Deep Thoughts on the Office

I haven’t watched the Office since I graduated college, but sitting here just now, I had some thoughts about the show that I had to get down.

From what I here the show is ending soon. It has a season or two left, and I was considering how it is going to end. In thinking about this, I came to a conclusion that I think is often ignored. The major conceit is of the Office is that this small paper company is being filmed for a documentary. This is conceit is also used in Parks and Rec and to a certain extent also in Modern Family. What I have never seen though is any of these shows take on what it means to be filmed as a documentary.

Who is funding the camera and editing team behind the Office? Are we meant to assume that because the show is edited that the events we are witnessing have already been filmed and ergo must be coming from the future, thereby making the Office the most subtle science fiction show in television history? Or are we watching the raw tapes and what we see as the Office will eventually be screened in some way?

If the second option is true, I can only imagine one extremely meta ending for the Office. At the end of the final episode in the middle of whatever plot point is occurring the police need to barge in, take all of the tapes of the documentary from the film crew, complain that they have never recieved any of the documentary that they promised to make, and the show should cut to black. This is not entirely unlike the ending to Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

District 9: A little over-hyped

Libby and I received and watched District 9 last night, and I have to admit that I was a little disappointed. She liked the movie more than I did. My issue is with the story. If you choose to watch that movie as an allegory for Apartheid then it works fine, but if you want to watch it as a sci-fi movie, then I feel like it kind of falls apart. Here are just some of my questions:

How did the aliens master interstellar transport but neglect to learn interstellar communication? It bothered me they could go back to the home planet, but couldn’t contact home.

Why couldn’t the mothership leave at any time? It takes those three aliens 20 to collect the fuel, but they brought the fuel with them, so they had the fuel to go home at any time.

Aliens landing on Earth would be the most world-transforming event in human history, and we’re letting a small country like South Africa take care of it? Scientists, philosophers, anthropologists would swarm the aliens as soon as we met them, and not one of them would think to ask, “So where are you from? Is there a way for you to go home?”

If the aliens need food, and they have advanced weaponry, including a giant robot, which would make the star of an anime jealous, why don’t they just take the food from the Nigerians. I understand they are sick and hungry, but they should easily be able to take them out with their attack robot.

Libby brought this one up, why didn’t they just take the fuel from the robot to fuel the transport ship?

Finally, unless this is the alien version of Lost, why didn’t their species come looking for them over the course of 20 years? Libby hypothesized that it could have been the equivalent of a prison ship, and the alien species were just trying to get rid of these beings, which I could believe. However, I can’t see any other explanation work. If two million people just disappeared, someone is going to get curious and come looking.

All of these questions don’t need to be answered if the movie is meant to be allegory, but they are pretty glaring omissions to a sci-fi story.

The World Ends with You: An emo boy in Tokyo grows up and fights some demons

I grew up on role playing games by Squaresoft. RPGs are those games like Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior where you take control of a character, build there abilities over the course of an adventure until you fight a big, bad guy.

I spent hundreds and hundreds of hours playing games like Final Fantasy 3, Chrono Trigger, and Super Mario RPG (Earthbound too, but that one wasn’t by Square)

Squaresoft eventually became SquareEnix during the time I wasn’t playing games. They are still releasing Final Fantasy games, but The World Ends with You isn’t one of those.

Over the years, from my outsider view, I argue that the Final Fantasy games have stagnated. They are a victim of their own success. SquareEnix is too risk adverse to try out new gaming concepts in their major money maker. Final Fantasy XIII is about to come out in the US, and most critics are saying that it is closer to a movie than a game due to it’s linearity.

I am about ten hours into the World Ends with You, and I am extremely impressed. The player controls Neku. A boy who wakes up in a street crossing in Tokyo with no memory. He is extremely anti-social. It’s unfair to call him emo really, but he distrusts everyone and doesn’t believe in friendship. Soon after waking up, he meets a girl named Shiki, and the two of them realize that they are in a taking part in a game. Demons travel around Tokyo pulling people into the game. The players must sacrifice what is most dear to him or her. If the player wins, they get back what they sacrificed and get to return to the real world. If the player loses, then they lose not only what they put up at collateral but also their own life.

The game has several really fun qualities. First, I love that the game takes place in a contemporary setting. Too many RPGs are set in fantasy worlds, and it’s refreshing to play in the real world.

Second, the battle system is unique. By defeating enemies the player gains pins, which give you specific abilities. Slashing, tapping, or making over movements with the stylus activates these abilities. As you defeat enemies these pins and their abilities level up.

Third, the game takes place in semi-real time. In order for your characters to gain abilities like attack and defense, the player has to eat food. Each piece of food takes a specific amount of time to digest. To limit you from building your character, you can only eat a certain amount of food in every 24 hour-period in the real world.

Fourth, I’m enjoying the story. Although the set-up of the story might sound silly. Neku has already shown a lot of changes over the first ten hours of the game. He no longer dislikes people as much, and he is starting to make friends.

Finally, the game has a clothing system. In normal rpgs, the player has to equip armor and weapons, which improves the player’s attributes. In the World Ends with You, though, clothing improves the players attributes but the fashion styles in Tokyo affect the improvements. So each game screen is quite small, and when you move to another part of the city the clothing styles change. If any of the labels you are wearing are unpopular in the area then you lose a lot of your players statistics. There are 13 different labels in the games; so it is rare for you to be wearing unpopular labels, but it is cool that the possibility is there.

As I am able to play more, I will write more on my impressions of the World Ends with You.

Professor Layton: I didn’t know studying for the LSAT could be a game.

The first game I slotted into the new DSi was Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box. Layton is a series of puzzle games for the DSi. There are two games in the series currently released in America and four out in Japan. There are six intended games in the series.

Each game tells a story of Professor Layton, a Sherlock Holmes-type character with an Abraham Lincoln hat, and his young ward Luke. The diabolical box tells the story of Layton trying to track down the Elysian Box, which mysteriously caused the death of his mentor Dr. Shrader.

The most important parts of the story are shown in anime-style cut scenes, and a lot of the dialogue is done with voice acting.

Although the game has an overarching story, the real game is about solving puzzles. Nearly every person that you talk to and many of the things you touch with the stylus result in either Luke or Layton being asked a question, and these questions can only be answered by solving a puzzle. There are 153 puzzles in the game, and you can download several extra puzzles over the Wi-fi connection.

It took me about 23-25 hours to complete the game. Nineteen hours of that was the main game, which your save file conveniently keeps track of, and a few extra hours to complete the puzzles that become available when you beat the game.

I spent the majority of the day today studying for the LSAT, and it is amazing how many of the logic puzzle questions are similar to puzzles in Layton. I’m sure the game helped me study in some way.

The puzzles are the real draw to the game, and they deliver. The game might say that it is intended for ten-year-olds on the box, but many of the later puzzles are downright hard. It took Libby and I working together upwards of an hour to complete some of them.

So my first foray into modern console gaming since 2003 was a great success. I enjoyed Layton and would love to play some of the earlier and future games. It had its downsides, but I really liked the animated cut scenes and puzzles.

I hope you enjoyed my first games related post. The next game I’m going to write about is The World Ends with You, which I haven’t beat yet. So my article will be less about the game itself and more about the experience of playing it.

I’m a gamer again

After about seven years of not owning a modern game console, I have finally entered the modern age of video games. For Christmas I got a Nintendo DSi with three games- Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box, The World Ends with You, and Dragon Quest V (When writing about video games, I will link them to Wikipedia because this is the least biased source that will have articles about about games).

Firstly, I really enjoy the DSi. Mine is matte black. I made sure that Libby was the person that turned it on because it takes a picture of the first person who uses the system, and I don’t want to look at my ugly mug whenever I boot up the system. I have only two major complaints about the system itself. First, I wish it were a little wider to fit better in my hands. Second, in order to connect the games (but not the system) online you have to use WEP encryption on your router, which is prone to being broken into. Therefore, I don’t want to switch the encryption on my router.

While I don’t intend this blog to become all about video games now that I have a new hobby. I will certainly be writing more about my experiences. I’ve already beaten Professor Layton and will have a post reviewing and critiquing it up tomorrow.

Bulk review time because most of these movies weren’t very good

It’s great writing reviews for a blog were I get upwards of 10 views when I post an opinion. It does a self esteem good. I kid; I kid.

Over the break I got to see four movies. Unfortunately, I have really bad taste because most of them just weren’t that good. Case in point, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is an overly long, tepid snoozer. Granted there are high points, but it is buried in so much artifice and pretentious hackery that it is best to just ignore it. Honestly, if the film were trimmed by 45 minutes or more, it might not have been that bad of a movie. The problem is that subplots are piled on top of each other until it gets hard to take anymore.

For me Sam Mendes has a great track record. Some people argue that his only good movie i is American Beauty, but I am a big fan of Road to Perdition as well. I haven’t gotten to Revolutionary Road yet, but I mean to; it’s on my Netflix. His most recent movie, Away We Go, doesn’t quite hold up to his earlier work, but it’s still worth seeing. The movie tells the story of a couple in their mid-30s who are basically just starting their lives. When they find out that they are pregnant, they decide to take a trip around the US and Canada visiting friends to decide where to live. The first three quarters of the movie is intensely funny with Allison Janey and Jim Gaffigan stealing the show. The last quarter of the movie goes off the rails though. Up until that point, the movie is very much about this couple dealing with having a child and reaffirming their love for each other. When they finally decide where to live though and why, the movie becomes extremely quiet and introspective. That’s not a bad thing, but it is presented at a point after the movie has reached its dramatic peak, and I wish these final shots would have moved the end along a little faster.

I got to watch Kingpin again today, and it is still a good movie. It’s the second movie from the Farrelly brothers, and although it isn’t nearly as funny as Dumb and Dumber. The movie is about a down-and-out bowler and a naive Amish man bowling their way across America on their way to a tournament in Reno. Essentialy, it’s a funny version of The Color of Money. I had only ever seen the movie on television where is always seemed really disjointed. I have been waiting since I got my Netflix account for this movie to be released on DVD, and I was only slightly disappointed. It turns out that the movie is actually that disjointed. For example, at one point Woody Harrelson runs over and is shocked that Randy Quaid’s Amish character is bungee jumping. What is odd is that Harrelson has a towel around his waist and no pants. It is never explained and passed over. Later Quaid holds up a sign that reads, “Go Roy,” which is Harrelson’s character’s name, however is the very next shot the sign reads, “Will work for food.” Again, it is never explained why the change is made. These aren’t the only examples, and there were no deleted scenes on the DVD. So I have no explanation for any of this. Regardless of the occasional oddities, the movie is still worth seeing. Bill Murray has a fantastic role as an athlete that the public adores, but who is actually a womanizer. He also has the greatest comb over in the history of film.

The last movie that I was looking forward to seeing during the break but ultimately disappointed me was Paper Heart. Starring Charlene Yi, the movie is part documentary, part maybe-love story-or-maybe-documentary-it’s-hard-to-say. The documentary part of the film shows couples in long term relationships and asks how they fell in love. Generally these stories are accompanied by Michel Gondry-esque papercraft shows. The other half of the movie is less interesting to watch but much harder to understand. Micheal Cera and Yi begin dating, and the filmmakers decide to follow their burgeoning relationship. What makes this so intriguing is trying to discern fact from fiction. Cera and Yi did date and possibly still are, but the way that it is shown in the movie is total fiction. They have a wonderful, awkward chemistry with each other that is one to watch for the first few minutes and becomes increasingly annoying.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me that I really only kinda-enjoyed two of these movies (Kingpin and Away We Go). I had been really excited to see them all, but for one reason or another they all disappointed me. Of the four the one most worth taking a chance on is Away We Go.

Observe and Report: Like Taxi Driver but funny

Observe and Report starts out like a pretty average comedy movie about a loser who wants to make it big, and then somewhere around half way through and certainly by the third act the movie gets really, really dark. Instead a being about a guy trying to make it, the movie morphs into derangement. Seth Rogan as Ronnie is actually a mad man off his meds whose id has taken over.

I got curious about Observe and Report when I read the review on Slate where it was described as the anti-Paul Blart: Mall Cop. At the basic level their plots are even similar, but where Paul Blart is that movie about the loser with a heart of gold; Observe and Report tells a much darker, more realistic tale.

The movie tells the story of Ronnie who is the head of mall security who desperately wants to be a cop. He sees his chance when a flasher starts attacking women at the mall, and the real cops are called in. Ronnie tries his damnedest to impress the detective played by Ray Liotta, but utterly fails. Slowly it is revealed that Ronnie has been on anti-psychotics since at least adolescence, and he decides that he is better and stops taking them. From here the movie just gets progressively darker culminating in the weirdest use of The Pixies “Where is my Mind” ever in a movie.

It took me about a day to determine my feelings on Observe and Report. While the first half of the movie is a pretty mediocre comedy, the second half is so weird it’s hard not to enjoy. Ronnie is Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver trapped in a modern comedy.

The Brothers Bloom: The maker of Brick goes neo-old-school again

If you haven’t seen Brick, rent it; queue it;  just make sure you see it.

The Brothers Bloom is a lot like Brick not thematically or visually but in its style. It is a very, very old Hollywood  heist movie as distilled through the sieve of Wes Anderson.

The movie is about two brothers, Bloom (Adrien Brody) and Stephen (Mark Ruffalo), who are orphans and have been con men since the tender age of 10 and 13, respectively, when the conned a bunch of popular kids who they detest into a cave in search of treasure but intending to dirty their clothes.

The movie jumps to several years later in Berlin, and at the end of a con Bloom says that he’s done.

Finally, the movie begins with Stephen coming to Bloom in Montenegro to convince him to come out of retirement for one last con. This con includes Penelope (Rachel Weisz), an heiress living alone in a mansion in New Jersey who is massively rich. The brothers are planning to make her fall in love with Bloom who will play an antiquities dealer who used to be a smuggler. They will get her to become interested in smuggling a Book of Hours in Prague and put up the money finance the operation. Obviously, this is a con and the brothers plan to net a million dollars.

Like any good heist caper this plan doesn’t quite go to plan and Bloom quits again. He’s fallen in love with Penelope, but Bloom doesn’t want her to be part of this life. The final act is a last con to try to make Penelope fall out of love with him.

The Brothers Bloom is just a romp. It’s fun, witty, and just reeks of heist movies from the 60s. It’s not as good as Brick, but I don’t think it was ever going to be. Brick was a neo-noir that transplanted 40s LA into a high school. It felt a lot like a movie that could have been written 70 years ago that was filmed today. The Brothers Bloom doesn’t adhere quite so strongly to its period. Still, the movie makes its characters ride on steamer ships and old fashioned trains. Everything about the movie is old school but with a tinge on modernity.

There are a few disappointments, though. Penelope’s character is really cute, but not totally believable. She gets away from the cops in Prague with a simple conversation that the audience can see but can’t hear. It’s never explained how. Also, she is such an intelligent person it’s hard to believe that she doesn’t realize that Bloom and Stephen are con men.

Regardless, The Brothers Bloom is a really fun movie to watch. Don’t think too hard about; just sit back and enjoy.

Evangelion: Wait, I’m watching anime again?

When I was in my early-teens, I was really into anime, which are Japanese cartoons. I don’t know exactly why, but I know it game from my love of video games at the time. One kind of lead to another. By the time I was a sophomore in high school, I had pretty much lost interest.

Recently, though, I’ve gotten curious again. Evangelion was one of the most important anime series from the late-90s. I owned the first volume on VHS, but because there wasn’t anything that I wanted on Netflix, I went ahead and ordered the whole series on DVD.

Evangelion is a 26 episode series about a post-apocalyptic world where Earth has been attacked by an angel, yes, the biblical ones, in the year 2000.  The show is set in 2015 when the remnants of humanity are being attacked by angels again. In the meantime, the UN has developed giant robots that can only by piloted by children born since the first angel attack.

Regardless of the weirdness of the plot, it is a really enjoyable show. The first 13 episodes are pretty standard giant robot show fare, but the second half of the series is where the show gets intriguing. It starts looking at the relationships between the characters and their backstories.

If you don’t like anime or have never watched it, this probably isn’t the best place start. It’s 13 hours long; the last two episodes are unwatchable; and a few of the characters are really annoying. That being said, I’m happy that I was finally able to finish watching this show.

I also want this “review” to be a little bit of a referendum. I am about to finish watching another anime series and have a handful of others in my Netflix queue. If you are interested in reading more, then let me know. If you find anime childish and dumb, which I often do too by the way, then please let me know that as well.

I have a job interview today, but I am planning on writing another article about how anime has changed and partially how I have changed in the last decade. As I read more, I am finding fewer and fewer shows that I find interesting.

Dark City: I dub thee Decopunk

I’m realizing that I don’t write a lot of negative reviews; not that this is going to be one. I imagine it’s because I’m curating the movies that I want to see on Netflix.

Anyway, if you haven’t seen Dark City just rent it. Other than maybe the ending, there is nothing bad about this movie.

The set design is simply amazing. It is a blend of modern design from the 30s, the 40s, and the 50s, and it all bleeds together into a fantastic aesthetic.

This is also the reason I call this movie decopunk. If steampunk is adding modern technology with an old aesthetic to the Victorian-age and Cyberpunk is science fiction looking at man’s relationship with computers; then Dark City uses the Art Deco and modernist look and includes some unique technology.

Dark City takes place in a world with no day light. John Murdoch wakes up in a bath tub with the scene of a murder around him. He has amnesia and slowly is able to rebuild who he is. What he finds out over the first two acts of the movie is extremely disturbing. Everyone in the city are alien abductees whose personalities are switched every night at midnight so the aliens can better understand us.

While this might sound kind of cheesy, and to be honest it is. This really isn’t the point of the movie. Most of the movie concerns a detective searching for Murdoch because of the murder. It is pure film noir.

William Hurt steals this movie. He is an underrated actor that seldom turns in a bad performance. He gets to play a Sam Spade-style, 1930s detective. His speech pattern and movements fit the movie perfectly, and I found myself waiting for him to get back on screen.

Dark City is similar to the Matrix in a lot of ways, at least as far as plot.