watching

I don’t know about you, but I found Wanted to be a pretty big disappointment. Even as a big-budget spectacle, it was too uneven and unintentionally silly to be what it could have been, and what it should have focused on being: a lot of fun. Its attempts at Fight Club nihilism feel out of place, its turns into mysticism totally unnecessary (so wait, you’re telling me the world is controlled by a bunch of textile hobbyists?). Writers, director, whoever might be to blame: your movie is about superhuman assassins who can do crazy shit with guns and cars. If said movie isn’t 98% fun to watch, then the problem is not the concept, but the execution. It’s obvious that somewhere between Mark Millar’s original comic work and the film that followed, something was lost in translation.

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.

[Keep reading »]

side notes

On our last podcast we discussed what Paranormal Activity did right and what it could have done better. I was a fan of how it played on our fear of the unknown, and thought the vague sense of terror it created was the movie’s strongest point. Spencer, on the other hand, wanted more screen time given to the back story, suggesting that would have made it a better film, not just a string of fun scares.

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.

playing

Modern Warfare 2 earns the title of fastest-selling game of all time. The team at Infinity Ward are among the most skilled action-game makers in the business, and their latest shooter is on par with any Hollywood blockbuster in terms of epic scale and moment-to-moment thrills. On the technical side, controlling your character is fluid and flawless in a way few games can match, and the presentation overall is stellar.

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.]

[Keep reading »]

playing

At this moment, the entire gaming world seems to be be focused on the year’s megaton release, Modern Warfare 2. And rightly so. It’s a big, meaty, incredibly popular (and somewhat controversial) game that’s well worth discussing, and which we’ll get to here soon enough.

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.

[Keep reading »]

podcasts

Episode seven is here. It took a couple weeks longer than we’d like to arrange a recording session, but the end result is a lot of fun. Our friend Gino joined us to provide more thoughts on Paranormal Activity and even more distracting off-topic jokes than normal, and Spencer and I read two of the same books just so we could discuss them on the show.

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

Subscribe in iTunes for automatic updates.

(Show notes below…)

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playing

Tim Schafer may be the funniest guy in video games. His resumé of classic adventures like The Secret of Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, and the later cult favorite Psychonauts have put him on the short list of designers whose name alone can draw an audience. He’s also one of the few people to put as much thought into game writing as level designing, penning dialogue as memorable as the strange worlds his characters inhabit.

So the potential of a heavy metal fantasy epic with a script by Schafer and Jack Black as the lead character — a match made in metal heaven — rightfully put Brütal Legend among this year’s most anticipated releases. But sadly, though there are moments of brilliance, the final result is more of a charming jumble than the instant classic it could have been. The biggest problem being that the game has too many ideas, with individual elements fighting against each other and preventing it from coalescing into a satisfying whole.

[Keep reading »]

watching

A few weeks ago now, I decided to start a little experiment: a simple regimen to combat the twin menaces of backlog and beer gut. Hop on the treadmill for at least 20 minutes every single day, and watch a movie every single night (see first post here for further explanation).

Week four is now complete. As I write this, since the posts do have a few days lag time, I’ve officially completed the full month I set out to do. And surprisingly, it’s been a lot easier than expected. Aside from the occasional night of starting too late and fighting not to doze off, or the occasional sore calf muscle in the morning, it’s a totally manageable commitment.

In fact, I feel like I’m just getting started. The progress on my fitness is only now starting to show a bit in that morning mirror assessment; the Netflix queue that started around 250 is inching a lot closer to 200. Sure, it might be nice to have an extra couple hours a night to divert to video games or comic books or catching up on the DVR I’ve been neglecting, but it also seems too soon to give up. For now, I’m contemplating making it a 50-day drive instead of just the 30 I’ve already got behind me. Or maybe Modern Warfare 2 will arrive next week and both fitness and films will take a backseat.

[Keep reading »]

watching

Each year, one of my favorite traditions is to watch the media’s excitement when Saturday Night Live picks its new cast members. They link to grainy footage of them on YouTube, shot at college talent shows and small nightclubs, where they demonstrate the four celebrity impersonations they’re going to wear into the ground over their televised careers. We hear how they’re all double-threats, because they’re also incredible writers. Then the actual season starts, we see them in action, and 9 out of 10 times, their contributions to the show totally suck.

I recently was over at a friend’s apartment and was surprised to find that he’d taped that week’s episode. Whether it was the twelve-pack each, or the suburban ennui, we said what the hell and decided to watch it. What followed was such a grim, humorless atrocity I could hardly believe it was televised under the label of entertainment; it was as ABC’s genial TGIF lineup had been preempted to show documentary footage of the Khmer Rouge regime.

The problem was the weakness of the writing. The episode I saw veered from the dull recitation of current events in what was billed as an impression but delivered in the actor’s natural voice, to the old favorite of combining two disparate pop cultural references and then stuffing them full of admittedly accurate but not particularly insightful celebrity impressions, to a fake news component that took an entire week to create yet was less funny than any given night of The Daily Show or Colbert Report. Hell, there were TWO fake game shows: it was lazy, lazy, lazy.

[Keep reading »]

watching

A few weeks ago now, I decided to start a little experiment: a simple regimen to combat the twin menaces of backlog and beer gut. Hop on the treadmill for at least 20 minutes every single day, and watch a movie every single night (see first post here for further explanation).

By week three, there have been some noticeable effects. To work up the same sweat on the treadmill, I had to bump up the incline a couple notches. Similarly, I’ve raised my selection standards a bit, trying harder to seek out movies I’ll really enjoy or at least have a strong enough opinion to make them worth discussing here. When making a time commitment equal to two work days per week, there really isn’t room for many Hancocks.

[Keep reading »]

watching

Two weeks ago, I decided to start a little experiment: a simple regimen to combat the twin menaces of backlog and beer gut. Hop on the treadmill for at least 20 minutes every single day, and watch a movie every single night (see first post here for further explanation).

The first week went swimmingly. I saw several great movies and was feeling energized physically. But of course, as with any attempt at a new routine, things get off to a strong start, and then you run into hurdles after the initial burst of enthusiasm. It’s easy to fit in a movie every night when you’re having a slow week. You’re certainly more in the mood to sit down for a movie when you haven’t been watching many lately. Just like it’s easy to motivate yourself to head to the gym when you’re well rested and itching for some activity.

But week two required a bit more will power. As an on-again, off-again gym-goer my form is far from perfect, my stretching probably inadequate, and so my legs began feeling the effects in terms of soreness and fatigue. At the same time, a delay in disc turnaround blocked me from seeing the films I wanted, possibly thanks to the infamous account throttling due to my rapid increase in Netflix activity, and I was forced to make due with the reduced choices on their Watch Instantly list.

[Keep reading »]