Wall-E

Go see it. Go see it now.

More reviews, yet again

Abandoning the hundred-word limit because honestly I think I'll be even more brief.

Saw Schindler's List for the first time, and it was every bit as potent and awful as I had imagined it would be. Didn't cry my eyes out, if only because I had just cried my eyes out at the Holocaust Museum in May when I went with the eighth graders and decided I didn't want to bawl about that stuff again.

Saw what might have been the complete opposite film, Flushed Away, just yesterday evening and found it thoroughly delightful. I was hesitant about the computer animation at first (as opposed to the traditional stop-motion animation Aardman Studios typically employs and used so masterfully for Curse of the Were-Rabbit), but it removed none of the quirky personality association with the films of those wonderful, wonderful people. The style was much more hyper-kinetic and cartoon bouncy than their other films, but it never becomes distracting. The humor is more Looney Tunes, visceral (often involving strikes to the crotch) which I found charming rather than off-putting, coupled as it was with the delightful characterization and witty humor. It's not quite Wallace and Gromit, but I'm gonna go ahead and say I prefer it to Chicken Run, even though the latter is a take-off of The Great Escape, because Flushed Away has no Mel Gibson. Instead, it features Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Ian McKellen, and Bill Nighy, ALL people whom I hold in the utmost respect.

Finally put to rest Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, and I can say for a certainty that it is a worthy successor to Phoenix Wright. Well, mostly. What Apollo does better than its predecessor is to tie all four cases (or "episodes") into a single, interwoven story (although this fact is one that only becomes apparent slowly). There are few, if any, concessions to more advanced gameplay (in fact I think the special case constructed as a bonus addition to the first game has more DS-specific features), but it doesn't matter because the story is told so well. I will admit that the final courtroom phase of the last episode feels a little brief, but maybe that's just because I knew what I was doing and presented all the right evidence. The game, however, is marred by one critical flaw: the absence of Miles Edgeworth. Ah well. You can't have everything, I suppose.

Kari and I are off to see Wall-E today, which I expect to be thoroughly delightful. I'll let you know what I think when I get back.

6/26 -- Lloyd Alexander's "The Iron Ring"

Lloyd Alexander has written a number of one-shot fantasy novels that incorporate elements of several different classical mythologies. The first of these that I encountered was The Arkadians, his foray into the world of Greek mythology, in the same summer than I first conceived The Silence. The Iron Ring is his take on the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, and while it never quite escapes the tropes and conventions that populate Alexander’s work, it nevertheless manages to satisfyingly plunge from light and carefree to dark and violent (though never really gritty or realistic) in the same way his Westmark trilogy does.

Also, this self imposed hundred word limit might be a tad too hindering--there's much more I could say about this text. Nevertheless, perhaps shorter reviews will inspire me to more quickly complete books, movies, and games in order to comment upon them!

More reviews

Gonna try and make this a game, now. Let's see if I can get this to a hundred words apiece.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:

This is the best Western film ever produced that does not also include spaceships, and even then I feel that I may be giving certain films preferential treatment. Ennio Morricone makes me shiver with almost sexual delight. Clint Eastwood makes me shiver with unmistakably sexual delight. And, quite frankly, I am convinced that nobody knows how to stand off quite so well as the Mexicans. Their standoffs are inarguably superior. The Italians, in their wealth of classical knowledge, stumbled across a fabulous formula: Spaghetti plus Western equals genius. This film is as awesome as twenty thousand dollars in Confederate gold.

Advance Wars: Days of Ruin:

Days of Ruin combines two of my favorite things in the world: complete global apocalypse and delicious turn-based strategy. Its cast of characters is cool but not quite as fleshed out as the cast of the previous games, and while I greatly appreciated the tuning-down of options and features from Dual Strike, the last game in the series, ultimately this entry ends up feeling a little stripped. The single player campaign has a more in-depth and fleshed out story than any of the other games, but some of the COs feel tossed aside as a result. Good but not compelling.

Recently seen and played

Seen:

Drunken Master: This is one of Jackie Chan's first starring roles, and it was fun seeing what he looked like when he was my age. His Kung Fu is a lot better than mine. When watching big CGI movies like Kung Fu Panda and the like, with exceptionally impressive fight choreography, one is inclined to believe that it cannot get more kinetic or impressive. One is wrong, of course. The fight scenes in Drunken Master are some of the best I've seen in any film, ever, aided hugely by the fact that there are no cinematic tricks, no slow motion, no stunt doubles. It's just a couple of dudes fighting quickly and elaborately, and with Jackie Chan you get the added bonus of a big dose of comedy. The rest of the movie-- the plot, the non-fight comedy, character development, cinematography, etc., is not particularly impressive. But my God, the fight scenes. Hands down better than anything I've seen in the last five years, and probably better than anything I've seen ever.

Played:

The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass: There are moments in which playing this game is kind of a grind. The sailing, while much more enjoyable than the game's predecessor Wind Waker, can still get tedious, considering the number of times one has to go back and forth to islands if one is, for example, intent on capturing all sixty spirit gems (which I was). I briefly wrote the final boss battle off as anticlimactic until it was suddenly not the actual final boss, at which point I discovered that the game has one of the more delightful final encounters of any game I've recently played (certainly on par with its predecessor).

Some points that are worth making: Many reviews of this game, I feel, are correct. It feels ninety-five percent of the time as though Zelda was made to be played on the DS. The touch screen controls, while initially awkward, become intuitive very quickly, and the ability to clear an entire field of grass by drawing a flight path for one's boomerang is a pleasure one is not likely to get tired of quickly. There are a couple of boss battles (including the final one) which make use of the top/bottom screen duality to great effect, and any game which makes you yell out loud regardless of what social setting you may be in wins points from me.

I don't know what it is about the "Celda" games that I enjoy so thoroughly, but I can firmly say that this is a Zelda game which did not lose my interest halfway through (I am looking at Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess). Anyone reading this blog is probably going to fall into one of two categories: Has beaten Phantom Hourglass, or is never going to play Phantom Hourglass. Nevertheless, if there's anyone new I can turn in the direction of this fine amusement, I will do so enthusiastically.

Minor things of note

Okay, a couple bullet points.

Kari and I haven't been doing a whole lot with our first week off, and I'm finding it particularly difficult to make myself do any of the things that I promised myself I'd do this summer.

We did manage to get out yesterday to see Get Smart, which was thoroughly entertaining. Nothing mind-blowing, but a wonderful example of a popcorn flick summer action comedy... thing... that doesn't aspire to much greater than what it is. Steve Carell is so wonderful at doing his thing. And you know what his thing is.

Uh, what else? Totally make french toast with a little bit of Bailey's. Or a moderate amount of Bailey's. It really does work quite well.

Advice from my 98-year-old great-great-aunt (and it's best to imagine this in her thick German-Austrian accent: "Don't ever get 98."

I think that's about it. Stuff is going well! We miss everybody, we wish we had some people to hang out with. Come back!

Top 5

My picks for an oddly-assorted top five list:

Top 5 Standard Battle Themes in Console RPGs

5. "Enemy Battle," from Golden Sun

This game was good in a lot of different ways, but did not have "the magic," as they say. Might be worth picking up again someday, if I were to ever have free time again (which I won't).

4. "Battle 1," from SaGa Frontier

Aside from that one time Anthony loaned me his copy sophomore year and I played about six hours of it, I have no real experience with SaGa Frontier. Needless to say, however, it has some of the most delightful battle music in all of RPG-dom, with its boss music and final battle themes exceptionally rockin'. Any battle theme in this game is worthy, but the first is the "standard" and so it goes here.

3. "Fight Against Monsters," from Super Mario RPG

There has never been jollier battle music, nor any tune so toe-tappin'. It's virtually impossible to hate this piece of music, or the game it's from. I think this one might actually be Yoko Shimomura, too, which might help explain how I love it so much.

2. "Cutting Edge of Notion," from Star Ocean: Till the End of Time

Funky, jazzy, and the only entry on this list to prominently feature a synthesized organ. A catchy battle theme and exciting gameplay mechanics made grinding XPs in SO3 a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Listen to it, you'll like it.

1. "Leap the Precipice," from Eternal Sonata

Eternal Sonata is not the greatest game I've ever played (nor, really, have I played it to completion-- I just hopped on the co-op for some of Kari's fights), but it might have the best battle system. Certainly it has the best standard battle theme of any game I've ever encountered--the strings and swelling orchestra really make every confrontation feel genuinely epic. It's a shame that the majority of the regular enemies in the game are only of moderate difficulty--with a battle theme this cool, I would not have minded if every fight was a close one.

I know what you're thinking: first blog entry in two and a half months, and it's something nobody will care about? Oh well.

Little stuff

Well, what's happened in the last week or so?

Kari and I watched "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium," which was a delightful little film, certainly worth a viewing.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl came out, and so far it's been an absolute delight, though it would be nice to have a full compliment of people to play it with.

I had a productive morning in terms of the paperwork that I'm supposed to be finishing up for the end of the quarter, progress reports and summary documents and whatnot.

I got my first rejection letter from an agent--short, polite, dismissive. About what I expected. I can't lie and say I'm completely unmoved, but I'm not pierced to my core. It's a little bit of a disappointment, but I am going to have to do as Westley suggests to Inigo in The Princess Bride and "get used to disappointment." I wonder if my query letter was sloppy.

I'm going to mostly put The Silence from my mind until spring break is over, I think. I don't want to deal with it anymore (except to finish implementing my edits), and I'm ready not to worry about being a writer for a while. I want to do it. I want to start working on the second book. But before I start really submitting to a whole host of agents and doing all that kind of research and effort and the real avalanche of rejections begins, I'd like a little breather.

In the meantime, I think I may smash a few brothers to relieve my anxiety.

A recommendation

Everyone ought to seriously consider going to see Be Kind Rewind. It's not perfect. But it stirred up feelings within me, I'll say that.

Feelings, people.