A wonderful world – but not a story

Bioshock-infinite-wallpaper

Bioshock Infinite has inspired an awful lot of writers to set forth since it came out. Count me among them, obviously.

There have been articles about the world of Columbia, the city in the sky, and its pre-war politics of segregation and exclusion. Chris Plante from Polygon wrote a couple of posts on the game’s combat and the often extreme violence, along with Cliff Bleszinski (whose main contribution to the current generation of games is the chainsaw rifle). Whatever you think of the game, it deserves consideration.

Then there’s the strange, hallucination of a story. Ken Levine, one of gaming’s few superstar creators, has poured his love of history and science fiction in to one place. He also spends a remarkable amount of time on character building. There’s a lot of downtime where the hero, Booker, and his victim/conspirator, Elizabeth share their feelings and thoughts about the world.

This rare attention to detail in the middle of an action game gives real heft to the game’s conclusion. Which is something of a surprise, because the conclusion, and the surrounding narrative, isn’t really that diverting when you examine it. I look at it as more a compelling collection of ideas, stuck together with little rhyme of reason. Which sounds like I didn’t enjoy it. I did, but it’s not the triumph some are suggesting. I’m going to talk through some of my thoughts on the story and the characters (including the city), so there will be spoilers and possibly stuff you don’t agree with.

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The Incredible Hulk

I wasn’t alive when The Incredible Hulk started on TV, but it gave me some strong memories. The tense bleeping of the opening credits, the sad piano theme, the Hulk’s eyebrows… It was a big part of my childhood. So, discovering it was on Netflix filled me with joy. And, actually it’s aged pretty well, simply because it focused on drama over steroid-enhanced heroics. Even the origin of David Banner’s other side is better than the comic’s original version.

But there’s a strong sense that the producers enjoyed the time with Bill Bixby’s Banner over Ferrigino’s Hulk. There really isn’t much for the Hulk to do in the middle of the soft drama and character building. Usually, when he appears, he’s shoehorned in for little reason other than, “Um, we’re called The Incredible Hulk – shouldn’t we like, feature him?”

So, how better than to have Banner meet a grizzly bear one afternoon? And how should we resolve this? Rub green make up over the bear, before turning him into a giant stuffed toy that the Hulk can throw without a) breaking his spine or b) facing the wrath of PETA? Why, yes actually!

Enjoy:

Guitar, bass and drums

I’ve started work on a new album, finally. Jamie (my co-writer, arranger, Krispy Kreme fiend and friend) and I spent yesterday with ace drummer, Ken Yip, getting some of the tracks down.

It was really good fun – Ken put so much work into his ideas, noting out structures, coming up with ways to make the tracks move. And Jamie is always prepared and full of things to try. We now have the arrangements for five songs down.

Some of those tunes are hangovers from our West Avenue days (Open Roads and Over My Head) but already they feel different. There are another couple we tried in that band but they just never seemed to work. Now they do.

What Jamie and I enjoyed most was recasting a much older song. We wrote the outline of Bound to Fail when I was 26. That arrangement was always punchy and aggressive, but a little much. We tried an acoustic version that built slower, which we both liked. And this version, well it’s very different. I can’t wait to get it finished.

So, lots going on. More updates soon!

Smashing Pumpkins–Oceania

After meandering around, Billy Corgan has delivered his best set of songs since 1998’s Adore. While never hitting the storied heights of that or its superior predecessors, Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, Oceania does at least make the attempt.

Of course, it’s not really the Smashing Pumpkins any more. The current line-up weren’t even buying records when Siamese Dream combined hard riffing, thick textures and West Coast harmonies in 1993 to near-dreamlike effect. Effectively this is a Corgan solo album, but one where he’s focused on the listener having as much as he clearly is.

There are stellar songs on here: The Chimera and Inkless provide a late-album surge with gorgeous melodies and glistening guitars. The Celestials and the stunning Pinwheels change the pace, particularly the latter with its bubbling synth that weaves into guitars and vocals.

Smashing Pumpkins performing Pinwheels live.

And if the opening two tracks try a little hard to recall earlier glories, they can be forgiven for actually being good songs in their own right.

Admittedly it’s not all plain sailing. Corgan still likes to think of himself as an ambitious composer, so the title track takes about five detours and none of them are particularly interesting. At times it feels very much like an album project, probably because Billy is overly in love with conceptual statements instead of emotional engagement. But that’s also true of the last two Pumpkins albums (2000’s Machina and 2007’s Zeitgeist), which were heavy on production but light on reasons to listen.

What makes Oceania such a pleasure is that it focuses on the things that made Corgan an interesting antidote to the rest of the alt-rock crew. He combines sounds from across his career (Mellon Collie’s pop sensibilities, Siamese Dream’s layers of guitars and ferocious drumming, Adore’s electronic textures) with some of his best songs in a decade, while ignoring, for the most part, his worst excesses.

At a time when the other grunge survivors are happy just to tour, it’s nice to see Corgan, always the misfit, turning in his best work in 15 years. It’s not as good as the band’s 90s output but that would be asking too much. But it certainly shouldn’t b ashamed to be in their company.

Gone

Sometimes you just don’t know what to say after a film other than “huh?”

Gone, starring the utterly unsuitable Amanda Seyfried, regularly requires you basically shrug your shoulders and sigh. It’s pretty terrible but curiously amusing.

Basic plot: Amanda claims she is the sole survivor of a kidnapper/murderer. Since then she has struggled to feel safe and becomes an outright lunatic when her sister is kidnapped. She’s convinced it’s the same guy, the police are convinced she’s imagining it, so she does what anyone would: she starts lying to everyone and breaking laws to prove it happened.

What’s a little sad about this film is that, at several points, it suggests a darker, much more interesting story going on underneath. Was she really the victim of a mysterious serial killer or is she mentally unstable and fabricating everything? Is she the gutsy female who’s looking after herself or is she a habitual liar with a seriously violent streak?

You can probably guess that the film only deals with these issues in the most shallow possible way. However, it doesn’t really stop it from being enjoyable. It’s a bad film and it really makes no sense, but it is pretty fun. And there’s little to top how sinister everybody is, just to keep the red herrings swimming.

The (mass) effect

imagesYes, everyone’s shouting about it. But since I didn’t buy Mass Effect 3 (all games will be referred to as ME) when it came out, it took me a while to get there. And, like almost every fan out there (bar a few weird “it’s ART” types), I’m disappointed in it.

Game Front’s Ross Lincoln has done a comprehensive explanation of why the fans are annoyed, and I agree with all of it. So I won’t go over that ground. What I will go over is why I think it happened, simply from a writing/narrative perspective.

The issue isn’t that ME3′s ending is negative, or that it’s strange (hey, I’m a huge fan of David Lynch), but that it’s nonsensical and ignores the stated purpose of the series.
It’s not grown up just to be bleak, it is grown up to present shades of grey. And it’s even more grown up to reflect the choices a player has made, not just in the trilogy, but simply the game you’re playing.

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Foreign films!

For the next few weeks, as well as a steady diet of odd action movies and crap horror, I’m going to watch foreign films (or just with notable foreign directors). I’ve got a few on my list already:

Spoorloos (The Vanishing) – the Dutch thriller, later remade with Jeff Bridges but by the same director

Flesh + Blood – Paul Verhoeven’s middle-ages sword and shagging epic

Soldier of Orange – Verhoeven again, but this time reflecting on growing up during the Nazi occupation of Holland.

Generally, I want to watch genre films, so action, thrillers, crime (special points for good crime movies), horror, etc. But any ideas are welcome!

I’ll watch and post my reviews here.