Mike At The Movies

This week’s review has been postponed until next week. This weekend however a number of great films are coming out.

Michael Reeves, according to the author bio in the back of the book is an emmy award winning author (batman the animated series) and has written some other Star Wars Novels.

I’ll be refferring to the entire trilogy as opposed to the individual books (Jedi Twilight, Street of Shadows, and Patterns of Force) This trilogy is a really quick read, the action is fast paced, and generally it reads like what you would expect a Star wars story to read like.  That said, this trilogy is pretty terrible.  It’s set almost immediately after the events of Revenge of the Sith (they don’t specify exactly how long after and at times may even contradict this timeline).  I don’t really want to get into the specifics of the plot, but it may be helpful to define this as a mystery series, each book has a mystery to solve, or a mission to accomplish and then the characters go about completing their objectives.  At times the protagonists behave in the manner of an adventuring party in an over-top-overpowered RPG/videogame/MMO.  I’m familiar with the expanded universe of Star wars (I’ve read the Wookiepedia), but this series introduced me to such things as Gray Paladins (heretical Jedi who eschew the use of Lightsabers and instead use blasters, including the ability to shoot blaster bolts out of the air),  Lightwhips (like a floppy lightsaber, like in Spaceballs), and Protocol droids who have apparently had their Asimovian circuits disabled (breaking the three laws which while not called that in SW, Protocol droids generally have followed them).

If you’re a teenager who has gotten tired of crappy Dragonlance novels (which is pretty much all of them not written by Weis & Hickman) this series may be right up your alley.  For everyone else they’re barely worth the paper they’re printed on, if you want a mystery in a planet-city go look for some of Asimov’s Foundation novels (which don’t all take place on a massive planet-city, but whose planet-city of Trantor is the inspiration for Coruscant in the first place).  These books don’t answer or ask any questions, and do nothing to advance the science-fiction genre.  The chapters are 6-10 pages long and there is no strong language at all, in fact they make up their own star warsian strong language which sounds sillier than a fistful of mudbloods.  I’ve read only one other Star Wars novel Trilogy, the  “Thrawn Trilogy” by Timothy Zahn (which I remember being very good, but my tastes were much poorer when I read them), but I think after reading “Coruscant Nights” I’m going to have to stay away from Star Wars Novels from now on, prior to reading Coruscant Nights I attempted to read the “Han Solo Trilogy” Omnibus but had to stop after only one page, the writing was just terrible.  I got these for free and I feel like Mr. Reeves and his publisher, Del Rey owe me some money.

-JohnK

Moon delicately straddles the thin line between big money blockbuster and pretentious artsy film, and it does so with the grace of a ballerina. The last time a science fiction film did something with such grace would be Stanley Kubrik’s rendition of 2001 a Space Odyssey. So close perhaps that it can almost be accused of plagiarism, for while the films have drastically differing plots, they both achieve their affect through very similar channels: Grossly isolated characters, silence, and endured hardship with dubious personal return, not to mention your friendly neighborhood mechanical chum.

However that’s where the similarities breakdown. While 2001 was really an investigation into the causation of life and our place in the grand scheme, Moon looks more towards our immediate future through the lens of our present. Contemplating the role of business, ecology, human rights, science, family and self all within 90 minutes is a tall order. One that will leave you eager for seconds if only because it doesn’t finish addressing any of them and leaves the dots for you to connect.

One of the important things to point out is that this is a Science Fiction film. Being as such it is very much grounded in the problems of today and how we can use science to solve them. These are solutions that are on the drawing boards at the moment just looking for the last little kick over the edge to become practical. Quality Science Fiction films don’t come along all that often and when they tend to get out shown by their bastard children “Future Tech” movies. Moon will undoubtedly get over shadowed by Transformers or Ironman, but it has significantly more important and relevant ideas.

Considering its effectively a one man show, Sam Rockwell more than rises to the occasion. Providing an incredibly dynamic performance with absolute credulity, he fills up the entire stage by himself. The character itself is very well written, fully rounded until he almost manages to turn himself into a Klein Bottle. Considering the small budget of the production the special effects are rather impressive.

The film, which is showing at both the Sundance and Tribeca film festivals definitely qualifies as an arts film and as I recommend to anyone I know, if you’re going to do something artsy bring along a chaperon. Coffee afterward is a great way to hack out anything that was left for you to think about. That and often they’ll keep you from sticking your foot in your mouth if you just don’t get it. This is definitely a film that warrants a cup of coffee and perhaps a chocolate dipped biscotii.

On this weeks Insane Robot scale Moon rates:
6 out of 10 Insane Robots

Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs is a beloved childhood classic of roughly anyone born after the late 1980s. Finally being rendered on the big screen in both 2D and 3D formats, the film does incredible justice to the core of the book. The plot has been radically reworked to hold together better for an hour and a half, but that does not take away one bit from the orginal charm of the print edition.

Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs is Sony Pictures Animation big break through into a market largely dominated by Pixar and Dreamworks. Sony while arriving to the scene a tad late is making up for lost time and coming out of the gate running. The visuals are stunning. Well rendered, great depth of field, spectacular color palate and a few new texture effects I’d never seen attempted digitally before. At times the food looked good enough to run out and hit up a resturaunt on the spot for a full 5 course meal.

That being said, the 3D version of the film seems to be trying to immetate 3D films made more than 3 years ago. The film continuously and needlessly throws food in your face. The other two 3D animation powerhouses have settled down a bit and realized that 3D doesn’t have to be about gimmicks but rather can be used to provide a more immersive environment and draw you more into the film, rather than reminding you that you’re in a movie theater and would you like a strand of spaghetti up your nose? However, as distracting and unnecessary as gimmicky 3D can be, it does add something to this film.

The voice acting was adequate. No earth shattering performances but nothing so terrible that it would make you want to cry. Worth noting however perhaps is Mr. T doing what Mr. T does best, namely playing Mr. T. While an ancillary character in the film he provides possibly the most entertaining value out of any of the other characters.

While the plot for the most part held up, given allowances for it being a childrens movie. The dialogue tanked. The actors weren’t given an opportunity to perform better than adequate with dialog that was as crippled as the film provided. While not nearly as bad as the dialog featured in G.I Joe: The Rise of Cobra, it still made me cringe from time to time. Disjointed and lacking substance, it bordered on ruining the film completely.

All of this said, the movie winds up coming out on both sides of the spectrum. Having an odd dicotomy of both spectacular grandeur and pestilant disappintment, the final coin really dropped upon one lone fact. It’s a childhood classic that was done justice. It was a throughly enjoyable experiance for that one simple fact alone. I can overlook all the flaws in the film becasue it is such a beloved treasure of my youth.

On this week’s Pastrami on Rye scale Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs gets:
7/10 Pastrami Sandwhiches.

As an adendum, bonus points go to whoever can comment with a famous movie/tv referance they caught within the film.

Dr. Tyson is an astrophysicist with the American museum of natural history and the director of the Hayden Planetarium.  If you watch PBS, History or Discovery you’ve probably seen him, he hosts NOVA for PBS and can be seen sometimes on The Universe on History and other shows.

Death by Black Hole (which I’ll be referring to by the initialism DBBH from this point on) is a popular science text.  Don’t let my choice of the word text over book turn you off, this is not a dry textbook (though I could see it being used for one in a “history of science” class).  DBBH is witty and fun, and somewhat lite tour of the our home, The Universe over it’s 14+ billion year lifetime.

DBBH starts off with some general scientific background in its first three sections and moves onto more interesting and perhaps even fun things for its final 4 sections.  There is some math, but it’s lightweight and easily explained by the author.  Section 5 details all the ways the universe can kill us, including the titular “Death by Black Hole”.  Fun fact: the process a body goes through when falling into a black hole is called “Spaghettification”.  Section 6 examines the interplay between science and culture and section 7 goes into the clash between science and religion.

Dr. Tyson delivers all this with a certain amount of humor, if you’ve ever heard him speak then you can hear him when you read this book.  There were times when I had to laugh out loud at something written in the text.  This book is definitely for laymen, and while there are some parts which should be familiar to anyone who didnt sleep through high school science, they’re worth reading for Tyson’s wit and wisdom, and if like me you’re a layman with slightly above average knowledge (and curiosity) about science you will find plenty in here to justify the price of admission ($15.95 US retail for the Trade Paper edition).   Go, run out and grab this book today you won’t reget it.

Finally here is a youtube video of Dr. Tyson speaking about the Spaghettification process:

-JohnK

If there was ever a film made to date that should have been in 3D it was 9. The film is permeated by stunning visual effects and environments. Characters, that look like gunny sacks come to life with surprising expressivenes and humanity and villains that are as evil as the boot-heel of fascism. The action lent itself directly to the “gimmicky” type of shots that tend to make 3D films look like nothing more than cheap ploys, and for once it would’ve fit perfectly and only enhanced the danger and excitement of the film. Alas, only the trailer of 9 was filmed and released in 3D and a golden opportunity for the rise of 3D cinema into a real media was lost.

All that said, 9 was still an outstanding film. With an incredibly strong cast featuring, Jennifer Connelly, John C. Riley, Martin Landau and Elijah Wood the characters pop off the screen even without the 3D. Each character has it’s own distinct personality and it’s own emotive range and all of it fits together in seemless beauty.

Themes from the cinema of the 1950s science fiction seem to be cropping up more lately. Possibly as a backlash from hollywood against the rise of military flex within our contry over the past 8 years and possibly someone has noticed the spreading “iFever”. Several films this year have brought the almost viral spread of electronics and machinery into our daily lives under the microscope while also reminding us of some of the horrors of totalitarian regimes.
On this week’s Body Snatcher scale 9 rates:
9 of 10 Bodies Snached

I took the opportunity this weekend to get together Joe and play Beatles Rock Band.

While I agree with Joe that the game is more than significantly prettier in both background graphics and even in game mechanics graphics. I find myself spending so much time watching notes run up the screen that I don’t even notice the majority of all the new fun animation, and the deeper saturated color palate that they put into this game.

Beatles Rock Band is much easier than Rock Band 2 was. I usually can only play at the “Hard” difficulty setting on bass, during Beatles Rock Band I was jamming out “Expert” and not even winking. Most of the bass parts were fairly similar such that after maybe a dozen songs I was ready to turn the game off. I’ll confess that I didn’t take advantage of the new 3 part harmonies or take an opportunity to play any of the other instruments (my skill with them is so low it would’ve been a poor benchmark)

Beatles Rock Band also does not mingle with your previous Rock Band titles. You cannot play Beatles songs within Rock Band 2 and vice versa. So you’re stuck playing the same group of songs over and over again, and while the Beatles wrote a lot of music at some point you just get sick of hearing the same group.

The historical aspect of the game is kinda neat if you’re interested in music history or the time period. It adds a bit of an exploratory aspect to a game that otherwise was fairly hum drum.

If you’re going to buy one Rock Band title to date, I’d reccomend Rock Band 2. The extensibility (although not cheap) of the titles more than makes up for the lack of pretty and desaturation of the title.

On this weeks Pumpkin Pie scale Beatles Rock Band Gets:
5/10 Pumpkin Pies

I have been more excited for the release of The Beatles Rock Band than any other title I can remember. I pre-ordered mine from Amazon.com with their “release-day delivery” guarantee. UPS finally dropped it off on my doorstep around 5:20pm. I had schoolwork I should have been doing anyway, so it’s fine that it came later in the day, but for future titles I think I might pre-order from local retailers – especially if it means I can pick it up at 12:01 am!

The game is absolutely beautiful. I imagine that because the gameplay mechanics were carried over from prior titles a ::lot:: more attention was paid to the visual aspects of the game. I couldn’t much appreciate the cinematic backgrounds while banging on the drums, though a couple “dreamscapes” did catch my eye – and the few songs I sat out for were as enjoyable to watch as they would have been to play.

The Beatles Rock Band is a feel-good video game. Everything about it is cheerful – the menu system, the interface design, the background videos, the music itself – everything is tied up into one big bundle of warm and fuzzy. Harmonix did an excellent job at creating the music tracks. I found my familiarity with The Beatles’ music helping me through the songs, anticipating rather than reacting to the notes coming down the highway. The translations felt right. I played through the entire setlist with my brother, myself on drums, he on bass, both on Expert – and while there were a few sticky bits, it was mostly a breeze. That balance, for me, made the game feel relaxing and satisfying and just plain fun to play. That said, this is not the game to get if you’re looking for a seriously challenging gameplay experience. I still can’t say I can play every song in prior Rock Bands on Expert (and I don’t think I ever will!), and some of them stress me out and frustrate me to no end. While that sort of difficulty is invigorating – it’s not The Beatles – and I’m glad Harmonix had the sensitivity to make that distinction.

What I like most about the game is the fact that it’s as much a history lesson and tribute to The Beatles as it is a video game. I’m only 23, which puts The Beatles well before my time. I’d say I was familiar with perhaps 3/4 of the setlist – which means 1/4 were selections I’d never heard before. In addition to the music, story mode follows The Beatles’ career, complete with authentic scenes and venues. In between each location are lovely bits of motion graphics (by MK12!) that use photographs (black and white, and then color) of The Beatles to tell their story. Before and after some songs are snippets of the Fab Four chatting with each other in the studio, riffing bits from the song they’re about to play, discussing, laughing, counting off; it serves as a neat little window into the lives of The Beatles as musicians first, cultural phenomena second.

New with The Beatles Rock Band is support for vocal harmony parts – up to three-part harmony simultaneously! This was the feature I was most eager to play with, and it turned out to be the one we used the least this evening. The reason for this being the apartment walls were thin, the hour was late, and our singing was terrible. I’m a baritone by nature, my brother is a bass, so trying to sing lead tenor and high harmony, and to do so quietly so as not to disturb the neighbors, was quite futile. What little singing we did do, though, convinces me that the system is rock-solid, and it will be a lot of fun to play with once we’re in a more sound-proof environment!

All things considered, I love the game, I love the music, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. If you’re looking for a great time, you can’t do much better than The Beatles Rock Band.

“And, in the end, the love you take,
Is equal to the love you make.”

The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman, edition reviewed: 1991 “Author’s preferred edition” published by Avon Books, 9th printing 1997, © 1974, 1975, 1997 Joe W. Haldeman

Joe Haldeman, was drafted into the army as a combat engineer after receiving his bachelors’ degree in 1967.  After returning from Vietnam in the early seventies he wrote the Forever War and had trouble finding a publisher for a work so clearly modeled on his real experiences.  Eventually it found a publisher after being serialized in pulp Science Fiction magazines, and went on to win the Hugo and Nebula awards for best novel.

The forever war is a bleak look at a war that lasts, well forever from the point of view of the characters.  The protagonist, one William Mandella, born in 1975 is conscripted into the United Nationes Expeditionary Force (UNEF) via the Elite conscription act, which will force him to spend 2 subjective years in the military.  The action of the novel begins in the late 90s, the author admits this was somewhat speculative on his part, but he wanted Mandella’s commanders to have been Vietnam Veterans.  Mandella is among the first wave of soldiers being sent out to fight humanity’s unknowable foe – the Taurans.  Haldeman’s physics are spot on, as befits someone with a science degree, that is other than allowing black holes to be used as wormholes, the so called “collapsar jump”.  I never thought that a work of fiction with realistic relativistic travel would be interesting, but this proved me wrong.  You see, in order to go anywhere they are bound by real rules of physics, which means that as they approach the speed of light, time for them slows down.  Subjectively the men and women moving out to attack a Tauran outpost only experience a few months’ time, but the rest of the universe may experience years, decades, possibly even centuries.  Fighting a war on this kind of scale is, complicated.  Your enemy comes from your future, you’ve been in transit for years, they’ve been developing new weapons and defenses.

The story is bleak, it’s realistic, it’s a bit of a downer, as you follow Mandella from Private to Major, you glimpse the realities of soldiers going off to war and coming home to a world they don’t fit anymore and having the unenviable choice of rejoining the only life that makes sense, even if it means risking that life.  The comparison to Vietnam is apt, the Forever War doesn’t seem to have much point )the war not the book), and the places they fight over don’t seem to be very useful.  Their enemy is alien, in every sense of the word.  And society changes around Mandella in ways he can’t even fathom, and I can’t explain without spoiling some good surprises.  The political message is somewhat heavy-handed at times, and some parts of it may have been written to shock his audience, or to take pot shots at the army.  It has a definite ending, which is good, things end for the characters, not sure I agree with how they ended, but it is an enjoyable ending none the less.  There are sequels but I feel this novel was a complete story and I’m not sure I need any more.

-JohnK

Capitalizing upon the recent success of shows like Dancing With The Stars and High-School Musical. Glee provides a pleasent escape from the heavier dramas that have been dominating television. The show does come off fairly saccharine, so if you have an issue with shows that are too light the show isn’t for you. Glee reminds me of what Pushing Daisies would’ve been if you’d lightend it up just a tad, refocused it back to your high school glory days, and thrown in a generious dose of song and dance. Glee is just flat out light hearted fun.
On this weeks plastic apple scale Glee snags:
8 out of 10 Plastic Apples