Game #16: Continuity 2: The Continuation (2011)

By: Guy Lima Jr, Stefan Mikaelsson, Elias Holmlid
Length: 51 levels
Finished on: 22 Mar 2012

A sweet little game that I played on my phone recently. The original Continuity was a free Flash game, simple in its conceit and ending with very hard levels. It’s a puzzle platformer, in which you can zoom out and slide the rooms round to make a new arrangement.

This is more of the same, but only for iOS (which annoys the piss out of anyone who hasn’t got such a machine, naturally). If you think about it, the reason for restricting it to a mobile platform might become clear eventually – a certain added mechanic to the game that I don’t want to give away at the moment! But in general, restricting it felt a bit pointless and annoying, at least until I actually acquired a device capable of using it.

The controls are pretty smooth – you touch one side of the screen or the other to move, and swipe up to jump, and it’s a double-touch to zoom out and play the characteristic sliding-puzzle game. I haven’t found another game yet with such simple controls, although to be fair I haven’t really been looking very hard.

As for the levels, they were suitably complex, keeping me busy for a few days, although there was only one that was truly difficult – it was the type of level for which it’s easy to see what to do but very difficult to pull off (I know them all too well from Lemmings!), to the point where you start to doubt that that could possibly be the solution. And then it does eventually turn out to be that way.

Definitely worth a play if you have an iphone and a spare dollar, anyway. If you don’t have an iphone, it’s worth trying to see if a friend will let you play it on theirs. Don’t expect anything too fancy, though. And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, Continuity 1 is available for free as a flash game, so actually, maybe you should just go and play that!

Game #15: Edge (2008)

By: Matthieu Malot & David Papazian
Language: English
Length: 48 levels (plus bonus and extended)
Finished on: 14 Mar 2012

Another game that I got through a Humble Bundle, this was originally designed for mobile platforms, so I also ended up buying it for my phone so that I could play it on the bus. The main reason to get it is probably the music, but the gameplay is also simple and addictive.

You play a cube going around an isometric 3D maze, and the title Edge comes from your ability to tip up onto your side and cling onto moving blocks with the edge of the cube. It kinda makes more sense in context, although it’s probably the biggest learning curve in the game and takes a bit of getting used to in terms of controlling it.

To complete the game 100%, there are a bunch of collectible tokens scattered around, although working out how to get to them can be confusing and counterintuitive. Sometimes you have to use your minimap to find a block hidden by the isometric view, or just trust that stepping somewhere will activate a moving block to take you somewhere.

The game has really taken the idea of a dynamic maze and run with it, and many levels require some degree of reflexes to complete. The last level of the extended set of levels is particularly fiendish in this regard; it took me over an hour to complete on the mobile version. This was mainly to do with the difficulty of the using the controls on the mobile version, as the computer version didn’t take me so long, despite still being very difficult. I found using the keyboard to be far easier to use than the tiny keypad that you get given on the phone, although it’s slightly counterintuitive as you have to get used to converting “up” into a northeast direction, and so on.

There are a couple of alternative control systems on the mobile version: touching the corners of the screen, which I found difficult, and using the accelerometer – ie, having the cube move in the direction that you tip your phone physically – but I think the latter was probably provided as some kind of novelty.

Anyway, overall it’s simple and addictive, doesn’t have a big learning curve, and is fun. My main criticism would be that there aren’t very many truly challenging levels (the final extended level is, of course, a worthy exception!). I’d say ideally it also needs some sort of level editor, although the levels are probably too complicated for that to be practical (there are usually some very complex things going on everywhere!). Now that I’ve finished the game, you see, its only replay value is time trials, which I don’t like and am not good at! Oh well, it definitely comes with a recommendation, in any case!

Film #54: Hugo (2011)

Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Language: English
Length: 126 minutes
Watched on: 13 Mar 2012

I watched this film at a very late-night screening back in March, purely out of curiosity for what it’d be like to go in at half past midnight and leave at around 3. Thanks to a quirk of the way things are timetabled in Japan, this was marked as “24:30-27:00″ on the timetable (they do this to emphasise that it’s part of the previous day’s schedule rather than the next day’s, since 00:30 is potentially ambiguous). Afterwards, the first train back wasn’t until 5 am or so, so I had the chance to experience a Japanese internet café for a couple of hours (a bit boring, to be honest), and to be approached by several black pimps on the main road…

As for the film itself, I went to see it in 3D, sort of on the recommendation of Mark Kermode, who seems insistent that it was the one film actually worth seeing in 3D. I didn’t really think it added anything. And I found most of it disappointingly bland. It has too much of a kids’ film feel for my liking.

It was certainly good in places. Sacha Baron Cohen (who I didn’t recognise at first) had an excellent turn as a bumbling policeman, after the manner of Clouseau or Crabtree; indeed, he looks very much like Officer Crabtree. The sequences looking at old silent films were quite interesting, too. It’s gained a lot of critical acclaim, to my knowledge.

But the whole thing with the clockwork steampunky robot thing was a bit ridiculous, and the rest of the story was just a bit disappointing and unmemorable.

Overall I think it was a nice film, and I’m glad I went to see it, but it wasn’t great.

Film #53: The Big Lebowski (1998)

Directed by: Joel & Ethan Coen
Language: English
Length: 117 minutes
Watched on: 5 Mar 2012

Keeping with my veritable tradition, this review is over two months behind. I haven’t been sure whether to review on this blog films that I’ve watched before… I think generally I just go for it just as long as I’m not repeating myself. Well, anyway, this is the third time I’ve seen this film by the Coen brothers, because it’s very funny, and I was needing cheered up at the end of a tough week back at the beginning of March.

It’s one of the few films that I can recite back a few lines from (make of that what you will), and it is indeed a very popular film for doing that, although some of its best lines are rarely repeated – I posted some on Facebook and nobody noticed or recognised them. It’s a shame, really… more people should see this film.

It’s best known for being genre-busting, and it is indeed somewhat difficult to classify. It’s fairly obviously a comedy, but there are elements of film noir, and a narrator who thinks the film’s a western.

Just to quickly sum up, the characters are hilarious, the jokes come thick and fast, the direction is smooth and engaging, and the plot is satisfyingly incomprehensible (with zany scheme piled upon zany scheme several times over) and ultimately irrelevant. A good film all round.

Film #52: Johnny English (2003)

Directed by: Peter Howitt
Language: English with some French & Japanese
Length: 88 mins
Watched on: 3 Mar 2012

This is technically a rewatch, since I guess I saw the film in the cinema when it came out. It’s been a while, though. Notably, I’m now coming at the film from an adult perspective, rather than that of a 15-year-old; and I think the 15-year-old me enjoyed it a lot more than the 24-year-old me did.

Let’s face it, this was always going to be lowest common denominator humour, only a couple of steps up from Mr Bean. And if you really want a James Bond spoof, you’re better off watching something like Austin Powers.

It has its moments, for sure; there’s one sequence where the characters lose control of their muscles or something, which was very funny, but Rowan Atkinson’s talent for physical humour wasn’t given enough airtime apart from those moments.

As for the actual plot, it’s completely ridiculous, but does achieve the certainly admirable goal of getting John Malkovich as a crrrrazy Frrrenchman hell-bent on tricking the Queen into abdicating and thereby obtaining the throne of England. Because, you know, that would totally give him any power at all. Why the French, anyway? Haven’t we flogged that horse to death several times already, or do we really have to remind ourselves that the French used to be enemies of the English? But I guess this story was chosen to be hilariously apolitical and nothing like anything that’s likely to happen in real life (because that way you do have the legitimate concern of pissing people off with an inappropriate storyline…).

One other funny thing about the film was seeing Natalie Imbruglia playing the suave Bond-girl, simply because nobody’s heard from her really since then. It kinda serves to date the film a little bit…

Anyway, I heard there’s a Johnny English 2 out recently. I don’t think I’ll be seeing it. That’s not to say this film is that bad, it’s just not worth seeking out.

Film #51: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

Directed by: David Fincher
Language: English with some background Swedish
Length: 158 minutes
Watched on: 15 Feb 2012

Having spent my first few weeks in Japan seeing the posters for this film everywhere I decided that I would go to see it at the cinema. There are a couple of things that are worth noting about Japanese cinemas. Firstly, as with this particular film, the Japanese seem to get films months after we do; I think in the UK it was out before Christmas, yet I went to see it in February. Secondly, just going by the exchange rate, they’re really expensive at ¥1800, which is like £16. I keep telling myself I have to stop converting, especially now that I’m being paid in yen, but it’s difficult to stop when the conversion is as easy as lopping off two zeroes from the yen price and rounding down a little. Anyway, they also get really busy; the cinema was packed when I went.

I have written at length about the Millennium trilogy books and the Swedish films before. To summarise, I liked them, and they were the last proper page-turning books that I read. And I love Noomi Rapace as Salander.

So I was a bit put out when I heard that they were remaking it to put it in the English language for a “wider audience”. Oh, for heaven’s sakes… people are idiots. I also had a bit of trepidation because I’m not much of a fan of Daniel Craig and I couldn’t see how Rooney Mara could live up to Rapace’s performance (plus she looked silly on the posters).

Of course, some of my fears were perfectly reasonable. For example, the language thing becomes a logical inconsistency because the main dialogue is in English but background noises and signs are in Swedish, as you’d expect for a film set in Sweden. You get some actors putting on Swedish accents (Mara affects some kind of Poirot-esque speech by greeting people in a very Swedish way), while others, like Craig, don’t even try.

Comparing it to the Swedish version, the main difference between the two is undoubtedly budget; because the Swedish film was a TV project, it shows sometimes. This film starts with a completely unnecessary flashy CGI credit sequence and goes from there. Yet some of the sets look like they could have been lifted straight out of the Swedish film, as if they’ve actually just gone and used the same locations… at which point I just turn around and think, “why did they bother making it, in that case?”

As for the rapist (oops, spoiler!), I felt he looked a lot more threatening in the Swedish movie; here he comes across as rather jolly and avuncular at first, and only threatening later once you realize that’s what he’s going to do. Perhaps that’s a good point to be made there, that rapists could look like anything, and perhaps someone might find it even more shocking if someone who doesn’t “look threatening” turns out to be threatening, but this is a movie we’re watching, and generally, movies have a sort of visual convention of how people are presented, and it just comes across as jarring when that’s broken.

But all that aside, Rooney Mara’s performance as Salander was truly formidable, and she really sank into the role. I’m not sure I’d say she brought anything new to the role, but I think she’s a really competent actress, especially considering that the only other thing I’ve seen her in is as a preppy love interest in the film about Mark Zuckerberg, and how completely and utterly different she looks and acts in each film. As I mentioned, she affects some kind of Poirot speak at a few points during the movie – she’ll greet or thank people in Swedish – but it was done just subtly enough that it really made me believe that she was actually a Swedish woman who just happened to be speaking English for the sake of the movie. And that can only be a good thing.

Other than that, there are only a few minor differences here and there between this film and the original one; in the end probably not enough to justify making it, despite the good performances. Perhaps this film is more true to the book in some ways – for instance, Salander doesn’t give herself away to Blomkvist as she did in the Swedish film. And one particular part near the climax is more coherently executed. But as with the original movie, the postclimactic ending is poorly executed, although this is a consequence of the book’s Return of the King Ending Syndrome. As I mentioned in my previous review, this was one of the worst things about the book itself too, although it’s easier to get away with it in a book than it is in a film.

Anyway, I still really enjoyed the film, as it’s ultimately an engrossing story, whatever form it’s in. And I suppose if it does accomplish the goal of getting more people aware of the story, then that’s good (most Japanese that I’ve talked to haven’t heard of the Swedish movie, but have heard of this one). But I think anglophones need to quit with the whining about subtitles. After all, I watched this film in a cinema packed with Japanese people, and they didn’t seem to have any trouble with the subtitles.

Oh yeah, I’ve just remembered the other annoying thing that the Japanese do with films… the sex scene was pixellated. I bet it wasn’t even explicit. It’s rather funny, then, that the rape scene actually left less to the imagination with this cut of the film…

Book #21: A Study in Scarlet (1887)

By: Arthur Conan Doyle
Language: English and a paragraph of Latin
Finished reading on: 5 Feb 2012

This book holds the prize for most paradoxical: it’s the oldest book I’ve read since I started counting two years ago, and yet I read it on my Kindle, an undeniably modern piece of equipment. I bought said device in London before I got on the plane to come to Tokyo, and I loaded it up with free (and legal!!!) ebooks from Project Gutenberg, which is well worth a visit. It’s all out-of-copyright works, so they’re all older than 100 years now, basically. But more on the device later.

This book is the first in the Sherlock Holmes series, and details the introduction of Holmes and Watson. It’s not the first Sherlock Holmes story I’ve read, although it’s the first full novel that I’ve finished; and I’ve seen a few adaptations of the works too, but I didn’t actually know that much about the backstory of Sherlock Holmes, such as the fact that he’s a chemist of some description, or at least spends time in the labs. I had assumed that that was something they’d added to the BBC Sherlock series to make him more modern, but it was just as present in the book here.

As for the story itself, it is also roughly the same as the BBC adaptation’s first installment (which changes the name to “A Study in Pink”). A lot of the same twists in the plot were kept between this book and the adaptation, such as a particular word written on a wall, and yet a lot of them were changed significantly, such as the identity of the culprit, who only bears a resemblance in the adaptation.

Where the book completely fails is in its second half; without any explanation, we are transported to the Utah territory and treated to a story of treacherous polygamous Mormons. It later transpires that this is the backstory of the villain, but a little warning would have been nice. Of course, at the time, people may not have been reading the book for Sherlock Holmes, because it was his first introduction, but now that’s the only reason people are going to be reading this book, so his excisement from the second half of the story is annoying.

As for the twist ending, it’s predictable a mile off by modern standards, although probably because of itself. And I had seen the BBC adaptation with the almost-identical twist ending just over a month previously.

Anyway, it’s good. Conan Doyle’s prose has aged well, and is not very difficult to follow (this is in stark contrast to Gulliver’s Travels, which I have sort of gotten bored of reading at the moment), so even when the story became about something I didn’t care about, it was still not too difficult to finish. Plus it was quite short. A good read, and if you’ve not read any Holmes before it’s worth starting here, but it’s maybe not the best of the books.

Just while I’m here, I thought I’d mention the Kindle again. It’s a nice piece of equipment, and it’s worth noting that you’re not tied into the Amazon DRM in any way, although it is one of the easier ways to get books for it. It’s capable of the internet, but I can’t get it to connect to the ad hoc wifi that I set up on my laptop, and it’s a bloody pain to try and type on, since I got the cheap version with no keyboard. Turning pages isn’t obvious at first – it uses buttons on the sides, but it’s lower button = forward and upper button = backward on both the right and the left side of the device, which is a bit unintuitive at first, and I still accidentally press the forward button on the left side of the device trying to go back. As for the screen, it’s quite nice, although I’ve found it difficult to read in low light. But you can certainly read it outside on a sunny day, unlike a laptop screen.

I just need to find something else decent to read on it, now. I’m currently on the second part of Gulliver’s Travels, and I would like to read more of it, because it’s quite enjoyable, but its prose is very thick, as I said, and it hasn’t aged very well. Has anyone got any other recommendations for books to get for it?

Film #50: Super 8 (2011)

Director: J.J. Abrams
Language: English
Length: 112 minutes
Watched on: 21 Jan 2012

This was the second film that I watched on the plane over to Japan, whiling away the long hours. It concerns a group of teenagers trying to while away the boredom of living in the midwest by making films on an old Super-8 camera. I think it was set in the 70s or 80s, where such things would have been more common. Then a big train accident happens right in front of them, and as the saying goes, their lives are turned upside down. Naturally, it’s all captured on camera.

Trying not to give too much away, during the rest of the movie, strange things start happening around the kids, and the military set up shop in the town. There’s some kind of cover-up operation going on. It gets weird and only makes sense within its genre by the end of the film.

Overall, it was quite a good film, but I just wasn’t gripped by it. It certainly had its moments, to be fair, but as to the entire plot, I can only give a basic outline (and I don’t want to do that because it’s better to watch it without major spoilers). It scores points by actually having kid actors instead of older kids and young adults playing the children, which lent it more credibility, although I found it a bit unrealistic when the two kids whose voices hadn’t even broken yet started fighting over a girl. I think that’s just a strange and foreign world to me.

Is it worth watching? Yeah, probably. I think Stephen Spielberg was involved, so it was definitely a quality production. So perhaps it’s worth a shot.

Film #49: Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)

Director: Rupert Wyatt
Language: English and some ASL
Length: 105 minutes
Watched on: 21 Jan 2012

I think I was introduced to this film by Mark Kermode on his podcast, who also missed it when it was out in the cinemas. I ended up seeing it on a plane, of all places, whiling away the dark hours probably somewhere over Siberia, on the way to Japan. So I only had a rather small screen to watch it on, unfortunately.

One thing I should mention is that, while I’ve seen both the Charlton Heston movie and the Tim Burton remake, I’m not particularly familiar with any other films in the Planet of the Apes franchise. This film is essentially an origin story, and is officially yet another Reboot to the franchise, whatever that means. Apparently it is pretty much a remake of an earlier film entitled Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. Its plot essentially covers the story of a scientist creating a drug to try and cure Alzheimer’s, and when they test it on apes, it makes them smarter. I guess it’s set some time in the near future from now. If you know even the slightest thing about PotA you can probably fill in your own gap now. It’s not a particularly cerebral plot in that regard.

The human characters tend to fall into archetypes, such as the scientist, the businessman, and the evil bully (the zookeeper, essentially), played by Draco Malfoy Tom Felton, in a rather disturbing turn. The main guy, the scientist in charge of the main ape, called Caesar, has a rather tepid romance with some woman, and a sick father who he is desperate to help – this brings about the main plot.

Evidently, the main ape roles were played by mocap actors, and I guess compared to some other mocap work I’ve seen (Tintin….), the fact that they’re not humans at least eliminates the problem of the uncanny valley, as it did with Gollum, so realism becomes less of an issue for them than it does in Tintin, for instance. I think Andy Serkis (of Gollum fame) actually played the main role, too; he seems to be in everything related to mocap now. Realism aside, the graphics are pretty good. I just can’t help but wonder if that’s because we’re looking at non-humans, though. I think one of the main problems with the film was that while the human characters are, for the most part, boring archetypes, the ape characters, especially Caesar, are expressive and show a full gamut of emotions. This is OK, I suppose, since it is his film at the end of the day, but I would have liked to see the same level of emotional involvement with all of the characters.

Anyway, overall it was an enjoyable movie for me, but it felt a bit unremarkable too. After a few months, I can only give a basic plot outline about the thing. Themewise, I guess it has things to say about consumerism, and has a few warnings about the dangers of the unknown in science: it essentially seems to be saying that humans should stop toying with nature, which I don’t necessarily agree with. The apocalyptic element is one that I’ve seen coming up a lot recently, as well, which makes it feel worrying because most of the plot (apart from a bit of magic unexplained science) is perfectly plausible. Because it’s actually set close to the modern day, it feels more relatable than the original PotA, which doesn’t really go into why the planet is full of apes, and leaves it up to the viewer’s imagination. So it’s certainly worth a watch.

Film #48: Mulholland Drive (2001)

Directed by: David Lynch
Language: English (and some French and Spanish)
Length: 140 minutes
Watched on: 18 Jan 2012

I watched this film on the train on the way down to London, where I was leaving to catch my flight to Japan. By the time I got to Japan, even in the first week it felt like forever ago, and I was surprised that I still had the DVD with me and hadn’t left it at home. A lot has happened since I got here!

The film itself is complex, to say the least, but fairly ordinary fare for Lynch. I was fairly sure of what was going on up until the last 20 minutes, in which so many alternative readings of the film were offered up that I just wasn’t sure what to think anymore. Characters suddenly merged together or split apart, and some scenes seemed to be repeated with different actors. Before that it had had a fairly linear plot; after that I was no longer sure quite who was doing what to who, and what exactly was supposed to be a dream and what was reality.

But overall, I kind of sat back for a minute and realized that it doesn’t really matter what happened, since it’s a film and not reality, and I kind of embraced the fact that I wasn’t sure what was going on, and that the film could easily just be several stories wrapped confusingly up into one. So I enjoyed it in the end.

It was quite a dark and slow film for the most part. As with other Lynch works, such as Twin Peaks, which I’m still currently watching, it lapses into weird sequences sometimes, most of which are recalled in the final 20 minutes of the film when all the story threads get woven together. Partly for that reason, I feel sure that if I watch it again, I’ll notice lots of things that I didn’t the first time around, or I’ll be more likely to remember parts from the first act that resurface in the third.

So yeah, overall I’d give this a thumbs-up. Obviously it’s not for you if you’re not into confusing Lynchian works, but if you are it’s probably less accessible than Twin Peaks but more accessible than Inland Empire, for example. Mind you, if you’re actually into Lynchian works you’ll probably have seen this one, since it’s one of his most famous, so perhaps I should amend that to “confusing arthouse films” or some other such label. I liked it, anyway.