence. A kickass adventure that combines aliens, Kafka’s Metamorphosis and an apartheid metaphor? No one saw that coming. New filmmaker Neil Blomkamp reminded audiences as well as the Hollywood machine that an original work from a genuine talent is miles better than a brain-dead Transformers sequel. I truly believe that someday we’ll look back and District 9 will be grouped with Terminator, The Matrix, or Alien as a classic debut by a visionary genre director.

Spencer: Frankly, I think your choice would only be controversial in a year that isn’t 2009, especially since our mutual friend Josh and I came to pretty much the same conclusion when we were talking last week.  District 9, The Hurt Locker (a.k.a. Lethal Weapon of Mass Destruction), Star Trek… we’re talking a year where in all sincerity Star Trek is one of the best movies. Let that sink in for a moment. That said, my pick goes to one you recommended to me originally. It’s hilarious, but so dark and profane that it’s like an unlubricated horse cock shoved in your ear: In The Loop. It’s a poisonous acid bath of a comedy that examines the foibles of an ensemble of British and American diplomats as they bumblingly bring the world into war with an unspecified country in the Middle East. The crack performances are killer, but the lion’s share of credit has to go to the amazing, amazing writing. For me, In The Loop’s main achievement is how it makes you realize how truly fucking unfunny every other comedy of the last ten years was.

Best Netflix Rental

Brian: Back when I was doing a mile and a movie every day, I saw a lot of great stuff I’d never got around to, but the standout was Synechdoche, New York. I watched it alone one night, and it’s so complex, uncomfortable, grand in scale and absolutely stuffed with detail, that somehow this story of a theatre director’s crumbling life hit me like a punch in the gut. It’s not necessarily a pleasant thing to watch, but so few movies are that affecting or thought-provoking, it’s still a must-see.

Spencer: Wow, you’re probably the only person I can imagine calling that movie a must-see.  I’m an embarrassing decade late on this one, but I finally saw the HBO documentary From The Earth To The Moon, a historical dramatization of the space race and lunar missions. You only need to see the first 10 episodes, as the last two were a complete waste of time, but this miniseries got me on the highly dorky NASA kick you’ve been making fun of me for. The Apollo program is mankind’s most jaw-droppingly what-the-fuck accomplishment; it’s been almost forty years and we still haven’t gotten back to where we were then.

Best Documentary

Spencer: The Cove is about a cove in Japan where fishermen systematically and brutally slaughter dolphins while trying to hide their activities from media and activist groups. A lot of hype has been made about the Mission: Impossible-style team that goes undercover to finally obtain footage of the cove, and how they release it to the world in as sensational a fashion as possible. But in a year with some great documentaries, The Cove stood out not just for the story it told, but for provoking some Big Picture questions.

I think the film has a lot to say about cultural relativism. Killing dolphins, a practice shunned by the majority of the civilized world, and even parts that aren’t, is defended by the fishermen as “part of a time-honored tradition”. When confronted with the fact that the ocean is so poisoned dolphins are no longer a viable food source, that live dolphins are worth more than slaughtered ones economically, that it was never really a Japanese tradition, or any one of the other logical and scientifically grounded arguments made in the film, the fishermen and their political leaders just close their eyes and tune out.

Another issue it ponders is the death of activism. My dad seems unable to finish a meal without asking me why my generation isn’t rioting in the streets about the two wars our country is in the middle of. The smartass answer is that we know it won’t matter, but what The Cove says is, “Yes, it does, and here is how you do it.” Maybe this ties into the first issue. It seems like such substantial resources in this country have been dedicated to indoctrinating universal, unconditional acceptance of every stupid belief, tradition, and opinion, that maybe my generation has become totally amoral in its haste to avoid taking or giving offense.

So, well done The Cove.  You exposed a bunch of corrupt bastards, made a documentary that explored some exceptional and controversial themes, and even managed to get the South Park treatment for an episode this season (’Whale Whores’). Hopefully, the impact of the film can extend beyond the immediate issue at hand and reach an audience that shares the filmmakers’ passion for thinking critically and creating change based on the resulting insights.

Brian: Wow, after that thorough an endorsement I definitely need to check this one out. It may sound silly to draw a comparison between everything you said and my pick, but I honestly loved Darkon for some of the same reasons. No wait, don’t leave, hear me out!

Obviously Darkon is not about our messed up political systems or changing the world through activism, but it is a compelling documentary that touches on much bigger ideas. Yes, on the surface it simply follows a bunch of nerds who dress up on weekends to act out role-playing games on the grassy fields of public parks (to an occasionally extra-ridiculous effect as ‘normal’ people play soccer or have barbecues in the background). And maybe I’m alone on this, but the ‘action’ scenes were filmed so beautifully that part of me wanted to be there with them.

But what this film is really about is our tendency to live in a fantasy world of our own making that doesn’t really gel with the mundane realities of life. It examines our desire to go so far into escapism that it becomes our primary motivating force. Sure, you and I don’t own mock chain mail or foam-padded broadswords, but with all the time we spend with books or films or games, are we that much different? Is one form of escape any less acceptable than the other? Or are we all wrong to spend so much time outside of our real selves? Maybe the gift of being human is that we can pick imagination over drudgery and still get by.

My honorable mention, Anvil: The Story of Anvil treads some of the same ground. Here’s an 80’s metal band that by every account is washed up, should probably have given up years ago, and yet they choose to believe against all evidence that they’re still gonna ‘make it’. Delusional? Maybe. Sad? Often. But you have to admit, spending a lifetime doing what you love has to be considered some kind of success.

Spencer:  Who doesn’t love Anvil?  I haven’t met that person yet, and I certainly don’t want to.

Best Movie That Not Enough People Saw

Brian: There were so many under-the-radar greats this year that it’s hard to choose just one for this category. The one I’d recommend to pretty much anyone is In The Loop, so I’m glad you enjoyed it as much as I did. As I mentioned in my review after the LA Film Fest, it’s a rapid-fire political satire that plays like the evil twin of The West Wing, and it’s the best-written, funniest comedy I’ve seen in years.

But to at least give credit to one more underdog I’ll make an alternate pick. I could go with Moon, Big Fan, Thirst, or several others, but one I really wished more people saw or were talking about was The Brothers Bloom. Check out my full review for more, but it’s a super-charming, fun, twisty con film by Rian Johnson, the director of the visionary Brick, and it’s definitely worth a viewing.

Spencer: The Carter is an authorized documentary about Lil Wayne.  Upon seeing the final result, Lil Wayne opined that while it was a great movie, he was still going to fight tooth and nail to block its distribution.  The movie is two hours of watching Lil Wayne “put in work”, drink “sizzurp”, and generally just be the most insane rapper since ODB passed on.  Rent it now and enjoy the insanity.

Best Worst Movie

Spencer: They say there are two ways to learn by example: you can learn from what people are doing right…or what they’re doing wrong.  Jennifer’s Body illustrated the second half of the maxim; halfway through the snoozefest, I thought to myself, “Man, I really love Heathers“.

Brian: I’m gonna go with Ong Bak 2. It’s the most gorgeous, expensive-looking kung-fu movie made without the wire trickery of something like Hero, and Tony Jaa is incredibly talented, no question. But you can tell they wanted so badly to make an epic historical drama on top of a bad-ass martial arts action movie, and they only really nailed the part where dudes get kicked in the face.

Best Animated/Anime Movie or Show I Saw This Year

Brian: This one’s tough. Pixar has yet to disappoint, and Henry Selick’s work on Coraline was gorgeous, but I think out of this year’s bumper crop of animated work the one I’ll keep going back to is Fantastic Mr. Fox. It has the mix of charm, warmth and humor the last few Wes Anderson movies were short on, and it may sound cheesy, but I was delighted the whole way through.
Spencer: I will be mainstream to the max and say Up, for obvious reasons. The first ten minutes alone are one of the best things I saw this year.
Brian: Oh, and because it would be remiss to leave anime wholly off this list, one quick add-on: I highly recommend the series Death Note. It’s a bizarre fantasy-noir involving demons and a kid with the ability to kill anyone by writing their name in a magic notebook, but the cat-and-mouse story between him and the detectives trying to figure it all out makes for an excellent series.

Funniest Show on TV This Year

Spencer: For me, it’s a tie between the brilliant but familiar Curb Your Enthusiasm and the newcomer, Community. Curb Your Enthusiasm’s overarching reunion plot line worked perfectly, and the Jerry Seinfeld guest spots were some of the driest laughs in recent memory. I mean, they even had the balls to address the Michael Richards thing and turn it into a laugh! Meanwhile, Community came out of nowhere to eclipse Parks and Recreation (which continues to better find its voice), and surprisingly, 30 Rock (as it begins to lose its voice and stop turning out consistently great episodes). The brilliance of Community is that, aside from the lightning-fast dialogue, they’re so accomplished at the sort of structural gags that knock you on your ass (ending 30 Rock’s reign as the sole torch-bearer of the Marx Brothers, Woody Allen, Mr. Show tradition).

Brian: I’m with you, I think most of my favorite comedies have been on the wane, but both your picks were up there among the best. So lacking a better choice I’ll just recommend a ten-year-old British sitcom that came out on DVD in 2008. We’re nothing here if not cutting edge.

Seriously though, it astounds me that most of the people I know still haven’t seen Spaced, even the ones who loved the more recent work of Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost — i.e. the guys from Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. You know all those sitcoms you love from the past few years that are filmed more like movies than TV shows? This is where they got that idea. It even predates the original Office, it was that ahead of it’s time. Plus it’s about a bunch of slacker twenty-somethings obsessed with pop culture. So next time you’re on Hulu catching up on 30 Rock or Always Sunny, do yourself a favor and check out Spaced — they do have the whole series, after all.

Best Series on TV This Year

Brian: Are we living in a post-HBO era right now? It’s strange that none of the shows I’m considering came from the network that aired several of my favorite shows of all time. I finally caught up on Friday Night Lights and loved it, but the most recent seasons were not their best. Mad Men continues to be the show I most look forward to, but they got the Undie from me last year. Instead I’ll go with Breaking Bad, another killer show from AMC, the network that’s slowly earning the next crown for channel with the most respect for their audience’s intelligence and maturity. While everyone else is gorging on formulaic game shows and reality trash, here’s a show about the disturbing depths a man will go to provide for his family while staring down his own mortality. Season 2 got darker as Walter grew into his role as a meth kingpin, and the supporting characters had more chance to develop, making them almost as fascinating to watch as the absolutely brilliant Bryan Cranston.

Spencer: As funny as I found some shows, I haven’t found anything yet to replace the great weighty dramas of yesteryear, like The Wire and The Sopranos. I’m excited to watch Breaking Bad, especially after yet another rave from you, but for now, I’ve gotta abstain on this category.

Keep reading for Best Video Game, Best Book, Best Album That Isn’t On Any Other Best Of Lists, and more…

Maybe because I remember watching MTV back at the beginning, when the first Real World set the ball in motion. Back when it was about casting an eclectic mix of interesting people and watching their ideals clash, long before it all went horribly wrong. Before they settled for hiring a bunch of fame-hungry, borderline-alcoholic airheads to yell at each other between swimming naked and screwing in front of night-vision cameras. Before it was accepted that one could find love on The Bachelor by winning a cut-throat contest against a score of desperate gold-diggers. Before people knew what a Kardashian or a Kendra was.

The point is, I seriously hate the current reality television machine.

I know plenty of people who can’t get enough though, and I’ve never understood it. Sure, there’s a voyeuristic pleasure in watching people argue or cry from a safe distance. But the way today’s shows create such artificial, manipulated drama isn’t satisfying. It’s mind-numbing, like a morphine button. Nothing is learned, gained, or created by anyone involved. It’s drama as sport: pure spectacle.

The central question I can’t answer is this: with such a parade of jackasses dominating television, how can anyone like these people enough to care about what happens to them? Is the American audience so low-brow that they genuinely relate to a bunch of shallow, mean attention whores constantly bickering? Or is it the opposite: are we all so insecure in ourselves that only the daily idiocies of the dregs of society can make us feel like worthwhile human beings in comparison?

What I’d much rather think is that the majority of us are better than that. That it’s easier to relate to smart people working hard perfecting a craft, and preferable to be inspired by our betters than reassured of our superiority to the worst among us. That’s why a few of the more successful, less offensive shows like Project Runway or Top Chef are at least watchable; they cast people who have talent and work at something more creative than douchey pick-up lines or the art of backstabbing. They have passion and drive. I may not care enough about designing cocktail dresses or pan-searing hors d’oeuvres to watch those shows religiously, but at least their existence doesn’t make me despair for the state of mankind.

……….

Then, to all our surprise and sudden fascination, in rolls 2010, with what may remain the best moments in reality television of this newly minted decade.

Suddenly, those of us who aren’t enthralled by would-be pop stars, celebutantes, or even aspiring chefs have a front row seat to the biggest reality-show contest imaginable: the race for the crown of late night talk. Though on its face the showdown is merely a contractual battle between two wealthy television stars, it captivates us because so many of the forces at play are totally relatable. We all know the sting of being screwed over by big corporations and the bosses who represent them. Conan has emerged as the sympathetic figure because so many have felt the pain of having their success determined by the whims of the old guard who came before them. As a culture we instinctively root for the underdog. Because we’re so used to being trampled on ourselves, we want to see someone fell the giant, just to know it’s possible.

Add to that the fact that, night after night, the entertainment value of the verbal battles being fought are far superior to anything reality television has to offer. These aren’t shrill cat fights between the petty and entitled. The late night war pits two extremely clever people (or at least one extremely clever person and one skillful panderer) directly in opposition, and as they trade cutting remarks it’s impossible to look away. Both shows are writing some of the best jokes of their careers, made even better because now there’s an element of human drama behind every punchline. When a nightly monologue rolls on, past the skewering of their incompetent network overlords or the deft jabs at each other, the few lame gags on current events or Hollywood gossip suddenly leave us cold, because at those moments nothing’s at stake. It’s less personal, less honest, less real.

Maybe the repartee isn’t quite as sharp as the best-written TV dramedies, but that’s what you trade for reality TV. The power comes from the understanding that you’re watching real people, not characters. We’re captivated by individuals laying themselves bare before our eyes. Sure, there are still machinations going on: when Leno took a serious moment to lay out the situation from his perspective, his blue-collar “I’m doing it for the crew” logic plays right into the working class audience he’s built up for himself. But there are also vulnerable moments of humanity: when Conan cracks wise about potential next jobs after leaving The Tonight Show, he may be laughing on the surface, but the hint of pain on his face makes his gallows humor hit even harder.

Then of course there’s the supporting cast. David Letterman, the older, wiser guy who’s seen this all before and has vitriol to spare. His clear distaste for NBC and Leno have made some of his remarks as fun to watch as the two central players. And don’t forget Jimmy Kimmel, the younger guy everyone counts out of the game, but who still has some surprises in store since he has nothing to lose. His full-episode impersonation of Leno was probably the funniest single episode of late night TV in years, not just because it was both ballsy and timely, but because his parody of Leno’s shortcomings was so brutally incisive.

This is the moment where a non-reality-show-watcher like me finally gets the appeal of reality TV. Watching the personal attacks and pleas for support of these two comedians has been the most compelling contest since Obama-McCain, with the added benefits that (a), they’re just TV hosts so they don’t have to watch their words the way politicians do — in fact they score more points the more daring they get — and (b), there’s nothing much on the line for us as an audience no matter who wins. We were entranced by the most-televised presidential race in history because for supporters on either side it felt like the future was at stake. Unfortunately for viewers at home, any given appearance was mostly full of the same old boiler-plate, focus-grouped sound bites. Here we have little to lose or gain on a personal level, but every episode is full of razor wit and bold surprises.

This is truly the most watchable reality TV out there. Instead of having to suffer the race-to-the-bottom most reality fare serves up, made tolerable only as the subject of scorn on a show like The Soup, we’re witnessing a duel to the death between two of the most beloved and talented comedians in our nation. (Make no mistake, even if you’re among those with no love for Leno, it takes talent to cater so successfully to the audience that adores him). The level of comic skill on display is awe-inspiring, and it’s being channeled into one of comedy’s best uses: as a take-down to the institutions that would prefer their control go unchallenged. I certainly never watched many reality shows before, but after a TV moment this captivating, it’ll be impossible to go back to anything less.

But now a new crew is having a go at taking the dark and violent Millarverse to the big screen with Kick-Ass, out this April. And based on the clips so far, director Matthew Vaughn is taking the exact opposite angle on the project — which is to say the exact right angle — and just making this movie a hilariously twisted and brutal good time. It’s got a nerdy teen who thinks he can be a super-hero. A foul-mouthed tween named Hit Girl who seriously fucks up bad guys left and right with her plentiful blades and bullets. And a chance to make Nicholas Cage both likable and cool again — though maybe not quite enough to make up for Ghost Rider.

As we round out Oscar season and its year-end dump of serious award-bait flicks, it’s good to know that just around the corner are the next round of fun action-comedies; especially R-rated ones that don’t play it down for the kiddies. For now, this one is definitely at the top of the “can’t-wait” list for 2010.

To ease the wait though, check out this Kick-Ass widget full of trailers, posters, and other bloody goodness.

Fingers crossed that Kick-Ass doesn’t fall prey to the all-too-common problem, which also plagued Wanted, of showing us all the best stuff in the ads before we even get through the theatre doors.

Attempting to fill in some of those gaps is Paranormal Activity: The Search for Katie, an iTunes-exclusive comic that picks up where the film left off (found via io9).

Since we so recently debated whether the movie needed to elaborate on its core mythology (and the comic was only 99 cents to download), I decided to give it a look. Unfortunately, what you get for those 99 cents is flimsy and tangential instead of elucidating.

Complaining about a dollar comic may sound petulant, but at any price, one has to ask, “What does this supplemental work hope to accomplish?” If the intent was to fill out the story of the film, then 40 iPhone panels (which might equate to 10 printed pages), doesn’t offer much space to do it in. But even in this compact form, it could have elaborated on several questions the film didn’t answer. The story of Katie’s childhood trauma might have made for a strong short piece. What the two paranormal experts were doing that night, or have done in other cases like this one, would be interesting to find out. Either would expand the fiction in a way that’s germane to the movie that people saw and enjoyed.

How any rational person could interpret the popularity of this haunted-house movie into a desire for a CSI/X-Files hybrid spin-off, which is what the comic attempts to be, is simply puzzling. The story in The Search for Katie prompts more questions and introduces new characters instead of clarifying anything the movie left us wondering, and it shifts tonally from horror to supernatural noir. It also treats the events of the film like the crime that launches an investigation into something — of course — “much bigger than we thought”. Now the awesome scary movie we just saw is like the murder in an episode of Law & Order: over by the opening credits and followed by a lot of people talking about it. Oh, and there’s no actual searching for Katie either.

Essentially, it feels like either a cash grab — “Quick, this is popular, let’s find a way to rake in some micro-payments!” — or a misread on the part of the makers. You already made a popular horror movie; don’t turn it into a story of supernatural detectives tackling a demonic conspiracy. Or if you do, hold off until you have a real story to tell so fans have something more to buy into than just the hype. If from the beginning the movie had been conceived as a cool pilot episode to a new comic or TV series about demonology, it might have been genius; but then they should have put more of that element into the film. Trying to staple on extended plots after the fact just feels like exploitation.

The only save would be if future installments came included with the price, or got better and worth paying for as a real story developed. But even then, do we need future installments of a ghost chase thriller based on Paranormal Activity? Do we have to live in a world where anything that people respond to gets milked and leveraged and franchised to death and there’s no such thing as a self-contained creative work? Some people may have wanted more of the background to show up on the screen to fill out the story. Lots of people thought the film was perfectly successful at what it set out to do already.  This comic, sadly, doesn’t do much for fans in either camp.

Then add to that a multi-player environment whose wealth of game types and unlockable rewards will keep players coming back for weeks and months to come. A mode that’s so good, in fact, that it’s the primary reason millions rushed out to buy the game; earning experience points to help trick out your soldier is so addictively fun it justifies a purchase all on its own. Taken together, in terms of both quality and quantity, the entertainment value of this disc easily exceeds what gamers get in an average sixty dollar package.

In essence, what this game does makes it a must-buy. But what this game says, and how it says it, is a much more fascinating question. Especially considering the record-breaking number of people playing it as we speak, possibly mindless to the messages it’s sending. [Full spoilers ahead, naturally.]

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Most games are pretty apolitical, dealing with broad character dramas if they go so far as to bother with story at all. No one would accuse Street Fighter of being about international relations as much as learning how to hadoken, or insist that Gears of War is about xenophobia as much as the joys of a gun with a chainsaw attached. Action games in particular mostly follow the good vs evil, human vs monster, America vs ‘ambiguous foreign terrorists’ model. Why over-think it when shooting stuff is just so much fun?

But over the course of Modern Warfare 2, a sneaking suspicion crept in that I was playing a distinctly Red State kind of a game. The moment that tipped its hand most shamelessly came in a briefing sequence while loading up the mission “Loose Ends”, near the end of the game. General Shepard, who directs your missions throughout by voicing over flashy wire-frame animations, makes a very pointed statement without a trace of irony: “Despite what the world may say, we are not savages. We don’t kill civilians. We use precision.”

The line is laughable for it’s standoffishness (Fuck what the rest of the world thinks… U! S! A!), as well as its patent falseness (only 828 in Afghanistan just last year is practically zero, right?). Even worse, it’s growled at you by a character who you later discover was in league with the terrorists all along, and whose goal is to orchestrate full-scale war to procure limitless military power for himself. The secret machinations and bald-faced double-speak are positively Cheney-esque. All that’s missing is a seat on the board of some military supply corporation.

But hey, it turns out that guy was the villain, so his crazy plans are what you’re fighting against, right? Does that mean that in the end, the underlying message of MW2 is about the necessity of taking down the hawkish and power-hungry? Not exactly.

Let’s look at a few key scenes. Though the infamous “No Russian” airport level has received plenty of coverage for taking you on a civilian killing spree (another reason for a quizzical pause when you hear the “We’re not savages” line), what’s sometimes glossed over is that at the end of the mission, you’re gunned down because the terrorists know you’re a plant. Their plan all along was to set you up as a patsy. Not only are the terrorists always one step ahead, but it’s because (gasp!) they’re colluding with Americans — a familiar justification for things like the Patriot Act. A few levels later, full scale war breaks out on American soil, bringing the most paranoid of neoconservative fears to life in vivid detail, down to a full frontal assault on the lawn of the White House.

Meanwhile, the heroes of the game learn a few key lessons: trust no one, especially the government. And when it comes to defending those nebulous things like ‘Freedom’ or ‘the American Way’, the ends justify the means. It’s okay that an undercover US operative joined in a rampage targeting innocents; he had a mission. It makes sense when Price launches a nuke into the atmosphere over DC, wiping out their electrical grid as well as decimating the international space station; someone has to make these sacrifices, or America will fall. Even better when that someone is a military man who’s “gone rogue”. Sound familiar? That’s the war cry of a real American hero.

It all brings us back, as conservatives are wont to do, to a simpler time. To a type of warfare that’s not so modern at all: where you shoot first and ask questions later, and when a scheming Russia is the unequivocally evil giant bent on our destruction (Russia? Really? It must be too challenging to make a blockbuster story around isolated terror cells. Welcome back to the Nixon era!). It makes for high drama, but it also misses the opportunity gained by setting a war story in the present. The chance to tackle the dilemmas faced by our actual modern military, whose enemies are no longer armies, is largely squandered.

Only it doesn’t fall back on entirely apolitical tropes either. What makes Modern Warfare 2 such a politically charged experience is that it both lays out the nightmare scenarios that right-wing ideologues are always harping about, and at the same time lets its players fulfill the good ol’ boy fantasy of being the gun-toting freedom fighter who saves us from the brink.

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So does any of this make the game any less fun? Of course not. A little less grounded in reality, sure, but still a hell of a roller-coaster ride.

Then what does it mean?

Maybe that a red-blooded game might have a better shot at full mainstream success than one that targets the traditional ‘gamer’ set. The computer types, the comic book types. The programmers and readers. Dare we say the intellectuals, or even liberals?

It might not be all that crazy to think so. Contrast Modern Warfare with its polar opposite, the Metal Gear franchise, and specifically last year’s MGS4. The latest chapter of Solid Snake’s story details the horrors of private military corporations wresting control from national interests, and its mechanics encourage you to play through as much as possible without killing anyone. You use your wits instead of your bullets. It’s heavy on dialogue and philosophy, and suggests tiptoeing through war instead of raining down fire. Its emphasis is on people and characters and the human cost of conflict. Not to mention the simple difference that you see your vulnerable, overwhelmed character on screen at all times, where in MW2 you literally see the world down the barrel of a gun. Though it’s no surprise that the simpler, more straight-forward, more gung-ho game is the one that sets sales records, the corresponding political overtones seem too convenient to be accidental.

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In late October, a certain pre-launch video received its own groundswell of coverage. In it, a sports star called people pussies, and it ended with a title card for a fictional organization with an insensitive acronym: “Fight Against Grenade Spam”. People rightly cried foul for Infinity Ward’s decision to play into the ugly behavior associated with online players. Though the video was pulled soon after, an interview around the same time quoted an Infinity Ward staffer as saying, ““Not only do we know the game but we know the gamer. We know what to expect from them and what they expect from us.”

Certainly he was speaking in part about the way the game works, in terms of the features and options people prefer to make playing as enjoyable as possible. But the bigger implication may have been that they also know fully well who plays these games most: small-town America. Red State America. And if they know their audience as well as they say, it should be no surprise that the game’s underlying politics play into their fans’ expectations in that arena as well.

Five years ago, Modern Warfare might not have gotten away with a present-day war taking place in the corridors of the White House. But at a time where middle America is frustrated and maybe even a little frightened of where the government is headed, the idea of blowing it all up and starting fresh isn’t scary, it’s exciting. And for the ‘elitist’ crowd (those big city intellectuals, or heaven forbid critics in the media) who see the whole thing as a farcical military fantasy that’s just a fun way to blow off steam: brace yourselves. Along with the mainstream acceptance of a maturing medium come some drawbacks we my not have considered. In the not too distant future, games may no longer be a victim of the culture war, but one of its weapons.

But sneaking in just before it was a quick bonus pack from that other action behemoth, Grand Theft Auto 4, with their latest follow-up chapter, The Ballad of Gay Tony. And though the timing may be unfortunate, any release in this series still deserves its share of attention before moving on to months of nightly multi-player.

As with the previous chapter, The Lost and Damned, just enough time has passed since our last stint in Liberty City to make revisiting its crime-ridden streets feel like coming home again. Another nine months go by, and we take up with another gang of misanthropes chasing their version of the American Dream — mostly through sprees of gleeful violence and reckless driving. Never let it be said that Rockstar’s games aren’t a hell of a lot of fun to tool around in.

GTA IV proper, however, marked a more serious turn for the series, putting less emphasis on the mayhem and more on the relationships between its central characters. The Lost and Damned continued this trend, stripping out some of the distracting elements of the full game and focusing even further on storytelling, including a few clever crossovers with the plot line of the previous installment.

Yet just as they’re verging on gaming’s closest thing to a Scorcese film — a complex work with a dramatic point of view on criminal life that still manages to have fun with its trappings, à la Goodfellas — they swing the needle back toward a big zany playground in The Ballad of Gay Tony for something that’s bigger, but not necessarily better.

The trajectory seemed set. With the HD graphics and improved motion capture made possible by next-generation consoles, the team could take a grittier, more realistic approach. Now was the time to leave the cartoonishness of the previous volumes behind, or at least let it fade into the background of pedestrian banter and radio chatter. Both GTA IV and its surprisingly strong follow-up in The Lost delivered on this, and suggested a series that was growing up (as discussed in our last review).

But to a large extent, they’ve abandoned that trajectory with this chapter. One can only guess at their reasons, but to an outside observer it’s as if the story tellers and game designers are fighting an internal battle. One side wants to make a sophisticated crime drama, and the other is fixed on a list of “Wouldn’t this be cool?” action sequences. Where the writers were winning the last round, with a story of tough choices and decaying relationships between factions of a biker gang, the winners here were clearly the action movie fans.

You play as Luis Lopez, reformed corner kid who has risen to the position of business partner/enforcer for the title character and his struggling pair of nightclubs. But in a leap of logic that even GTA barely manages, the bulk of your time is spent sky diving, taking down swat teams with enormously powerful guns, or flying helicopters into firefights. For all the fun that is, it comes at the expense of a coherent story. There are plenty of coarse jokes, outlandish side characters, and exciting set-pieces, but the central relationship between Luis and Tony never feels believable. As a result, the whole over-the-top escapade feels more like a missed opportunity than a welcome departure.

In fact, it shares flaws with their third release of the last generation, San Andreas. In that volume, they expanded the world (probably a little too much; those interstate drives could be awfully long), they added more craziness (jetpacks? really?), and the characterization suffered as a result. What could have been a tightly focused and more meaningful story of gang life in Los Angeles became a bloated epic without a clear course. Sure, it was still fun, but it wasn’t anything close to the step forward that its predecessor Vice City was.

The only excuse that comes to mind is that it must be hard to please all of your millions of fans when you’re among the biggest-selling games of all time. Some want more carnage, and Gay Tony is unapologetically for them. But some, like myself, were hopeful that the more adult storytelling shown in GTA IV and sharpened in The Lost might continue to evolve in this next installment.

In a time where a dozen games have spun off the open-world formula into their own brand of explosive chaos, Grand Theft Auto shouldn’t be trying to out-jump Crackdown or out-demolish Red Faction. Let the newcomers have their action-packed comic-book fun, because that’s what they’re good at. But the team at Rockstar is one of the few who’ve shown talent at pushing the boundaries of what games can be. We can only hope they get back to what they’re best at before too long.

If you’d like to join the conversation, you can always leave comments here, or email brian@under-culture.com with questions, opinions, etc. We love having listener thoughts to include in the discussion on the show. If you like what you hear, please give us a review in iTunes too so we can get a better rank and rating in the listings.

Enjoy…

Download The Under Culture Podcast: #7 - Wrapped and Myrtled

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(Show notes below…)

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We open the show touching on our relative obsession with the maddening Trials HD.

Not a bad way to spend fifteen dollars, especially if you have perfectionist tendencies or love dirt bikes. As of now, we’re still not sure why these guys need so badly to get over those pipes and giant tire stacks.

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In case you hadn’t seen it yet, the Glenn Beck jokes are in reference to this parody site, DidGlennBeckRapeAndMurderAYoungGirlIn1990.com - which is obviously a crass joke, but such a smart and funny one you’ve got to respect it.

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If you have yet to see Paranormal Activity, it’s not too late. Skip watching the trailer (it gives away too many scares), don’t expect a revolutionary film (it’s just a solid thrill ride), and you’ll have a fun scary time.

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The debut album from San Francisco’s Girls, ambiguously titled Album, is out now on True Panther Sounds. They are touring North America the rest of this year.

The Mountain Goats‘ latest, The Life Of The World To Come, is out now on 4AD.

They’re halfway through their American tour with Final Fantasy, and having just caught the LA show last night, I would definitely recommend it. Of course since they’re probably my favorite band, there is some inherent bias.

Music Breaks:

1. Girls - Lust for Life
2. The Mountain Goats - 1 John 4:16
3. Girls - Hellhole Ratface

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We’re finally finished talking about Beatlemania for this year, but let it be known that The Beatles: Rock Band is definitely a fun party game purchase if you like rock music. Results may vary when trying to sing like John and Paul though.

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It’s never too late to join in the Under Culture book club. The beauty part is there are no meetings or deadlines. Just read the books we talk about and send your thoughts to us here to discuss on the show, either in the comments below or via email.

This month’s selections are definitely both worth looking into:

Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith is a well-executed thriller set in Stalinist Russia, out now in paperback from Grand Central Publishing.

The Magicians by Lev Grossman is a uniquely dark spin on the childhood magic and fantasy stories like Harry Potter and Chronicles of Narnia, and is out now in hardcover from Viking Press.