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MoeSnodgrass
Reviews
Banshee (2013)
Okay Cable Series
This series looks and feels more like cinema than a 'cable' TV series. The writing, plot and acting are excellent. The characters who fight represent trained and accomplished fighters but the good guys still must fight extremely hard to win and sometimes are badly beaten. Lots of violence, alcohol, drugs and sex scenes but like the fighting, the sex is not completely gratuitous. Sex scenes are frequent and fairly graphic and many of the characters are very attractive.
The series falters somewhat with the introduction of the character 'Job' who with a laptop can open any locked door, do a background check on anybody, and set off explosives remotely. I hate this trope more than anything but otherwise like the series enough to overlook it here.
Compared to cinema, the problems with long-running TV series are that in TV it's difficult for the makers to provide a substantial and satisfying climax and denouement in every episode. The various writers and directors manage to pull this off in every episode which says a lot about the ability of the producers to recognize, attract and control talent and the medium.
I am often left dissatisfied with a TV series but this one gave me renewed hope for the 'cable' TV medium.
The Last of Us (2023)
Don't Watch Season 1 Before Playing Game
Season 1 follows the game (Pt. 1) so closely that it will spoil the game considerably. I assume the same is true of Season 2/Part 2. The game (pt. 1) is highly over-hyped (IMDB 9.7/Metacritic 9.2). The TV series is good, not great. I rate the game Pt. 1 a *7*. Season 1 adds 2 episodes that do not appear fully in the game, the weakest of the epidodes ('Long, Long Time' and 'Kin;' acting is great but the stories are weak). The entirety of the series S1 and game Pt 1 are overall depressing from beginning to end with only just one scene of comparative lightness throughout. Watch the series? Yes, but wait if you plan on playing the games. Play the games? Yes, but don't expect 9.7 quality.
Far Cry 3 (2012)
The best of the best -- but buggy (PC), perverse
I'm an old man who's new to video gaming. I wanted to see what the state of the art and all the hype is about. It ends up that I purchase 3 or 4 games for every one that I truly enjoy. I have abandoned many very popular, highly-rated games after less than an hour of play.
The Very Good: The main story is set in the present. That means: no stretches into unrealistic Sci-Fi worlds. I can enjoy Sci-Fi games, Deus Ex Human Revolution is one example, but the interminable popularity of the "Star Wars" series seems to dictate that we must endure comically-voiced robots in every futuristic game. Please.
With a very good story and superb voice acting, this game comes the closest I've found to dramatic realism -- like a good movie -- only interactive. It's still a "first person, shoot 'em up" game and requires a very high level of suspension of disbelief -- more than I would like and greater than most cinema requires -- but this is getting closer to a quality of dramatic storytelling in a game.
There exist fewer gaming clichés here. Gamers seem to hold past clichés as icons, dearly, with expectation, and here I think the developers felt a need to satisfy expectations. Fantasy/Sci-Fi seems the rule in gaming. However the very good aspects of this game demonstrate that the writers/developers were not limited by imagination or expertise. BTW, when I say the voice acting is superb I really do mean superb, at least in the main story line and among the primary and most supporting characters. Allow me repeat: Superb.
The Mediocre: The original, incidental music is mostly percussion and synth, is often repetitive and droning and is just fair overall. The licensed songs (real pre-existing songs used in the game) are generally better. That licensed music plays over certain quests or sequences and whenever you are driving a vehicle. The game takes place on a tropical island and so the licensed music gave a very good sense of location. In that vein however, I, for one, kept wanting to hear "Israelites," the 1968 Top 40 reggae hit by Desmond Dekker. One particular licensed song that makes its way into the game is a truly inspired placement though.
The Bad: For such a good game, the thought put into the side quests seems lazy, like an afterthought. Even the superb voice acting is diminished in the side quests, as though the main quest and the side quests were written by different teams or were hurried. I know, the development time and budget would have cost xx% more to integrate them more closely and realistically into the main quest. Even among all the video games I truly enjoy the lazy side quests are always apparent and sadly there is little exception here.
With that said, there is an ongoing public debate concerning "can a video game be art?" It is these things like the worn-out clichés and poor integration of side quests that will continue to make the skeptics say "No." I very much want that answer to deserve to be "yes." Soon graphics technology will advance to permit a true confluence of games and movies allowing a new and true interactive cinema. Will the game writers and developers be up to the story task? Based on the evidence so far the answer is "no" but Far Cry 3 is as good as it gets. The best motion pictures, throughout the history of cinema for example, never compromised at all but video games compromise too easily and too frequently. That is the difference between games and art and is something I wish game producers would learn.
The Bugs: Even on my 4 core, 16GB, Win7x64 PC with 1GB graphics there exist too many bugs and glitches to list. Outright crashes occur occasionally. Numerous glitches occur that require a restart from the beginning of a quest or at the most recent checkpoint. The system of one saving one's own progress is the worst I have yet encountered, nonsensical, nonexistent. The game auto saves checkpoints well enough and the game is enjoyable enough so that, although annoying, I can dismiss them. It's worth it.
Perversion: so, so many video games, especially FPSs are violent but I have trouble gauging whether the more perverse aspects of Far Cry 3 are gratuitous or not. For the most part they advance the story and create a heightened sense of dread so I'm inclined to say 'no' but this is very definitely adult material. I was somewhat taken aback at a few points and so I felt it is worth mentioning: Adult Material.
Conclusion: The cliché-ridden "Half-Life 2" is often held up as the contemporary milestone in good game development. Yes it is almost a decade older and the technological eras they were created in are vastly different but Far Cry 3 leaves Half Life and most all other games in the dust on the basis of story and voice acting alone.
As of this writing Far Cry 3 as a whole is the state-of-the-art, the best of the best. Given the long time period the Valve company has been taking in the development of Half-life 3, one holds hope for it to be another new milestone, if only Valve can escape its C3PO/R2D2 mentality to somehow find a mature story. Fingers crossed.
The Life of David Gale (2003)
Nonsensical but watchable. ***SPOILERS***
So many people enjoyed this film, I should not dissuade others from viewing it. But when other reviewers here heap praise on it, I feel I need to weigh in.
This story is full of holes big enough to fly a 747 through and red herrings the size of the Loch Ness monster.
The entire premise of the film, that death penalty abolition activists would commit suicide and murder solely in the name of their activist cause is very difficult to buy.
The Gale character's alcoholism serves only as a crude device to further his unbelievable actions during the "rape" scene and among so many other scenes.
The existence and resulting "search" for the rape victim is a heavy-handed red herring to the degree that is not often witnessed in "serious" writing and world cinema.
The payment of $500,000 to buy the rights to Gale's story, in cash no less, by an established media organization, is preposterous. Nobody would have cared about Gale's story. In fact, to the contrary, it was Gale alone who wanted his story told. It would have been more likely for him to attempt to pay a writer.
I don't fault the writer because, after all, the producers and director bought it, and based on the reviews here, so did the audience -- you've all been sold a bill of goods.
As in his other films, Alan Parker manages to mangle acting talent as if he had over-squeezed a piece of citrus. The resulting unwanted pulp, seed and rind make the performance unrecognizable from what was ordered and leaves it mostly unpalatable.
The ending tries in vain to explain away the story inconsistencies in ways that are implausible. It would have made more sense to invoke "Angel Heart voodoo."
In fact, this film feels so much like Parker's "Angel Heart" that it now becomes obvious: the greatest problems lay in Parker's choice of properties and in his very choices in direction. Worst of all, Parker seems consistently intent on defacing the world's premier acting talent.
All-in-all a mostly ridiculous, mundane effort in generic Hollywood filmmaking.
4/10
Il piccolo diavolo (1988)
Benigni's Best ...
Benigni's best film and performance but unfortunately unavailable in the North American NTSC video format. Walter Matthau plays a priest visiting the Vatican who is called upon by church officials to exorcise an unknown demon from a local fat woman.
Once the demon is expelled, Matthau hears a racket in a nearby closet only to discover Benigni who proclaims himself to be (paraphrasing), "the disgusting thing you (Matthau) exorcised from the fat woman."
His first time out of Hell, Benigni is a devil who is naive and curiously tests the world, discovering many of the mundane little joys of living that we all take for granted. All of this is observed with arm's-length curiosity by Matthau who inadvertently brought this fool- of-a-devil into our world.
This great film is in the vein of the lost art of Chaplin and Keaton, approaches and perhaps equals those almost-forgotten cinema artists. If all you can find is a copy in Italian, seek out an interpreter any way you can. You and the interpreter will thank each other afterword.
A unique and very worthwhile piece of artistry.
P.S. In 2011, I translated this film and put the subtitles into .srt format. srt subtitles can be loaded into Video Lan Player (free download). Now, if you can find a digital copy of the film, you can use the English subtitles. Search for Il_Piccolo_Diavolo The_Little_Devil.srt Enjoy.