A Good Old Child Murder Picture

I want this movie. Dracula accents and all. I want this bad.

I've been meaning to read Child 44 for years. It looks like a movie adaptation is going to have to do for the time being.

This also reminds me of a movie I watched in a high school class called Citizen X. Why I watched it in class, I haven't the foggiest (I can't even remember what class it was. Senior religion?). It is notable for two reasons: A) It has Max Von Sydow and that's always a good reason to show up, and B) It's pretty good. I guess the third reason should be "It has echoes of Child 44."Oh, and the fourth reason is look how smart I am for connecting things with other things! Give me some money!

The thing I remember most distinctly is that the film ends with a positive note: The Soviet Union breaking up, and, presumably, without the Communist Party running the show good men will actually be able to get things done. It's projected that this is going to be a time of optimism and that the worst is behind us. While, the breaking up of the USSR is a fantastic thing, it's kind of funny to think that, at some point, we thought everything was going to be okay with Russia once we got rid of that pesky politburo. Oh, the 90's. Your hope almost seems cute.

What was I saying? Oh, yeah. Child 44. Let's do this. Any excuse to listen to more Gary Oldman chewing scenery with a Russian accent is a good excuse.

James Kislingbury is a podcaster, a writer, and a friend of workers everywhere.

I don't know what this is. . .

But I know I want it.



White God comes to America on the 27th of March, 2015.

The Only Other True Detective Theory That You Have to See

I was skeptical, but I'll tell you, now, after seeing this, my eyes are wide open.



There's no coming back from this, people. It's all out there now.

Shameless Self Aggrandizement: An Ongoing Concern

We released a new episode of White Guys, Square Glasses.

Here's a quick cut of it--


Man, I should really update the blog for our show. . .

Why Aren't I Making Movies?

I just.

Man.

I gotta do something while I'm here.

Consider for a moment

Consider for a moment the last Planet of the Apes movie's trailer. Consider how terrible that thing was. Dr. Stoner finding "The Cure." An ape jumping at a helicopter for some reason. Amorphous Inception sounds. Then remember how great that movie was.

By my math this should be the greatest movie of all time.

Friends that have more talent than I do Part LXVII of MMLVIII

My friend Anthony directed this. You should watch it. For your own good, I mean.

Skull bashingly good!

Hotline Miami is a videogame as much as it is an interpretation of what a fight between the spirit animals of Gaspar Noe and Nicholas Winding-Refn and it plays somewhere between the original Grand Theft Auto, Dead Souls, and maybe a little bit of Condemned thrown in to boot. It's an incredible game at what I'm saying. At ten dollars, it also might be one of the best games I've played in a long time-- at the least it is one of the best values I've had in a long time.

It's simple, it's brutal, it's quick and to the point and it's this boiled down intensity that makes it work and it is what makes it work despite being a game that is built entirely around trial and error. Having sweated my ass off trying to figure out algebra for much of my youth I realize just how terrible trial and error can be, so it's amazing that this game is as fun and as addicting as it is. It also manages to give you a feeling like you've actually got the game beat and not just that you played until the end.

The aesthetics remind me of being somewhere between this washed out faux-VHS look that we've been seeing lately (I'll blame Drive, it's also made its way into things as varied as Max Payne 3 and this interview with Emma Stone in Interview magazine) if it was filtered through the kinds of custom made playsets we all used to make with Legos. It's looks have been mentioned in every single little review I've seen of it, but it's something worth agreeing with, because it is the core to understanding this game. It's hard to say it without both sounding and feeling like a pretentious asshole, but the visuals of Hotline Miami are the game.



There is nothing superfluous to it and it's this strict aesthetic style that makes something as simple as a smoking cigarette or a pool or blood or a hot-wired door frame seem so cool. The look is as stripped down and no nonsense as the game play. If you want to rap about game play not jibbing with the rest of the world, Hotline Miami is not that game. The only thing that thing resembling gilding is the soundtrack and that is as integral to the tone of the game as the spurts of blood and globs of brain flying everywhere-- but that's what I mean by nothing being pointless.

Hotline Miami is a game that seems to achieve everything it set out to do. From the through back visuals to the wonderful soundtrack to the gameplay, it is a game that wastes very little effort, even though it must have taken quite a bit to make something as well formed as this is.I really, really like it.

Play it.

Max Payne: The Post-Modern Shootmetheus

Max Payne 3 is a mighty fine video game. It's been a long damn while since the last installment of this series has come out

This entry really isn't going to be about that. It's really just going to be about things that it reminds me of. I'm going to glaze over things I learned in my film classes and I won't nearly have an appropriate amount of references. If that sounds fun, then let's go! Let's do it!




 Lost in a Payne Hole--

This game triggered something deep inside of me. It is something that I can't even put exact words to. I can only ramble. . . but rambling has taken me this far, so I figure I'll just figure out where it wants to take me. With a lot of things ans with this game in particular, it's practically subconscious and I can testify to this because it has made me pine for Michael Mann films, which are films that I have complained about again and again ad nauseam. It's also made me think of a lot of other nonsense.

If that's what you want to read about, then come along! Seriously! Last warning!

What it's made me think about, though, are mostly subjects that are just on the periphery of the game. Everything from the storyline to the tone to the setting to the game play reminds of me a heap of movies an TV shows (and those things in turn remind me of other TV shows and movies). Most specifically Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days (at least in some ways, but I'll get to that in a moment.).

The Max Payne series has always been over the top and self-aware. It's a hard-boiled game series that knows it's in a hard-boiled game series. Not only did the creators know that its audience had their heads chockful of Sin City and Pulp Fiction (not hard-boiled, but you know what I mean), but Max did too. Referencing past works is in the DNA of Max Payne. It's why he moves in slow motion and holds two pistols at once and talks in overwrought metaphors.

While the third installment has been made by a new team and it has stripped away its old comic book noir sensibilities, it's now published by Rockstar, a company that has never felt shame over wearing its influences on its sleeves. If anything, in this case, they want you to remember the things that inspired it.

This game picks off years after the last installment in the series came out and, predictably, the years of murder, mayhem, and drug abuse has not done Max any favors. He's a wash-out and a self-hating addict with a very narrow set of professional skills. In short Payne is exactly the sort of character that I love best.



(Why couldn't they just make that game?)

The Case of Lynch V. Payne--

What Max Payne 3 is what Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days should have been. Where Kane and Lynch 2 is a monochromatic, senseless game with poor controls and almost no plot to speak of, Max Payne 3 has great art design, an entertaining combat system, and a plot that is about as edifying, but much better written (CONTRADICTION) it has greater depths than "LET'S GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE!"

Despite being a man of no little education, I like  Kane and Lynch 2. I know I'm alone on this and I know that I shouldn't. It's a complete mess.  From top to bottom it is an unworthy game. Its a shooter where shooting barely works. It takes place in an exotic location that you can't see. Calling the main characters two-dimensional would be an insult to cardboard and worst yet its last boss is literally a dog.

Let me repeat: THE LAST BOSS IS A SINGLE (ONE) DOG.

Payne's boss is a much more impressive encounter, even though both of them take place on an airport. If I had to put my finger on what differentiates these games is that Max Payne 3 is Jack Bauer and Kane and Lynch 2 is just Jack Bauer torturing people.

Don't like these guys? Tough shit.

And yet, I still really like the stupid game.

I cannot think of a game as unapologetic and brutal as that game. One of its trailers revolves around the titular characters running naked from police attack dogs. One of the men is attacked and his partner picks up a plastic fast food tray and starts hitting the dog. Top that off with the "Bowling for Shangai" video, I realized that this is a game that I want to play (plus the demo wasn't terrible. It had potential and some of the guns had the kind of kick that guns in a gritty game like this should have. Unfortunately the finished game is not the demo).

Where it goes a bit pear-shaped is that it's entire aesthetic seems to have been crafted to have been off-putting. From the washed-out You Tube-esque digital grain to the nihilistic storyline and its scumbag main characters seems to have been crafted to get people to not want to play it. Well, IO Interactive succeeded. They wanted to make a game that is as unpleasant and mean as the world the titular wallows in and they hit the bullseye. Good for them, I guess. But maybe they should've wrapped a better game around that whole concept.

Max on Fire--



But general harshness isn't the main thing Max Payne 3 (or the games before it, really) shares with Dog Days.Max Payne 3's non-gameplay sequences is complete with digital distortion and neon blow-outs and every other kind of 21st century film making technique. It's a technique they both use in various ways and to various effects. It's not a direct stylistic aping and it might be that if they both weren't crime-centric third-person shooters I wouldn't have ever thought of it, but here we are.

The one piece of art that's most similar to the third Max Payne is the movie Man on Fire, which not only lends a big, bloody chunk of its plot, but also its frenetic on-screen aesthetics. It's worth noting that Man on Fire is also the only Tony Scott movie where Tony Scott's recent manic style isn't completely terrible.

But it isn't just the odd crime game or Tony Scott movie that's been doing this sort of thing, I've also seen it appear most recently in the second episode of the second season-- 'scuse me, guv, the second series-- of Sherlock. The You Tube era's version of distortion has supplanted my generation's TV snow. I doubt that kids today even know what the hell snow is (And I know they do not appreciate the pleasure of scrambled pornography. We lucky few). In that case I think that was specifically a decision to be clever, but it's Sherlock-- That whole show is a showcase for clever.

In most of these cases, they aren't They aren't statements, they just look cool.And art is in a position where instead of making things look better and have higher fidelity, we're trying to find ways to make things look wonky. In fact, new technology seems to exist specifically to make things look less like regular ol' reality.

Without getting into stuff like indy lo-fi bands or vinyl collecting, I think the best example-- and really the most fun example-- is the newest Star Trek movie.

To Boldly Mess Things Up For a Lot of Money Like Nobody Has Before--

Well, at least the trailer didn't have any Inception sounds.

There probably isn't a single shot in Star Trek that doesn't have some kind of computer effect in it. Not including the green screen, even, what was shot on the set is not the movie that we saw and enjoyed. That movie wasn't made until it was built months later. It's funny, because the Star Trek is a movie that was never actually shot. (I guess in the same way that people say that the Gulf War wasn't ever actually fought).

Fifty years ago a lens flare was considering a flaw in filming. A lens flare is a result of the light of the Sun (or a similarly bright projection like a lamp or a key light) hitting the back of the film stock and projecting back into the camera. Film isn't supposed to work that way and traditionally that was a fuck up. It meant that you filmed a scene poorly, after all, nobody wanted to watch a scene with Humphrey Bogart with these optical spirits dancing around the camera. In still photography that also meant that you would pray to whatever saint was relevant that you had images on your test strip to cover you.

It wasn't until Lawrence of Arabia came around that lens flare actually became an artistic technique. That film had long and important sequences about the Sun and about the heat of it and these flaws in the filming because the means to show the audience just how terrible this Arabian sun was-- After all, we'd never seen a sun so bad before that it distorted a camera, had we?

And that was then. Lawrence of Arabia is considered one of the best films of all time and with reason, so it's funny to see the reboot of Star Trek take that lesson and apply it, not as a reference to Lawrence of Arabia, but because lens flare means the future. It's made a full circle. It isn't an error, it isn't even really an artistic choice, it's ubiquitous.

(I guess it's also worth considering that color opens up the film to a lot more techniques like that, where as in black and white, which is binary by definition, it is a far more glaring flaw.)

There are plenty of other problems that come up with digital filming, but every single piece of lens flare that appears in JJ Abrams' Star Trek has been artificially placed there. What you have then is a film that has spent millions of dollars to artificially mar a film that would have been a disaster only a generation or so ago. What was once a flaw has turned into a stylistic choice and now has just become standard operating procedure. I wonder what David Lean would think.

Hey, Larry? That's a fire hazard, buddy.

Grain Pain and Payne Grain--

And to bring it back to video games this sort of absurdity is only heightened. Digital distortion is now just an aesthetic choice as much as anything. For whatever reason war games have globbed onto this style, as well, because nothing says visceral like static and buzzing noises (and a vaguely disguised Terminator theme, apparently).

(Ghost Recon: Future Soldier also has supertext and words projected onto the world in the same way that Splinter Cell: Conviction, but, again, where Max Payne uses it to get across the concept of grit, Ghost Recon does it because pop-up words means the future. So: More static to think about.)

And the list of games that use the same techniques as Max Payne 3 and Kane and Lynch 2 to get their tone across goes on and on.

Mass Effect 2 naturally had a false film grain effect on it, which naturally kicks it back to the kind of 70's and 80's science fiction films that it's a product of (Aliens, Silent Running, Outland, Enemy Mine). I guess that's another slight break between Alien and Prometheus, which is that one is super sharp and the other is a low-budget genre flick from the 1970's.

Resident Evil 5 allowed you to put multiple film grain effect over the game once you beat it (Since it's a horror game, I don't know why that isn't simply the default. I know it's an HD game, but come on, film grain is cool!). Silent Hill uses the same technique, as well, which is a case where I'd appreciate them taking it out, because, fuck, man, I couldn't even finish Silent Hill 2 I was so upset by it. Tone it down, Silent Hill 2, I just want to play you!

In science fiction seeing film grain makes you think of the future and in horror it's there to instill a sense of something being off (or, again, maybe you just want to reference Evil Dead 2 or something). With fake film grain you can have it all!

(And that isn't anything new either. I remember that the final shootout in Taxi Driver was purposely given a grainy look in order to tone down the brutality. Apparently it worked. Again, you have a director purposely making his film look worse, but in this case instead of it being for fun aesthetic reasons, Scorsese did it to get his movie and R-rating. The same goes for Kill Bill Vol.1. In that case Tarantino made the big sword fight black and white in order to tone down the gore. In both cases, I guess it worked.)

Then, there are video games that now have lens flare a la Star Trek and Lawrence of Arabia or whatever else, but, again, like there being no film to have grain there isn't any lens to have a flare. There isn't even a sun or light. It's all made up!

Putting Dog Days Down--

Alright. Back to Kane and Lynch 2-- Because I have to get this out somewhere--

"Here's looking at you, shitwad."

As dour and on-the-rocks as the whole of Max Payne 3 is, it does allow you to have a good feeling every three hours or so that doesn't involve shooting bad men in the face ten times.

I mean in in that it allows room for actual good guys and maybe lets some people to not be tortured to death. It's not much, but there is something more to this game than Dog Day's main statement on the human spirit than "We're all cocksucking scumbags or Chinese. Or dead." It's depressing.

Max Payne 3 has a discernible story arc as well as an incredible design, and what is more is that is plays like a good video game. There is something that is simple and appealing about diving at people whilst holding two guns that I just can't explain. It's just awesome. It doesn't work as well as it does in the first or second Max Payne, admittedly, but it is a much different kind of game.Thematically Max Payne 3 also works far better as a Michael Mann homage than does Dog Day's (the first game, Dead Men, has a whole level that apes the club scene in Collateral).

The visceral appeal of Mann's movies are that they revolve around men being experts at a sort of obscure art. Whether that be a behavioral psychologist, a thief, a frontiersman, another kind of thief, a cab driver, cops posing as thieves, or cops fighting thieves, he makes movies about men being men in very specific ways. I love that. And where this game goes its own way is that Max isn't a professional, he's a fuck up who has been cursed with having professional skills. His skill set is more a curse than a boon and you couldn't say that of somebody like Ali.

None of Mann's character's are cursed (except for in The Keep, but since when has The Keep ever counted for anything?). They execute until they cannot execute any more. Payne is a character who has to execute because he isn't much good at anything else, especially being alive. I like that. I like a down and out character and I especially like that being rammed into the digitally perfect styling of Michael Mann. As much as this game is indebted to Mann (in addition to Man on Fire and Elite Squad and, of course, John Woo) it is also shirking these associations and going its own way. It is being honest with its influences without being a copycat.

I also appreciate that Max Payne 3 had the good taste not to force America through another parkour sequence through a favela (see: The Incredible Hulk, Fast Five, and Modern Warfare 2). At least video games have made some progress with this thing.

To mangle a Joseph Campbell quote, he was once asked why what he studied and talked about mattered and he replied that it didn't matter. He then said that a dog is happy, but it doesn't know about anything that we care about or any of the things we study. But, he added, "It's a dog's life."

Which Brings Us To The End--

So, what's the fucking point? I don't know: If you're going to do something weird, make sure you do it well. I don't see a sense in mucking it up any further than that. I already used the term "post-modern" and that's unforgivable enough without me becoming an even bigger jerk.

I guess, in general, though, I like being reminded of good things. It's more than just that pleasure of recognizing something, which is the kind of thing that Dane Cook thrived off of, I just like seeing and knowing that the thing I like also likes other good things. Knowing that the Coen Brothers love Raymond Chandler makes me like them more and it makes me understand them more as artists. I also like seeing where something as simple and as generally invisible as intentionally grainy footage goes. That's fun to me. If it wasn't I wouldn't have become a media studies major.

Now, okay, I guess that's what makes me the jerk in this scenario

If you've got any input, please let me know. I won't assume that anyone will make it this far down this article, but it is always nice to hear from other people. That sort of thing keeps me sane. My friend Andy said some interesting things about my Prometheus post, so maybe I'll present my rebuttal when it comes out on DVD. I wish I had gotten back to him on that. Anyways, good on ya, I'm off to watch Body of Lies.

Anyways, apropos of very little, here's the best bit of dialogue in the movie Thief--



A FEW RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:
* I think it's pure laziness on the part of the Max Payne 3 writers that there's a gang called the Comando Sombra and nobody connects the dots and calls them "cocksuckers." Get it together, guys.

* While Kane and Lynch 2 is almost uniformly regarded as garbage by both the public and the critical community, the new Hitman looks pretty hot even with stupid shit like videos about killing battle nuns.

* I'll back away from falling any further down the reference hole, but you all should watch Elite Force: The Enemy Within, Mandala Bala, and Senna as soon as humanly possible. They are great, great films about Brazil for completely different reasons.

* Thinking about t now, I realize that Kane and Lynch 2 has one advantage over Max Payne's third outing which is that you can pick up gas canisters and fire extinguishers and chuck them as bombs. That's the kind of weaponization that I'd like to see more of in video games.

*Oh, you can also take human shields in Dog Days. I like that. You can't turn them into bombs though as in Gears of War 3, though.Two steps forward, one step back. . .

* Life imitates art. . . But in Spanish, not Portuguese.

* Here's a link to something better about this game.

* Also: This image kind of perfectly sums up the tone of Kane and Lynch 2.

* I love how many costume changes Max goes through in this game. His hair changes with just about every level, as does his clothing and his various wounds. It's great. It'sa big macho game of dress-up the psychopath. What's more is once you beat the game you can dress him up as Max from the first two games as well as the model from the ending, which includes Max in full-blown tourist wear right down to the flip flops.

* Not to bring up Prometheus again . . .again (again), but while looking for Lawrence of Arabia images, I remembered that movie was featured in Ridley Scott's sci-fi film after stumbling upon this blog.

* I could have totally used the term "mis en scene" to describe the various styles, tones, and aesthetics of these movies because, but I didn't. Because I care about you the reader.

* Also my next entry will be shorter and more coherent then this one so, as you may have guessed, it will be about Chinese history.

Listen to Your Prophets

This vignette speaks to how I feel in a way that I couldn't ever express in so few words. I agree with him completely. This is what America is. This is the America somebody has built.



Try and tell me I'm wrong.

This is Why I Got Into Movies

At the risk of being too reflective or too effacing, this is what I got into movies for--


I got into them for "Ode to Joy" playing as a leitmotif. I got into it for crazy women and gay men playing romantic leads. I got into the kind of magical madness that only magic turned into light can bring. I love movies. I love the artifice. And as much as I complain and whine about what's wrong with movies (I won't stop the blog to go into all that, don't worry) I do this out of a real love for the medium.

There's this old Patton Olswalt essay* about this exact sort of thing. It was so long ago that I think I read it on MySpace (so, like, maybe five years ago, whoopee) and I have no desire to look it up. If I remember it correctly, people were complaining about how much he was complaining about movies. The reality is that they didn't get why he was being such a stick in the mud. The reality was that he loved movies. He was being a dick because he loves movies so much. The kind of particularity that comes out of movie fans-- real serious movie nerds-- appears as serious dicksmanship. In reality, it is a form of affection that can never be read by the thing it is aimed at. There are more efficient forms of prayers than fanhood.

To state the obvious: I am no Patton Oswalt. I'm not saying this as a revelation, I am saying this as insurance against people saying "Oh that James thinks he's a regular Patton Oswalt" as they chew their tobacco and watch their Jerry Springer, no doubt**.



My point is that I love trash. I love ridiculous films. I love Written on the Wind and All That Heaven Allows (and its remake) and it isn't simply because I had to watch these in college. It's a chicken or the egg type of situation and I can only dwell on it for so long before it turns into a soggy, over-fried mess.



Not to say I'm opposed to self-destruction.

Movies should be true to their form. As much as films are built around lies and tricks, they should be in the service of truth. I can't remember where I got this idea from-- Ideally someone will correct me on this account-- But films are pieces of fiction that tell the truth. If this weren't an entry simply on a semi-campy 1950's "Women's Picture" and where I more sober, I would go into detail on this. Nobody wants that, though, including myself, so I'll add this as my conclusion:

Films should be true to what they're trying to be. An action movie shouldn't make airs towards being a political drama and a romance shouldn't feel the need to include horror elements. Or whatever. Nobody wants to see a musical sequence in a court room potboiler unless you're Indian, in which case everything is a musical and nobody kissses.

All of that is grammatically horrific and horrifically vague and, you know what, in terms of art I think that is pretty goddamn succinct. It's certainly the best that a snob who loves garbage can do.

With all of that said, there is a factual error in the trailer of Magnificent Obsession--The stone cold reality is that the "greatest romance in cinema" is, in fact, Black Narcissus, a movie where no one kisses, no one has sex, and everyone leaves because they're failures and they hate themselves. Also: Deborah Kerr. Your move, Douglas Sirk.



*It's really a blog entry, but why denigrate his words by attributing such a horrible word to his poetry?

**How bad did all of you want to watch the Jerry Springer Too Hot for TV VHS tapes when you were a young 'un? Bad? Really bad? I think it was between that and the uncensored sections of Blind Date. Thinking back on that time of my life, it's crazy to imagine I was that willfully restrictive about what I wanted to get a boner about.

FILM NERD SHIT HEAD BONUS:

It's Happening Again!

Dear Inceptors/Haruki Murakami protagonists/hypothetical older brothers, Please stop reading my dreams/dream journals/calling cowboys gay.

Prinicpal Skinner best of / Vietnam flashbacks / monologues

Skinner was a lot better when he was a high-strung 'Nam vet.

You know the saddest thing about this is when The Simpsons celebrates its 40th year, he's going to be a high-strung Afghan War veteran.

Call This Mother Fucker Now

Life advice from a man who knows a thing or two about a thing or two.

"All I See is Ketchup and Death"

Your Garbage is Shit

Everyone who watches Transformers 3 needs to be put in a home. This isn't because I hate them. It is because they clearly need help. After two utterly shitty movies, they insist on seeing a third shitty movie with the same exact horrible talent. . . but in 3D. They clearly need help.

Donate to your local mental health organization to help these poor dumb dumb dumb souls out.

I've Only Seen This Once This Year

An Excercise in Music Choice

I don't care much in particular for the Assassin's Creed series, but I'll be damned if this video doesn't get me psyched to wreck Templar ass.

And all of this is more or less a result of the "300 Syndrome." That, of course, is the principle that a trailer, especially when backed with a killer song, can not only sell you the unsellable but supersede the work it is advertising as an enjoyable piece of art. You see this with Watchmen and Terminator: Salvation in particular. You simply cannot have in your heart no desire to see films sold this well to you. You want to see it. You want to fulfil the prophecy of this amazing song against these amazing visuals.

The problem is that cinema tends to come in at 90 minutes a pop, which is sixty minutes longer than even the most ambitious or indulgent music videos out there. A movie isn't a 90 minute long (or a three hour long) music video, much to the chagrin of morons like Zack Snider.

But it isn't quite because this game will probably be pretty good. At the very least they'll understand that slow motion doesn't a film make.

God I hate Zack Snyder.

The Boys of Summer

I fucking miss having a summer.

And being perpetually broke.

No, wait. . . something got screwed up here.

"Oh, yes, the interview where I got shot."

I met Herzog once and it wasn't really a meeting. It was a book signing. But I told him that I loved his work and that I always recommended to my friends if they wanted to get a taste of Herzog they should watch the interview with him and Dr. Mark Kermode and, without pause or irritation and with a little glimmer in his eye, "Oh, yes, the interview where I got shot."

He is one of my favorite artists. Bar none.