"Viggo Mortensen in a film called American Yakuza!?" I said, "Sign me up." So I did sign up on Amazon Prime's new video service. It was pretty creepy that I watched this film about a month ago, didn't finish it, loaded it up today and it started right where I closed the window.
Really creepy actually.
I'm actually still watching it as I write this. My reaction to the most recent scene, "DUDE! DUDE! DUDE!" So yes it is actually better than the title would imply. It also features amazing camera angles and frequent improvisational piano (holy fuck I got improvisational right on the first try.) I do mean amazing camera angles. It also features much more symbolism than you would possibly expect in such a film.
It even gets a little homoerotic. And the black cop is dressed like eddy murphy for the final scene, stupendous.
That was a good time!
Monday, August 29, 2011
Friday, August 26, 2011
Koda Kumi - “Poppin’ love cocktail feat. TEEDA”
Song and video here
There are truths to this universe. An absolute truth is this song is the song that will bring Budweiser to Japan. It is the song you drink Budweiser to. I have never consumed a beer, and I am barely holding myself back from jumping into the car to grab an ice cold bud from the convenience store. It is a reality. It is time to drink a Budweiser while listening to this song and looking at a neon Budweiser sign.
I find this video on this blog post, of this wonderful blog I was linked today. I link the post specifically so I don't just state what they said, but add my own commentary. TEEDA is no MC. He should not be on a stage anywhere. He shouldn't be on a platform. He should be holding a bottled water waiting for the MC to leave the stage because the show is over and the MC will be thirsty. Also he's dancing like George Micheal in Wham's Wake me up before you go go.
There are truths to this universe. An absolute truth is this song is the song that will bring Budweiser to Japan. It is the song you drink Budweiser to. I have never consumed a beer, and I am barely holding myself back from jumping into the car to grab an ice cold bud from the convenience store. It is a reality. It is time to drink a Budweiser while listening to this song and looking at a neon Budweiser sign.
I find this video on this blog post, of this wonderful blog I was linked today. I link the post specifically so I don't just state what they said, but add my own commentary. TEEDA is no MC. He should not be on a stage anywhere. He shouldn't be on a platform. He should be holding a bottled water waiting for the MC to leave the stage because the show is over and the MC will be thirsty. Also he's dancing like George Micheal in Wham's Wake me up before you go go.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Farcry 2 (PS3)
I threw Farcry 2 back in the mailbox like I threw F.E.A.R. 2 back in the mailbox: angry at a game ending glitch. At least this time I wasn't on spawned on the wrong side of the wall. Instead I pressed triangle to talk to someone then the camera just slowly slowly slowly started approaching the NPC. It was kind of funny and kind of intensely boring.
FC2 has a heck of a lot of problems. In every cutscene/non-player controlled segment you have a body. You have a body when you press L2 to pull a bullet out of your body, or stab a needle into your arm to regain health, or to pop a pill because the plot says your malaria is affecting you RIGHT NOW. However in your day to actions you have no body. back up against the corner of a room, aim down, get depressed.
It also implies from the opening that there's some real world negotiation/bribing/arguing in your trecks across Africa. The reality is to quote a man, "To shoot or not to shoot, and not shooting gets you shot so that's not even a real option." Every checkpoint will open fire as you approach it. A big corridor filled world where you reach out and touch someone with your gun. No dialog choices, no manipulation. If you see someone they are going to shoot you, otherwise you can't shoot them. You sure as hell can spin your camera body in circles as they tell you what to do.
Also an early early objective has you use a computer in the middle of nowhere to buy a gun, then go next door where magically you can pick up the gun, which magically spawns in the bar next door people in the bar, where there previously weren't.
The environments are unusually constrictive considering the place you are. There's no "climbing" element, and about my favorite thing I wish for in games is to be some place high, see my goal then walk to my goal. There are plenty of GIANT ROCKS around, but they are walls.
At least in the Legend of Zelda I can cut the grass. Also the game gave me a little cheevo prompt everytime I "got a safehouse "found a suitcase with diamonds" "checked out a checkpoint".
I could probably have wrung more dumb fun out of the game if the out of body experience didn't really really bother me, and the enemy AI from 1999.
FC2 has a heck of a lot of problems. In every cutscene/non-player controlled segment you have a body. You have a body when you press L2 to pull a bullet out of your body, or stab a needle into your arm to regain health, or to pop a pill because the plot says your malaria is affecting you RIGHT NOW. However in your day to actions you have no body. back up against the corner of a room, aim down, get depressed.
It also implies from the opening that there's some real world negotiation/bribing/arguing in your trecks across Africa. The reality is to quote a man, "To shoot or not to shoot, and not shooting gets you shot so that's not even a real option." Every checkpoint will open fire as you approach it. A big corridor filled world where you reach out and touch someone with your gun. No dialog choices, no manipulation. If you see someone they are going to shoot you, otherwise you can't shoot them. You sure as hell can spin your camera body in circles as they tell you what to do.
Also an early early objective has you use a computer in the middle of nowhere to buy a gun, then go next door where magically you can pick up the gun, which magically spawns in the bar next door people in the bar, where there previously weren't.
The environments are unusually constrictive considering the place you are. There's no "climbing" element, and about my favorite thing I wish for in games is to be some place high, see my goal then walk to my goal. There are plenty of GIANT ROCKS around, but they are walls.
At least in the Legend of Zelda I can cut the grass. Also the game gave me a little cheevo prompt everytime I "got a safehouse "found a suitcase with diamonds" "checked out a checkpoint".
I could probably have wrung more dumb fun out of the game if the out of body experience didn't really really bother me, and the enemy AI from 1999.
Monday, August 22, 2011
Spraynard - "Funtitled"
The page where you can download Spraynard - "Funtitled" for free famously declares it's the punk album of the decade. After furiously listening to this record since a few weeks after it's release non-stop, I agree. Then again I agreed around the 5th time I listened to it.
I kept planning on writing something about this album. I also planned on going to their show, which was the day after the return from my short notice trip back to Tokyo. If I hadn't been dead I'd have gone. I still regret not going to the show so I could shove fifty dollars into the hands of the band go THAT was worth it.
The album channels the dead ghosts of my favorite era of Punk music, mid to late nineties Fat Wreck. It also comes with growing up since then. Every song doesn't have to be intro-verse1-chorus-verse2-chorus-breakdown-chorus. These men are master craftsmen of a punk rock song. Songs often have the chorus only once. They know exactly when to stop playing.
It's also the first album to make me nostalgic for high school, as opposed to missing the people I knew in high school. It dredged up good memories in the ways that I'm usually hung up and more strongly remember the bad.
It also has the lyric, "I'm a White Suburban Male, and I still blame everything else when I fail."
I hope I'm one day again surrounded by friends that are as good as the ones in Spraynard's songs.
I kept planning on writing something about this album. I also planned on going to their show, which was the day after the return from my short notice trip back to Tokyo. If I hadn't been dead I'd have gone. I still regret not going to the show so I could shove fifty dollars into the hands of the band go THAT was worth it.
The album channels the dead ghosts of my favorite era of Punk music, mid to late nineties Fat Wreck. It also comes with growing up since then. Every song doesn't have to be intro-verse1-chorus-verse2-chorus-breakdown-chorus. These men are master craftsmen of a punk rock song. Songs often have the chorus only once. They know exactly when to stop playing.
It's also the first album to make me nostalgic for high school, as opposed to missing the people I knew in high school. It dredged up good memories in the ways that I'm usually hung up and more strongly remember the bad.
It also has the lyric, "I'm a White Suburban Male, and I still blame everything else when I fail."
I hope I'm one day again surrounded by friends that are as good as the ones in Spraynard's songs.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Japanese Television June 2011
I haven't voluntarily watched TV in over a year. I got a cable box which I needed to unhook at one point, and then never hooked it back up. I'd watch what was on my Dad's TV which was usually pawn stars, pickers, or Anthony Bourdain. Which are really, all told, fine shows. Getting angry about those kind of shows makes me wonder how deep the black pit inside you is, and what actually hearing about something bad in the world does to you.
Still while I was in Japan, I happened to catch a human interest story. A solid rock of a man with 5 kids and a wife and something resembling a house were lamenting money problems. Two of the kids were in high school, one was just starting middle school and the other two were elementary. That's a huge family for a Japanese household. The father was trying to get more jobs at his only job at a crossdressing bar.
His only job was at a crossdressing bar.
Though he didn't like, his wife also worked part time...at a bar.
Then they cut to footage of their middle daughter, who was overweight and because they didn't have the money was forced to wear her older sister's middle school uniform. Which didn't fit even after mom altered it. So it was safety pinned.
Then footage of cross-dressed daddy with a fur coat and looking fabulous drinking in the bar that sat no less than 3 people at maximum occupancy.
Thinking about this news story infuriates me to this day, over two months later.
Still while I was in Japan, I happened to catch a human interest story. A solid rock of a man with 5 kids and a wife and something resembling a house were lamenting money problems. Two of the kids were in high school, one was just starting middle school and the other two were elementary. That's a huge family for a Japanese household. The father was trying to get more jobs at his only job at a crossdressing bar.
His only job was at a crossdressing bar.
Though he didn't like, his wife also worked part time...at a bar.
Then they cut to footage of their middle daughter, who was overweight and because they didn't have the money was forced to wear her older sister's middle school uniform. Which didn't fit even after mom altered it. So it was safety pinned.
Then footage of cross-dressed daddy with a fur coat and looking fabulous drinking in the bar that sat no less than 3 people at maximum occupancy.
Thinking about this news story infuriates me to this day, over two months later.
Fukubukuro 2010 Epilogue
I've come home from an experience in which people are changed and will hopefully wake up the next day. It's August 2011, 8 months into a year that is not and can't be 2010. The drive home gave me energy on putting a nailgun firmly against a 2010 project and pulling the trigger. It was started because it did not exist, and I felt like it should.
Fukubukuros are written when the conditions are right, and the conditions were never right to truly grab bag a grab bag. It was almost entirely into 2011 with 2011 feelings that weren't 2010 feelings. With 2011 events echoing 2010 events and 2009 events the noise and sadness and beauty and silence was never enough for a fukubukuro to truly flourish.
In August 2010, I was playing Nier which could never become
GAME OF THE YEAR 2010
It left me gasping at how to discuss and what to think of it. I told a man who had been told a lot of similar things to play it. I watched him intensely play it in 2011 while writing what I could of the fukubukuro, wondering if I could figure out how to talk about it.
Nier almost meant something to me. It almost gained my love, and then it didn't. It killed the company that created it with love that never quite bled on me.
That's the sort of writing you get when you have no idea what you're thinking about a game. And then,
If I can feel the emotion called love, that truly must be what I feel for Tokyo. It took root long ago, on a website that has come back in a form I feel nothing for. I find myself now the age I was when the writers of that site entranced me. 5 years ago, I found myself living the life I had read about, finding it exactly to my expectations.
One day I'll write about that life, maybe when I have whatever new from that life has. Everyone has left Tokyo now, and the Tokyo of insert credit has long since died. Until then these words are up until I feel terrible enough to take them down.
Thank You
Fukubukuros are written when the conditions are right, and the conditions were never right to truly grab bag a grab bag. It was almost entirely into 2011 with 2011 feelings that weren't 2010 feelings. With 2011 events echoing 2010 events and 2009 events the noise and sadness and beauty and silence was never enough for a fukubukuro to truly flourish.
In August 2010, I was playing Nier which could never become
GAME OF THE YEAR 2010
It left me gasping at how to discuss and what to think of it. I told a man who had been told a lot of similar things to play it. I watched him intensely play it in 2011 while writing what I could of the fukubukuro, wondering if I could figure out how to talk about it.
Nier almost meant something to me. It almost gained my love, and then it didn't. It killed the company that created it with love that never quite bled on me.
That's the sort of writing you get when you have no idea what you're thinking about a game. And then,
If I can feel the emotion called love, that truly must be what I feel for Tokyo. It took root long ago, on a website that has come back in a form I feel nothing for. I find myself now the age I was when the writers of that site entranced me. 5 years ago, I found myself living the life I had read about, finding it exactly to my expectations.
One day I'll write about that life, maybe when I have whatever new from that life has. Everyone has left Tokyo now, and the Tokyo of insert credit has long since died. Until then these words are up until I feel terrible enough to take them down.
Thank You
Friday, July 29, 2011
Fukubukuro 2010 #5 DOG DAYS
I love stories about heroes trying to escape hell. Reading an essay about After Hours an oft-forgotten Scorsese brought this to front. While opposite in tone, trying to escape Hades is the core story of both that movie and
GAME OF THE YEAR 2010
Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days.
If you played the demo, and didn’t instantly love it, I can’t help you. 10 seconds into the demo and I was frothing for it. By the end of the demo I wanted to drink deep from Dog Days’s (YES that’s the one part of this whole thing I’m sure is grammatically correct.) cup. I needed Dog Days bad. Then I heard it was 5 hours long, and man no. Action movies on blu-ray are 19.99 USD. I ended up waiting a month until Gamefly put the game directly into my mailbox.
I co-opped the game at the house of the man I co-op games with. I was equipped with a energy drink that tasted like Crystal Light Lemonade and 30% sugar. He had a pepsi max. I also had a little, then regretted that this year I had given up zero calorie beverages. The situation called for it, even though I vastly prefer Coke Zero to regular or diet.
We blasted through that game in seven hours. We laughed like hyenas at the naked level. The sucker-punch ending made me step back and go, “That was pretty good.” My friend might have liked the game less than I did, but was being polite. I couldn’t pry a verdict out of him. The game fully satisfied me from beginning to end.
I again lamented it’s 60 dollar price point. Games can’t continue doing this. Back-Mops breaking all sorts of records doesn’t mean anything when it takes 2 less people to generate the same level of profit from one sale. I briefly considered, years ago, with the success of Katamari Damacy that maybe, games would get universally cheaper. This generation ended up being more expensive all around.
2 months later, 3 months after it’s release, Dog Days was all of 19.99 at Best Buy. I bought it and immediately played through the game again offline. Then I tried online, which was already something of a ghost town. Any complaints I can level at the game are in the multiplayer. The online stages are not nearly as gloriously genius as the single player levels. I can’t mute the jackasses that made me sit out the 5 minute match I waited 10 minutes to play because he held me up then threw me to the ground and shot me before I even got the QTE prompt to get out of the hold up. I did find a few people to run through the single player with, and everything is glistening level design.
If you didn’t like the demo, I can’t help you. The demo starts with a fantastic escape from a restaurant out the back way, and might be the only time the level doesn’t make sense in reality because I can’t remember where the actual restaurant entrance is. You also hop over the same broken wall a few times. But when it is time to MURDER CHINA, the level design is perfect. If you played this alone, maybe this is why you didn’t find it genius.
There is always two paths, the straight path for Lynch, the side path for Kane ( the side path for Lynch, the straight path for Kane.) The man taking the straight path is there only as distraction to the private body guards for the mafia elite and to not get killed. When the side path gets a clear shot at the white suit cleanup team, they have to kill as many of the chinese military as possible before they realize he’s there. The low-level gangsters will then focus on Kane, giving straight path Lynch a shot at headshotting the police officers just trying to kill two unstoppable men.
Our demo level has K and Mister L escape onto a street. On the left side is a video store. On the right is a building under construction and a catwalk. On the street you have convenient cars. One man should obviously be fighting through the video store, the other is his cover fire. Cars sometimes blow up, and the catwalk’s cover will get blown to bits. Our video store hero’s cover is good for the most part. Most of your opposition is flooding out of a restaurant down on the left side, which has a lot of propane tanks around it.
A later escape has you in an area with three warehouses and a dozen different ways to approach the problem of murdering everyone and getting out of China. Every failure feels like you did something stupid. Getting away with something stupid is a sigh of relief for you and your partner. After a dozen times of playing through the game I'm still getting surprised by myself of my co-hort's discovery at another way escaping everything we deserve.
There was no reason this game was going to be a success at 60 dollars. It’s too much of a decision. Hell if I could recommend it to anyone for that price. This game might of set the world on fire at being released at 19.99. I0 Interactive might still have been a development studio. This game features at least 3 scenes I had been waiting for in an action movie.
Friends on Steam ended up getting the game for 5 dollars when it was 5 dollars on Steam. I was happy at everyone on my list that suddenly had that game in their possession. Either way, this friend complained that their were no civilians in the game, even though the opening movie somewhat promised there would be. I didn’t have a response to that, it somewhat bothered me in my response playthrough. The satisfaction in killing all of armed-China came back, and I got over it.
His other complaint was all the enemies had the same AI if they were military personnel or thugs jumping off moving motorcycles. I didn’t notice this either, maybe because what you were fighting was just another bit of windowdressing. Through their own actions Kane and Lynch end up having the entire city of Shanghai hating them. The game gives us just enough showing that we don’t need any telling about them.
Dog Days is fantastic, brief and features a shootout at a McDonald’s. I’ve been waiting for that for years. It has the most glorious idle menu screens. The 15 seconds of running across an empty lot and an helicopter flies over is worth more to anyone than the entirety of Brak Fops and most action films. The guns are stupendously loud! Everytime I play the game I have to remark, “Holy lord, I’m kind of killing a LOT of people.”
In short: My good friend Chris Pinner can forgive Dog Days because the bodiless camera is just following Kane and Lynch, and you’re not the camera. He has a thing for FPS games not showing the body you see. I hope he loves Breakdown (Japan does Half-Life and Halo is Xen.)
GAME OF THE YEAR 2010
Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days.
If you played the demo, and didn’t instantly love it, I can’t help you. 10 seconds into the demo and I was frothing for it. By the end of the demo I wanted to drink deep from Dog Days’s (YES that’s the one part of this whole thing I’m sure is grammatically correct.) cup. I needed Dog Days bad. Then I heard it was 5 hours long, and man no. Action movies on blu-ray are 19.99 USD. I ended up waiting a month until Gamefly put the game directly into my mailbox.
I co-opped the game at the house of the man I co-op games with. I was equipped with a energy drink that tasted like Crystal Light Lemonade and 30% sugar. He had a pepsi max. I also had a little, then regretted that this year I had given up zero calorie beverages. The situation called for it, even though I vastly prefer Coke Zero to regular or diet.
We blasted through that game in seven hours. We laughed like hyenas at the naked level. The sucker-punch ending made me step back and go, “That was pretty good.” My friend might have liked the game less than I did, but was being polite. I couldn’t pry a verdict out of him. The game fully satisfied me from beginning to end.
I again lamented it’s 60 dollar price point. Games can’t continue doing this. Back-Mops breaking all sorts of records doesn’t mean anything when it takes 2 less people to generate the same level of profit from one sale. I briefly considered, years ago, with the success of Katamari Damacy that maybe, games would get universally cheaper. This generation ended up being more expensive all around.
2 months later, 3 months after it’s release, Dog Days was all of 19.99 at Best Buy. I bought it and immediately played through the game again offline. Then I tried online, which was already something of a ghost town. Any complaints I can level at the game are in the multiplayer. The online stages are not nearly as gloriously genius as the single player levels. I can’t mute the jackasses that made me sit out the 5 minute match I waited 10 minutes to play because he held me up then threw me to the ground and shot me before I even got the QTE prompt to get out of the hold up. I did find a few people to run through the single player with, and everything is glistening level design.
If you didn’t like the demo, I can’t help you. The demo starts with a fantastic escape from a restaurant out the back way, and might be the only time the level doesn’t make sense in reality because I can’t remember where the actual restaurant entrance is. You also hop over the same broken wall a few times. But when it is time to MURDER CHINA, the level design is perfect. If you played this alone, maybe this is why you didn’t find it genius.
There is always two paths, the straight path for Lynch, the side path for Kane ( the side path for Lynch, the straight path for Kane.) The man taking the straight path is there only as distraction to the private body guards for the mafia elite and to not get killed. When the side path gets a clear shot at the white suit cleanup team, they have to kill as many of the chinese military as possible before they realize he’s there. The low-level gangsters will then focus on Kane, giving straight path Lynch a shot at headshotting the police officers just trying to kill two unstoppable men.
Our demo level has K and Mister L escape onto a street. On the left side is a video store. On the right is a building under construction and a catwalk. On the street you have convenient cars. One man should obviously be fighting through the video store, the other is his cover fire. Cars sometimes blow up, and the catwalk’s cover will get blown to bits. Our video store hero’s cover is good for the most part. Most of your opposition is flooding out of a restaurant down on the left side, which has a lot of propane tanks around it.
A later escape has you in an area with three warehouses and a dozen different ways to approach the problem of murdering everyone and getting out of China. Every failure feels like you did something stupid. Getting away with something stupid is a sigh of relief for you and your partner. After a dozen times of playing through the game I'm still getting surprised by myself of my co-hort's discovery at another way escaping everything we deserve.
There was no reason this game was going to be a success at 60 dollars. It’s too much of a decision. Hell if I could recommend it to anyone for that price. This game might of set the world on fire at being released at 19.99. I0 Interactive might still have been a development studio. This game features at least 3 scenes I had been waiting for in an action movie.
Friends on Steam ended up getting the game for 5 dollars when it was 5 dollars on Steam. I was happy at everyone on my list that suddenly had that game in their possession. Either way, this friend complained that their were no civilians in the game, even though the opening movie somewhat promised there would be. I didn’t have a response to that, it somewhat bothered me in my response playthrough. The satisfaction in killing all of armed-China came back, and I got over it.
His other complaint was all the enemies had the same AI if they were military personnel or thugs jumping off moving motorcycles. I didn’t notice this either, maybe because what you were fighting was just another bit of windowdressing. Through their own actions Kane and Lynch end up having the entire city of Shanghai hating them. The game gives us just enough showing that we don’t need any telling about them.
Dog Days is fantastic, brief and features a shootout at a McDonald’s. I’ve been waiting for that for years. It has the most glorious idle menu screens. The 15 seconds of running across an empty lot and an helicopter flies over is worth more to anyone than the entirety of Brak Fops and most action films. The guns are stupendously loud! Everytime I play the game I have to remark, “Holy lord, I’m kind of killing a LOT of people.”
In short: My good friend Chris Pinner can forgive Dog Days because the bodiless camera is just following Kane and Lynch, and you’re not the camera. He has a thing for FPS games not showing the body you see. I hope he loves Breakdown (Japan does Half-Life and Halo is Xen.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)