Empire of the Sun

Empire of the Sun – “Walking on a Dream”

Movies of 1999 – The over- and underrated

Films from 1999 you should watch if you haven’t already:

• Toy Story 2 – A Pixar film about your toys. Good for kids, good for you too.
• The Sixth Sense - I swear this is M. Night Shyamalan’s only good film. The guy is a hack! A hack, I say!
• American Beauty – Great drama that won the Oscar for best movie. I think this was the movie that introduced me to Kevin Spacey.
• The Green Mile – I like most Tom Hanks movies, and this is no exception. Just go into it knowing it’s a three hour investment of time.
• The Mummy – I’m serious; it’s good clean fun. The computer animated special effects don’t really hold up, but there is some corny humor that reminded me a bit of the Evil Dead series.

Underrated films of 1999:

• South Park – Bigger, Longer and Uncut – On the surface, South Park seems vulgar and crass. Underneath that veneer there is usually a smart message taking aim at some of society’s hypocrisy. And this one is delivered as a musical!
• Run Lola, Run – A German movie that plays out three scenarios of a girl’s day. Each one has one minor difference that throws her time line off, causing the day to play out in a different way.
• SLC Punk – Move about punks growing up in Salt Lake City in the 80s. The story shows how all punk rockers come to realize they need to grow up and get an education so they can affect the changes they claim to seek. To quote the main character’s father, “I didn’t sell out, I bought in.”
• Trekkies - A documentary about obsessed Star Trek fanboys. You get to watch a couple get married, in full Klingon regalia. It’s funny and engaging.

Overrated films of 1999:

• Disney’s Tarzan – I think this started Disney’s decline into animated movies with indistinguishable plots played by different stereotypes. Or maybe this was when I started to realize it.
• Austin Powers – Sure, it was funny at the time, but this is a movie franchise that won’t seem to die. Three Austin Powers movies later I think we can all agree that Mike Myers is a washed up, one-trick pony that was only kind of funny in the 90s. Why do all his characters have a bad Scottish accent? Think of Fat Bastard, Shrek, probably someone in Love Guru, The Axe Murder movie, probably some other movies I’m forgetting…see what I’m saying?
• American Pie - High school humor. A “controversial” pie fucking scene made this the talk of Tinseltown. Formulaic humor and otherwise lame plot and characters. If you’ve seen one comedy set in a high school, you’ve seen them all.
• Varsity Blues – Speaking of movies set in high schools, this one isn’t anything special but it I recall everyone in my class talking about this movie. Skip it.
• Dogma – Kevin Smith’s faux-intellectualism and potty humor is meant for teenagers. This movie is less a commentary on religion and the Catholic church, and more a movie about Kevin Smith’s desire to make jokes told by jaded Catholic school children. To think I used to be a fan of Jay and Silent Bob. I guess a more years and a solid education changed my opinion of “intelligent” humor.

So what do you all think? Agree? Disagree? Did I gloss over something?

Movies of 1999 – Fight Club

Fight Club, based on Chuck Palahniuk’s novel of the same title, was considered a box office failure. It earned approximately $36 million during its box office run. If you watched the trailer above, you’ll notice that it doesn’t do the movie justice.

The plot, summarized as succinctly as possible, is about a corporate man’s (fans know this character as Jack) insomnia that ultimately puts him in touch with anarchistic character named Tyler Durden.  Tyler is everything his desk jockey counterpart is not; aggressive, impractical, daring, accepting of others but hating of conformity, and completely insane. Tyler could be considered a blue collar/middle class Robin Hood – he’s rebelling against an institution (credit, government, etc) that no longer looks out for the little guy while encouraging other people to break the norms in favor of doing what they want versus what society tells them to do.   Tyler starts a series of fight clubs across the country, starting a counter-culture movement and creating an army to destroy the empire built by credit card companies.

The movie’s twist makes it great, and I apologize if you haven’t seen it, but it turns out that Tyler Durden is a manifestation of Jack’s subconsicious and this second personality has been using Jack’s body when he’s asleep.

The impact of this movie is widespread. DVD sales almost doubled box office revenue. Worldwide, the movie did $100 million in its international release.  The movie did much better in theaters outside of the United States. My guess is that people in the U.S. caught the movie at the tail end of its run, told others to see it. In the early days of the Internet, this movie probably benefited from word-of-mouth reviews.

It also seems to have spawned lots of underground fight clubs.  I won’t go into too much detail here, but there is some documentation to this.  I know I’ve seen several investigative journalism pieces on this topic. I’m not really into pain, so I haven’t joined any fight clubs myself.

I watched this movie again a few weeks ago and think it’s definitely worth checking out. It’s got some lasting appeal, but maybe that’s generational. I feel the film is a commentary on the state of our society. Lots of people feel lost in the corporate shuffle.  We do what is expected of us, and not so much what we want to do.  It may not hold the same interest to people 20 years from now. Time will tell.

You’ll notice a trend forming. As with the Matrix, the story talks about how society shapes us and expects to act a certain way.  The Marquis de Sade actually wrote a good bit about this.  His philosophy was basically “does a person not do something because they think society will think poorly of their actions, or do they not do something because they don’t want to?” I think his writing came about as a way to justify his sexual deviance, but it can be applied to other topics as well.

Movies of 1999 – Part 1

Continuing with my theme of movie re-reviews, I’m going to rewatch movie from my teenage years to see how they were as good as I remembered.

First up: The Matrix.  Written and directed by the Wachowski brothers, this cautionary (?) tale of the future is one part Terminator, two parts Neuromancer/cyber punk with Kung Fu action for an added kick. Sound complicated? A pseudo- intellectual robot apocalypse made fans fall love with this movie, but are they still enamored with the idea?

For those of you still plugged into the matrix, the movie is set in the distant future. Robots have enslaved the entire human race, save for a small group of cantankerous rebels. The majority of the human population has been inserted into a machine that uses our bodies natural energy (heat, pulse, etc) to power our robot overlord’s infrastructure. The people in the machine are hooked up to a giant virtual world set in what seems to be 2002. Why 2002? I’m not sure, but the robots realized our bodies produced more energy if our minds were kept stimulated and somewhat happy. It seems like running a giant server and coming up with sustenance to feed this giant human power plant would defeat its purpose, but we’re suspending disbelief here.

Anyway, the resistance needs to free people from this virtual world so they can fight the robots in the real one. And they do this by plugging themselves back into the matrix and causing problems. Actually, that plot point is kind of lost on me. Other than freeing people, why would they need to go back into the matrix? They fight these computer programs known as agents, but the agents are only there to stop these rebels that are logging back in and try to keep other computer programs from going out of whack. In fact, why would the robots even allow access to the matrix over a wireless connection as they do in the film? Everyone else is hardwired into the system.  That seems like a convenient security vulnerability for the human resistance to exploit. Must have been a Microsoft robot that designed that system.

So the resistance is looking to free the right person because there has been some crazy prediction of a messiah. Enter Keanu Reeves. He learns kung fu, dons a black coat with matching sun glasses and proceeds to kick the crap out of every adversary in this virtual world. In the end, he saves the day. The end of movie implies he has started freeing more people and is in control of the matrix.

This decade old movie holds up surprisingly well! The special effects don’t detract from the movie, the action is still top notch, and the plot is engaging. Of course I’m speaking as a biased individual – I saw the movie when I was 16 or so, I’m male, like sci-fi and kung fu flicks, I log into virtual reality sessions pretty regularly (World of Warcraft) and think that explosions are cool.

I would say every sci-fi action movie from this point on tried to imitate the action sequences from this movie. From the frozen frame three-dimensional bullet time to the wire action stunts, this movie significantly raised the bar for American action movies. As for cultural impact, we still see references to taking the red or blue pill and people hypothesizing if they are plugged into the matrix or not.

The Matrix retains its “must see” status. The sequels, however, do not add much to the story’s continuity. While the special effects and action sequences are worth watching, the plot seems to move away from the existentialism of the first one in favor of a martyr’s tale of sacrafice. Yawn.

10 years ago I was working in a movie theater

Ten years ago I was a finishing up my sophomore year of high school. It was also about the time I landed my first part-time job. I guess you could say that was the exact moment I gave up my blissful dependence on my parents for the pursuit of financial success.

My first job was at a movie theater. I worked behind the concessions stand in an ill-fitting polyester uniform. I started working at the time Star Wars: The Phantom Menace hit the box office. Movie theaters used to receive celluloid prints on several reels. Someone would need to splice the reels together, then the movie would be screened to make sure the splices wouldn’t break when ran through the projector. I was lucky enough to sit in a Star Wars screening two days before its release.

Hollywood thought this would be an instant classic, but it had relatively little cultural impact when compared to other movies released around the same time. Do you remember who won the Oscar in 1999, or can you quote a few lines from Fight Club, a box office failure? Over the next few days (or weeks more likely) I’ll recap some films that were released during my time at the movie theater to see if they hold up to the test of time.

Why do you let me stay here?

Sita Sing the Blues

One of the best movies I saw in 2008, Sita Sings the Blues, has been released under a Creative Commons license and can be streamed directly to your computer for free.  This animated adventure recounts a bit of Hindu history with humor, an excellent sountrack and some beautiful animation. It’s available in just about every format imaginable. Check out your viewing options here.

Street Fighter IV – A review

I used to review video games, in my old life before I became a desk jockey. I don’t get to play games much anymore, ergo I don’t review them.

However, when I saw that a new Street Fighter had been released I decided to pick it up. Was it worth $60? Not really, but I don’t think any game is worth $60.

Street Fighter IV is a lot of fun. It brought me back to the days I would spend after school playing Super Nintendo version of SF2: Championship Edition at a friend’s house. And seeing as my friends didn’t like giving up the controller, I didn’t get to play much. But now I have the last laugh, I don’t have to share with anyone! And that’s the problem. This game is more fun when played with someone else. As with most video games I own, I don’t seem to know anyone else interested in playing.

It also seems that I need to dedicate a lot of time to learning the ins and outs of each character before I can truly master the game.  Right now I’m at casual gamer status, but to compete with the best I’d need to quit my job, give up my worldly possessions and dedicate my life to Street Fighter training in a monastery on some snowy Himalayan mountain top. Seeing that I lack the motivation to even write this blog with some regularity, that won’t happen. What will happen is that I’ll get bored of the game quickly. While I enjoyed Street Fighter IV when I first put it in my Xbox, my interest has since waned.

My review so far has been somewhat negative. I don’t mean to pan this game. It’s actually a lot of fun. The new characters are quirky, but forgettable. The character back stories are ridiculous. El Fuerte is a Mexican luchador that wants to be a have his own cooking show, so he sets out learn what other world class fighters eat by challenging them to street fights. Blanka sets out to prove to his mother that he isn’t some kind of big green failure. The other new characters are standard issue fighter game space fillers, so I won’t even go into them. The final boss, Seth, is frustratingly impossible to beat. I spent at least two hours trying to defeat him on the medium difficulty setting before giving up. I’d beat him in the first round and get his health bar half way down in round two before he unleashed 17 hit combos and supermoves on me that ended the match in a matter of seconds. Maybe that’s just my skill level, but I couldn’t figure out how to defeat this guy.

One of my friends complained about the graphics. I thought the graphical upgrade looked amazing. I also read that someone thought this game wouldn’t have garnered any attention if it didn’t have the Street Fighter legacy attached to it. I’d have to say their might be some truth to that, but Street Fighter become the franchise it is today because of its arcade experience. You can’t really go to arcades these days, so something is lost in the transition from arcade to console.  If this series was introduced in the console age it probably wouldn’t receive much attention because it does little to differentiate itself from other fighting games.  Of course you could argue that this is the seminal fighter, so without it you wouldn’t have Mortal Kombat or Soul Caliber.

As for the gameply, it plays just like the version I played in junior high school. And that’s where the game shines. Capcom took the tried and true classic and updated it for the latest console generation. I did have some trouble pulling of some of the super moves (not the special moves, but the super-powerful round-ending combos). I loaded up the training mode and turned on the option that shows the history of the buttons you’re pressing. I noticed that the Xbox controller made it difficult to press three buttons at once (two on the main part of the controller and one on the shoulder), a requirement to pull of those super moves. I think the arcade stick would probably be worth the investment if you really want to master this game, otherwise you won’t be able to pull off the moves with any consistency.

Seeing as the game has the same moves, characters (for the most part) with only a graphical upgrade, should you shell out $60 for a gussied up version of a game that otherwise retails for $20? You shouldn’t. Unless you’re a die hard Street Fighter fan, this game is definitely a rental. It just won’t hold your interest for more than a couple weeks. I suppose one could argue that most fighting games don’t have a lot of long-term appeal, but I’d have to disagree. I’ve sunk plenty of time in other fighting games, and even found single-player challenges to be fun. Maybe it’s just my age and interests at this point in my life, but this game didn’t hold my attention.

Since I still think World of Warcraft is the best game ever, Street Fighter IV only takes 4 days away from my time spent in Azeroth.