Dragon Age II

“Wait a minute” you’re thinking to yourself. “I don’t remember a movie called Dragon Age, let alone its sequel!” And you’d be right. Dragon Age: Origins was a video game. It’s sequel, Dragon Age II, came out recently. I bought it and played through it, and decided to review it.

“What?!?” You’re now thinking to yourself. “This is a movie site. Where do you get off writing a review of a game?” And you’d be perfectly right. In fact, if you want to leave right now and come back when I’ve regained my senses, you can. I only offer three rebuttals. One, it’s my site, and I can do whatever I want with it (technically, Evan contributes as well, but if he doesn’t like this … well, he’s much bigger than me so he can do what he wants). Two, I like the game so much I want to write about it. It would be difficult not to write about it, in fact. Third, the game is so cinematic it may as well be 40 hour interactive movie.

The Dragon Age games are made by an Edmonton-based company called Bioware (although they’ve spread out to Austin, Texas and a few other locations that don’t come to mind. They’re growing, and it’s no wonder. They make good games). I was introduced to Bioware when they made Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, which is about as close as Dungeons and Dragons will ever get to Star Wars. Released in 2003, it was fantastic! I played it about a year later, and ran around, beheading bad guys with my lightsaber and generally saving the galaxy about 4000 years before Luke Skywalker had to do it again. I bought the game some time later, and have enjoyed it playing through it occasionally (I’ve beaten it four times, at last count).

In 2007, Bioware made Mass Effect, an RPG set in a universe of their own creation. I saw it on the shelf when browsing Best Buy. I remember an ad campaign that had emphasized choices having a huge impact, so I picked it up, expecting another RPG where you’d pick your abilities during combat, and the characters would execute them, much like in SW: KotOR. Instead, I got an RPG/shooter. It was pretty much the perfect game for me. I wanted a shooter interface for combat (emphasizing twitch reactions) and RPG mechanics for story interaction (upgrading talents, weapons, armor). Absolutely amazing. It blew me away, and I’ve played through it a number of times.

In 2009, Bioware came out with Dragon Age: Origins. Another RPG, with interaction similar to SW:KotOR. Set in another original universe, this time a fantasy setting with witches, mages, dragons, swords, and all that stuff. It was a little grimmer than usual. Some of the choices you made had unintentional effects, and beating the game involved a terrible sacrifice or evil decision. Fun times!

In 2010, Bioware released Mass Effect 2. And it was so good, I can’t play Mass Effect any more. Some of the RPG elements were removed (no more inventory management headaches), but the story is still strong, the character interactions are much better, and the shooting is far superior. I loved it. And I still intend on playing it a few more times (in one year, I’ve beaten it four times. It’s so awesome, it’s almost addicting).

When Dragon Age II was announced, I was expecting it to have the same improvements over Dragon Age: Origins that Mass Effect 2 had over Mass Effect. I was a little disappointed in that regard, because it wasn’t quite as revolutionary as I had expected, but it’s still a great game.

Because I usually review movies, and this is something different, I thought I’d review it in a manner that’s different as well. So, here are a bunch of signs I got playing Dragon Age II.

- Sign of a funny game: Acquiring a dagger called “The Tiny Cut (413 out of 1000)”

- Sign of a punny game: Acquiring a shield called “Lord Bearing’s Wall”

- Sign that Windows is taking over the game: Some major plot decisions have a cleverly concealed “Are you sure?” dialogue.

- Sign that Final Fantasy is working its way into your game: One of the characters is an elf names Fenris. He’s an escaped slave from a foreign land. He reminded me very strongly of Cloud, or Lightning, or whatever generic emo protagonist with an object-based name is starring in the latest FF games (in a few years, Square Enix will just give up and the hero of Final Fantasy 27 will be named Noun). Tall, white-haired, and brooding. The only difference is Fenris has Emo-hair, and FF protagonists have Calvin-hair. Also, Fenris has a reason to brood. He had magical substances tattooed onto his body in a process so painful, it burned away any of his previous memories.

- Sign of an updated graphical engine: The game has better graphics, but runs much smoother and quicker than its predecessor

- Sign of a different graphical engine: Any character returning from the first game and its expansion (there are a few returning, one playable) looks a little different. The differences range from “there’s something different, but I can’t quite put my finger on it” all the way to “What the hell?”

- Sign of some graphics bugs slipping through the beta: Clipping issues on shields, swords, and elbows. Whoops.

- Sign some details are to small to animate: There are no scabbards. Daggers are stored on your back, floating about an inch behind you when not in combat. I’ve never heard of gravity defying knives before, but there you go.

- Sign of a cool game: The rogue class is about as close to a ninja as you’ll get outside of an Assassin’s Creed game. Leaping or combat rolling from one enemy to the next. Disappearing in a cloud of smoke, only to reappear behind an enemy to stab them in the back. Spinning roundhouse to the side of the head for extra damage. Dual-wielding vicious-looking daggers.

- Sign of different combat programming: fighting is a lot quicker, especially moving from one enemy to the next.

- Sign the player-base likes rogues and mages: playing as a warrior is kind of dull. Yes, combat happens faster, but most abilities are only useable in certain situations and have long cooldowns. Plus, the resource bar for tanks (I played as a tank – someone who gathers the enemy’s attention and soaks up their damage while my team mates laid the smack down) is pretty small since tanks concentrate on building up health, strength, and defence. So the resource for abilities (called stamina) is tiny and used to quickly, and then there’s a long wait for it to recharge.

- Sign of the times catching up with the game: the main character is fully voiced, after being a silent protagonist in the previous game. Mass Effect’s effect, I guess.

- Sign of trying to reach a wider audience: They eliminated skills entirely. Now there’s only attributes (Strength, Agility, Cunning) and abilities. I’ll miss pick pocketing, persuasion, poisons, and what-not. I’m not really surprised, because this was similar to the style of change between Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2.

- Sign the lore team is well paid: They’ve developed a detailed religion that most of the citizens of the game believe in. It was in the first game, too, but it’s more in depth here. Of course, it’s also spawned its own in-game curses as well, like “Maker’s Breath” and “Andraste’s Flaming Knickers!” Fun times.

- Sign the political subtext team is well paid: In this fantasy land, only one nation has legalized slavery. Most people detest it, with obvious reason. However, if a noble or king of a slavery-free nation needs cash, they can surreptitiously round up a bunch of people (usually malcontents) and sell them off to this nation as slaves. How does this nation pay for the slaves? When you get free labour, you save a lot of gold. It’s makes total sense from a pragmatic viewpoint, and is disgustingly sick from an ethical viewpoint.

- Sign the party was well designed: There are six roles possible. Two for the warrior (Tank and melee damage), two for a rogue (melee damage, and ranged damage with a bow) and two for a mage (ranged damage and healing). Each of these roles are filled by one teammate, with only one or two overlaps (there’s more than six party members, although one’s downloadable and one’s temporary, leaving after the first act). Some are optional and some can leave if you make the wrong choices. I don’t begrudge Bioware designing it like this, but the problem is that whatever role you choose, you’ll wind up leaving the teammate whose role you stole at home a lot.

- Sign the character’s writers had fun: Each character has several different interactions possible with each other character. Most of them are pretty funny, and they usually crop up when nothing else is happening (walking from one location to the next).

- Sign that pop culture goes way back: In one situation, it’s possible for a character to say “I like big boats and I cannot lie.”

- Sign that romance is harder in real life than a game: I (a male warrior) was nice to everyone in my party at the appropriate junctions, and wound up getting kissed by a dude. Thanks, Bioware, but where the hell did that come from?

- Sign the romance team has given up completely and just allowed everything: There are five characters able to be romanced, and all but one are available for male and female characters. So I ended up kissing a guy and two girls. I broke the guy’s heart, and one of the girls moved in with me. The other, I’m sailing around the world with. So bisexuality and polygamy are fine in this game. I’m not sure what Bioware is hinting at, except that it’s tired of everyone complaining about the romance options, so it threw everything in.

- Sign that the writers know their clichés: “Nobody believed in me” is common in movies, where one person, or one group of people, go against everyone else, and is proven right. In this game, it looks like that’ll happen, only the character ends up being wrong, and the events are tragically awful (or awfully tragic). It’s heartbreaking.

- Sign the writers saved the best for last: The ending sequence and final boss is set up by a devastating betrayal. Like, a fall-to-your-knees-in-despair betrayal, and an unpreventable war after a terrible tragedy.

- Sign the designers saved the best for last: The last boss fight is … well, there’s only one word for it, and that word is EPIC! It’s not that hard, but it’s ridiculously cool. You get through about a quarter of the boss's life, and then a cutscene ensues that could teach movie studios a thing or two about cinematics. A-maz-ing! And then it goes from there. And the bosses death is in another fantastic cutscene. Seriously, the end is made of pure awesome. Cranked up to 11.

- Sign the humano-centric programming is lessening: Dwarves no longer look just like short humans (their jaws are much bigger), and elves no longer look just like humans with Spock ears. Elves are much thinner, their ears are generally longer than before, and their eyes are set farther apart, and are sometimes larger. They look like a cross between the Na’vi and the aliens at the end of A.I. One of the elves had such large eyes, and was so overwhelmed by the city (“there was a mugging, right outside my door. It was fascinating!”) that it’s impossible not to want to protect her, even from herself. And that’s how I wound up with a live-in elf girlfriend.

- Sign the game takes up less space than it could: There are only two or three (admittedly large) cave designs. The game opens or closes portions of them to simulate the differences between each of the several caves in the game. “Wait, this looks familiar.” The annoying thing is that they didn’t change the colour at all. The DLC came with the exact same cave, but used a different colour, and the difference was staggering. It was like being in a whole different place.

- Sign the programmers were stingy with their code: The DLC character, Sebastian Vael, comes with his own interactions with other party members, a few short quests, and some cutscenes. It comes in a package 31.6 MB in size. For reference, in the original game, there was a DLC character Shale. There was probably three times the content, but the DLC was over 500 MB.

- Sign the item creation team ran out of ideas: I had a pair of gloves called “Gloves of the Unknowable Unknown.” Really, Bioware? What’s next, Boots of Foot covering? Breastplate of Upper Body Protection?

- Sign I’m not the player I thought I was: A lot of people are saying almost all the battles can be won by simply auto-attacking. I dunno. While there certainly are a lot of battles (probably a little over half) where I didn’t have to do much more than auto-attack with my own character, there were some were I had to use a lot of my abilities, as well as being aware of what my teammates were doing, and issuing orders to them. I mean, spellcasters are a pain if you don’t immediately kill them.

- Sign the music is a rush job: Besides the composer saying it’s a rush job? It uses a few of the cues from the previous game. I even thought I heard a clip of the Kashyyyk music from KotOR, but maybe that’s just me. Plus, the music itself just isn’t very good. I bought a special edition of the game, which included the soundtrack. I had a listen, and there was one good part of one song. That’s it. I’m kinda disappointed.

- Sign that gear involves circular logic: I killed a High Dragon (the toughest kind of dragon in the game). It was fairly late in the game too. It had a lot of fire based attacks, and no enemies afterwards had any fire attacks of significant value. The dragon dropped Dragon’s Blood, which I could take to an NPC, who crafted an amulet for me. It had +1 to all stats (at this point, pretty meh) as well as 20 health (again, meh) and a bunch of fire resistance. Which would be really helpful, if I ever had to KILL A HIGH DRAGON! Thanks, Bioware. The rewards for killing a particular monster is an object to make killing that particular monster easier.

- Sign that morality can be complicated: There’s a race in the game called the Qunari, who follow a strict philosophy of duty to their society. Obey, or die. It makes them seem evil, except they make a whole lot of good points, especially about the despicability of parts of our society. Plus, they rarely judge. Anyone can join the Qun. Most people would see it as militaristic, but they would contend it’s discipline. It’s a very fine distinction, but the writing team makes it legitimate.

- Sign that while party banter is mostly fun, it can add subtle emotion: Two people are talking about Anders, a mage. “I feel sorry for Anders.” “Why? He’s a danger to himself and everyone around him.” “I think he broke the thing he meant to save.” Such a simple but heartbreaking line.

- Sign of recycled animations: There’s only one animation for a basic attack with a melee weapon. I definitely remember trying to stab someone with my mace. It’s a testament to my strength or my stupidity, I’m not sure which.

- Sign the fourth wall has a hole in it: As mentioned above, the characters look a bit different from the previous game. So when one shows up in a cameo – “Isabella, you look … different.” “Don’t we all.” I LOL’ed.

- Sign my character has ESP: Characters will unsheathe their weapons at the beginning of combat (or at least, grab a hold of them from their invisible scabbards) and put them away again at the end. Combat usually has more than one wave of enemies. They’re timed waves though (the second comes about 20 or 30 seconds after the first wave has been engaged, not immediately after the first wave is killed). If you’re quick enough, the first wave will be killed a few seconds before the second wave shows up, instead of a few seconds afterwards. This leads to a situation where all the enemies are dead, but the characters keep their weapons out, as if preternaturally sensing the enemies who will pop out moments later. The tip is, if your characters keep their weapons out, their will be another wave. Probably because of the programming, but I like to think it’s ESP.

- Sign that asymmetry is popular: This happened in the first game as well. I’d get a suit of armour, and it would make me look cool, or shiny, or badass … except for one thing. The left would be exactly the same as the right, except for one shoulder, or one arm. Attached would be some spikes of doom, or a giant shoulderpad, or something to throw off the symmetry. I have no idea why these are on there. Sure, it make easy identification of rank in the military, but four stars on a collar does that too. It’s not like I need the left half of a set of football pads to tell me that. And it looks pretty ridiculous.

- Sign that real life annoyances can infiltrate games: one of the codex entries (the codex is basically a journal that stores all the information relevant – and sometime irrelevant – to the story, including info on characters, weapons, places, game-play, and lore) told part of a story about a monk who had a problem with lost socks whenever he did the laundry (as many of us have, as well). Going back over his life, he found he had lost quite a number of them (something like 800). Determined to get to the bottom of it, he constructed a sock blind to spy on the socks while doing laundry, to see where they went.

- Sign that Psycho is creepy everywhere: At one point, my character’s mother disappeared. While tracking her down, she was repeatedly referred to as “Mother” and not “my mother.” As in “That’s Mother’s locket!” It was very … Norman Bates-ish, and I wished the protagonist (whom I was supposed to cheer for) wouldn’t be quite so uncomfortably ungrammatical.

- Sign of pun-based pop-culture references: There’s a gang called Reining Men. They were hurting a lot of people, so I killed them all, but I can only imaging what would happen if they were decent and trying to rescue some people in a bad situation. “Who’s there?” “It’s Reining Men.” “Hallelujah!”

- Sign that hypocrites do well in fictional worlds: Near the end of the second act, I killed a group of enemies simply labelled “Looters.” This was ironic, since I had been grabbing everything everywhere that wasn’t nailed down (there was a surprisingly large amount of stuff nailed down. I was disappointed).

So there it is. I don’t know what all these signs mean, except that I enjoyed a great game with an epic ending and a lot of funny, and sometimes touching, moments.

Paul

We watched Paul this week. Evan, Shaun and I went to see it at the new theatre, complete with reclining seats. You have to be a bit taller than I am to take full advantage, though. I didn't notice it as much as in TRON, though.

I got two of the three trailers, but neither Evan nor I had seen Bridesmaids before, and we hope to never see it again. I got Arthur (not on our list) and Your Highness (definitely on our list, and coming up in a few weeks). Then the credits rolled, and only two companies were involved in the making - Working Title, and Universal. Of course, the giant companies barely count, because you can't really mistake them for a movie (thanks for the joke, Family Guy). We all know the globe from Universal, or the kingdom & castle from Disney, or the lady with the torch for Columbia (although I do miss the horse from Tri Star) or the floating triangles for Alliance (I'm not sure how many Americans would know that one, since I think Alliance is a Canadian company mostly involved with distribution here).

The movie itself starts about 60 years ago, with a dog going outside to investigate strange lights, followed by a young girl. A spaceship lands - on the dog. I laughed, but I'm sure PETA wasn't impressed. It was only implied, though, not shown.

The movie skips ahead to the present day, at Comic Con. This was both funny and informative, because I've read about Comic Con on a number of nerdy news sources. And some legitimate ones, as well. There are a few gags, one involving Simon Pegg's character (Graeme) eyeing one of the many ladies dressed up in Princess Leia's bikini from Return of the Jedi (there were a bunch of those bikinis wandering around) while Nick Frost's character (Clive) eyes the girl in the Ewok costume. Snigger. Then they meet an amalgamation of every author who's sick of meeting every fan whose life was changed by his works, played hilariously by Jeffrey Tambor. Anyway, we learn that Clive won the Nebula Award in 1992, which is actually pretty good. It's the award for best Sci-Fi novel. Past winners include Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke, and Orson Scott Card, who won for Ender's Game, which everyone should read. Seriously, stop reading this good-for-nothing blog and pick it up. It's one of the better books ever written.

Anyway, after Comic Con they rent an RV for a road trip to all the alien landmarks in the USA (they’re from the UK). Some of them I recognized, some I did not. After a run-in with a couple of rednecks (and denting their truck), they wind up meeting the titular alien when the car he's acquired crashes. Clive faints, so Paul explains to Graeme that he's in trouble and on the run. It eventually comes out that the government has gotten enough information out of him, and now wants to dissect him, so he understandably goes on the lam.

A short while later, they hook up with Ruth (played by Kristen Wiig), who's a hardcore Young-Earth Christian Fundamentalist. Tired of her calling him a demon, Paul imparts knowledge of evolution and alien culture via mindmeld, and her faith is shattered. "I can drink." "Yeah." "I can smoke" "Yup." "I can swear." "Probably." "I can fornicate." "Maybe later." Afterwards follows her learning attempts to curse properly. She can find the right words, and find the right times, but not the right words at the right times. Until the end, when it's used for subtly for drama.

Anyway, her equally fundamentalist father thinks she's been kidnapped, so he's after her. Also on the trail are a senior Secret Service Agent (Agent Zoil, played by Jason Bateman) who knows about Paul, and two junior secret service agents who are pretty dumb, and are recruited by Zoil to find anything suspicious. They eventually cotton on that it's an alien, but only after hilarity has ensued.

Halfway through, they go to a tavern in the middle of nowhere, where the band is playing ... wait for it ... the Cantina music from Star Wars. You have not heard it until you've heard it on a slide guitar. A perfectly understandable brawl breaks out, involving everyone that's chasing them (and the two rednecks, and a random group of sailors). They get out of it alright (except for a bloody nose for Clive) and go on there way to Paul's destination. They also pick up the girl (now an old woman) whose dog Paul crushed when he arrived.

More chasing and humour ensue ("You're not going to ... probe us, will you?" "Why does everyone always go to that? What do they think we do, harvest farts? How much can you learn from ass anyway?") as well as some references to other science fiction. Everyone in the theatre got the Cantina music, but I'm not sure how many people got the five notes from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. And they even managed to get a cameo of Sigourney Weaver in there, complete with Aliens reference: "Get away from her, you Bitch!"

All in all, it was much funnier than I expected. Or maybe more obviously funny. I think some of the humour in Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz may not have been to American sensibilities (many of which I share). And of course, both of those movies split comedy with another style as well (Zombies and Action, respectively), so making a movie that concentrated on pure comedy may have distilled the funny. Or they got even better at writing, or they had a bunch more references to go with. Whatever it was, I thoroughly liked it. Theatre movie for sure.

As a PS, I’m pretty sure Paul (the character) was all computer generated. And fantastically done as well. People will always hold up Gollum as the epitome of CG characters, but I think Paul holds his own. Kudos to the effects department for a tremendous job on that.

Battle Los Angeles

We went to see Battle: Los Angeles this week. It's in 2D, so that saved us a few bucks. Also, even though it was tops at the box office, we still got there way earlier than we needed to. Whoops. Anyway, I got nearly all of the trailers (most of which were on our list) although Evan got Priest. The last time I threw a shut out, the movie turned out horrible, so we try and avoid that. The last time Evan got all of them was before The Last Airbender, so we know something's terribly wrong when he gets them all.

The movie opens during a helicopter ride full of marines, receiving instructions from their commanding officer as the chopper avoids anti-aircraft fire. Then it flashed back 24 hours to introduce all the members of the squad. Here's a Staff Sargeant, played by Aaron Eckhart. He's been in the marines for years (like, 20) and decides it's time to retire (after being passed on his run on the beach by a squad of much younger marines). This sets up a battle of the clichés, because the guy who's a few days from retirement almost always gets killed. However, he's never the main character. So I wondered if he'd get killed or not. Anyway, they also have the guy who's about to get married, and faking excitement about the planning to mollify his wife. There's the guy who busts everyone's balls. Here's the guy who has a joke for everyone. A new recruit, who everyone teases but also looks out for. Here's the guy whose brother was killed while serving under Eckhart's character (an interesting dynamic that gets played out). There's the guy who had some sort of psychological episode (PTSD?) and isn't cleared for combat by the doctor. Here's the guy from Nigeria, who joined the American Marines to be a doctor. Finally, here's the newly minted lieutenant, heavy on training but light on experience, saying good-bye to his very pregnant wife. There are more characters, but they don't get introductions because they come in halfway through, or they're just not that important.

They're initially about to be deployed to help with evacuation because asteroids will probably wreak some havoc on coastal cities, but by the time they report to the Forward Operating Base (FOB), they know they're up against aliens. The plan is bomb the snot out of Santa Monica, so they now need to get every civilian back to the FOB.

Their squad is tasked to get to a police station, grab the citizens that are holed up there, and get back. So off they go, into smoke filled streets, and then the action starts. The first part is a little confusing, because of the shaky-cam, and also because it's hard to tell who's who when they're all wearing the same coloured fatigues amid a smoke-filled battleground.

The team gets whittled down a little, but they make it to the police station, even offloading some of their wounded back to the FOB. Unfortunately, the aliens’ airforce makes an appearance, so they have to hoof it back on foot or by bus. Bus it is, with a few extra members from other teams that got wiped out and five civilians - a father and his son, and a woman with her two nieces.

The path back is blocked, and a few firefights ensue. It becomes obvious they won't get back to the FOB in time, so they get out of the bombing zone and hunker down. From there, the tension rises, as does the action. Fighting, moving, more fighting, more moving, much fighting ... it's all pretty good.

I really liked this movie. It was, for all intent and purposes, exciting. Maybe it was the shaky-cam combined with the excessive military jargon that seemed to put me into the moment. Maybe it was the acting. Maybe it was the writing and dialogue. Or a combination of everything. Whatever it was, I really liked it. It's been a while since I've left a movie feeling like that.

Of course, the music probably played a part. I had planned on acquiring it, but forgot until Evan emailed me the groove shark link, so I downloaded it, and added it to my list of things to buy. It's by Brian Tyler, whom I had never heard of before. Not that that's such a bad thing. I hadn't heard of Steve Jablonsky either, but he did both Transformers movie soundtracks, and they're amazing.

There are some flaws, but they seem less important than flaws in other movies. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because those things aren't given much importance in the movie. Anyway, one of them is that the aliens come to earth to steal our water. Apparently, they didn't see Europa on the way in. The second problem I found is that the ships look quite un-aerodynamic, but Evan made the great point later that perhaps the design facilitates intra-galactic travelling. The other point I actually got from Gregg Easterbrook, and is generally common to all alien movies. The chances of aliens coming to Earth being within a certain technological window of our evolution is incredibly small. The universe is 14 billion years old. A 1% increase in the rate of evolution would make them 140 million years more advanced than us. 140 million years of evolution would take them from just past single-celled organisms (the next step after amoebas) to humans. Homo Sapiens have only been around for 5 million years. The idea of anything alien being damaged by anything human is ... laughable.

Still, ignoring these (or shoving it into the bubble with all things covered by the Willing Suspension of Disbelief), there's a terrific movie in here. Highly recommended. Be aware, though, that's it's less Independence Day and more Black Hawk Down. Once the cast gets whittled down, it seems to be far easier to tell everyone apart, so that's nice. Definitely a theatre movie.

Drive Angry 3D

This is a review for a movie two weeks old that nobody saw. Why am I writing it? Because we saw it, that’s why. And we’re probably the only ones who can tell you if it was any good or not. It’s not, by the way. So there you go. You can leave now, if you want.

The whole experience did not start well. On the way to the movie, we discussed how much money the movie had made (very little). I put the over/under of people in the theatre at 7.5 and took the over. Evan gladly took the under, and nailed it. There were four people there, including us. That’s why I don’t work in Vegas.

None of the previews were in 3D, which was a little disappointing. We did get to see some previews of movies on our list (Battle Los Angeles and possibly Hanna). Then we got the title screens of the five companies that worked on it. Yes, five. It used to be only one company did a movie. Then it was two. Now it’s usually two or three. But five seems excessive. One of them was Maple, though, and they did The Expendables, so that was a good sign.

The movie opens with an obviously computer-generated car jumping over an obviously computer-generated bridge in an obviously computer-generated Hell. Then it goes to the real world, where the 3D is so obvious it hurt my eyes. Seriously. They toned it down after about five minutes (or maybe I got used to it), but that opening scene was literally painful.

And ridiculous, which is what I’d hoped for. Most of the reviews had stated the movie is bad, but full of ridiculous things. So I was expecting it to be like The Expendables or The A-Team. Unfortunately, Drive Angry did not live up (or down) to the hype. Sure, there were some over-the-top things, but the whole movie wasn’t made of those. And the title was misleading too. Maybe Drive Perturbed would have been more appropriate. It’s also possible that Nicolas Cage was acting angry the entire time, but I’m so used to fury that I mistook anger for annoyance.

There were some good thing about this movie. The lead female is hot, and can pack a wallop into a punch. She’s got a mean right hook, which isn’t very commonplace unless your Michelle Rodriguez. Not even Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft had such good boxing movies (and I haven’t seen Million Dollar Baby, so I can’t comment on Hillary Swank).

There are some good action scenes, as well as some interesting shots. 3D might hurt my eyes, but it certainly has the capacity to make standard shots completely new again. So that’s nice. But the best thing about this movie is probably a character called The Accountant, played by William Fichtner, whom you may recognize as the shotgun-wielding bank manager from the opening of The Dark Night, but who I recognize as a pilot of one of the space shuttles in Armageddon and as the leader of the resistance in the criminally under-the-radar movie Equilibrium. He’s … interesting. Always calm (in the break-your-neck-without-changing-facial-expressions type of calm) and provides some remarkably creepy lines. Almost cheerful, but creepy. Plus, he does a cool coin trick to reveal an FBI badge. He’s not actually part of the FBI, but is part of Hell’s bureaucracy, employed to track down people who break out.

There are stretches in the movie of just driving. Which is apt, based on the title, but it’s also kind of boring. Going fast doesn’t mean excitement, especially on a straight road. Twisty-turny chases make things better, and using cars as weapons definitely raises the ridiculous level.

Still, it’s not quite to my liking. If I had to give it a rating, I’d say it’s at the high end of DVD. Considering the only other DVD movies are Jonah Hex and The Mechanic , there’s not much competition. But I can’t put it in the same category as Resident Evil or Predators. There’s just not over-the-top enough to justify that. So catch it on DVD, or TV next year, when it’s licensed cheaply because it really needs the money.

Religion and Film

Religion and Film was a course I took in university, where they forced us to watch Spiderman and Star Wars. I know. What a travesty. We also got to watch some lesser known works about religion. I remember one of them about a soldier in Iran who's trying to make a movie about the time he wooed his wife. Interesting look into the politics of the region, from a different perspective than we're used to.

Anyway, what I'm writing about should probably be more entitled Religion in Film, or Religion and Culture as Portrayed in the Media, only not as pretentious.

Religion often gets a short shrift in the media these days. Either they're portrayed incorrectly, simply, or generically. My main point of reference will be an episode of Eureka. I like the show. It's usually good-hearted. It carries on some season-long story lines. It has great humour, and it pairs up nicely with Warehouse 13.

Eureka is about a town called Eureka in Washington or Oregon (the Pacific Northeast is all they're willing to specify on, but it's filmed in Vancouver). Eureka was founded to be the home of America's brightest scientists, so they could all work on making the future of mankind a better place. So there's a whole bunch of really intelligence scientists, most of whom are eccentric as well. And Jack Carter, who's of average intelligence, but he's the town sheriff. Each episode usually has an experiment or project go wrong, and Carter has to fix it, with whatever help he can scrounge from the people nearby. There's a lot of Hollywood Science in it (something like "Lets run a nuclear topology scan to find the tachyon wavelength displacements"), but mostly it's about the fun of Carter interacting with (slightly) mad scientists.

The episode in question deals with Biblical phenomenon. Water turns into blood, someone starts glowing (transfiguration), and some people are struck dumb. There is a church in Eureka, and the opening scene takes place there. It's Sunday morning, and it's almost empty. The pastor is talking about science interacting with faith. It only lasts about 20 seconds before we cut to church singing Amazing Grace and then letting out, but that 20 seconds is informative. Because the pastor has been around for a number of years, surely this sermon has been given before. In fact, it would probably be one of the first given. All the parishioners would have reconciled science and faith by now, making the sermon pointless. It's only there to provide the audience with an introduction to why faith and science come into conflict, and maybe why they don't have to. Also, Amazing Grace? Seriously, there's more than one hymn that churches sing.

Throughout the episode, there are a few mentions of the Bible, and some of God. But none of Jesus, which is weird, because he's pretty central to Christianity (it's implied that the church is some denomination of Christian). Later on, we find out that all these problems have centered around a device built by the organist for the church. She had lost her husband a few months previously, and built an inter-dimensional portal to heaven.

All of this makes me think that most atheists (or agnostics) don't understand Christianity that well. Firstly, Heaven is not simply located in another dimension (or at least, I highly doubt it). It's not a portal or gateway away. There will be no technological device to take you there.

Secondly, Jesus is a pretty big thing. You can mention him from time to time. Christianity is not a bland religion where God answers our prayers from time to time and nothing else. So please, stop trying to be inoffensive and start being honest, even if you have to piss people off.

Thirdly, Amazing Grace? Is there only one hymn in Hollywood? Unless there's a large, black church in the movie or TV show, we'll hear Amazing Grace. Never mind that there are several hundred other hymns out there. Is it the only one that the writers can remember from their childhood upbringing in the church?

As for other religions, I unfortunately don't know much about them. However, being Jewish does not simply mean wearing a yarmulke and going to Temple on Saturday. Maybe you guys should watch The Believer again. Being Muslim is not about wearing a turban (that's sikh) and even women are allowed to go Burqa-free in a majority of Muslim nations. Finally, do not get Muslim and Arab mixed up. It’s both incorrect and insulting.

Culture has almost the opposite problem from bland religion. A lot of media add to cultures to make them more interesting. This is most evidently seen in real life, actually, with the Bushido code that Samurai apparently lived by. It’s actually fictitious, having been invented as a model for people to look up to and be inspired by.

Luckily, most other cultures are portrayed more realistically. Sure, they might exaggerate the “eh’s” of Canadians, or the studiousness of Asians, or the redneck-ness of parts of American, but for the most part, it’s on the ball. The parts that writers make up are for little-known or fabricated cultures, because it opens up the plot possibilities.

As an example, say that the protagonist was searching for a homeopathic cure for his one true love, and journeyed into the heart of a remote jungle to find it, and the tribe of people who guard it. In real life, he could ask the tribe for the cure (and they might give it to him, because they’re nice), or he might trade money, gold, medicine, shiny rocks, TV’s, movies, or food for it. So he’d go there, and come back with it.

In movies or TV, he’d have to undergo tests to prove he was worthy of speaking to the tribe. This is a chance for him to prove how badass he is, because one of the tests will undoubtedly involve hand-to-hand combat (hey look, The Rundown. And Brotherhood of the Wolf). Another test might be free-climbing a mountain located conveniently close to the village (in the heart of a jungle?) and the third test will probably involved some sort of riddle, which will prove how smart the protagonist is.

I used to think that making up weird things for cultures to do was silly, until I looked at my own. How funny would handshakes look to an alien (“why do the engage their upper appendages in a vigorous vertical motion?”) or bumping fists, slapping hands, bowing, or any hundred other greetings we have for each other? Instead of shaking hands, maybe we should have short martial arts bouts. Sure, we’d all be bruised, but we’d all be more badass.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve notice about religion and culture in different types of media. Now, if you want to ask me why Christians should be Jedi, you’ll have to ask me yourself.

The King's Speech

We saw The King's Speech last night. There's been a lot of hype surrounding it, mainly for the Oscars. And while it's probably not the best movie I've ever seen (and not in the usual category of movies I see), it's definitely going into my list of favourite movies where nothing happens (joining Field of Dreams, The Rookie, October Sky, and The World's Fastest Indian).

It opens up at Wimbledon in the mid 30's, where Prince Albert is about to deliver the first radio address of his life. I'm not sure if it's possible to look dignified and terrified at the same time, but Colin Firth (playing Prince Albert) gets the closest. You can see the dread, but it's very subtle. He's in a hallway, being quietly encouraged by his wife (Elizabeth, played by Helena Bonham Carter, whom you may not recognize outside of a movie directed by Tim Burton or starring Johnny Depp). After a few scenes of a radio voice announcing the upcoming speech, Albert walks up some corridors and to the stands, coming to a halt in front of the microphone. The red light blinks three times, then becomes steady, and he's live. Dead air ensues. A few words emerge, a few torn sentences, and it mercifully cuts to a later session of him with a speech therapist. A bad speech therapist, who encourages him to smoke ("to relax the throat") and gets him to put marbles in his mouth to encourage enunciation. It doesn't work, and Albert nearly chokes on the marbles before storming out.

His wife manages to find Lionel Logue, a rather unconventional speech therapist, and wheedles an appointment out of him after telling him he'll be practicing on the Duke of York. Heady stuff.

The first meeting goes awkwardly, as it does in most movies where the protagonists are strangers at the beginning of the movie but best friends at the end. I guess real life is like the movies in some ways, and the story of two people who got along as soon as they met would be rather boring. Still, Albert shows he can speak in the occasional clear sentence if he gets really pissed off. Logue records him reciting Shakespeare while listening to chamber music on headphones, to distract him from the sound of his own voice.

After giving up, he finally listens to the recording, his wife hears it, and it cuts to them back in Logue’s office. A montage ensues, with them working on mechanics, relaxing various body parts, shouting at open windows, and a speech Albert's trying to make at the opening of the manufacturing plant. Despite a few hiccups (not literal ones), it goes decently.

Problems arise when the King passes away, and Albert's brother Edward becomes King. He's a bit of a playboy, and takes up with a married woman ("she put in a petition for divorce"). Because the King is the head of the Church of England, and the head of the church can't marry a divorced woman, Edward eventually abdicates to be with the love of his life. The Monarchy falls to Albert, who takes the name King George VI. He gets Logue's help in more speeches after a bit of a fight.

Unfortunately, Neville Chamberlain announces that Germany has not retreated from Poland, and now a state of war exists between them and Britain. King George must make a speech to the masses to encourage them to fight and uphold the principles of democracy and all that other good stuff, yada, yada yada.

There’s a lot of preparation for the speech (is it the title, after all, unless the title was actually referring to the King’s ability to speak … touché, Movie Title). Most of it is alright, and we watch as Albert uses all the tricks he’s learned to get through it. Bouncing onto P’s (“apeople”), or stringing swear words together to get through pauses (he’s quite the smooth speaker when he curses up a blue streak). Finally the moment arrives, and he walks through many corridors in the palace (wow, it’s like a call-back to the first scene of the film) to the radio room, where everyone exits except for Albert and Logue. Logue tells him to just speak to him, since he’s a friend. The speech has a few pauses, but it adds to the solemnity of it (they’re declaring war, after all), so everything goes well, and then he gets congratulated by everyone, and profusely thanks Logue. And then the credits roll.

There are a lot of good things about this movie. The acting is tremendous, but that’s a given. Colin Firth, Geoffrey Bush, and Helena Bonham Carter are all incredible actors. The thing that caught me off guard was the amount of humour in the movie. At one point, they’re talking about all of Albert’s previous speech therapists. Logue calls them idiots. Albert says “They’ve been knighted.” Logue responds “Well, that just makes it official.” And after the titular speech, Logue merrily whispers “You still stammered on the W’s.” Albert replies “I had to do something so they’d know it was me.”

Another thing that caught my eye was the subtlety. Well, either that or I was reading too much into the movie. For instance, the Logues are listening to Chamberlain declaring war on the radio, and their oldest son rushes into the room. We’re left to question whether he’ll end up fighting (possibly dying) in the upcoming war. Another example would be the stammering itself. In most media, stammering means that the person repeats the sound a few times before getting to the rest of the word “p-p-p-people” whereas here, Albert pauses and struggles to say the word in the first places “ … people.” It makes it more believable since it’s different than what we’re used to. And Firth continues it for the entire movie, shortening the pauses when he’s getting better, and adding more when he’s doing worse. It just looks like his vocal cords have seized up.

The only nit I have to pick is at the very end. After the speech, everyone congratulates him on doing a good job (to be fair, it was a good job). The only problem with this satisfying ending is that it contrasts sharply with the tone of the speech itself. He’s just launched his country into war. The last one claimed nine million lives. I doubt that anyone could have predicted the enormous casualty total of World War II, but even so, one would expect most people to be a little reticent about engaging in another war. It just struck me as jarring, but that’s after the benefit of hindsight.

I’m not sure how to rate this movie. It can easily be seen at home. There are no explosions or gargantuan special effects that need to be properly experienced on the silver screen. No booming sound that needs to properly be heard from speakers big enough to rattle internal organs. Still, purely ratings-wise, it’s a theatre movie for me.

Humour

Humour (or humor, for you people that leave U out of everything) generally comes from the unexpected. We get the setup, which is a general event, and then the punchline, which is contrary to our expectations of what the setup would indicate. So, for instance, you might get the question "How many (blanks) does it take to change a light bulb?" The expected response might be "one" since it usually only takes one person to change a light bulb. Perhaps two, in case the light bulb is high and someone needs to hold a ladder for safety concerns. The punchline is usually "(number) - one to change it and (number minus one) to (act in a stereotypical manner of blanks)." So you get "How many Baptists does it take to change a light bulb?" "Eight. One to change it, but not before seven get together to form a committee for approval." Or "How many trumpet players does it take to change a light bulb?" (For this, you have to know that trumpet players are the most egotistical of all those gifted with music. Even more than drummers) "Four. One to change it and three to say how they would have done it better."

One of the more recent interpretations of this is subversive. For instance, with an obvious setup, most people would expect a joke. So to be unexpected, there is no punchline. "Why did the chicken cross the road?" "To get to the other side." It's unexpected because people are expecting a punchline, and not getting one. For light bulb jokes, this is usually played out by having the answer not be a number. “How many Catholics does it take to change a light bulb?” “Change?”

In all of these, though, missing expectations is not enough. You generally have to be funny, and I can't explain that really well. All I can do is point out examples of different types of humour.

Observation humour is pretty much just contrasting expectations with something funny. "You ever notice how (something you're familiar with) is actually (something funny)?" The expectation is the view of what we have of said object. The humour comes from the new view we gain of said object. Some of it falls flat if the view isn't so different from what we know. "You ever notice how men and women are different? (pause for laughter)" Observation humour is mainly used by standup comics, and the good ones are terrific. The bad ones get another job.

Cringe Comedy (as TVtropes calls it) or awkward humour (as I call it) is mainly based on the difference in expectations of what we're comfortable with in our relationships. Shows like The Office or Parks & Recreation or 30 Rock or It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia show what happens when people say things that other people aren't comfortable with. It usually needs a straight man to play against (not that kind of straight ... not that there's anything wrong with that) to show them being uncomfortable. So when Michael Scott or Dwight Schrute go off the deep end and do something that would get them arrested in real life, the camera can focus in on the facial expressions of Jim or Pam and show what we'd be feeling in those situations.

In that vein, but a little moreso is offensive humour. It's like cringe comedy without the straight man, so everyone says or does the uncomfortable things. Most of the time, they have to be so obvious and over-the-top that that's where the humour comes from. Also, on a meta-level, part of the humour comes from watching it and saying to yourself "I can't believe they just said that. I wonder how many people aren't going to get the joke and protest?" Well Family Guy, the PTC (Parents Television Council) did not get the joke and protested. Way to go! Unfortunately, this humour is a very fine line, subject to many different tastes, so some people will enjoy the jokes, some people won't, and some will be offended. Personally, I like Family Guy, I think The Simpsons is a bit too tame, and I'm not a fan of South Park. But that's a matter of taste.

I'm more into the zany, wacky humour partially pioneered by Monty Python. They defy expectations by having anything happen. "How many engineers does it take to screw in a light bulb?" "I don't know, how many?" "Gah! I'm having a heart attack ... while aliens are landing ... and complaining about the food!" It's somewhat head-spinning and doesn't appeal to a whole lot of people. But it did open up a lot of different avenues of comedy and if you ask any modern humourist, most will list Monty Python as an influence. It's this type of humour that made me enjoy Scrubs and Better Off Ted so much. Killing those was "like beating a unicorn to death with a bag of rainbows." - Phil, Better Off Ted.

Spoofs are kind of hit and miss. The expectation is whatever's being spoofed. Airplane was mainly a parody of Airport, so people would expect most of the same events as that movie. Airplane did a good job of being very similar, but changing one or two details to turn the situation on its head. Good parodies will change very little and still be hilarious. Bad parodies won't change anything, and expect the humour to come from the references to the movies they're spoofing *cough* Seltzer-Friedberg *Cough*.

Black comedy is very hard to pull off well, because death isn't very funny. It's not used in movies or TV shows very much. I've heard it's used by people who face death or worse a lot to help them cope. Doctors, policemen ... I imagine funeral directors or embalmers use it a lot.

Blue comedy (sorry, dirty jokes) will get a lot of people riled up. Sex tends to be a private thing, so people will get offended when it's brought up publicly. It can be pulled off quite well, but often times it just tends to be crude. Same thing with toilet humour. The potential is certainly there, but writers either haven't harnessed it right, or their viewers are content to find humour in the gross-out factor. It's not something I like, but if someone pointed out a tasteful bathroom joke, I bet I'd laugh.

One of the main problems with humour in general, though, is the tendency to make fun of someone. Anyone who's the subject of the joke may be offended. Light Bulb jokes make fun of the subjects using stereotypes. Same with Dumb Blonde jokes (never mind that stupidity has never been limited to hair colour ... or any other characteristics, for that matter).

Generally, you can only make jokes at the expense of a people group you belong to. I can make fun of Baptists, or Christians, but not Jews. I can make fun of Canadians, but not the Polish. I can make fun of white people, but no others (there's been enough of that, and worse, over the course of human history). Self-deprecation is the extreme form of this. Since no one is the butt of your joke but yourself, no one can really protest except yourself. Conan O'Brien does this a lot, mixed with zany humour and some offensive humour as well.

Of course, there are some groups of people that can be made fun of by everyone. TVTropes calls them Acceptable Targets. Men and women can be made fun of by either gender, because we pretty much exist in equal amounts. Other acceptable targets are usually majorities. Americans, white males, Christians. Making any of these a target of a joke is generally fine (again, taste is an issue, and anyone can protest if they're not good humoured enough). Making a joke of anyone else is a tricky business, and writers had best be prepared, lest they face the wrath of the PTC. Of whom it takes 476 to screw in a light bulb. One to actually do the work, and 475 to make a special interest group and complain to the government about the effect of dead bulbs on children.