Nick came over yesterday and spent the night. Today, we went downtown to see Cloud Atlas at the Cinerama.

This film was directed by the Wachowskis and Tom Twyker (Run Lola Run). It’s based on a famously unfilmable novel, which is best described as “take six short books, open them up to the middle, stack them, then close them up”.

The movie adaptation… well. It’s better described as “take six short books, rip them each into about twenty pieces, and interleave those pieces in largely chronological order”. With some pieces from just before the climax of each story right up at the front.

Mostly I wanted to see it not so much for the film itself as for the filmic tricks; the choice to have the same half dozen or so actors and actresses play a role in every sub-story mirrors what I’m doing with Rita. I’m not sure it gave me any real insights into how to do that right or wrong. Well, it gave me one insight – if you’re making this connection through visual means, leave it for the viewers to puzzle out. Don’t have the characters give out lengthy speeches at the end about how WE WILL ALL MEET IN ANOTHER LIFE. And luckily, I do seem to have the sense to leave pretty much all the connections between the four stories in Rita for the reader to discover.

And overall – I feel it’s a failure as a coherent film. At least on its first viewing. It might fare better if I watched it a couple more times, but I’m really not sure I want to spend three hours watching it again. To its credit, it pretty much held my attention throughout! And there was one really nice moment where I realized what relationship two of the narratives had.

Still. It’s a very fascinating kind of failure, that I think was eminently watchable and kind of fascinating. I’d recommend going to see it. It’ll leave you disoriented and discombobulated. In a good way.

Also this was the first time I’d seen a movie at the Cinerama. Holy shit that is a nice theatre, and only $9 for an evening show. Man the next time I want to see a movie I am totally going there if it’s an option. We got there barely in time to find seats, so we didn’t get to try the chocolate-covered popcorn they offer. Maybe next time.

Here are some capsule reviews of some games I have sitting around on Steam. Most of them I got for stupid dirt cheap in one bundle or another. I don’t think any of them are what you’d call hot and new by any means.

The Binding of Isaac: How do you fuck up the great idea of combining a roguelike with an arena shooter? No diagonal shots, that’s how. And then you implement it in Flash so it runs around 13fps on a Mac.

Bioshock 2: I fiddled with this for about an hour before deciding that, you know, I don’t care how pretty they are, I really just don’t enjoy FPSs unless they have a sexy evil AI or are Portal. Bonus suck points for its tendency to keep showing me low-res textures for signs even after cranking texture detail up.

Dustforce: An odd mix of frustrating and compelling. It really needs at least some tenuous hint of a story to make me want to actually play all its technical platforming insanity. Really pretty, though.

Strong Bad’s Cool Game For Attractive People: Oblique, poorly-hinted puzzles galore. It might have been more fun if I actually liked Homestar.

Limbo: Vicious and horrible at first until you start seeing it as a videogame version of an Edward Gorey book. The last level stops having any kind of narrative justification and is just one deathtrap after another, causing me to resort to a walkthrough and quit really giving a shit about the player character.

McPixel: Stupid, random, and absolutely insane. I didn’t finish it but I laughed a hell of a lot. Recommended.

Psychonauts: aaargh why did they update to a new version that’s full Mac native code, but terribly crash-prone, instead of the version bundled in Wine, a few weeks before I decided to play with it? FRUSTRATING.

Rochard: A very clever little space platformer starring a fat construction worker with a gravity control remote. Gets stupid halfway through when it’s revealed that the Macguffin is something left with Native Americans by ancient astronauts, but still fun.

Sam & Max Season 3: The Devil’s Playhouse: Holy cow, the beginning of episode 3 is the first time I have EVER felt like I was actually BEING A DETECTIVE while playing a detective game, there’s a really neat twist on the traditional dialogue tree mechanic. Lots of point-n-clicky fun. Recommended.

Scoregasm: This one keeps on not being uninstalled because it’s a great little quick blast: an arena shooter with some really clever levels, and an occasional bulletstorm kind of attitude. I think I actually bought this one all by itself for a whole $5-10. Recommended.

Woohoo. I just got the first finished pages turned in for the comics anthology I’m putting together. They look awesome. This is gonna be a way-cool book.

I still need to come up with a name for the furshlugginer thing. I’ll worry about that when I have more stories in.

I also need to edit the rough layouts/dialogue and do the final art for mine. Where has the time gone? Oh, right. Lethargy and malaise.

edit. Man all the titles I’m coming up with so far sound like tacky horror porn anthologies.

Huh. Aikido class, this week, has involved weapons – a staff on Monday, and a sword today. I wasn’t expecting that.

No, we weren’t going at each other with the staff and sword. We were using them because the move we were studying that day had a lot in common with the way you use one of these, and doing a similar move with a big wooden stick or sword in your hands kind of forces you into better form. We were just doing some work with these things, then putting them away and bringing that feeling back to trying to throw each other.

It’s been interesting learning this. I feel like I’m at the point where I’m starting to know enough that things make sense. I still have a lot to learn but I can, like, actually ask questions now and somewhat understand the answers. I don’t feel like I retain the techniques well enough to practice them by myself yet, but they’re starting to worm their way into my subconscious, because doing them in class is becoming easier.

I mean, I’d still be useless trying to really spar with someone who knows their stuff, never mind if someone came after me with a knife or something. But I can feel myself getting better.

I’m putting more points into the long-neglected physical skill trees. It feels pretty nice.

I’m filling out my ballot for the upcoming elections. Sitting there reading through the pamphlet describing the various propositions, I come upon a proposal to up property tax a whole six cents for upgrading the police’s fingerprint matching system.

The statement in favor? It tries to grab me by opening with a story about a twelve year old girl whose assailant was caught thanks to the miracle of modern fingerprint matching, then goes on to talk about how this thing is part of a massive national database of fingerprints. Which is… you know, that’s kinda troubling, because it puts a lot of power in the hands of the Man. Plus starting with an appeal to emotions puts me on my guard.

The statement in opposition? Starts by bitching that this system was voted for LAST election and wants more money. Then it goes into this rant about how “the Council uses homeowners as its ATM!” and that “Seattle residents now will have been taxed higher for an emergency response system, concert hall, playgrounds, youth offenders, veterans, public housing, sports stadiums, zoological gardens, education, and LIBRARIES where patrons can view FREE ONLINE PORNOGRAPHY during EXTENDED HOURS”. (emphasis mine)

It goes on in that vein for a while, ranting about another measure entirely, and finishing with something about how this will drain Seattle’s homeowners dry, and that we should “[e]xpect little, if any, federal assistance because elected politicians who once favorited “earmarks” now respond with deafening… silence!”.

There are no paragraph breaks; it’s just this long stream-of-conscousness AAH TAXES ARE BAD rant with some bonus insertions of words that the right wing has focused on making BAD THINGS.

What the fuck. I mean, look, you could certainly construct a thoughtful, nuanced statement of opposition to this that simply talks about how much more information this makes easily available to authorities, pull up an anecdote about someone arrested on spurious reasons due to their political activism or something. But instead there’s just this crazy rant that tells me, “well, the crazy arm of the Repubs wants this to not happen”. Sigh.

Also there is a page in the information pamphlet telling me that “Fictional characters are great, but they do NOT belong on ballots. Don’t write in frivolous names when you vote. Be an informed voter.” Well okay then. *writes in Pogo for president*

Man this country is fucked up.