Religion, Myth and Games

As expected, Bill Maher’s new documentary Religulous is stirring up strong reactions from supporters and opponents of religion alike. I probably won’t watch this movie because it seemingly aims to prove a predetermined point: that religion is ridiculous. A more bipartisan effort might have tried understanding why people subscribe to a religion, and what the religious belief adds to their lives.

But I don’t think that a discussion of the validity of organized religion will lead to a fruitful result, anyway. As game developers, understanding why religion plays such an important part in many people’s life can help us, though! Because religion is myth. And understanding myth can help us to create games that connect with the audience on a deep emotional level.

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Rating “Cyberfilms” (Part 4)

Cyberfilms is a collection of 11 sci-fi short stories that were turned into movies at some point. Movies that, with the exception of Total Recall, I have never seen. So I cecided to review each story on their own merrits, and let you know if I could see a movie in each story. Today we have two rather well-known entries: Johnny Mnemonic and Enemy Mine. I didn’t end up liking either one too much, though To read about some stories that I did like, I suggest visiting parts 1, 2 and 3 of this series. Or wait for the weekend, when I will review the final two stories from this book. Anyway, on to this week’s reviews!

Johnny Mnemonic (William Gibson)
1981
Score: D

Johnny Mnemonic was adapted by the author and turned into the film of the same name, directed by Robert Longo, and starring Keanu Reeves, Dina Meyer and Ice-T.

Yep, that’s me giving William Gibson’s story a D. I didn’t understand it. It might be a great tale, but the density of information that Gibson crams into every sentence and description is staggering. And unfortunately, it is done in such a way that my brain can’t follow. Gibson’s writing just doesn’t create any images in my mind, and an entire action scene might be over before I even realized it. Or understand what just happened.

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Rating “Cyberfilms” (Part 3)

On to part 3 of the Cyberfilms feature! This part adds two reviews that I left out from the last post, because that article was getting too long for my liking. If you haven’t done so already, I suggest reading part 1 and part 2 of the series first! You will get an introduction to the book and insight on the stories that have already been reviewed. As with the other posts, you should be aware that this article might contain spoilers for the featured stories! (Some pretty big ones for the The Forbidden review.)

Air Raid (John Varley)
1977
Score: A

Air Raid was adapted into the movie Millennium by the author. The movie was directed by Michael Anderson, and starred Kris Kristofferson, Cheryl Ladd and Daniel J. Travanti.

Ah, John Varley. I’m a big fan of his Gaea cycle, and was captivated by this short short story (12 pages) as well.

Air Raid is one of those ‘clever’ titles. The story isn’t about an air strike – there’s no approaching fighter planes, no howling sirens, no people scrambling for cover. No, Air Raid is about a group of human time travelers from the future, who come back to our time to steal the travelers of airplanes that are doomed to fatally crash. Does that make sense?

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Rating “Cyberfilms” (Part 2)

Part 2 of my Cyberfilms story review features two well-known authors and a big movie adaptation. Read part 1 of the series for more information on the book and these reviews. I had originally planned to post four reviews, but when I realized how long each of them had become, I decided to split up the post. As before, be aware that story spoilers might be lurking ahead!

Sandkings (George R. R. Martin)
1979
Score: A

This story was turned into an Outer Limits episode of the same name, written by Melinda M. Snodgrass, directed by Stuart Gillard and starring Beau Bridges, Helen Shaver and Dylan Bridges.

I wasn’t sure what to expect of this story, but ended up really liking Sandkings! It starts off a bit wonky, with a Mos Eisley style alien bazaar that conjures up a pulp sci-fi universe that I usually can’t buy into. But Sandking’s strength lies in its characters, not the environment.

When millionaire Simon Kress returns from a long business trip, he discovers that most of his exotic pets have died because of a lack of food – the piranhas cannibalized each other, and his ‘shambler’ devoured the carrion hawk. Somewhat miffed, Kress sets out to find repacement pets at the local market. After a lengthy, unsatisfying search, Kress is finally introduced to a novel species: the ‘Sandkings’, a race of insect-like creatures that build castles, wage wars against each other, and even worship their owner.

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Rating “Cyberfilms”

Cyberfilms is one of those books that I bought on a whim. It might have been during a late-night Readers’ Books run with Victoria. The book might even have been in the bargin bin – the cover isn’t all that attractive, but the description sounded interesting enough. Cyberfilms is a collection of sci-fi stories that were adapted into movies. The cover boldly proclaims that “You’ve seen the movies – now read the stories they were based on!”, but that might be overstating it a bit. Of the 11 stories on the book, only three or four (depending on your accounting) became major motion pictures. The remaining eight were turned into B or made-for-TV movies.

But even with over half of this book’s stories turning into somewhat obscure sci-fi movies, I was surprised (if not to say ashamed) to find that I had only seen one of the actual movies: Total Recall. That’s quite a wake-up call: I never watched Candyman! Or Mimic. Not even Johnny Mnemonic… or Reaminator! I’m not sure what I was doing in my teenage years, when you were supposed to watch these campy horror classics. I wasn’t keeping up with the times, that’s for sure.

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Futurama DVD Movies

Somebody explain this to me: how can the 1st Futurama movie be so bad when the 2nd one is so good?

The 1st movie feels like way too many ideas strung together with no coherent structure. It’s all over the place, every major character from the TV series is getting crammed in, and a flimsy time traveling gimmick is trying to hold everything together (but fails). And for some reasons most jokes misfire! The ending is kinda neat, but comes way too late to redeem the movie.

The 2nd movie, on the other hand, is very entertaining. I was just going to watch the beginning late one night, and ended up watching the entire movie all in one sitting. It still feels like a long TV episode with several small plots, but it’s entertaining throughout and never feels drawn out. And the jokes work!

I’m hoping that the 3rd and 4th movies are going to be good. As of now, there’s a 50% chance

The Movie Distraction Test

I’d rented two Blu-ray movies for the weekend but didn’t have a chance to watch them, so instead of just returning them I decided to play them in the background while working on the webpage. A great way to judge a movie’s appeal, really: if the movie good, your attention will be drawn to it against your will. If the movie is bad, it’s easy to ignore. Based on this test:

• Spiderwick Chronicles is good.
• 10,000 BC sucks. Bigtime.

10,000 BC sucking isn’t a big surprise, of course. I figured it might be fun for its pretty pictures, or be entertaining in a dumb way, like Stargate. But it’s just a boring, unengaging mess in which I don’t care for any of the characters. Extra negative points for opening the movie with the same mountain ranges as The Two Towers! I thought I was in the wrong movie…

Spiderwick Chronicles is a pleasant surprise. Well told, well executed, great family movie that adults can enjoy as well. Much recommended!

If You’re Not Watching the Jace Hall Show…

You should be. Fun mixture of video games and celebrities from a guy who actually knows a lot about the industry (he ran Monolith for many, many years). Well produced and entertaining.

Digital Juno

Gotta give a shoutout to the Fox DVD department: getting a free digital copy of the movie when you buy Juno on Blu-Ray is pretty damn cool! And useful. Sure, it’s DRM’ed, but the license acquisition is as painless as any other iTunes purchase. And even though we’ll watch the movie on the big TV, it’s great to have the movie on the iPhone for unexpected waits at the doctor etc. It’s good to see big studios embrace the digital frontier and deliver a purchase in multiple formats. I paid for it, I can watch it wherever I am! Perfect.

R.I.P. Suzanne Pleshette

Actress Suzanne Pleshette died today . She was 70 years old. I would have found out about this by reading the news, anyway, but I’d already noticed earlier today when checking my site stats. I keep getting Google search hits for “Suzanne Pleshette” and “Birds”, which is somewhat unusual When I checked her Wikipedia entry it all made sense…
Just for the record, I don’t have any information (or pictures) on Suzanne on my page. The newpost from last September, in which I detailed my field trip to Bodega Bay and the Birds schoolhouse, mentioned her name, and I guess the search engines associated the name with one of the pictures. I’m not sure where exactly the links is, I can’t find it when I do the search myself. Interesting how those things work… I’ll think of Suzanne the next time we go to Bodega Bay. May she rest in peace.