First Impressions of ‘Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller’ [Episode 1]

Back in August I shared the trailer for Cog­ni­tion: An Erica Reed Thriller , an episodic point-and-click adven­ture game that was Kick­started by Phoenix Online Stu­dios. (I won’t be sur­prised if you don’t remember/don’t care; that’s prob­a­bly one of the least-viewed posts on this blog. This one will prob­a­bly suf­fer the same fate, but I’m OK with that.) A few days ago the first episode was released and I’ve spent a good part of this dreary Sat­ur­day set­tling into its ser­ial killer mur­der mys­tery with a steam­ing chai latte.

It feels wrong to write a full-blown review for a game that only has one episode out so far, so instead I thought I’d share a list of first impres­sions which I’ve been adding to as I play through.

Good stuff:

• Jane Jensen ( my favorite game designer ) served as story con­sul­tant on this game, and it shows. I can feel her touch all over it.
• The 2D art style of the cut scenes and ani­ma­tion is very sim­i­lar to Gray Mat­ter. I hope that doesn’t sound like a complaint–I love Gray Mat­ter, and I real­ize this is prob­a­bly due to bud­getary constraints.
• Right out of the gate, this game goes to some pretty dark places. Within the intro­duc­tory sequence I had to make a blood self-sacrifice and also attempted to burn a man alive. Huzzah!
• Love the music. The intro song in par­tic­u­lar (after you play through the mau­soleum part) is fan­tas­tic. Dur­ing game­play the back­ground music is chill and pen­sive with an under­tone of inten­sity; per­fect for mur­der inves­ti­ga­tions. There’s also some spacey synth music on the map screen that sounds like it was bor­rowed from this track on the Nev­erend­ing Story sound­track. This is not a complaint.
• The inter­face is very well thought-out and intu­itive. Inven­tory is a breeze to manage.
• The cog­ni­tion abil­ity and the way you use it adds some unique game­play ele­ments. I like the way it was inte­grated into the puz­zles, using flash­backs to under­stand how objects were affected in the past so you can manip­u­late them in the present.
• Great story so far and inter­est­ing mur­der M.O. Def­i­nitely not cookie-cutter.

Not-so-good stuff:

• Decent voice act­ing, but it was hard for me to keep a straight face in some parts because of the Boston accents, which I find humor­ous. Noth­ing against you Boston­to­ni­ans, but those SNL skits (“ You are SO RET-AH-DED!” ) have ruined it for me.

• In some of the close-up scenes–like when you’re exam­in­ing the FBI’s wanted list, for example–the graph­ics look all choppy and pix­e­lated. I can live with it, but it does make the game seem a lit­tle rough around the edges.
• The 3D ani­ma­tion isn’t bad, but leaves a lot to be desired. The move­ment is a lit­tle stiff and unnat­ural. Also, some­times the char­ac­ters look down or too far to the left or right and the irises of their eye­balls dis­ap­pear. It creeps me out.

Easter Egg!

In one of the scenes I found a poster for The Scar­let Furies , which is Jane Jensen’s step-daughter’s band. Ha!

 Play the Game

Cog­ni­tion: An Erica Reed Thriller — Episode 1, as well as a Sea­son Pass for all the upcom­ing episodes, is avail­able for down­load via RainDG , GameStop , and Gamers­gate . In the future it might also be com­ing to Steam.

‘The Office’ Still Hilarious in its Final Season

Last night was the sea­son pre­miere of The Office . It’s the begin­ning of the end for NBC’s Thurs­day night com­edy sta­ple, as this will be the show’s 9th and final sea­son. Though I have my doubts about this sea­son due to the cast mem­bers who left, I’m just so excited and happy that it’s back .

Since Steve Carrell’s exit, not many peo­ple care about The Office any­more, and that’s just fine. For the major­ity of those peo­ple, Michael Scott was the anchor of the show and view­ers have steadily dwin­dled since his depar­ture (and also because Jim and Pam are all bor­ing nowa­days ).  I, how­ever, have been watch­ing the show since the begin­ning and still find it gen­uinely hilarious.

As much as I loved Michael Scott, for me, the fun­ni­est moments of the show are con­tributed by the quirky cast of sup­port­ing characters–Toby’s seem­ingly end­less mis­for­tune, Meredith’s drunken antics, Creed’s steadily-advancing senil­ity, Stanley’s reac­tions (of which there are only 2 pos­si­ble: un-amusement and dis­ap­proval), or Dar­ryl just being Dar­ryl. I loved it when they brought in Kathy Bates, I’m think Gabe is hilar­i­ous (though I’m cer­tain I’m in the minor­ity on that one), and I thought James Spader’s bizarre, awk­ward turn as Robert Cal­i­for­nia was bril­liant and it kept me watching.

Last night it was Kevin who got the most laughs from me. He opened the show with an anec­dote about a turtle–well, here, just watch it–I don’t want to ruin it:

Episode Review

SPOILER WARNING for the hand­ful of you out there who even still care what goes on at Dun­der Mif­flin.

The rest of the episode was a bit of a mixed bag, but not in a bad way. Andy is back as man­ager, much to Nellie’s cha­grin, and Erin is her usual ditzy, overly-enthusiastic self. Both Kelly and Ryan are gone (which is no sur­prise to any­one who’s been keep­ing up with cast­ing news) but we at least got to see them get a nice lit­tle send-off. Toby is, of course, thrilled at this devel­op­ment. Tak­ing their place are two new interns who have already been dubbed Mini Dwight and Mini Jim.

All is not well in Jimand­pam­lan­dia, how­ever. Jim seems to be grow­ing increas­ingly dis­sat­is­fied with his job/life and fan­ta­sizes about start­ing a new busi­ness with a buddy of his. Mean­while, Dwight is eager to prove him­self to the new guys and con­tinue to assert what­ever shred of author­ity he feels he has. Dwight is usu­ally my favorite char­ac­ter, but I just wasn’t feel­ing it in this episode. His antics were a lit­tle too ridicu­lous this episode, even for Dwight. I guess he’s gone a bit crazy, well, cra­zier than usual since learn­ing Angela’s baby isn’t his (sorry Team Dwan­gela). The most sur­pris­ing turn of events, how­ever, was learn­ing that Oscar is sleep­ing with Angela’s hus­band. BOOM, as Andy would say.

Oh, and this also hap­pened .

I think we’re in for a weird farewell season.

P.S. Will we ever get clo­sure on that whole Scran­ton Stran­gler thing?

Did Hogwarts really exist or was it all in Harry Potter’s head?

Today I came across this weird arti­cle in my news feed, which dis­cusses a the­ory about the Harry Pot­ter books I had never heard before:

“Here’s one that might be new to you: there’s a rumor going around that the entirety of the  Harry Pot­ter  fran­chise existed com­pletely within the realm of one trou­bled boy’s imag­i­na­tion — and that his abu­sive aunt and uncle drove him to insan­ity by mak­ing him live in a cupboard.”

Fas­ci­nat­ing. I did some addi­tional pok­ing around and found this lengthy post  (extreme tl:dr warn­ing!) on a phi­los­o­phy board about “The True Mean­ing of Harry Pot­ter” which sug­gests that the Harry Pot­ter series is about men­tal ill­ness and that Hog­warts is an insane asy­lum. “I’ve heard it sug­gested to me more than once that Harry actu­ally did go mad in the cup­board, and that every­thing that hap­pened sub­se­quently was some sort of fan­tasy life he devel­oped to save him­self,” Rowl­ing said in a behind-the-scenes inter­view with Steve Kloves for the Harry Pot­ter Wiz­ards’ Col­lec­tion box set. It’s inter­est­ing that she didn’t con­firm or deny it, though.

There’s cer­tainly plenty of evi­dence to sug­gest the “Harry is insane” the­ory could be true:

• The Magic realm is invis­i­ble to Mug­gles (for the most part).
• Harry’s pre-Hogwarts life with the Durs­leys could def­i­nitely be clas­si­fied as child abuse
• The Durs­leys’ embar­rass­ment, fear and over-zealousness to rid Harry of any and all abnormalities
• And per­haps most con­vinc­ingly, this quote spo­ken to Harry by Dum­b­le­dore toward the end of the last book: “Of course it is hap­pen­ing inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

I’m sure you can con­jure up many addi­tional exam­ples that I haven’t both­ered to list. How­ever, I don’t believe any of these the­o­ries are true, or that mak­ing us believe some­thing wasn’t quite right in Harry’s head (other than that whole Volde­mort mind con­nec­tion thing) was ever J.K. Rowling’s intent.

These insan­ity the­o­ries are always fun to knock around, but they’re com­pletely sub­jec­tive and like most cre­ative inter­pre­ta­tions, you can find always find evi­dence to sup­port your wild the­o­ries if you squint your eyes and blur the details enough. Some peo­ple have a hard time sim­ply accept­ing things at face value and always try to search for a hid­den mean­ing; I guess in this case it’s because they don’t feel Harry Pot­ter is awe­some enough with­out some extra layer of head­trippy LIKE WHOA Sixth Sense “He was dead the whole time!” bullshit.

Not every­thing is a con­spir­acy the­ory, guys.

I’d rather be in a ‘Coma’ than waste 4 hours of my life watching this one.

I’m sorry, was that too harsh?

Last night’s con­clu­sion to A&E’s “four-hour epic mini-series” COMA  left me feel­ing incred­i­bly under­whelmed after what I felt was a solid opener. I’ll admit to falling prey to clever mar­ket­ing: for a made-for-TV movie, phrases like “pre­sented by Rid­ley Scott” and “star-studded cast” tend to res­onate with me. I mean, just look at the names at the top of this poster:

Geena Davis? James Woods? Richard Drey­fuss? Ellen Burstyn? Rid­ley and Tony Scott (R.I.P.)? Plus, a dis­turbingly creepy sci-fi/medical mys­tery? How can this go wrong?

The answer is every which way imag­in­able . First of all, even though it’s “pre­sented” by the Scotts, it’s not directed by either one of them so don’t bother get­ting excited about that. Sec­ondly, even though it boasts some big names, the major­ity of COMA stars Lau­ren Ambrose and Steven Pasquale, and nei­ther of them are exactly what I’d call a great actor. Out­side of the big stars, the act­ing was pretty atro­cious all around, but bad dia­logue is cer­tainly to blame as well. Though it had slick pro­duc­tion val­ues and looked good for a TV movie, the direc­tion and edit­ing felt on par with an episode of CSI. Blah.

The biggest prob­lem with COMA, how­ever, is how painfully obvi­ous the plot is. I con­fess, I have not read the best­selling book this movie was based on, nor have I seen the orig­i­nal 1978 film. From what I under­stand, it’s one of those twisty-turny thriller types with a lot of slow-building ten­sion and a huge twist end­ing. That’s a movie I would like to see. A&E’s ver­sion, how­ever, seems to spoil the mys­tery early and spends the rest of the time beat­ing you over the head with it. Once you know what’s really going on at the creepy Jef­fer­son Insti­tute, there’s no rea­son to keep watch­ing. Every scene is painfully dragged out and felt like it was padded to fill up the four-hour time slot. By the third hour, I was bored out of my mind and kept watch­ing out of sheer des­per­a­tion that it would get better.

This is one of the first times in a long time that I’ve actu­ally made an effort to com­mit to a “two-night tele­vi­sion event,” as I typ­i­cally pre­fer to let them pass me by and wait for the reviews to roll in before decid­ing if it’s worth my time. I sorely regret not hav­ing done so in this case. I mean, four hours is a LOT of time to com­mit to some­thing that sucks this much, so con­sider this a pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment if you haven’t seen it yet.

ShezCrafti’s Rating:

4 out of 10 stars.

Did ‘Breaking Bad’ just completely break bad?

Spoiler Alert

Warn­ing: if you’re not com­pletely caught up with Break­ing Bad , you read this post at your own risk. Spoil­ers are guaranteed.

Tonight’s episode of Break­ing Bad left with me with a very uncom­fort­able feeling–but uncom­fort­able in a good way because it means the show is liv­ing up to its name. Every episode is a mas­ter­stroke of drama and ten­sion that pushes Wal­ter White one step closer to the edge; a pre­cise, carefully-balanced formula,just like the one he uses to cook meth, that keeps me addicted. But I think tonight’s episode was a stand­out, and pos­si­bly the defin­i­tive point on the time­line of Walter’s trans­for­ma­tion into the antihero.

Who is Wal­ter White now? Do you rec­og­nize him any­more? For the first time in the series I feel as if I don’t. We’ve known from the begin­ning that Break­ing Bad is a show about a man who goes from good to bad. We’ve been wit­ness­ing his dis­turb­ing meta­mor­pho­sis since the first episode, lit­tle by lit­tle, as he unrav­els. But up until tonight, I was still kind of root­ing for the guy. I can’t say that anymore.

I think Wal­ter has almost com­pletely lost his shit by now. There were a cou­ple of moments tonight that really brought this home: his happy whistling after Jesse’s break­down over the mur­dered child, his not-so-subtle power play with Skyler at din­ner (was that not the most awk­ward din­ner scene EVER?), and most of all, his insane-sounding tan­gents about wealth and power that clearly indi­cate he’s will­ing to sac­ri­fice every­thing for it.

As Jesse so aptly points out, when Wal­ter got started in the meth game, his goal was $737,000. Tonight we saw Wal­ter turn his back on $5 mil­lion. He claims his busi­ness is the only thing he has left, despite the two chil­dren he’s been neglect­ing for sev­eral episodes now. Even more chill­ing is Walter’s skill­ful manip­u­la­tion of Jesse’s emo­tions and the bla­tant dis­re­gard for his well being–as long as Wal­ter con­tin­ues to ben­e­fit from the rela­tion­ship, it seems he’ll con­tinue to pull Jesse’s strings.

There may not have been much action in tonight’s episode, but I think it will go down as one of the most impor­tant in the series for Walter’s char­ac­ter devel­op­ment. He seems com­pletely detached from his for­mer life at this point, spi­ral­ing ever down­ward into…well, what, exactly? How much darker can the show get? To what extremes will Wal­ter go for his “empire?” I have a sink­ing feel­ing we haven’t seen any­thing yet.

By the time Break­ing Bad is over, I wouldn’t be sur­prised if we see Wal­ter kill a mem­ber of his own fam­ily. Or worse.

Yes Virginia, there is a perfect super hero trilogy: ‘The Dark Knight Rises’

(This is a spoiler-free review.)

Up until approx­i­mately 3:00 AM this morn­ing, I didn’t believe that a per­fect super­hero tril­ogy existed. The Dark Knight Rises changed my opinion.

Now, when I say “per­fect,” I don’t nec­es­sar­ily mean that each indi­vid­ual movie is per­fect in and of itself, for I cer­tainly have nit­picks with all of them. I’m refer­ring instead to the tril­ogy as a whole, a sin­gu­lar entity, which is the first super­hero tril­ogy ever to make good on its promise of deliv­er­ing three solid, con­sis­tent films while avoid­ing what one fel­low blog­ger friend of mine calls “The Super­hero Curse of Three.”

I want to start off by talk­ing about the film’s pac­ing, which is always a con­cern when a movie is as long as the run­ning time of The Dark Knight Rises (a whop­ping 168 min­utes!). I spent so much time on the edge of my seat or engrossed in the story that I never had a chance to “feel” the two hours and forty eight min­utes, nor was there ever a moment when I felt the film dragged.

If I had to sum up  The Dark Knight Rises  in one word: intense. Going in, I was skep­ti­cal that direc­tor Christo­pher Nolan would be able to top his estab­lished vision of ter­ror and despair for Gotham City that we saw in Bat­man Begins and more so in  The Dark Knight , but my God he does it. This is unques­tion­ably the dark­est, bleak­est Bat­man film yet. And its main vil­lain, Bane, is utterly terrifying—once you get used to his voice, that is.

The film wastes no time estab­lish­ing Bane (Tom Hardy) as a man who—to put it bluntly— is not to be fucked with .  His very pres­ence is men­ac­ing and the acts of extreme vio­lence and ter­ror he com­mits against the cit­i­zens of Gotham City had me gasp­ing in dis­be­lief. Nolan doesn’t hold any­thing back here. Imag­ine the worst ter­ror­ist act you can think of. Now mul­ti­ply that by eleven—that’s how Bane rolls. You thought The Joker was badass? Psh!

But Bane isn’t just a heart­less vil­lain arche­type. He’s given a back­story that slowly unfolds through­out the film and cul­mi­nates in a rather shock­ing twist end­ing that will make you actu­ally feel for the guy. When we finally learn his true motives, we’re also given answers to ques­tions we’ve had since Bat­man Begins con­cern­ing The League of Shad­ows. I don’t want to say too much more for fear of tread­ing into spoiler territory.

The per­for­mances were incred­i­ble all around, but I’d espe­cially like to com­mend Michael Caine (who damn near made me cry) and The Bat­man him­self, Chris­t­ian Bale; of the three films, I feel this is by far and away his best. I really bought his pain and suf­fer­ing, and the emo­tional tran­si­tions he goes through as Batman’s story builds to an epic con­clu­sion. New­com­ers Joseph Gordon-Levitt (as Detec­tive John Blake/mystery char­ac­ter who isn’t revealed until the very end of the film) and Mar­ion Cotil­lard (as Miranda) are also impres­sive, but I was really sur­prised by Anne Hath­away as Cat­woman. I’ve said before that I’m not really a fan of hers, and I feared her scenes in this film would be campy and irrev­er­ent. But DAMN she seems to have been born for this role.

Have I men­tioned how spec­tac­u­lar the action sequences are yet? I caught myself wring­ing my hands in ner­vous excite­ment as   the action unfolded before my eyes, being so caught up in the moment of every­thing, unsure of what would hap­pen next. The visu­als, direc­tion, spe­cial effects, sound, editing—all of it—mindblowing. It truly is an epic cin­e­matic expe­ri­ence that deserves to be seen on the big screen. And when you hear it all set to Hans Zimmer’s raw, pow­er­ful score, you will feel it in your bones.

And how about that end­ing, huh!? Huh!? That fuck­ing beau­ti­ful end­ing! (How much do you hate me right now?) For real, though, I am wholly sat­is­fied with Nolan’s vision of Bat­man and the con­clu­sion he brings to Batman’s story. I left the the­ater in awe. Chris Nolan, you have out­done your­self. Thank you for giv­ing us this amaz­ing tril­ogy. It is a masterpiece.

Run, do not walk, to the the­ater to see The Dark Knight Rises .

ShezCrafti’s Rating:

10 out of 10 stars.

I Couldn’t Put Down ‘Thomas Was Alone’ Until I Beat It

A sure sign that a game is good: sit­ting down to play it and not stop­ping until you’ve beaten it.

I woke up this morn­ing to the news that Thomas Was Alone had been released and promptly forked over $10 for it. It had been on my radar for a cou­ple of months due to the rave reviews it’s been get­ting, but it was Ind­ie­Games’ descrip­tion of it as “the Por­tal 2 of the indie world”  that sold me. I pro­ceeded to fork over the rest of my Sat­ur­day as well, because I soon learned this game is highly addictive.

Designed and devel­oped by Mike Bithell,  Thomas Was Alone is an indie puzzle/platformer with min­i­mal­ist graph­ics but a bril­liant, well-developed nar­ra­tive. You begin the game as Thomas, a sim­ple red rec­tan­gle, and you are indeed all alone as the British nar­ra­tor (voiced by Danny Wal­lace) guides you through the game’s begin­ning lev­els that acquaint you with some of the con­trols and obsta­cles you’ll encounter through­out the game’s 100 levels.

As you move through the lev­els, you’re intro­duced to other char­ac­ters who are also quad­ran­gles with dis­tinc­tive per­son­al­i­ties, each one with a unique ability–often one that appears to be a lim­i­ta­tion at first. For exam­ple, there’s Claire, a rather depress­ing large blue square who laments that she can’t jump very high, only to later find out she can float in the poi­so­nous water that would oth­er­wise kill Thomas and his acquain­tances. This makes Claire feel like a super­hero and gives her a renewed sense of pur­pose as she’s excited to show off her abil­i­ties and come to her friends’ rescue–just one exam­ple of how the game breathes life into its char­ac­ters. Yes, this game made me empathize with col­ored shapes!

Thomas gets by with a lit­tle help from his friends.

Actu­ally, I wouldn’t be sur­prised if  Thomas  was inspired, at least in some small part, by the clas­sic car­toon  The Dot and the Line  which kept pop­ping into my head as I was play­ing through, and I couldn’t help but draw com­par­isons between the nar­ra­tion styles. The char­ac­ters in Thomas Was Alone also grap­ple with feel­ings of lone­li­ness, inse­cu­rity, romance, and the desire to find their place in the artificially-rendered world in which they find themselves.

Let’s talk about the audio for a minute, because it’s fan­tas­tic. In fact, the first thing I noticed was the game’s gor­geous music, which was com­posed by David Hous­den. Retro gam­ing fans will also appre­ci­ate the Atari-esque sound effects when you jump and com­plete goals; it makes for an inter­est­ing fusion of old and new.

Move­ment is sim­ple: arrow keys to move, space bar or the “up” arrow to jump. You must also use Tab (or the Q key) to switch between char­ac­ters for most lev­els where you’ll be required to make them work together to solve puz­zles. Stand­ing on the extreme edge of things is going to be your bread & but­ter maneu­ver in most cases, using the flat sur­faces of the shapes to your advan­tage.  At times I found myself really wish­ing I was using a con­troller, as some of the jumps are pretty dif­fi­cult to land and there are obsta­cles like mov­ing plat­forms and spiked bar­ri­cades to con­tend with that require pre­cise tim­ing. But by around the twen­ti­eth level or so I was more than com­fort­able with the keyboard.

Level 5.0 is where the anti-gravity kicks in and things start to get a lot more chal­leng­ing; I felt like a genius when I finally fig­ured out the twist in level 5.6.  Though there are 100 lev­els, some of them are much eas­ier than oth­ers and you’ll most likely breeze right through. Over­all, the game presents a good mix of dif­fi­cult and easy puz­zles, some of which seem to exist to fur­ther the story along. On the other hand, there were lev­els that had me com­pletely stumped for 30 min­utes or more. In total, I think I spent a good 5 –6 hours on the game, with the excep­tion of a few breaks.

There isn’t much neg­a­tive I can say about the game, other than the few small glitches I encoun­tered where my char­ac­ter got stuck to the side of a plat­form. In one case it was actu­ally help­ful to get past an obsta­cle, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how I was meant to do it. I also felt the end­ing was a lit­tle lack­ing, but still satisfying.

ShezCrafti’s Rating:

8 out of 10 stars.

‘The Pact’ Totally Creeped Me Out

On a whim I decided to watch The Pact last night, an inde­pen­dent hor­ror film from the fes­ti­val cir­cuit that’s cur­rently avail­able On Demand.

I’m gen­er­ally pretty jaded when it comes to most mod­ern hor­ror films, which, more often than not, are cheap scare fests with vapid, one-dimensional char­ac­ters that reveal too much and rely too heav­ily on flashy spe­cial effects. I was fully expect­ing as much from The Pact , whose premise and above poster remind me of another recent hor­ror film, Dream House ,  in which I was extremely dis­ap­pointed because it vio­lates all of the above.

Thank­fully that wasn’t the case for The Pact . It’s a method­i­cally paced creeper of a film that takes its time build­ing up to the big scares, all the while keep­ing things suf­fi­ciently spooky with plenty of Poltergeist-like phe­nom­ena that made my hair stand on end.

Caity Lotz (whom I found quite mes­mer­iz­ing) stars as Annie Bar­low, a young woman who returns to her child­hood home fol­low­ing the death of her mother and sub­se­quent dis­ap­pear­ance of her sis­ter. We learn that she’s been detached from her fam­ily for quite some time, hav­ing sur­vived trau­matic abuse that’s only hinted about in the film, which leaves much open to inter­pre­ta­tion later on. This isn’t a film that wraps every­thing up neatly in a bow; you’re left to your own devices to make sense of the plot and end­ing, which, frankly, I found refresh­ing. I enjoy movies that force you to pay atten­tion to sub­tle clues and con­nect the dots for your­self. And because I’d rather you expe­ri­ence it for your­self, I won’t spoil any­thing for you.

For a film that takes place pri­mar­ily inside of a tiny, two-bedroom rancher in Cal­i­for­nia, The Pact drips with atmos­phere.  I’m usu­ally not a fan of haunted house type movies that take place in such loca­tions, pre­fer­ring dreary, driz­zly, or win­try cli­mates to the sunny back­drop of Cal­i­for­nia, but The Pact makes it work with grim light­ing, deep, dark shad­ows and min­i­mal­ist but effec­tive score. I was also very impressed with Nicholas McCarthy’s direc­tion, who makes his feature-length debut with this film. I’ll def­i­nitely be look­ing for­ward to what­ever his next project will be; hope­fully another hor­ror film like this one.

ShezCrafti’s Rating:

6 out of 10 stars.

I like Adam Sandler, I just don’t like most Adam Sandler movies.

So, Adam San­dler has a new movie com­ing out. I can prac­ti­cally feel your excite­ment per­me­at­ing through my screen.

Regard­less if you like the guy or not, I think we can all agree the ratio of ter­ri­ble Adam San­dler films to good Adam San­dler films is pretty unfavorable.

Let’s go through the list, shall we?

Good Adam San­dler movies:

• Air­heads (1994)
  I know this isn’t tech­ni­cally an “Adam San­dler film”, but I’m includ­ing it for pity’s sake.
• Billy Madi­son (1995)
• Happy Gilmore (1996)
  Which is really just Billy Madi­son golf­ing.
• The Wed­ding Singer (1998)
  Which has less to do with Adam San­dler and more to do with it being set in the ‘80s and star­ring Drew Bar­ry­more, whom I adore.
• Big Daddy (1999)
• 50 First Dates (2004)
  I’ll give this one a pass (again, saved by Drew Bar­ry­more) even though it’s just rinse & repeat of the Wed­ding Singer for­mula. 

I can’t help but notice that most of these movies are from early in Adam Sandler’s film career. It could be that San­dler blew his comedic wad too soon, but I’m more inclined to believe that Fry’s analy­sis is accurate:

Bad Adam San­dler movies:

• The Water­boy (1998)
  Yeah I know, there are a lot of you out there who love this film and I admit it has its moments, but even Fairuza Balk and Kathy Bates, whom I both love, couldn’t save it for me.
• Bul­let­proof (1996)
• Lit­tle Nicky (2000)
• Punch-Drunk Love (2002)
• Mr. Deeds (2002)
• Eight Crazy Nights (2002)
• Anger Man­age­ment (2003)
• Spang­lish (2004)
• The Longest Yard (2005)
• Click (2006)
• Bed­time Sto­ries (2008)
• You Don’t Mess with the Zohan (2008)
• I Now Pro­nounce You Chuck & Larry (2007)
• Funny Peo­ple (2009)
• Grown Ups (2010)
• Just Go With It (2011)
  I’m not much of a Jen­nifer Anis­ton fan, so this one was two scoops of fail for me.
• Jack and Jill (2011)

Clearly, the list of bad Adam San­dler movies is sub­stan­tially longer.

I’m sure some of you are also going to give me flack about Punch-Drunk Love and Spang­lish , which are more seri­ous films that Adam San­dler fans love to hold up as proof of his sup­posed act­ing “range” and “abil­ity.” I’m sorry, maybe I’m just pre-conditioned from decades of movies where Adam San­dler acts like a com­plete idiot, but I’ve seen both of these movies and nobody has been able to suc­cess­fully con­vince me they’re any good. (I’ve yet to see  Reign Over Me , so I’ll reserve judge­ment on that one.)

Adam San­dler is fun­ni­est, even charm­ing, when he’s just being him­self. Give me  Red Hooded Sweat­shirt  San­dler over any of his dumb movie char­ac­ters any day. Hell, I’ll even set­tle for Jimmy Fallon’s Celebrity Jeop­ardy impres­sion of Adam San­dler over the likes of Zohan or Jill.

I don’t dis­like Adam San­dler. Hon­estly, I don’t. He has a lot of good ideas (which would prob­a­bly be bet­ter exe­cuted by some­one else) and he’s con­tributed a lot to his craft. I just think the guy tries too hard.

By the way, here’s the trailer for That’s My Boy , that new Adam San­dler movie I men­tioned earlier.

I won’t pay to see it in a the­ater, but I’m sure I’ll catch it on Net­flix or cable even­tu­ally because I enjoy tor­tur­ing myself I keep hold­ing out hope that one of these days Adam San­dler is going to make a good movie again.

Are you offended by this tentacle rape card game? [Updated]

So appar­ently there’s a crowd­funded card game on Kick­Starter called Ten­ta­cle Bento , which recently sur­passed and more than dou­bled its $13,000 fundrais­ing goal and still has 24 days left in the cam­paign. Why is it so pop­u­lar? Well for one thing, it’s got plenty of super cute anime girls for you to ogle, and oh yeah–it’s about (implied) ten­ta­cle rape!

Note  the “implied.” That’s key for the point I’ll make in a bit.

In Ten­ta­cle Bento, a trick tak­ing card game by Soda Pop Minia­tures , you play as an alien mon­ster dis­guised as a stu­dent at an all-girl uni­ver­sity whose mis­sion is to “get your slimy ten­ta­cles on as many of the stu­dent body as you can before time runs out.” You do so by cor­ner­ing girls (who are rep­re­sented by the four suits of Cute, Sexy, Sporty and Smart) in loca­tions such as The Fresh­man Dorm and by lay­ing down “Sneaky Snatch Action” cards.

I heard about the game on Twit­ter when @stillgray tweeted a link to this rather assertive post by Bran­don at Insert Credit that pretty much dis­misses the game as noth­ing but offen­sive, rape-glorification mate­r­ial that shouldn’t be allowed on KickStarter:

“The style is a cute, light­hearted, pastel-colored look at the won­der­ful world of forc­ing your way inside a female against her will. There are, to my mind, a lot of things wrong with this.

For one thing, rape is not cute.  Amnesty Inter­na­tional states  that 1 in 3 women is molested, sex­u­ally assaulted, or oth­er­wise beaten in her life­time. I’ve heard many advo­cates say this num­ber is low, due to under-reporting. And it’s not cute, and should never be depicted with such sac­cha­rine sweet­ness as Ten­ta­cle Bento does. It is ter­ri­bly dam­ag­ing to any­one it hap­pens to.

The more trou­bling thing is how many peo­ple are sup­port­ing it with­out think­ing about it. Or even worse, maybe they  are  think­ing about it.”

While I’m in total agree­ment with Brandon’s posi­tion on rape, I can’t say I agree that Ten­ta­cle Bento is as bad as he’s mak­ing it out be–which is a shame because I had my pitch­fork all cleaned up and ready to go.

After read­ing the Kick­Starter project page, watch­ing the video and look­ing closely at the cards, I’ve come to the con­clu­sion Ten­ta­cle Bento is a rel­a­tively harm­less slice of tongue-in-cheek humor aimed at anime fans and yes, those weirdos with a ten­ta­cle fetish who are gen­uinely turned on by the idea of being sex­u­ally probed by ten­ta­cles (which, frankly, I will never under­stand, but if that’s your thing, hey).  How­ever, I’d wager that for most of the world ten­ta­cle rape fetish is a fringe curiosity–just one more biz­zarre thing to come out of Japan, like used panties vend­ing machines .

Like Munchkin or Killer Bun­nies , this is the type of par­ody card game you whip out at a party to play with your nerdy friends while drink­ing and hav­ing a good laugh about ter­ri­ble anime. Because it’s a card game, and not say, a film or videogame, if there’s any actual “rape” in this game, it exists solely in the player’s imag­i­na­tion. The project descrip­tion and video don’t use the word “rape” either, but even as implied rape  I’m not offended. There’s a major dif­fer­ence between the real­ity of being bru­tally raped by another human being and this breed of bizarre alien fetish porn that is the stuff of fantasies.

Look­ing through the com­ments sec­tion, I’m inclined to believe the peo­ple who are donat­ing money to this project are not the pro-rape, women-hating, sex­ual assault apol­o­gists the arti­cle above would have you believe. They’re just a bunch of dorks who want a cute, funny, mildly-inappropriate card game to play–and some of them are even women.

Update 5/16 — Well, looks like Kick­Starter has given in to the few overly sen­si­tive peo­ple out there cry­ing “rape!” because the Ten­ta­cle Bento project has now been pulled–which I’m sure has a lot to do with Luke Plunkett’s hit piece for Kotaku. I’m really dis­ap­pointed in KickStarter’s deci­sion to cen­sor this project. What will they cen­sor next? Leisure Suit Larry ?

’21 Jump Street’ is Surprisingly Not Terrible, Almost Makes Me Pee

The orig­i­nal  21 Jump Street was one of those ‘80s shows that seemed really cool at the time but look­ing back on it nowa­days you’re embar­rassed you ever liked it. It’s worth watch­ing for the glimpse at Johnny Depp’s early, pre-superstardom career and per­haps as a fun stroll down Regret­table ‘80s Fash­ion Lane, but not much else.

So when I heard about the new 21 Jump Street movie I wasn’t exactly quiv­er­ing with antic­i­pa­tion in my sparkly leo­tard. If not for the recent over­abun­dance of pseudo-nostalgic reboots of pop­u­lar TV shows from my youth, I might have been a lit­tle more excited about it, but my ini­tial reac­tion was a full-fledged “meh.”

After see­ing the film last night and laugh­ing so hard I almost peed myself (seri­ously), I’m com­pletely rethink­ing that position.

Like the premise of the orig­i­nal show, 21 Jump Street is about a spe­cial unit of young cops who go under­cover to fight youth-related crime. In this case it’s the awesomely-named Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Chan­ning Tatum), two under­achiev­ing cops forced to go back to high school in order to bring down a syn­thetic drug ring, with the fun twist that they used to be ene­mies in their own high school days.

Have you ever seen  The Other Guys ? Well  21 Jump Street  is kind of like that except set in a high school and Ice Cube is there to make it more awe­some and uncomfortable.

For­go­ing the cheesy teen melo­drama that the orig­i­nal series was known for, the new 21 Jump Street is all com­edy. While Jonah Hill and Chan­ning Tatum are hilar­i­ous together, I think the real source of the com­edy is in the editing.

As fod­der for funny quotes and ani­mated GIFs, 21 Jump Street is a gold­mine.  At the cen­ter of the plot is the fic­tional syn­thetic drug HFS (short for Holy Fuck­ing Shit) which has five phases:

• Phase 1: The Giggs
• Phase 2: Trip­ping Major Ballsack
• Phase 3: Over-Falsity of Confidence
• Phase 4: Fuck Yeah Motherfucker!
• Phase 5: Asleepyness

Through­out the movie you’ll see var­i­ous char­ac­ters take the HFS drug and react accord­ingly, while help­ful on-screen title cards announce what phase you’re wit­ness­ing. It hilar­i­ous, trust me.

If you are a diehard fan of the orig­i­nal show you’ll prob­a­bly be dis­ap­pointed to know that the new film is noth­ing like it aside from its premise and the  Johnny Depp / Richard Grieco dou­ble cameo that you’ll have to wait over an hour and a half to see.

At a run­ning time of 109 min­utes, my biggest com­plaint is that the movie is too long for a goof­ball com­edy and toward the end I felt it was get­ting old. There’s a lengthy car chase scene with a run­ning gag where you keep expect­ing an explo­sion, and when it finally does hap­pen you’re just kind of like “meh,” which sums up how I felt about see­ing this film in the first place.

ShezCrafti’s Rating:

6 out of 10 stars.

‘American Reunion’ a Hilarious & Fitting End to the American Pie Franchise

Note: for max­i­mum preser­va­tion of lulz, this is a spoiler-free review!

Being a grad­u­ate of the Class of ’99 and hav­ing grown up along with the Amer­i­can Pie gang, it was inevitable that I’d see Amer­i­can Reunion , the fourth and final film in the Pie fran­chise that takes place 13 years after the original.

There’s a rea­son why these films are con­sid­ered by many to be clas­sics (with the excep­tion of those hor­ri­ble straight-to-video cheap spin-offs ). For those of us squarely in their tar­get demo­graphic, the Amer­i­can Pie films are like mile­stones by which we can mea­sure our own lives:

• 1999: Amer­i­can Pie came out. I had just grad­u­ated high school. Prom (and dis­pos­able boyfriend) was behind me. My friends were the most impor­tant thing to me in the world.
• 2001: Amer­i­can Pie 2 came out. I was in col­lege, had started my first “real” job, and was try­ing to fig­ure out what to do with my life in between par­ty­ing and try­ing to hold on to my youth.
• 2003: Amer­i­can Wed­ding came out. I was in love, engaged, and look­ing for­ward to my own wed­ding. (It didn’t end well, by the way, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.)

So last night it was with great inter­est and pangs of nos­tal­gia that I went to the the­ater to see Amer­i­can Reunion .

From the moment I heard the first lines of R. Kelly’s glo­ri­ously cheesy sex anthem Bump N’ Grind –the film’s open­ing song–I knew I was in for some seri­ous laughs. Actu­ally, there were very few moments dur­ing the whole film when I–along with every­one else at the theater–wasn’t in hys­ter­ics. Like the pre­vi­ous films, Amer­i­can Reunion opens with a spec­tac­u­larly raunchy gag that made me glad I decided to skip the soda.

Amer­i­can Pie fans will be happy to know that every­one from the entire orig­i­nal cast has reunited for this film–and I mean every­one . Just when you’re think­ing “Hey, where’s so-and-so?” that char­ac­ter shows up; usu­ally to great comedic effect.

Thir­teen years later, we learn Jim (Jason Biggs) and Michelle (Alyson Han­ni­gan) are still mar­ried but now with a tod­dler and fiz­zling sex life, Kevin (Thomas Ian Nicholas) is an archi­tect and hap­pily mar­ried, Chris/“Oz” (Chris Klein) is a famous sports­caster and TV per­son­al­ity with a huge L.A. man­sion and a tro­phy girl­friend, and Sti­fler (Seann William Scott) is a temp at a large invest­ment firm.  Oh, and  Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas)? He’s essen­tially “the most inter­est­ing man in the world” to have ever grad­u­ated East Great Falls High , but that’s all I will tell you with­out spoil­ing anything.

Every­thing that made you fall in love with these char­ac­ters in the first place is present and accounted for:  Jim’s awk­ward con­ver­sa­tions with his Dad, Finch’s too-cool-for-school atti­tude, Kevin’s wist­ful inter­ludes with Vicky, Oz and Heather’s elu­sive romance, and Stifler’s oblig­a­tory obnoxiousness.

Although the premise is a lit­tle flimsy (a 13-year high school reunion?), you’ll be laugh­ing so hard it won’t even mat­ter.  You know those come­dies that blow their wad early by includ­ing all the fun­ni­est bits in the trailer ? I can assure you that’s not the case here. It’s not just a film full of sex jokes or one-liners, either (even though there’s plenty of that too).  Some of the gags are pretty elab­o­rate and the pay­offs are huge. (Again, so glad I opted not to drink anything.)

But Amer­i­can Reunion is not with­out a few seri­ous moments too.  The film is anchored by the rela­tion­ship between Jim and Michelle and Stifler’s grow­ing fear and ulti­mately real­iza­tion that his best days are behind him.  The char­ac­ters are han­dled with care and I felt each of their sto­ries was given a sat­is­fy­ing con­clu­sion. Clearly a lot of care and atten­tion to detail went into this movie, and it def­i­nitely shows in the cast performances.

Oh! I also wanted to be sure to men­tion the sound­track, which I found to be an enjoy­able blend of old and new. There’s cur­rent big hits ( You Make Me Feel, Sexy and I Know It, Every­body Talks… ) as well as songs that took me right back to high school ( Wannabe, My Own Worst Enemy, Clos­ing Time… ).  Fans will also rec­og­nize a few songs from the pre­vi­ous films that reprise their role as theme music for the char­ac­ters. It’s also worth men­tion­ing how mas­sive the Amer­i­can Reunion sound­track is–60 songs! But don’t expect to be able to pur­chase a com­plete one  yet.

In this dis­ap­point­ing era of Amer­i­can cin­ema where sequels and remakes are the norm and our child­hoods are con­stantly being plun­dered , I found myself really sur­prised by Amer­i­can Reunion .  Now please don’t make any more Amer­i­can Pie films so we can end this thing on a high note!

ShezCrafti’s Rating:

9 out of 10 stars.

Review: ‘Starry Starry Night’ is a Beautiful, Imaginative Coming of Age Film

You’ve prob­a­bly never heard of the Tai­wanese film Starry Starry Night , a com­ing of age drama directed by Tom Lin that was released in late 2011. I had cer­tainly never heard of it until a few weeks ago when it popped up in my DVD rec­om­men­da­tions over at YESASIA , and every­thing I read about it just seemed so appeal­ing to my inter­ests that I couldn’t resist pick­ing it up.

The film is an adap­ta­tion of a children’s book by Jimmy Liao , a Tai­wanese illus­tra­tor and pic­ture book author renown for his melan­choly depic­tions of child­hood using vivid col­ors and strik­ing visuals.

The story cen­ters on Mei, a bright, sen­si­tive but lonely 13-year-old girl who is deal­ing with a lot of issues in her young life. She’s quiet and with­drawn at school, her par­ents are on the brink of divorce and barely notice her, her mother is grow­ing increas­ingly dis­tant and drinks too much, and her grand­fa­ther, whom she loves more than any­one else in the world, is in very poor health.

Mei is a very imag­i­na­tive girl who fills her days with art, puz­zles, day­dreams, and yearns for the days when she used to live with her grand­par­ents at their cot­tage in the moun­tains. One day around Christ­mas­time, Mei hears beau­ti­ful recorder music out­side her bed­room win­dow and sees that its being played  by a young boy, who is at the win­dow of a neigh­bor­ing apartment.

The boy turns out to be Jie, a new stu­dent at Mei’s school who is a bud­ding artist also deal­ing with many issues of his own. His artis­tic tal­ents and cocky atti­tude make him an easy tar­get for the other boys at the school who con­stantly bully him. Mei can’t help but feel drawn toward Jie, and after a series of rocky events in both their lives, the pair begins a tremu­lous friendship.

As Mei and Jie’s rela­tion­ship blos­soms, they both begin to over­come their lone­li­ness and adver­sity while try­ing to cope with the ongo­ing harass­ment of their class­mates. There is a strong under­cur­rent of desire between the two leads, who grow closer and closer and even­tu­ally run away together on a fan­tas­tic adven­ture. Their sum­mer romance is short-lived, but sets in motion the events that will for­ever change both of their lives.

Starry Starry Night has been described as a “visual feast” for its beau­ti­ful cin­e­matog­ra­phy that blends together rich, imag­i­na­tive visu­als with dra­matic light­ing and shadow play.  The film is punc­tu­ated by gor­geous CGI fan­tasy sequences where Mei’s imag­i­na­tion takes over, as she envi­sions inan­i­mate objects—her grandfather’s wooden ani­mal carv­ings, col­or­ful pieces of origami, fan­tas­tic shadow beasts—coming to life all around her. This focus on Mei’s imag­i­na­tion as an exten­sion of her character’s hopes and dreams is a beau­ti­ful way of look­ing at the world through a child’s lens.

The mes­mer­iz­ing score is another ele­ment that adds to the dream­like qual­ity of the film. It’s a mix­ture of del­i­cate music box melodies, and sweep­ing, ethe­real lul­la­bies that really makes the imagery soar.

There are a few flaws, how­ever, such as the film’s some­times labo­ri­ously slow pac­ing; but at least the film’s unques­tion­able beauty makes the jour­ney worth­while. There are also some direc­to­r­ial choices that pile on too much unnec­es­sary melo­drama, and visual metaphors that are too obvi­ous.  These are only minor com­plaints, though.

Starry Starry Night may not wow you with its uncom­pli­cated plot and sim­ple spe­cial effects, but if you enjoy ten­der com­ing of age sto­ries and deep char­ac­ter devel­op­ment, I can­not rec­om­mend this film highly enough.

ShezCrafti’s Rating:

7 out of 10 stars.

An Honest Review of ‘Love Never Dies’ from a Non-Phan

There are gen­er­ally two types of  Phan­tom  fans:

The crazy, obses­sive vari­ety who hold every­thing to impos­si­ble stan­dards and will pick apart every per­for­mance and adap­ta­tion of  Phan­tom  like vul­tures (these are the same peo­ple  who write tawdry phan-fiction and believe  Joel Schumacher’s  2004 film ver­sion  is a pile of rub­bish), and those like me who sim­ply enjoy  Phan­tom,  in all of its var­i­ous forms, for what it is—a damned good story no mat­ter ho w it’s told .  Like Robin Hood or The Count of Monte Cristo , it’s one of those clas­sic sto­ries that will be retold and redis­cov­ered through the ages, with or with­out Andrew Lloyd Webber’s help.

As the sequel to one of the most beloved and obsessed-over musi­cals of all time,  Love Never Dies   was bound to ruf­fle a few feath­ers, but the real­ity is that it has been plagued with prob­lems almost since its incep­tion. Die-hard Phan­tom fans, or “phans” if you will, have been on some­thing of an anti-LND cru­sade . Feel­ing betrayed by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s deci­sion to extend the canon of his mas­ter­piece by essen­tially “mak­ing shit up,” they argue that the sequel takes too much lib­erty with the story and char­ac­ters of Gas­ton Leroux’s orig­i­nal novel. Many phans sim­ply choose not to acknowl­edge that a sequel even exists.

The crit­ics have not been kind either, pan­ning every­thing from the libretto to the chore­og­ra­phy.  One even cru­elly dubbed the show ” Paint Never Dries .”  After a dis­ap­point­ing run in London’s West End, Love Never Dies was almost com­pletely over­hauled and the pro­duc­tion moved to Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia, then later to Syd­ney, where it’s cur­rently set to run until April.

Despite the the harsh crit­i­cism and phan back­lash, the reworked show seems to have found its audi­ence in Aus­tralia where its get­ting rave reviews and play­ing to sold out venues.  The Sep­tem­ber 15, 2011 8:00 PM per­for­mance of the Mel­bourne  pro­duc­tion was filmed for release on DVD and Blu-Ray  and is cur­rently play­ing in the­aters, so that is the ver­sion I will be reviewing.

Synopsis

Beware: lots of spoil­ers below. You’ve been forewarned!

Set ten years after the events in Phan­tom ‚  Love Never Dies shifts us from the majes­tic Paris opera house set­ting to the  car­ni­va­lesque spec­ta­cle of 1920’s Coney Island. We learn that The Phan­tom has estab­lished a new artis­tic base of oper­a­tions in Phan­tasma, a musi­cal menagerie of sorts, with the help of famil­iar char­ac­ters Madame Giry and her daugh­ter Meg, who smug­gled him out of Paris. Known only to his per­form­ers and patrons as “Mr. Y,” The Phan­tom is the mys­te­ri­ous fig­ure behind Phantasma’s—and Meg Giry’s—success.

Yearn­ing to hear his beloved Chris­tine Daaé sing for him once again, The Phan­tom sends her an anony­mous invi­ta­tion to make her Amer­i­can debut at his the­ater. Now mar­ried to the Vicount de Chagny, Chris­tine accepts the invi­ta­tion and arrives by boat to much fan­fare with her hus­band Raoul and young son Gus­tav in tow. Evi­dently Raoul has become a dis­tant hus­band as well as father, is in dire finan­cial straits, and is also quite fond of the drink.

The Phan­tom soon reveals him­self to Chris­tine in her hotel room, who is of course shocked and bewil­dered, but still unable to resist him. In “Beneath a Moon­less Sky” we learn that Chris­tine and The Phan­tom once shared a secret night of pas­sion, and that “Once Upon Another Time”, Chris­tine was pre­pared to break her engage­ment with Raoul for her masked lover. But it was The Phan­tom who in fact rejected Chris­tine, break­ing her heart.

Their semi-romantic inter­lude is inter­rupted by Gus­tav, who awak­ens from a ter­ri­ble night­mare. Chris­tine intro­duces him to “Mr. Y”, say­ing that he’s an old friend of hers. The Phan­tom is enchanted by the boy, and Gus­tav likewise.

Gus­tav grows increas­ingly enthralled with Phan­tasma as The Phan­tom intro­duces him to his world in “The Beauty Under­neath.” When Gus­tav plays a beau­ti­ful melody on the piano, his extra­or­di­nary musi­cal tal­ent causes The Phan­tom to begin to sus­pect that he’s really the boy’s father. Believ­ing that Gus­tav will accept him, he takes off his mask which causes Gus­tav to run away, scream­ing. He retreats to his mother, who when con­fronted by The Phan­tom, admits that Gus­tav is his son. He makes Chris­tine promise not to ever tell Gus­tav that he is his father, but promises to leave him every­thing he owns. Unfor­tu­nately, Madame Giry over­hears all of this.

As the reign­ing star of Phan­tasma, Meg con­sid­ers her­self Mr Y’s pro­tege. When she learns of Christine’s oppor­tu­nity, she can barely hide her jeal­ousy.  Madame Giry is none too thrilled about The Phantom’s obses­sion with Chris­tine, hav­ing a vested inter­est in her own daughter’s future and feel­ing betrayed after all she’s done for him. She exposes The Phan­tom and his plans to Raoul, who storms off in a fit of rage and later goes to drown his sor­rows at the bar, ques­tion­ing Christine’s love for him.

The Phan­tom drops in on Raoul and makes a bet: if Chris­tine does not sing for him, she is free to leave with Raoul and her son. If she does sing, how­ever, Raoul must leave alone. To make a long story short (because this syn­op­sis is already get­ting ridicu­lously long), Chris­tine does end up stay­ing and singing for The Phan­tom, despite Raoul’s plead­ings that they leave together as soon as possible.

After her stun­ning per­for­mance of “Love Never Dies,” Gus­tav mys­te­ri­ously dis­ap­pears. Meg Giry, in a jeal­ous rage, has kid­napped him and taken him to the docks, threat­en­ing to drown him. The Phan­tom, Chris­tine, and Madame Giry arrive just in time, and The Phan­tom is able to get the boy safely away from her. How­ever, Meg pulls out a pis­tol and threat­ens to kill her­self instead. In the midst of a lengthy, emo­tional tirade where Meg reveals all sorts of unsa­vory things about her­self, The Phan­tom tries to wres­tle the gun away from her and she acci­den­tally shoots Chris­tine in the stomach.

As Chris­tine lay dying in The Phantom’s arms, she tells Gus­tav that he is the boy’s real father. Gus­tav runs off to find Raoul, who arrives on the scene too late. Chris­tine and The Phan­tom pro­fess their undy­ing love and then kiss their final kiss. As the cur­tain closes, Gus­tav removes The Phantom’s mask and embraces him.

First, the not-so-good stuff:

To appre­ci­ate Love Never Dies, you have to sort of let go of any pre­con­ceived notions you might have about the char­ac­ters. The Phan­tom a lov­ing father fig­ure? Raoul an abu­sive drunk? Meg Giry a pros­ti­tute? Accept­ing these new real­i­ties requires putting aside the out­comes of the events in The Phan­tom of the Opera . And peo­ple can cer­tainly change a lot in ten years.

Admit­tedly, the plot is kind of a mess, espe­cially toward the end. If I hadn’t known what to expect from hav­ing lis­tened to the sound­track so many times, I prob­a­bly would not have fully grasped what was going on. One of the main crit­i­cisms of the show’s orig­i­nal pro­duc­tion was its non­sen­si­cal plot. I com­pletely under­stand why it had to be reworked. On the other hand, it feels strange to watch some­thing that you know has been sig­nif­i­cantly tweaked because the edits tend to seem all the more obvious.

Being reworked also means that some musi­cal themes from The Phan­tom of the Opera were injected into the score. In between the new songs, you’ll hear hints of Phan­tom songs like “Angel of Music” and “Prima Donna.” Sup­pos­edly the cur­rent iter­a­tion of the show includes many more of these inva­sive musi­cal inter­ludes than the orig­i­nal pro­duc­tion. It’s dif­fi­cult not to notice these melodies when you hear them, and I found myself won­der­ing if they were nec­es­sary additions.

And now on to the good stuff:

My first intro­duc­tion to Love Never Dies was through its sound­track (the full orig­i­nal cast record­ing is  avail­able on Spo­tify ), which I fell imme­di­ately in love with and ended up lis­ten­ing to on repeat while at work.

Musi­cally,  Love Never Dies  is excep­tional. It’s full of haunt­ingly beau­ti­ful themes (“Beneath a Moon­lit Sky” , ” Once Upon Another Time” , ” ‘Till I Hear You Sing”) and grand, sweep­ing waltzes (“The Coney Island Waltz”, “Look With Your Heart”) that, when they bloom, will make your heart swell with emo­tion.  Andrew Lloyd Web­ber has described it as being the most beau­ti­ful score he’s ever writ­ten, and I don’t believe he’s exaggerating.

It’s also one of the most visu­ally stun­ning musi­cals ever pro­duced. Coney Island pro­vides a vibrant, spec­tac­u­lar back­drop to the drama unfold­ing on the stage. The cos­tumes, espe­cially those of the cir­cus per­form­ers, are lush and imaginative.

I won’t pre­tend to know more than I do about the­ater (which is very lit­tle) but I must com­mend the extra­or­di­nar­ily tal­ented cast. The singing, danc­ing and act­ing were all top notch. The show opens with Ben Lewis’ (The Phan­tom) pow­er­ful per­for­mance of “‘Till I Hear You Sing”, which kicks off the first in a long series of big, ambi­tious musi­cal num­bers to come.  I was espe­cially impressed by Anna O’Byrne (Chris­tine Daaé), whose vocals on songs like “Once Upon Another Time” took my breath away.

In terms of the over­all mes­sage or moral of the story, I much pre­fer  Love Never Dies’   mature view of life and love  over the impos­si­bly ide­al­is­tic “hap­pily ever after” end­ing of  Phan­tom.  Christine’s “safe” choice of suit­ors has always both­ered me, and the sequel attempts to explore what might have been had Chris­tine given in to her true desires. It’s a flimsy basis for a sequel to be sure, but it does man­age to pro­vide answers to the ques­tions we’re left with at the end of Phan­tom . For the peo­ple who were root­ing for The Phan­tom and Chris­tine, Love Never Dies is like a beautifully-wrapped gift.

The bot­tom line:

Though Love Never Dies doesn’t quite man­age to cap­ture the same magic as the orig­i­nal (and let’s be hon­est, sequels rarely, if ever, do) it’s still a highly enjoy­able pro­duc­tion that is well worth watch­ing. But even if the show doesn’t man­age to cap­ti­vate you, the music prob­a­bly will.

Does the world really need a sequel to  The Phan­tom of the Opera , the most suc­cess­ful musi­cal of all time? Most peo­ple would prob­a­bly say no.  But those peo­ple would be miss­ing out on some­thing really special.

ShezCrafti’s Rating:

8 out of 10 stars.

Review: ‘Chronicle’ is Surprisingly Good for an Angsty Found Footage Teen Film

Chron­i­cle is a sci-fi thriller about three teenage boys who come into con­tact with a strange, radioac­tive sub­stance found in a well near their Seat­tle home, and weeks later dis­cover that they’ve devel­oped telekinesis-like abilities.

The story cen­ters on angsty high­schooler Andrew Det­mer, who begins doc­u­ment­ing his trou­bled life with video.  He con­stantly gets picked on, his dad is an abu­sive drunk, and his mother lay dying of can­cer.  It doesn’t get much worse than Andrew’s life.  And so he finds solace behind the cam­era, con­stantly film­ing at every oppor­tu­nity (much to the annoy­ance of his friends and classmates).

The first part of the film is pretty much what you’d expect: through Andrew’s lens, we get a good intro­duc­tory glimpse of his life, his friends, and his prob­lems. About 12 min­utes in, every­thing changes after he and his friends Matt and Steve stum­ble across the mys­te­ri­ous well.  From there after­ward the boys begin doc­u­ment­ing their pow­ers on video, test­ing the lim­its of their abil­i­ties with gen­uine awe at what they’re capa­ble of, often in humor­ous ways (for instance play­ing pranks on unsus­pect­ing peo­ple).  With the new­found sense of belong­ing that Matt and Steve pro­vide, Andrew’s per­sonal life begins to trans­form as well, gain­ing more con­fi­dence and con­trol in his social life even when things are falling apart at home.

And this is where Chron­i­cle  really gets inter­est­ing. Rather than focus­ing too much on the “Hey, look at my awe­some super pow­ers, isn’t this cool?” aspect of Andrew’s story, the film takes a much darker turn as we learn that Andrew’s inten­tions and moti­va­tions aren’t exactly pure.  Tired of being bul­lied and his mis­er­able home life, Andrew beings to rec­og­nize that hav­ing such power also means hav­ing the abil­ity to pun­ish those who would do him harm.  And power in the hands of some­one who is so obvi­ously dis­turbed is a very dan­ger­ous thing.

The film’s unspo­ken ques­tion: if you sud­denly devel­oped super pow­ers, what kind of per­son would you  be?

Shock­u­men­tary hor­ror films like Blair Witch and Clover­field that favor the shaky, first-person hand­cam method to tell the story as if it were “real” footage usu­ally come across as highly unbe­liev­able because, hon­estly, what kind of fuck­ing idiot would keep the cam­era rolling in ter­ri­fy­ing life-or-death sit­u­a­tions? (For what it’s worth,  REC  was one of the only films to get the ‘found footage’ for­mula right.)  But In a non-horror film like  Chron­i­cle,  the found footage style makes more sense to me. In the age of YouTube, I have no prob­lems believ­ing that a bunch of bored teenagers who sud­denly develop super pow­ers would want to film all the awe­some things they can do.

That’s why I was pleas­antly sur­prised by how well Chron­i­cle  works. Direc­tor Josh Trank, who is only 26 years old, by the way, is to be com­mended for putting his unique twist on the found footage trend with this direc­to­r­ial debut. Rather than mind­lessly mimic the first-person shoot­ing style like so many other films have done, he cre­ates char­ac­ter sit­u­a­tions that allow for dif­fer­ent film­ing per­spec­tives, bet­ter cam­era angles, and more inter­est­ing frames of reference.

For exam­ple, there’s a pretty insane action sequence toward the end of the film where we get to wit­ness the events unfold through traf­fic and secu­rity cam­eras posi­tioned all around down­town Seat­tle. In some other cases, how­ever, it felt like the film­ing sit­u­a­tions were far too con­trived.  But over­all I think the direc­tion was appro­pri­ate and var­ied enough so that you don’t feel like you’re trudg­ing through loads of raw footage wait­ing for some­thing cool to hap­pen (fuck you, Para­nor­mal Activ­ity ).  Cool stuff def­i­nitely hap­pens in this movie. I don’t want to give too much away, but I can promise there are some fan­tas­tic “WTF” moments that come out of nowhere, and awe­some action sequences that must be seen to be believed.

I believe Chron­i­cle  is an amaz­ing achieve­ment in low-budget film­mak­ing.  If you can put aside your expec­ta­tions of what found footage films are typ­i­cally like and just let your­self get immersed in the story, this movie can be a lot of fun.

ShezCrafti’s Rating:

7 out of 10 stars.

Mouse Without Borders vs. ShareMouse for Windows Keyboard and Mouse Sharing

I recently recon­fig­ured my desk into a multi-workstation setup, using both my lap­top and desk­top side-by-side, plus an extra mon­i­tor. Hav­ing three screens* to con­tend with, switch­ing between two sets of key­boards and mice just doesn’t cut it.  In my efforts to find an eas­ier solu­tion, I recently had the oppor­tu­nity to try both Share­Mouse and Mouse With­out Bor­ders.  (Feel free to skip ahead if you just want to know which one is bet­ter, in my hum­ble opinion.)

(*Yes, that’s my nerdy triple Hunger Games wall­pa­per you’re see­ing)

ShareMouse

To try to rem­edy the sit­u­a­tion, I first found and installed a “free­ware” pro­gram called Share­Mouse .  Share­Mouse uses your exist­ing local area net­work con­nec­tion to trans­mit key­board input and mouse cur­sor move­ments between mul­ti­ple com­put­ers.  You install it on each com­puter you want to con­trol, des­ig­nate which com­puter is the server (the one con­trol­ling the oth­ers),  then adjust set­tings to con­fig­ure your mon­i­tor arrange­ment.  It also allows for con­ve­nient drag-and-drop file shar­ing between con­nected com­put­ers that have Share­Mouse installed.

The “free” ver­sion of Share­Mouse worked great—except for the fact that it inex­plic­a­bly stopped work­ing alto­gether for me after only two weeks.  I got an error mes­sage telling me the “beta” trial period has expired, and to con­tinue using Share­Mouse I would have to “down­load the lat­est ver­sion.”  Which, of course, I did.  And after going through the motions of unin­stalling and re-installing, I still  got the same error mes­sage upon try­ing to launch the program.

Sus­pi­cious, I went to ShareMouse’s web­site and started comb­ing through the FAQs, where I found this:

“Per­sonal home use.”  I fit that descrip­tion.  So far so good.  But that still doesn’t explain why Share­Mouse stopped work­ing.  After click­ing the link, I found this:

Well now,  that changes things a bit, doesn’t it?  I’m only using two com­put­ers, but I’m using more than two mon­i­tors if  my lap­top screen is counted.  Also, I have soft­ware “which is typ­i­cally used in pro­fes­sional envi­ron­ments” installed, e.g. Adobe.  But I won­der what else counts?  Does the Microsoft Office suite count?  That’s cer­tainly typ­i­cal of pro­fes­sional envi­ron­ments.  What other soft­ware is included in that sneaky “etc.”?  The Share­Mouse pol­icy also seems to equate “pro­fes­sional users” with “power users,” although you have to drill deep into the FAQ to fig­ure that out.

So basi­cally, the rea­son Share­Mouse stopped work­ing for me, with­out warn­ing, is because the soft­ware deter­mined that I fit their vague def­i­n­i­tion of either a pro­fes­sional user or a power user.  It would have been nice if Share­Mouse informed me of all of the “gotchas” before I installed their “free­ware” soft­ware and got really used to it!  After wast­ing sev­eral hours of my life try­ing to fig­ure out why the blasted thing wasn’t work­ing, I finally got fed up and started look­ing for other solutions.

(By the way, if you do decide to pur­chase a license for the full-blown ver­sion of Share­Mouse, another “gotcha” is that a sep­a­rate $24.95 license is required for EACH com­puter run­ning Share­Mouse.  And since Share­Mouse is pretty much worthless/unnecessary for single-computer setups, why would you EVER pur­chase just one licence?  So the real price of Share­Mouse is $49.90 for a two-computer setup).

Mouse With­out Borders

For us Win­dows users, thank­fully there is a very use­ful and 100% FREE piece of soft­ware called Mouse With­out Bor­ders  from the Microsoft Garage.  It essen­tially does all the same things Share­Mouse does, except its func­tion­al­ity is lim­ited to Windows-based PCs.  It’s much eas­ier to install and use.  Instead of hav­ing to install it on all your com­put­ers and then hav­ing to mess with cum­ber­some con­fig­u­ra­tion set­tings, Mouse With­out Bor­ders works automag­i­cally after a sim­ple prompt:

Basi­cally all you have to do is install it on both PCs, and enter a sim­ple code to begin shar­ing.  You can down­load Mouse With­out bor­ders right here .

tl;dr

For Win­dows users in need of a dead-simple key­board and mouse shar­ing solu­tion, Mouse With­out Bor­ders is supe­rior to Share­Mouse and doesn’t try to bait and switch you into buy­ing a paid ver­sion.  You can down­load Mouse With­out bor­ders  right here .

‘The Beaver’ Will Make You Sort of, Kind of Like Mel Gibson Again…Maybe

“Hello. I’m The Beaver. And I’m here to save your career.”

Whether you’ve for­given Mel Gib­son for his self-righteous behav­ior, anti-Semitic tirades, racist rants, and alleged wife-beating ways or not (in which case I com­pletely under­stand), I think it’s a tragedy that one of the best movies of 2011 will prob­a­bly never get the recog­ni­tion it deserves because it stars a man who occu­pies a spot on Hollywood’s per­ma­nent blacklist.

But I’m not here to throw a pity party for Mel Gib­son.  I don’t think any man who hits beau­ti­ful women, dri­ves drunk, and owns an island the size of a small coun­try is deserv­ing of much pity.  But acknowl­edge­ment for his extra­or­di­nary act­ing abil­ity? Sure.

Like the guy or not, I think there are few peo­ple who would deny that Mel is a tal­ented actor.  I mean, not once dur­ing The Beaver did I feel like punch­ing him in his douchey, N-word spew­ing face, and that is say­ing some­thing.  I went in with low expec­ta­tions and a healthy dose of cyn­i­cism, yet by the time the end cred­its rolled I felt ready to take back every harsh word I had ever said against Mel Gib­son.  Well, okay, not exactly…but it kind of felt like that!  That’s how a good actor is capa­ble of mak­ing you feel.

And I have to agree with the crit­ics who are say­ing The Beaver is one of Gibson’s best roles. For 91 min­utes, I was some­how able to com­pletely for­get all about Mel Gib­son the per­son and warmly embrace Mel Gib­son the clin­i­cally depressed hus­band and father of two, who after a men­tal break­down and sub­se­quent sui­cide attempt decides to wear a beaver pup­pet on his arm and com­mu­ni­cate exclu­sively through his new stuffed friend’s per­sona thereby regain­ing his con­fi­dence and abil­ity to func­tion.  It’s all very Lars and the Real Girl (a bril­liant film) except per­haps with bet­ter direct­ing (Jodie Fos­ter), more of a focus on dys­func­tional fam­ily dynam­ics, and a bit of a shock ending.

Though a ridiculous-sounding premise, The Beaver is a thor­oughly enjoy­able dram­edy that just seems to work and the rea­son why it works is Mel Gib­son, who man­ages to pull off two simul­ta­ne­ously demand­ing roles in a sin­gle film.  Despite his sta­tus as one of America’s most dis­liked peo­ple, I am not so jaded by the media’s anti-Mel Gib­son cru­sade that I am inca­pable of rec­og­niz­ing tal­ent when I see it.  If you’re able to sep­a­rate an artist’s abil­ity from his or her per­sonal life and appre­ci­ate their work despite per­sonal short­com­ings, well con­grat­u­la­tions on being a ratio­nal per­son. You know, Polan­ski may be a rape artist but I’m not afraid to admit that I really enjoy his movies. And Michael Jack­son may or may not have been a kid-toucher, but when­ever Bil­lie Jean comes on, I always turn that shit up.

Go see The Beaver. It is a beau­ti­ful film that will make you laugh, cry, and all that good stuff if you just give it a chance . And if you can’t sus­pend your per­sonal dis­dain for Mel Gib­son, well, you just might be miss­ing out on a really great movie.

Why ‘Reality is Broken’ Is a Must-Read for Every Gamer

And now for some­thing com­pletely different…

If you con­sider your­self a gamer in any capac­ity, you have prob­a­bly not gone through life with­out some­one telling you, at some point, that video games are waste of time, or you have no life, and other insult­ing mis­con­cep­tions that non-gamers often spew at us.

In her new book, Real­ity is Bro­ken , vision­ary game designer Jane McGo­ni­gal hopes to change such attitudes.

Let’s be hon­est: Video games typ­i­cally get a bad rap.  Blood, sex, vio­lence, gore, moms seduc­ing 13-year-old boys on Xbox Live, the boy who shot his par­ents for tak­ing away Halo… Sen­sa­tional head­lines about video games tend to over­shadow the medium itself.

But what about all the pos­i­tive ways in which games influ­ence our lives?  Beyond basic read­ing com­pre­hen­sion and hand-eye coor­di­na­tion, video games can teach us how to set and achieve goals, adapt to new sit­u­a­tions, learn from our mis­takes, help and influ­ence oth­ers, and even how to be an effec­tive team member.

For the mil­lions of Amer­i­can gamers (over 174 mil­lion, to be more pre­cise) who already real­ize these ben­e­fits, Real­ity is Bro­ken is a refresh­ing and encour­ag­ing study of how video games improve our lives and the rea­sons why we need them.  Jane McGo­ni­gal advo­cates that video games are so omnipresent today because they are able to ful­fill basic human needs that we are oth­er­wise lack­ing in our mod­ern lives.  In short, “real­ity is bro­ken” and McGo­ni­gal believes video games are the “fix.”

“Draw­ing on pos­i­tive psy­chol­ogy, cog­ni­tive sci­ence, and soci­ol­ogy, Real­ity Is Bro­ken uncov­ers how game design­ers have hit on core truths about what makes us happy and uti­lized these dis­cov­er­iesto aston­ish­ing effect in vir­tual envi­ron­ments. Videogames con­sis­tently pro­vide the exhil­a­rat­ing rewards, stim­u­lat­ing chal­lenges, and epic vic­to­ries that are so often lack­ing in the real world. But why, McGo­ni­gal asks, should we use the power of games for escapist enter­tain­ment alone? Her research sug­gests that gamers are expert prob­lem solvers and col­lab­o­ra­tors because they reg­u­larly coop­er­ate with other play­ers to over­come daunt­ing vir­tual chal­lenges, and she helped pio­neer a fast-growing genre of games that aims to turn game­play to socially pos­i­tive ends.”

No mat­ter what kind of gamer you are, from the week­night WoW raider to the casual DS gamer—even non-gamer—you will find your­self inspired by the views Jane presents in her book, and per­haps even in awe at all the inno­v­a­tive, ground­break­ing ways that game design­ers through­out the world are using their tal­ents for the greater good.

Book Giveaway!

Would you like to win a copy of Real­ity is Bro­ken? Cour­tesy of The Pen­guin Press and TLC Book Tours, one hard­cover copy of the book will be given away to one of my read­ers in the U.S. or Canada.  If you’d like to enter to win, sim­ply leave a com­ment below using your email address.  I will ran­domly select a win­ner on Fri­day, Jan­u­ary 28 and will con­tact you fur­ther by email.

Good luck!

Review: Reasons to Love ‘Deathly Hallows: Part 1′

When I first learned that Warner Bros. was going to split  Harry Pot­ter and the Deathly Hal­lows into two movies, there was much kick­ing and scream­ing on my part.  I was not alone.  There were plenty of fans and non-fans alike who felt it was a poor deci­sion, and one that fur­ther painted Warner Bros. as greedy stu­dio execs who were try­ing to milk the Harry Pot­ter fran­chise dry.

I saw Harry Pot­ter and the Deathly Hal­lows: Part 1 last night and I am happy to report that my atti­tude has changed.  My faith in David Yates still wan­ing, I went into the movie with slightly low­ered expec­ta­tions.  But when the cred­its rolled, I walked out of the the­ater with only pos­i­tive thoughts.  Reflect­ing on the fin­ished prod­uct, I now under­stand not only why it was nec­es­sary to make two films, but also why the film­mak­ers felt it was impor­tant.  They wanted to give us a proper farewell.

Right away, the decay­ing Warner Bros. logo sets the tone: this will not be a happy movie.  Dum­b­le­dore is dead, Volde­mort and his Death Eaters have infil­trated the Min­istry of Magic, and the wiz­ard­ing world is at war.  Times are so dark that even the Mug­gles are flee­ing their homes–nowhere is safe.  Harry, Ron, and Hermione have said their good­byes to Hog­warts (the warm, famil­iar school set­ting is notice­ably absent) and set out on a jour­ney to destroy the hor­cruxes: objects con­tain­ing the seven pieces of Voldemort’s soul that are the keys to his destruction.

The dan­ger is emi­nent from begin­ning to end; this is the dark­est Harry Pot­ter film yet (which should be no sur­prise to those who have read the books).  There are some gen­uinely fright­en­ing scenes and, of course, more deaths of beloved char­ac­ters.  Yet all this doom and gloom is punc­tu­ated by sur­pris­ing lit­tle moments of joy.  I found myself cheer­ing at grand entrances, for exam­ple, when Dobby bursts into Num­ber 12 Gri­mauld Place wrapped around Mundun­gus Fletcher; and at other times laugh­ing out loud like when Harry tests out the wand that Ron gives him, which unex­pect­edly shoots out a pil­lar of flame  (it’s much fun­nier than it sounds, trust me).

There were also many moments in the film that felt like a love let­ter to fans.  There was an espe­cially lovely scene where Harry coaxes a melan­choly Hermione into danc­ing with him; it was a touch­ing and fit­ting trib­ute to their seven years of almost sibling-like friend­ship.  We were also treated to an early scene where Hermione per­forms a mem­ory charm on her par­ents, know­ing she will have to leave them behind.  In the books, we never get to see Hermione’s “Mug­gle” life, so I really enjoyed this lit­tle bit.

I some­times take issue when this type of fluff is injected into books based on movies, espe­cially if they replace scenes that are more crit­i­cal to the plot, but I could not find much to com­plain about here.  Even the book’s most ten­der moments are han­dled with great care like the death of Dobby (which man­aged to make me cry) .  There are, of course, some dif­fer­ences between book and film that improve the flow and pac­ing of events, but over­all I felt Deathly Hal­lows: Part 1 was a very faith­ful adap­ta­tion that cap­tured the same feel­ings of iso­la­tion and impend­ing doom.

There were some low­lights for me, how­ever.  Let’s start with Xenophilus Lovegood–I didn’t care for Rhys Ifans’ per­for­mance.  I real­ize the char­ac­ter is sup­posed to be eccen­tric, but I felt really dis­tracted by his screen-time.  Also, I love Helena Bon­ham Carter as Bel­la­trix Lestrange, but with every Harry Pot­ter movie she gets more and more ridicu­lous.  When­ever she’s on screen I feel like I’m watch­ing the Helena Bon­ham Carter show–I wish she’d tone it down a bit.  Then there was Alexan­der Desplat’s score, which was not spec­tac­u­lar, but it gets the job done.  Those are my only com­plaints, and yes, they’re nitpicky.

Visu­ally, Deathly Hal­lows is a mar­vel of film­mak­ing, from the cin­e­matog­ra­phy to the spe­cial effects.  The spells, appari­tions, fly­ing and bat­tle scenes all looked amaz­ing.   As much as I missed Hog­warts, this film makes up for its absence with breath­tak­ing nat­ural back­drops.  See­ing it on an IMAX screen was truly a mem­o­rable experience.

But as spec­tac­u­lar as part one of Deathly Hal­lows is, it’s almost a bit unfair to review it as a com­plete film.  Even at a whop­ping two hours and twenty six min­utes long, I guar­an­tee you will be dis­ap­pointed when it ends; feel­ing rather like some­one pulled the rug out from under you.  And like all good two-part movies, this one ends on a major down note.  For those won­der­ing what part of the book serves as the end­ing to this film, I will only say this: they made a very good decision.

There were so many things to love about Harry Pot­ter and the Deathly Hal­lows , and I am con­fi­dent it will go down as one of the best films in the Pot­ter movie fran­chise, if not the best. The only bad thing about this movie…is that it ends.

Review: Gray Matter Was Worth the Wait

For gamers who have been antic­i­pat­ing the release of this game for over seven years (prac­ti­cally an eter­nity in game devel­op­ment), Gray Mat­ter will inevitably polar­ize us into two groups:

1. Those who will crit­i­cize it for not being per­fect despite “all that extra time” the devel­op­ers have had to work on it
2. Those, like myself, who are sim­ply so grate­ful to finally be able to play this gem that we are will­ing to look past its shortcomings.

The most glar­ing crit­i­cisms are the game’s graph­ics and ani­ma­tions.  (Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way, shall we?)  If you are expect­ing an adven­ture game with cut­ting edge graph­ics and ani­ma­tion, you will not find it here.  What you can expect, how­ever, is a game that is rich in story, mys­tery, and the super­nat­ural.  In other words, it’s all the things that fans of Jane Jensen’s games have come to expect.   Gray Mat­ter tells a beau­ti­fully crafted story with inter­wo­ven themes of sci­ence vs. magic, love and obses­sion, death and for­give­ness. Set in Oxford, the game is steeped in his­tory and atmos­phere, and fea­tures real loca­tions from around Eng­land ren­dered into beau­ti­ful, softly lit backdrops.

There are two main char­ac­ters that the player con­trols alter­na­tively in dif­fer­ent chap­ters:  Saman­tha (“Sam”) Everett, a young, spunky ex-goth street magi­cian who has spent most of her well-traveled life in and out of fos­ter care, and Dr. David Styles, a bril­liant but reclu­sive neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gist with a tragic past.  Both of their lives begin to change when Sam shows up at the doorstep of Dread Hill House one rainy night, des­per­ate for a job and a place to stay.  Still mourn­ing his dead wife and con­sumed by his exper­i­ments, Dr. Styles soon becomes entan­gled in pow­er­ful forces he does not under­stand, and it’s up to Sam–who has an agenda of her own–to help him.

The story unfolds in a care­ful, sus­pense­ful man­ner that gives us insight into both char­ac­ters’ minds and emo­tions.  Nei­ther of them hold all the clues or know all the answers, and both of them are deeply flawed in one way or another.  That’s all I will say with­out giv­ing too much away.

The voice act­ing ranges from just okay to great, with Sam’s voice lean­ing toward the low end of the spec­trum; a bit dis­ap­point­ing given her huge role.  There are cer­tainly moments when her voice shines, but over­all I felt it didn’t quite fit her char­ac­ter and wasn’t always gen­uine.  On the oppo­site end, David’s voice was excel­lent.  The game’s score and sound­track is another high­light.  The few sub­tle musi­cal tracks are won­der­fully com­posed, if a bit repet­i­tive. (I’m now a Scar­let Furies fan, by the way.)

The game also fea­tures graphic novel-style cutscenes that have a hand-painted look and feel.  I very much enjoyed the game’s art style, but crit­ics will most likely ding the cutscenes for being a byprod­uct of low bud­get.  I at least applaud the devel­op­ers for doing some­thing unique and cre­ative given their limitations.

Most of the puz­zles are log­i­cal inventory-based puz­zles that fit the sit­u­a­tion the pro­tag­o­nists find them­selves in.  You will not encounter any ran­dom, out of place puz­zle mech­a­nisms that seem to exist just to slow your progress, or be required to go on any tedious pixel-hunting tan­gents.  The game’s magic trick sys­tem is inno­v­a­tive and pro­vides some unique game­play, but it’s also not much of a challenge.

Over­all, the puz­zles aren’t that dif­fi­cult, but they are some­times pre­sented in a non-linear fash­ion that I often found con­fus­ing.  For exam­ple, gold loca­tions on your map indi­cate that there’s “some­thing left to do” at that loca­tion.  How­ever, the game will not let you progress until you go to another loca­tion, work on a sep­a­rate puz­zle for a while, then come back later.  You will find your­self check­ing the Chap­ter Progress screen frequently.

One issue I have with many adven­ture games is the copi­ous amounts of read­ing.  Though Gray Mat­ter does have its fair share of in-game doc­u­ments and other printed mis­cel­lany, it’s usu­ally pre­sented in such a way that’s easy to digest and actu­ally some­what infor­ma­tive and inter­est­ing.  (You may even find your­self learn­ing a thing or two about magic–who else tried some of Sam’s tricks out on their friends?)  And of course, in clas­sic Jane Jensen style, there’s plenty of humor, in-jokes, and pop cul­ture references.

Gray Mat­ter proves, as most great adven­ture games do, that graph­ics are not the only thing that makes a game good.  If you can look past it’s rough edges, Gray Mat­ter will reward you with sat­is­fy­ing game­play, lov­able char­ac­ters, and a truly riv­et­ing story that comes to an excit­ing and sat­is­fy­ing con­clu­sion.  But per­haps the more amaz­ing story is how Gray Mat­ter sur­vived through years of devel­op­ment hell and lived to tell its tale.

Yes,  Gray Mat­ter was absolutely worth the wait.