Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Butt Files
South Park continues to bore.
And my braindead devotion to the Silent Hill movie continues. Next-gen.biz says:
Although the critics grouse, Silent Hill’s real strength comes with how it wears its videogame roots on its sleeve. The first hour and a half or so of the movie almost perfectly nails the atmosphere, pacing, and structure of the first game in the series. Watching that portion of the movie is as close as one can get to playing the games without actually playing them. That this is achieved within the constraints of Hollywood movie-making is remarkable; the problem is that while the film succeeds as an adaptation, it fails as cinema. The world of Silent Hill is vividly brought to life on screen, only to be squandered on schlocky storytelling. Character motivation is weak, the town’s backstory is both unclear and over-explained, and one particular sequence towards the end nearly undermines what the rest of the film sets up. The pieces are fine; they're just not assembled with much skill for cinematic narrative.Fair enough. Christophe Gans wants to do Onimusha. It's another visually spectacular property - magical samurai demons! - but its story is remarkably lightweight compared to Silent Hill so I guess it shouldn't be as big of a handful to adapt. Hopefully. But y'know. Can't hope for anything anymore.
Silent Hill is not a step forward for being the first “good” videogame-based movie; by most accounts, it is not. Rather, it is the first movie of its kind that is poised to play an active role in broadening its intended audience. The non-gamer who comes to see Silent Hill unprepared may be confused and disappointed by the film’s seemingly tacked-on and incongruous ending. However, there is also the hope that this viewer will be enticed by what makes the Silent Hill games – and videogames at large – such compelling works of entertainment. If the movie succeeds in this regard, its true value lies not in its box office returns, but in how it points towards using film adaptations as a tool for expanding and enriching the market.
What’s also promising is how series producer/composer Akira Yamaoka took such an active role in the film’s development. He is reportedly so pleased with the results that he intends to incorporate a good chunk of material from the film into the recently-announced PSP remake of the original game. This sort of creative feedback loop (the film takes most of its inspiration from the first game, which in turn was inspired by horror films of the past) is unprecedented, and may provide a blueprint for the future of successful movie-to-game adaptations and vice-versa.
I will draw this painful saga to its close with this thing I made.
HEY, E3 is around the corner! Let's see what Square's got in store. Valkyrie Profile 2, FF12, FF6Advance... YUP, that's it for me. Oh hey! That Japanese game I got is gonna be in English.
Adorable.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Finally
Sunday, April 23, 2006
More horsehockey
Hm. Thinking about the Rose Da Silva/Harry Mason thing... I was fairly pleased with her but if they did Harry, yeah, that would've been better and even unorthodox. We've seen women get scared in movies. Spider-Man 2 could be called Screaming Women 2: More Screaming Women. When they changed Harry's gender they did it for nothing but weird, sexist reasons that don't really make that much sense. From ComingSoon.net's interview with Gans:
Actually, when we decided to adapt the first game, we decided to have the hero of the first game, a guy named Harry Mason, but when we put him on the paper and tried to be very close to the original character of the game, we noticed that he was almost never acting like a man, but much more like a woman. When we decided to make him a woman, we realized that all the game was filled with women. It was almost like a complete feminine world, so then we realized that it was very interesting that "Silent Hill" was dealing with such issues as motherhood, sisterhood, immaculate conception, and we realized that was a good angle to make the film. It started as a convenient thing, making the character female, but then it became the structure of the project, and we realized that "Silent Hill" was a feminine dimension.
"He was almost never acting like a man?" WTF? So Harry lacks a penis, let's just go the whole nine. :\ Gans is playing off archetypal gender expectations which couldn't please anybody. So a single father can't be concerned for his only remaining family? He's in a frightening situation so let's make him a woman? I dunno but to me, seeing a biiiig stroooong man break down is much scarier, even if that is ALSO playing off gender type since guys are expected to be gun-toting bruisers and not pansy wusses which we rarely ever see unless it's Final Destination or some teenage shit. Then again, I hear The Hills Have Eyes takes the male protagonist idea and does its own crazy gender stuff.
Plus, if the Silent Hill-verse truly is feminine, having a man penetrate its darkness would make more sense and be much more interesting. Hear me out.
Look at Alien. The Nostromo is run by a computer called Mother. The crew is a closeknit family seemingly raped by a phallic invader (yet capable of impregnation), repelled by a feminine force. THAT'S gender play. If Gans really wanted to play with gender he'd take that basic theme with its weirdo contradictions, spin it around and keep Harry, except he wouldn't be a sinister rapist so much as a poor schlub lost in the confusing "otherness" of the terrifying female realm. When the male in Alien invades the female it's to hurt, when Harry visits female Silent Hill it's to save.
Hm. But then that becomes problematic doesn't it? So, a woman NEEDS a man to save her. Ho-hum, whatever, we saw that. But this wouldn't be a romantic relationship - it's his daughter. It's about family. Cybil, Harry and Cheryl would reinforce traditional American family values at the end... I guess. =\ Not that I'm offering right-wing crap like "family values" as an alternative to Gans' and Avary's "kill the red states" idea but that's how the game was and it felt better.
But after ruminating all that I can see why they chose Rose even if introducing the feminine into the feminine doesn't seem to add up to anything unless you count a deal with the devil, despair and a family torn apart. The gender politics get complicated don't they?
This hill sure is silent!
You know how much of a whiney blowhard I can be so here's my basic summation:
Opening - Lame but thankfully quick
First half - Almost gold
Second half - Mostly bullshit
Ending - Dumb as fuck
AND NOW SOME DETAIL LOL
Roger Avary's script is problematic. To the core. The dialogue ranges from passable to heinous, getting worse and worse as the movie drags on. I accepted Sharon screaming "Silent HILL!!!! SILENT HILLLL!" in the very first scene though that is a dumb-shit way to introduce the name of the movie and town, I even accepted Dahlia's and Cristabella's cryptic asswiping. But how on Earth did Silent Hill get me thinking about Monty Python & The Holy Grail? When a crew of terribly dressed bums scream "BURN THE WITCH! BURN THE WITCH! (Yeah!) BURN HER!"
Roger Avary needs to goddamn listen to what real people are saying so he can get a feel for how people talk (see Rules of Attraction. Or don't.
). No one's writing acclaims about Silent Hill the Videogame's hokey dialogue but in a film...... GOD. I feel the movie would've been far more effective had it been silent. Okay, if that's too much to ask, mostly silent (Hill lol). There's a lot of unnecessary quipping. "Look, there's a room behind this painting." Yes we can see that. Don't tell us the obvious. "We need to go to Room 111." Yeah, we figured that out. "Use this to swing back over here!" YEAH, WE KNOW, FUCK. No one else wanted to punch Cybil everytime she opened her pixie-headed maw? She's perhaps the guiltiest stupid quip quoter with "What the FUCK was THAT?" and "WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!" and worst of all, the line that just had to be repeated for some reason, "Mother is God in the child's eyes." So fucking what. Let us do the analyzing. Ellen Ripley didn't right out say "I am a badass lioness crusading for the safety of my adoptive kid." ...Right? Hm.Avary forgot some very, very basic screenwriting do's and don'ts. Though I feel Matrix 2 got away with it because of the philosophuck nature of its narrative Silent Hill has no excuse for its Architect scene. Everything was overexplained and was already hinted at earlier in the movie, and yeah, actually managed to be more convoluted than the original game. How could Avary make an even bigger clusterfuck of the original by merely explaining it MORE? I haven't a clue. And was there a reason that fade-to-white lasted longer than it should've other than to piss me off?
Characters and their motivations were BLEH except for Rose who was pretty much spot-on, she even had a Heather-esque appearance. Sure, she's a fanatical mother, nuts enough to make a deal with the devil. Okay, fine. What about her marriage with Chris? Poor useless ol' Chris? Why abandon your husband - who seems to care a LOT for his family even if he IS a bumblefuck - for adopted demonspawn? I think that could've been worked on... Cybil has no real reason to be around other than to make sure there's a gun in the movie and to give us more of a reason to hate those dastardly cultists when they barbecue her. But those cultists should'nt be there anyway because they're annoying and stupid as hell.
So why are all these useless characters hanging around making things worse? Because there needs to be MORE! MORE MORE MORE. It's not a live-action MOVIE unless there's a LOT of SHIT to PUT UP WITH. Silent Hill does NOT need to be 127 minutes long. There's a terrific movie in there somewhere but they just had to pad it all up with bullshit. Cut out Chris and Officer Gucci and the film doesn't suffer. Cut out the Cybil character or at least make her tolerable and give her something to do and the movie can ONLY improve.
Cut out the annoying cult and are you missing anything? Not really, a reason isn't even given for what they're doing besides BURNING WITCHES YEEAAAAHHHHHH. If you really wanna know why they're so fucking annoying it's because Cristophe and Avary wanted to throw a Bush metaphor in there. Seriously. It's all but confirmed by Rose's accusation of Cristabella "using fear to control you!" and Avary himself in the latest Script magazine. Gans apparently said something like "Silent Hill will expose the cult mentality of the United States!" So, yeah, you're not watching Alessa ferociously eviscerate cultists with barbed wire tentacles. You're really watching a French director and liberal jackoff screenwriter eviscerate President Bush/the sheeplike masses/Roger Ebert with barbed wire tentacles. It's insulting, disgusting and over-the-top. Since when is Silent Hill about gratuitous fatalities?
The movie's second half was already suffering from a botched pace and ridiculous plotting. Let me see if I got this straight: Cristabella offers to help Rose for some reason. Then sends her to "the demon" who turns out to be Alessa, someone who REALLY has it out for Cristabella and the cult. After the shittiest monologue ever heard by human ears Rose BRINGS Alessa RIGHT to Cristabella. IS... IS CRISTABELLA RETARDED? Well, yes, yes she is, but sending some stranger directly to the aid of your worst enemy is not only the dumbest fucking thing ever it's also the dumbest fucking way to rush a movie to its grisly, outrageous, atrocious end.
At this point Avary and Gans do follow an important film rule which is to show the audience something they never saw before. Alessa's barbed wire massacre is something I won't soon forget but that doesn't make it any less horribly tasteless. It's the worst offender of the "MORE MORE MORE" mentality of the film. Gans promised us "elegant horror." Silent Hill's climax is anything but. This was slasher shock schlock more suitable for Even More Anacondas: There's a Copperhead in My Cooch. It was embarrassing.
And of course, the obligatory depressing/confusing ending. Fitting for a Silent Hill movie I suppose but still unsatisfying. Is Rose warned what's at stake for her when she makes the deal with Alessa? Because she DOES what Alessa wants, causes the death of a bunch of awful people and fulfills a demon's revenge wish yet she's... punished with the Foggy World? I don't get it. And once again, Chris gets shat upon.
The very very very end was the last thing I liked. I felt pretty bad for Chris, even if I felt worse for myself =\ but the last lingering shot on the bush - wait, was it a ROSE bush? - is the first and only organic thing we see, perhaps the only time we ever see the color green. It was a nice, very David Lynch thing to do.
So what else did I like? If you're foolish enough to have read this far might as well find out!
Introducing Rose in her underwear was a great touch. Not because of the odd amount of skin revealed in the first few seconds of the flick but because it brought Ellen Ripley to mind (again), as if the movie was invoking the horror history before it. But y'know I'M THE ONLY PERSON TO EVER THINK THAT so that doesn't matter. But Rose was pretty solid overall. Anyone got a theory as to why she suddenly wears red at the end?
The title card was fantastic, the logo with the floating snow/ash... the snowy scenes were gorgeous. The whole movie is a visual and technical marvel, a FEAST of frightening and disturbing imagery, even if none of it is really scary. And the MUSIC. Ecstatic, except for that piano music whenever Alessa/Sharon shows up, they used that three too many times. >:
The first half of the movie is, save for a few hiccups, spot-on shot-for-shot Silent Hill. Once she wipes that ash flake off her face the movie clicks , becomes a beautifully faithful recreation of the first game's first moments and it's awesome. The siren, the radio, the rain, the girl running away, the bloody gurney, the camera angles, the Gray Children... the movie peaks right there for me. That's when it's perfect and frightening.
The stride continues at the school, Rose in handcuffs is a great touch, and Chris "feeling" her was pretty cool/sad. The siren, the darkness... anytime the darkness comes (in the first half) I'm right there with the movie. Pyramid Head's entrance was appropriately intense even if he was merely fan service and served next to no narrative purpose whatsoever... except for killing Anna... who also served no purpose aside revealing just how retarded the cultists are. Who's the worst Silent Hill character? Anna or Jasper? At least Jasper had chocolate milk.
There's a terrific movie in Silent Hill somewhere. Its obvious Gans and Avary respect the material but all we get is the overlong, self-indulgent version they wanted to see.
Friday, April 21, 2006
Is it dead?
So Silent Hill is supposed to suck. I couldn't find out last night and I probably won't even find out tonight. At this point it's hard to care.
About ANYTHING.
Monday, April 17, 2006
Camptown Races
This is the best music video ever.
And Metal Gear Solid 3 online is FUN as BALLS.
Onimusha 4's pretty fun too. Still not up to Onimusha 2's par but, so far, better than 3. It does continue 3's not making any sense at all but why should Capcom start crafting intelligible storylines now?
Saturday, April 15, 2006
Warming up
It's been a while. And I'm tired. But it's been a while and a lot's happened/happening. List time.
- I'm an idiot. I finally realized my professors are all brainwashing socialist SCUM. Communism sounds great and all despite its fucking failure but uh can we PLEASE talk about the literature I wasted my money and afternoons on?
- Eureka Seven premieres tonight. But you can watch it online at http://www.adultswim.com. It's charming, colorful and fun. Reminds me of FLCL and Xenogears. I look forward to getting the DVD set (w/ shirt, manga, box and soundtrack ZOMG)
- 2nd Gig continues to kick my ass.
- I saw a bunch of movies this week. None of which have agreed with me, all of them Japanese. In order of viewing: Cruel Story of Youth (MST3K-worthy), Maison de Himiko (boring), Wild Berries (boring), Tamala 2010 (screwy but boring), Preparation for the Festival (twisted but got boring).
- Also saw Secret Agent, old Hitchcock movie. I should watch more of those. Peter Lorre's the man.
- Silent Hill is a week away. I may even see a preview screening of it. Meanwhile I've been looping this one-minute clip over and over.
- I'm probably not gonna do anything this summer. I will be a waste of life. Of space. Of money and food. I'm sure my father will be pleased. At least, I want to improve my writing, my drawing and I want to run again. I miss it.
Speaking of drawing, I need a lotta work.
Batgirl. Look at Batgirl.
My version of Batgirl again. Fun to draw till I realized I can't even give her a damn pose.
Film noir guy. Proud of the hat.
Here he is again. Something's happening!
Once more. I saw that I drew his coat way too short so I... drew more coat. Didn't notice it before but I guess his scruff is basically Jet's from Cowboy Bebop.
Dingo Egret from ZOE2. Always liked his design but damn did I forget all the detail. Not a bad normal pose. The swirly knees come from Gabe. There's a failed Batgirl on the side.
Rutger again. Still context-less.
I dunno. Femme fatale? Chinese temptress? Something. Inspired by Shanghai, a novel from a pinko revolutionary class.
