Culture, Cuisine and the Occult

Aww man, it's already November, where did the year go? Also, apparently I've only posted here five times previously this year, this is a new low.

I watched The Martian in the cinema shortly after it came out. It was a thoroughly brilliant and enjoyable film. I don't think 3D viewing added much (I have yet to view a film where it did), but it was not terribly distracting, either. I am also stupidly proud to have known of Andy Weir before he became famous (I have been a longtime fan of Casey and Andy).

I think its slightly less meaningful to be stupidly proud of any Homestuck alumni, since Homestuck was a force of nature, but I do remember when Toby "Radiation" Fox was relatively nobody. If video games cannot be art, then what is Undertale? For example, without Undertale, this cinnamon butterscotch tart would not have existed.

(Recipe available here - all I changed was to cut the amount of whipped cream topping in half, and use sweet potato flour instead of cornstarch. Also, I suggest allowing the tart to sit in the refrigerator overnight before consuming.)

Contrastingly, spaghetti recipes (for that animate skeleton in your life) are not difficult to find, but this one for Tagliatelle al Ragu Bolognese is my favourite.

Overall, this has been a good year for independent artists. Scott Cawthorn's Five Night's at Freddy's survival horror series, which I have been following vicariously through Let's Plays since I am a huge coward, will be getting a film adaptation from Warner Bros. Pictures. I'm ...not sure if I will overcome my fear long enough to watch the film. Or even the trailer. I enjoy horror prose, as embodied by the SCP Foundation, but visual elements are...harder to ignore.

On the subject of prose, I recently came across the satirical works of Saki, which are freely available via Project Gutenberg. The style rather reminds me of Jane Austen's, but with a mostly masculine viewpoint and greater usage of biting social commentary. Saki's heroes are witty and intelligent, contrasting with their dull, greedy, self-centered antagonists, although over-cleverness is not rewarded either.

My recent readings have included Charles Stross's works. I loved the Laundry Series from about a page into the The Concrete Jungle. The protagonist works for "The Laundry", an organisation very much like the SCP Foundation in function and scope, but with a distinctly British flavour to contrast with the Foundation's faintly North American air. The stories read like detective fiction, in which the protagonist has to figure out what new supernatural creature is involved in the latest case and how to defeat the creature, and any humans who might be assisting it. However, the sheer delight of these stories is how the paranormal is described in terms which allows it to fit into the known scientific world. Equoid is particularly wonderful in this regard. (Note that Equoid is mildly unsafe for work, and very much unsafe for sleep if read immediately prior.) The novella's explanation for the appearance and behaviour of a certain mythical being is fleshed out with gradual, creeping horror, small details inexorably building a final, sickening picture. At the tale's conclusion, I felt both ill and enlightened.

Returning to video games, I think A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky is another strong contender for the video-games-can-be-art argument. It's a thoughtful game, deconstructing some video game tropes while playing into some others. It's also, frankly, underrated. Perhaps the long title, somewhat subpar graphics and plodding pace put off some players. It is a long game, and it takes a while for its true brilliance to be apparent, but it is very much worth playing until the end.

This was another edited stream-of-consciousness post. It's almost the only type of post I write. Also, I'm not good at closing paragraphs, possibly for the same reason. My mind certainly doesn't stop, not just yet, so how should this prose end?

Men in Black III

It has seriously been fifteen years since the first Men in Black film was released, and ten years since the second one.

Seriously?

Seriously.

I watched the third instalment yesterday, and I have to say I loved it, even to the point that it's my favourite of the three. I'm always happy to see a comedy film which doesn't rely on gross-out humour or slapstick, and which is backed up by a good plot. The story had a few holes here and there, but they were easy to forgive in light of how entertaining the whole thing was, start to finish.

Naturally, the story was helped along by the excellent characters. There was a notable lack of plot-induced stupidity in the lead characters - none of them inspired moments where I thought to myself, "No, you idiot, you should obviously...!" (The minor characters were a different story - but then again, without their mistakes, there would be no plot.) Intelligent characters catch on very quickly, as they should, and authority figures don't unnecessarily get in the way of the heroes beyond the demands of their duty. The cast was believable, aliens and all.

Will Smith played an older, more experienced but still smart-mouthed Agent J to perfection. Tommy Lee Jones is excellent as the stoic Agent K - there are a couple of brilliant scenes where J despairs over K's apparent lack of emotion, even as Jones is able to convey that K is indeed affected. Together, it is easy to believe that the two agents had been partners for fourteen years - J's ribbing of K's faults is good-natured, they cover each other during battle almost seamlessly, and their determination to keep each other safe is heartwarming.

I should mention that Josh Brolin is utterly, utterly brilliant as the younger Agent K. His performance is spot-on. The bad guy, Boris, was also great. He reached a level of sheer repulsiveness which even the villain from the first film didn't achieve. (Incidentally, Boris is played by Jermaine Clement, from Flight of the Conchords. I didn't even recognise him!)

The film kept many of the staples of the series - sly jokes about disguised aliens, shiny technology, good old-fashioned detective work, pie - and built a clever story which forces you to rethink what you may have assumed earlier in the film. It was by turns exciting, suspenseful, intelligent, funny and yet full of heart. I'll be getting this one on DVD.

Transformers 3

In my humble opinion, Dark of the Moon is the best of the three live-action Transformers films. Watch it. Watch iiiittt....

(Again, don't bother with 3D. While less of a waste as with Pirates 4, and while it is used well, it doesn't really add anything.)

Actually, I'll go into a little more detail. Why do I say it's the best? Allow me to break it down.

Stuff improved from the previous ones:

• Juvenile humour - thankfully reduced to a few cringe-worthy bits. Why is this stuff in a movie about giant robots, anyway?
• Annoying government agent - the new one is less annoying, and you get a sense of rationality behind the things she does. Overall, a stronger character.
• Annoying humans - less of them. Unfortunately, Sam is very much evident. You'd think he'd have grown up by now.
• The camera - much, much better. The shots are smoother, and pull back to show the fighting so you can actually see what is happening, as opposed to a frantic jumble of metal. The slow-motion shots are also used a lot better this time. There's one scene, with Optimus bearing down on an enemy while shooting rapidly - and then the camera slows to show you that he is actually picking out multiple targets in quick succession and with perfect accuracy, simultaneously avoiding the enemy's counter-attack  That is the perfect use for slow-motion.

Really good things:

• The plot. Very well written, with several good twists and surprises. Instead of the last movie, which was pretty much random events happening just so that the characters could move from one set piece to another, there is a greater coherency about the whole thing, as well as some nicely-placed Chekhov's guns. The bad guys really show their mettle here, pulling off an impressive, multi-layered plan which takes a while to fully reveal itself. There's still some bad physics, especially with the main villainous plot, which is (literally) straight out of the 1980's cartoon. That said, in a film about giant sentient transforming robots, perhaps disbelief should be suspended for a while here.
• Trope subversions - there are a number of these, to the point that I think the writers may have been hanging around TV Tropes a little too much. Nevertheless, they helped to keep the situations plausible. There's one part where it seems the good guy and bad guy will have a final one-on-one showdown...and then the bad guy calls for backup to take out the good guy, more good guys show up, and it turns into an all-out brawl. Which is, of course, what you would expect in a real war situation. I think it actually helps the characterisation along - the characters aren't stuck in a kid-friendly cartoon, and they know it.
• More robots! There are plenty of them in this movie, with enough screen time allocated to them to make the appearance worthwhile. Even the little comic-relief characters get some good scenes. 
• The military tactics. Instead of simply slinging around hardware, there are more instances of out-gunned forces using their limited resources in an intelligent manner to overcome a vastly stronger enemy. Again, it makes things more interesting. Overall, the final battle was a lot more entertaining, in part thanks to these.
• A cameo by the real-life Apollo 11 astronauts. Optimus remarks that he is honoured. I would be too!
• Desert Megatron. That is all.

Things which still bug me:

• There's that one slow-motion shot. You'll know it when you see it, because you'll be asking the same thing I did, and the same thing the person sitting next to me was asking. "Why?"
• Actually, all the slow-motion shots where the camera is clearly doing nothing other than admiring the female lead. Just for once, I'd like a camera which stops to admire, say, Sideswipe. Or Mirage's gorgeous Ferrari alt-mode. Or even that one Mercedes-Benz.
• Sam, stop whining and grow up already!
• There were some pacing issues - sudden slowing or diversion of the plot just when things were getting serious. It was rather jarring sometimes.
• This film is pretty brutal. As in 1986 movie brutal. 
• Physics aside, there are still some plot holes and things which don't quite make sense.

Miscellaneous

• Did anyone else note the visual and thematic similarities to Half Life 2 in parts of the movie? At times I felt like I was watching a playthrough of the game, only the aliens are giant robots.
• That would actually make a pretty awesome game.
• Optimus... hmm. He's a lot more brutal in this film, and makes some harsh decisions. You can understand where he's coming from, especially since the Decepticons are also more ruthless in this continuity. I have to say, his characterisation was well done, and he shows emotion at some times while becoming unyielding at the right moments an experienced commander could be expected to. It's just a bit hard to get a handle of what his ideals and motivations are sometimes. He's certainly been built to be a separate character from his G1 counterpart.
• This film is darker than the other two, but in a good way. I think it underlines the seriousness of the conflict between the Autobots and Decepticons.

So yes. The first move was a fun introduction, the second one was spectacular but largely forgettable, and this latest one stays with you for days afterwards. A good end to the trilogy.

Pirates, Pirates, Pirates, Pirates

Or Pirates 4. :)

Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides was a great, fun movie. I think a problem with the previous two movies was that they had too much plot baggage, with Dead Man's Chest setting it up and At World's End trying to resolve it. In contrast, On Stranger Tides had that light, "first movie of the series" feel. It helps that you don't really need to have watched the previous films to enjoy this one, since it has largely new characters and re-establishes the personalities of the existing characters quite early on.

Another thing is that Jack is back to being largely in control, and one step ahead of everybody. And isn't watching Jack pull off yet another daring, showy escape one of the main attractions of the series?

So, good movie. Watch it. Just not in 3D (it's pointless).