20080524

Four reviews today: a good cross-section of media.

• Ticket to Ride (boardgame)
• Sputnik Sweetheart (novel) by Haruki Murakami
• Paranoia Agent (DVD) by Satoshi Kon
• Gallbladder Removal by Dr. Chang

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Board Game: Euro-Lite
Players: 2-5
Time commitment: An hour or so
Price: $49.99 (retail)
Publisher: Days of Wonder
Official website: http://www.daysofwonder.com/tickettoride/

Way back in September of Oh-Seven, I did a little post called 16 Games—in which I honoured sixteen games that I enjoy playing. Mostly board games. In the post's comments, a certain spartican Mark said: Ticket to Ride. It's all about ticket to ride.

He was, unfortunately, a liar, a lunatic, or the... well, no. He wasn't the lord. The other two choices are up for debate.

My initial concern with the game had been with its theme. Trains. Trains? No really, trains. You can probably see from where my hesitation arose. There may have been an age in which trains were in any way something by which one could be overawed. That time is distant and very much not now.

Still, I never ceased to hear good things spoken of said Ride and said Ticket. It is, in fact, currently the forty-third most highly rated game on Board Game Geek. And! In the intervening months I had been convinced to buy and try Railroad Tycoon—which has been an unquestionably cool sort of game. As I remarked in January, "Quite honestly, it's been a lot of fun. We can't wait to play again."

So, my bulwark defenses against locomotive games laid flat, I asked for and received Ticket to Ride as a Christmas gift. Perhaps I'm just being surly, but I don't really like the game. Certainly I've played worse, but Ticket to Ride will not, I think, ever make it into my heavy-duty play rotation.

Unless there is duress involved. Extreme duress. Or maybe six-year-olds.

So here's the deal, Ticket to Ride has two good things going for it: 1) it's ridiculously easy to explain (which shows itself to be even more wonderful when one considers the difficulty I've recently had explaining games like World of Warcraft or Tigris and Euphrates to the willing); and 2) it's a relatively short game, one that can be played in under an hour.

The game essentially works like so. Players are presented with a game board map of America, its principal cities, and the routes that connect said cities. In a fit of arbitrariness. each route is coloured according to the kind of trains that will take that route (e.g., red trains, blue trains, green trains). From the first, each player receives three random route completion cards, also known as Tickets (signifying routes that should be completed for points), and may keep one, two, or all three of these cards. Completed routes add to one's overall score but uncompleted ones subtract from one's score. Ah, risk!

During one's turn, a player chooses one of three actions: 1) drawing Train Cards; 2) drawing Tickets; and 3) laying routes. Tickets are going to be where the big points come from, but to fulfill tickets players will need to lay routes, but to lay routes players will have to draw the correct colours of trains to complete the route. So, it all works to the same end. Of course, the correct colour of train is not always available and other players might lay route where you had been planning to build, thereby blocking your path, causing you to weep and moan and try a different tactic. If you can.

Really, it doesn't sound all bad and really could have been a pleasant diversion for an evening with friends. But the game is fundamentally broken in the state it comes in. The problem is the Tickets (route completion cards) with which players begin the game. This random assortment of options handicaps the game from the start. A month or two back, we played a five-player game and after receiving my three Tickets, I kept all of them, knowing my victory was assured. Each Ticket built on the others and were to be built around the outskirts of the where I was in little danger of being blocked by players forging opposing routes. I easily completed my routes and near the end of the game drew from the few remaining routes to find that they all coincided with what I had already built as no one else had any need to build there, the cards were always abandoned in favour of Tickets that favoured routes that coincided with other player's rail empires.

In the end, I finished the game a hundred points ahead of the second place player—who herself was far ahead of the other three. But my victory was hollow because I didn't earn it. It was given to me. It was like winning at Candy Land.

In summary, if you find games like Settlers of Catan too complex, you might find Ticket to Ride is more your speed; but for myself, I'll play it again if requested, but I'd rather play any number of other games. I'm glad I didn't pay for the game myself, but also sad I didn't ask for something else too. (Actually, I just looked at the retail price of the thing and Yikes!)

Rating:

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Book: Novel
Author: Haruki Murakami
Year: 2001
Pages: 224.

After the excellent Kafka on the Shore and the perhaps much better Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, I've been on something of a Murakami kick. I find his storytelling fascinating, both in device and in style. His use of the extraordinary-as-mundane is a tasty joy for me to indulge. Sputnik Sweetheart, while not as wonderful an experience as the two aforementioned works, was quite a bit of quick fun.

Thematically not dissimilar from Wind-up Bird, this short novel revels in questions of identity, conscious vs. subconscious, and the real vs. hidden world, and the nature of sexuality. The book is lean and packed with Murakami-style mystery—that is, both mystery in the detective sense and mystery is something closer to a Pauline sense, a revelation that is baffling to those who don't get it and uncanny to those who do.

Sputnik Sweetheart revolves around three characters: 1) the largely passive narrator, K, a thity-year-old elementary school teacher and passionate reader who is madly in love with 2) Sumire, a former classmate of K's who dropped out of school to become a writer and who has fallen madly in love with 3) Miu (whom Sumire calls her "Sputnik Sweetheart"), a married woman who imports wine, has a hidden past, and holds no ability to care sexually for her husband, Sumire, or really any other creature. All three are tortured by their own lives and despite the plot involving Sumire's abrupt disappearance off a secluded Greek island (a la L'Avventura), the story is less about the disappearance and K's subsequent investigation, and more a discussion of who people are and what is it that both separates and binds humanity from and to itself.

Sputnik Sweetheart is not the best I've read from Haruki Murakami, but it was certainly worthwhile and a book I hope to revisit in a few years.

Rating:

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Television: Animated
Director: Satoshi Kon
Year: 2005
Length: 325 minutes/13 episodes.

I had thought of doing a Capsule Review devoted wholly to the works of Satoshi Kon, detailing his complete available collection of films and television. But then i realized I had already reviewed Tokyo Godfathers and Paprika, leaving only psychological thriller Perfect Blue, sentimental ode to film Millennium Actress and his television series Paranoia Agent left to cover.

So, since I just finished watching Paranoia Agent with the Monk, I thought I'd talk about it and hit the other two another time.

I've been following Kon's work ever since seeing Perfect Blue in 2000 and with the exception of that first film,* I have been universally happy with everything of his I've engaged. Paranoia Agent is no exception and curiously, many of the themes Kon explores across the stage of his thirteen twenty-five-minute episodes, intersect well with the content of the novels and short stories by Haruki Murakami I've been devouring over the last several months.

Over the course of the creation of his first three films, Kon discovered there were a number of ideas that he wanted to explore but just couldn't justify squeezing into the stories he had already created. Those ideas find themselves winding their way into Paranoia Agent, which presents an ideal vehicle for such examination as each episode focuses on a different character, allowing for a wide discussion of themes and ideas.

Yet even with Kon's ability here to investigate a greater variety of aspects of his nation's culture and history, the series does follow certain particular themes from start to finish. Just as Murakami finds interesting questions of identity and responsibility, violence and sexuality, so too does Satoshi Kon. Paranoia Agent examines Japan's post-war abandonment of responsibility and visceral need for the peace that irresponsibility offers. In some ways devastatingly satirical, the brief series treats many of the cultural peculiarities that have grown to strength under the shadow of the Atom bomb: kawaii culture and its embodiment in Hello-Kitty-like animal mascots; otaku extremism; suicide cults; youth violence; bureaucratic ineptitude; and the ever-increasing dissolution of the real individual in favour of the technologically removed superself.

In the end, the show offers considerable grist for the thoughtful viewer over which to mull after the series' cataclysmic finale. In the end, Kon seems to be saying that Japan is trapped in its inability to take responsibility for really much of anything and that even its complete destruction can only serve bring the culture/nation back to a point where it can begin the cycle anew.

Huh. I almost forgot to talk about the show's actual premise. In the first episode, the creator of cuddly kawaii icon Maromi is under increasing demands to create a new cuddly mascot to fuel society's need for ever-cuter icons. At the height of her panic she becomes the first of many victims of Shonen Bat (literally, Bat-Boy, but translated as Li'l Slugger on the dub), a juniour-high-aged kid on rollerblades wielding a baseball bat. Gradually, as the number of victims mount, a pattern emerges. Et cetera.

All in all, an excellent series that seems to flag for a couple episodes around the three-quarter mark only to rally again in the last few episodes. Highly worthwhile.

*Perfect Blue, while interesting and somewhat engaging, is not a perfect movie and suffers at times from plot holes that a little tightening might have fixed. It's a film that I enjoy but not one I return to over and again.

Rating:

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Operation: Laparoscopic
Surgeon: Dr. Steven Chang
Year: 2008
Operation Duration: Couple hours
Recovery Period: Seemingly interminable.

Despite all the rave reviews, having one's gall bladder out is really not the amazing experience one would imagine. Sure, there's the glamour and allure of several hours of unconsciousness, the signs of stigmata in all the wrong places, the shaved belly, the two weeks off from work, the überhip Dr.-Pepper-coloured splotch of settled blood that stains one's belly subcutaneously, and the newfound celebrity amongst friends and family alike. But to let in on the secret, there are disadvantages as well.

Indeed.

Chief among these, I think would be the freaking excruciating pain one experiences nearly constantly in the days following. Pain killers might be said to dull the pain and they may very well do their job, but if this is the case, pity above all earthly creatures those that endure such surgery without availing themselves to such medicinal remedies. For days after, getting into and out of bed is what is known in scientific circles as a quantum impossibility—a body at rest must at all costs remain at rest and a body at stand must at all costs remain standing. Or terror shall ensue.

The real surprise comes when one comes to find just how deeply the average, non-vegetative person relies upon the abdominal musculature for every aspect of daily living. In the days following such a surgery, do not expect to: stretch while yawning; turn to face a speaker; laugh, chuckle, or chortle; breathe more than the shallowest of breaths; shift in one's seat; shift in bed; survive having one's pillows adjusted; cough. Performance of any of these tasks may render one unconscious for several moments—or at the least make one wish for the Apocalypse. Bowel movements may actually kill. Which is ironic considering that one's surgeon will inevitably prescribe the liberal use of stool softener.

Also, the absence of usable abdominal muscles will cause the performance of urination to well-resemble the accomplishment of the same task performed by a ninety-year-old man with a swollen prostate. A twenty-minute dribble (a.k.a. gradual evacuation) should not come as entirely unexpected. One imagines that a ninety-year-old man with a swollen prostate who underwent such a surgery would really just have to give up on urination entirely.

As well, hot tubs are apparently out of the question for several weeks—a revelation to which all the faithful must assuredly say Boo. Further, spousal caretakers will generally be overwhelmed with frustration of their inability to really do anything to make the pain go away or assist in any way save for providing pitying glances.

Currently there is no reliable data on how long continued pain should last. Of course it gradually recedes and within a week one should find the ability to putter around the house a gratifying experience. Poop no longer stands threat as a mortally feared enemy after five or six days and is merely relegated to an adversarial role. At two weeks one will likely not be able to sleep yet on one's side and rising from bed may still present some challenges.

My personal recommendation is to engage one's mind during such trials on a plane divorced from common levels. This state may be most readily attained through the use of technological substances rather than medicinal substances. Particularly useful in this divorce from reality is the engagement of realtime strategy games such as those cut from the Age of Empires, Civilization, Total War cloth. My personal remedy included much early involvement in Sid Meyer's Railroads! and, as strength permitted, a deep involvement in a solitaire version of the WoW boardgame.

All in all, there are better ways to spend one's weeks.

Rating:

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20080228

Among currently producing animation studios, there is none so good at what they do as Studio Ghibli. Producing films since 1984, they maintain the place in the animation world that Disney held in '40s and '50s. In fact, nobody even comes close in terms of consistently producing amazing works of importance and integrity. In this special edition of Capsule Reviews, I'll look at all of Ghibli's feature films (save for Tales from Earthsea, which due to Scifi Channel holding the rights cannot be released in the US until 2009). We'll list these chronologically, beginning in 1984.

Skip to a Review:

• Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind • Laputa: Castle in the Sky • My Neighbor Totoro • Grave of the Fireflies • Kiki's Delivery Service • Only Yesterday • Porco Rosso • I Can Hear the Sea

• Pom Poko • Whisper of the Heart • Princess Mononoke • My Neighbors the Yamadas • Spirited Away • The Cat Returns • Howl's Moving Castle

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Year: 1984
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Runtime: 116 min.

Nausicaä was the film that started Ghibli and many of the motifs that would later mark Ghibli films are introduced here. Environmentalism (later revisited in Only Yesterday, Pom Poko and Princess Mononoke) and anti-war sentiment (revisitied in Castle in the Sky, Grave of the Fireflies, Porco Rosso, Princess Mononoke, and Howl's Moving Castle) both find a prominent place in Nausicaä's themes. As well, this begins Ghibli's durable tradition of strong and independent female protagonists.

This is a tale set in a post-apocalyptic future. Centuries prior, the earth had been destroyed in seven days of fire as humanity's technology for killing had grown beyond its ability to control. Now with the world poisoned and the earth gradually cleansing itself through its flora, mankind (as per usual) finds itself at odds both with its environment and with itself. Nausicaä tells the story of a world-conscious young princess named (ta-da!) Nausicaä as she tries to bring peace, love, and understanding to a world that threatens to destroy itself again.

The animation feels a bit dated (though the technique for animating the giant ohmu is impressive) and the story a bit brisk, but it's a good film and a great start for what would become the premiere animation studio of the age.

Rating:

note: I highly recommend the book version of the story as Miyazaki had only finished the first quarter of the story when he released the movie. The book took more than ten years to finish and has the kind of epic quality that is missing from the movie.

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Year: 1986
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Runtime: 124 min.

When a girl named Sheeta falls from the sky bearing a strange stone, Pazu begins an adventure that will take him under ground and over cloud, eventually bringing him face to face with the legacy of his dead father and a discovery straight out of myth and legend. Floating cities, air pirates, royalty-in-disguise, robots bent on killing all, humanity on the verge of apocalypse, and a pair of intrepid heroes populate the background of this story of adventure and hope.

Unfortunately while Laputa contains several breathtaking scenes and edge-of-seat moments, it is also overlong and tends to flag at times. Miyazaki also uses a device that has always been unpalatable to me and crops up again in several of his films (most notably and to greatest deficit in Porco Rosso), and that is his rendering of comedic characters in a more cartoonish style than the average character. Such representations strike me as out of place and always serve to remove me from the story. Still, that said, while Laputa is certainly not Miyazaki's best effort, it is worth watching.

Rating:

note: I always recommend watching these films in their original language and opting to use the subtitles, but I understand how it can be. You get home from work. You're exhausted. The last thing you want to do is read a movie. In such cases even I, being the purist I am, will sometimes give the dubbed English version a shot. DO NOT do this with Laputa. Within minutes (if not immediately) James Van Der Beek will cause your ears to bleed and your lungs to ulcer. The English voice-casting director ought to return to hat-making. Listening to the English dub is like buttering your jam with your tears.

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Year: 1988
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Runtime: 86 min.

Totoro, for a long time, was Miyazaki's most famous creation and is still perhaps his most iconic.

The film follows two young girls, Satsuke (11) and Mei (4), as they and their father spend their first days in their new house in the countryside. Their mother is sequestered in a hospital in the city as her health fails due to some undisclosed (to the children and to the viewer) illness. Against this backdrop, Miyazaki plays out a tender story exploring both the wonder and terror of childhood as the girls cope with the fact of their ailing mother and become acquainted with the tree spirits who occasionally haunt their property.

The film is endearing and the scenes featuring the spirit creatures are indelible (especially those with the large Totoro and the catbus).

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Year: 1988
Director: Isao Takahata
Runtime: 88 min.

Grave of the Fireflies is one of those hurtful movies that probably everybody should watch on occasion. It's right up there with Schindler's List in its portrayal of the tragedy of humanity. Takahata's first Ghibli film should be required viewing every time our nation feels the need to go to war—so that we might better judge the necessity of our actions against the plain cost we will incur.

Grave of the Fireflies is a story of children and war. It begins with the male protagonist narrating, "September 21, 1945. That was the night I died." And then we watch as he passes into death from weakness and hunger. Then we flash back to a healthier time and watch his story unfold.

It is hard to watch, but really very good. I hope to never see it again. Which means it's probably about time I did.

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Year: 1989
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Runtime: 102 min.

Kiki's story is like an expansion of The Little Engine Who Could. Kiki is a vaguely talented young witch who has reached the age at which she is expected to go out into the world and find a town to serve in as Town Witch. She and her little black cat Jiji eventually find a place to serve but as Kiki is not the most powerful of witches, she is not certain how it is that she can work for the good of the town. Until she strikes upon the idea of running a delivery service, taking parcels here and there on her broom.

It's all pretty standard. She has her ups and downs. Doubts her place. Mopes a bit. Then saves the day. Kinda like a typical Spider-Man story.

But the joy of the story is not found in the pieces. Like all Miyazaki's films, Kiki's Delivery Service delivers a sense of wonder and joie de vivre that exists independent of its particulars. This is an entirely human film. Plus, kids seem to love it.

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Year: 1991
Director: Isao Takahata
Runtime: 118 min.

Only Yesterday is my favourite of Isao Takahata's Ghibli productions. It could very well fall under the category of "chick-flick," but it's so good that one shouldn't worry about taxonomy.

This is the story of twenty-seven-year-old Taeko as she takes a break from her life to visit the countryside. Taeko finds herself at a crossroads, not knowing where her life should take her. Or where she should take her life. This recalls for her the last time she felt such confusion for life, as she endured the fifth grade, on the cusp of puberty.

As the story progresses and Taeko gradually builds toward making a decision for her life, we are treated with numerous vignettes of her childhood in 1966 Japan. The story is treated delicately and with affection and for a long time it may even be hard to discern that there is a story to the film at all. There is. And it is only resolved while the credits roll.

And it causes me to smile every time.

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Year: 1992
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Runtime: 93 min.

Porco Rosso would probably be my favourite Ghibli feature if it weren't for the problem I mentioned with Laputa in which characters present for their comedic impact are drawn in a far more cartoonish manner. As in Laputa, the air pirate gangs that fill the air over the Mediterranean here are silly-looking and it takes me out of the story. The climax is also drawn with such comedic intent.

Aside from that, Porco Rosso is a gorgeous film. The seascapes are beautifully painted and the story carries such a warm sentimentality that it's hard not to bask in Porco's nobility—when he's not being crass. The film is fascinating in that the hero, having flown with honour for Italy during the war, has become nauseated by humanity and the human endeavor and has thrown off the skin of that disgusting animal for that of a far more noble creature: a pig. Porco has cast off his allegiance to any nation and now trolls the Mediterranean as a bounty hunter, so that he might subsidize his life off solitude in a lonely cove.

It really is a marvelous exploration of individual identity vs. national identity—made all the more striking when one considers the highly nationalistic nature of Miyazaki's own country.

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Year: 1993
Director: Tomomi Mochizuki
Runtime: 72 min.

This was a simple story, filmed for television, masquerading as a love-triangle—but it's really just a great little coming of age tale. I don't really have much to say save for that I've seen this three or four times now and I always find it enjoyable. There are no fantasy elements and it could probably be as easily told via live-action filming, but it wasn't and it may be more poignant for that fact.

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Year: 1994
Director: Isao Takahata
Runtime: 118 min.

This is probably my least favourite of the Ghibli oeuvre. It's a documentary-style presentation of how the encroaching civilation of man affects the wildlife that used to live where there are now suburban developments. It's kind of what I imagine Over the Hedge would have been like if the raccoon had enormous magical testicles.

No really.

The principle characters of the film are a group of tanuki, a raccoon-like dog-beast native to Japan and notable for their tremendous nutsacks. And throughout the movie, these tanuki use their scrotum for a hilariously diverse set of tasks. Parachute canopies to slow their fall. Large picnic-like blankets. One even sets his to form a large ship that they might sail away to safety and new fortune.

I know. It sounds like the RADDEST MOVIE EVER. Maybe it was. Maybe the subtitling on my peculiar copy was so poor that the movie seemed boring. Because really, that's how it felt. Dry. Overlong. Unexciting. Granted, it's probably still worth a rental so that you and your family can enjoy a good healthy dose of tanuki balls.

Rating:

note: here's a popular commercial featuring a tanuki that was going around for awhile. Uh, it's NSFW I guess. It's more funny than offensive, but you never know...

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Year: 1995
Director: Yoshifumi Kondo
Runtime: 111 min.

Whisper of the Heart is probably the most adorable of all the Ghibli productions. It is in almost constant battle with Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke in contention for my Top Spot as Best Ghibli Film. While Miyazaki did not direct, he was heavily involved in scripting and production, so I guess you can see his hand. Or else Kondo just rocks. Er, rocked. He was being groomed to take over Ghibli, but he died suddenly right after completing Whisper of the Heart.

This is the story of a fifteen-year-old girl who loves fantasy and faery tales more than life. When she meets a kid who crafts violins, they inspire each other to be the best people in the world, so she determines to write a novel over the next month or two. I won't say anymore except to say: "High-five Ghibli!"

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Year: 1997
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Runtime: 133 min.

This is the first Miyazaki film I ever saw. It was a revelation to me. Like most of you, I grew up on "quality animation" being synonymous with Disney. I don't know what I expected. I had seen Akira so i had some taste for Japanese animation, but the sheer attention to detail on show here was awestriking. Visually, Princess Mononoke may actually be the most impressive Ghibli film of all.

And it's not just in the broad strokes either, but in the little things as well. A scene in which a rock is pebbled with a light rain until it is soaked to wetness. Beams of light piercing as shafts through storm clouds and wind breezing across fields as the grasses flutter against its waves. The dappling of sunlight as Ashitaka rides through the forest. These were details that would not even be considered in the American animation style. Animation was not dead as I had been led to believe. It was just overseas.

Princess Mononoke is thoroughly adventurous and action oriented, but it has its soft, thoughtful side as well. For every arm that Ashitaka lops off, there is a scene of quiet reflection and care for the world or the forest or humanity itself. I walked out of the theater in August 1999 changed. And not every film can boast that kind of accomplishment.

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Year: 1999
Director: Isao Takahata
Runtime: 104 min.

Less a narrative direction and more just a series of vignettes, My Neighbors the Yamadas is good or mediocre depending entirely on which vignette is playing at a given time. Some of the short stories are funny and inspired, others are less interesting and function more as time-fillers than anything else. More than anything though, My Neighbors the Yamadas offers a sketch of one brand of contemporary Japanese family life.

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Year: 2001
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Runtime: 124 min.

By the time Spirited Away was released to theaters, I had seen a number of Ghibli's films and so was well-prepared for a cinematic treat. Still, I wasn't prepared for the harmonious cacophony of creatures and sights that filled the screen during the bulk of the film. I feel like I've been gushing about Ghibli's product so I don't want to do that here.

But I can't help myself.

If you've never seen a Ghibli film, not knowing you or your tastes, I would probably recommend Spirited Away as the place to start. It's possible that you won't like it, but that would mean you had no soul—and so, not liking a movie I recommended would be the least of your concerns.

Spirited Away, as I've described before, is kinda like Alice in Wonderland hopped up on meth. It tells the story of Chihiro, a little girl who becomes lost in a world of gods and spirits as she works in a mystical bathhouse hoping that she can rescue her parents who have been captured according to their greed. There's witches, dragons, bodiless heads, giant babies, sludge monsters, and giant hopping chicks. There may be other things you'd want from a movie, but I can't think what.

Rating:

note: despite the japanese penchant for fan service, the giant hopping chicks are not cute women but but baby chickens.

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Year: 2002 Director: Hiroyuki Morita
Runtime: 75 min.

This was a slight, enjoyable film. The animation was perhaps a small step down from typical Ghibli, but it was a fun story. It also functions as something of an off-shoot of Whisper of the Heart bringing back both Muto the cat and the Baron figurine and breathing new life into each. Worth a rental.

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Year: 2004
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Runtime: 118 min.

Howl's Moving Castle was adapted from, I guess, a British children's book. I don't care to read the book. I was perfectly satisfied with Miyazaki's presentation and can consider myself sated.

I was actually surprised that I found the story as compelling as I did. Miyazaki typically uses the young as his protagonists, and though the hero started as a young woman, she spends the majority of the film as a tubby old lady, bent over with age. Like Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle presents an explosion of visual imagery, most notably in scenes within the titular moving castle itself. This film is the best kind of fantasy and I can't wait to see it again. And probably again.

And again.

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