Falling Short of Vertigo

Mirror's Edge was a uniquely frustrating experience for me. I’m well aware the game was out last year and as such, nobody in the video gaming world officially gives a shit about it anymore, but Johnny-come-late posts aren’t exactly a rare occurrence here, so kindly deal, or write an angry email.


As a concept, the game glowed with the sort of innovative potential that makes game-design nerds like myself salivate with potential. You play as a spunky rebel named Faith, subverting an Orwellian police-state by delivering illegal messages to various rebel factions throughout a sprawling city. The gameplay is based around free-running, the purest mix of movement and awesome this side of ballet. The story is penned by Rhianna Pratchett, daughter of the much-loved Terry Pratchett. The art-style was also really fresh; the nameless metropolis is primarily rendered in sterile, spotless white, and detailed with impossibly bold, jump-off-the-screen shades of blue, tangerine, green and yellow. Best of all, the experience would be brought to us by a EA; one of the big boys, meaning (to my idealistic mind) that all of these ideas would be backed by deep pockets, major man power, and an advertising campaign which would not allow the title to go overlooked. If Mirror's Edge did well, it would be a major battle won in favor of risk-taking game design.

A great deal of my disappointment stems from a fundamental misinterpretation of the game's intention. I half-hoped, half-believed, that the gameplay would be based on a relay-race sort of model. When violence inevitably arose, I imagined it would consist of evasion and fluid attacks that leveraged your improvisational mastery of the environment. Now that I write it all out, it seems like I was hoping for a modern, more realistic take in Sonic, but there was more to it than that. I was hoping for a game that could, and would, evoke vertigo in the player. An electronic experience that would make my stomach lurch as I pitched my character off buildings.

Veritgo is a big deal to because it is one of the four major types of play; the one that has seen the least representation in video games. It's not terribly surprising, seeing how video gaming is almost always a sedentary (read: lazy-ass) activity, but if a game could inspire that level of physical exhiliration and disorientation, it would be a major breakthrough. We would be closer to making games that captured the visceral thrill of roller costers, hang-gliding, and bungee jumping; types of play based solely on physiological sensation. Some audiences were affected by Mirror's Edge, but I was not among them. Maybe it played differently on PC, though I suspect that the sort of physical experience I crave is inherently rooted in physical movement, which really isn't such a bad limitation; especially if one considers the physical possibilities that exist for videogames beyond the valley of silly plastic peripherals, though that is a subject for another post altogether.

Ripped from IGN. How would you know if I didn't tell you?

Anyway, although it is understandable that Mirror's Edge fell short of my lofty vertigo inducing ideal, the game also failed to satisfy a host of more reasonable expectations. At every corner, the game purports to be about "freedom of movement" and "breaking the mold" while simultaneously dictating how I should play it. It told me when I had to fight the badguys, what moves I should use to fight them, and which path I needed to take through the deceptively large levels. In fact, the levels are large enough for you to get lost in them, but since exploration is not on the agenda, getting lost means getting stuck or dying. Through some diabolical paradox, the game manages to be infuriatingly vague despite it's dictatorial model; The "runner vision" system which promised to guide me with red highlighting is later subverted by arbitrarily red interiors, and you also have an insipid talking head barking vague orders like "Get to the mall!" Meanwhile, helicopter gunships and rent-a-cops pepper your ass with lead. Worst of all, once you finally recognize which path the game has charted for you, and which move from your repertoire it wants you to use to get there, you can attempt the prescribed maneuver fifteen times and plummet to your doom, only to inexplicably succeed on the sixteenth try, with no appreciable variation. It's this kind of bullshit that sends me into apoplectic, controller smashing fits of rage. Lewis Black would be proud, but my spouse was not pleased.

In addition to forestalled dreams and out-right frustrations, Mirror's Edge also has lots of good ideas that don't quite fly, like the controls. Instead of an antiquated, "Press X to Jump, Hold Y to Dash" set-up, you get a "One Button Per Body Part" config that is similar to Assassin's Creed. I am a big fan of these contextually sensitive control schemes, but many of the predetermined button choices are terrible. Bumper buttons, the slightly retarded brother of trigger buttons, don't see much use outside of shooting games because they are kind of awkward. Assigning jumping actions to the left bumper, the least used button on the Xbox controller, in a game where you must constantly jump feels, plainly wrong.

At this point, I've waded knee deep into the realm of personal gripes, so I think I'll call it a day. Mirrors Edge has a lot of potential, and it certainly put a lot of interesting ideas about Vertigo in video gaming into my head, but in my book, it misses the mark. It'll be interesting to see what EA will do with the sequel, though I think I'll watch from a safe distance.

The Cure for The Common Gore Flick

Paranormal Activity is a good horror movie.

It is the best horror movie I've seen since The Ring, and it's scares did not only quench my thirst for terror, but restored my faith in the Horror genre. My faith in general is a rather withered and neglected organ, and the section of it dedicated to horror movies has grown particularly coarse and scarred thanks to Hollywood's recent offerings: uninspired remakes and torture porn. If you like sadistic, visceral scenes of mutilation, you do not only want another movie, you want a different website. Or rather, I want you to go to a different website. Now.

Torture porn fans are grossly unwelcome here because as far as I am concerned, their fetish flicks are the cancer that is killing Horror. Sadistic violence and gore certainly have a place in the genre, but I believe they are best administered in doses that have been carefully measured to provoke as much fear as possible. When violence and gore are taken to excess, we are no longer dealing with Horror, but it's daffy little brother, Camp, which I would argue is a sub-genre in and of itself. Planet Terror and Evil Dead are not Horror films for example, because they do not only invoke humor through horror, but prioritize humor above horror. There may be a few quick scares and gross-out moments, but on the whole the tone is light.

In torture porn, Brutality is the exaggerated element that brings us outside Horror's typical boundaries. The violence can be very innovative (the subgenre's sole virtue), but it is designed to invoke revulsion and disgust rather than fear. There is something of value in fear. It provides a test of ones' mental mettle that makes one aware of the presumptions which support his sense of security and how he copes when said presumptions are challenged. Put simply, it is coming to terms with uncertainty and the unknown. Disgust, by contrast, is the recognition of something that is familiar but unpleasant, and conquering one's sense of disgust simply means putting up with its unpleasantness. The difference between the two processes can be crudely illustrated by exploring a dark cave vs. learning to enjoy the smell of dogshit. I don't like the smell of dogshit, and I'm fine with not liking it. It's dogshit. There is no nutrition or rewarding stimulation to be derived from it, much like Hostel and any SAW title with a roman numeral in it.

Which brings me back to Paranormal Activity, a film at the opposite end of Horror's spectrum. It was made on a budget of nothing, with a cast of nobody, and it still manages to instill curiosity and fear in a delightfuly vicious cycle.


As you may have heard, the film follows a young couple who have recently moved in together, only to be bothered by things- or thing- going bump in the night, and the entire affair is presented as if it were declassified footage of a real-life incident, inevitably begging comparisons to The Blair Witch Project. I trust you good people to parse out the similarities between these two handy-cam horror shows for yourselves, though Paranormal Activity improves on it's predecessor in a number of subtle ways; most notably, it's use of stationary camera work. Almost all of the scary stuff goes down at night while the couple is asleep and we watch them atop a tri-pod in the corner of their bedroom. It may not sound like much, but the immobile perspective shifts our role from mere 'voyeur' to 'prisoner', or even 'victim'. We are not only forced to watch, but forced to watch from a fixed perspective. This sort of immobility creates the perfect climate for claustrophobia to fester and dread to take root in audiences.

Another substantial area of improvement is that the characters are very aware of the camera at all times, and they make you aware of the camera's presence too. In Blair Witch, I frequently found myself wondering, "Why is this being shot?" or "Who is controlling the camera?" and in PA, such queries are never an issue. Most scenes begin with a brief explanation of what we are watching, or about to be watching, and give way to either scares or an interlude between the couple. These interludes run the gamut from mundane and mildly humorous to wrenching shouting matches where we can feel the young lovers' union breaking apart like a limb that is slowly, but insistently being bent against its joint. The initial tension exists within the camera itself, as the young belle is exasperated by her beau's desire to film her at all times. This conflict is the emotional core of the movie, and one gets a clear impression that even if the haunting were to suddenly cease, the young couple would have a few demons yet to face.

And at the expense of a mild spoiler, I will tell you that this is a movie about demons as opposed to a movie about a haunted house. Fortunately, it is a very good movie about demons. In fact I would go so far as to declare Paranormal Activity the natural heir to The Exorcist's dark lineage. You'll have to pardon my purple prose; that film made an impression on me which has yet to fade, despite countless re-watchings and horrendous sequels. The thing that links both movies is not their similar subject matter, or even their sense of claustrophobia, but the way they draw from deep-seated belief to instill fear. There is an impressive legacy of fear surrounding the concept of possession that reflects something primal in human nature. By tapping into that heritage, the superficial details of the haunting gain the rumbling momentum and cold impact of a snowball that has been rolled down a glacier.

Having extolled such high praise, I must confess that I wanted a little more from Paranormal Activity. Ever since the original Exorcist scarred me as a child, I have been waiting for another film to surpass it. This film held such promise, as did The Ring before it, but it did not escalate quite enough to seal the deal. Once again, you will need to excuse my personal fascination, and keep in mind, I have already met people who found PA far more terrifying than The Exorcist. If your looking for a scare this Halloween Season, why not give it a watch and make up your own mind?

Bound for the Attic?

I fear Joss Whedon will soon be known as "That guy who makes shows that could have been great." Apparently, Fox is pulling Dollhouse from its November lineup in favor of House and Bones re-runs. Even more worrisome is the news that it will be aired in two hour blocks upon its return. For FOX, it is a product that has reached its expiration date, and now they desperately clear their stock before it stinks up the storehouse. Somehow this just doesn't cover it.


To be fair, Dollhouse didn't make things easy on itself. To begin with, the show is inherently hard to market. Describing it's premise is a task which is probably better left to Wikipedia, but essentially, it's about a shady organization (guess what it's called!) that rents out programmable people (Actives or Dolls as you please) to cater to the fantasies of the rich, well-connected and over-privileged. Our heroine, is Echo, a Doll played by Eliza Dushku who has a nasty knack for remembering the fabricated personalities and engagements she's supposed to forget.

At it's best, the show is an intelligent exploration of exploitation with some truly fresh sci-fi elements to drive the plot. At it's worse, it's an over-complicated version of The Pretender, at least from a weekly story-telling perspective: The early episodes of the first season saw Dushku trying on outlandish outfits and disposable personas to navigate canned TV perils. Guy who hires Dolls to live out his Most Dangerous Game fantasy? Check. Stuck-up super-star in need of a bodyguard and a lesson on being yourself? Check. Ironically, I think these throw-away scenarios might have been Whedon's attempt at simplifying things for general audiences. Unfortunately, they were still far too confusing for general audiences, and too stilted for his normally stalwart fanbase. By the time the show arrived at truly interesting questions and scenarios ("Can dead people's personalities be imprinted on Actives to get life after death?" "Yes!" "Wow! Altered Carbon much?") almost everybody had lost interest.

The very thing that makes the show so interesting is the thing that makes it so challenging to watch: It strains audiences' abilities to empathize. Whedon's casting and characterization is brilliant as always, but everyone has serious relatability issues. When unprogrammed, the Dolls are amusingly vapid and vulnerable, which is good for a few quick laughs, but quick to wear thin as well. Their programmed presonalities are engaging enough, but too short-lived to get attached. That being said, both Victor and Sierra, the other main dolls aside from Echo, are played brilliantly by Enver Gjokaj and Dichen Lachan, who you probably haven't even heard of before now.

The people who run the Dollhouse are also a real mixed bag. The Dollhouse's resident mind fabricator, Topher, is clever, nerdy and at times disarmingly vulnerable, but he's also obnoxiously conceited and detached from the people whose heads he fucks with for a living . British Boss Lady Adelle is deliciously dry and cold in a curiously endearing way, but she's also the head of an organization that rents people out for everything from sex, to manslaughter, to really dedicated daycare. Head of Security Boyd and disgraced FBI agent Paul Ballard bring some boy scoutly heroics to the mix, but both are administered in controlled doses to prevent them from stealing the show from Echo.

On the subject of Echo; I was skeptical at first as to whether Dushku would be able to carry the show, and while she has given a few trully exceptional performances (like her recent stint as a mother for rent) I'm still a bit ambivilant about her character. Some of her roles seem to bleed together in ways that make it difficult to tell if she is intentionally blending personas (which would be consistent with the shows plot) or if it's just less-than-stellar acting. Furthermore, while Echo's persistent memory affords her a more stable personality than the other dolls, the personality which emerges is that of a perfect doll, or actress. I'm a huge fan of metafiction and the ironies in play here are still a bit much for me to swallow.

Meet the Dollhouse! From left to right we have Ballard, Victor, Echo, Sierra, Topher, Adelle and Boyd. And yes, every doll is named after a character in the NATO alphabet. So far!

Given all it's inherent challenges, I was fairly certain that Whedon couldn't do anything to sell the show to the kind of viewership FOX was expecting without completely compromising its plot. But then a friend invited me to watch one of the unaired episodes exclusive to the Season 1 DVD, an episode titlted Epitaph One. From what I understand, it was intended to serve as the series de facto ending in case of cancellation, and it does a beautiful job of validating all the characters' grim predictions that the Dollhouse could very easily be the downfall of mankind. Those of you who have not seen the episode but intend to would do well to skip the next three paragraphs, and the general point of this post.

In the episode, we have fastfowarded ten years into the future, and find ourselves faced with a world that has been utterly ravaged by Dollhouse technology. Somehow imprinting signals were unleashed through cellphone signals: everybody who picked up was implanted with a homicidal Doll, and everybody who didn't suddenly found themselves facing off with said doll army. In a way, that scenario is simpler by far than the plot of the first season. You've got a nice, fairly clean binary opposition (the dolls and the people controlling them vs. the survivors), with plenty of opportunity to blur the lines and uncover the mystery of what happened.

If it was up to me to launch my brilliant new show, I'd open with this edgy ruined hell-scape to show people what was at stake, and fill in the blanks as I went along. I'm the sort that sits back and spends a good half hour speculating about stuff with friends and even I was blown away by how fucked up things were, though given the situation presented, the aftermath seemed completely appropriate. As for flashbacking, what better environment could a writer ask for than a world where you can download a person's entire being into a flashdrive?

There are obvious virtues to Whedon's subtler, more gradual approach to the story pf course. We grow increasingly attached to the show's characters as fissures creep through western society, right under our noses. We watch the technology push further and further, breaking boundaries that seem so innocent at the time. If anything, I am a sucker for brilliant plotting. But sadly, most folks aren't patient enough to watch a five year plan unfold. Hell, if Robot Chicken and Family Guy are any evidence, five minutes of continuity is pushing ones' luck. I love both those shows, don't get me wrong, but it saddens me to think that longer term, serialized story-telling is loosing it's place in television.

In conclusion, if you are a Browncoat who was turned off by Dollhouse's early offerings, come back and give it another look, preferably guided by a friend who knows the show well enough to take you through the good stuff. It may already be too late to launch a fan campaign strong enough to save the show, but trying never hurt anything. If you'll excuse me, I'm going to be late for my Treatment.

Rule 32

Nerd flicks have been dominating the box office for a couple of years now. The influence of comic books, fantasy trilogies and video games has been rising at a meteoric rate. But on October 2nd, 2009, pop-corn nerd cinema reached a new zenith with Zombieland.


When I first saw the trailer, I remember thinking "this looks pretty awesome, but I probably just saw all the best parts." If you clicked the link, you may find yourself haunted by similar reservations. But fear not; there is a lot more funny to be found in these post apocalyptic wastes. And I am not an easy laugh. Like most people, society has conditioned me to produce a courtesy-laugh with a very low humor threshold for the sake of politeness. Sadly I frequently fall back on it even when I'm watching movies. But this is not real laughter. It is a real-life 'lol' that is more a recognition of attempted humor than a genuine display of mirth. By contrast, this movie has several legitimate ROFL moments. In fact, no fake, truth here to follow: Zombieland is not merely hilarious, but one of the funniest movies I've seen in a long time.

Then again, this movie was designed with people like me in mind, and it was perfectly calibrated to ensure total domination over my demographic. It's clear that Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese have played a lot of video games, and I'm not just talking about zombie blastin' fare like L4D- although the influence of that title is clear, and the film will do the sequel's sales figures a big favor. The influence of Max Brook's Zombie Survival Guide is also apparent, as main character Columbus rattles off a list of zombie surviving maxims simply referred to as "The Rules." Interestingly, these rules are not only narrated, but they pop up on screen whenever applied or applicable, in a comparable manner to the visual motifs of a video games. One gag, (which was sadly surrendered by in one of the trailers), takes this concept even further, referencing a "Zombie Killer of the Week", complete with a flashy, 'achievement unlocked' looking icon.

In case you've been wondering, this post is named after rule 32 for Zombieland which simply advises that one "Enjoy the little things." It's the kind of trite advice which normally pisses me off, because I've always felt there is an urge for compliance and complacency buried beneath the optimism of those truisms. Suggesting one satisfy himself with 'little things' seems to imply that going after big things would be too much trouble. Of course, my suspicions led me to completely disregard the whole "enjoy" part of the equation, so I miss the point entirely. Zombieland helps remind people like me that the difference between living and un-living is enjoying vs. surviving life. I know it sounds pithy, but the gleeful cringe-inducing semi-campy violence involved delivers the movie from preciousness.

From right to left we have Columbus, Wichita, Little Rock and Tallahassee

From a technical perspective, the movie doesn't break any ground, which is perfectly fine because it doesn't aspire to. The music is mostly familiar, forgettable rock, and the effects are sufficiently bloody. The performances were very enjoyable, though given that every character in the film is a stock character of one kind or another, it was mostly a matter of good casting. That being said, I'm glad that Jesse Eisenberg was chosen to play 'the nerdy sensitive guy' instead of Michael Cerra, and Woody Harrelson makes a hell of a psychotic cowboy. Abigail Breslin of Little Miss Sunshine fame didn't get much in the way of screen time as 'the cute kid' and Emma Stone meets the right balance between wicked hot and playfully bitchy. It's the 'surprise guest' who really steals the show though, but giving him away would be a spoiler punishable by death. As time goes on, the secret will get harder to keep though, so I recommend you get to a theater post-haste. And bring friends. It's that kind of movie.

They Come in Squalor!

I think enough time has finally passed for me to give District 9 a good talking about without having to worry about catastrophic spoilers. Of course, if you have not seen it yet but you still intend to, do that before reading what I have to say, as the plot will be divulged, and dissected in detail henceforth.

District 9's premise, "what if Aliens came to Earth, not in war or peace, but poverty and desperation?" can be thought of as a return to classic sci-fi form, insofar that it is less concerned with the fantastic trappings of its own genre (laser gunfire, warp drives, paradoxes) , and more concerned with the scenario's social implications. The psuedo-documentary format is a brilliant frame for such examinations, because examining humanity is what documentaries do. We do eventually arrive at flashy firefights, foreign biology and space travel tropes as well, resulting in an intringuing, unique experience. Some critics, whose names I have made a point of not remembering, have complained that the film is simply a mishmash of old and familiar sci-fi tropes, and is therefore not original. Though honestly, if amalgamations cannot be considered original, Homer's a hack, Shakespeare's a schmuck and... you can see where I'm going with this.

The film opens with a collage of interviews and handy cam footage which informs us that an alien ship arrived in the skies of Johannesburg, South Africa in 1982, and ever since, the area has been inhabitted by a populous of alien aliens (Guffaw!) referred to as the Prawns, presumably because Cthulhu-Grasshoppers takes too long to say. An insidious PMC known as Multi-National United (MNU) has seized control of the situation, and it quickly becomes apparent that one of their lackeys, a Wikus van der Merwe, is going to be our main character and he's about as likeable as a wet pair of good shoes; he is boringly average, socially awkward and naive in an way that is simutaneously obnoxious and pitiable, but you aren't going to throw him out because there's good there.
If you think this is heavy-handed, you should check out the promotional website.

Things start to shift gears when Wikus gets sprayed with an alien chemical that (spoiler alert, last chance to turn back) gradually transforms him into a Prawn. Although it may not be all that original as hooks go, the twist works excellently as a plot device because it serves as the narrative's fulcrum, providing a convincing bridge for the disparate switch from docudrama to action thriller. Wikus' metamorphosis begins with his right arm, conveniently allowing him to use the alien weaponry coveted by tribalistic african gangsters and the scheming executives of MNU. All Wikus wants to do is go home to his loving new wife who is inconveniently the daughter of MNU's evil CEO. Since MNU is on high alert and anxious to sell Wikus to the military, he has to turn to the aliens to cure his condition. Carnage and gunfights ensue; the bloodiest seen since Watchman.

Yet District 9's sensationalized gore serves a purpose beyond the superficial: It establishes an atmosphere of intense brutality, which is quite appropriate for a movie set in a politically tense, refugee environment. Documentary fans may argue that the horrors of starvation, subjugation and degradation are brutal enough, and that watching people erupt into showers meat when blasted by lightning cannons only trivializes those subtler, truer horrors, and they may have a point. It's obvious that Blomkamp opted for "totally awesome" instead of social commentary in the final sequence where we see Wikus commandeer an alien battle mech and lays waste to scores of MNU soldiers. Then again, when Wikus is forced to fire a lightning cannon at a hooded, handcuffed prawn, it provokes sorrow and revulsion as opposed to stylized admiration.

That compromise between meaningful social examination and manic spectacle best describes my feelings toward District 9. It is engaging, both emotionally and intellectually, but part of me has to wonder what would have happened if things continued on at their slower initial pace. To a certain extent, it seems like we got to watch the fused halves of two seperate movies. I suspect that a big part of this has to do with the fact that Blomkamp was working on a budget of almost nothing; a condition that, when paired with passion and vision, produces truly remarkable things.
Truth be told, I'm worried about how the inevitable sequel (please come up with something more creative than District 10), will fare with a bigger budget and more press.