There's plenty to say on this topic, but I'm going to keep it brief.
Long story short, I will always, always prefer open standards and community driven moderation of quality over proprietary mediums who have their content governed by a single entity. However, a commentator on NPR this morning drew up an apt analogy that makes me understand, to an extent, why some people are perfectly happy using the knee-capped system Apple has in place. He noted that using an iPhone/Pad is much like belonging to a gated community. Standards are put in place to ensure that your perfect little existence remains as unblemished as possible; and if you're willing to deal with the inconveniences and the isolation, that can be a fine life. It's just certainly not for me.
It's also worth noting that, in most gated communities, the residents are either allowed to be part of the decision making or at least have the possibility of becoming part of the board that makes the rules. No such luck here. As so many have noted, Apple has seemingly become the Big Brother it pretended to be rebelling against in the (in)famous 1984 ad; going so far as to tell us which generally inoffensive, scientific words cannot go in our book descriptions. Nobody really cares, though. Apple is doing it for The Greater Good (The Greater Good).
Oh well, I just hope that there are enough of us who aren't willing to sacrifice free access to information that the market will continue to count us as worthwhile and that Apple doesn't get big enough in the field of pervasive computing to kill Net Neutrality in a way that service providers never dreamed possible. Long live Google.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Blurring Genres
People who have seen me play action games, especially games that allow me to save anywhere and reload quickly, know that I have an odd habit of not being content with merely completing a section of the game. By and large, I feel challenged to a way of progressing through the challenges posed to me in a way that causes me the least damage while progressing through the sequence as smoothly as possible. Depending on the specific style of the game, this can mean anything from stealthily removing guards one by one from the shadows to removing the heads of every enemy from the greatest distance possible to using surgical explosive strikes to deform the environment and eliminate the threat.
This could be understood as a desire to preserve my characters life in case another difficult situation is right around the corner, but I intuitively understand it more as a path finding exercise. I feel that, of all of the possible ways to get through a game, there must be some ideal path, one that the game mechanics best support and that is most in line with the character I am manipulating and the atmosphere I'm working in. In this way, the game is much like a puzzle for me to solve, and the experience of iteratively improving my solution is therapeutic in a way.
Now it seems that the fine folks at Ubisoft, and particularly the team behind the Splinter Cell series, have come to the same conclusion. I downloaded the demo for Splinter Cell: Conviction the other day, and while I will say that it doesn't feel like Splinter Cell as I know it, it is a perfect, even planned example of the action game meets puzzle game approach. Mike Fahey at Kotaku came to a similar conclusion during his hands on last month, but I couldn't have realized the extent to which it worked until I played the game for myself. Figuring out where enemies are, the order in which to mark them, and finding the proper guard to melee in order to set off the chain is entirely a matter of trial and error, of learning the level, and of following the path you've decided on until it either shows its imperfections or gets you through the level ideally. You can make up for a botched sequence by getting back to cover and either popping off the enemies individually or sneaking back into the shadows and starting over again; but doing so is both harder and less fulfilling, seemingly be design.
I'm not certain if Splinter Cell: Conviction is a game I'd actually go out and buy, but it's interesting knowing that other people see these games the way I do and that maybe I'm less "weird as hell" and more "ahead of the curve".
This could be understood as a desire to preserve my characters life in case another difficult situation is right around the corner, but I intuitively understand it more as a path finding exercise. I feel that, of all of the possible ways to get through a game, there must be some ideal path, one that the game mechanics best support and that is most in line with the character I am manipulating and the atmosphere I'm working in. In this way, the game is much like a puzzle for me to solve, and the experience of iteratively improving my solution is therapeutic in a way.
Now it seems that the fine folks at Ubisoft, and particularly the team behind the Splinter Cell series, have come to the same conclusion. I downloaded the demo for Splinter Cell: Conviction the other day, and while I will say that it doesn't feel like Splinter Cell as I know it, it is a perfect, even planned example of the action game meets puzzle game approach. Mike Fahey at Kotaku came to a similar conclusion during his hands on last month, but I couldn't have realized the extent to which it worked until I played the game for myself. Figuring out where enemies are, the order in which to mark them, and finding the proper guard to melee in order to set off the chain is entirely a matter of trial and error, of learning the level, and of following the path you've decided on until it either shows its imperfections or gets you through the level ideally. You can make up for a botched sequence by getting back to cover and either popping off the enemies individually or sneaking back into the shadows and starting over again; but doing so is both harder and less fulfilling, seemingly be design.
I'm not certain if Splinter Cell: Conviction is a game I'd actually go out and buy, but it's interesting knowing that other people see these games the way I do and that maybe I'm less "weird as hell" and more "ahead of the curve".
Sunday, March 28, 2010
On Bromance
I really need to be writing any number of other things right now, but none of them are working for me at the moment and I'm hoping that cranking this out will get the juices flowing again. In any case, I think that this is an interesting topic and one worth talking about briefly, so without further ado, here we go (warning, gross generalizations ahead).
A few months ago, I was talking with a friend about something or other and mentioned that I had a new man-crush brewing (in this instance, it was Rick Bayless, who is my culinary man-crush). She laughed a bit and commented that, for as much as I and others talk about man-crushes, there was no real female analogue. This made me sad, as I can't imagine life without the stupid grin I get when I think of Captain Mal Reynolds. What made me sadder, though, was when I realized that no analogue to the man-crush meant no analogue for bromance. Lord, life without bromance *and* having to deal with menstruation? Talk about short end of the stick! No wonder women tend to be more high strung than men.
To explain exactly what I mean by all this, I suppose I need to quickly break down a man-crush and explain how it relates to bromance and why, exactly, bromance is such an awesome thing. In short, to me, a man-crush is basically a deep seated admiration for another man. A recognition that, if you could, you would echo the abilities or attitude of that individual in your own living. Sometimes man-crushes lead towards emulation, but more often, a man-crush acknowledges that the desired skill or trait is somehow inimitable. That doesn't mean that we don't strive for advancement in admired area; just like a normal crush, the a man-crush motivates us to improve ourselves in hopes of earning the mutual admiration of the crush.
Another way in which man-crushes and normal crushes are alike is that our strongest man-crushes tend to be directed at unattainable individuals. We learn to see the flaws of the people who are actually in our lives, and therefore we cannot idolize them to the same degree; but we can definitely have man-crushes on our friends. And, just as romance arises from a mutual crush between two individuals, bromance is the end result of a reciprocated man-crush. And just as actual romantic relationships far exceed the benefits of a simple one-sided crush; bromance improves our lives vastly more than a simple man-crush.
For one thing, there's something incredibly empowering about knowing that a man you admire admires you. Perhaps more important, though, is the knowledge that somebody has your back. It's simple fact that men desire to protect the people they care about. Failing to at least make an effort take care of your own is reprehensible, and no man would risk the respect of a person he admires by not being there for support when shit goes south. Again, the comfort that comes from knowing that you've got unwavering support when things start to fall apart, whether that support comes in the form of a drinking buddy or a wingman or a second cannot be overstated.
Now, I know that all of this sounds kind of sexist. I know that women admire and support their friends, too, but there's a difference. Not all male-male friendships result in bromance, and we certainly still support and respect those friends. In those friendships that can be described as bromantic, though, there's just a certain...purity and earnestness that seems absent from normal male-male friendships and virtually all female-female friendships. Those few women I've talked with about this seem to agree with this assessment.
I offer the following thought experiment as inadequate proof. I was watching Superbad today, and there's a scene towards the end of the movie where one of the characters, drunk as can be, picks up his passed out friend and carries him as he runs from a party that the police are busting. For most of my friends, I would try to rouse and warn them. I would wonder if they got away safely and call them later to find out. But I would not pick them up and run with them. For my truest friends, though, this is exactly what I would do; and they would do it for me (you know, if they could). Women out there: can you honestly say the same? If not, well, :(
A few months ago, I was talking with a friend about something or other and mentioned that I had a new man-crush brewing (in this instance, it was Rick Bayless, who is my culinary man-crush). She laughed a bit and commented that, for as much as I and others talk about man-crushes, there was no real female analogue. This made me sad, as I can't imagine life without the stupid grin I get when I think of Captain Mal Reynolds. What made me sadder, though, was when I realized that no analogue to the man-crush meant no analogue for bromance. Lord, life without bromance *and* having to deal with menstruation? Talk about short end of the stick! No wonder women tend to be more high strung than men.
To explain exactly what I mean by all this, I suppose I need to quickly break down a man-crush and explain how it relates to bromance and why, exactly, bromance is such an awesome thing. In short, to me, a man-crush is basically a deep seated admiration for another man. A recognition that, if you could, you would echo the abilities or attitude of that individual in your own living. Sometimes man-crushes lead towards emulation, but more often, a man-crush acknowledges that the desired skill or trait is somehow inimitable. That doesn't mean that we don't strive for advancement in admired area; just like a normal crush, the a man-crush motivates us to improve ourselves in hopes of earning the mutual admiration of the crush.
Another way in which man-crushes and normal crushes are alike is that our strongest man-crushes tend to be directed at unattainable individuals. We learn to see the flaws of the people who are actually in our lives, and therefore we cannot idolize them to the same degree; but we can definitely have man-crushes on our friends. And, just as romance arises from a mutual crush between two individuals, bromance is the end result of a reciprocated man-crush. And just as actual romantic relationships far exceed the benefits of a simple one-sided crush; bromance improves our lives vastly more than a simple man-crush.
For one thing, there's something incredibly empowering about knowing that a man you admire admires you. Perhaps more important, though, is the knowledge that somebody has your back. It's simple fact that men desire to protect the people they care about. Failing to at least make an effort take care of your own is reprehensible, and no man would risk the respect of a person he admires by not being there for support when shit goes south. Again, the comfort that comes from knowing that you've got unwavering support when things start to fall apart, whether that support comes in the form of a drinking buddy or a wingman or a second cannot be overstated.
Now, I know that all of this sounds kind of sexist. I know that women admire and support their friends, too, but there's a difference. Not all male-male friendships result in bromance, and we certainly still support and respect those friends. In those friendships that can be described as bromantic, though, there's just a certain...purity and earnestness that seems absent from normal male-male friendships and virtually all female-female friendships. Those few women I've talked with about this seem to agree with this assessment.
I offer the following thought experiment as inadequate proof. I was watching Superbad today, and there's a scene towards the end of the movie where one of the characters, drunk as can be, picks up his passed out friend and carries him as he runs from a party that the police are busting. For most of my friends, I would try to rouse and warn them. I would wonder if they got away safely and call them later to find out. But I would not pick them up and run with them. For my truest friends, though, this is exactly what I would do; and they would do it for me (you know, if they could). Women out there: can you honestly say the same? If not, well, :(
Monday, March 15, 2010
On Fanfiction
Last week, courtesy of Facebook, I learned about a fanfic called My Immortal. It is widely, and rightly, regarded as being among the worst fanfics ever written. For a couple of hours, a friend and I regaled ourselves reading through it, laughing, reading especially heinous passages aloud, and generally celebrating our superior intellect. While I'm not anywhere near to endorsing either My Immortal as good writing, I am going to take a moment to build a mild case for why I was too hard on it and why we can't simply write off all bad writing as being without value. If nothing else, we need to acknowledge the value that it has, or at least ought to have, for the author.
Like many young nerds with an active online life, I tried my hand at writing a fanfic when I was in high school. And like many young fanfic authors, my story was a self-insertion. I could try to defend myself on the grounds that I was not making an effort to radically disrupt an existing canon or that my character avoided most of the teenage author Mary Sue pitfalls; but that doesn't change the fact that it was generally a poor story (no matter what the other members of the message board I posted it on said).
After a couple of hints and a lot of stalking, I recently found a similarly dreadful fanfic that a good friend wrote around the same time period. While I was gently teasing her about it, we came to the shared conclusion that neither of us really regretted writing these things. Why? Because we learned a lot about writing. We learned about persevering and finishing a story -- my story was 13 pages, hers a whopping 60. We learned the basics of how characters interact and how to build drama. And, in looking back, we learned how *not* to do a whole lot of things and a bit of valuable humility.
I have legitimate hope that the author of My Immortal eventually got over her angsty teenager-ness, kept writing, and uses the reaction to her (fortunately anonymous) early writing as motivation to improve. Writing is hard. I doubt that anybody can do it well without lots of practice; and for lots of people, working with an established, familiar setting is a nice crutch for flexing creative muscle and learning the basics of style and form. I may be mildly embarrassed by my character story, but no more so than I am of many of my old essays or even half of what I write on this blog; and I am in no way ashamed that I wrote it. In fact, I'm mostly ashamed that I haven't done more fiction writing since. If I were to somehow crank out another 13 page story, even if it were just as bad as that first one, I'd be damn proud of myself.
So, try not to be too hard on the poorly assembled day dreams of aspiring writers. We all need to start somewhere, and so long as you reach a point where you're willing to accept the flaws that exist in what you've made and learn from them, there is no shame in trying.
On a final note: no, I will not share my story with all of you. Near as I know, only two people outside the original community it was written for have read it; and I'm happy to keep it that way. If you know way too much about my message board junkie days, you might be able to track it down, but after some searching of my own, I can tell you that Google won't make it easy for you.
Like many young nerds with an active online life, I tried my hand at writing a fanfic when I was in high school. And like many young fanfic authors, my story was a self-insertion. I could try to defend myself on the grounds that I was not making an effort to radically disrupt an existing canon or that my character avoided most of the teenage author Mary Sue pitfalls; but that doesn't change the fact that it was generally a poor story (no matter what the other members of the message board I posted it on said).
After a couple of hints and a lot of stalking, I recently found a similarly dreadful fanfic that a good friend wrote around the same time period. While I was gently teasing her about it, we came to the shared conclusion that neither of us really regretted writing these things. Why? Because we learned a lot about writing. We learned about persevering and finishing a story -- my story was 13 pages, hers a whopping 60. We learned the basics of how characters interact and how to build drama. And, in looking back, we learned how *not* to do a whole lot of things and a bit of valuable humility.
I have legitimate hope that the author of My Immortal eventually got over her angsty teenager-ness, kept writing, and uses the reaction to her (fortunately anonymous) early writing as motivation to improve. Writing is hard. I doubt that anybody can do it well without lots of practice; and for lots of people, working with an established, familiar setting is a nice crutch for flexing creative muscle and learning the basics of style and form. I may be mildly embarrassed by my character story, but no more so than I am of many of my old essays or even half of what I write on this blog; and I am in no way ashamed that I wrote it. In fact, I'm mostly ashamed that I haven't done more fiction writing since. If I were to somehow crank out another 13 page story, even if it were just as bad as that first one, I'd be damn proud of myself.
So, try not to be too hard on the poorly assembled day dreams of aspiring writers. We all need to start somewhere, and so long as you reach a point where you're willing to accept the flaws that exist in what you've made and learn from them, there is no shame in trying.
On a final note: no, I will not share my story with all of you. Near as I know, only two people outside the original community it was written for have read it; and I'm happy to keep it that way. If you know way too much about my message board junkie days, you might be able to track it down, but after some searching of my own, I can tell you that Google won't make it easy for you.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
The Significance of Statistics in RPGs
Mass Effect 2 just came out, and it is incredible. It's not without fault -- if I wanted to, I could pick out plenty of gripes both minor and less than -- but these faults are only apparent to me when I analyze it from outside the experience. At any time that I have actually been playing the game (and that's nearly 40 hours at this point), I have been absolutely enthralled by the characters, the story, and the gameplay.
One thing that the developers did in an effort to make the game more accessible was to streamline the combat and the bookkeeping. There's much less equipment to deal with and fewer abilities for each character to sink experience into. Looking at reviews on Amazon, I see that this has caused a furor among many shut-in genre snobs complaining about how this somehow diminishes the game as an RPG. To these folks, I have one word: bullshit.
In the days of pen and paper role playing, stats were assigned to player characters to allow the game master some way of determining what was feasible for the players to do in the game world. It's that simple. In the modern era of videogames, no human being needs to determine what players are or are not capable of doing. We can write elaborate rules that determine that for us and hid them away behind the scenes in physics engines and other computations. Even if hit points and damage modifiers are in effect, the player only needs to be made aware of their existence and general impact, not every specific facet of how they work. This allows us to have rules governing player behavior that are infinitely more complex, which allows for scenarios that are more consistent and more elaborate, and the players' blindness to the exact functioning allows for an experience that is more engrossing.
In the early days of videogames, it wasn't possible for players to have any control over the plot or the game world. For the most part, if there was any sort of significant plot, everything ran on rails with the player being the vehicle for advancing the plot, not an agent actively participating in its progression. Combat, then, was the only thing that the player had any sort of say in. So, in order to give a sense of individuality, games gave players more control over how they were to engage in it. Statistics and customization, tools that formerly existed to provide regulation of the game world, turned into mechanisms by which players were allowed a sense of personal identity in their character. Certainly, pen and paper games had player controlled proficiency development of this nature before the era of videogames; but they weren't essential to the genre. Unfortunately, the proliferation games allowing player directed character growth and boasting that they have "RPG elements" has apparently made it the defining aspect of the genre.
Truth be told, these sorts of customization options only lead to min-maxing and metagaming, the eternal enemies of immersion. Agonizing decisions about what's best instead of what's fitting; elaborate plotting of intended builds and ideal combinations; overwrought mappings of stimulus to optimal response. How can an interactive story survive when the player is more concerned with how he or she intends to play it than with how it will unfold? How can you effectively extend yourself into a character when you are entirely preoccupied with controlling him or her?
Statistics and customization are not the defining characteristics of the ideal role playing game. They are a cancer. What was once a healthy, functioning component of the genre has swollen and now threatens its very livelihood. They are a parasite, slowly killing the host on which they rode into popularity while simultaneously attempting to assume its identity. The folks at Bioware recognized this and have made an attempt to put them back in their proper place, and the result is hatred.
Statistics do not make an RPG. Role playing makes an RPG, and the Mass Effect series, taken as a whole, allows for deeper role playing than any computer game I've ever seen. I never could have predicted the way that certain decisions I made in Mass Effect 1 could have impacted the game world in Mass Effect 2; and I've spent the last couple of days consumed with questions about what the final effects of choices I made in this middle chapter will turn out to be. I am very nearly as curious about what this universe would look like for characters with other tendencies (as anybody who has heard me discuss a hypothetical "violent space lesbian" is aware). I am more attached to the character of Commander Shepard as I have brought him to life than I have been to any other character I have ever played.
Certainly, there is nothing wrong with player control over statistics or ability development. They allow you to impart some notion of who you feel your character is and how they interact with the reality around them. When they become the focus, though, something has gone terrible wrong, at least if you're trying to create a pure Role Playing Game. Anybody who discounts Mass Effect 2 not as a game, but as an RPG because they tried to relegate character growth to its proper place is missing the point and shutting themselves out of one of the best gaming experiences of all time.
One thing that the developers did in an effort to make the game more accessible was to streamline the combat and the bookkeeping. There's much less equipment to deal with and fewer abilities for each character to sink experience into. Looking at reviews on Amazon, I see that this has caused a furor among many shut-in genre snobs complaining about how this somehow diminishes the game as an RPG. To these folks, I have one word: bullshit.
In the days of pen and paper role playing, stats were assigned to player characters to allow the game master some way of determining what was feasible for the players to do in the game world. It's that simple. In the modern era of videogames, no human being needs to determine what players are or are not capable of doing. We can write elaborate rules that determine that for us and hid them away behind the scenes in physics engines and other computations. Even if hit points and damage modifiers are in effect, the player only needs to be made aware of their existence and general impact, not every specific facet of how they work. This allows us to have rules governing player behavior that are infinitely more complex, which allows for scenarios that are more consistent and more elaborate, and the players' blindness to the exact functioning allows for an experience that is more engrossing.
In the early days of videogames, it wasn't possible for players to have any control over the plot or the game world. For the most part, if there was any sort of significant plot, everything ran on rails with the player being the vehicle for advancing the plot, not an agent actively participating in its progression. Combat, then, was the only thing that the player had any sort of say in. So, in order to give a sense of individuality, games gave players more control over how they were to engage in it. Statistics and customization, tools that formerly existed to provide regulation of the game world, turned into mechanisms by which players were allowed a sense of personal identity in their character. Certainly, pen and paper games had player controlled proficiency development of this nature before the era of videogames; but they weren't essential to the genre. Unfortunately, the proliferation games allowing player directed character growth and boasting that they have "RPG elements" has apparently made it the defining aspect of the genre.
Truth be told, these sorts of customization options only lead to min-maxing and metagaming, the eternal enemies of immersion. Agonizing decisions about what's best instead of what's fitting; elaborate plotting of intended builds and ideal combinations; overwrought mappings of stimulus to optimal response. How can an interactive story survive when the player is more concerned with how he or she intends to play it than with how it will unfold? How can you effectively extend yourself into a character when you are entirely preoccupied with controlling him or her?
Statistics and customization are not the defining characteristics of the ideal role playing game. They are a cancer. What was once a healthy, functioning component of the genre has swollen and now threatens its very livelihood. They are a parasite, slowly killing the host on which they rode into popularity while simultaneously attempting to assume its identity. The folks at Bioware recognized this and have made an attempt to put them back in their proper place, and the result is hatred.
Statistics do not make an RPG. Role playing makes an RPG, and the Mass Effect series, taken as a whole, allows for deeper role playing than any computer game I've ever seen. I never could have predicted the way that certain decisions I made in Mass Effect 1 could have impacted the game world in Mass Effect 2; and I've spent the last couple of days consumed with questions about what the final effects of choices I made in this middle chapter will turn out to be. I am very nearly as curious about what this universe would look like for characters with other tendencies (as anybody who has heard me discuss a hypothetical "violent space lesbian" is aware). I am more attached to the character of Commander Shepard as I have brought him to life than I have been to any other character I have ever played.
Certainly, there is nothing wrong with player control over statistics or ability development. They allow you to impart some notion of who you feel your character is and how they interact with the reality around them. When they become the focus, though, something has gone terrible wrong, at least if you're trying to create a pure Role Playing Game. Anybody who discounts Mass Effect 2 not as a game, but as an RPG because they tried to relegate character growth to its proper place is missing the point and shutting themselves out of one of the best gaming experiences of all time.
Friday, January 8, 2010
Letting Life Live Me
Wow, I am an idiot. I was double checking a couple of due dates on grad school applications that I'd finished recently because I got this strange paranoid feeling about when they were supposed to be in. Turns out I was right and that I'd screwed up the deadlines for applying to the MS and PhD programs. Turns out that, out of my list of 6 schools, I only applied to two of them on time and in time to be considered for funding. Those two schools are CU-Boulder and Brandeis.
Oddly enough, these are kind of the two schools I've been most subconsciously attracted to, even if both of them have things that could keep me from going there as well. Further coincidence is that, ever since I actively decided I didn't have the time to apply at Carnegie Melon, I've been fairly seriously considering taking a year off and doing something like Americorps (something where the pay isn't great, the purpose is important, and the federal loans don't accrue interest). It would be a good way to have some new experiences and figure out how much I really want to do the whole PhD thing without giving myself a good excuse to give up on it -- an excuse like a high paying job.
Now, I have a long tradition of kind of sitting back and letting life take its course and of delaying decisions until time makes a decision for me. I wound up at Calvin in large part because I liked it well enough and didn't feel like filling out applications for the other schools on my list. The whole National Merit thing and needing to accept admission early was a nice excuse, but it didn't really factor at the time. Honestly I've been pretty satisfied with the course my life has taken living this way. Calvin has been great, and even this weird fifth year has ultimately been for the best; but I'm still anxious about this habit and what will happen if I keep on only allowing myself minimal say in my life. I just know that those few times where I have tried to be the active decider haven't turned out too well for me. Usually life kicks my ass a bit and throws me back on the path it had me going down.
Oddly enough, these are kind of the two schools I've been most subconsciously attracted to, even if both of them have things that could keep me from going there as well. Further coincidence is that, ever since I actively decided I didn't have the time to apply at Carnegie Melon, I've been fairly seriously considering taking a year off and doing something like Americorps (something where the pay isn't great, the purpose is important, and the federal loans don't accrue interest). It would be a good way to have some new experiences and figure out how much I really want to do the whole PhD thing without giving myself a good excuse to give up on it -- an excuse like a high paying job.
Now, I have a long tradition of kind of sitting back and letting life take its course and of delaying decisions until time makes a decision for me. I wound up at Calvin in large part because I liked it well enough and didn't feel like filling out applications for the other schools on my list. The whole National Merit thing and needing to accept admission early was a nice excuse, but it didn't really factor at the time. Honestly I've been pretty satisfied with the course my life has taken living this way. Calvin has been great, and even this weird fifth year has ultimately been for the best; but I'm still anxious about this habit and what will happen if I keep on only allowing myself minimal say in my life. I just know that those few times where I have tried to be the active decider haven't turned out too well for me. Usually life kicks my ass a bit and throws me back on the path it had me going down.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Year in Review
Last year was interesting to say the least and difficult to say a little more. I can't really talk a lot about the last 12 months without getting on the pity train, as certain events paint even the happier memories in a dimmer light. As always, I'm fairly content when I remain in the moment, but reflecting on the past and pondering the future both put me in a bit of a down mood these days as I question my decisions and where they are bringing me.
So, instead of actively talking about my life over the last 12 months, I'll look at some of my favorite movies from the time period and reflect on why they've impacted me as they have.
500 Days of Summer:
This may be my favorite movie of the year. I identify with it in a way that I haven't identified with a movie since Little Miss Sunshine. I have a bad habit of expecting too much out of my relationships and of reacting poorly when my expectations turn out to be completely unrealistic. This has been a huge problem for me especially in the last year as I struggle to find proper footing to maintain relationships that life has determined must change. Tom's flight from the rooftop party in particular will be a powerful cathartic experience for awhile to come.
Up:
Pixar comes through again with what I'm willing to call my third favorite movie in their oeuvre (after Wall-E and The Incredibles). If nothing else, the first ~15 minutes are the best film making of the year. I don't know if the beautiful depiction of Carl and Ellie's life together will ever not make me tear up, and the way Carl places his hand on Ellie's hand print when he's checking the mail is the most subtly profound image in a movie this year. Again, this movie deals with accepting that life is never what we want it to be. It reminds us that we need to make our own adventures where we are instead of dwelling on those we wish we could be having.
Moon:
Moon ranks in as my favorite sci-fi movie in a year packed with great entries in the genre. It didn't impact me as personally as the previous two movies, but it does show a gradual shift my tastes have been taking. I still enjoy adventure and high action, but more and more I find myself inclined towards slower, more thoughtful narratives. Under its skin, Moon asks some interesting questions about how much our personal growth is influenced by our environment.
Coraline:
I'll admit, I'm a Neil Gaiman fanboy; but this wouldn't have come about if his work didn't tend to be of such exemplary quality. The most interesting feature of Coraline is one that it shares with Gaiman's (deservedly) much lauded Graveyard Book: the level of respect it shows for its young audience. Coraline refuses to give everything away. It lets you put together the pieces for yourself and offers a few genuinely frightening moments for viewers of all ages.
Julie and Julia:
As much as the fanfare around the release of Julie Powell's latest book, Cleaving, disappointed me, I don't think it can do much to dilute the pure enjoyability that Julie and Julia offered. Many people were primarily taken with the Julia Child aspect of the story, and Meryl Streep's performance in the role was exceptional, but Amy Adam's performance as Julie Powell was equally potent if you can identify with her position. The NPR pop culture blog Monkey See, which is spectacular, has a great write-up on the importance of the two stories here.
That's it for now. There were plenty of other good movies this year (Zombie Land, A Serious Man, District 9, The Hurt Locker, and Avatar among others), and a couple I still want to see (chiefly, Up in the Air and The Princess and the Frog), but these are the ones I had the most to say about. Hope all of you are in a good place as this new year kicks off and blessings to all of you.
So, instead of actively talking about my life over the last 12 months, I'll look at some of my favorite movies from the time period and reflect on why they've impacted me as they have.
500 Days of Summer:
This may be my favorite movie of the year. I identify with it in a way that I haven't identified with a movie since Little Miss Sunshine. I have a bad habit of expecting too much out of my relationships and of reacting poorly when my expectations turn out to be completely unrealistic. This has been a huge problem for me especially in the last year as I struggle to find proper footing to maintain relationships that life has determined must change. Tom's flight from the rooftop party in particular will be a powerful cathartic experience for awhile to come.
Up:
Pixar comes through again with what I'm willing to call my third favorite movie in their oeuvre (after Wall-E and The Incredibles). If nothing else, the first ~15 minutes are the best film making of the year. I don't know if the beautiful depiction of Carl and Ellie's life together will ever not make me tear up, and the way Carl places his hand on Ellie's hand print when he's checking the mail is the most subtly profound image in a movie this year. Again, this movie deals with accepting that life is never what we want it to be. It reminds us that we need to make our own adventures where we are instead of dwelling on those we wish we could be having.
Moon:
Moon ranks in as my favorite sci-fi movie in a year packed with great entries in the genre. It didn't impact me as personally as the previous two movies, but it does show a gradual shift my tastes have been taking. I still enjoy adventure and high action, but more and more I find myself inclined towards slower, more thoughtful narratives. Under its skin, Moon asks some interesting questions about how much our personal growth is influenced by our environment.
Coraline:
I'll admit, I'm a Neil Gaiman fanboy; but this wouldn't have come about if his work didn't tend to be of such exemplary quality. The most interesting feature of Coraline is one that it shares with Gaiman's (deservedly) much lauded Graveyard Book: the level of respect it shows for its young audience. Coraline refuses to give everything away. It lets you put together the pieces for yourself and offers a few genuinely frightening moments for viewers of all ages.
Julie and Julia:
As much as the fanfare around the release of Julie Powell's latest book, Cleaving, disappointed me, I don't think it can do much to dilute the pure enjoyability that Julie and Julia offered. Many people were primarily taken with the Julia Child aspect of the story, and Meryl Streep's performance in the role was exceptional, but Amy Adam's performance as Julie Powell was equally potent if you can identify with her position. The NPR pop culture blog Monkey See, which is spectacular, has a great write-up on the importance of the two stories here.
That's it for now. There were plenty of other good movies this year (Zombie Land, A Serious Man, District 9, The Hurt Locker, and Avatar among others), and a couple I still want to see (chiefly, Up in the Air and The Princess and the Frog), but these are the ones I had the most to say about. Hope all of you are in a good place as this new year kicks off and blessings to all of you.
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