Nostalgic indifference

I was iffy about the idea of going to a High School reunion for two reasons:

1. I see the people I would care to catch up with at least one or twice a year
2. I don't see the people I have no interest in catching up or seeing with ever
3. I also don't see the people I have a mild interest

Then I found it's $25 per person and it instantly went from iffy to "no." (Just lowercase, though. No big, dramatic NO!!!11!11! with fake scoffing or anything.)

Because if Logan, Brad, Nell, Ian, Ben and I each put in $25 for alcohol, we could have a pretty good time.

We could, maybe, even afford some food. And a raffle for a fun prize like his and hers monogrammed copies of Das Kapital.

Or Independence Day on DVD. Autographed by Logan.

Or The Matrix on VHS. Autographed by Brad.

Hmmm...

Netflix instant recommendations based on Fantastic Mr. Fox:

Stockholm syndrome

Heavy Rain
Towards the end of Heavy Rain's narrative arc, you are faced with a not so simple choice: to drink or not drink from a bottle that may or may not be filled with poison, which in turn may or may not allow you to discover the location of your kidnapped son who may or may not be still alive.

In most games such an exercise in free will would be bifurcated to the "good" or "bad" option: i.e. help the elderly lady cross the street or kidnap and sell her to a sex trafficking ring. But in Heavy Rain, the decision is terrifyingly drenched in ambiguity: at many junctures in the game, you are forced to make quick judgements without a full understanding of their consequences.

The fact that I had to pause and weigh the potential outcomes of The Rat trial, a feat rarely attempted in video games, leads me to say that Heavy Rain is a success, albeit not an unqualified one.

Heavy Rain's success or failure hinges on how much you are willing to suspend your disbelief in the face of uncanny histrionics and for just about every courageously immersive decision Quantic Dream implemented there is another which is equally as disruptive.

As a video gamer - particularly a perfectionist one - Heavy Rain can be both frustrating and liberating. Early in the game, the father, Ethan, is interrogated by police officers about specific details of the day his son was kidnapped. As a gamer this was particularly exasperating because I was never warned there was going to be a pop quiz. In most cases, I probably would have simply reset the game and played through the scene in question with a keener attention to detail. But for the sake of verisimilitude, I kept playing because in real life an individual probably would forget the specifics. Eventually, I learned not to worry about making correct or incorrect decisions and just played out the storyline as I felt the characters would [i.e. my impression of Ethan was that he would sacrifice himself to save his son's life, but was too weak-kneed to kill someone].

Unfortunately, despite all of the perceived ambiguity, there is an unequivocally good ending and only a few of the decisions you make throughout the game actually influence whether you see it or not. In fact, certain sequences could have been entirely excised because they not only have one outcome but contribute nothing to the overall advancement of the plot [the most egregious example being a dream sequence]. Although this does detract from the naive enjoyment of my original play-through per se, it is rather disappointing from a game design perspective and does not encourage multiple replays.

As Mark has mentioned, the story itself is rather thin, but I believe that gamers have unreasonable expectations. A game focuses on plot and character and suddenly everyone uses Joyce and Nabokov as the benchmarks. Heavy Rain is a piece of genre writing: no more, no less. Is the serial killer conveniently rationalized through Freudian psychology? Yes. Is the final reveal incredibly stupid? Yes. Are there red herring plot holes that are never resolved? Yes. That is about par for the course in Hollywood, and still leagues ahead of most video game narratives.

The localization, or lack there of, is far more dismaying. The script is littered with bizarre attempts by a foreign writer at American colloquialisms and the Belgian actors' American accents never quite settle down -- which is particularly unfortunate because Origami is one of the words constantly reused in the script and nobody can seem to agree on a pronunciation. It is almost as if Quantic Dream is playing chicken with uncanny valley.

Yet, despite all of this, the storyline is still incredibly involving because of the core game mechanic. Heavy Rain employs what I will call kinesthetic storytelling. As the characters act, you pantomime along with them. Suddenly, rather pedestrian cut scenes are transformed into visceral experiences. The sequence Mark mentioned earlier, in which you have to cut off one of your fingers, is remarkably harrowing. The actual control input is quite simple, but the force feedback really sells the severity and intensity of the action.

It is like the psychological experiment in which subjects who are forced to cross a rickety bridge find individuals on the other side more attractive than if they had simply encountered them on terra firma. Heavy Rain may not always be deserving of your affection, but you might be surprised how attached you have become after the ordeal is over.

Grade: B

Cats and dogs

My niece recently told me, quite matter-of-factly, that dogs are boys and cats are girls. Heavy Rain, the new hotness in “interactive drama,” uses that kind of childish logic to create its “drama.”

I didn’t really like Heavy Rain. It’s a compelling, hard-to-put down “thrilling ride” of a video game. (Like you’ve heard.) Just don’t spend any time thinking about what’s happening.

Heavy Rain is brilliant during the action. Whenever you’re forced to survive a string of electrified wires or the chopping off of part of your hand, the intensity is palpable. Everything else, however, plays like a bad Law & Order: SVU, or (as you probably have heard) a weak cross between Seven and Saw. 

How far would you go to save someone you love?

It’s a powerful question. And it’s too bad that Heavy Rain really doesn’t have much to say about it.

Because—unless you’re a totally anti-social deviant (at least when you play videogames)—you’re probably going to answer it the right way. You’ll do whatever it takes. Because, in a videogame, it’s easy to take on whatever the bad guy can throw. Cut off a finger. No problem. (I just have to do a few extra button presses.) Drink poison? Why not? (I’m not going to die. It’s a game.) Even the “bad guy” is inexplicably one of the main characters.

All work together to make you constantly aware of the distance between you and the game. Which is, essentially, the problem with all videogames.

I get distracted by the industry conversations about how the level of story in videogames and how they are now capable of being meaningful, emotive art. I absolutely believe that games can be art, but it has only happened a few times so far.

Heavy Rain is not art. Heavy Rain is a very, very good videogame. But nothing more. It asks some very deep questions and does some really interesting things to try to connect the player to the drama. But it never quite works.

In the end, I probably won’t really remember Heavy Rain. The technology is there and, with the right structure of a story, the art could have been too. But I can’t recommend Heavy Rain to almost anyone. Even though I admire that David Cage tried so hard to create something he loved.

(P.S. I had talked to Logan, in detail, about how we should present our thoughts on the game. Turns out, even though there is also much ado about the supposedly branching structure of the game, the actual details of the game don’t matter. [That’s one of Heavy Rain’s failings. It doesn’t really matter what you do. As long as no ones dies, the last scene is the only one that is important.])

(eau)

More unsurprising picks for what is sure to be another unsurprising night. Please feel free to gloat come Monday morning.

Bold = will win
Italics = should win

Best Animated Short

70% A Matter of Loaf and Death
25% Logorama
3% The Lady and the Reaper
1% French Roast
1% Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty

Three words: Wallace & Gromit. Pixar's mysterious absence should make this category a no brainer, but Logorama is the excessively violent and vulgar darkhorse -- and the most imaginative piece of cinema I have seen all year. Seriously, download it off of iTunes right now. Just don't watch it with your niece unless you want her to have nightmares of Ronald McDonald being sniped by the Michelin Man.

Best Live Action Short

30% The Door
25% Kavi
20% The New Tenants
15% Instead of Abracadabra
10% Miracle Fish

This is the hardest category to predict of the entire ceremony. My jaded heart tells me that the Academy is going to bite hard on The Door, a Holocaust-lite tale of the tragedy at Chernobyl, or Kavi, a didactic expose on human slavery in the third world. And it wouldn't surprise me if members are charmed by the Swedish Instead of Abracadabra, staring a mildly amusing cross between Napoleon Dynamite and Gob. But my personal pick is The New Tenants, a brilliantly sardonic Tarantinoesque short from David Rakoff. It is both heartbreaking and life-affirming -- a tough tonal line to walk in just under 20 minutes.

The entire line-up is surprisingly solid.

Best Animated Feature

80% Up
10% Fantastic Mr. Fox
5% The Princess and the Frog
4% Coraline
1% The Secret of Kells

I am going to be honest: I hate Pixar movies and I hated Up. Use this as an excuse to discredit everything I say in the future. Coraline and Fantastic Mr. Fox, on the other hand, are both fantastic.

Best Adapted Screenplay

55% Up in the Air (Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner)
35% In the Loop (Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci)
5% An Education (Nick Hornby)
4% Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire (Geoffrey Fletcher)
1% District 9 (Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell)

Up In The Air is going to win, which is ironic as the best parts of the movie are the unscripted confessionals. In The Loop is razor-sharp and quick-witted, but far too British for most Oscar voters.

Best Original Screenplay

30% Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)
25% The Hurt Locker (Mark Boal)
20% The Messenger (Alessandro Camon and Oren Moverman)
20% A Serious Man (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen)
5% Up (Tom McCarthy, Bob Peterson and Pete Docter)

Another tough category. The Hurt Locker has the critical cachet, but the script might be a little too spartan for its own good. The Coens won the same category too recently and Up would have been better as a silent film. I haven't seen The Messenger yet, but neither did anybody else. Which leaves us with Quentin Tarantino and how could you vote against a movie that contains the line: "Well, if this is it, old boy, I hope you don't mind I go out speaking the King's?"

Best Supporting Actress

70% Mo'Nique (Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire)
20% Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air)
7% Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air)
3% Maggie Gyllenhaal (Crazy Heart)
1% Penélope Cruz (Nine)

The academy needs to abolish or consolidate the Best Supporting category. It can barely round up 10 worthy performance a year and at least half of the winners are real eye rollers. There is only one performance even worthy of being nominated for a supporting role this year...

Best Supporting Actor

96% Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds)
1% Matt Damon (Invictus)
1% Woody Harrelson (The Messenger)
1% Christopher Plummer (The Last Station)
1% Stanley Tucci (The Lovely Bones)

That's a bingo!

Best Actress

55% Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side)
30% Meryl Streep (Julie & Julia)
10% Gabourey Sidibe (Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire)
4% Carey Mulligan (An Education)
1% Helen Mirren (The Last Station)

It is still unfathomable to me that I am actually typing Sandra Bullock and Oscar in the same sentence.

Best Actor

80% Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart)
10% Morgan Freeman (Invictus)
5% Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker)
4% Colin Firth (A Single Man)
1% George Clooney (Up in the Air)

Hard to begrudge The Dude winning an Oscar, but Colin Firth's performance in A Single Man was unparalleled.

Best Director

40% James Cameron (Avatar)
39% Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker)
11% Jason Reitman (Up in the Air)
5% Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds)
5% Lee Daniels (Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire)

Kathryn Bigelow is only the fourth woman to be nominated for best director. No woman has ever won the the award. I don't see the Academy breaking that glass celling anytime soon. Bigelow does have one thing working in her favor: James Cameron is a notorious asshole.

Best Picture

52.98% Avatar
37% The Hurt Locker
3% Up in the Air
2% Up
2% A Serious Man
1% An Education
1% Inglourious Basterds
1% Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire
.01% The Blind Side
.01% District 9

Although Hurt Locker is the critics' darling, I can think of 714 million reasons why the Academy is going to opt for Avatar.

Yo, Macadamia Do You Have Any CDs of Enya?

I eat macadamia nuts from time to time, you know, the occasional white chocolate macadamia cookie, or sometimes in December when people eat a lot of exotic fruits and nuts and summer sausage for some reason. In fact, I acquired some macadamia nuts in the shell about a month and a half ago from someone who had received them as a gift and was like, "here, you figure out what to do with these." They sat in my car for about a month, and recently I brought them into the kitchen.

A couple weeks ago I decided I'd open some up and enjoy a tasty snack.

First I tried a normal nutcracker which served only to agitate me. So I broke out the cast iron skillet and placed a macadamia nut on a cutting board. WHAM! The cutting board jumped and my macadamia nut skitted off unscathed, taking refuge somewhere underneath the oven. Naturally I decided a stronger blow would do the trick, so I set up another nut and took aim. It worked. . . sort of. The shell and nut were demolished, nearly indistinguishable from each other, and totally useless. After a couple more whacks and wasted nuts I surrendered. But lived to fight another day. . . .

It's been kind of warm here lately and last night I felt a hankering for a summery meal and with the pesky macadamias on my mind remembered seeing someone on a cooking show use macadamia nuts and panko to bread fish. So I walked to Smith's and bought the best looking fish they had. On the walk back I used my trusty iphone to research macadamia cracking methods.

There are specialty macadamia crackers; weren't gonna help me that night. People recommended C-clamps; I know I have a couple, but have no idea where they are - plus it seems like it would be pretty slow. Finally I came across this from OChef:

Another Hawaiian says, "As children, we knew where and when to go out and gather these nuts. How did we open them? We found just the right sized hole in the curbings of the streets where we lived; it had to be just deep enough to hold the nut in place. A well-placed nut in the right sized recess will come apart fairly well when given a sharp blow with a hammer."

I found a couple good nooks in the broken concrete of my driveway and started swinging. It worked like a charm. About 20 minutes later I had a nice stash of macadamia nuts to use. I ground them and mixed them in a bowl with a little flour and bread crumbs. I mixed some buttermilk and sriracha in another bowl and gave my tuna fillets a bath in that first and then dipped 'em in the nut mixture. I seared them in hot peanut oil for about 2 mins on each side and then finished them in the 400 degree oven for about 3 or 4 mins.

I served them on a bed of carrot, raddichio and sweet onion stir fry. (Slice those three ingredients thin and saute them on medium high in a couple tbsps peanut oil for about 3 mins, then add some sliced green onions and chopped cilantro, cook it all up until your veggies are tender, but still crisp.)

My finished product was a victory, in my opinion. Man conquers nut, and hunger.

Last Living Souls

Demon's Souls
As anyone from the NES generation can attest, video games have become significantly less difficult. It is a natural consequence of the mainstreaming of gaming as well as the simple logistics of modern game architecture: loading screens and the sheer vastness of gaming worlds make losing less a challenge than an irritant.

Enter Demon's Souls, a Japanese import that has taken on a cult status due to its extraordinary degree of difficulty. When you die -- which happens quite a bit -- you not only lose all of your unspent experience, but also half of your maximum health. Clearly a game that does not mess around.

It is not so much that Demon's Souls is deliberately sadistic, it just requires a great deal of concentration and prudence. The first encounter in The Tower of Latria is a Mind Flayer who will probably kill most novice players instantly. In other games, a Mind Flayer would be a boss; in Demon's Souls it is a common encounter. Even though the worlds themselves are rather small, the game itself is rather lengthly because you have to approach each section with methodical precision. Almost every level is taut and immensely rewarding.

Perhaps Demon's Soul's [the localization team should have spent more money on punctuation] best element is its unique approach to online play. Not only can you see the apparitions of other gamers playing the same level as you, but other players (or souls if you want to borrow from the game's obtuse mythology) can leave you ephemeral messages to alert you to dangers ahead. Basically, crowd sourcing for the high gothic era. These warning help take the sting out of some of the game's more daunting challenges and instill a strange sense of camaraderie with the other masochistic gamers playing alongside you.

A brief admission: I did not beat Demon's Souls. I made it all the way to the second to last boss, The False King, before I had to quit. Unfortunately, The False King has a melee attack that steals an entire experience level -- permanently. On my single attempt to defeat him, he stole one of my levels, sapping me of the strength I needed to carry my equipment. Because the game does not pause in the menu screens, I did not have the time to unburden myself thus allowing him to steal four more levels before I eventually died. Levels are hard to come by in Demon's Souls and I didn't have the heart to spend another two hours regaining them only to have them stolen again.

That is not a challenge, that is simply a waste of my time.

I can already imagine the sequel: the final boss erases all of your saved games if you fail.

Grade: B

Quick and dirty oscars

I'll leave it to Logan for a more in depth look. As a curtain raiser, here are my quick and dirty picks.

writing (original): a serious man, joel and ethan coen.

writing (adapted): precious, geoffrey fletcher.

music (song): crazy heart

music (score): fantastic mr. fox

directing: quentin tarantino, inglourious basterds

supporting actress: mo'nique, precious

supporting actor: christoph waltz, inglourious basterds (he actually deserves best actor)

best actress: i really don't know about this one. not sandra bullock.

best actor: again, don't know. not george clooney.

best picture: inglourious basterds