the-inbetween.com

Movies of March

March comes to an end and with it another month of watching movies. It started with a personal pledge to watch a film a day in February, but it has grown to two months and, grander still, a full year. The one movie per day rule is dead, but the target average remains. 365 movies in a year. And since I didn't start keeping track until February, I have some catching up to do.

The following are the films I have seen in full during March. There were other movies I caught parts of, but I don't list them (consequently, a wiki is very useful for keeping track of such useless bits of data... wait, does this make me autistic? The test says 26. Almost.)

• Falling Down (A&E) [Mar.2]
• Once Upon A Time In America (DVD) [Mar.3]
• Gandhi (Hist) [Mar.4]
• Layer Cake (TMNOD) [Mar.4]
• The French Connection (Bravo) [Mar.5]
• Strangers on a Train (MPIX) [Mar.5]
• Advertising Rules! (DVD) [Mar.7]
• Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War (DVD) [Mar.7]
• Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia (DVD) [Mar.10]
• High Plains Drifter (DVD) [Mar.12]
• The Decalogue 1, 2, 3 (DVD) [Mar.13]
• Red Eye (DVD) [Mar.15]
• My Architect (DVD) [Mar.15]
• The Decalogue 4 (DVD) [Mar.17]
• Good Night and Good Luck (DVD) [Mar.17]
• Pale Rider (DVD) [Mar.17]
• The Decalogue 5, 6 (DVD) [Mar.18]
• Glengarry Glen Ross (TVO) [Mar.18]
• The Decalogue 7 (DVD) [Mar.19]
• A History of Violence (DVD) [Mar.20]
• The Conversation (DVD) [Mar.21]
• How To Get Ahead in Advertising (DVD) [Mar.22]
• The Decalogue 8, 9 (DVD) [Mar.23]
• The Decalogue 10 (DVD) [Mar.24]
• Shane (DVD) [Mar.24]
• Capote (DVD) [Mar.24]
• The Ballad of Cable Hogue (DVD) [Mar.25]
• High Noon (DVD) [Mar.26]
• Chungking Express (DVD) [Mar.27]
• My Name Is Nobody (DVD) [Mar.31]

If anything, the western theme remained strong. High Noon was outstanding, I don't know why it took so long for me to see it. Shane was disappointing and a good reminder as to why I had an aversion to the Western genre in the first place. It wasn't a bad movie, but this often labeled "greatest Western" was too classically romanticized for my tastes. I preferred Eastwood's Pale Rider, which was so similar in theme that it might be considered a Shane remake, since it was more ambivalent and less "apple pie". It was very post-Leone, which, as should be obvious by now, appeals to me.

Game Art revisited

Today I went down to the so-called "Entertainment District" to get a burrito for lunch and do a little bit of media shopping. Eating my large steak burrito (everything on it, no guacamole, light on the jalapenos) I browsed through a copy of Toronto's free paper "Now". In it was an article about The Fine Art of Video Games, which focused on two game-related art shows in the city: Microsoft's PR-laden Play: The Art of Xbox 360 and the more conceptual Controller: Artists Crack the Game Code (which, unfortunately, I have never heard of until today. It closed on Saturday. Fuck. I would have enjoyed that one).

According to Horgan, hardcore gamers feel offended that artists want to add an extra level of commentary. Games by people like Davie of Project Gotham, they say, already are art.

Offended by an extra level of commentary? That's a dubious claim. A claim that is dependent on how one defines a "hardcore gamer." Their definition seems at odds with the "hardcore" that I encounter everyday on the internet and off of it. That group of gamers doesn't judge a game solely by its entertainment value. That group has long, hard wrought discussions and arguments about the nature of interactivity and narrative and play. That group looks for those extra levels of meanings in games, even if the creators never intended any. Indeed, it takes those kinds of hardcore gamers to create a show like "Controller" in the first place.

I folded up the burrito-juice stained newspaper and headed down to Chapters, where I purchased that Will Wright editted issue of Wired and a copy of the I Am 8-Bit exhibit book. Then I realized just how common it is all becoming.

The night before, LifeMeter Comics came up in conversation; GameSetWatch is doing a comic series of their own about Nintendo characters past their prime called The Multicart Project; and the local Microplay store -- not my favourite of the local gamestores -- is going to have its very own exhibit of art inspired by coin-op classics, as mentioned on Clickable Culture .

It's already there. It doesn't matter if Hideo Kojima doesn't think games are art and says art is the stuff you find in the museum, whether it be a painting or a statue. The organizers of the "Controller" exhibit have already contradicted his statement by showcasing their work in a gallery. They have already turned classic games, like Super Mario Bros., into art (mario_battle_no.1) and into something entirely different in the same manner that LHOOQ turned a classic painting into its own distinct work of art.

When Microsoft prints out some renders on giclee, frames them, hangs them in a gallery, and then advertises their product with them -- how some people in the industry regard "game art" -- they do a disservice to the whole debate. There's no context to it; it's just style.

It doesn't matter whether the games of yore are art or were art. What matters is that there exists an entire generation of artists that grew up with them and continues to live with them. An entire generation defined by them. In their eyes, those games that resonate aren't just mindless entertainment, they're mythology. Instead of Heracles and Icarus and Pegasus, there's Mario and Pit and Sonic. In the same way that the old myths inspired generations and generations of art, these new pixel mythologies are inspiring a new generation of art. So when you talk about whether games are art or not, don't look at the polygons and the pixels and the vectors, look at their impact, what they say and what they mean to people.

That's what makes game art. Not renders and sprites, but artists' interpretations of them; their reworking of the systems and rules of games; and their use of interactivity to make a statement. The Now article mentioned two video game fine art shows -- I count one.

Snow (not the Informer-kind)

A short while ago I was browsing the coming releases at GameSpot to see what's coming down the line. The answer: not much at all. It's a sad bunch of games. Somewhere down that line I came across "Snow". The coming releases page at GameSpot lists a game's title, the release data, a small box shot (if available) and a quick blurb. It read:

Snow
Release Date: May 1, 2006

Snow is an empire building game that lets you work your way up from a pot smuggler to drug kingpin by managing smuggling operations between Mexico and South America, and the United States.

The drugs and crime-ring element is cliched in the current gaming world, but it could be an interesting title. An empire building game where you create a crime syndicate from the bottom up. A sort of Cocaine Tycoon, if you will. A Tropico for cartels. I follow through to the game's page.

The first thing that is noticeable is By: 2K Games. How very unsurprising. Then I notice the screenshots and I laugh. Then I laugh some more.

The second one is particularly great because they couldn't even get the type to fit within the button, which is a big-time sloppy no-no. The game has done nothing to convince me that it isn't just an expanded version of DopeWars with a coating of (lousy) design on top. In which case, I think I'd rather just play DopeWars [Sourceforge].

DS Double Shot (mostly Tetris)

Excluding "Exit" for the PSP, up to today I haven't bought a single game since before Christmas. There was little of interest coming out and the incentive to play the older games just wasn't there. Today, two anticipated games came out. Both for the DS. Both by Nintendo (I don't understand that planning at all). Both wifi enabled. Tetris DS and Metroid Prime Hunters.

The only sensible option was to get both. So I did.

Now that I have both, I only play one. Rationality goes out the window when you are making an impulse purchase. It's not that there's anything wrong with Metroid Prime Hunters (as far as I noticed,) it seems alright (not great.) It's just that my free game time has been consumed by Tetris DS since it's so much less committal than Hunters. That appeals to some of my own personal sensibilities.

There isn't much else to say about the game. It is Tetris and everyone knows what that involves; everybody's played Tetris The game can be reviewed in a few IM messages, which is what I realize I already did so I might as well copy and paste it here:

[01:15] n()wak: What's great about it? I can pull it out at any time, turn it on, play around with it with an actual partner across the world, be done, turn it off. Repeat later. (This is not a sexual reference).
[01:16] Walter: well i mean, is the main addition to regular tetris the fact that it's internet multiplayer?
[01:16] n()wak: Well, there are other modes of varying degree of interest, but that to me is the biggest appeal.
[01:17] Walter: gotcha
[01:18] n()wak: That's the great thing about portable online play, especially with very quick pick-up-and-play games like this -- you can just turn it on anywhere, go at it for a few minutes, and set it aside.
[01:18] n()wak: Commercial break? Launch. Bored of working? Launch. Don't even have to get off my ass.
[01:19] Walter: cool
[01:19] n()wak: It helps that there are no load times.

One thing that I don't like about Tetris DS is its overt reliance on Nintendo nostalgia. Good as they are, I don't need to be hearing the Super Mario Bros. theme and the Zelda overworld music for the five-thousandth time. Not in a game of Tetris. I miss the old Tetris themes (Tetris-A), I miss the dancing Russians and I miss the Space Shuttles. Tetris DS should have included a "Classic" mode. Just plain old GameBoy Tetris without the extended previews, without the "holds", and without some of the new drop mechanics. That would have made this title definitive. Without that, it's too glossed up for its own good.

Still fun though. Here's my friend code:
473082
189851

Fact Correction: it seems as though the dancing russians, the space shuttle, and the classic Tetris music is in the game, but you can only see it if you're are really good at arranging falling blocks. And even then, you don't see too much of it.

Open Letter to YouTube

Dear YouTube,

you have amused us greatly with your SNL clip videos (which get pulled down due to legal threats) and your "Snakes on a Plane" trailer (which got pulled), and all your other and future videos that will be replaced with a This video has been removed due to terms of use violation message. You cover the full gamut from videos of people geeking out to Guitar Hero on camera to videos of random people dancing to crappy music on camera. All the while you do this using Flash video.

I'm not going to make a judgement call on your decision to use Flash. It is what you chose and it is what I shall tolerate. However, you have made one annoying mistake. You spent all this time coding the site and coding this embedable flv player, yet you forgot one easy to implement thing. One thing that your competitor, Google Video, does do. One thing that *I* could code in five minutes for you guys: volume control.

Please add this feature. Your "all or none" volume button is very presumptuous in its assumption that your video is the only media I have playing on my computer. It's not. I do not like having to adjust my system volume to view your video at a tolerable level when my system volume is perfectly fine the way it is. Please resolve.

Your viewer,

Mike Nowak

Clarification

Jenn's post claims that I was the regional champ at Super Mario World. I should clarify that it is true and it's not something that I pulled out of my ass. No, I have the official Nintendo documentation to prove it.

That's probably my proudest gaming achievement of all time. I was twelve at the time. It's up there with beating Zelda: Link to the Past in one sitting with a friend (we tag teamed the game); getting half of all the Final Fantasy VI characters up to level 99 (oh I once was a Squaresoft fanboy, long ago in the 16-bit days); one creditting Gradius (though it was, by far, not the hardest of shooters); and beating Metal Gear Solid on easy, medium, hard, and extreme within a two week period. I was a poor kid then and the game was borrowed from a friend, so I had to make due with the little time I had with it. As such, I got to know the game very well and that is why I thought that Metal Gear Awesome was awesome.