’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.

10 Reasons to Buy a PlayStation Vita Right Now (and 10 Reasons Not To)

With the North Amer­i­can launch of PlaySta­tion Vita just days away, 1up has put together this in-depth eval­u­a­tion , which serves as a score­card of sorts to help you decide if Sony’s newest hand­held will be a wor­thy invest­ment of your hard-earned gam­ing dol­lars.  Like many gamers, I too am weigh­ing the deci­sion of whether or not to drop $250 or more on this lit­tle piece of plas­tic, how­ever slick and beau­ti­ful it looks at first glance.

After read­ing through 1UP’s four page’s worth of exhaus­tive hands-on review and com­men­tary, I’ve dis­tilled the main talk­ing points into pros and cons to help me (and hope­fully you) decide if Vita is the must-have, can’t-live-without gam­ing portable you should rush out to the store and buy immediately—of if you should save your cash and take the “wait and see” approach.

First, let’s get the fan­boy hype out of the way…

10 rea­sons to buy a Vita right now:

1.  The screen is drop-dead gor­geous.  At 5 inches with a dis­play res­o­lu­tion of 960 x 650, games look amaz­ing even at oblique angles or from a dis­tance.  OLED tech­nol­ogy means richer col­ors and pure, deep blacks.

2.  Clunky UMDs are a thing of the past.   For game soft­ware, the Vita drops uni­ver­sal media discs (UMDs), which were extremely clunky (due to all the mov­ing parts required in an opti­cal drive), in favor of pro­pri­etary, solid state flash mem­ory cards. No more acci­den­tal disc ejections!

3.  Decent bat­tery life.  Vita’s reported bat­tery life is good for up to 5 hours of inter­rupted play. 1Up observed 3.5 — 4 hours of play­time run­ning a high-performance game at full screen bright­ness. It’s not amaz­ing bat­tery life, but it’s cer­tainly on par with most other devices.

4.  Left AND right ana­log sticks for the win.   The Vita is the only hand­held that boasts proper left and right ana­log sticks (ver­sus PSP’s weird lit­tle slid­ing ana­log nub thingy). Most mod­ern games like plat­form­ers and FPSs are designed for dual ana­log sticks, so play­ing these types of games on Vita will be more com­fort­able and enjoyable.

5.  Rear touch pad and two cam­eras.  It’s a hard­ware com­bi­na­tion that should make for some very inter­est­ing games, if devel­op­ers inte­grate them wisely.

6.  Sim­ple, ele­gant, multi-touch user inter­face.   It’s clear Sony was inspired by iOS when design­ing Vita’s inter­face; except instead of lit­tle square icons with rounded cor­ners, Vita’s are cir­cu­lar. Multi-touch lets you flick and swipe the screen to move between home screens and launch and close apps.

7.  Mul­ti­task­ing is now pos­si­ble.  Unlike the PSP, you don’t have to quit your game to jump into another app. And there are sure to be plenty of 3rd-party Vita apps com­ing soon that you’ll want to have the abil­ity to switch between.

8.  Vita’s PlaySta­tion Store rocks.  Accord­ing to 1Up, it “eas­ily ranks among the best con­tent stores any­where.” Nav­i­ga­tion is easy and more direct than on PS3, and the store is sim­ple and clutter-free.

9.  Excit­ing launch titles.   The launch game line-up for Vita, though not exten­sive, includes sev­eral hotly antic­i­pated, note­wor­thy gems like UNCHARTED: Golden Abyss , Lit­tle Deviants , and Grav­ity Rush .

10.  The (some­what) afford­able pric­etag.   Yes, it’s $250, which isn’t a drop in the hat by any means. But this is Sony we’re talk­ing about. $250 for a tech­no­log­i­cally supe­rior portable gam­ing device doesn’t seem so bad when com­pared to, say, 3DS’s $250 launch pricetag.

And now for some harsh realities:

10 rea­sons NOT to buy a Vita (or at least wait a while):

1.  You’ll have to buy your PSP games all over again.  If you want to be able to play them on Vita, that is. Vita only sup­ports PSP games pur­chased from the PlaySta­tion store. So if you have pur­chased an exten­sive library of PSP games and expect to play them on Vita (which upgrades their graph­ics qual­ity sig­nif­i­cantly), guess what? You’re shit outta luck.

2.  It’s not truly “back­wards com­pat­i­ble.” Even though Sony’s push­ing this as a sell­ing point.  Yes, you can play PSP games on Vita and they look amaz­ing with upscaled graph­ics, but with no way of play­ing your PSP UMDs on Vita with­out hav­ing to re-purchase your games, is it really fair to make this claim?

3. The ana­log sticks are likely to break.  Hav­ing dual ana­log sticks on a portable is great, but not when they jut out so far from the device that they could eas­ily break off. 1Up rec­om­mends pur­chas­ing a hard-shell Vita case to help shield them from acci­den­tal drops, or being snagged on some­thing (like when you’re stash­ing it away in your bag).

4.  The rear touch pad is awk­ward, uncom­fort­able.   Gamers with large hands may have trou­ble hold­ing the device com­fort­ably, since merely graz­ing the rear touch pad acci­den­tally with your fin­gers can trig­ger “back touch,” Sony’s new touch-based sen­sor on the back of the sys­tem. You’ll most likely need to con­stantly adjust your grip while play­ing games, which doesn’t sound very com­fort­able to me at all.

5. Vita’s stor­age media is ridicu­lously expen­sive.  Sony only uses pro­pri­etary (read: expen­sive) stor­age cards for Vita. A 32 GB PlaySta­tion Vita mem­ory card costs $100.  For comparison’s sake, you can buy a 32 GB SD card for about 30 bucks.  And accord­ing to every­thing I’ve read, you’re going to need a lot  of stor­age for Vita’s library of games.

6.  The touch screen con­trols are incon­sis­tent.   Rather than giv­ing gamers a choice between touch AND D-pad con­trols, you’ll be forced to use only touch screen con­trols when nav­i­gat­ing the Vita’s menu sys­tems.  This is counter intu­itive and incon­sis­tent with some games like UNCHARTED: Golden Abyss , where play­ers have the choice to use either/or.

7.  The Vita games library is promis­ing, but not stel­lar.   Other than a few key Vita titles, the library at launch time mostly includes ports and re-worked games from other platforms.

8. That $250 pric­etag is actu­ally more like $400.   By the time you pur­chase a mem­ory card, a pro­tec­tive car­ry­ing case (which you’re going to need, due to the ana­log stick design flaws men­tioned above), and a game, you’re look­ing at a total spend of around $400 or more.

9.  Other than look­ing impres­sive, what does Vita really offer?   Apart from the rear touch con­trol (which, from the sound of it, is less cool in real­ity) there’s not much in the way of inno­va­tion here other than being able to play beautiful-looking games on a handheld.

10.  Is there room in our lives for another portable gam­ing device?  Most gamers already own a DS (maybe even a 3Ds) and a PSP in addi­tion to their smart­phones, tablets, Kin­dles, and other expen­sive gad­gets that can also play games.  That begs the ques­tion: where does PlaySta­tion Vita fit in?

The main ques­tion for me is:  Do I really need this much gam­ing power in my pocket?  Being real­is­tic about the price, am I will­ing to drop around $400 for a device that doesn’t offer me any sig­nif­i­cant value other than look­ing slick and being able to play a small hand­ful of beautiful-looking games?  The thing that would be most likely to get me to change my mind at this point is offer­ing more exclu­sive, must-have titles that would jus­tify and sup­port my pur­chase.   UNCHARTED: Golden Abyss is a good start.  But what else?

As I did with the PS3, I think I’ll take the “wait and see” approach for PlaySta­tion Vita.  How about you?

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.

Heavy Rain is, well, heavy. (A spoiler-free review.)

Every so often, a game comes along that changes the way I feel about video games.  Heavy Rain is one of them.  It’s been a long time since I’ve played a game that has absorbed me as com­pletely as this one did.  I sup­pose I should pref­ace this review by admit­ting that Heavy Rain is the main rea­son I finally broke down and bought a PS3.  (Sure, I’m a month or two late, but that’s what I get for pro­cras­ti­nat­ing on my taxes.)  I had been lust­ing after this game for well over a year, all the while lament­ing my lack of PS3.  But the game’s highly antic­i­pated release, along with PS3’s much more rea­son­able $299 pric­etag, was, for me, a win­ning combo I could no longer ignore.

So a few days ago I wasted no time break­ing the seal of the PS3 box, breath­ing in that deli­cious new con­sole smell (I know you know what I’m talk­ing about) and chris­ten­ing my Sony expe­ri­ence with this amaz­ing game.  I won’t bother delv­ing too deep into the plot or the char­ac­ters, as I’m sure you can find more than enough infor­ma­tion about them else­where.  Instead I’d like to focus my review on con­grat­u­lat­ing Quan­tic Dream for craft­ing a gam­ing expe­ri­ence like no other.  It seems incor­rect some­how to refer to Heavy Rain as a video game, when really it’s more akin to an inter­ac­tive film.  The direc­tion and art design demand your atten­tion right away, with graph­ics so real­is­tic you almost feel like you’re intrud­ing on these character’s lives.  (Side note: the game def­i­nitely lives up to it’s M-17 rat­ing; it’s def­i­nitely not a game I’d let my kids play…if I had kids).  The metic­u­lously detailed envi­ron­ments, rich sound­scapes, and of course the game’s sig­na­ture relent­less, pound­ing rain com­bine to cre­ate an atmos­phere of intense fore­bod­ing.  It’s an emo­tion­ally heavy expe­ri­ence that pro­gresses from light to dark; from sad­ness to full on despair.

Although there is but one over­ar­ch­ing objective–to iden­tify and stop The Origami Killer–the four main char­ac­ters each have their own story to tell.  Your actions and deci­sions as a player impact their per­sonal nar­ra­tives, for bet­ter or for worse.  There is no right or wrong in Heavy Rain , there is only cause and effect.  The best course of action to take is not always the most obvi­ous; and some­times the game throws a deci­sion at you so fast you can eas­ily miss it.  Yet the game pro­gresses even if you fail or if your actions don’t unfold as intended.  By the way, Heavy Rain’s auto-save fea­ture pre­vents you from going back for “do-overs.”  Thus, life goes on and you must live with your choices.

With that final thought in mind, I’ll try not to beat myself up too much for unin­ten­tion­ally killing off 3 out of 4 main characters. ;-)

My thoughts after fin­ish­ing Heavy Rain :

• Damn, I fucked up.
• Damn, I fucked up a lot.
• Now I’ll need to play through it again just to redeem myself.
• The iden­tity of the Origami Killer…wow.  Did not see that one com­ing.  At all.
• Yes, Heavy Rain was worth the wait. (And worth my PS3 pur­chase, for that matter.)
• This theme music is going to be stuck in my head for a long time…

And now, a few small gripes (because Heavy Rain, although amaz­ing, isn’t perfect):

• It was shorter than I had hoped.  On the other hand, like a well-edited movie, it was no longer than it needed to be.
• Some­times the game is too lin­ear for my taste; it’s often too obvi­ous where to go or what to do next.
• Some of the but­ton com­bi­na­tions are frus­trat­ing as hell; be pre­pared for rig­or­ous fin­ger exercises.
• It could just be my shitty TV, but some­times it’s really hard to see the action icons.  There were mul­ti­ple times when I inter­preted an action incor­rectly because either my char­ac­ter was hid­ing it, or it was too small to see.

Despite its minor flaws, I loved every sec­ond of Heavy Rain and I wish there were more games like it.

I didn’t realize New Moon was a comedy

All this week I pur­posely stayed away from the spoil­ers, the leaked clips, the early reviews, the 3 a.m. tweets, and the rav­ing fan­girl Twi­hards in social­me­di­a­land.  I wanted to see New Moon with­out my already low opin­ion of Stephe­nie Meyer and her ilk taint­ing my expe­ri­ence.  So tonight I cast aside the Twilulz and gave New Moon a chance.

I want my $10.00 back.

New Moon started badly, ended badly, with plenty of suck in between. Now, I real­ize The Twi­light Saga isn’t exactly pro­found lit­er­a­ture.  I also real­ize I’m about ten years older than this franchise’s tar­get audi­ence.  But I also know the dif­fer­ence between good and bad movies, and New Moon is a ter­ri­ble film.  The Twi­hards must be happy, though.  If they were hop­ing for a per­fect smoldering-glare-by-smoldering-glare trans­la­tion of the book, New Moon delivers.

It’s not like the con­cept of vam­pires ver­sus were­wolves is any­thing new, nei­ther is the injec­tion of a trite love tri­an­gle.  But when you take already-ridiculous sub­ject mat­ter and try to turn it into a seri­ous film, usu­ally one of two things hap­pens:  1) You get some­thing akin to Under­world .  2) Hilar­ity.  New Moon col­lapsed under the weight of its own attempt at being seri­ous.  There were some moments when I felt like I was watch­ing One Life to Live .  At other times, an after-school spe­cial.   Sure, I laughed dur­ing the parts where I was sup­posed to laugh.  There were plenty of inten­tion­ally funny moments pep­pered through­out the film, and these I enjoyed.  But I knew the movie was bad when I couldn’t stop laugh­ing at the seri­ous parts.  I wasn’t alone, either.  I heard snorts and sti­fled gig­gles all around me.

I found these bits espe­cially lol-worthy:

• Grandma Swan’s thou­sand yard stare.
• Edward Cullen’s fond­ness for walk­ing in slow-motion.
• CGI were­wolves emote sur­pris­ingly well.  Almost as good as Fal­cor in the Nev­erend­ing Story!
• Throngs of ambigu­ously gay shirt­less wolfmen.
• Cam­era shots that make every­thing seem EPIC.
• Bella and Edward frol­ick­ing through the woods. Yes, frol­ick­ing.
• The Volturi’s drag makeup.
  
• Bella is evi­dently a Mac geek.  No won­der I hate her.

And those were just some of the good parts.  Aside from mak­ing me laugh inap­pro­pri­ately, the film’s music was another sore point.  The score seemed so out of place in most scenes, it was almost laugh­able.  In other places it was weirdly silent.  I really missed Carter Burwell’s beau­ti­ful Bella’s Lul­laby theme from the first movie; I wish they had reprised it here.  In fact there was no trace of any kind of theme at all in New Moon ; just the occa­sional soap opera-ish strings (you know, dur­ing the ” smol­der­ing glares ”) and and end­less playlist of sedate, instantly for­get­table indie songs.  This is one ille­gal down­load I’ll skip.

New Moon has a run­ning time of 2 hours.  By the 90 minute mark, I was pray­ing for it to end.  Say what you want about Cather­ine Hardwicke’s gritty direct­ing style, but she did a hell of a lot bet­ter on Twi­light than Chris Weitz on New Moon .  It’s sad that I have to say this, but New Moon makes Twi­light —a much lower bud­get film, I might add—look like an Oscar nom­i­nee. I don’t sup­pose it’s entirely Chris Weitz’s fault, though, con­sid­er­ing the source.  New Moon is a shitty book, ergo, New Moon is a shitty movie.  I guess you can’t pol­ish a turd.

God, I hate being right all the time!

Harry Potter and the Half-way Decent Movie

So it’s like 3:30 a.m., and I just got home from the mid­night show­ing of Harry Pot­ter and the Half-Blood Prince .  I could go to bed, but I had to get a few things off my mind first while my mem­o­ries are still fresh.  Legili­mens!

First, the good.  This movie was a LOT of fun.  As one of my Twit­ter pals put it, Half-Blood Prince felt like return­ing to high school and see­ing all of your old friends.  Harry, Ron, and Hermione have always been at the heart of every Pot­ter film, and HBP doesn’t devi­ate from this win­ning for­mula.  The film doesn’t waste any time get­ting right down to busi­ness, and it’s action-packed from start to fin­ish.  From a plot stand­point, it had a lot of ground to cover (as all the Pot­ter films do) and those two and a half hours just seem to fly by.  Over­all it was a solid Pot­ter film, and I’m sure it will hold up to many sub­se­quent view­ings, which are no doubt nec­es­sary to catch all the things you might have missed.  There was just so much going on in this movie it was almost overwhelming.

And now the not-so-good.  I don’t know if this is a byprod­uct of hav­ing been forced to wait an extra 9 months for its release and hav­ing inflated expec­ta­tions or what, but HBP def­i­nitely had its short­com­ings.  The down­side to cram­ming so much stuff in is that there’s quite a bit left out.  And I’m not even one of those book Nazis that insists all movies must be 100% faith­ful to the book; not even close.  I just didn’t under­stand some of the logic behind the deci­sions made in this film’s case.  They had time to throw in a bunch of lengthy scenes that never hap­pened, but they didn’t have time to include the ones that actu­ally did?  I would rather see a film where they’re forced to leave things out due to time con­straints ver­sus just mak­ing up what­ever the hell they want to.  With­out giv­ing any­thing away, the first 10 min­utes of this film is a prime example.

Many parts of this film just didn’t feel like a Harry Pot­ter movie at all when com­pared to the pre­vi­ous five.  I think a lit­tle too much lib­erty was taken, to the point that some of the things that make Pot­ter movies feel like Pot­ter movies was lost–which is really sur­pris­ing, because I felt Yates did such a fan­tas­tic job with Order of the Phoenix.  Maybe I’m expect­ing too much; it’s just Harry Pot­ter after all.  Or maybe I’m just get­ting too old for this shit.  I cer­tainly felt old dur­ing the romcom-y bits when 90% of the the­ater was squeal­ing like giddy school­girls.  It could not have been more appar­ent who this film’s tar­get audi­ence was.

Speak­ing of get­ting old, when did the stu­dents of Hog­warts all turn 30?  I real­ize Daniel Rad­cliffe and com­pany have aged quite a bit since the first film, but I don’t think I saw any younger stu­dents at all in HBP.  You know what else I didn’t see?  Any infor­ma­tion about the Half-Blood Prince what­so­ever.  I feel bad for any­one who has never read the books that tries to watch this film; you will be hope­lessly lost.

For the rest of you–the ones who’ve read the books–despite my pithy com­plaints, there’s a lot to love about the film ver­sion of Half-Blood Prince:

(Warn­ing: HERE THERE BE SPOILERS.  Beware! )

Things I liked:

• The bits about Harry & Hermione’s friend­ship, par­tic­u­larly Dumbledore’s “curios­ity.” So cute.
• Jim Broadbent’s turn as Slughorn; great job!
• Aragog’s funeral and Hagrid’s sub­se­quent drink­ing binge.
• Snape bein’ all Snape-ish as only Snape can.
• Happy to see Tonks & Lupin together , how­ever brief.
• Both kids who played Tom Rid­dle (age 11 & age 16) were fantastic!
• Michael Gambon’s Dum­b­le­dore was much bet­ter played this time around.

…And of course,  there were some things that needed improvement:

Things I could have done with­out:

• Jessie Cave as Laven­der Brown.
• Pan­der­ing to the HP fan­girl set.  Yes I real­ize HBP is the “O.C.” of all the Pot­ter books, but the teen romance por­trayed in this film was just over the top, to the point where I felt like the roman­tic sub­plots over­shad­owed the main one.
• Ran­dom black woman who comes on to Harry in a cafe.  Seri­ously, what is up with ran­dom black char­ac­ters appear­ing in the Pot­ter films?  It’s almost like the direc­tors throw them in there for diversity’s sake.
• The heavy-handed direc­tion.  I swear in some shots you could almost feel Yates think­ing “Hmm, what crazy cam­era wiz­ardry can I do to make this scene look cooler?”
• The Weasley’s house burn­ing down.  Um, WTF??
• Fen­rir Grey­back.  Although an impor­tant char­ac­ter in the book, his pres­ence added noth­ing to this movie.

Things I missed:

• The “feel” and spirit of Hog­warts just wasn’t there for me this time around.
• Did they even bother to put the main char­ac­ters in uni­forms dur­ing classes?
• Where the hell were all the younger stu­dents?  I don’t think I saw even one.
• Dumbledore’s funeral.  I won­der if we’ll see it in the begin­ning of Deathly Hal­lows? I felt the end­ing in gen­eral was kind of a cop-out.
• Cho Chang. I thought we’d at least see her in the back­ground or something.
• Any back­ground infor­ma­tion what­so­ever about the Half-Blood Prince.

P.S.  Did any­one else almost pee a lit­tle bit when Dum­b­le­dore (whom J.K. Rowl­ing pro­fesses to be gay) starts telling Harry how he’s been fond of him since he was a lit­tle boy, and that they need to fig­ure out the deal with the closet??  Unin­ten­tional hilar­ity FTW.

The New Moon Trailer: OMG Squee!*

*Dis­claimer: I do not ever say things like ” squee ” or other words usu­ally belong­ing to the ver­nac­u­lar of 12 year old  fan­girls, but felt the dis­claimer was nec­es­sary to save me from hav­ing to explain myself to idiots who can’t tell when I’m being sarcastic.

Here’s what all the fuss is about:

If the trailer is any indi­ca­tion, I believe  New Moon is going to suck and suck hard , but it’s really not the filmmaker’s faults.  My lack of enthu­si­asm for the movie can be blamed on author Stephe­nie Meyer’s dread­ful source mate­r­ial.  For your con­ve­nience, and for my own per­sonal amuse­ment, let’s re-cap Meyer’s super-epic plot to the sequel of Twi­light , shall we?

• It’s Bella Swan’s birth­day and her vam­pire friends throw her a party at their digs.
• At the party, Bella gets a paper cut.
• Jasper, one of the newest vam­pires, can’t con­trol him­self when he sees the blood.
• Pre­dictably, he goes into a rage and lunges for Bella.
• Bella’s sexy vam­pire boyfriend Edward Cullen (pause to swoon here) saves the day…
• …But then tells Bella he must leave her for­ever in order to keep her safe, then peaces out.
• Bella can’t han­dle him leav­ing and goes all emo, bor­der­line suicidal.
• That’s okay though, because there’s yet another sexy guy, Jacob Black, just wait­ing around to take Edward’s place.
• And Jacob just hap­pens to be a werewolf.
• Jacob tries to get Bella to “drop that zero and get with the hero” but she ain’t havin’ none, and con­tin­ues to mope around and do reck­less things, like ride motor­cy­cles and go cliff diving.
• At some point Jacob the Were­wolf saves Bella from Lau­rent and Vic­to­ria, two ran­dom vam­pires turned vil­lians, recy­cled from the plot of Twi­light .
• Then out of nowhere, thanks to some weird, poorly-explained mixup cour­tesy of Edward’s sis­ter Alice, who can see the future but fucks it up som­times, Edward thinks Bella com­mit­ted suicide.
• In true Romeo and Juliet fash­ion, Edward decides he can’t live with­out Bella either, and runs off to Italy to kill him­self too.
• But Edward’s a vam­pire, and sui­cide is eas­ier said than done.  Rather than try to explain about the evil Vol­turi and the other bull­shit sec­ondary char­ac­ters that Meyer pulls out of her ass when she needs a plot, Edward’s sui­cide attempt can best be expressed as: DEATH BY SPARKLES.
• Just in the nick of time, Bella saves Edward from expos­ing him­self thus sav­ing him from the Vol­turi and there’s a big dra­matic reunite­ment scene.
• Some other unim­por­tant crap hap­pens in Italy, then Bella, Edward, and the rest of the vam­pires return home.
• Bella wants des­per­ately to become a vam­pire, and so she calls a Super­friends meet­ing where all the vam­pires take turns vot­ing on whether or not it should happen.
• And like the end­ing of  Twi­light , Meyer recy­cles the same “does Bella become a vam­pire or not?” cliffhanger in New Moon .
• The end!

It’s mind-blowing stuff, I know.  If you really want, feel free to read  my less than glow­ing review of the  New Moon book over at Ama­zon.  It’s just all so ridicu­lous, even for a fan­tasy book based on vam­pires.  Most of the book’s 563 pages is spent with Bella, as she pines away for her lost vam­pire love, and let me tell you, it was hell read­ing through page after page of this:

“I was not allowed to think of him. That was some­thing I tried to be very strict about. Of course I slipped; I was only human. But I was get­ting bet­ter, and so the pain was some­thing I could avoid for days at a time now. The trade­off was the never-ending numb­ness. Between pain and noth­ing, I’d cho­sen noth­ing.”

So by default,  New Moon the film should at least be a slight improve­ment over New Moon the book, if only because the nature of the media spares you the lit­er­ary tor­ture.  But Hol­ly­wood isn’t dumb.  It knows there’s good money to be made by cater­ing to the overzeal­ous female fan­base that made the first film such a suc­cess.   Twi­light fans want hot vam­pires, mushy romance, and plenty of Rob Pat­tin­son screen time.  Make no mis­take, New Moon will be one big fan­girl orgy from start to finish.

But why take my word for it when you can read real reviews of the trailer writ­ten by (what I hope are) teenaged girls?

“ok WOW!!! new moon is going to be AH-Mazing, i love kristen’s face when she say ” kiss me” her eye­brow is funny! and the were­wolf, i didnt even expect it to be that big, but OMg i love it!! but tay­lor GOOOOSSH!! i thought he was Hott, now he like fire! but edward was really sad!cant wait! woooo and bella looked eally pretty”

“The part when she got the paper cut and jasper tried to get her but, edward pushed her was so intensed i was like O.O”

“omg omg omg not going to faint but omg. that as freak­ing awsume. may i faint from how hot jacob is. p.s. i think the wolfy looks friendly”

“OMG! This movie looks even bet­ter than Twi­light! It’s dri­ving me crazy cause I wanna see it so bad! Idk if I can wait for Novem­ber 20 to come! Btw: Jacob, so hot!”

Well there you have it.

Nothing ventured…

Sur­prise is a rare feel­ing for me to get from most games nowa­days, but The Lost Crown is a rare breed of game—the kind that draws you in slowly, peel­ing away each rich layer of story, slow and method­i­cal.  You are Nigel Dan­vers, trea­sure hunter and para­nor­mal inves­ti­ga­tor, sent to seek your fortune—the ancient Anglo-Saxon crown—like many before you.  Atmos­pheric and steeped in mys­tery, the quaint Eng­lish sea­side town of Sax­ton and the sur­round­ing coun­try­side awaits your adven­ture…

Although “a ghost-hunting adven­ture” is indeed an appro­pri­ate sub­ti­tle for this game, I believe it’s also the thing that orig­i­nally turned me off, and the rea­son why I have not played this game until now.  I finally decided to give it a go after see­ing it so highly rec­om­mended here and here .  I remem­ber a few years back, see­ing The Lost Crown on the store shelves, and quickly dis­miss­ing it as some kind of cliche hor­ror title with vague, sim­plis­tic goals of cap­tur­ing proof of the after­life.  And while it’s true that you will spend a good por­tion of your play­time doing exactly that, The Lost Crown offers much, much more.

For starters, the game fea­tures a large cast of extremely well-developed characters—both liv­ing and dead—all with dis­tinct per­son­al­i­ties, back­grounds, & (often tragic) his­to­ries.  The quirky towns­peo­ple of Sax­ton are gen­er­ally a sim­ple and kind­hearted folk, but the small town’s more sin­is­ter res­i­dents (and past res­i­dents) are the kind you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley, or say, in an ancient grave­yard in the mid­dle of the night! Every sin­gle line of dia­log in this game is superbly voice acted.  The sound­track is richly lay­ered with Celtic music, ghostly voices, nature sounds, and a cacoph­ony of eerie effects.  It never felt repet­i­tive or unin­ter­est­ing, and each loca­tion seemed to have its own audi­tory iden­tity.  The starkly-contrasted black and white visu­als are also highly effec­tive in cre­at­ing the over­all mood.  Every scene fea­tures one small burst of color—such as the bright red of the phone booth, or the pale pink hues of the flowers—similar to those old hand-dyed pho­tographs.  But whether its min­i­mal­ist approach to graph­ics was a bold styl­is­tic choice, or a result of bud­getary restraints, The Lost Crown’s unique style oozes charm.

And I haven’t even men­tioned how good the story is yet!  Sax­ton can best be described as a mys­tery wrapped in an enigma.  As its super­sti­tious res­i­dents might say, “Not all is as it seems.”  Your adven­ture into the spirit world will uncover many grisly, ter­ri­ble secrets, but it will also help some of the poor souls who are still lost and wan­der­ing.  The Lost Crown is equal parts scary and sen­ti­men­tal, and this, I feel, is one of its strong points.  There are plenty of scares, but plenty of ten­der moments too.  The game is also sur­pris­ingly long, but I say that to its credit.  There are far too many adven­ture games out there that are big on gim­micks and short on game­play (cough, Still Life , cough).  The Lost Crown takes its time to tell its many related sto­ries, and wraps them all up in an ele­gant pack­age.  The game also boasts a good vari­ety of cre­ative puz­zles, and although chal­leng­ing, not once did I ever feel frus­trated by them.

The Lost Crown is not flaw­less, how­ever.  There were a few (minor) annoyances:

• Inabil­ity to skip through dia­log quickly
• Too wide of a range on click­able “hot spots”, which can be cause for confusion
• Nigel walks very slooooooooooowly…
• Cum­ber­some inven­tory; you will walk around car­ry­ing 20+ things at any given time

But these things are all for­giv­able, espe­cially con­sid­er­ing the small size of the devel­op­ment team, led by the insanely tal­ented game designer, Jonathan Boakes .  I loved this game so much that, before even fin­ish­ing it, I felt com­pelled to buy the Lim­ited “Pins & Nee­dles” Edi­tion of Dark Fall , Jonathan’s pre­vi­ous series of games.  Each edi­tion is hand num­bered & signed by the designer himself—I can’t wait to get my mits on this one!  And as for The Lost Crown , well…I will never judge another game by its cover again!

Coraline: A modern day Wizard of Oz

“You prob­a­bly think this world is a dream come true… but you’re wrong.”

Cora­line is one of those movies I knew I would love before I even knew any­thing about it. Between being writ­ten by fan­tasy god Neil Gaiman , directed by Henry Selick (The Night­mare Before Christ­mas) , and fea­tur­ing dark and dreamy stop-motion visu­als, it just had my name writ­ten all over it. Nev­er­mind that I had never read the story*. I knew I had to see this movie the moment I heard about it.

And I was not disappointed.

From begin­ning to end, Cora­line is an absolute delight on the eyes and ears. It was sort of like watch­ing the inhab­i­tants of a Vic­to­rian doll­house come alive and invite the entire toy box over for tea. Every char­ac­ter was lov­ably quirky, funny, and mem­o­rable; includ­ing the per­son­al­i­ties of the not-always-inanimate objects. Even the voice act­ing of Dakota Fan­ning and Teri Hatcher, two actresses whom I ordi­nar­ily don’t care for, was very well done. I found myself so absorbed that it didn’t even occur to me which famous per­son I was lis­ten­ing to, which is one thing I typ­i­cally dis­like about ani­mated films–I tend to hear the celebrity, not the character.

And the visu­als were top-notch, as usual, which seems to be stan­dard for all of Henry Selick’s pic­tures so far. Kudos to LAIKA ani­ma­tion stu­dio and the hun­dreds of tal­ented peo­ple who brought the world of Cora­line to bril­liant life.

But Cora­line isn’t just eye candy. Like most of Gaiman’s sto­ries, Cora­line has a good mes­sage, and deliv­ers it with a bit of clever wit wrapped in child­like intrigue. Movie­go­ers may find Coraline’s sto­ry­line sim­i­lar to Mir­ror­mask , another of Gaiman’s stories-turned-movie, in which a young girl becomes dis­en­chanted with her life and par­ents, escap­ing to a dream­world where the grass seems greener at first, but soon dis­cov­ers it to be a warped and night­mar­ish ver­sion of her own reality.

I’ve seen some crit­ics already refer to this movie as a clas­sic , and I don’t think I would dis­agree with that. In many ways, the story of Cora­line is rem­i­nis­cent of another clas­sic, The Wiz­ard of Oz. And like Dorothy, Cora­line reminds us that there’s no place like home.

*Note to the book Nazis: Cora­line is pretty faith­ful to its source material.