Still Alive

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You want new content for 2013?

"Hicks hasn't posted in over 6 months"?

"What if he's in hypersleep and won't resurface again for 57 years when he drifts right through the core systems and it's really just blind luck that a deep salvage team finds him when they do?"



Well, fret not, readers! I'll be back with more film reviews, game reminiscences, VGM, and general ramblings before the month is out. And before I return to university - no doubt resulting in a second hiatus of this blog.

If you really really want a preview of what's (possibly) to come, I've got plans for posts on The Hobbit, James Bond, The Terminator, Hitman: Absolution, Rayman Origins, and another thrilling essay about the Alien franchise, plus more stubby VGM posts featuring Dead Rising, Okami, Portal, Metal Gear Solid, Bully, and many more.

Whether or not all of that actually materialises is another thing.

Also I did have a review of The Dark Knight Rises in the works, but 5 months on from release, I'm not sure whether or not to finish/post that.

I'm an indecisive man.

Prometheus: Small Beginnings

First off I’d like to bellyache about the length of time it took me to view my latest obsession, Prometheus, after its nationwide release. 5 whole days. Saw The Avengers on opening night. Even saw Men in Black 3 on opening night. But the film I’ve been dying to see for months now? 5 days late. Stupid life getting in the way of more important things.

Secondly I’d like to complain heavily about Cineworld’s crumminess. My ‘local’ multiplex is a relatively large, 12 screen cinema. And yet, the management decided to put an evening showing of a 5-day-old major blockbuster in one of their tiniest screens. So by the time my friends and I showed up inevitably late of the advertised starting time, the few available seats were practically full, meaning we had the displeasure of sitting in the very front row, mere feet away from the screen. FUCKING CHEERS. Love cranking my neck and twisting my head to see everything going on. This is definitely the way movies were meant to be seen. Bravo.

Seriously, the screen I saw The Artist in, several weeks after its release, and at a late night showing time, was larger (and much emptier) than that for Prometheus. This is part of the reason cinema figures are declining, because of the idiocy and complete lack of basic logic that goes on behind the scenes, i.e. monstrously dumb screen choices, psychotic food prices, and apathetic staffing. Get it together.

Onto the film itself. For a good long while, I’d been building up Prometheus as a prospect for genuine masterpiece material. Those wonderfully mysterious trailers, the intriguing casting, and Ridley Scott’s sci-fi pedigree all seemed to add up to a product that would have trouble going wrong. Sure, Alien never needed a prequel, and I don’t think anyone really asked for one. True enough, the unexplained nature of the so-called ‘space jockeys’ was just another important part of the tension that clouded the first act of the film. But then Alien never needed a sequel either, and look what happened: Aliens was the BEST SEQUEL EVER MADE (The What-Father Part II? LALALALALA). So necessity wasn’t really an issue with Prometheus, and with Scott back at the helm, it could only be a thing of majesty, right?

Well that’s what I thought. But then the reviews bled out, and everywhere was a sea of mediocrity. 3 out of 5 stars, a 60-something Metascore, a 70-something % on Rotten Tomatoes, nothing even approaching the acclaim of Alien. And naturally, my expectations suddenly plummeted, and I went into that poorly-chosen Cineworld screen on a very diminished buzz, expecting a decent, but not nearly mind-blowing, experience.

Essentially, that’s pretty much what I got. There’s an array of ups and downs present during its considerable running time, but there’s very little here to compare with Alien. That is, save for one scene in particular. (Spoilers onward)

One of the main facets of Alien that has always made it fascinating to me is the lasting impact of the famed ‘chestburster’ scene, in which John Hurt’s character Kane has a bit of a bad time during a meal. It’s an unforgettable sequence, one of shock and chaos, of progress and evolution, of watershed and significance, and eventually of silence. I’ve always wondered how one would respond to that scene on first viewing, particularly in the tense and hushed cinema environment, which is something I never got to experience (having been born 12 years after its cinema release), and unfortunately I don’t really recall my reaction to seeing the chestburster on first viewing. Luckily, Sir Ridley saw fit to include another such scene in Prometheus.

This time, it’s not a xenomorph forcing its own way out of Kane’s chest into the world, this time it’s a squid-looking creature about to be born from Shaw’s lady parts before being forcibly removed in a medical pod. Something horrifying about this sequence had me absolutely gripped, more than any other chunk of the film. I sat, neck wrenched upwards, mouth literally agape, watching this semi-parallel horror unfold above/in front of me. There was something different about this one.

Over the numerous viewings of all 4 Alien films, I’ve become accustomed and effectively desensitised to the chestburster trope, but that still didn’t prepare me for the bloody thrashing and constant danger of Prometheus’s caesarean scene. It stands alone from the chestburster scenes, much as Prometheus stands alone from the Alien franchise. What was in Alien a bizarre and revolting scene of sudden helplessness and disruption, is in Prometheus a fresh scene of urgency and panicked survival. This showcases a new tone and a new creature, and despite a similar narrative frame, it’s a relatively different shock. It’s really quite difficult to describe that feeling of ‘sweet merciful crap, what in the fuck is that?!’, but it has been a long, long while since I reacted so noticeably to a film, and that’s something incredibly meaningful in today’s Hollywood of repetition and regurgitation. The fact that a setup that I’m so familiar with can be reimagined to affect me in the way it did makes Prometheus, for all its flaws, a success.

Beyond that, it’s really rather hit-and-miss. On the pro side, it’s beautiful. Once again, Sir Ridley provides a wondrous collection of shots and edits, including some magnificent establishing shots. The film’s first act contains a series of breathtaking outer space shots, focussed around the titular spaceship, which combine Dariusz Wolski’s cinematography with the excellent visual effects of Moving Picture and Weta and various other companies to create something truly awe-inspiring. Gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh.

The scale on show in Prometheus is what really separates it from Alien in terms of style. This film constantly deals with grander issues in a grander frame. We’ve got a much bigger crew with a much bigger mission asking much bigger questions. And stylistically, the film has a much bigger aesthetic. Large chunks of Alien were presented through very claustrophobic cinematography, while everything in Prometheus feels more open and breathable. We get more and bigger creatures, and ultimately we get more questions than we get answers.

Which leads me to a con. At some points, it feels a little unfinished – like it’s holding back, or setting up for something more. Something like Alien? Possibly. But Sir Ridley said he was going to make an individual film (and that he did), so why would he produce a near-2 hour prologue for a film he wanted to distance from? Perhaps it’s setting up for a sequel. The big questions that were teased in Prometheus trailers and in Alien are mostly left unanswered, frustratingly so, leaving plenty of sequel potential. Honestly though, I hate when filmmakers do that. Like in The Hunger Games. The very end was a clear “Next time on...” ploy, which I refuse to play along with. Fuck you Hollywood, don’t treat me like an obedient fucking dog. Bad Hollywood. Slap on the wrist for you.

Further pros include Michael Fassbender, about whom I frequently complain (despite his undoubted acting talent) because of his status as the current “let’s cast him in everything” bloke in Hollywood. He’s once again a revelation in Prometheus. Perfect casting choice for the android David. Plus that sequence of him prowling the ship alone near the beginning, imitating TE Lawrence and putting Ripley’s clone’s basketball skills to shame put a smile on my face. The rest of the cast follows suit, with Noomi Rapace giving a consistently not-Ripley Ripley, Charlize Theron gives a good standard cold corporate bitch (which was actually jarring after watching her play Rita on Arrested Development...), Guy Pearce is... odd... as the aged Peter Weyland from the TED conference video, and everyone else is generally good.

There’s also a great score, a passable screenplay, and some genuinely exciting action – which is surprisingly hard to come by in this age of giant fighting robots, superheroes, and alien invasions which all somehow find a way to be boring. So, good job for actually entertaining me.

Back on the con side, though, is the pressing issue of pacing. Part of Alien’s slow-burning glory (I KNOW it wasn’t supposed to be another Alien and I should stop comparing them like it was blah blah BLAH BLAH BLAH) was that it built up the tension to boiling-point and released it all out of one man’s chest. Prometheus doesn’t take much time to do that. We start off with the why the crew’s going where they’re going, then they get there. Then after the initial exploration, it’s set-piece after set-piece after set-piece, without much breathing time in between. In Alien, after each set-piece (in this case each crew member death) there was time for the characters and the audience to settle, take in what had happened, and reflect, which further allowed for us to bond with and understand the characters. Not so much of that in Prometheus. For instance, after the aforementioned scarifying caesarean sequence, we go almost immediately into the next sequence, wherein the surviving crew go back onto the planet to ‘meet’ the space jockeys (or ‘engineers’, as they are so-called in Prometheus), leaving very little time to take in the insane, panicky body horror we’d just witnessed.

So in summary, Prometheus offers a mix bag of greatness and not-so-greatness, resulting in something transcending mediocrity, but not quite reaching brilliance. I think the key to enjoying the film is to try and view it separately to Alien. If you try and compare the two, you’re gonna have a bad time, because Scott didn’t intend this to be a new Alien, nor a direct prequel. It’s a rather different film with an independent atmosphere, with minimal (though deliberate) links to Alien. But it seems to be confused. It can’t make up its mind about what it wants to be, flipping and flopping between horror and action, never quite nailing either in the way Cameron’s Aliens did.

What Prometheus needs is another viewing or four. And inevitably a sequel that may or may not answer the questions it opened up, and may or may not tie it more closely into the Alien series. And if James Cameron were to direct that sequel, I might just explode.

VGM #5

Max Payne - Main Theme

To celebrate the release of Rockstar’s latest, Max Payne 3, here’s the main theme to the excellent first game from 2001.

Max Payne was a highly atmospheric game, and this theme pretty much sums up the warm, cuddly feel of the highly-acclaimed third person shooter. Throughout the story, Max’s wife and adorable pixel baby take an extended holiday, so Max decides to go on a whimsical friend-making spree, encountering all sorts of colourful people along the way. You’ll stop and stare at the beautiful bright streets and interiors of summery New York. You’ll laugh at the lengthy exchange Max has with his best buddy at the train station. You’ll fall in love with the wacky characters that like to give Max a hard time. But it’s all in good fun, as you can tell from Max’s happy-go-lucky expression.

You definitely won’t love the film though. Mark Wahlberg. Yeah.

The Great Debate

The last few weeks for me have consisted of dividing my time between Mass Effect 3, discovering Arrested Development, and doing uni work (aka – procrastinating with Mass Effect 3 and Arrested Development). I also managed to leave the confines of my room to catch The Hunger Games, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!, and The Avengers (still refusing to refer to it by its British title) which I may or may not review here later.

This period has given me time to think about my own approach to video game critique, and whether or not I should take it as seriously as film critique. One of the problems here is that video games are a more difficult medium to actively pursue, partly due to the higher costs, and partly because of the lesser ease of access. For example, to discover and watch films for criticism is relatively easy – they can be found on TV regularly, they can be bought on DVD for quite cheap, they can even be found for free on the internet (or so I hear...)*. Whereas, there’s no real similar means of access for video games, one has to find and buy most of them, sometimes much more expensively than films. There’s also the problem of changing platforms. With film, you could just as easily watch something from 1910 as from 2010, but to play a video game from even 20 years ago would require tracking down the necessary console (unless you use an emulator, but that’s not the same).

Another of the problems of video game critique is Roger Ebert’s favourite debate – are video games an art form? To make a real decision regarding this, one would probably need a definition as to what ‘art’ is. And that’s where the whooole debate becomes a big ugly mess before it’s even begun. ‘Art’ is a loose and subjective issue. What one person might consider to be art, another might not. Personally, the furthest I could possibly define art would be some sort of creative expression that evokes a reaction. Sure, video games can evoke reactions – TimeSplitters made me laugh, Amnesia made me shriek like a lady, Mirror’s Edge made me cry tears of frustration. But for me the real debate lies in whether or not games are much of an expression.

Something that the Seven Arts (as detailed by Georg Hegel, then Ricciotto Canudo, then the French** – although how they ever agreed upon the set is beyond me) seem to share is that they lack any audience participation, in that their pieces are created with the express intent of being judged, thereby being a focus of creative expression. This is what could separate video games from the other ‘arts’, as games are generally made with the audience’s direct interaction in focus, often pushing the creative element to the side. For example, can a World War II video game like Call of Duty or Medal of Honor be as much an expression about war as a film like Saving Private Ryan or Full Metal Jacket? Can a game like BioShock be as much an expression about Objectivism as a book like Atlas Shrugged?

Certainly if we look only at the visual and aural aesthetic of video games, they can be opened up for critiquing. There are many games that use creativity in these areas to draw the attention of an audience much in the same way as a film would – Okami, Limbo and Rez are notable examples. There are also plenty of less artistic games that still feature a particular graphical style which sort of contextualises the gameplay, like Gears of War, Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Dead Space. But to only consider the audio-visual side of games would be to detract from the very thing that makes it individual as a medium. Gameplay needs to be analysed as well to form a proper artistic critique. And yet how do we consider the ‘art’ of gameplay?

Here’s where I think the ‘games as art’ debate could be eventually settled. If some serious video game critics begin to theorise about the artistry of gameplay and game design, then maybe it can begin to achieve some legitimacy as an art form. For cinema, it took a good couple of decades of infancy before meaningful narrative features started to arise and be written about seriously. Video games seem to be maturing now, much as cinema did. What started with Pong and Asteroids has now moved onto Red Dead Redemption and Mass Effect, like cinema moved from Train Pulling into a Station and Fred Ott’s Sneeze to Birth of a Nation and Wings. Maybe if some critics or even just gamers begin to write some analytical and critical debate and theory, maybe we can give Canudo an eighth art.

Although maybe not, ‘cause he’s a bit too decomposed to really reconsider his work.

So to link all this back to my original point, whether or not it’s an agreed-upon art form, video games can still indeed be taken seriously as both a hobby and a pursuit, not just a time-waster. I don’t consider much of my gaming time to be wasted time – I’m doing something I enjoy and being mentally stimulated, as I would be whilst watching films, so how can that be anything but good? So through this approach of taking them seriously as an art form and as an important cultural pastime, I can critique video games with a meaningful attitude... as far as money will allow.

*Disclaimer: The Company and its employees do not endorse the extra-legal discovering of films for free.

**Hegel listed architecture, music, painting, poetry and sculpture as the five Arts before Canudo added dance and film.

Really good noodles

13 years ago to the day, the world was given its first glimpse of Andy and Larry Wachowski’s science-fiction vision – The Matrix.

In the time since, the very landscape of cinema has changed – its state altered irrevocably by the challenging philosophies and unique visual stylings of the film. Its influence can be felt throughout Hollywood, thanks to its popularisation of various elements – cyberpunk, slow-motion, martial arts set pieces, and so on. Slow-motion editing certainly underwent a massive uprising in mainstream action cinema after The Matrix, as can be seen in the films of Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen, Sucker Punch), Michael Bay (Transformers) and Guy Ritchie (Sherlock Holmes), among others. Meanwhile other films share numerous similarities with The Matrix in their shared themes and designs and action sequences, such as Equilibrium, Sucker Punch and Inception.

But that’s not to say The Matrix is the main source or creator or First Cause of all these elements. Far from it. The Matrix is undeniably a product of a mass of influences and borrowed ideas, reaching vastly across cinema history. Drawing from Japanese martial arts films to infuse its combat scenes with an awe-inspiring grace and flow, the chaos and destruction of the gunfights is contrasted sharply with the slow elegance of the protagonists’ martial arts to forge a unique blend. And slow motion seems to be everywhere now, perhaps thanks to The Matrix, but it certainly wasn’t the first film to make notable use of it. Famed scenes from the likes of Sam Peckinpah, Akira Kurosawa, James Cameron and Quentin Tarantino all precede the Wachowskis’, but none really gave it the revolutionary push that The Matrix did. Cyberpunk also existed before 1999, in print, and in films like Blade Runner, Videodrome, and Akira. But what makes The Matrix so important and enduring, is the way in which all these aspects have been combined into one original package.

And therein lies the success of The Matrix. For mainstream Western cinema, it really was unlike anything most people had seen before. So it became a sort of benchmark for future action and sci-fi films. In particular, its influence can be felt in Kurt Wimmer’s Equilibrium.  Y’know, I’ve seen people argue about whether or not that particular film was influenced by The Matrix, and some seem to get really defensive and militant about comparisons between the two, which I don’t really understand. If you ask me, while the two are very separate, individual films that explore different ideas in different ways, there are similarities that can’t be ignored. The dystopian future, the protagonist fighting for freedom, the gunfights. Yes, I know Equilibrium’s ‘gun kata’ is more John Woo and The Matrix is more kung fu, but would Equilibrium and its action really have happened without The Matrix?

Anyway, returning from that digression, what the Wachowski brothers managed to do with The Matrix was really tap into the consciousness of the generation it was aiming for. It modernised the kung fu fad of the 1970s for the 1990s audience, and brought the lesser-known themes of cyberpunk fiction and classic philosophy to the forefront of the public mind. And it did this through its use of stylistic production. Because The Matrix isn’t just an idea and an image, it’s also a brilliant piece of filmmaking. The breathtaking use of moving cameras is an exciting elevation of the action scenes, without relying on nauseating quick cuts or shaky cams, and there’s a real sense of dedication and commitment in the post-production. For example, the large scale shots, quiet-but-noticeable green tint, and slow motion help turn the diegetic world of ‘the Matrix’ into a very different world from that of the ‘real world’, which allows for a contextualisation of the astonishing sequences we see. And it’s this phenomenal achievement of technical prowess that makes The Matrix as memorable as it is. These fantastic and scarcely-believable images are etched into the minds of the viewers, giving indelible weight to the symbolism and ideology that overrides the film.

Few films can be said to have had the same cultural impact as The Matrix. Since 1999, it has cemented its position in the public consciousness and influenced an entire generation of viewers and filmmakers alike in a way that perhaps hasn’t occurred since Star Wars in 1977. Personally I credit it as the sole film that got me interested in cinema in the first place, and alongside Alien, is my joint-favourite film. I owe as much to The Matrix for inspiring and exciting the young me as millions owe to Star Wars for much the same thing. May it continue to inspire and amaze for decades to come.

AND THEY NEVER MADE ANY SEQUELS *fingers in ears* LALALALALALALA

Big things have small beginnings

I may be a tad late in sharing this, but I simply HAVE to share it.
Last week, 20th Century Fox released the second official trailer for Ridley Scott's Prometheus. And it's looking incredible.
As an obsessive Alien fan, I'm more excited for this than any other film this year; more than The Amazing Spider-Man, more than The Avengers (or Marvel Avengers Assemble as we Brits have to bafflingly suffer); even more than The Dark Knight Rises.

I haven't been this excited for a film since The Dark Knight back in 2008. My faith in Sir Ridley will be repaid...

See for yourself.
IN GLORIOUS HD.



Excuse me while I change my underwear.

VGM #4

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - Main Theme

Oh, Rockstar. You and your magnificent soundtracks.
There's an art to intro music that gets you raring to go even when you're just booting the game.
Every single time you load that disc, this little tune tells you you're in for yet another good time.
Welcome back. We missed you.



A relevant transmission will follow...