A Movie A Week - Week 3: The Iron Lady

Theater: AMC Discover Mills 18
Snack: Hot dog and Coke

I had hoped, when I decided to go and see "The Iron Lady," that I would be seeing the story of the rise to power of a significant 20th century political figure.  Or maybe the story of a woman's rise in a traditionally male world.  These were not really the stories this movie was interested in telling.  Instead, a lot of time was spent chronicling the mental decline of Thatcher in her later years.  Between that and scenes from her marriage, there didn't seem to be much time left to spend on her time in government.  Unfortunately, I just didn't find the story that was told to be all that compelling.  Honestly, it played like paint-by-numbers Oscar-bait.  Margaret Thatcher was a controversial figure during her time in office who aroused both passionate opponents and equally passionate defenders.  Here, though, it was as if the filmmaker was not sure how she felt about Thatcher as a political figure and so chose to just gloss over that part of her life.

The acting was uneven in places.  Streep was fine, of course, but I found the performance of the actress playing young Margaret Thatcher to be a bit overwrought.  Problematic performances combined with an overblown musical score make the whole production seem rather ham-handed.  Surely there is much richer dramatic material to be found in the life and career of Margaret Thatcher, if only the filmmakers had tried harder to find it.

A Movie A Week - Week: 2: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Theater: Regal Mall of Georgia 20
Snack: None

I've never read the John le Carré novel or seen the mini-series starring Alec Guiness, so I walked into this movie cold.  I think I may have benefited a bit from not knowing the details of the plot beforehand, I was learning things as the characters were and I was riveted.  I would be interested to hear the reactions of those who were familiar with previous versions of the story.  What I did know going in, was that it stars Gary Oldman (who is awesome) and that it's about Cold War spying (which is fascinating).  This isn't action-movie, James Bond type spying, this is the talk-y, think-y, spying-as-chess-game type of spying.  The story had my full attention for its entire running time.  The performances were fantastic across the board.  Particularly noteworthy were the were Oldman, of course, and Benedict Cumberbatch, who I mainly knew from the BBC's recent "Sherlock" series and who I almost didn't recognize thanks to the dramatically different look he sports in this film.  I also have to offer special praise to the filmmakers for taking such a complicated story and managing to fit it into a little over two hours without making it hard to follow.  I always felt like I knew how one scene connected to the next.  To sum up, "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" is a fine film with some great performances; well worth seeing.

A Movie A Week - Week 1: The Adventures of TinTin

I have decided that I want to make an effort to see more movies in the theater in 2012. I was inspired by the comments of one of the hosts of the iFanboy podcast who had set a similar goal for himself last year. I feel like I've been getting a bit lazy about going to the movies. Oh sure, I'll be going to see "The Dark Knight Rises," "The Avengers," and "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" in theaters, but every year there are great movies that pass me by because I can't get myself out to the theater to see them and I forget about them by the time they come to Netflix. So, I've set myself the challenge of seeing at least one movie a week in a theater in 2012 (because, really, the theater experience is a different, and I think better, experience than the home viewing experience). Without further ado, on to week one:


Movie: The Adventures of TinTin
Theater: AMC Discover Mills 18
Snacks: M&Ms and a Coke

I have no preexisting connection to the TinTin comics to drive me to see this movie. It was the creators involved that made this movie so enticing. The behind the scenes creative talent links this film to such greatness as The Lord of the Rings trilogy (Peter Jackson, producer), the Indiana Jones films (Steven Spielberg, director), Doctor Who (Steven Moffat, writer), and Shaun of the Dead (Edgar Wright, writer). With that kind of pedigree, how could I not want to see this movie. Fortunately, I feel like the movie lived up to the expectation of excellence this creative team inspired.

I do have a complaint, and that is with the animation style. I am not a fan. Specifically, I do not particularly like the strange merge of animation and live-action that has been scene previously in films like "The Polar Express" and the Jim Carrey-filled version of "A Christmas Carol" from a few years ago. There's just something vaguely creepy about the look of the characters. It's not all the time, but every so often it pops up and is really distracting, particularly when you see the realistic hands and cartoony face on a character. I think I would have preferred a more purely animated approach to this uncomfortable hybrid. That said, this all bothered me less and less as the movie went on and I got caught up in the story, which was a lot of fun. There is not a wasted frame of film and the story moves along at a brisk pace with some truly inventive action sequences. I found "The Adventures of TinTin" to be a great time at the movies and well worth the effort to see in a theater.

Declaring Myself

I am back.

I am here with a specific intent.

I am here to declare my intention to participate in NaNoWriMo for 2011.

What is NaNoWriMo, you ask?

Well, mysterious voice in my head, it is National Novel Writing Month. The details are here.

Every year it rolls around and I toy with the idea of giving it a try, but always I find some excuse to not take part. This year I'm going to try. I may not complete a novel, but my writing needs a jump start and having a definite goal seems like a promising way to get that boost. So I'm dusting off an old story idea that I've never really gotten very far with and just writing. The polish and research can come later. The goal for now is to just write.

So, you may ask, how did the first day go? Well, I fell a little short of the 1,667 word daily goal I need to hit to reach 50,000 words by the end of the month. As of day one I am at 235 words. It's a start and it is 235 more words than I wrote yesterday. That is progress.

I'm Okay, You're Okay

I've got hand it to Roger Ebert, he's got a real knack for posting things on his blog that make me want to post on mine. This time it's a post about the response to his "Thor" review. I'm always baffled by how mad some people get when someone doesn't like the movie or book or band or whatever that they love. It's natural to want to share the things you love with other people, I'm certainly guilty of pushing favorite movies or TV shows on friends. And in my younger, less rational days, I might have been just as militant about my passions, but as I've gotten older I've realized that everything doesn't have to be for everyone.

It so happens that I enjoyed "Thor". Roger Ebert didn't. That's cool. I know how I feel about the movie, I don't need it validated by someone else's opinion. That's not why I read Ebert's reviews and blog. I read it because I find how he writes and thinks about film to be interesting. That doesn't mean I have to agree with every word he writes.

Are Video Games Art?

In a recent blog post, Roger Ebert declares that video games can never be art. Now, I like Ebert, and while I don't always agree with his opinions, I do find his thinking on film to be interesting. This would be one of the times where I have to disagree.

Not only can games be art, but I'd argue that there's been art in video games for quite some time. Go back to some of the classic arcade games like Pac-Man or Donkey Kong, both very simple games, but how can you deny the artistry of the design. What about a puzzle game like Tetris, it took a great deal of imagination to create something that addictive. Is archetecture an art? I would say so, and I would argue that game design, both of the video and board/card variety is similarly an art.

I suppose we start to get into the bigger question of 'What is art?' here. Ebert seems to favor a more restrictive definition derived from the Greeks and influenced, I think, by auteur theory. I've always kind of thought auteur theory was bullshit, but that's a longer discussion for another time. At the same time, I have to admit that my definition of art might come across as a bit of a cop out, it's something akin to the old saw about pornography "I can't define it, but I know it when I see." So, while I'm forced to admit that Ebert's perspective, which makes his claim completely understandable, is a more mature and thoughtful conception of art, I can't help but find it a bit too inflexible for my tastes.

So far, I've only been discussing the art found in the mechanics of games. Some games today have strong stories to go along with the game mechanics. Ebert suggests that games that tell stories are no longer really games. This seems like a semantic hand-wave to dismiss counter examples to his argument without actually evaluating them. I would use the examples of the Mass Effect games. Both games have very strong stories, to the extent that I found that they elicited an emotional response (admittedly, I'm a pretty easy mark for emotional manipulation), which to me would seem to be a mark of art. And yet, I don't think that you can argue that they are games. The decisions made by players affect how the story unfolds, and it is certainly possible to "lose" the game by dying (though you are allowed to go back to the last save point).

So, are games art? I'd say yes, but ultimately it is probably more a question of semantics than anything else and as such has no definitive answer.

Long time, no write . . .

Wow, it's been May since I last updated this thing. I guess the bloom has kind of fallen off the rose for me on the whole blogging thing. Still, I feel like I should be doing something with this thing. I'm just not sure what.

I've got a couple of ideas, so hopefully I'll get something more interesting up in the next few days. This entry is really mostly about saying, "Watch this space."