The Last Candle

As a very fine pre-emptive Graduation gift, Anthony gave me the also-very fine Thief: Deadly Shadows for the Xbox. The Thief games is arguably my favorite series (in contention with the Silent Hills and the Metal Gear Solids), so being able to enjoy Thief’s givings — atmosphere and anxiety: thick, engrained in all facets, and uncomparably well-produced — in this final game of the trilogy is high treat.

But that’s not even the interesting part! While I could probably talk about Gorman Truart, The Thieves’ Highway, and the terrifying qualities of Hammer Haunts, I’d like to present the evidence for what was truly an unusual mix-up of media.

EXHIBIT A: THE SPAWNING

If you’ve never seen an opened Xbox game case, lucky you! This is what one looks like. For the rest of you, point those roving eyes forward again and scope the digs on the succeeding exhibit: EXHIBIT B!

EXHIBIT B!!!

You can almost smell the City from here. Like any other kid salivating over another favorite game sequel, we immediately popped the disc into the Xbox to begin again the frequent and unrelenting clubbing and backstabbing upon an entire religious and civil force. Instead, the Xbox served up the “Unplayable disc” message, which is not quite as fun.

My first thought — one, I admit, that has been lingering ever since I got the ‘Box — is that the Thompson drive in my Xbox has made an exit in very poor taste. (Those things are infamous for quittin’ out after a year or so.) After two or more tries, “BOLLOCKS!” went up the cry; as we extracted the disc from the carriage, the disc’s read side was inspected for defects — but it was clean as a military barracks’ mirror.

However, the front of the disc, while sans defects, had a rather suspicious marking that might lead to what the problem could be.

EXHIBIT BS

Installation, aye? Disc I, aye? So, um…Thief 3 on the Xbox has, er, multiple discs? On DVD? Additional discs that the rental place we pulled it from several times in the past neglected to include? And we have to install it?

Or: that looks like a friggin’ PC game disc to me. Easy enough to find out what Windows thinks of it.

EXHIBIT X: The (God) Damning Evidence

Verdict: Bill likes it! Win!

Or not. Thus we come to the overburdened conclusion: I’ve got one-half of Thief:DS for PC in media form, along with a manual, case, and license for the Xbox version of the game.

Needless to say, this was just so damn extraordinary that I had to post about it on my LiveJournal blog.

AFTERMATH

Thankfully, Walmart took the game back (even though it was ordered online; even though it was an opened video game, which they usually don’t accept). Anthony got the money back, and the opportunity to hunt down another copy.

Walmart didn’t have it, along of what seemed like none of the chain stores in 60 miles. OK, try Target. Target is nice and quiet and has stuff, most of which is red. The game’s not in the Xbox display case, which causes me to start thinking that Eidos pulled an Ubisoft Beyond Good & Evil move and stop shipping copies of the game. In a last, hopeful effort, Anthony asks an employee if they can check if they have any in stock. “Sure. There’s about three of ‘em in the clearance section in the back corner.”

Honestly, I’d been oblivious to Anthony’s hunt, due to a DS on display with WarioWare Touched! loaded up. But there I was, scraping across the touchscreen in a furious attempt to slice flying fruit and meat hunks, when an unopened Thief:DS box with a big red “I saved seven bucks!” clearance sticker on it was shoved in my face. Score.

And the Thompson drive liked this one. If there’s something better than being a part of extraordinary circumstances, it’s having ‘em turn out well.

After confirming that we were indeed given the correct product this time, we compared the “good” version’s case with the “wrong, evil” version’s pictures and respective loathsome experience. The new case was composed of a bright, translucent green plastic, while the bad copy had been housed in a plastic that was a darker green and opaque. The disc release of the ridden copy had been a squarish button enscribed with a small “1”; the new copy had the typical “ying-yang” release. And the old case had extra clips for the manual that aren’t on any other Xbox case I’ve seen (if you look at EXHIBIT A, they’re the ridges in the middle on the left side of the case’s interior).

And what do all these anomalies signal? Beats me. But there you have it.

Days until graduation: 17.

Prepare thyself, employers!!

And what might this delectable combination be? Black and Tan, nay; Half and Half, nein. (Although there is some argument as to what exactly the two actually are…)

Ready for the answer? Spring ‘er open.

Well, there you go: half Wexford Irish Cream Ale and half of the classic dry stout. Half surprise, half same-ole’.

The best Guinness I’ve ever had was after an Irish Cream Ale on this year’s St. Patrick’s Day; the chocolate flavors in the Guinness were extremely pronounced, making a usually decent Guinness excellent. So why not combine the two and crank up the aesthetics as well?

I call it the Storm and Snow.

NOTICE: Paul has been playing Pokemon: Fire Red on his newish Game Boy Advance SP for the last five hours in the same chair. In that same time, I’ve savagely killed about one-hundred and fifty people in Halo 2 MP, caught 20 fish in Animal Crossing (as well as two old boots and some empty cans), extracted the music from a classic adventure game from long ago…and wrote this post.

And now I want a Game Boy Advance SP.

After Googling for Gimli’s insult to Haldir in the extended version of The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, this very handy list of translations of all (most?) Elvish dialogue from all three films cropped up. Just another example out of thousands — MILLIONS! — of examples showing the detail was packed into those films; although I was somewhat underwelmed by the severity of Gimli’s barb, some of the stuff that I had previously took for just vocal rumblings (such as the dialogue growled by the Ringwraiths on Weathertop) are actual phrases in Tolkien’s Elvish. Not bad! More LOTR Elvish.org stuff at the main page.

On the same subject, the greatness of watching the films has motivated me to attempt reading through the books again. The first try occurred about ten years ago: I only made it to about the Aragorn-Frodo switchover in The Two Towers before getting too bored to continue. I’m a little past that point this time around, and although the last quarter of the Rohan story arc lagged quite a bit, the Frodo/Sam/Gollum arc is moving along great so far.

Oh, and Paul just bought The Silmarillion. Good luck, you crazy Swede!

Part, um, four of an ongoing series of impressions from Central Michigan Film Festival films. Introduction here, Bloody Sunday review here

If I was going to bet on any film to be the most fascinating out of the bunch of Festival films, I would have put almost all of my money on Amen. Even if I’m not familiar with the history and story — a SS Officer and a Jesuit priest attempting to confront the obstructive Catholic Church to denounce the massacre of the Jews in Germany — I’m a sucker for realistic, non-emo or modernized human drama.

But here we go: I enjoyed Amen, but, erm, not very much. Absolutely it had an endearing and tragic story, and absolutely it was an “important story to tell.” But, in what I consider a great travesty considering the content, Amen had very little emotional or overall impact. Even while the story is an engaging one, there are many moments when the plot is not. Many scenes seemed lifeless, repetitive, dull, or otherwise unimportant.

Amen’s actors in the two hours and ten minutes had a single two-second shot that I thought had impact worthy of the material. I can’t tell what it is without giving away one of the few good parts in the plot, but suffice to say that I was hoping for far more. Partially to blame are the actors, who with the exception of the Jesuit Preist, Riccardo Fontana (played by Mathieu Kassovitz), showed little emotion besides being generally stiff-necked and wooden. There was zero subtlety in the performances: you couldn’t see the torture or pain behind the faces of those trying to wrong the right; the Germans in charge of the executions were given no background besides their Nazi facade. Everyone on this film acted right down the line — in one-dimension, that is. While the story endears and attempts to entreat, those who were doing the telling did it hardly any justice.

Direction-wise, there is nothing to laud. The way the movie reminds us that the Jews are in constant execution are about fifty shots of moving trains throughout the first hour of the film. Problem is that I don’t recall actually telling us what’re in the trains until someone says it explicity after more than an hour. Before that, I racked my brain trying to figure out what I thought was an obvious piece of symbolism (since the film didn’t have anything explicit to say): “Is this a sign of progression? A mockery of industry? Important movement? What?” Symbolism can be such a powerful device to link together the figurative, the literal, and the film in between both, so I was a little disappointed that Amen didn’t make more of it. (Of course, I’m not the champion at picking out of deciphering symbolism. But I’m not one to attempt to try and exaggerate things, either.)

On other directive facets, there was nothing extraordinary: the editing was simple but did nothing to increase the tone or feeling of the movie (such as by using fades, quick cuts, and so on); the cinematography likewise added nothing and was completely forgettable.

The “theater” I saw the film at also had the picture quite dark, and the quality of the film was quite fuzzy, which didn’t help the experience. This was in the Park Library Theater too, which was a little small (about 100 person capacity) but only about 2 years old and quite refined aesthetically. (For the record, I sat pretty much exactly where the camera is located in that Quicktime VR demonstration. Precision!) All that nice polished wood, but they didn’t put enough money in the budget for a nice projector. The Broadway Theater, where I’ve been to see the past three films of the Festival, by comparison looked like it was built in the late 70’s, but has quite good sound and picture. Leave it to those in the business to do it right.

Just to be clear, I don’t think Amen was a bad film. I think it was a film that wasted an amazing opportunity: to tell an incredibly engaging, humane and historical story using all the exact properties of the time and place. That opportunity was lost; instead, Amen settles to be above-average in all things except story, where great potential still remains.

Okay, so I’m already behind on these reviews. Amen is actually the fourth film I’ve seen — hence being part four. The review for Tokyo Godfathers is about half done, but Bus 174’s hasn’t been started. An attempt to finish the former and jot something, anything down for the latter will occur tomorrow, but here are some very short reviews of each:

• Tokyo Godfathers: Absolutely fantastic. Maybe one of the best films I’ve ever seen — yes, better than Spirited Away.
• Bus 174: Frightening, but very informative and surprisingly objective. I guess you can only be objective when you show almost an hour of police and journalist footage of a crazed, coked-man man hijacking a bus — the subject of your film.