I Suppose I Might As Well

I’ve had some time to think.

BLACKEST NIGHT: TITANS #2
Written by J.T. Krul
Art and cover by Ed Benes & Rob Hunter
Variant cover by Brian Haberlin

Titan-on-Titan violence! Black Lantern Hawk has his talons set for the female Hawk and Dove! Meanwhile, Red Star faces a frightful family reunion with Black Lanterns Pantha and Wildebeest, and Donna Troy faces her worst possible nightmare! Plus, Black Lantern Terra terrorizes Beast Boy! Continuing the 3-issue miniseries from writer J.T. Krul (JSA CLASSIFIED, Fathom) and superstar artist Ed Benes (JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA)!

I’m cautious. I’m happy Pantha is being used, though not how she got there. But I have some uneasiness.

I worry she’s just going to be the butt of bad, overdone head jokes.

I worry it might end up being a horribly cliched resolution – Red Star learning to let go and leave Pantha and BW to rest (despite, of course, other dead heroes coming back anyways).

I’m hoping they bring back the dead like Pantha after the event is done. They can’t keep Martian Manhunter dead, can they?

In Control

Microsoft’s foray into motion controls, dubbed Project Natal, made a pretty big splash at E3.
The Milo demo was a pretty impressive demo of the capabilities of the device, showing off the various ways you can interact with the game. But Richochet is probably closer to what the actual gameplay will be.

But can you get rid of the controller all together? How will Natal handle other genres of gaming? Can you play something like Street Fighter just by flailing around? Is it easier to use buttons with encoded actions, or miming actions?

Despite striking first and successfully with the Wii, it still requires a controller for input, especially if you consider retro and indie gaming. Shigeru Miyamoto, in fact, argued that controllers are a necessity (full interview) for gaming.

As someone who thinks of things from the perspective of creating interactive experiences, I really think that you do need something. I don’t think as a creator that I could create an experience that truly feels interactive if you don’t have something to hold in your hand, if you don’t have something like force feedback that you can feel from the controller. That’s why I think the Wii remote, particularly with Wii MotionPlus, makes for such a strong experience.

I think that some of their designers are going to be faced with that question going forward, and they’ll have to find solutions to that, and perhaps that’s why you see for one of the devices that it’s not simply a camera, but that you’re holding some kind of wand with lights that change colors. I think those are interesting ideas, and there are interesting ways that that could be developed, but those are challenges that they’re still facing and trying to learn to overcome.

Granted, it’s still way too early to fully judge what Natal will become, but it’s opening up a new road.

The Greatest Animated Film

Yuri Norstein’s dreamlike Tales of Tales has been dubbed the best animated film there is. It’s a real beautiful film, with some haunting imagery.

Here’s the short, split into three parts:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Silent Wii

Looks like my initial disappointment with the Wii might be made up: there will be a “reimagining” of the first Silent Hill for the Wii. An intriguing aspect of the game:

“One of Shattered Memories’ most significant and intriguing additions—your answers actually affect how the game unfolds. And it doesn’t end there. the game “watches” you constantly, and your behavior throughout can determine when you’ll meet certain characters, which scenes you’ll witness, and a variety of other factors.” “In Silent Hill games, the town always gets inside the protagonist’s head,” say Hulett. “But now, it’s getting inside YOUR head.”

That really has my attention. I think Silent Hill 2 did something similar to great effect where your actions lead to different endings. It’d be interesting to see how this implementation works for the new Silent Hill, since it opens up new layers and experiences.

Dream Pair 1

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou + Terrence Malick

Hitoshi Ashinano’s breezy slice-of-life tale is about a robot woman running a cafe that hardly gets many customers. You wouldn’t expect it to have anything in common with a war movie, but Terrence Malick’s Thin Red Line was hardly the standard kind of war movie. (It’s been a while since I’ve seen Badlands and Days of Heaven, so I have stick to Thin Red Line…)

For one thing, they both are really concerned with is people and their philosophic struggle as opposed to an external threat or catastrophe. Ashinano sets his story seemingly after global warming has caused the ocean level to rise up and flood the land, while Malick’s story takes place in the Pacific Theater of World War II. Both aren’t afraid to shelve the Big Event in favor of exploring characters.

Malick’s movie is full long, philosophically-minded introspective monologues and takes long shots of nature to give the audience some time to soak things in. Similarly, Ashinano will have big panels of the post-catatrophic surroundings and long seqences of Alpha alone, going out to buy supplies or work at the cafe. Given Malick’s love of nature (TRL has tons of “pillow shots” of nature in midst of battle), he would be a perfect fit for Ashianano’s similar panels of the altered natural landscape.

Ashinano, though, seems to have much more socialization than Malick’s introspective soldiers – YKK is also about the connections to other people, and so explores the different kind of conversations and relationships. TRL usually has conversations with clear philosophic arguements, such as Sean Penn’s disillousanded cynicism and Jim Cavezel’s idealistic humanism. Still, Malick’s meditative style suits Ashinano’s style just fine.

If Malick wasn’t available, a replacement would be David Gordon Green, who is heavily influenced by Malick’s work. With George Washington, like Ashinano, Green focuses on the daily life, this time of kids in a small, depressed town in the South. Something bad happens, but given what that is (I don’t want to give anything away) it doesn’t turn into a mindless thriller, but instead it explores the characters and how they react to the event and its aftermath. Green employs the meditative style similar to Malick, which works for YKK’s own meditative tone and pacing.

Recently Consumed Media

- I really enjoyed Coraline. You can see that – from the animation to the set design – a lot of love and care went into making this movie. There are some gorgeous scenes (such as when the alternate world breaks down). I’m happy to see it employed stop motion animation, which always, I think, gives the movie a certain charm and aesthetic.

I managed to see it in 3D, which was nice for the movie, but I’m not too sure I’d like to see it in other movies. It looked great (though I had to put the 3D glasses over my regular glasses, which was kinda awkward), but I think 3D only works for certain kinds of movies, not quite for, say, dramas.

- OK, I’m hooked on Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack. I’m a big Tezuka fan, and I love House, so this medical drama is right up my alley. In fact, House owes a lot to Tezuka – the titular main character is a mysterious, complicated man recovering from a disfiguring operation; both deal with rare or special cases with huge risks. House, though, edges more toward a traditional detective story structure (where the diagnosis is the “criminal”), while Black Jack is mostly the drama.

A Shame

Winter is a survival horror game intended for the Wii much in the same vein as Silent Hill. Taking place in a chillyIt uses the Wii’s remote pretty cleverly, intending to be as interactive as possible in an environment, like opening a door a smidge to take a peek, “spark a fire and light some oily rags,” or shake a flashlight to get it to work again. Unfortunately, the game is stuck in limbo, because third party publishers think of the Wii as a kid’s system, and so they’re skittish about selling a dark, mature game on a system that has the stigma of being made for children.

Which is a shame, really, for a number of reasons. From the interview it sounds like the Winter team used the Wii’s potential to good use, integrating the movements with the remote with appropriate actions in the game. It doesn’t seem tacked on or arbitrary. The survival aspect is a fresh take on the survival horror genre, and it appeals to the big Silent Hill fan in me. Second, it would give the Wii some variety in its line-up.

Which leads to a personal letdown.  Out of the PS3, XBox 360, I decided to go with the Wii. The PS3’s and XBox 360’s libraries didn’t really appeal to me for more than a few games. Plus I kept hearing too many stories about the XBox 360 always breaking down. The Wii seemed to have more going on. But now I’m sorta feeling a bit detached from the gaming world. I don’t know – I loved my PS2 because of the wide and varied library that came with it. You could get serious titles like Silent Hill 2 and 3, fighting games like the popular Capcom series to cult favorite Guilty Gear, and quirky gems like Ico, the Katamari Damacy series (when it was still a novelty), and Steambot Chronicles (which I ougtta finish one day). The Wii hasn’t lived quite up to that yet, the PS3 much less so, so far (price not helping too much either).

Cuba at 50

“Gonce still supports the revolution’s principles and is grateful for a recent heart bypass operation. “A top surgeon – and I didn’t pay a cent!” But celebrating the anniversary is not an option. The former author and book editor is nearly destitute. She has no money for decent food, cooking oil or soap, let alone treats. So she will stay at home, follow the anniversary commemorations on TV and reflect on a process that has simultaneously inspired and impoverished her. “The ideals are good but the reality of daily life … ” Her voice trails off.

The ambivalence reflects the complex legacy of a revolution which invested in health and education, crushed dissent and provoked admiration and revulsion. Cuba reaches today’s milestone with the echo of the prediction Fidel Castro made from the dock as a young revolutionary in 1953: “Condemn me, it does not matter. History will absolve me.” Well, did it? “