Well well well my little potato-cakes of splendiferousness (that one's for Kogii). It hasn't been all that long since my last update but I've got a ferew things to get through, so here goes.
First of all, I watched Man On Fire yesterday. I don't know why, but for some reason every now and then there's a film that drags my inner critic out of me kicking and screaming, not necessarily because I particularly love or hate it, just because I have something to say about it. Man On Fire is one of those films. For me, Man On Fire was a lot like watching someone play a grisly interrogations videogame (a torture-em-up, if you will) produced by Hideo Kojima with out-of-date graphics drivers.
You might need to bear with me on this one.
Ok, first of all, Hideo Kojima for two reasons. First of all, he's one of only a handful of game designers that are stark staring batshit crazy enough to design a videogame based on violent interrogations. Ok, Shigeru Miyamoto has taken enough tugs on the crack pipe to do it, but knowing him and his stance on violent games you'd probably have to interrogate the prisoner by waggling your dick around in the special proprietary controller to simulate waggling a feather under his nose to make him sneeze. And somehow it'd all be utterly, utterly compelling.
But I digress, the other reason for Hideo Kojima is he sure does like his cutscenes. Man on Fire is a film that feels like it takes an immensely long time to get started, the 'action' doesn't get started until something like an hour into the film. However, this part I'm pretty much ok with. The film's trying to establish a huge character arc for Denzil Washington, and this isn't something you can set up in ten minutes. He's supposed to be completely changed by his relationship with Dakota Fanning and I like that they actually took the time to set that up.
Next, the videogame thing. I say this as, once things do get started, it's all remarkably formulaic. Denzil finds a bad guy, Denzil tortures bad guy till he tells him where to find next bad guy, Denzil finds next bad guy, etc etc. I half-expected a little screen to pop up saying 'Congratulations! You ahve beaten the boss!' after the last one. That's just lazy plotting, as far as I'm concerned.
Lastly, the old graphics driver thing. Visually, Tony Scott has crammed Man on Fire full of little stylistic cut-up camera movements, jarring cuts, bleached-out colours etc etc. and it really irked me. At first I wondered if I didn't like it because I was acting like some kind of cinematic purist who had not ime for this fancy camera tomfoolery but that's not it. Some of my favourite directors include John Woo and Ryuhei Kitamura (although he's been in my bad books recently) and both of these have stylisitic flourishes coming out of the ass. No, the problem is that Tony Scott's style just isn't done in service of the characters or the story. It feels bolted on, an artificial attempt to be something it's not, like a funeral director turning up to work in a Hawaiian shirt.
Also, I've been tagged by that unspeakable bastwich antenna and cajoled into telling you 20 things I haven't shared with anyone before. Normally I would look on this with the same scorn that I would treat chain e-mails, usually inciting a reply containing more profanity than you can shake a big, shitty fuckstick at. However, I am somewhat delirious with fatigue after not getting enough sleep last night, so fuck it:
1) To start with the basics, I'm 25 and currently work in two libraries. One witha small chance of being stabbed and another with a large chance of being yelled at for being patronising.
2) I occasionally have aspirations towards being a writer. When I say aspirations, I mean I'm one of those people who have a shitload of first chapters and discarded ideas strewn around the hard drive. I'm great at coming up with ideas, I just don't have the willpower to actually follow through on any of them. The closest I got was maintaining a website with another guy called Roman at randomactsofnonviolence.com but when I go back and read some of the stuff I posted, it makes me cringe.
3) I almost never remember my dreams. I've found it mroe common that I've actually sometimes woken myself up by talking in my sleep. The last time I ddi it I woke myself up by mumbling 'and those fucking wizards'. To this day I have no idea what that dream was about.
4) I have an unhealthy addiction to videogames. Survival horror games especially. I'll play any old shit if it promises to try and scare me. I forced myself to only ever play Project Zero on my own, in the dark at 2am. There's a very good chance that I hate myself and want to make me suffer.
5) I remember the exact moment my parents realised I needed glasses. We were watching a Sinbad film and I had to sit 12 inches from the TV to make out the screen.
6) Whenever I DO manage to force myself to write something, I treat sentances like a sculptor. I hack away words that don't fit, I chip away till I find the right shape. I even do this with things I say. I treat the English language like a big hunk of marble, but then never really use it for anything other than finding brave and exciting new ways to call Mariana a ho-bag.
7) My academic career is something of a downward spiral as higher and higher levels of education required higher and higher levels of effort and I found myself less and less able to depend on natural brainpower.
8) I'm something of a bullshit artist, given a few seconds to spin up the old internal flywheel, I can fire off an impressive tirade of bullshit in several exciting flavours: academic, business, so on and so forth.
9) I took a degree in Media Studies, but ahve norw realised I don't actually want to do what I studied for a living. Whoops.
10) I get unbelievably self-conscious about my (hah!) singing voice.Anyone who ever tries to cajole me into doing karaoke is going to force an extremely awkward social situation when I stab them in the face.
11) I get scared sometimes at the prospect that I'll never be 18 again. Or 19. Or 20. Or 21... Did I really do enough with the time I was given? Christ, who knows.
12) I'm damn near impossible to offend, and far too laid back for my own good.
13) I've just discovered the joys of plugging in random words into Google Video to see what I get. Bugger this for a lark, I'm off.
First of all, I watched Man On Fire yesterday. I don't know why, but for some reason every now and then there's a film that drags my inner critic out of me kicking and screaming, not necessarily because I particularly love or hate it, just because I have something to say about it. Man On Fire is one of those films. For me, Man On Fire was a lot like watching someone play a grisly interrogations videogame (a torture-em-up, if you will) produced by Hideo Kojima with out-of-date graphics drivers.
You might need to bear with me on this one.
Ok, first of all, Hideo Kojima for two reasons. First of all, he's one of only a handful of game designers that are stark staring batshit crazy enough to design a videogame based on violent interrogations. Ok, Shigeru Miyamoto has taken enough tugs on the crack pipe to do it, but knowing him and his stance on violent games you'd probably have to interrogate the prisoner by waggling your dick around in the special proprietary controller to simulate waggling a feather under his nose to make him sneeze. And somehow it'd all be utterly, utterly compelling.
But I digress, the other reason for Hideo Kojima is he sure does like his cutscenes. Man on Fire is a film that feels like it takes an immensely long time to get started, the 'action' doesn't get started until something like an hour into the film. However, this part I'm pretty much ok with. The film's trying to establish a huge character arc for Denzil Washington, and this isn't something you can set up in ten minutes. He's supposed to be completely changed by his relationship with Dakota Fanning and I like that they actually took the time to set that up.
Next, the videogame thing. I say this as, once things do get started, it's all remarkably formulaic. Denzil finds a bad guy, Denzil tortures bad guy till he tells him where to find next bad guy, Denzil finds next bad guy, etc etc. I half-expected a little screen to pop up saying 'Congratulations! You ahve beaten the boss!' after the last one. That's just lazy plotting, as far as I'm concerned.
Lastly, the old graphics driver thing. Visually, Tony Scott has crammed Man on Fire full of little stylistic cut-up camera movements, jarring cuts, bleached-out colours etc etc. and it really irked me. At first I wondered if I didn't like it because I was acting like some kind of cinematic purist who had not ime for this fancy camera tomfoolery but that's not it. Some of my favourite directors include John Woo and Ryuhei Kitamura (although he's been in my bad books recently) and both of these have stylisitic flourishes coming out of the ass. No, the problem is that Tony Scott's style just isn't done in service of the characters or the story. It feels bolted on, an artificial attempt to be something it's not, like a funeral director turning up to work in a Hawaiian shirt.
Also, I've been tagged by that unspeakable bastwich antenna and cajoled into telling you 20 things I haven't shared with anyone before. Normally I would look on this with the same scorn that I would treat chain e-mails, usually inciting a reply containing more profanity than you can shake a big, shitty fuckstick at. However, I am somewhat delirious with fatigue after not getting enough sleep last night, so fuck it:
1) To start with the basics, I'm 25 and currently work in two libraries. One witha small chance of being stabbed and another with a large chance of being yelled at for being patronising.
2) I occasionally have aspirations towards being a writer. When I say aspirations, I mean I'm one of those people who have a shitload of first chapters and discarded ideas strewn around the hard drive. I'm great at coming up with ideas, I just don't have the willpower to actually follow through on any of them. The closest I got was maintaining a website with another guy called Roman at randomactsofnonviolence.com but when I go back and read some of the stuff I posted, it makes me cringe.
3) I almost never remember my dreams. I've found it mroe common that I've actually sometimes woken myself up by talking in my sleep. The last time I ddi it I woke myself up by mumbling 'and those fucking wizards'. To this day I have no idea what that dream was about.
4) I have an unhealthy addiction to videogames. Survival horror games especially. I'll play any old shit if it promises to try and scare me. I forced myself to only ever play Project Zero on my own, in the dark at 2am. There's a very good chance that I hate myself and want to make me suffer.
5) I remember the exact moment my parents realised I needed glasses. We were watching a Sinbad film and I had to sit 12 inches from the TV to make out the screen.
6) Whenever I DO manage to force myself to write something, I treat sentances like a sculptor. I hack away words that don't fit, I chip away till I find the right shape. I even do this with things I say. I treat the English language like a big hunk of marble, but then never really use it for anything other than finding brave and exciting new ways to call Mariana a ho-bag.
7) My academic career is something of a downward spiral as higher and higher levels of education required higher and higher levels of effort and I found myself less and less able to depend on natural brainpower.
8) I'm something of a bullshit artist, given a few seconds to spin up the old internal flywheel, I can fire off an impressive tirade of bullshit in several exciting flavours: academic, business, so on and so forth.
9) I took a degree in Media Studies, but ahve norw realised I don't actually want to do what I studied for a living. Whoops.
10) I get unbelievably self-conscious about my (hah!) singing voice.Anyone who ever tries to cajole me into doing karaoke is going to force an extremely awkward social situation when I stab them in the face.
11) I get scared sometimes at the prospect that I'll never be 18 again. Or 19. Or 20. Or 21... Did I really do enough with the time I was given? Christ, who knows.
12) I'm damn near impossible to offend, and far too laid back for my own good.
13) I've just discovered the joys of plugging in random words into Google Video to see what I get. Bugger this for a lark, I'm off.
VIEW 25 of 25 COMMENTS
I just get tired of the old, run, stop, run hide, stop get seen, hide, wait, wait some more, run, get seen again, get fed up and take on every bastard in sight, die, try and do it properly gameplay.
i'm not sure - i kinda like it, its a bit beserk, but completely different - which is what i thinks putting me off 'em...