Tag: Storytelling

San Ber'dino

2012-06-26, 11:02 pm
Categories: Music

As surely as night must follow day, San Ber'dino must follow Evelyn, A Modified Dog.

I love this one. I love the sound, I love the rhyme scheme and the vocabulary, I love the way it tells a story with three-dimensional characters in so few words. And I love the gentle admonition against snobbery and judgement: "You may think they're dumb an' lonely, but you're wrong 'cause their love is strong." A bit of perspective we should all remember the next time we feel like looking down our noses at somebody.

And hey, special bonus Adrian Belew.

Great Opening Titles: Mad Men

2012-06-25, 8:44 pm
Categories: Cartoons, TV

All right, another one of these. Like the last one, it's recent, it's obvious, it's Emmy-winning, and Simpsons did it.

Mad Men -- the falling, the skyscrapers, the sexy ads. In thirty seconds we've got a picture of the glamor and the horror, the loss of control and even identity -- but, at the same time, the slickness, the class.

The black-and-white figure is presumably Draper, but it could be anybody -- he's literally faceless. Draper may have the most obvious and literal identity problems, but the entire cast grapples with them. The figures in the ads on the walls -- they're otherworldly, they're a little creepy; they're not more real than the falling figure, but they're certainly more defined.

And here it is on Simpsons.

And here it is on Daily Show three weeks ago.

And once again, Art of the Title has more.

Belladonna's Bad, Mmmkay?

2012-06-23, 9:15 pm
Categories: Stream of Consciousness

This one's only tangentially related to Frank Zappa, but I figured I'd include it because it's a fun read (for certain values of "fun"). I just saw this in a BoingBoing post by Mark Frauenfelder: The Belladonna Shaman, by RU Sirius, detailing his experience, at the age of 15, taking a recreational drug called asthmador, which, as the title implies, contained belladonna.

So what's this got to do with Frank Zappa?

I entered Our Lady of Lords Hospital wrapped up in a straightjacket and was immediately given a shot of morphine. Once they got me to stop flailing, they were able to find my wallet. They pulled it out to see who I was. In those far less paranoid times, teenagers didn’t necessarily carry ID cards. But my friend Vinnie had found these sort-of IDs that had a space on them to write your name and address and phone number and we’d had some fun one night writing the names of our heroes, or of odd characters, onto the cards and sticking them in our wallets. I had two cards on which I had written two different names. Since the admission authorities knew I wasn’t Ho Chi Minh, they figured the other ID must be the correct one. I was admitted as Frank Zappa.

So, uh, don't do belladonna, kids.

(And, ironically, Zappa was pretty vocally opposed to drug use.)

Not My Batman

2012-06-23, 8:39 pm
Categories: Cartoons, Comics, Games

I've been talking about fanboys and entitlement. It's kind of amazing the extent to which fans can be territorial and proprietary about characters they don't actually own or control.

To wit: you've probably heard the phrase "That's not my Batman."

The wonderful thing about Batman is that he is, quite possibly, the most versatile superhero in all of comics. (The most versatile supervillain, on the other hand, is Dr. Doom, and Chris Sims did a great job of laying out the reasons why in a recent column.) He's been around for close on 75 years and has, in that time, appeared in virtually every kind of story. You've probably got a "your Batman", the one you consider definitive and canonical -- and it's probably the one from when you were a kid. I'm no exception -- more on that in a moment.

I saw an Amazon review of the Arkham Asylum game that gave us this great bit of That's Not My Batman:

No, this is not the BAM, WHAM, KA-POW batman you saw David West in and it's not the weird new batman from Batman the Brave and the Bold cartoon and that is such a relief !!
This is the TRUE Batman, the one Bob Kane had in his mind even in the late 30's[.]

Yes, who could forget the famous Batman TV series starring David West? It was a huge departure from the TRUE Batman who Bob Kane had in his mind in the late 1930's -- you know, the one who wore a red costume, wings, and a domino mask, and was called Bird-Man, because that was Bob Kane's pitch until Bill Finger suggested some changes. (There's more on the origins of Batman at Dial B for Blog, and I strongly recommend the book Men of Tomorrow by Gerard Jones.)

Of course, the funny thing is that the guy who wrote the script to Batman: Arkham Asylum, Paul Dini, also gave us the following exchange (on Batman: The Brave and the Bold, the one with "that weird new Batman" -- specifically, in the episode Legends of the Dark Mite):

I always felt Batman was best-suited in the role of gritty urban crime detective, but now you guys have him up against SANTAS? And EASTER BUNNIES? I'm sorry -- but that's not my Batman!
Batman's rich history allows him to be interpreted in a multitude of ways. To be sure, this is a lighter incarnation, but it's certainly no less valid and true to the character's roots as the tortured avenger crying out for Mommy and Daddy.

(You can see the clip on YouTube, too, but the uploader prevents embedding.)

Because Dini doesn't just understand that there's more than one "valid" interpretation of Batman, he excels at jumping between them. He's a true chameleon like few Batman scribes in the character's history -- Grant Morrison springs to mind, as does Bill Finger himself, who wrote everything from Batman's earliest appearances and origin story to a two-part episode of that "BAM, WHAM, KA-POW" TV series with Adam "My Name is Not Even Remotely Similar to David" West.

And the funny thing is, playing Arkham Asylum, I've realized something: this isn't my Batman.

He sounds exactly like my Batman. And the Joker sounds exactly like my Joker. And the writing sure sounds a lot like my Batman too.

But it's meaner. It's more violent. An asylum littered with the bodies of murdered security guards. Batman himself sticks to the "no killing" rule in this version (unlike, say, the Burton movies), but he's brutal. The game features fetishistic slow-motion beatdowns that look like something out of the Watchmen movie; Batman may not kill, but he snaps bones and smothers perps until they lose consciousness.

Don't get me wrong -- I like the game. It plays fantastically; it's expertly designed, fun as hell, and it fits Batman -- at least, a version of Batman.

I guess that's what this comes down to: I can recognize a Batman as Not My Batman and still enjoy and appreciate it.

Caroline John, RIP

2012-06-21, 4:51 pm
Categories: TV

I read, today, that Caroline John, Doctor Who's Liz Shaw, passed away. There are obits at the Beeb and io9.

That's her, Elisabeth Sladen, and Nicholas Courtney all in the past year and a half -- I imagine Katy Manning's feeling a little nervous about now.

At any rate, I'm going to jump out of my original posting sequence and include one of my reviews on a Shaw-era episode: Inferno. Originally posted 2008-12-28.

Inferno, it turns out, is another great Pertwee serial that is available through Netflix (disc only, no streaming).

Essentially, it's like Mirror, Mirror, except instead of Spock with a goatee, it has Brig with an eyepatch.

It's a little long (could be one episode shorter -- he spends the entirety of the first episode in the parallel universe trying to explain to everyone that he's from a parallel universe), but really it runs at a great pace overall and has a whole lot more action than most Who from that period.

The parallel universe is used to good effect, emphasizing characters who are much different (the Brigade Leader is a coward hiding behind his gun and his rank) as well as characters who are more or less the same (the pompous Professor Stahlman, who would doom the world rather than take a blow to his ego, and the dashing Greg Sutton, who defies him), with companion Liz Shaw somewhere in-between.

The best device, IMO, is that in episode 4 or 5 the Doctor outright tells the parallel cast that they're screwed and past the point of no return and there's nothing he can do for their world, but that he can still save his own, leaving several episodes for the parallel cast to come to grips with their certain impending doom and react accordingly.

The "there are some things man wasn't meant to tamper with" premise is stale, but works well for an apocalyptic "Earth ends in fire" story -- the ending of the penultimate episode, with a wave of lava coming toward the cast, while cheesily green-screened, is a striking image.

The finale is another episode that could safely be chopped in half, but it mirrors the events of the parallel world, with slight changes, satisfyingly. The ending is vintage Third Doctor, with the Doctor and the Brigadier butting heads and then one of them forced to eat crow.

The transfer has all the usual flaws I've now come to associate with Pertwee-era serials, an often-grainy picture and occasional wavy lines. I watched one episode (3 or 4) on an SDTV and it was a lot less noticeable.

There's also a second disc with extras on it; I assume they're neat but I'm not going to bother.

All in all, classic Who; worth renting, worth buying. (It DOES help to have a cursory background knowledge of the Third Doctor's setup, that he's been exiled by the other Time Lords and trapped in 1970 London, and that at this point he's trying to fix his TARDIS so he can travel again.)

Titties 'n Beer

2012-06-20, 7:36 pm
Categories: Movies, Music

We were talking about Zappa's Senate testimony on the boards today. I mentioned that I loved the incredulous tone in Zappa's voice when Senator Hawkins condescendingly remarked that she would be interested to see what kind of toys his kids played with and he responded, "Why would you be interested?"

And something hit me:

Listen to the bit starting at 3:16. Bozzio as the Devil adopts the EXACT SAME tone of voice.

And this brings up something I hadn't thought much about before: Zappa not just as musician, composer, and conductor, but as director.

The 200 Motels credits say "Characterizations directed by Frank Zappa/Visuals directed by Tony Palmer". And sure enough, even in his music you can hear Zappa's direction on characterization.

Tangentially, I remember when Charlie Daniels played Devil Went Down to Georgia at the Super Bowl XXXIX halftime show. We were talking about what a great damn song it was, and my roommate Mike said, "Yeah, but you know what the best song about making a deal with the Devil is?"

You can probably guess which one he was talking about.

Monkeys Aren't Donkeys

2012-06-17, 1:45 pm
Categories: Games, Movies, Stream of Consciousness

Something that always bothered me:

Okay. So Cranky Kong is supposed to be the original Donkey Kong, right? Except now he's old and cantankerous and has a long white beard.

Except here's the problem: Donkey Kong was released in 1981. Donkey Kong Country was released in 1994.

Now, I'm no expert on anthropomorphic video game gorilla physiology. But it seems to me that thirteen years is a bit of a short time to shrivel up and grow a long white beard. (And that's without even considering DK's appearance in the 1994 Donkey Kong remake just months earlier, looking perfectly healthy.)

I guess that, of all the places to draw a line in the sand for suspension of disbelief in a game about anthropomorphic, barrel-hucking gorillas, "How did that one get so old so fast?" seems rather an arbitrary place for it. But dammit, it bugged me.

And it gets worse: Donkey Kong Country Returns, released in 2010, a full 16 years after the original DKC (and 14 after DKC3) -- nobody has visibly aged. Donkey Kong, Cranky Kong, and all the rest look exactly the same as they did in 1994. 1981-1994: dramatic visible aging. 1994-2010: no aging whatsoever.

Unless -- and here's my theory -- the original Donkey Kong died of old age, the Cranky Kong in DKCR is actually the 16-bit Donkey Kong now old and decrepit, and the Donkey Kong you're playing as is actually...a now-fully-grown Kiddy Kong.

Course, then you still have to explain Diddy, Funky, and the rest of the Kong family.

Anyway. Here's the trailer for Wreck-It Ralph. Which, while not technically a movie about Donkey Kong, appears to be a much-better-thought-out story of Donkey Kong's journey from villain to hero than the Donkey Kong Country series.

Doctor Who: Vengeance on Varos

2012-06-14, 5:38 pm
Categories: TV

Gotta clean the house and get to the airport, so for today I'm just gonna dig up another of my old Doctor Who reviews.

Originally posted on Brontoforumus, 2008-03-08.

Latest Netflix selection (Netflick? Netflik?) is Vengeance on Varos. I decided I should probably check out something with the Sixth Doctor just so I could say I had, and this is apparently generally viewed as his best serial.

It is pretty good, and manages that elusive trick of still being topical 24 years later. There's some 1984 in there, a bit of Fahrenheit 451, and a little Running Man; Varos is a world where the government keeps its citizens in line by plopping them in front of reality TV, and the particular brand of reality TV revolves around the execution of rebels. Varos's figurehead leader is an ineffectual governor who is physically punished every time the people vote against one of his policies; the true villain is an alien slug who sounds like Cobra Commander and who is ripping off the oblivious citizens on Varos by grossly underpaying them for their fuel source.

Hell of a lot going on there: the complacent citizens, the reality TV, the struggle for energy sources, the government figurehead being manipulated by a military-industrial complex. On top of that, the pacing is tight (though a bit off from what I've come to expect from classic Who, as this was after the shift from 25-minute to 45-minute episodes). The makeup's good, but the sets are pretty drab; lots of identical metal corridors in this one.

The other problem is that the Doctor and companion Peri are really just window-dressing in the story -- they're far less interesting than the supporting cast, and the story would have worked fine without them but for the Doctor's off-world knowledge of the value of Zeiton-7 ore. I didn't really get a bead on the Sixth Doctor's personality beyond "generic", and Peri was little more than a pair of jiggling breasts -- though I'm not going to spend too much time griping about that.

It's the best I've seen in awhile. If you're doing what I'm doing and Netflixing old eps on DVD, I'd call this a must-see; if you're looking to buy, I'd say it's worth the $12 Amazon's charging for it. (Update 2013-01-29: It's now also available in a $20 Special Edition and streaming for $2 an episode or free with Prime.)

Doctor Who: Earthshock

2012-06-10, 7:37 pm
Categories: Stream of Consciousness, TV

So back in 2008, after my sixth consecutive post (and twelfth post overall) in the Old Doctor Who thread, Brontoforumgoer Bal had this piece of advice:

So Thad, I know you love Doctor Who, and so do I, but uh, this whole thread is just you talking to yourself. Maybe you should just start a Doctor Who appreciation blog.

Well, he makes a good point. I'm not going to turn this into a Doctor Who appreciation blog, but I am going to repost some of my old episode reviews here.

I wrote a few back on the Pyoko boards but none of those appear to have been archived, so I'll just start with the first one I wrote on Brontoforumus: Earthshock.

Originally posted on Brontoforumus, 2008-02-22.

The original post contained spoiler tags. I'm going to omit them here. So, be forewarned: an extremely well-known spoiler from a 30-year-old Doctor Who serial, that is in fact probably the best-remembered sequence in the entire Davison run, follows.

Earthshock is a Davison-era serial best remembered for the death of Adric.

One of the reasons it is best remembered for that is that the rest of it is pretty thoroughly forgettable.

I hope you like stories where the Doctor materializes in the middle of a murder investigation, is falsely accused and taken into custody, and his captors don't believe his story until the real killers show up and start shooting people...because for some reason that happens twice in this serial.

The more interesting angle is the attempt to establish a father/son relationship between the Doctor and Adric. Unfortunately, Adric is at his most obnoxious here and what we see is full-on teen drama, which amounts to "You treat me like a child, you're not my real father, I liked Tom Baker better, I wanna go home, waaaaaaah." (And really, who didn't like Tom Baker better.)

Just to review Adric's faults, since the spotlight's on him here: while he predates Wesley Crusher, he's pretty much in his mold. He's the precocious child who somehow manages to show up all the adults on the show every time there's a problem to solve. Adding teen angst to his character traits does not make him more sympathetic.

That said, the attempt to explore the Doctor's companions as surrogate family is a noble one. We see a paternal side of the Doctor that recalls the First Doctor's farewell to Susan.

After that it's largely a straightforward Cybermen story; the Fifth Doctor's first (and only, unless you count their brief appearance in The Five Doctors) encounter with them. (As the Cybermen recognize the Doctor and recount his previous appearances, they bring up, by omission, the interesting bit of trivia that they didn't appear during Pertwee's run.) Pretty standard stuff; they're trying to destroy the Earth for what turns out to be a supremely nonsensical reason. (It turns out that a coalition of planetary leaders is meeting on Earth to declare war on the Cybermen; the Cyber Leader plans to wipe them all out in one fell swoop as this will "destroy their unity". Because nothing destroys the unity of a group that wants to declare war on you like assassinating all their heads of state.)

The big payoff is in the last five minutes -- a frantic battle with the Cyber Leader on the TARDIS, while the rest of the cast race against time on the bridge of a spaceship to prevent its lethal collision course with Earth. It's a tense and extraordinarily well-executed climax.

Adric's death is handled surprisingly well. He dies in truly precocious-child fashion, with the words "Now I'll never know if I was right" -- managing to turn his most obnoxious character trait into something bleakly charming. The reaction on the TARDIS is beautifully handled -- stunned, slackjawed silence, which carries over through the credits.

The presentation is slick -- the transition from the caves to the ship shows some good range in setting, and the Cybermen look less ridiculous than they did during the Troughton years. The score is solid, not nearly the overbearing early-'80's synth that characterized some of the late Baker stories.

This is one of those eps that's considered a classic by fans whose appeal I can't see so well watching it for the first time with no emotional investment. (This seems to be a trend among Cybermen stories.) The payoff of the last five minutes is excellent, and the pacing of the story is tight except for the fact that the first and third episode have exactly the same plot, but all in all I'd say it's a pretty average story. At the time of this posting Netflix has it available by mail but not for streaming, and Amazon's purchase price is $12.99, which is fair. (Update 2013-01-29: It's also streaming, free with Amazon Prime.)

Great Opening Titles: Game of Thrones

2012-06-09, 10:43 pm
Categories: TV

So here's a thought: looking at great opening title sequences for TV shows.

Let's start with an obvious one: last year's Emmy winner, Game of Thrones.

(This video is from the official GoT YouTube account, so it's probably region-locked, but it's also probably not going to get pulled for copyright infringement.)

So okay. What's great about it?

Well, first of all, it serves a purpose. A Song of Ice and Fire is one of those incredibly complex and convoluted fantasy series where it's hard to keep track of just what the hell is going on at any given time; reading the books, I find myself perpetually flipping to the map.

So how do you deal with that in a TV show? You show the map, at the beginning of every single episode. And actually change what parts of the map you show, to match the locations where this week's episode takes place.

It also stresses another of the central themes of the series: the idea of distance, of the vast expanses between all the characters you're seeing, the isolation of Daenerys out in Qarth or Jon Snow north of the Wall. The series itself initially focuses on a comparatively small area of the world, and the characters and their narratives drift farther and farther apart as it goes.

Technically, it's beautiful; the CG and clockpunk styles combine to make for a sort of pleasing set of anachronisms, so that you know what your'e seeing doesn't literally fit the setting of the show. You've got the symbolic rising of kingdoms, towns, and castles, with the heralds of the major families. And the theme song -- I don't think I've stopped humming it since April, 2011.

Simpsons did a fantastic parody of it recently, too; I can't find a good copy of that that's embeddable, but they have it over at io9. (Does not appear to be playable in Firefox on Ubuntu. Booooo.)

If you want to read more, Art of the Title has a great interview with Angus Wall, creative director of Elastic, the company that made the sequence (and also the animated Deathly Hallows sequence in the second-to-last Harry Potter movie).

And we've got a couple discussion threads over at the forums: Game of Thrones: The TV Show, where, as the name implies, we discuss the TV show (expect untagged spoilers for all of season 1 and much of season 2 at this point, and tagged spoilers for both seasons and the books), and Song of Ice and Fire: The Books: Massive Spoilers & Rampant Speculation, which, as the name implies, is nothing but huge spoilers and speculation and which I advise you not to read unless you've read all five books and don't mind people talking about as-yet-unrevealed things like who Jon Snow's mother is.