The Walking Dead Game

I'll say it right off the bat. Zombies in pop culture is getting stale. Actually, no, it's past that. It's getting tired and old. The horse passed away a while back, came back as zombie horse, died again and now they're giving it a pretty thorough beating. If I hear one more person say "OH MAN I HOPE A ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE REALLY HAPPENS DUDE I CAN TOTALLY SURVIVE I'M GONNA DO THIS AND THIS AND THIS AND BE THE ULTIMATE BADASS BLAH BLAH BLAH" I'm going to go crazy. Everyone thinks they'd survive a zombie apocalypse, and realistically it wouldn't be an apocalypse if everyone survived it so shut up and accept the fact that you'll be part of the 99.9% of the population that dies  shortly after the event begins (which it won't). It just pisses me off that zombies are a sure-fire way to make money, and that fact is being exploited in every corner of the entertainment industry that is capable of capitalizing on it. The games are getting repetitive, the movies are derivative, and it's just getting boring, to be honest. It's not that I hate zombies, the original Night of the Living Dead film still scares the hell out of me. I thoroughly enjoyed games like Dead Rising 2, Red Dead Redemption Undead Nightmare, and Dead Nation. There's just a point where they need to either cool it or stop, and that point has passed.

So why do I love The Walking Dead game so much then? 

Some people think Telltale Games is clinging to a sinking ship. I mean, creating point-and-click games on PC and consoles in the technologically developed gaming climate of today? It's definitely old school, a genre that is pretty much dead in commercial gaming. There's more of an emphasis on high action setpieces, realistic graphics and fast paced gameplay these days, and The Walking Dead isn't particularly huge on any of those things. If you're not familiar with the gameplay style, I'll elaborate a bit. Basically you walk around, examine your environment, solve puzzles and most importantly, engage in dialogue with the other characters. You play a convicted murderer named Lee who gets caught up in the middle of a zombie outbreak and encounters an innocent little girl named Clementine who he protects along his journey, with the ultimate goal of bringing her to her parents. These are the two main characters, and the rest are fairly interchangeable. Why? Because Telltale sees fit to kill several characters off in every episode and bring in new ones. Normally in horror movies I'm fairly good at predicting who is going to die and who will live. But in The Walking Dead, not so much. In the last episode alone I can think of 4 moments where my jaw literally dropped and I was saying "Dude. no way, like seriously?". The best part of this game is by far the story, and the level of unpredictability that is there. Lee and Clementine and their various companions are on an incredible journey and by the end of each episode you really feel like you've made some progress, whether you've fixed up a broken train, escaped from a farm inhabited by horrible cannibalistic rednecks, or decided who to save when the building you're in is being overrun. The Walking Dead thrives on immersion, dragging the player with it on its insane, unpredictable journey. And I gotta say, it's been amazing so far. I also like the way they decided to release it, as an episodic continuing game. This is season 1, hopefully  implying that there will be more seasons to come, and there are 5 episodes that go for $4.99 each. I bought the season pass when episode 1 was released for $20, so if you bought early you even save money. Every episode takes 3-4 hours to complete which is a pretty nice value for 5 bucks, especially considering the quality of the content. Every single episode has improved upon the last, and best of all, the episodes are extremely replayable.

Free choice is something that a lot of games advertise, but not many actually do right. It's one thing to give the player a bunch of black and white choices and then give them 1 or 2 endings depending on what they pick like Infamous or Bioshock, and something else entirely to let the person playing make hundreds of small choices throughout the game in the form of dialogue and scripted actions. Every episode of The Walking Dead contains a lot of conversation, and every single thing you say to anyone impacts the story, the way they think about you and how they're going to treat you in future episodes. I have one guy in my group right now that doesn't trust me and won't help me anymore because I didn't take his side in a particular argument like 3 episodes ago. The characters in The Walking Dead remember everything you do and say, even the order you complete objectives in will affect your interactions. Most of these choices aren't just choosing sides either, a lot of them have multiple options and you have to think very carefully about the possible repercussions of what you might do. I remember in one episode I had 4 pieces of food and I had to decide who in the group to give them to. It was a really hard decision, and I could have approached it multiple ways. Even the characters in your game are determined by your choices. I can think of several people that have died along my journey that I could have saved by making a different choice, and several people in the group now that are only there because I chose to keep them alive. The sheer amount of choice in this game makes it well worth the price, after I finish episode 5 I plan to replay the entire thing again making different choices in every episode. But even after 2 full playthroughs there will be a lot I still have to experience to say I have seen everything. 

The graphics in The Walking Dead are not amazing (on the PS3 version I've been playing at least), but they stay true to the franchise's graphic novel roots. The zombies look great, and the character expressions are very well done, which is good because how a person feels about you is usually indicated by their expression when you're talking to them. The scenery changes a lot throughout the story, which is more than I can say for the TV show. The characters in this game have goals greater than just staying alive, and while some of them are inevitably unlikable, you put up with them anyway because sometimes you get to tell them off or even decide whether they live or die later on. The Walking Dead is really what you make it, and if you go with your personal morals when making decisions you can become incredibly emotionally invested in it. I feel really involved in the lives of the characters in the game, and if Clementine dies in episode 5 I'm going to cry like a baby.

Play it. 

Review: The Cabin In The Woods (2011)

Horror is a pretty overpopulated genre these days, which is kind of a double edged sword. On one hand, if you're a huge fan of the genre then there's no lack of material for you to feed your addiction with. On the other, however, it means that although there may be a lot of good horror movies, there are a lot that also suck really hard. And if you're not a die-hard horror fan such as myself, that means that it can be fairly rare that a really good horror film crosses your path. So in a genre inhabited by a huge excess of remakes, sequels, reboots, zombie movies, "found footage" films and torture porn gorefests, The Cabin in the Woods is an original movie that I found surprisingly impressive.

Spoilers ahead.

The basic premise of Cabin in the Woods is nothing too original. A group of young adults go to a cabin in the woods for a weekend of partying and relaxation. You've got all the typical horror movie character archetypes: the promiscuous party girl, her athletic jock boyfriend, the relaxed stoner, the average, nice, normal girl and the smart guy. I suppose it's missing the token black dude that gets killed off first but I'll just assume they decided to forgo that cliche to save time and create unpredictability. Anyways, these five kids head off to the jock's cousin's (allegedly, he doesn't appear in the movie at all) cabin for a few days. On the way they encounter that age old foreshadowing device of a creepy old man that plays no real role in the film other than to give the characters directions and vaguely predict their demise. Of course, they assume he's just been alone out in the middle of nowhere too long and continue to their destination. Once there, they find a few spooky things in the place but generally just chalk it up to an old house built by someone strange. Big mistake. This is where the other subplot comes into play. The kids are being watched the whole time, and their entire experience is being controlled by people underground who are drugging them and controlling them to complete a mysterious ritual. While playing truth or dare that night the cellar door suddenly bursts open. Just like the classic stupid horror movie characters they are, the victims enter. They find a strange diary and read some incantations out of it, causing zombies to rise from the ground. While the jock and his dumb blonde girlfriend are outside making love, encouraged by pheromones that the technicians controlling them released, the zombies appear and kill the blonde. This is when things start to go downhill. The zombies bust into the house, killing the stoner shortly after he finds a camera in his lamp and believes he's on a reality TV show, and the jock, the smart guy and the other girl escape in the RV they came in, only to have a tunnel collapse in front of them, detonated by the technicians trying to kill them. After this, the jock tries to jump across a nearby ravine on a dirt bike to get help, but hits an invisible wall and falls to his death. After this, smart guy and normal girl go back the way they came, only to realize that one of the zombies is in the RV. He kills smart guy, and almost gets average girl too but in a startling change of events, the stoner had previously survived and saves her. They go back to the cabin and discover an elevator under the floor. This takes them down into the secret base where all the people are that are controlling them and trying to kill them. Here they see hundreds of monsters that have been used in previous rituals, and it is revealed that the monster that each group of people get is determined by what object they select when they go into the cellar full of weird old stuff. This group got the zombies because they read the diary of the family that the zombies used to be. Once the technicians discover the kids got into their secret lair, they send troops after them. Thinking on his feet. the stoner opens the containment cells and the monsters all come out and massacre everyone. The two survivors eventually make it into a secret vault where Sigourney Weaver mysteriously appears and tells them that it was all a ritual to appease ancient gods that will destroy the world if they don't get very specific sacrifices that correspond to each victim's personality: The Whore, The Athlete, The Scholar, The Fool, and The Virgin. All of them have to die but the Virgin can survive, her life is left up to fate. So basically, Sigourney Weaver dies and the two survivors chill out smokin' a J while a giant god awakens and presumably destroys the earth because they failed to complete the ritual. (This is a very rough summary, watch the film to get the finer points.)

One of the things I liked about Cabin in the Woods the most was fairly formulaic for its genre, but it had a reason to be. It's one thing to write in characters that are stereotypical of horror films (stoner, jock, slut etc) just because that's become standard, and another thing completely to use those archetypes for a purpose that helps drive the storyline. Those students were picked and chosen to go to that cabin by the people orchestrating the ritual because they fit the descriptions of the people they needed to sacrifice to appease the ancient gods that are really insecure and require validation in the form of human sacrifice to feel good about themselves. It's sort of a horror film inside a horror film. The victims dying is freaky enough in itself, but the story takes itself to another level in the form of questions involving reality and freewill. Am I really sitting here typing this right now? or is some guy watching me waiting for me to get up and leave the room so a werewolf can jump out of the shadows and devour me? I'm pretty sure that the next generic slasher film I watch I'm going to be thinking the whole time about those technicians underground, controlling the environment and the people in it, betting on how and when they are going to die but at the same time making sure things to according to plan so their ritual goes off without a hitch and they appease the ancient gods.

Cabin in the Woods can be seen as a critique of the meta that slasher films generally tend to follow, and some would say that some of the more contrived plot points suggest that the main goal of the movie is to satirize its own genre and reveal how stupid slasher movies really are. I think it's partially that, but it's also something more. It's a new lens for people to view the horror movie genre in, giving purpose and reason to why the current formula is the way it is. It expands outside of itself to create a whole other dimension of horror, and in that aspect is succeeds. The concept of being controlled by mind altering drugs and forced into situations that all but guarantee your own demise is pretty scary in itself, not even counting the hundreds of horrific creatures that the technicians have in store for anyone who is part of the ritual. When the stoner let all the creatures out and they started killing everyone in the underground bunker, a clown came out. I'm freaked out by clowns. Just the prospect of people being able to drug me up and send a killer clown after me is pretty horrifying. There was also one scene where the kids were playing truth or dare and the Whore is dared to make out with a wolf's head that is mounted on the wall. Watching that happen, I was completely sure it was going to come to life and eat her head right there, but it didn't. Cabin in the Woods understands the value of restraint as well as excess, and how necessary it is to create tension and suspense as well as using violence and gore to scare an audience. And in that  aspect as well as several others, it succeeds.

Casino Royale: A Feminist's Nightmare

So in preparation for Skyfall's North America release next week, I watched Casino Royale again. I'm no Bond expert (not really much of a fan, either), but for what it's worth I would definitely say that this is probably the strongest 007 film I've seen. Also, Pierce Brosnan is horrible. Needed to be said. Anyways, Daniel Craig's debut performance as the famous James Bond is really quite impressive, and a taut, well written story along with Eva Green's smoking-hot-ness really brings this film together into something special.

But the quality of the movie isn't really what I want to talk about, what I really want to touch on is how masculine, borderline sexist and misogynistic (sort of, depending on who you ask) Casino Royale is. Bond has always been a masculine, strong manly man with a thing for the ladies, but damn Daniel, you could have toned it down a bit in this one. In the first hour alone he crashes the car of a rich dude who pissed him off by mistaking him for a valet (partially to create a distraction, but still, dick move), takes huge amount of money away from a dude in poker including his absolutely gorgeous Aston Martin, before proceeding to (almost) bang his wife and then later looking straight into his eyes as he pushes a knife into his gut in the middle of a crowded museum. Now that's how you kick a guy while he's down. Bond seems to be a very primal person in this movie, eager to assert his dominance over every foe he encounters, and even more eager to get with every woman that crosses his path.

Our hero 007 has been a ladies man in pretty much all of his movies, but this movie is the first I've seen where they actually have some exposition as to why. Bond says himself that he is pretty much only into married women, so he obviously enjoys the thrill of the hunt, going after women who are unavailable or hard to get, and especially ones who won't get attached to him because that's the last thing he wants. Women are disposable to Bond, and when one he was getting romantic with is killed because of her involvement with him he doesn't care. Why? Because he's JAMES BOND, that's why! He can just find another one and start over. And he does, the one he's working with to bring down the bad guy. Or does he? the very woman who abhorred him at first sight for his objectification of women and his massive, uncontrollable ego falls for him, only to stab him in the back and end up dying because of it. When asked how he felt about it Bond replied with his signature sentimentality, he said "It's over. The bitch is dead." They were apparently in love, but he got over that one pretty quick, probably because he's mad because he thought women were just stupid objects and he got outsmarted by one.

In summary, James Bond probably had mommy issues

Probably going to post a Skyfall review after I see it, stay tuned.

Play This Game: Dark Souls

Dark Souls is the best console game to be released this generation (in my opinion, which is correct), and one of my favourites of all time . Every single aspect of this game is near flawless, and in a sea of derivative, unimaginative, laughably lame mainstream games it stands head and shoulders above everything else. It's challenging, emotional, immersive, addictive, beautiful, and completely amazing. Why should you play it?

1) The high level of difficulty.

Dark Souls is not for children. If you're a typical Call of Duty playing, Nickelback listening, Transformers watching douchebag, then don't even think about playing this game, because a) you're not worthy, b) you'll most likely ragequit early on and c) I hate you. Dark Souls is for people who want a challenge, want to die a lot and actually THINK for once in a video game. Right on the back of the game it says "PREPARE TO DIE" in huge letters, and you're going to. A lot. Hundreds of times most likely. In my 400 hours of playtime, I've died hundreds of times, probably thousands. But the thing about Dark Souls is that every death is a lesson. When you die, you learn about hazards in the environments, the attack patterns of enemies, what they're resistant to or weak against, when to charge and when to be careful, etc etc etc. This is one of the greatest successes of Dark Souls. It defies the modern conventions that games have (d)evolved to. There's no mini-map on your screen telling you where to go, no arrow giving you directions, very few tips and free items. The only advice you're gonna get is the messages that other people playing online leave behind to help you, and a lot of those are made by trolls that just want to mess with you. Dark Souls does not hold your hand in the slightest, and that's one of the reasons playing it is so satisfying. When you figure out how to open a shortcut you previously couldn't get to, or beat a ridiculously hard boss (which are common in Dark Souls, the bosses are insane) or even just make it to the next save point you feel amazing. So many times in this game I've found myself holding my breath without realizing it, and then when I finally make it to safety I let out a sigh of relief and feel awesome because I just did something really difficult and I feel good about it. Sure, it's really hard. Most of the enemies can kill you in seconds, regardless of your gear. But when you finish the game you have an amazing feeling of accomplishment that very few games can give, you feel like you actually DID something.

2) Atmosphere/Immersion.

Atmosphere is something that a lot of games miss the mark on. It's that immersion factor, the way a game can drag you right in, to the point where there is nothing but the game and your attention is totally consumed. Because of the aforementioned difficulty, Dark Souls requires that much more concentration to play (also because you can't even pause the game). You won't be able to play it while texting, you won't want music on, and playing it drunk is probably a bad idea too, although I've heard of some cool Dark Souls drinking games. Since the game autosaves constantly, everything you do is final. There are no do-overs. You can't load up your previous save and try whatever it was you were doing again like in Skyrim. This made me play really carefully, and care about what I was doing. Constantly assessing risk and strategically planning your battles is a key to success in this game, and since you play the game with your mind you are so much more immersed and invested in the game. You have to read the enemies and know your surroundings everywhere, because the game developers did an amazing job here. They set up traps, put enemies in the most inconvenient spaces and made incredibly difficult levels to traverse, because they hate us all and don't want us to beat the game (notice I said beat, there's a difference between beating a game and finishing one). So when you do finally destroy the final boss and beat Dark Souls, you feel totally badass. I remember the first time I beat it, I was strutting around the house like I owned the place and wasn't a loser living in his parents' basement until he finished college and finds a job, it felt awesome.

In addition to this, the atmosphere in the game is enough to creep anyone out. The world you're in is completely bleak and hopeless. Everyone there is depressed, and everyone else wants to kill you. The areas you go through in the game are dark and dreary, devoid of sunlight and filled with murderous creatures that sometimes come out of nowhere. Some of the levels are riddled with traps, others are dark, hopeless labyrinths. The mood of Dark Souls is incredibly depressing, and after playing for a while you certainly feel its effect on your psyche. It's not a happy game, and when you become hopelessly addicted to it you get fully immersed in this nightmarish world, never to return until you turn off the game, which you won't want to do because you're hooked.

3)The absolutely brilliant multiplayer/co-op

Dark Souls' multiplayer is like nothing else on the video game market today. There's no invites, no lobbies, no matchmaking. There's just the game world, and whoever gets brought into or comes into it. When you're running around dying, killing, looting and dying more, you can randomly get invaded by other players. This person comes into your world as a red phantom, and basically hunts you down and tries to kill you. You either win or die. There are also clan-like groups known as covenants that you can join that give you special abilities and advantages in the PvP system, which spice things up a lot. Being invaded is scary. When it happens, your heart skips a beat and you wonder who it is, what kind of character they have, how good they are etc. There are hundreds of weapons in Dark Souls that you can upgrade and create, and they all handle differently than others. Finding a weapon that you like and are comfortable with is key to being good at PvP. Some people are incredibly good and kill you easily, but most of the time it's a pretty fair fight since you're always around the same level. Defeating an invader or hunting someone down and killing them is very satisfying, adding to the gratification Dark Souls offers to those who take on the challenge. 

Even more fun is the co-op. When someone wants to help another player out, they leave a sign on the ground. This appears in the worlds of other players and they can summon the other player as a white phantom to help them get through the level or finish the boss off. Helping people out is awesome, and certain boss fights are really insane to do alone, so the co-op is a welcome addition to the bleak, depressing atmosphere of the game. Hooking up with a friend and running through the levels quickly is incredibly fun.

I could write pages and pages about Dark Souls because I truly believe that it is one of the best games to come out in recent memory, but it's better to experience it yourself than read about it on some stupid blog. So I encourage you, give Dark Souls a try if you're brave enough. It's coming out for PC soon with new content, so everyone, console and PC gamers alike, can experience this amazing game.

There Will Be Blood: An Analysis/Essay

I'm really lazy right now, so instead of actually writing something I'll post an essay I wrote last year for an elective Film Criticism course I took. My teacher liked it and gave it a 90 so it must be decent at the very  least. I had to keep it short because there was a word limit,so there's not nearly as much in here as I would have liked, but whatever. If you haven't seen the movie it probably won't make sense, and if you haven't seen the movie you should stop reading here and go watch it because it's a goddamn masterpiece. Anyways, here:

Religion and Capitalism: A Formula For Disaster

Ideological Themes in There Will Be Blood

A bleak, unforgiving landscape. A geyser of fire spewing out of the earth, like an explosion from hell itself. These are just a few examples of the striking images that occupy the screen in Paul Thomas Anderson's meditative, dramatic epic There Will Be Blood. The film documents the experiences of oil entrepreneur Daniel Plainview, from his rise to prominence to his descent into madness and alcoholism. Daniel encounters several problems and obstacles in his pursuit of oil and financial success, including personal injury, corporate rivalry, and the interference of and conflict with religion, which is one of the main ideological subtexts of the film. This collision between capitalism and religion manifests itself in There Will Be Blood in the visual and implied symbolism shown, the actions of the main characters (specifically Daniel) and the general descent into madness that is experienced by both sides of the conflict. There Will Be Blood contrasts religion and capitalism, and portrays extremism in both sides of the conflict. Daniel Plainview is a very business-like, profit orientated man who has no place in his life for religion and is clearly focused on one goal above all else: finding oil, building an empire and making money. Actor Daniel Day-Lewis' portrayal of Plainview is immaculate, his character has been described as “a great oversized monster who hates all men, and therefore himself” (Ebert, 2008). On the other end of the spectrum is Eli Sunday, a preacher and inhabitant of the land that Daniel eventually buys to develop and drill for oil. He is extremely devoted to his religion, and right from the beginning he is cautious of Daniel and his motives for coming to Little Boston and buying the land. The contention between them is a classic example of stubbornness, an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object, and throughout the film it snowballs from initial co-operation to a violent showdown at the end, resulting in Daniel brutally murdering Eli. This suggests that capitalism and religion do not mix together well and it is unlikely that they can peacefully coexist.

One of the most effective ways that a film can convey a message to the viewer is to use visual symbolism to communicate. To the discerning audience it can speak volumes about the intent of the movie and the themes that it is trying to explore or express. In There Will Be Blood, symbolism is used to draw attention to the conflict between Daniel and Eli, and the conflict between religion and capitalism happening beneath the surface. This symbolism is evident in the names of the characters in the film. Daniel Plainview is “a representative figure, a man of his times” (Mapping Contemporary Cinema, 2007). As his surname implies, he has a very realist, plain view of the world and is representative of capitalism, the desire for money and little else. On the other end of the spectrum is Eli Sunday, whose last name can be associated with his religion in the fact that Sunday is the Christian Sabbath, or day of rest. There are some striking shots that visually foreshadow what is to come in the film, such as when Daniel strikes oil in Little Boston. The geyser of oil becomes ignited and a spew of fire comes out of the ground, burning the giant oil derrick that Plainview constructed to drill with and injuring his son H.W. Daniel sits down and watched the giant, flaming oil derrick snap and fall to the ground, symbolizing a “breaking point”. This is shortly before the relationship between Daniel and Eli turns sour, from tolerance to violence and conflict. Another symbol that is prevalent throughout the entire movie is that of baptism. When Eli confronts Daniel and demands that he give him the money that Daniel had earlier promised to donate to his church, Daniel physically attacks and beats him, eventually throwing him into a puddle of oil and mud, and rubbing it all over his face and body. Later on, Daniel gets baptized at Eli's church in exchange for more land from an old man who previously refused to sell his lot. Eli takes this opportunity to get revenge on Daniel for his humiliation, slapping him repeatedly and making him admit that he is a sinner and has abandoned his child. Finally, when Eli comes to visit Daniel in his mansion at the end of the film their final confrontation ends with Daniel beating Eli to death with a bowling pin, a symbolic baptism of blood and Daniel's victory over his nemesis. These symbolic circumstances are very effective in Anderson's film to demonstrate the underlying theme of the movie, the battle that takes place between business and religion.

The conflict between capitalism and religion is also manifested in the actions of the main characters of the film, specifically Daniel Plainview. He is the embodiment of business, a man who “regets nothing, pities nothing, and when he falls down a mineshaft and cruelly breaks his leg, he hauls himself back up to the top and starts again” (Ebert, 2008). To him there is no other goal worth striving for other than money. When attempting to persuade investors to give him a lease on some land to drill, he claims that he is “a family man” and that his son is his motivation for his life's work. But later on when his adopted son H.W is deafened after being hit by a geyser and attempts to burn down their house out of frustration, Daniel has him sent away to boarding school rather than trying to take care of the child himself. When the incident happens and H.W loses his hearing, Daniel quickly leaves him and seems more excited about his oil strike than he is worried about his own son being injured. He later on disowns H.W when he is grown up and decides to go to Mexico and start his own oil company, saying that he is now his rival and enemy. Daniel is corrupted by money and only cares about becoming rich, and this drives him to alcoholism and madness later on in life. He despises religion, which is the cause of his conflict with Eli. When a man offers Daniel permission to build a pipeline through his land in exchange for him getting baptized and joining the church, Daniel offers him a large sum of money instead, because he is loath to be associated with Christianity. Earlier on in the film Daniel witnesses Eli exorcising an “arthritis demon” from the hands of an elderly woman in the congregation. He is amused, calling it “one goddamn hell of a show”. Daniel sees religion in a very mocking, sarcastic way and has no belief in a specific higher power, saying early on in the film that he belongs to no church and “enjoys all faiths”. This outlook is one of the main differences between Daniel and Eli and further demonstrates how opposite they are to each other, and how religion and business collide in this film.

One of the ways Paul Thomas Anderson illustrates the theme of capitalism versus religion in There Will Be Blood is through the gradual descent into madness and insanity that the main characters experience throughout the film. After Daniel Plainview strikes oil and his son loses his hearing, his sanity seems to go downward from there on. He becomes violent towards Eli specifically, beating him and throwing him into a puddle of oil, humiliating him publicly. After this, Eli loses his temper on his own family, assaulting his father and calling him “a stupid father to a stupid son”. Later on, Daniel meets a man who claims to be his long lost brother. Although suspicious of him at first, Daniel gives him a job and welcomes him as a business partner. A while after this however, Daniel grows doubtful of his legitimacy and finds out that he is not his brother, but a man pretending to be his sibling. Daniel reacts by killing the man and burying him in a shallow grave. This is something that the Daniel that we see at the beginning of the film would never have done. He claimed to be a “family man” and that his family was just as important to him as his business. By the end of the film Daniel has become the polar opposite of what he once claimed to be, becoming a reclusive alcoholic. He even disowns his son H.W and calls him a bastard child when he tells him that he is moving to Mexico to start his own oil company. Finally, Daniel completes his descent into insanity in the film's dramatic climax, where he confronts Eli Sunday for the final time and ends up bludgeoning him to death with a bowling pin. This gradual disintegration of Daniel's sanity illustrates the results of the combination of capitalism and religion: death.

There Will Be Blood is a strikingly philosophical film on several levels. It offers an intimate portrait of a businessman pushed to his limit by the opposition he faces, and the ultimate breakdown that results in his conflict. Daniel Day-Lewis' performance as entrepreneur Daniel Plainview is nothing less than legendary, and he does a spectacular job of portraying this complex character. There Will Be Blood effectively explores the themes of capitalism and religion in America, and what happens when those two forces collide and conflict with each other. As the movie shows, the results are grim. When an unstoppable force meets an immovable object, there will be blood.

Just Watched: eXistenZ (1999)

If you enjoy video games, or consider yourself a gamer, watch this film.

For real, this movie appealed to the incurable video game addict in me a hundred times more than the awful video game "adaptation" movies that Hollywood pukes out every year. Directed by the brilliant (and Canadian) David Cronenberg, this is an intense study of a possible future of video games and the effects a person's immersion in them can have. Basically, games have progressed to completely realistic virtual reality. People get small holes called bioports surgically embedded into their lower backs, which allow them to plug into "gamepods" which are basically weird looking sacks of flesh that are apparently biologically engineered and grown from DNA, something like that. The player is connected via a tube that looks a heck of a lot like an umbilical cord, and is brought into a fully realistic virtual world. eXistenZ's plot centers around a game designer and her bodyguard (apparently) who are on the run because video game haters called "realists"  want to kill her and stuff. This eventually leads to them entering the video game she created and chaos ensues, plot twists happen, and I become too lazy to summarize it all because I'm tired and ruining the ending(s) of this movie would be a dick move. Just watch it for yourself.

What I really want to talk about is the treatment of the subject matter. Cronenberg's attention to detail in the game world here is perfect, but if you're not a person who regularly plays games you're unlikely to notice. The characters programmed into the game appear as real people, but their mannerisms and the way they behave gives them away as constructs of the virtual reality. If waiting for a player to say the right line of dialogue or figure something out that they are supposed to do, they'll stand there looking around, silently blinking, waiting for something to happen for them to react to, just like the NPCs (Non Player Characters) in the video games of today. They have pre-programmed dialogue that they use to react when given the proper trigger, and their facial expressions serve as a reminder that they are really nothing but lines of code. 

The people playing the game also had characteristics that are common in video game protagonists, and after a while I began to see them as characters, and not actual people. In the movie it is explained that people playing the VR games get "game urges", inclinations in their mind that strongly tell them to do something, actions that elicit responses from NPCs and lead to discoveries that further the plot. It's really convincing, and watching it reminds me of video games I've played where a hint, or a phrase pops up onscreen and you immediately know what to do. In addition to this, there's a fairly linear plotline (for a while, everything goes to hell eventually) where the players receive objectives through dialogue and must complete them on their own, like in every game ever where the guy is like "hey, go do this, it's your quest" and you do it to find out what happens next. The narrative is structured like a video game, and that aspect of the movie is extremely well done. Cronenberg is either a gamer or he really did his homework on this one.

eXistenZ also stays true to Cronenberg's style, his "body horror" genre of movies. This deals with augmentation, degradation and transformation of the human body. It bears parallels to his other film Videodrome, where the main character grows a weird slot in his chest where he can put videotapes. In eXistenZ however, the characters stick an umbilical cord in their backs and go into a video game world in a Matrix-esque (ehhhh, maybe more like Inception now that I think of it) transcendence of reality. And that is another theme that is also explored in Videodrome. Man's interaction with technology, his reliance on it for entertainment. Where does it end? Will we eventually be able to alter reality so much that we can't tell what's real and what isn't? Is that a bad thing? What moral and ethical rules apply in a virtual game world? I guess we'll have to wait until science catches up with David Cronenberg to find out.

A Dream of Dark and Troubling Things: Eraserhead (1977)

"Dude, what the hell am I watching?"

Words that are so very often associated with David Lynch, one of modern cinema's most creative, imaginative auteurs, and one of my personal idols. The surrealist elements in his movies are incredibly unique, beautifully grotesque and often incomprehensibly weird. But since the beginning of his film career none of his works have quite reached the level of strangeness that is achieved in his first feature length movie, Eraserhead (Except maybe Inland Empire, but I'll talk about that some other time). The plot is hard to explain, because a) there really isn't much of one, it's a very visual film and b) if you haven't seen this movie already you should do yourself a massive favour and watch it so I don't have to even try to explain it.

Basically it's about an average guy named Henry (played by Jack Nance, an actor who appeared in pretty much all of Lynch's work before his death in 1996) who has a weird mutant baby with his girlfriend and then has some really, really weird dreams and stuff happen to him. Honestly, that's the best summary I can come up with. It's nearly impossible to convey the plot of this movie using words, because there basically isn't a coherent, forward moving narrative here.

But don't get me wrong, that's not a bad thing. In fact, quite the opposite. David Lynch describes Eraserhead as "a dream of dark and troubling things", and that's exactly what it is. A dream. Most of the things that happen in this film happen for no reason at all. Strange fluids pour out of things. Mutant babies cry all the time, apparently. There's a chipmunk lady living in Henry's wall heater who likes to sing (what?). Creepy worms float through space. And it goes on and on and on. Calling it a dream is pretty accurate, because anything can and will happen in a person's dream, for no reason at all. And that's one of the reasons Eraserhead works so well, it puts the viewer directly in Henry's tense, paranoid brain, front row center to his surreal, dark and disturbing nightmare. We (the audience) are just as confused and oblivious as he is for most of the movie, it's almost like Lynch put a camera in his head and taped a dream he had.

But while the movie is weird and nonsensical, the interactions Henry has with people and some of the situations he is put in are all too familiar to the average person. Coming home from work, going to his girlfriend's house for dinner, meeting her parents, these are things that normal people can empathize with. But Henry's demeanor is almost always intensely uneasy, he locks up when engaged in conversation, and just seems generally ill at ease all the time. Which makes sense, considering the things that happen to him over the course of the movie. Henry experiences and dreams some really weird stuff, and it's an interesting juxtaposition placed beside the fairly normal, ordinary circumstances that the film opens with.

Another thing that always stands out for me in Eraserhead is the use of audio in the film. There's almost always some kind of background noise in every scene, whether it's a train, random machinery, the howling of wind, a thunderstorm, or a mutant baby screaming, it's almost never entirely quiet. But when it is finally silent, things become really freaky. The viewer gets accustomed to the background noise, and when it's not there the silence kind of tricks your brain into thinking that something really weird or unexpected is going to happen (and it usually does). This is a pretty cool technique.

Overall, Eraserhead is an entirely unique film. It's a surreal string of creative imagery that draws the viewer directly into David Lynch's messed up dream, and it never fails to captivate me, even after several viewings. A lot of people hate it for it's nonsensical plot and "excessive" use of gore but whatever. The bottom line is there is absolutely nothing like it and that in itself makes it a massive success, not to mention the fact that it launched David Lynch's extremely successful film career.

And I think the chipmunk lady was adorable.

Just Watched: The 39 Steps (1935)

Note: Posts with the "Just Watched" tag are movies that I just watched for the first time.

          I have a confession to make. I'm a really big fan of Alfred Hitchcock, but I've never seen The 39 Steps, a film that is regarded as an essential espionage movie and one of Hitchcock's greatest works. Thanks to Netflix, I just changed that.

          This movie is fantastic. Although some of Hitchcock's movies are shot in colour, I think black and white really was his best medium. His use of light is brilliant (see the picture above), often using heavy amounts of contrast and sharp, unsettling shadows to reflect the constant state of paranoia that the protagonist lives in, something that could probably not been accomplished (or possibly done to a lesser effect) in colour. That said, the setting in this particular film are gorgeous. This was made before Hitchcock's departure from England to Hollywood, and most of it takes place in rural Scotland. Gorgeous hills, peaceful farms and quaint country life visually counterpoint the chaotic chase that unfolds throughout the movie, as a man wrongfully accused of murder runs from police and spies trying to find answers. Hitchcock's signature attention to detail is also dominant in the composition of the elements onscreen. Everything is in its place, drawing the eye to the most important parts of the shot and keeping  the viewer focused on what matters.

          The plot of 39 Steps was absolutely not what I expected. I was expecting a spy movie focused on a protagonist (a spy), trying to stop an evil nemesis of his from taking over the world, stealing technology etc etc etc. In short I was kind of expecting a typical espionage film, which was probably stupid of me because all of Hitchcock's work is anything but conventional. Blame it on me watching too many Bond movies, I suppose. The story is more focused on the journey of the main character, and his struggle to prove his innocence. His character definitely grows over the course of the movie, turning from a freaked out average guy to a (sort of) fearless perceived criminal who jumps off trains, runs from cops, gets shot, and eventually proves his innocence in the end. And that's what made The 39 Steps so appealing to me. There was a lot of effort put into character development. A movie hero is nothing if not interesting, and I was constantly left wondering how he was going to get out of these tough situations. Hitchcock really makes the viewer empathize with the plight of his character here, and that is one of the biggest triumphs of this movie.

          This was also one of the first Hitchcock movies I've seen where I was able to spot his famous onscreen cameo on my first viewing, and I just want whoever reads this to know that I am really proud of myself for that. But in addition, there were some other plot elements that are very "Hitchcockian" that I noticed in 39 Steps that also show up in other films he has made. For instance, the concept of an average, normal person becoming involved in some type of conspiracy, or suddenly thrown into a world they know nothing about. This also happens in North By Northwest, where the main character's identity is mistaken and he is kidnapped. There were also a few things in Psycho that are reminiscent of this movie. Both contain a character that is just kind of "off". The crazy killer Norman Bates doesn't immediately strike his victim as a psychotic murderer, but you can definitely tell that something is not right in his head. In 39 Steps, the main character stays with a farmer and his wife in Scotland, the husband is extremely religiously zealous and suspicious; he has an unsettling presence on screen. The viewer knows that he is not trustworthy and is going to negatively impact the protagonist. This adds to the suspense because we do not know initially what is going to happen in that circumstance. Also, the concept of killing off a character early in the story is evident, in Psycho the "main" character is killed off fairly early in the film, in 39 Steps our hero appears to be shot and killed halfway through but survives due to a book hidden in his jacket. It's things like these that Hitchcock uses to mess with our minds, one of the reasons why he is known as the Master of Suspense.

          This is classic Hitchcock, I love it.

the title of this post is not important

Apparently mandatory introductory post. College student, 22 years old. I like movies. And video games. And books. And writing about them on the internet. And music. And sentence fragments. And that's all.