After too long of being sick for too long I decided that I should write a post that was too long. Et voila:
Animated Film: Sci-Noir.
115 minutes.
When I first started watching Reneaissance, I thought that I was watching the next step in rotoscoping. The animation was much smoother than A Scanner Darkly (which was, incidentally, just rad) and some of the details were amazing (this, I accounted for by noting that black and white art is always easier than colour).
But then I noticed the teeth.
The movement of the characters was suspicious, but it was the teeth that made me think, Waitaminnut! As it turns out, the film used mocapped* 3D models and was entirely computer generated. Which is fine. I just had to drop the comparison with A Scanner Darkly out of my head. Just so you know, 3D models never move naturally and their teeth are always funny-looking.
In any case: Renaissance.
A French film from last year, it echoes the industrial German expressionism of Fritz Lang (Metropolis, M), the cameraplay of Orson Welles (Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil), and the stark visual contrast- lighting of the American noir cinema. Visually, it's like a black and white Dark City. And it's futuristic.
The creators describe it not as sci-fi, but as an anticipation film. It's Paris in 2054 and the city has grown and evolved almost naturally (given technologies that don't exist). And it's actually a pretty interesting vision. Like much of the genre of near-future fables, the urban center has become dichotomous in its expression of utopia and dystopia. Like Metropolis and hundreds of stories from the last eighty years, uptown and downtown are heaven and hell, respectively. The closer one gets to the sky, the brighter and shinier his world becomes; while those near the earth dwell in darkness and rut and moan even as you would expect of the merely human.
Of course, as is common with the genre. Not all is good in utopia and the underworld has its honourable moments. On its surface, Renaissance is the story of a successful, untouchable cop named Karas who is on the hunt for a missing woman, kidnapped from the darkness outside a downtown club. And of course, Karas is his own law; he doesn't break rules so much as just pretend that there are none. He's a noir hero for the new age. The story plays out as a typical manhunt with 21st century toys.
And while the story on the back of the box will talk about the kidnapping, the manhunt, and all the foul play along the way, the subtext is what the story is all about. And by subtext, I mean that which sits immediately below the surface with dorsal fins jutting out hear and there at odd and defiant angles. The film is not by any means deep. Its black and white heart sits perched with gravitas on its sleeve.
Renaissance is about a moral dilemma. If immortality can be had, can it be entrusted to a private corporation? Already in the business of rejuvenation, turning old women into twenty-six-year-old hotties, Avalon is now hot on the trail of a treatment that will keep those treated eternally young. There really isn't much question as to where the sympathies of the audience ought to lie. After all, this is a black and white movie. The corporation is the soul of evil, quietly murdering those who stand in their way, while it is upon to renegade Karas and his misfit accomplices to kill there way into a world where immortality remains elusive.
The visual aspect of the film is stunning, even if occasionally the black is so overwhelming that it can be hard to see what's what. The plot is engaging if not brilliant. The characters are two-dimensional at best. And the story is, well, typical.
*note: mocap stands for "motion capture," the process of using a computer to plot the movements of a live person and transfer those movements to a 3D computer rendering - used extensively in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings.
Rating: 
Board game.
3-5 players.
A few weeks ago, I put together that list of my Top Howevermany games. A few of you may have taken note of my Number Two choice, placing immediately after the Cities and Knights expansion to Settlers of Catan. That game is Puerto Rico and is, by any standard, a reason to get back into playing boardgames after whatever time/space distance has irrupted between your childhood and your present state.
Myself, I loved boardgames as a child. From Candyland to chutes and Ladders to Uncle Wiggly to Sorry to Trouble to Monopoly to Life to Oh! What a Mountain to Bargain Hunter and beyond. Then I hit the ripe ol' age of perhaps eleven years old. Board games immediately lost their allure and were recognized for what they were: games of chance modified by nothing save the occasional dash of whimsy (as in property-buying logic in Monopoly) and in which the investment of time was only a gamble insofar as a victory would allow the winner to imagine that he had not just wasted the prior hour and a half. Hungry Hungry Hippos was a greater determinant of a victor's skill than any of those board games.
And so, board games were put away for nearly twenty years (with occasional detours into the realm of over-complicated war-strategy games like Axis & Allies).
With my skeptical introduction to Settlers of Catan a few years ago, a whole world of engaging entertainment was revealed to me. And within months, I was led to a game that was quick to place among favourites. Puerto Rico is a thinking Dane's game. While there is enough unpredictability to rescue the game from the dire tediousness that makes its abode in the impoverished recesses of the game mechanics of old clunkers like chess, checkers, and tic-tac-toe, there are definite strategies upon which to adhere and unwise play will seldom result in a victory.
In Puerto Rico, three-to-five would-be rulers try their hand at governing the colonial island while interacting tangentially with the Old World. Primarily, players are concerned with four things: producing salable crops, building upon the islands slim infrastructure, distributing manpower to the island's best function, and supplying Europe with the goods your citizens have reaped.
Puerto Rico's two conceits are the facts that there are no dice and that all three-to-five players are constantly involved with the game (there is little downtime, waiting while paralyzed players consider their far-too-many options). In the course of the game, players choose various roles related to island operation—and when a role is chosen, each player follows through on the opportunities that role presents. If Player 1 chooses the role of the Mayor, she greets newly arrived citizens and puts them to work as she chooses; and then, Players 2, 3, 4, and 5 each do likewise. If Player 2 thinks it's high time those plantations produced a worthy crop of indigo, tobacco, coffee, or whathaveyou, he might choose the role of the Craftsman, reaping the benefits of his manned crops and production facilities; and then, Players 3, 4, 5, and 1 would take their turns to do the same.
The trick is to balance your coin-purse, your storehouse, and your choices in such a way that moves will benefit you more than they will benefit your competition. And that is a heady trick to master. As mentioned last week before I got sick, I had recently been party to a game in which the order of play coupled with very occasional poor choices to leave me a shell of a man. Strategies undone, hopes dismayed, dreams dashed. And oh what fun we had playing. Three of our party of five had never played the game before that night and each one of them (wholly different personalities all) maintained that the game was strong fun and well worth revisitation.
They'd be fools to say otherwise.
Rating:
Novel: Thriller.
508 pages.
I loved the movie and heard that I the book was comparatively awesome. And it was.
The thing is: I haven't the faintest idea how the movie came out of the book. Beyond the premise of a man fished from the sea with no memory but incredible ingrained abilities and talents that make it look like he's really probably and assassin with no amnesia, and the fact that the first act after the prologue occurs in Zürich and deals with a Swiss bank, nothing is the same.
Sure, there's a girl named Marie, but she's an entirely different character. Sure, there are people trying to kill the man named Jason Bourne, but they're entirely different men. Sure, there's an American government-run company called Treadstone Seventy-One that is looking for Bourne, but for entirely different reasons. But are all these differences a bad thing?
No. They are not.
I really think the first Bourne movie is among the best action films ever created. That said, for most of its running time, Ludlum's 1980 novel is better than the movie. The premise is so much more intriguing and Bourne's turmoil better perceived. Instead of an enemy as doughy and effeminate as cloak and dagger U.S. senators and secret servicemen, the novel pits Bourne against the unbeatable assassin, Carlos the Jackal (though Ludlum refrains from the colourful animamorphism), and his vast array of human resources. The book is action-packed, one of those thrillaminnut rides that refuse, for the most part, to let up. I don't read cheap thrillers often, but The Bourne Identity was well worth my time.
And I like to think that my time is valuable.
This is not to say that Ludlum's thriller is not without fault. The books requisite romance is rushed and artificial. We know that Bourne and his interest are in love solely because Ludlum tells us that this is the case, not because we see any evidence that this should be the case. And, actually, there is a far greater problem. The climax is poorly wrought and much more difficult to follow than anything previous encountered in the book. The ending is not satisfying in that by the time it comes, emotional resonance has long-since evaporated.
But still. I was in love with the book until the last forty pages or so.
Rating:
And... 1700 words later, I present: The Labels!
Labels: games, literature, movies, reviews
He takes the author of Who Needs a Hero? to task for not keeping up with the times and imagining that comics are all about the bright and shining heroes that have recently populated the big screen. Ibru points out the grim-n-gritty era of comics begun in the mid-'80s through the influence of books like Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore's Watchmen (coming soon to a theater near you) and chastises the author of Who Needs a Hero? for entirely ignoring the evolution of comics from its more colourful, heroic expressions of the past. 
Granted, there is a small segment of the industry that is still influenced by Miller and Moore, but what about all the more worthwhile developments in the medium? Ibru bemoans the association of comics with children's entertainment and the best he can do is cited teenager's entertainment as an example of why comics are not kid's stuff. Sin City? The Punisher? Spawn? This is the stuff that solidifies the childish reputation of comics.
But where is the interesting stuff? The autobiographical works like Blankets, Persepolis (coming soon to a theater near you), and Fun Home? Documentary works like Palestine, Safe Area: Gorazde, and Doing Time? Crime stories like Stray Bullets, Bendis' Alias and Death Note? 
Dramas like Jar of Fools and Jimmy Corrigan? Comedies like Scott Pilgrim, Yotsuba&! and Blue Monday? Fantasy like Sandman, Bone and Fables? Speculative fiction like Y: The Last Man (coming soon to a theater near you)? Historical fiction like Berlin and Usagi Yojimbo? Horror? Westerns? Romance? Sports? Politics?
