Upstart Swedish developers Frictional Games have created something unique in their latest horror title, Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Its concept seems almost diametrically opposed to the general understanding of what makes a video game, and yet is wonderfully successful. It's a title sure to be bandied about in discussions of the genre's artistic potential for years to come.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent is the work of some evil motherfuckers from Swiss-land or something who I am pretty sure like to step on puppies or agree to catsit while you're visiting your cousin in Michigan and then they try to poop on your cat and when the cat runs away from their butts they throw books at it from your shelf and you just know they're going to land weird and get their covers creased, and now there's poop on the floor, and it goes without saying that they aren't going to give the cat enough food.
The player is given a first person view from a man named Daniel, who, predictably, wakes up with amnesia in a broken-down castle. Certain objects can be manipulated by lifting, throwing, pushing, pulling, or opening them. There's not much demanded in the way of player input. The reason becomes clear as the game progresses: your former self wants you to kill the castle's master, who is probably evil, but more importantly: the castle in inhabitated by unfathomable horrors who, bucking all video game tradition, the player is quite literally unable to harm in any way.
So you wake up in a scary castle. OK, whatever. Follow a blood trail, not so bad. Then a door loudly blows open right in front of your face and any sane person would turn the game off right then. Speaking of sane, seeing weird stuff, that is, seeing ANY of the stuff in this game, makes the dude lose sanity, making the screen all woo-y so even normal stuff looks scary. You learn that the monsters are invulnerable because OF COURSE THEY ARE. That's just how much of a dick these developers are. Seeing a monster makes your dude go extra insane. So basically you have walking horrors that you can't look at or even be near. And you have no idea where they are. Fucking wonderful. I am just loving playing this game. And by playing I mean turning on for one second before realizing it is literally the most unpleasant thing I could be doing with my time.
The game opens with a suggestion not to be too bogged down with thinking of it as a "game." That is to say, don't go in expecting to "win" or to overcome challenges--instead appreciate its atmosphere. An apt suggestion indeed. None of the tasks your character must perform are in and of themselves difficult. Puzzles are basic and monsters are slower than your sprinting speed. One infamous section takes place in a flooded chamber with a blind, invisible monster who hears you as you splash through the water. A terrifying prospect, but jumping safely on boxes is simple, and there is a long enough grace period to jump back to safety if you miss. The next section finds the character in a flooded chamber with no boxes--it's a mad sprint from the monster, making sure to lock doors behind you to slow the beast down. The scenario is spine-tingling, but in execution, it's almost impossible to lose unless you forget to run or close the doors. This is where the game's excellent sound design comes in. As your character's sanity drops, he starts hearing things. Steps, moans, groans, wails of terror. But a monster's growl is loudly distinctive and sets your teeth on edge. In the sprint away from the water monster, its growls are nearly deafening as are the splashes it makes. It pounds on the locked doors viciously until they explode off the hinges. The intensity of the sound is mind-blowing.
This stupid game is just a series of fetch quests. There's a big safe room that connects all these little levels and I just want to spend all my time here. Why don't I just break a window and get the fuck out? In the levels it's all dark, which makes your character insane, warping the screen and making him hear noises. OK, fuck that. I don't want to see any scary monsters, so I need their sounds to know when to run away, and now you're throwing fake-out sounds at me? HOW THE HELL IS THAT FAIR? Oh my god, I don't like this. I don't like this. I should light this candle but then I'm afraid a monster will see it and eat me. I don't like this. This area is so small. How can there be a monster here? He has to have seen me by now. OK, what was that sound? Were those my steps? OK, walk a little so see what my steps sound like--OK, there it was again. Is that ME? I--I don't think so. Oh crap. A monster. It's gotta be. I'm hiding in this wardrobe. Yes. Nice and safe. Yeah, I don't ever want to come out. This is where the game is gonna end for me. My dude's just going to starve to death in here, safe from monsters.
Amnesia is miserly with its monster's screentime and it benefits tremendously from it. The developers must be fans of Jaws. Other horror games put considerable time and effort into the character designs of their monsters and feel it'd be a waste not to show them off. Of course, in those games, you are often wielding massive weaponry. In Amnesia, actually being close enough to a monster to see it means you have made a terrible mistake in course-plotting and are about to pay dearly. As a result, players likely won't see a monster for more than a fraction of a second, and several intensely eerie, dark areas teeming with spooky noises often appear to not house any monsters at all. The player has to do the work of being scared, and a person's imagination will always do more to scare them than a piece of creative media. That isn't to say the monsters are lackluster visually. The game's graphics are pretty good, especially in the momentary visual transition as you move from light to dark areas, and the shambling, deformed, humanlike monsters are sufficiently gross.
HOLY SHIT I mean if I just died once and was reminded it was a video game I'd be OK. Where even are these things? It's like there aren't even any, it's just faking me out constantly. Like there's probably only like four in the whole thing. I mean I just--oh shit, what was that sound? OK, put out the lantern. It was probably a fake out, just going to open this door and HOLY SHIT IT'S A DUDE NO NO NO IT'S GROWLING RUN RUN RUN RUN! Ok, going to make it, gonna get away, OH SHIT THIS HALLWAY IS CAVED IN I'M TRAPPED GOTTA GO BACK AND FIND ANOTHER WAYYYOH SHIT OH SHIT NO NO IT'S RIGHT THERE IT'S SO GROSS I'M GONNA DIE--wait, where'd it go? Did it just turn to dust? Oh my god. A fucking fake-out monster? A full-on fake-out monster? Well fuck, guys, what the hell. Why? Why would, why would you...this is just cruel. This doesn't even count in the game. I didn't take any damage or anything. Why would you put this here? It's just to make me want to never do anything in the world ever again. OH my god. God damn. So scary. I hate this. Stupid game. I don't like this. I don't like this.
Of course, it's not a perfect game. The writing and voice acting are only a few steps above atrocious, lending the game unintentional comedy. And even though the game is little more than a delivery system for paranoia-inducing spooky noises and panicked fleeing from scary dudes, the level design could be a little more inventive than "safe hub room with little clumps of rooms attached that you need to get items from." However, it's still a game unlike any other, and packs more genuine scares than most horror films. Frictional Games is definitely a company to watch. 8.9/10
Oh my god, it's all woo-y. Why can't you turn, dude? You're insane, not drunk. Oh shit, no, loud noise, oh crap, oh crap, my dude's falling down, get up dude, don't you know monsters will get you if you sit around like this? Oh my god, oh my god, at least I don't have that god damn water to deal with anymore. You know what, this game is just the worst. From the fake-outs, the darkness, the relentless spooky noises, I don't understand why they don't send some boxer to my house to punch me in the face while I play. I mean this game clearly isn't meant to be enjoyed. It's designed to be as unpleasant as possible. This actively makes me more wound up and more stressed. Why would anyone want this? Why would anyone want to make this aside from possibly IRL trolling? OH SHIT there was a scary sound. What the hell was that? Oh god. 0/10
Monday, January 31, 2011
Monday, November 22, 2010
My Review of Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows Part 1
It was OK, but I still don't understand why, after learning that one of the Deathly Hallows is an invisibility cloak, Harry didn't go
"HOLY FUCKING SHIT I HAVE ONE OF THE GOD DAMN DEATHLY HALLOWS. LIKE I HAVE IT AND HAVE HAD IT SINCE I WAS A LITTLE KID WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME THIS RON RON SERIOUSLY YOU HEARD THIS STORY WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE AND DIDN'T BAT A FUCKING EYELASH WHEN WE USED THE INVISIBILITY CLOAK LIKE EVERY DAMN DAY BACK THEN WHAT THE HELL BRO"
Let's be reasonable, people
"HOLY FUCKING SHIT I HAVE ONE OF THE GOD DAMN DEATHLY HALLOWS. LIKE I HAVE IT AND HAVE HAD IT SINCE I WAS A LITTLE KID WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME THIS RON RON SERIOUSLY YOU HEARD THIS STORY WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE AND DIDN'T BAT A FUCKING EYELASH WHEN WE USED THE INVISIBILITY CLOAK LIKE EVERY DAMN DAY BACK THEN WHAT THE HELL BRO"
Let's be reasonable, people
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Stuff that's happening
So apparently there's a lot of hooting and shrieking going on about violent video games and whatnot. Now, I'm nothing if not an ignorant and uninformed person. This is what happens when one does not have access to TV news, newspapers, or the will to find reliable sources of news on the Internet. So, I don't really know what the people on either side of this issue are arguing. But I know enough about stupid reactionary idiots and the nature of fabricated moral panic to have a basic idea.
The thing that most annoys me about this is that the violent video game most often cited by the anti-game people is Postal 2, a game specifically designed to be as obnoxiously inappropriate as possible. This game is A. Over 10 years old and completely irrelevant when talking about modern gaming, B. taken seriously by approximately zero percent of the gaming community and is considered kind of a crappy game, and C. Seriously, what the hell?
Worse still is the Grand Theft Auto hate. Every mention of the series is sure to come with a mention of prostitute-killing, painting a wholly inaccurate picture of the games and gaming as a whole. Here's the deal: Most of the people who have an opinion about this issue have never played video games or are so ignorant of them that they may as well not have--this in and of itself is absolutely ridiculous and makes me miserable--and therefore most of what they know is based on what has been told to them. When they hear whore-killing linked with GTA so often, it follows that they would connect the two in their minds. Since they hear little else about them, GTA becomes "that game where they give you points for killing hookers" (nevermind the fact that "points" as a game design concept have long become irrelevant and are rarely if ever used). Couple that with GTA being one of the most prestigious series in modern gaming, and you have a lot of ignorant people who associate an entire branch of media with killing prostitutes. AND THAT'S TERRIBLE
I mean, here's the deal: GTA is about giving the player freedom. They can do whatever they want. They're in a city, and, as cities are wont to do, they are full of people. The player, being equipped with weapons, is able to use them against any of said people. Some of said people are appareled in clothing befitting of ladies of the night. It is therefore possible to discharge the player's weapons upon such women. Is there any benefit to doing so? No. Is it ever required or even recommended to the player to do so? No. Let this sink in. GTA mostly stars anti-hero gangsters who adhere to a basic honor-among-thieves moral code. They aren't much worse than the mobsters one finds in mafia movies. Of course, the player can be a total dick and kill every pedestrian during gameplay. But they can also get in an ambulance and save people's lives. But that doesn't matter: GTA is the game that gives you points for killing hookers. The news said so.
But that said, the fact is that most video games are, in fact, violent. Most games have the player shooting a gun of some kind. Oh no! What horrors! Humanity will always have games and contests--it's the way we are. Video games are a way to live out that need in ways that wouldn't be possible in real life. Take, for example, Team Fortress 2, a popular competitive shooting game where your team must shoot, explode, stab, bludgeon, and burn the other team to death. When I play this game, am I doing so because I am an aggressive person? Do I like to hurt others? No. I'm playing the game because, like all human beings who enjoy games (that is to say, all of them), I wish to test my skills against others, hoping to emerge the more talented competitor. Team Fortress is about strategy, skill, and quick decision making much more than it is about murder. I suspect other popular games like Call of Duty (which I haven't played) are similar. The satisfaction a player gets from a challenging kill isn't due to their primal, immoral bloodlust and violent nature, but the same satisfaction a chess player gets from saying "checkmate" after agonizing over dozens of moves. Really, why isn't there more controversy over violent chess games? I mean, you can kill whores in GTA, but in chess, you can kill clergy and female heads of state!
Anyway, I don't want to continue this anymore because I'm getting mad and have work to do.
The thing that most annoys me about this is that the violent video game most often cited by the anti-game people is Postal 2, a game specifically designed to be as obnoxiously inappropriate as possible. This game is A. Over 10 years old and completely irrelevant when talking about modern gaming, B. taken seriously by approximately zero percent of the gaming community and is considered kind of a crappy game, and C. Seriously, what the hell?
Worse still is the Grand Theft Auto hate. Every mention of the series is sure to come with a mention of prostitute-killing, painting a wholly inaccurate picture of the games and gaming as a whole. Here's the deal: Most of the people who have an opinion about this issue have never played video games or are so ignorant of them that they may as well not have--this in and of itself is absolutely ridiculous and makes me miserable--and therefore most of what they know is based on what has been told to them. When they hear whore-killing linked with GTA so often, it follows that they would connect the two in their minds. Since they hear little else about them, GTA becomes "that game where they give you points for killing hookers" (nevermind the fact that "points" as a game design concept have long become irrelevant and are rarely if ever used). Couple that with GTA being one of the most prestigious series in modern gaming, and you have a lot of ignorant people who associate an entire branch of media with killing prostitutes. AND THAT'S TERRIBLE
I mean, here's the deal: GTA is about giving the player freedom. They can do whatever they want. They're in a city, and, as cities are wont to do, they are full of people. The player, being equipped with weapons, is able to use them against any of said people. Some of said people are appareled in clothing befitting of ladies of the night. It is therefore possible to discharge the player's weapons upon such women. Is there any benefit to doing so? No. Is it ever required or even recommended to the player to do so? No. Let this sink in. GTA mostly stars anti-hero gangsters who adhere to a basic honor-among-thieves moral code. They aren't much worse than the mobsters one finds in mafia movies. Of course, the player can be a total dick and kill every pedestrian during gameplay. But they can also get in an ambulance and save people's lives. But that doesn't matter: GTA is the game that gives you points for killing hookers. The news said so.
But that said, the fact is that most video games are, in fact, violent. Most games have the player shooting a gun of some kind. Oh no! What horrors! Humanity will always have games and contests--it's the way we are. Video games are a way to live out that need in ways that wouldn't be possible in real life. Take, for example, Team Fortress 2, a popular competitive shooting game where your team must shoot, explode, stab, bludgeon, and burn the other team to death. When I play this game, am I doing so because I am an aggressive person? Do I like to hurt others? No. I'm playing the game because, like all human beings who enjoy games (that is to say, all of them), I wish to test my skills against others, hoping to emerge the more talented competitor. Team Fortress is about strategy, skill, and quick decision making much more than it is about murder. I suspect other popular games like Call of Duty (which I haven't played) are similar. The satisfaction a player gets from a challenging kill isn't due to their primal, immoral bloodlust and violent nature, but the same satisfaction a chess player gets from saying "checkmate" after agonizing over dozens of moves. Really, why isn't there more controversy over violent chess games? I mean, you can kill whores in GTA, but in chess, you can kill clergy and female heads of state!
Anyway, I don't want to continue this anymore because I'm getting mad and have work to do.
Woes re: Dracula
Reading Dracula makes me really self-conscious that I don't write journals (let alone well structured and narratively compelling ones).
I mean even if I were to write journals I don't think I'd remember all that dialogue.
I mean even if I were to write journals I don't think I'd remember all that dialogue.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Oh man
Do I ever write gigantic walls of text. Oh well, I never claimed to edit any of this stuff, and it's better to have too much to say than too little. Sorry my two readers (that is, myself and my imaginary friend Klondike Robert [disregard part about having an imaginary friend {I don't, honest}]).
P.S. Check that correct usage of squiggly brackets, brackets, parentheses, and period, in that order! Yeah, I'm an English major, and am cool.
P.S. Check that correct usage of squiggly brackets, brackets, parentheses, and period, in that order! Yeah, I'm an English major, and am cool.
Monday, October 18, 2010
The House That Drips Blood on Alex
Well, it had to happen, didn't it? Tommy Wiseau, director, writer, producer and star of The Room, a man who most resembles Vincent D'Onofrio's alien-wearing-a-dead-human's-skin character from Men in Black, has produced another film, this time the bafflingly titled The House That Drips Blood on Alex.
I mean, The Room, as terrible as it is (and it is terrible), had enough of its own undeniable charisma to make it ultimately more profitable than Wiseau might have hoped. Every frame and line drips sincerity. Wiseau's intentions are as apparent in The Room as the complete lack of recognizable human behavior. His dreamed-of drama of a wronged man and his devilish fiancee and disloyal best friend (who curiously is freed of blame at the film's end, leaving the horrible, horrible woman wholly responsible) is undone by the sheer incompetence of Wiseau's writing and acting. Its particulars are well documented, and are obvious after watching even a fraction of the film. What made this terrible film so magnetic was the singular way it was terrible. Wiseau's brand of mangled English, his unwavering dedication not to resolve subplots, and nigh-surreal plotting is unlike anything else in film--it is entirely Wiseau, and it is this glimpse into the mind of a man unlike any other that makes The Room worth seeing.
But poor Tommy Wiseau, despite all claims to the contrary, knew that people were laughing at him, not with him. This would be kind of tragic if these same people weren't also giving him their money. But they are. And Wiseau wanted more. And so comes The House That Drips Blood on Alex. I was excited at the prospect of further Wiseau, but upon its release a few days ago, I learned this film's fatal flaw--it's intentionally funny. Which is to say, in Wiseau's case, not funny. What's even worse, it's not even written by Wiseau, but some crappy sketch comedy group looking to cash in on the Wiseau glory.
Wiseau kills any possible spark when he winks at the audience. When he implicitly says "Oh hi guys, isn't this movie so silly? Listen to the weird stuff I'm saying," he's undermining the inscrutably weird sincerity that made The Room work. And it's sad--because The House That Drips Blood on Alex could really have been hilarious. I realize it's kind of cruel that I'm saying Wiseau's films can only be enjoyed when they unintentionally expose the vaguely non-human elements of his mind--but who cares, everyone knew that already.
Even the title shows Wiseau's newfound self-awareness. The Room is famous for its non sequitir title, as it is unclear exactly which room is the room in question. So what better way to have another funny title than to have a comically long one which excessively describes the film's ridiculous plot? I don't have an answer, but the title's not that funny. Wiseau's character, Alex, is, like The Room's Johnny, a doofus who acts in supremely strange ways that are completely accepted by the rest of the world. Unlike Johnny, the situations in which Alex does so are located firmly in punchline land. It wouldn't be past Wiseau to be amazed by a quill pen, but The House... has him saying "it's like writing with a duck" and quacking after being presented with the pen in a scene ripe with calculated foreboding. Cheaters host Joey Greco (who is actually great in this--he's ever so smarmy and clearly having a great time) plays the realtor who sells Alex the titular house. He mugs and smirks, his character taking no effort to hide his evil intentions. He presents Alex with a deed for a house on 3 Blood Street (pronounced "blewed," he insists--Wiseau's attempts to pronounce "blewed" are a highlight), written in Gothic calligraphy and the aforementioned quill pen with an ink well filled with blood. Greco's character seems to genuinely enjoy passing off cursed houses on people, so gleeful is his performance. Of course every thing he says is met with a misunderstanding from Alex, a conceit clearly supposed to make the audience say "Ha ha! That doofus Alex!" but that mostly falls flat. Alex says the ink reminds him of something. Greco replies with an exaggerated "blood?" "I was going to say ketchup. I love ketchup," is Alex's response. It's all so set up, so much like a sitcom. It may have worked in someone else's hands, but the scene falls flat here.
There are flashes of Wiseau's trademark ability to present lines, situations, and actions no normal human could conceive of. See Alex's refusal to acknowledge his house drips blood on him. Taken by itself it's a pretty standard joke, but when you consider Alex's method of showing it--he claims he doesn't even like the bloodstained shirt and proves it by ripping a hole in it. There! That proves the house doesn't drip blood. I guess. His friend Thomas welcomes Wiseau to his new house brandishing a happy-meal style cardboard box emblazoned with the words "Pizza Party" on the side, cheerfully exclaiming "I brought a pizza party!" Wiseau's moving boxes consist of "house stuff," (specifically a lamp, oven mitt, and flashlight) "pillows," and "gifts for mother." In The Room these would be seen as some of Wiseau's crazier conceptions of life. But in this, their artificiality is clear, a side-effect of words being put into Wiseau's mouth. He isn't an actor capable of performing someone else's work, or really performing at all. The only possible value in his work is its exposure of his fascinating self. For example, in The Room, Wiseau tells his friends a so-called "interesting" story about how he met his fiancee. In a disinterested deadpan, he tells the tale of seeing his fiancee in a coffee shop, thinking she was attractive, and talking to her. On their first date, she paid for dinner. His companions roar with approval. The entire exchange is so bizarre and so sincere--it's played as legitimate character development. Wiseau seems to have wisened up about the public's perception of his material. In this film, he begins a similarly described interesting story. He begins in the same cadence, only managing to recall his memories "as a little girl" before being interrupted. Apparently the film's trying to be slyly self-aware of his own weirdness, but Wiseau lacks the range to convey sarcasm or humor in general.
The dripping blood is eventually explained via a trip to a Turbo-Cooker-housing attic and the discovery of a poorly explained and not scary source. The film then switches back to a pointless frame story, in which Wiseau is telling his tale to two unwilling girls in a movie theatre. It turns out that Wiseau's story is mirrored in a trailer for "3 Blood Street," a fake movie with some Jared Leto-lookin' fool in the Alex role. The girls look back at Wiseau and he looks exactly the same! They scream in horror! Or maybe it's a prop made to look like Wiseau's desiccated corpse. It's hard to tell, really.
At least The House... is only 12 minutes and saves the viewer from too much punishment. This film's obvious jokiness kills many of its scenes--even Wiseau's vaunted accent seems exaggerated in places. As a straight comedy, it's terrible. Not Wiseau terrible either, not the kind of terrible that made The Room a sensation--it's just plain vanilla terrible from some plain vanilla bad writers. The sets are laughably cheap (count the amount of bare white walls characters stand in front of) and the sketch group's cinematography is infuriating (it seems every conversation must show the speaker and the back of the listeners head, and slide the camera so that the listener's head blocks the speaker's). But it isn't a total wash. Joey Greco, still the king of leading bouncers, cameramen, and a jilted lover into the love nest of a stranger, shines in his brief, shameless, gloriously hammy appearance. And despite it all, Wiseau manages to wedge some honest-to-goodness what the fuck moments in there. From the way he must constantly say his friend Thomas's name every time he speaks to him, his insistence on the nonexistent nature of both shit houses and shit offices, and his startling nonchalance toward blood dripping on his face.
I'm not usually a huge proponent of the auteur. Most great art is forged with compromise and limitation--imagine how Jaws would have suffered if it had a fully functional shark able to be shown in every scene--and avoiding collaboration almost always corrodes creativity. However, Tommy Wiseau is an actor who undeniably must only work when reading his own scripts. He is a miserably talentless actor, and any work he finds is clearly just an attempt to tap into the kind of unfathomable energy The Room is so famous for. But that energy isn't just the voice, the craggly, jowly face--it's the glimpse into what makes this man tick, this man who hates women, loves football without seeming to understand that there is an actual game beyond playing catch with it, and claims to be from New Orleans despite having a speaking voice closer to Borat than...some sort of character known for being from New Orleans. There is no one in the world like Tommy Wiseau, and human curiosity is naturally drawn to the perfect storm of incompetence, confidence, and uniqueness he embodies. No one wants to see him act, inhabiting the role of another--they want to see him. In his own work, every word spoken by every character shows more about the weirdness of Wiseau. The House That Drips Blood on Alex wants to exploit this weirdness but misunderstands what made it so alluring.
I mean, The Room, as terrible as it is (and it is terrible), had enough of its own undeniable charisma to make it ultimately more profitable than Wiseau might have hoped. Every frame and line drips sincerity. Wiseau's intentions are as apparent in The Room as the complete lack of recognizable human behavior. His dreamed-of drama of a wronged man and his devilish fiancee and disloyal best friend (who curiously is freed of blame at the film's end, leaving the horrible, horrible woman wholly responsible) is undone by the sheer incompetence of Wiseau's writing and acting. Its particulars are well documented, and are obvious after watching even a fraction of the film. What made this terrible film so magnetic was the singular way it was terrible. Wiseau's brand of mangled English, his unwavering dedication not to resolve subplots, and nigh-surreal plotting is unlike anything else in film--it is entirely Wiseau, and it is this glimpse into the mind of a man unlike any other that makes The Room worth seeing.
But poor Tommy Wiseau, despite all claims to the contrary, knew that people were laughing at him, not with him. This would be kind of tragic if these same people weren't also giving him their money. But they are. And Wiseau wanted more. And so comes The House That Drips Blood on Alex. I was excited at the prospect of further Wiseau, but upon its release a few days ago, I learned this film's fatal flaw--it's intentionally funny. Which is to say, in Wiseau's case, not funny. What's even worse, it's not even written by Wiseau, but some crappy sketch comedy group looking to cash in on the Wiseau glory.
Wiseau kills any possible spark when he winks at the audience. When he implicitly says "Oh hi guys, isn't this movie so silly? Listen to the weird stuff I'm saying," he's undermining the inscrutably weird sincerity that made The Room work. And it's sad--because The House That Drips Blood on Alex could really have been hilarious. I realize it's kind of cruel that I'm saying Wiseau's films can only be enjoyed when they unintentionally expose the vaguely non-human elements of his mind--but who cares, everyone knew that already.
Even the title shows Wiseau's newfound self-awareness. The Room is famous for its non sequitir title, as it is unclear exactly which room is the room in question. So what better way to have another funny title than to have a comically long one which excessively describes the film's ridiculous plot? I don't have an answer, but the title's not that funny. Wiseau's character, Alex, is, like The Room's Johnny, a doofus who acts in supremely strange ways that are completely accepted by the rest of the world. Unlike Johnny, the situations in which Alex does so are located firmly in punchline land. It wouldn't be past Wiseau to be amazed by a quill pen, but The House... has him saying "it's like writing with a duck" and quacking after being presented with the pen in a scene ripe with calculated foreboding. Cheaters host Joey Greco (who is actually great in this--he's ever so smarmy and clearly having a great time) plays the realtor who sells Alex the titular house. He mugs and smirks, his character taking no effort to hide his evil intentions. He presents Alex with a deed for a house on 3 Blood Street (pronounced "blewed," he insists--Wiseau's attempts to pronounce "blewed" are a highlight), written in Gothic calligraphy and the aforementioned quill pen with an ink well filled with blood. Greco's character seems to genuinely enjoy passing off cursed houses on people, so gleeful is his performance. Of course every thing he says is met with a misunderstanding from Alex, a conceit clearly supposed to make the audience say "Ha ha! That doofus Alex!" but that mostly falls flat. Alex says the ink reminds him of something. Greco replies with an exaggerated "blood?" "I was going to say ketchup. I love ketchup," is Alex's response. It's all so set up, so much like a sitcom. It may have worked in someone else's hands, but the scene falls flat here.
There are flashes of Wiseau's trademark ability to present lines, situations, and actions no normal human could conceive of. See Alex's refusal to acknowledge his house drips blood on him. Taken by itself it's a pretty standard joke, but when you consider Alex's method of showing it--he claims he doesn't even like the bloodstained shirt and proves it by ripping a hole in it. There! That proves the house doesn't drip blood. I guess. His friend Thomas welcomes Wiseau to his new house brandishing a happy-meal style cardboard box emblazoned with the words "Pizza Party" on the side, cheerfully exclaiming "I brought a pizza party!" Wiseau's moving boxes consist of "house stuff," (specifically a lamp, oven mitt, and flashlight) "pillows," and "gifts for mother." In The Room these would be seen as some of Wiseau's crazier conceptions of life. But in this, their artificiality is clear, a side-effect of words being put into Wiseau's mouth. He isn't an actor capable of performing someone else's work, or really performing at all. The only possible value in his work is its exposure of his fascinating self. For example, in The Room, Wiseau tells his friends a so-called "interesting" story about how he met his fiancee. In a disinterested deadpan, he tells the tale of seeing his fiancee in a coffee shop, thinking she was attractive, and talking to her. On their first date, she paid for dinner. His companions roar with approval. The entire exchange is so bizarre and so sincere--it's played as legitimate character development. Wiseau seems to have wisened up about the public's perception of his material. In this film, he begins a similarly described interesting story. He begins in the same cadence, only managing to recall his memories "as a little girl" before being interrupted. Apparently the film's trying to be slyly self-aware of his own weirdness, but Wiseau lacks the range to convey sarcasm or humor in general.
The dripping blood is eventually explained via a trip to a Turbo-Cooker-housing attic and the discovery of a poorly explained and not scary source. The film then switches back to a pointless frame story, in which Wiseau is telling his tale to two unwilling girls in a movie theatre. It turns out that Wiseau's story is mirrored in a trailer for "3 Blood Street," a fake movie with some Jared Leto-lookin' fool in the Alex role. The girls look back at Wiseau and he looks exactly the same! They scream in horror! Or maybe it's a prop made to look like Wiseau's desiccated corpse. It's hard to tell, really.
At least The House... is only 12 minutes and saves the viewer from too much punishment. This film's obvious jokiness kills many of its scenes--even Wiseau's vaunted accent seems exaggerated in places. As a straight comedy, it's terrible. Not Wiseau terrible either, not the kind of terrible that made The Room a sensation--it's just plain vanilla terrible from some plain vanilla bad writers. The sets are laughably cheap (count the amount of bare white walls characters stand in front of) and the sketch group's cinematography is infuriating (it seems every conversation must show the speaker and the back of the listeners head, and slide the camera so that the listener's head blocks the speaker's). But it isn't a total wash. Joey Greco, still the king of leading bouncers, cameramen, and a jilted lover into the love nest of a stranger, shines in his brief, shameless, gloriously hammy appearance. And despite it all, Wiseau manages to wedge some honest-to-goodness what the fuck moments in there. From the way he must constantly say his friend Thomas's name every time he speaks to him, his insistence on the nonexistent nature of both shit houses and shit offices, and his startling nonchalance toward blood dripping on his face.
I'm not usually a huge proponent of the auteur. Most great art is forged with compromise and limitation--imagine how Jaws would have suffered if it had a fully functional shark able to be shown in every scene--and avoiding collaboration almost always corrodes creativity. However, Tommy Wiseau is an actor who undeniably must only work when reading his own scripts. He is a miserably talentless actor, and any work he finds is clearly just an attempt to tap into the kind of unfathomable energy The Room is so famous for. But that energy isn't just the voice, the craggly, jowly face--it's the glimpse into what makes this man tick, this man who hates women, loves football without seeming to understand that there is an actual game beyond playing catch with it, and claims to be from New Orleans despite having a speaking voice closer to Borat than...some sort of character known for being from New Orleans. There is no one in the world like Tommy Wiseau, and human curiosity is naturally drawn to the perfect storm of incompetence, confidence, and uniqueness he embodies. No one wants to see him act, inhabiting the role of another--they want to see him. In his own work, every word spoken by every character shows more about the weirdness of Wiseau. The House That Drips Blood on Alex wants to exploit this weirdness but misunderstands what made it so alluring.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Janelle Monae is everything that is right with music
Whoa ghost town all up in here. Here is a new thing I wrote. Sorry if it's a bit slapdash--I just wanted to write something because I hadn't in a while.
Janelle Monae is everything right with music today and if you care at all about originality, creativity, and enthusiasm in music then you must support her as soon as possible. Her latest album, The Archandroid, is one of the most ambitious, unpredictable albums in recent memory. If you’ve heard it, you likely understand me and love it; if you haven’t, you really should.
Monae’s music is thankfully worlds away from the standard, commercialized, easily categorized R&B the music industry expects from black female artists. The Archandroid accomplishes a startling feat for an album of 18 tracks lasting nearly seventy minutes: it is never once boring, repetitious, ordinary, or redundant. To say that every track works would not be true—but the mere fact that every song is different is mind-boggling in modern music.
The industry would much prefer all artists to produce exactly the type of music they would most easily be identified with based on their appearance. White dudes with glasses? Indie rock, please. Black guy? You better be a rapper. Black guy with glasses? Your raps better reference comic book characters. This way makes it much easier for the industry to classify music, and cater to specific audiences, giving them exactly what they want and what they expect. Some people might love getting a steady stream of the familiar, and it certainly makes money, but it also stifles artistic growth and creativity. Janelle Monae is amazing and defies expectations like it’s her job.
For example: she releases a 70 minute, 18 track concept album about how she was sent from the future and had her genes stolen to make an android named Cindy who has superpowers and is the only one who can help some oppressed masses and some other stuff. It’s all very hard to follow and poorly explained. She’s heavily influenced by Fritz Lang’s Impressionist film classic Metropolis, both in the style of the cover art and in the lyrics themselves. These themes don’t exactly cohere or anything—but good lord, man, when was the last time you could say that there was so much excess meaning in an album of frigging pop music? How often does a pop musician even take the effort to put something strange or out of the ordinary in their work? One of the most complimentary things one could say about The Archandroid is its all-too-rare quality of never being the same. The listener isn’t numbed by 70 minutes of the same style repeating over and over. Monae’s schizophrenic mishmash of influences, themes, and styles is welcome even with its flaws, because what else is there in music today? When we have musicians like Ke$ha who seem almost willfully ignorant of good taste, every little bit of originality is a blessing.
And dang if Monae is ever original. She opens the album with an orchestral overture, moving into a slow, understated, bass-heavy groove, then an upbeat, peppy piece of guitar funk, into a classic piece of soul wondrousness that would make Stevie Wonder proud, then a languid, ambient ballad, then a drum-destroyingly propulsive rock-soul banger, and caps it with “Tightrope,” an impossibly funky horn-assisted masterpiece whose repetitive yet ripe-with-emotion vocal performance recalls the best of James Brown. The eleven songs following are no slouches—highlights include a folk-styled hymn with a standard R&B chorus showcasing Monae’s traditional vocal strengths, and a diabolically sleazy slab of punk guitars and funk bass over which she shows she can screech and scream with the best of them—but man, those first seven songs are all five-star instant classic winners. The Archandroid demands repeat listening, if for no other reason, than to re-experience that opening stretch, one of the most exhilarating you’ll encounter from any album, in any genre, in any era. Yes, I’m serious.
Some later songs misfire, but at least they do so in interesting ways. Monae isn’t perfect—her voice is perfectly acceptable and versatile, but she’s not on her way to being the next Aretha Franklin. What she is, however, is brilliant, ambitious, and unhindered by what she thinks she has to do as a musician in her genre. If I had to compare her to any musician, the only choice that presents itself, honestly, is Michael Jackson in his prime. Like Jackson, she breaks barriers of genre, has an ineffable charisma, and is quite simply producing dance music completely different from everyone else. I know MJ is an untouchable icon to many—even more so after his death, when people stopped making pedophile/plastic surgery jokes and realized, man, this guy made some unimpeachably brilliant music—and I don’t mean to say that Monae, a relatively new artist, is on the same level as he, but she is doing something monumentally rare in modern popular music. It’s something Jackson did and something hardly anyone else does (Andre 3000 seemed like he was going to, but then I guess he decided to stop for some reason): she is making music completely fearlessly, with no regard to real or imagined constraints, discontent to stay in one place for too long. Technically, experimental groups like The Residents or whatever do this, but I’m speaking about pop music specifically here, the kind of stuff meant for “the people,” the stuff that gets stuck in your head and gets you on the dance floor.
So you can keep your bland, samey singers wailing cookie-cutter lyrics over a manfactured electronic dance beat polished to a mirror sheen by Pro-Tools wielding producers. I’m sure Monae isn’t going to dispel all the Britneys, Ke$has, and Gagas in the world overnight. But if you want something more out of your music—effort, ingenuity, insight, creativity—there’s Janelle Monae waiting for you. She offers something you’d be hard pressed to find in her peers. Specifically, her music isn’t something you’ve heard before. It’s influenced by the great musicians of yesteryear, but it’s changed, interpreted, flipped, made new. In an industry content to tread water, Monae moves forward into the unknown. She is everything right with music and art in general and if you care at all about creative expression spread the word and give her your money.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwnefUaKCbc
Janelle Monae is everything right with music today and if you care at all about originality, creativity, and enthusiasm in music then you must support her as soon as possible. Her latest album, The Archandroid, is one of the most ambitious, unpredictable albums in recent memory. If you’ve heard it, you likely understand me and love it; if you haven’t, you really should.
Monae’s music is thankfully worlds away from the standard, commercialized, easily categorized R&B the music industry expects from black female artists. The Archandroid accomplishes a startling feat for an album of 18 tracks lasting nearly seventy minutes: it is never once boring, repetitious, ordinary, or redundant. To say that every track works would not be true—but the mere fact that every song is different is mind-boggling in modern music.
The industry would much prefer all artists to produce exactly the type of music they would most easily be identified with based on their appearance. White dudes with glasses? Indie rock, please. Black guy? You better be a rapper. Black guy with glasses? Your raps better reference comic book characters. This way makes it much easier for the industry to classify music, and cater to specific audiences, giving them exactly what they want and what they expect. Some people might love getting a steady stream of the familiar, and it certainly makes money, but it also stifles artistic growth and creativity. Janelle Monae is amazing and defies expectations like it’s her job.
For example: she releases a 70 minute, 18 track concept album about how she was sent from the future and had her genes stolen to make an android named Cindy who has superpowers and is the only one who can help some oppressed masses and some other stuff. It’s all very hard to follow and poorly explained. She’s heavily influenced by Fritz Lang’s Impressionist film classic Metropolis, both in the style of the cover art and in the lyrics themselves. These themes don’t exactly cohere or anything—but good lord, man, when was the last time you could say that there was so much excess meaning in an album of frigging pop music? How often does a pop musician even take the effort to put something strange or out of the ordinary in their work? One of the most complimentary things one could say about The Archandroid is its all-too-rare quality of never being the same. The listener isn’t numbed by 70 minutes of the same style repeating over and over. Monae’s schizophrenic mishmash of influences, themes, and styles is welcome even with its flaws, because what else is there in music today? When we have musicians like Ke$ha who seem almost willfully ignorant of good taste, every little bit of originality is a blessing.
And dang if Monae is ever original. She opens the album with an orchestral overture, moving into a slow, understated, bass-heavy groove, then an upbeat, peppy piece of guitar funk, into a classic piece of soul wondrousness that would make Stevie Wonder proud, then a languid, ambient ballad, then a drum-destroyingly propulsive rock-soul banger, and caps it with “Tightrope,” an impossibly funky horn-assisted masterpiece whose repetitive yet ripe-with-emotion vocal performance recalls the best of James Brown. The eleven songs following are no slouches—highlights include a folk-styled hymn with a standard R&B chorus showcasing Monae’s traditional vocal strengths, and a diabolically sleazy slab of punk guitars and funk bass over which she shows she can screech and scream with the best of them—but man, those first seven songs are all five-star instant classic winners. The Archandroid demands repeat listening, if for no other reason, than to re-experience that opening stretch, one of the most exhilarating you’ll encounter from any album, in any genre, in any era. Yes, I’m serious.
Some later songs misfire, but at least they do so in interesting ways. Monae isn’t perfect—her voice is perfectly acceptable and versatile, but she’s not on her way to being the next Aretha Franklin. What she is, however, is brilliant, ambitious, and unhindered by what she thinks she has to do as a musician in her genre. If I had to compare her to any musician, the only choice that presents itself, honestly, is Michael Jackson in his prime. Like Jackson, she breaks barriers of genre, has an ineffable charisma, and is quite simply producing dance music completely different from everyone else. I know MJ is an untouchable icon to many—even more so after his death, when people stopped making pedophile/plastic surgery jokes and realized, man, this guy made some unimpeachably brilliant music—and I don’t mean to say that Monae, a relatively new artist, is on the same level as he, but she is doing something monumentally rare in modern popular music. It’s something Jackson did and something hardly anyone else does (Andre 3000 seemed like he was going to, but then I guess he decided to stop for some reason): she is making music completely fearlessly, with no regard to real or imagined constraints, discontent to stay in one place for too long. Technically, experimental groups like The Residents or whatever do this, but I’m speaking about pop music specifically here, the kind of stuff meant for “the people,” the stuff that gets stuck in your head and gets you on the dance floor.
So you can keep your bland, samey singers wailing cookie-cutter lyrics over a manfactured electronic dance beat polished to a mirror sheen by Pro-Tools wielding producers. I’m sure Monae isn’t going to dispel all the Britneys, Ke$has, and Gagas in the world overnight. But if you want something more out of your music—effort, ingenuity, insight, creativity—there’s Janelle Monae waiting for you. She offers something you’d be hard pressed to find in her peers. Specifically, her music isn’t something you’ve heard before. It’s influenced by the great musicians of yesteryear, but it’s changed, interpreted, flipped, made new. In an industry content to tread water, Monae moves forward into the unknown. She is everything right with music and art in general and if you care at all about creative expression spread the word and give her your money.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwnefUaKCbc
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