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I have toted with checking this show out a number of times, but have always been cautious taking on a gay themed series sight unseen.
But with JB Hifi currently selling the series at a dramatically reduced price – $14.95 NZ – I decided to take the plunge and bought the first season. After only two episodes I have now gone back and bought the rest. It is that good.
Beyond just being witty and about the GLBT community, the series really does present a fairly accurate portrayal of the minefield of issues that face gay men and women on a daily basis. Yes, it is slightly exaggerated, but when one of the character’s states “There are only two types of straight people. Those who hate you to your face and those who hate you behind your back” in reference to gay people.
That’s not only a ballsy statement to have a character make, there really are actually gay men out there who think like this. Presumably this guy is going to have this view challenged before the series ends.
While the series is an ensemble show, there are three clear leads out of the cast of seven. Mike is the narrator who occasionally breaks the fourth wall for comic effect. He’s nice, friendly and clearly a bit of a romantic. Brian is the gorgeous cocky manwhore who doesn’t believe in love just sex for fun. He’s arrogant, but there is a hint that this is to protect himself from a world he feels is just out to get him. Justin is the supernaturally beautiful 17 year old virgin who is just entering the gay community. I say supernatural because the actor is just stunningly beautiful in a very angelic manner. Even when he’s being adorably goofy – for example he is in bed and asked “what do you like?” by a naked Brian and he starts listing his hobbies and after school activities.
I love that the show has a reasonable cross section of the community, including a lesbian couple that don’t look like a crass stereotype.
From a perspective of “would heterosexual viewers like this show?” I think many would. The cast are great, the dialogue is witty and fun. The show is very frank about what the gay community is like, to the point that it may surprise some people as to what it is like to be a part of that community.
I think QaF succeeds in presenting a gay perspective that can engage, shows the sensuality of the lifestyle without being porny and has some bluntly honest observations of how the world looks from a gay perspective.
Two thumbs up. Genuinely good television.
Conan
I have just finished playing Ninja Theory’s Enslaved, and I felt that I kind of need to get my finishing thoughts about the game out there.
For those who didn’t know about this game, Enslaved is a post-apocalyptic third-person platformer with a melée combat element. It retells the classic Chinese tale, Journey to the West – better known in NZ by the television version, Monkey.
Enslaved includes a very cool looking post apocalypse over-run with abandoned war machines that were programmed to kill all humans.
Much like Heavenly Sword, another Ninja Theory game, Enslaved left me feeling wanting more. But not in a “that was awesome cool” way but in a “what? Is that it?” way.
There were many similarities between the two games – a desperate desire to tell a compelling story, and a desire to be a fun game. Unfortunately it felt to me in both instances that Ninja Theory kind of gave up half way through the process.
But I’m going to focus on Enslaved here.
Gameplay
Many reviewers have compared Enslaved to Uncharted 2 – and it isn’t a surprise. UC2 has kind of set a new benchmark for production of a third person game both in storytelling and gameplay. Uncharted 2 is not innovative in its gameplay, but it is innovative in how it uses established gameplay. Naughty Dog clearly decided that reinventing the wheel isn’t necessary, focus on good solid and engaging gameplay – then produce exciting set pieces around that gameplay that really lets the player cut loose and have fun.
Enslaved’s gameplay was solid, but also very lacking. The platforming felt unnecessary and used only to pad out the game, the fighting felt anaemic and limited, and there really wasn’t much strategy to the game. It often felt like the gameplay was just there to get you along to the next cut scene.
The cinematic chase scenes were at times cool. but often annoying too.
It wasn’t awful, and was fun at times – but generally I just felt like the game didn’t want to let me really experience the setting.
Graphics
I get that a lot of developers love using the Unreal engine – but why do they do such a sloppy job of it. And why did Ninja Theory drop the ball so badly this time. Heavenly Sword was a gorgeous game that rarely experienced the glitches so common in Unreal engine games. But here the game was constantly plagued by glitches – slow texture loading, clipping, characters mysteriously vanishing… but more than that the game would enigmatically boost the volume on the music, or keep a track playing when it should have cancelled – often drowning out dialogue…
In one instance, Monkey fell but didn’t die, requiring me to reload the game.
Which is all a shame given that most of the time the game does look gorgeous. The set design and character models are great. Monkey grew on me as a character, and the Mechs were all very cool designs.
Story
So with gameplay not really rocking my world, and graphics being glitchy, it kind of comes down to the story.
Yes. The story.
While I do think that the In Media Res opening could have started a little differently, the story does start off well enough, and the initial chapters are well told. The game slowly reveals to us the city, we get some teasing hints about the characters and it all seems a very promising start. Unfortunately as the game progresses, all that promise – the interesting location and vision of a post-apocalyptic world kind of gets dumped in favour of a cliché heavy second half.
It’s a real shame that after presenting the ruins of New York City with it’s teasing hints of how the world collapsed – interesting posters that suggest the slow decent of civilisation, the state of the ruins – and then the minute Trip and Monkey are out of the city all that haunting and intriguing history is summarily dumped.
The middle part of the game, with the arrival of a third member to our merry band, does have some amusing banter and great visuals, and again teases some possible ideas of what happened before – but this gets lost in the hokum cliched plot development.
As if the characters didn’t already have a good enough reason to find out what happens at Pyramid. Instead a good 3-4 chapters are wasted on fetch quests that were unnecessary. I would have excised all but one maybe two chapters from that tripe and focused on getting to Pyramid. Which does bring me to the epilogue.
The ending is, in my opinion, crap. I saw it coming from a mile away and it was not an original finish to the story. It cheapened the whole experience for me because of two things:
a) It contradicted nearly everything leading up to it.
b) It lacked decent foreshadowing.
c) It kind of felt slapped on at the end. It was one of my most hated clichés in storytelling – the twist for the sake of a twist. And it wasn’t even a “ZOMG! I didn’t see that coming!” It was more “oh, so that’s how they decided to spin it this time.”
It felt to me like the writers suddenly felt that the story wasn’t profound enough and tried to have some moral quandry at the end – but it was so poorly handled and sloppily resolved it just felt like a lame duck ending. There isn’t really any room for a sequel either.
What this game and story needed was to firstly be twice the length it ended up being. It needed to draw more plot inspiration from it’s source material Journey to the West – it had some nice parallels at the beginning, but again dropped these in favour of bad lazy game clichés. There should have been more characters. There should have been more communities shown struggling to exist in the world. The arrival to Pyramid should have been the beginning of the third act of the game, and the final chapters should have been about exploring Pyramid and learning its secrets.
And those secrets should have been more profound and uncomfortably challenging than the lame-ass ending that Ninja Theory went with.
Apparently there is a DLC episode planned that will be a story that runs in parallel with the main one.
Given how disappointed the game left me feeling, I don’t intend to waste my money on it.
Ultimately I felt that Enslaved was a squandered opportunity. There was a lot of promise in the setting and characters, but the game cops out rather than does any justice to those inspired ideas.
Conan
Sorry for not posting in a long time, folks. I’ve been a busy beaver trying to get a few projects underway and kickstarting some stymied projects. But I’m back with a review on a recent film – Jennifer’s Body.
Be warned, there may be a couple of spoilers in the following review. I’ll try to avoid them where possible.
The reason this film has kickstarted me into posting is because it exemplifies the issue of how even with all the right ingredients a film can fall apart very easily.
Needy is your stereotypical Hollywood high school geek girl. We know this because her hair is frizzy, she wears glasses and usually has her hair in a ponytail. She is best friends with high school cheerleader, Jennifer. (Played reasonably well by Megan Fox.) They live in the small hick town of Devil’s Kettle – so named after a mysterious waterfall and sinkhole on the outskirts of town. After escaping from a bar fire, Jennifer allows herself to be driven off by a visiting indie band who are devil worshippers in disguise and ends up possessed by a demon who proceeds to eat the local jocks and boys. But when she sets her sights on Needy’s cute boyfriend, Chip, the war between BFFs is on.
Despite being penned by Diablo Cody of Juno fame, and despite a number of talented actors – this film never knows what it is trying to be. It is clear that Cody is trying to tell a metaphorical tale about the pitfalls of an abusive friendship -the boy eating takes a backseat to Jennifer and Needy’s friendship and the strain put on it by Jennifer becoming demonic.
However the director’s lack of confidence unhinges the film, as does the weak set pieces and Cody’s error in writing the characters as more in depth than the archetypes they are meant to subvert.
While making things have a very real foundation, the failure to decisively be a comedy or a humorous horror ends up making for an uncomfortable mess of a film.
That, in my view, is the director’s responsibility. Despite casting a pretty girl as Needy, she never transforms into an attractive character. She remains geeky throughout. Even though the promotional posters have her sexied up.
Jennifer is presented at times in a sympathetic light, but nothing ever really comes from this.
Often humorous lines are delivered in a flat manner, and are accompanied by totally inappropriate music that steals from the scene.
By refusing to take one position over another in style, the film is just an awkward mess. The big face-off even happens at the beginning of the third act rather than the climax, leading to another weaker climactic face off that is far too emo for its own good and leaves everything feeling flat and undercooked.
A comedy, even a dark comedy, should never make you shy away from finding the humour. It should make you feel uncomfortable for laughing – but it shouldn’t make you feel too awkward to even laugh.
This film lacked that decisive directing that would have kept the film balanced. Which is a shame. In the hands of a more capable director, this did have the potential of being another Heathers. Brilliant, witty and dark. But what we got was wishy-washy and awkward instead.
Conan
I had always given this show a bit of a wide berth. Sure, it had been talked up heaps – but I kind of fell into that Joan of Arcadia mentality of thinking it was a teen show for girls.
Boy. Was I wrong.
Although the first two seasons were often promoted as such – one viewing of the first episode presented a show that was really the kind of Noir that Brick aims for. Just with a little less pretention and more focus on being intelligent and engaging.
There are so many things about Veronica Mars that won me over. Well paced mysteries, an excellent storyline, great actors – it’s all there.
For those not in the know, Veronica Mars is about a teenage girl whose life gets turned upside down when her rich best friend is murdered. In the process of this occuring, her father is fired, her boyfriend dumps her, her mother goes missing and Veronica goes to a party where she believes she may have been date-raped.
Hardly the start of a teen girl television series.
We quickly learn that Veronica is a strong willed young woman who teams up with her father – who becomes a private investigator after being fired as sheriff for arresting the wrong man for the murder of Veronica’s friend. In the pilot episode we learn that Veronica is feisty, intelligent and independent. She stares down bikers, stakes out seedy motels to get shots of unfaithful spouses and is secretly investigating the murder of her best friend.
Nancy Drew just can’t keep up with this teen detective.
The first two seasons present two big mysteries that arc over each season, each being revealed by season’s end. The third season takes a different approach of having a number of smaller arcs that present several mysteries while the various storylines from all three seasons are brought to a head.
I ended up loving both models. By third season the over-arcing mystery just seemed a bit of a stretch. The second season’s mystery did sometimes feel that things were being padded out. I liked that in third season, each mystery was wrapped up just before they could get tired.
What is so great about the mysteries is how they rarely feel like the writers pulled the resolution out of their butts. Each of the big mysteries felt well established, and that the clues were all there if you looked for them.
Further, the cast were great at keeping everything at a reasonably believeable level. Kirsten Bell who plays Veronica is a true find. She is hugely talented and the series allows her to really show her range and ability. The relationship between Veronica and her father, Keith, are pure gold moments of television – as are the interactions between Veronica and Logan Echolls, her dead best friend’s boyfriend.
As each season develops, loyal viewers are constantly rewarded with references back to previous episodes and characters are regularly brought back – even when they were just bit parts in an episode shown during the previous season. The series treats its viewers as intelligent thinkers who are engaged with the mystery as much as Veronica is.
I’d also like to mention that this is a truly wonderful show for computers. For the first time in a long time, it shows computers working like they do in real life. Virtually all the software used is recognisable as real software – not some cheesy computer graphic for dumb dumbs.
Veronica uses search engines that present logical search results. When she is watching a file on her mac, it opens in Quicktime. She uses Photoshop. Files take realistic amounts of time to download – websites look like real websites. Even her PI database site looks like a genuine site without a whole bunch of stupid flash special effects.
This is a series that wants things to be believable. That deserves credit.
In short – Veronica Mars is a funny, witty, intelligent, thrilling, enjoyable and oddly resonating show that should never have been cut. It successfully shows that television can be as engaging as cinema and is populated with a cast of characters that you grow up with and fall in love with – even the assholes. 😀
Top viewing! Get it now!
Love and Huggles
Conan
Currently Reading: Reign
Currently Playing: Exalted: Lunars
Mood: Still perky from Veronica Mars
Have these guys just never actually looked at the possibility that showing a programme inconsistently and out of order could be at fault, and not the show itself?
Think I’m talking about Firefly? No. I’m talking about Judd Apatow’s follow-up series from Freaks and Geeks – Undeclared.
Hampered by many of the same clumsy and unprofessional mistakes caused by programming, Undeclared – like it’s spiritual predecessor, Freaks and Geeks – made TIME’s top ten television shows of 2001. It was universally acclaimed and hit a chord with its audience.
That is, when they were able to catch it. The show was shown at odd occasions, and often out of sequence. A pivotal episode never screened, and generally everything was done to ensure that it would die in ratings limbo.
Which is a shame. Because it is a DAMN good series. Thanks to my brother providing me with the complete DVD set for Christmas, I have had the chance to once again see why Judd Apatow and his friends are some of the funniest and coolest people in America.
Undeclared takes place in a modern day campus where freshman Steven Karp has started his life at College. (Or as we in the Antipodes like to call them, University.)
Finding himself sharing a dorm suite with a sarcastic business type, a flaky music major and a suave British acting major – ex-geek Steven sets about befriending his room mates in the hopes of a new start.
And that’s pretty much the initial set-up for this comedy. Much like Freaks and Geeks, the series is about the characters. Each episode follows from the last, but focuses more on the people and how they related to each other.
Unlike Freaks, Undeclared is a half-hour format and is purely a comedy. This means that the jokes often come hard and fast. But in true Apatow fashion, each character has layers to their personality – even the most comical ones.
The result is a remarkably honest and familiar telling of life in University. Even though it is set in America, I found several episodes mirrored my own University experiences – the excitement, nervousness and horror. The characters are hilarious, while managing to be likeable. Even the arch-nemesis figures are painted with depth and believability. They are not simple people to hate, there is a likable side to them.
Featuring many Freaks and Geeks alumni, the show proves how Apatow has the wisdom and eye for picking people who he isn’t afraid to let loose. Like Freaks and Geeks, Undeclared’s true genius comes from the rare synchronicty of all the people working on the project – not just one man.
A great crew, talented and eager cast who never seem to try to upstage each other – but rather give everyone room to shine… it was a delight to watch this show. And a shame to know that it never got continued.
I’ve studied how polling works, and you simply cannot rely so heavily on ratings alone. Fox’s exec should have been asking why the ratings were low. If no programming gaffs had been made, then they may have had a case. But any idiot should know that a series being shown out of sequence loses its audience. Most choosing to wait for re-runs, by which point the series is usually canned.
I do wonder how Undeclared would have done if it had been allowed to run in sequence as intended…
If you haven’t seen it yet – GET IT! This is pure gold. And if you loved Freaks, you ought to love Undeclared too.
Conan
Currently Reading:
Currently Playing: Exalted: Nexus of the Sun
Mood: Buzzing from lots of Undeclared!
Now, as Tony Hawk’s line of skating games is beginning to groan under the weight of mediocre game play – EA has burst out with a new type of skating game. Gone is the idea of skating gaming as a kind of arcady unrealistic experience. SKATE wants you to genuinely learn to appreciate the sport.
This is primarily done via the Flickit system – where Tony Hawk requires a Mortal Kombat style left, left, circle, circle, square combo to succeed at a trick, SKATE uses skill with the analog sticks.
Your avatar in the game never statistically improves, you – the player – do. This is a game where you freestyle your lines in any way that you can to perform realistic tricks and lines while exploring the vast city of San Vanelona (a fictional city that combines aspects of several famous cities of the world.)
After a very clever movie at that sets up why your character is such a newbie on the scene, you are literally dumped in the Skate Park of the San Van suburbs at the top of the hills, and given a short tutorial to accustom you with the controls. Then you are literally let loose on the city.
This game isn’t about winning any goal. It primarily is about enjoying skating for the sake of it. There are challenges to keep things interesting, and the basic idea is that you will strive to get onto the cover of one of two famous skate magazines (or both if you so choose.) Each photo shoot you end up doing unlocks more challenges and come cool hidden locations – but you could happily play the game for ages without ever taking up a challenge.
What impressed me about the challenges is that they are never released before you are ready to take them on. The game is well balanced towards challenging your skills and getting you to learn the system without ever becoming too frustrating.
By no means is the game easy, but it is well balanced to keep things interesting for hours. I literally lost a day to this game, as it is very relaxing and challenging at the same time.
What is also impressive is the ability to take photos and footage of your tricks then load them up to the internet. All the pictures on this post are of my character performing various stunts.
SKATE’s system is so fluid and intuitive, you seamlessly move from one trick to another – never having to look at the controller to pull of a trick. The controls aren’t perfect – some tricks are too similar in movement, and I had a bitch of a time working on a Nollie 360 Flip, and constantly getting a Nollie Pop Shuvit 180.
But with a game that looks this gorgeous, and with so many challenges, I was always able to skate away and try something else for fun.
I can highly recommend SKATE to anyone who wants to play a game that is entertaining and fun.
Love and Huggles
Conan
Currently Reading:
Currently Playing:
Mood: Loving SKATE!
Part of the problem lies in the series being slot into the lost zone of late evening/night screening. Why? Who knows. But due to perceived low interest in the series it was canned. Which is probably a good thing, because without that happening Judd Apatow and Seth Rogan might never had made the brilliant 40 Year Old Virgin or Knocked Up (which remains the funniest film of 2007 in my humble opinion.)
What makes Freaks and Geeks so cool? Well, much the same elements that make Knocked Up so brilliant a film. Judd Apatow is the rare producer/director/writer who knows that a quality show is not made by one man, but by a whole group of talented people with a passion for the series. Rather than cast big names in the series, he pushed to get unknowns who actually fitted the roles. He got writers, directors and crew who were professional and creative.
This and his talent for finding the humour in everyday life guarantees that this is a consistently funny show. Freaks and Geeks doesn’t try to win you over with its humour, the gags come fast and out of the blue – letting you either get it or miss it. Humour lies in realistic set ups, nothing is implausible – even when dealing with the more eccentric characters of the world.
Stand-out performances from every cast member along with wry editing and shot construction make the whole series just one memorable moment after the next.
Set in the early eighties, it tells the story of two groups of friends as seen through the eyes of Lindsay and her younger brother, Sam. Lindsay has grown tired of her academic lifestyle, and following her grandmother’s death she tries to strike out and make her own way in life rather than follow the path laid out for her by her family. In doing so she befriends the “Freaks” of the school. The dope-heads and drop-outs. Despite her intelligence and success at school, she finds a common bond with them.
Sam, on the other hand, finds himself labelled a Geek along with his two friends Neal and Bill (two of the geekiest guys you could ever meet…) However he is madly in love with one of the school cheerleaders, Cindy.
Each episode gently follows from the last, cleverly setting up jokes that sometimes pay-off only two or three episodes down the track – while having a sympathetic and real approach to each character. Despite the initial stereotypical characters, we soon learn that they have a lot of depth to them. As Henley, my brother, pointed out – each episode looks at cliches of the high-school milieu and then takes it somewhere you didn’t expect it to go.
Brilliant. Watch it. Love it.
Love and Huggles
Conan
Currently Reading: Sidereals
Currently Playing: Nothing
Mood: Loving the geeks…
For those not in the know, it is the story about drippy-but-cute Lily and her romantic adventure to find love with Jarrod, the absolutely useless and seemingly irredeemable twat who works in the video store up the mall from her. Initially blinded by love, a trip to see his family becomes a subtle battleground between the two of them for attention.
Ultimately we find what it is that Lily sees in Jarrod, but I have to admit that for the majority of the film I just hated the guy unconditionally. He was the epitome of self-centred, arrogant and deluded. But he does come around in the end… kind of.
So what did I think of the film. Well it suffered from the awkwardness that so many NZ films deliberately aim for. Not so pretentiously as it could have, but what it ended up doing was making the film less appealing than it could have been. Don’t get me wrong, I liked it mostly, and there were funny moments – but good comedy it wasn’t. More often I found the best moments were not carried by the leads but some of the secondary cast – and the awkward tone of the film made the first half almost agonising to sit through. In fact, if it hadn’t introduced Lily’s brother when it did, I was getting tempted to just walk out of the cinema.
This whole aim at making the audience uneasy and uncomfortable was great back in the day when NZ film-making was all self-reflecting and searching for an identity – it worked for such serious films like Sleeping Dogs, Vigil, The Quiet Earth – but NZ comedy has always fallen flat on cinema because of this style of film-making. Via Satellite, Goodbye Porkpie, even Came a Hot Friday (one of my favourites…) – NZ film-makers need to understand that there is more to comedy and, frankly, more to NZ’s identity than this.
Eagle Vs Shark felt, to me, like a great big step backwards for NZ comedy films. Seriously. It just wasn’t as funny as it could have been. But maybe I’m just being a bit harsh – I just felt that with the amount of characterisation given, there could have been a better way to tell its story.
Maybe I feel that it is time for NZ film-makers to grow out more – redefine what it is to make a film in NZ.
I think one of the reasons that comedy suffers in New Zealand lies in how we train our actors. I’ve been watching Freaks and Geeks, by the brilliant Judd Apatow – who knows how to get the most out of performances. Most importantly his films and shows identify that the visual media is not a stage. Stage acting is the anathema of good film.
To act on screen a person needs to either be natural or hyper natural. People need to talk like real people, and not annunciate every word. New Zealand television and film performances are a bit of a mixed bag – with many good actors, and a lot of bad television actors who are better on stage.
There is a fault in the mannersims given – on television you get NZ actors who either do nothing but deliver their lines with minimum facial reaction, or go too over the top and look terribly uncomfortable and self-conscious when they do it. As if to apologise to the viewer.
Not that Eagle Vs Shark suffered too much of this – if anything it was too awkward and understated, and I feel that was a lot to do with the director and the style chosen.
All in all, I just wish I could see an NZ comedy that kept me laughing rather than squirming in my seat during the obligatory “serious bits.”
Maybe I’ve just become a serious Apatow school of comedy guy – where humour is found in the everyday, and where even during the most serious and heart-touching moment we still find something to laugh about. That is good comedy.
Conan
Currently Reading: Sidereals 2e
Currently Playing: Nothing
Mood: Getting ready to write his own scripts…
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