The Last Candle

I’m not about to write an extended review for each of the 12 shorts screened at the Manhattan Short Film Festival, but I’m about to write 12 very short impressions. These impressions are purposefully vague and non-descriptive — if you want more information on the shorts’ content, take a gander at the Festival’s Finalists 2008 page.

Ripple: Comedy is low on my list of preferred genres, but dark comedy ranks much higher, and Ripple was maddeningly comical.

Ode Ober: Loved it. A very tight and well-composed perspective of a single man, an older waiter in a luxury restaurant. Rich without hardly a trace of pretension. Nearly dream-like in its portrayal of just another night on the job, but a grounded viewpoint, courtesy of its simple introspection.

Rachel: Didn’t take well, but it took the audience for an emotional ride, eventually arriving at a forgettable destination. A bit lazy. Good performances by the actors.

Teat Beat of Sex: Enjoyed this more than any previously-seen sex comedy, which isn’t saying much. Lots of laughter from the rest of the audience though.

Sour Milk: Good framing and a concise plot, but the story itself just wasn’t all that interesting or unique.

New Boy: Terrific. Colorful and memorable characters, almost all of ‘em pre-teens. Another very well-paced story, and the editing and cinematography bolstered aspects of the plot and characters from side stories into essentials. The Irish accents helped.

Mother Mine: Started off well, but the conclusion was so contrived that the whole movie was ruined. Argh.

Make My Day: Cute, endearing and precise. The birthday of the child character was the same as my birthday, which was a bit of unexpected fun.

The Game: Blew all four tires due to mind-numbing pretension and characters that motioned through odd, inexplicable behaviors which might have made sense (or been an inside joke) to the screenwriter.

Change Coming: Get a couple of good actors and strife becomes very compelling, assuming that the people and not the suffering is the focus. The dust and sun of the Australian outback was a nice contrast amidst the urban- or apartment-interior-based shorts.

Viva Sunita: Limited in scope and silly. Fun and memorable.

The Golden Thread: All the marks of professionalism, but seemed a tad predictable. Could’ve done with more of a human element — people trying to cope with suffering doesn’t need any fantasy element to heighten the experience.

Official ballot of the Manhattan Short Film Festival

Finally, I won’t reveal which short received my vote (ha!), but I’ll reveal my two favorites: Ode Ober and New Boy.

Akira Kurosawa’s film Rashomon is “a film so profound that it changed the way we talk about truth and perception,” says Susan King of the LA Times — that “way we talk” is, or rather the term that’s used is, namely, the Rashomon Effect.

While the psychology world has the great Japanese director’s most thought-provoking movie to thank for a naming a distinct phenomenon of perception, the late Kurosawa would surely thank the Academy Film Archive were he around today (October will mark the 10th year of his passing): the Archive, in cooperation with the Kadokawa Culture Promotion Foundation and the Film Foundation, has restored Rashomon to a new digital print and will be screening the enhanced print at a Beverly Hills theater through the first week of October.

Being a big fan of classic and foreign films, hearing about new and restored prints of these older films is always exciting. Even the process itself of creating an enhanced print sounds like a great deal of difficult, enduring work and a lot of fun: it’d be parts of a history lesson, treasure hunt, editing exercise and a multi-medium puzzle. Film-restorers share the produced wealth and information, too: the LA Times article mentions that the irreplaceable Criterion, who had previously made their own print out of a different negative (and released it on DVD), gave the Academy Film Archive a few frame that were missing from the Archive’s otherwise-superior negative. (The Criterion negative was a fine-grain negative — good color and detail, but the print was not made from the original negative. The Archive acquired a print from the National Film Center in Tokyo that was evidently closer to Kurosawa’s original negatives and, as such, a better copy of the original, actual film.)

Being a Kurosawa fan, I am doubly enthused at the news of this enhanced print; hopefully it’ll see a wide release on DVD or Blu-ray (or come to the Michigan theater — I can dream).

But amidst the Rashomon hoopla, another detail in the LA Times article caught my attention: the film is being shown as part of an exhibition that includes four other Kurosawa favorites, three popular films (Ran, Yojimbo, and, of course, Seven Samurai) and the much lesser-known Dersu Uzala, the latter being the detail that popped out at me.

What’s odd about Dersu Uzala? Just this: not only was it the only Kurosawa film produced and filmed outside of Japan, but the Soviet Union — a very different locale and culture compared to Japan, yes? — footed the bill and provided the actors and setting. The film itself had a Russian-oriented plot and Russian characters.

Dersu Uzala was also only the second film Kurosawa made during the 1970’s, in 1975: Dodesukaden was released in 1970. The film was not a success, and after several years of strife between Kurosawa and Toho, his production company, as well as difficult shoots for Dodesukaden and his previous film Red Beard (1965), Kurosawa attempted suicide in 1971. Dersu Uzala was his first film after recovery; thanks to a continued love for history and filmmaking, the 1980’s brought the realization and completion of Kagemusha and Ran, two of Kurosawa’s richest and most detailed films, the latter regarded as his masterpiece.

The thing is, Dersu Uzala (to my knowledge) has never been given the great treatment received by many other Kurosawa films, perhaps due to the lack of a good print. The version I’ve seen, a DVD released by Kino, supposedly an otherwise-reputable transfer and production company, was decent but not good. Criterion has released several “minor” films in Kurosawa filmography, but Dersu Uzala remains outside of the Collection’s catalog.

I don’t know why Uzala has yet to be given a good print: the movie is great, cut out of the same fine cloth as any other of the master director-editor’s movies. Maybe the answer is simple — maybe the original negatives are simply lost (Russia’s pretty big) and any remaining prints are mediocre quality.

But back to the present, and a glimmer of hope for the sole Russian-born Kurosawa flick: Dersu Uzala is being shown at the Beverly Hills Kurosawa exhibition among four other, beautifully-restored movies — perhaps Dersu Uzala has been given a reprint and remaster itself. Maybe a new print generated by the graces (and money) put forth by this exhibition will lead to a new wide disc release as part of Criterion’s Kurosawa library, and then the movie will finally get the popular release it deserves.

The LA Times article (or anywhere else I’ve looked) doesn’t mention any enhancement to the Uzala print, but hey, any Kurosawa is good (really good), even if the print itself isn’t. The Rashomon Effect may describe that separate participants in the same event can store away completely separate and seemingly conflicting recollections, but the effect of Kurosawa films on me is a consistent phenomenon: I love ‘em all.

Total time to completely readjust my expectations for a good rock and roll concert? Four days, two concerts.

The first concert was on Friday, September 5th, a power-metal show headlined by Nightwish, the dark orchestral-themed darlings of Finland, supported by the not-so-darlings Sonata Arctica, also from Finland. I’ve preferred the straight-forward, bright-vocal, guitar-and-keyboard brand of power metal delivered by Sonata Arctica compared to Nightwish’s pretentious gothic-orchestrial trappings, but I definitely enjoy the music from both groups and had looked forward to the gig many months before the event: this concert would be my third time catching Sonata Arctica, having seen them once earlier this year in San Francisco, and my first live Nightwish show.

But another concert followed closely on the heels of that metal extravaganza: I had tickets to see the Newfoundland-based pop-folk act Great Big Sea at my beloved Michigan Theater on the following Wednesday. Like Nightwish’s platinum-selling power in their homeland, Great Big Sea is big in Canada, guaranteed to hit single digits in the chart ranks and sell out arenas, so both concerts featured big-league artists from their respective genres.

I’m not a great big fan of Great Big Sea, but a few albums are in my collection, so I obviously was familiar with the group and liked their bouncy, folksy pop presence. Also, Prior to booking tickets I had heard that the GBS boys put on a great show, which certainly helps to attract a crowd, and, hey, I always love visiting the Michigan Theater, especially now that I need excuses to visit now that the Summer Classic Film Series is over.

So, four days — I went, I saw, I rocked. Roughly a week has passed since the Sonata Arctica and Nightwish double-punch combo show and a few days have elapsed since the Great Big Sea show. Final thoughts: good concert featuring the power Finns, but holy smokes, those Newfoundlanders know how to play.

First, a breakdown of the Sonata Arctica/Nightwish concert. Our metal-seeking clan of four showed up at quarter to seven, nearly two hours after doors opened, expecting to miss the usual mediocre local music support and arrive during Sonata Arctica’s soundcheck and only a few minutes before they took the stage; at roughly 8:15 PM the guys took the stage and the metal onslaught began. As we later found out, our plan to arrive late-but-on-time worked out better than we could’ve guessed: One of my chums at the concert talked to a woman who had been at the show since the doors opened and learned than between doors-open at 6 and concert-start at 8:15 was…absolutely nothing. The punctual folks were rewarded by being stuck in a blank venue, full of foul smoke and cheap beer, for more than two hours without any on-stage entertainment.

Sonata Arctica beat out a good set of music, 45 tight minutes of music from the recent album as well as a handful of “oldies,” including a favorite that hadn’t been played on previous tours (but the song wasn’t Wolf and Raven, a big favorite I have yet to hear live). The amp volume had been turned to eleven, as all metal shows are, necessitating earplugs to fend off a week of tinnitus. (I still don’t understand how another of my metal-going chums has been going to shows for years and years earplug-less and can still understand people talking at normal volume. Either my ears are sensitive or his are armor-plated.)

After Sonata Arctica left the stage, and after a grueling half-hour equipment switch and sound check — out of all the bits of a metal show, my least favorite are the long spans of equipment-changing and sound-checking during a band switch — Nightwish took the stage for an hour-long set of mostly new material.

Strangely enough, Nightwish’s on-stage presence turned out to be a very different experience compared to Sonata Arctica’s live performance, even if the bands play a very similar type of music.

Sonata Arctica had the feel of an energetic, of-the-cuff, good-times garage band: members wore t-shirts, flannel and jeans, roamed and danced on stage where they pleased and generally appeared a bit uncoordinated, a bunch of guys who just enjoyed what they did, even if that didn’t have (or need) a strict setup.

Nightwish, on the other hand, did have a strict appearance: members stayed in one general area on stage, wore semi-formal dress in dark tones and addressed other members of the band during song breaks cleanly, almost as if from a script. I’ve never seen a metal show that looked so practiced or choreographed; Nightwish, whether because of general demeanor or a sensibility born out of their Finnish stardom, just felt more, well, professional compared to the more rock-and-roll Sonata Arctica.

But I enjoyed both groups and both song sets. What I didn’t like so much was the hour-and-a-half wait after the show to get a few signatures. Such a long wait is not uncommon, oddly enough, and many times for the me the urge to escape that part of Detroit is only overcome at the last second by the appearance of a band member. I can’t imagine what’s the hold-up after a gig for the band members: you get out of the show, throw back a few stiff drinks and then head out to where the fans had congregated to shake hands, sign some album covers and field hugs and compliments. Done, easy. Right? Maybe a quick shower’s in there somewhere. Or maybe I need to become a rock star and find out, which would at least require ripping apart the fabric of space-time, twisting the cloth and sewing the ends together in an irregular fashion. Until that red-letter day I’ll continue to wait in back of the venue, sitting around for the opportunity to augment my collection of signed album covers.

By the way, Harpo’s bathrooms are scarier than the venue’s web site. Surely any health official would only need to take a photograph of the facilities to the local health board to convince the government a quarantine and subsequent fire-bombing of the entire city block would be in the nation’s best interests. Then again, the metal acts wouldn’t have anywhere to go if Harpo’s was wiped off the map, so maybe a couple of stern warnings on the restroom doors would be an adequate solution for now.

Now let’s talk about the Great Big Sea show, which I can be summed up in two quick points.

One: These guys brought a stadium- or arena- class rig — choreographed lights, amps, props and the lot — into the Michigan Theater, which is probably 1/20th the size of a stadium. As a result of that technical fortitude, the concert was awesome, and loud, and awesomely loud. High production values, and so loud that the woman next to me left at the intermission, complaining that the volume cranked out was similar to — and I am not making this quote up, although it’s paraphrased — “the same kind of noise and power we use to torture people overseas.” While the false analogy flag flew high on that comment, she was right about the volume, but if that was torture, call me a masochist.

Two: Until this gig, I have never felt a theater balcony anywhere that bounced. The audience at the GBS concert was so thrilled, lively and energetic than any rousing rock, folk, or folk-rock tune was received with dancing, clapping, cheering in the seats, aisles, on chairs, fallen bodies, anything. The energy could’ve outlasted and out-jigged the fever at any rave, chem-induced or otherwise.

So, comparison time, and this was a big of a shocker for me: After the Great Big Sea concert settled in for a couple days (and after my ears stopped ringing — fortunately the temporary tinnitus stopped after the 20-minute-long walk home), I realized I had enjoyed the Great Big Sea show even more than the Sonata Arctica and Nightwish gig.

Part of that is because the Michigan Theater is literally down the street from my apartment, convenient and one of my favorite public spaces, and Harpo’s is a nasty, smoke-bloated hole located in an ugly part of Detroit accessed by a 40-minute car ride. But the big part of enjoying the Great Big Sea show was, besides the good music, was the strength and production of the performance coupled with the undying enthusiasm of the audience. Even if I had walked into that theater in the worst of moods, any small seed of enjoyment would have flourished in the fervent atmosphere in front of the stage; seeing as how was in a pretty good mood to start, I really enjoyed myself.

Sigh: now I love the Michigan Theater more, and like trips to Harpo’s even less. Too bad the big metal acts don’t visit little ol’ Ann Arbor, unlike the, erm, really big pop acts. Chalk up yet another reason why I need to uproot and move to a city, where all kinds acts come to town and are a public-transporation ride away. As for which city that’ll be, it goes without saying that Detroit is not a candidate.

After the recent completion of Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, the fourth and most recent lawyering-concept adventure game series, my initial and succint review: “Satisfying and a fair successor, but the game lacked Justice.”

Ha! Pun intended, although I lose points on the originality factor: the game itself used many variations on that same pun, most of them spoken by the titular lead character himself. Joke aside, the non-pun side of my reaction stands easily on its own: while the game’s plots, good humor and bombastic courtroom drama was what I’ve come to expect and enjoy from the Ace Attorney series, the designers largely neglected to give the lead character much time on the stand.

Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney is an adventure game, and modern adventure games depend largely on only a few integral components, one of those components being good characters. Even in a restricted-view game like Riven, where the viewpoint is entirely first-person and all other characters address the player directly without using a specific name, a lot of satisfaction comes from the player’s connection to the game’s character solving puzzles in whatever digital world they’ve engaged.

Not that all adventure games have characters, but when they do, the experience moves beyond a puzzle game and into something that’s a heck of a lot more involving, immersive and fun. Characters matter a lot in adventure games, much more than in, say, real-time strategy games or first-person shooters.

Tim Schafer, writer and designer for three of the best-known adventure games — Secret of Monkey Island 1 and 2, Day of the Tentacle and Full Throttle — and, more recently, the very well-rated 3D-platformer Psychonauts, gave a lecture at the Game Developers Conference on character design; as part of the lecture Mr. Schafer related a simple gauge to use when determining the quality of a lead character. The gauge’s setup: the finished game, a first-rate and well-known actor, and casting call for a film adaptation of the game. (For the following hypothetical example, viewers of actual video-game movies will have to suspend belief and imagine that a good video-game film might be released someday. Give it a try.)

Imagine, Mr. Schafer related in his lecture, that the first-rate actor or actress caught wind of the film adaptation and, utilizing a keen nose for high potential, requests and acquires a copy of the script. After reading the draft script his interest is completely piqued by the lead character: the role is interesting, deep (or devestatingly clever), offers the ability to flex a well-toned acting muscle (or a challenge in new territory), and, above all, fun.

Well-known thespian, exercising the experiences of years of acting and sound judgment, smells a really good role in this film’s lead characters. He decides that he must have this part. He reaches for his phone to call his agent; once the other end picks up the line, the actor’s enthusiasm and near-desperation is obvious: “Get me that part! I need that part!”

In his lecture Schafer asserts that the lead character in a video game should be like the lead character in the hypothetical script — any good actor would be honored to represent that role in the cinema. The actor would want to be that character. Similarly, and more to Schafer’s point, a video-gamer, who controls a role much like a actor, wants to play the great role. Therefore, when writing a game, give the player the ability to control that great role.

Phoenix Wright, protagonist of the first three Act Attorney games, delivered the goods as the lead character. Wright’s appearance was tame compared to almost other characters who appeared during the series, but after evidence was collected, the wacky courtroom proceedings ensued and the trial was over (defendant: innocent!), Wright, via his tenacity for freeing his client and his unearthly ability

Who played the role of Wright? Me, damn it. The player, of course, and that kind of excellent protagonist is one of the big reasons why the Ace Attorney games are so darn good. After I finished the Wright games, including the mediocre second game, I couldn’t help but feel completely satisfied about outing lying witnesses, beating down the prosecution’s stance and thoroughly vindicating my client. (Now if only a studio would start producing the film or TV mini-series production of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney.)

Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney has the same great oddities, humor and intrigue that the Phoenix Wright games presented so easily, but Apollo Justice is not the great character that Phoenix Wright was.

For one, Apollo begins first trial — a murder trial, no less — as an unsure, stammering rookie attorney and roughly holds onto that persona throughout almost the entire game. Sure, Apollo (that is, me) would nail a witness on a false testimony one in a while (or often, actually), but the lead character never moves far beyond stammering rookie.

Stammering Rookie might be a fun role in particular contexts — fun in a Marx Brothers movie, maybe — but that persona suffers in the surprisingly anxious Apollo Justice scenarios where logic, courage and confidence in the truth, even if it’s a wacky truth, prevails. (By the way, the world definitely needs more wacky courtroom drama.)

So playing as Apollo was a little disappointing. To make the player feel even more like a dope, the prosecution is a international rock star who, through one of the best animations in the entire series, cranks out a killer guitar riff at a the drop of a high-hat and crows of all his success via hip music metaphors.

Heck, even Apollo’s friend-sidekick, a young magician, who is topped off in a bright blue top hat, a cape tipped with images of playing-card suits, and a great ventriloquist act involving one “Mr. Hat” (the same top hat) that beats out Prosecutor Rock-Star’s riff any day of the week, is a more interesting character than our poor lead defense attorney. Just those two characters, the magician and the rock star, both lively, clever and fun to watch, make Apollo appear, well, a little dull by comparison. Phoenix Wright was the same way — a somewhat banal character in the face of a motley and ridiculous cast — but the cases won by Phoenix felt like a worthy struggle and overall development.

One last major gripe (and this one includes spoilers): in Apollo Justice’s fourth trial, Apollo isn’t even the main character for half of the episode: Phoenix Wright is! Throughout the game Wright is a loose mentor of Apollo, and the final trial looks into Wright’s history between the final Phoenix Wright game and Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney.

That matchup is fine in itself (obviously, Phoenix Wright is a welcome return), but a good portion of the evidence-searching segments is spent playing as Phoenix Wright, even if Apollo handles the final courtoom encounter. But when that final encounter arrives, Apollo doesn’t even feel like the lead character — Phoenix does — and the finale feels indebted to the success of a secondary character rather than the actions brought about by the game’s protagonist. Boo!

Okay, mild frustration over. I really did like Apollo Justice, but the misaligned characterizations was a little off-putting, especially after three great Phoenix Wright games.

Gamer rant over.

Apropos to the Michigan Summer Classic Film Series: Sunday’s showing of _Battleship Potemkin_ was the originally-intended end of my run of the Michigan Theater’s Summer Classic Film Series, but the Series’ finale has been gladly delayed to tonight, two days later than originally planned.

That is, I’m heading off this evening to see the second and final showing of Battleship Potemkin. The Sunday show was so terrific, and having a second opportunity (and likely last opportunity I’ll ever have) to see the great film on a big screen combined with Dr. Ball’s live organ isn’t one to pass up. Additionally, having seen the movie once and received the general gist and composition, I’ll now be able to forgo the bigger picture and keep an eye out for the compositional details that have elevated the film to one of the all-time greats.

I did pass up on the Series’ showing of Casablanca, shown last night and offering free admittance to all students. It was that offer of free admission to the student body that stopped me: when I’m in a theater I don’t really want to hear anybody, let alone a thousand flirty second-week university students whispering and giggling and laughing at any small on-screen gesture. I remember the free screenings at my college all too well: the atmosphere during those showings was less like a movie screening and more like a bar on Friday-night, a bar on campus full of freshman. No thanks. Hopefully the raucous brats still enjoyed the movie.

Apropos to Upgrade 2008: The fevered pitch of Upgrade-nee-Downgrade 2008 finally found a decrescendo into uneasy peace, having finally hashed out a diplomatic agreement between the hardware and software after five days of tense and frequently-fractured negotiations. The ultimate remedy: a Windows XP + Service Pack 3 installation disc that accepted the size of the new hard drive, avoiding the show-stopping “Error Loading Operating System” alerts that occurred during installations using Windows XP SP1 disk, allowing me to utilize both available hard drives fully.

All is well now in computer land, besides having to slog through the usual procedure of installation all the necessary software again.

Apropos to the new site design: Yesterday — one day after the new design went “live,” as they like to say in the Valley — I found a Wordpress theme that not only looks better than my current hack-job of K2 but implements bits planned for the current design but forestalled in the interest of shoving the new site out of the door.

The theme discovery arrived after I spent all bloody weekend (when not trying to get the desktop PC working, of course — all of the new design was composed on the MacBook Pro) fiddling with K2; if I had known about this other, similar-but-better theme, development time would have been reduced by several hours. Alas.

Anyways. Things might change a bit here (again) within the next month.