Archive for June 29th, 2009

Transformers 2: not good but awesomest

Monday, June 29th, 2009

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Transformers 2) is not what one would refer to as a good movie in the sense that Forrest Gump or Seven Samurai might be con­sid­ered good. Transformers 2 is, how­ever, an awe­some movie in the sense that sum­mer block­busters are designed to be awe­some. It’s pretty typ­i­cal to see a movie that’s got crazy effects and action but with a story/plot that mostly exists to give pause and glue to hold things together, which is some­what far­ci­cal, in my opinion.

The log­i­cal con­clu­sion to the trend of sum­mer block­busters is that story/plot isn’t actu­ally that impor­tant and, if done wrong, can really drag a movie down. So, what hap­pens if you reach that log­i­cal con­clu­sion and make a movie that is an open acknowl­edg­ment of the friv­o­lity of plot in sum­mer block­busters? You end up with some­thing that is a gor­geous, shiny, mov­ing piece of art, that pleases your senses but not your intel­lec­tu­al­ism; you end up with some­thing that every tra­di­tional movie-watcher will think is ter­ri­ble as they hunt for plot and a, so to speak, good movie.

This is the case for Transformers 2. Critics, in look­ing for plot and tra­di­tional qual­ity, have failed to see the gor­geous, shiny, sense-satiating, mon­ster of an expe­ri­ence that Transformers 2 is. The crit­ics made a sim­i­lar expe­ri­ence with Speed Racer, which was not very com­pelling but nonethe­less exces­sively beautiful.

In addi­tion to the amaz­ing expe­ri­ence that Transformers 2 is, its qual­ity has also inspired, what is prob­a­bly the finest review of any­thing, ever. io9 puts it quite well in their review, Michael Bay Finally Made An Art Movie, which I com­pletely agree with. Excerpt below:

Transformers: ROTF has mostly got­ten pretty hideous reviews, but that’s because peo­ple don’t under­stand that this isn’t a movie, in the con­ven­tional sense. It’s an assault on the senses, a bar­rage of crazy imagery. Imagine that you went back in time to the late 1960s and found Terry Gilliam, fresh from doing his weird low-fi collage/animations for Monty Python. You pro­ceeded to inject Gilliam with so many steroids his penis shrank to the size of a hair fol­li­cle, and you smushed a dozen tabs of LSD under his tongue. And then you gave him the GDP of a few sub-Saharan coun­tries. Gilliam might have made a movie not unlike this one.

In short, read this review; ignore the other reviews; go see Transformers 2; get over­stim­u­lated; and enjoy the cul­mi­na­tion of all that is the sum­mer blockbuster.

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[PROTOTYPE]

Monday, June 29th, 2009

At the sug­ges­tion of my good friend Rodin, I grabbed a copy of the game [PROTOTYPE] (which I am going to refer to as “Prototype” because the brack­ets and cap­i­tal­iza­tion are annoy­ing to type) for my Xbox 360. Rodin’s sug­ges­tion was a very good one and so I am pass­ing it on to all of you; Prototype is awe­some, you should go get a copy and start play­ing it.

Discussing the story behind Prototype won’t really give you a sense of why you should be play­ing it so, instead, let me start off by say­ing that it’s a game where you can jump kick heli­copters. Let me say that again, you can jump kick heli­copters; this includes apaches, and you can destroy them by so doing. Other things you can do include con­sum­ing peo­ple for their knowl­edge and pow­ers, shoot­ing spikes through the ground to destroy entire city blocks, or throw­ing tanks at mutated mon­sters. All of this mas­sive destruc­tion and awe­some­ness takes place within the con­text of being able to run up the sides of build­ings so as to jump and glide from one to the next. Your char­ac­ter is truly super­hu­man in a ridicu­lous and com­pletely amoral man­ner; you will con­sume civil­ians just to restore a lit­tle bit of health.

The con­trols are tight, if a lit­tle com­plex, the cam­era is ok, and the game­play is as cathar­tic as video games get. I’ve sunk, and enjoyed, enough hours of Prototype to say that it’s worth the $60 that I paid for it. It doesn’t mat­ter what you’re play­ing these days, you should put it down and go get a copy of Prototype; unless you’re bor­ing, you’ll thank your­self for doing so.

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