Last week, I posted a podcast I recorded with my friend Jason about the movie Patch Adams. In the film, Robin Williams plays a med school student who upsets the medical institution by caring about patients and clowning around the hospital. In the podcast, one of my biggest complaints was that the movie completely failed to make the “established” doctors into anything more than villainous straw men for Patch to knock over. When questioned as to why they hated Patch (a man who, given his outright illegal actions throughout much of the movie, they have every reason to hate), they would say absurd things about him sinking to the patients’ level, or being too happy.
Category: The Deep End
In-depth think-pieces about Movies, TV, and Games
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Cinderella and the Importance of Complex Villains
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The Importance of Longevity and the Plague of the Dotted Map
Just last week, one of Sony’s most high-profile exclusives, The Order: 1886, launched on the Playstation 4. However, before most people could get their hands on it or even read a review, a Youtube user leaked a video of the entire game, from start to finish. This in and of itself isn’t especially uncommon these days, but the video stirred up a lot of controversy by only clocking in at a little over 5 hours. For a $60 game, this seemed outrageous to many gamers, and a full-blown controversy emerged online. -
American Sniper Review: The Hazards of Thematic Confusion
The following article is a review of American Sniper, but it goes further in-depth than most of the reviews on this site. Because of this, I am posting this as a “Review” and a “Deep End” article. Due to the nature of the review, spoilers will be discussed.First off, the good: American Sniper is a technical marvel. The film is the frontrunner in both sound categories at the Oscars this year, and it is obvious why. The way that the sound team layered the background noises in Iraq onto the “silent” moments while Chris Kyle is lining up shots gives everything a additional layer of realism and tension. Also well done is the way these background noises fade out momentarily between breaths and heartbeats prior to Kyle firing his gun. When Kyle returns to America, harmless noises like lawnmower engines and auto-repair work rise up in the sound mix to subtly indicate the way that he is always on edge. Combined with Bradley Cooper’s strong performance, the film is able to say a lot about Kyle’s mental state without throwing it all into the dialogue.
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Oscar 2015 Predictions
UPDATE: So, the Academy Awards have come and gone this year. I’m going to update each section below to my thoughts on the winners. The new text will all be in bold, so it should be easy to spot.
Some general thoughts: this wasn’t one of my best years for predictions. 17/24 isn’t bad, by most standards, but it’s less than 75%, which is typically where I fall. On the plus side, my misses were usually categories where I had been cynical about my prediction, and the Academy actually went with the option I wanted. So good on them for recognizing the right films for a lot (if not all) categories.
So, without further ado, here is the final, post-mortem Oscar write-up!
It’s that time of year, when the most hardcore of us film lovers start prognosticating on what a particular group of Hollywood insiders thought should be revered! Yes, it’s the Academy Awards, the foremost authority on “good” films, if you don’t consider the public, the fans, the critics, etc.
Yes, most awards are bullshit, but they’re also a fun way for us to start a conversation about what WE thought were the best of the year, and a good way for us to prove that the Hollywood Elite really are as predictable as we think they are. Below are both my predictions (after doing some research online about the “expected” winners) and my personal favorites in each category.
Also worth noting: if you want to see a list of the generally accepted “favorites,” the New York Times has a handy page right here. (more…)
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Destiny: Skinner Box Gaming and the Myth and Truth of the 30 Seconds of Fun
“In Halo 1, there was maybe 30 seconds of fun that happened over and over and over and over again. And so, if you can get 30 seconds of fun, you can pretty much stretch that out to be an entire game.”The above is a relatively famous quote in the gaming scene, from Bungie game designer Jaime Griesemer. While Griesemer meant to convey that his team thought of the various set-pieces in the game as 30 second loops of varied and fun gameplay, each unique in their own right, this is not the message that most developers and gamers took from the quote. Instead, it seemed to speak of core gameplay mechanics, and the fact that as long as there are “30 seconds of fun” in the basic mechanics, then you’ve got a great game regardless of other factors.