Quantum of Solace

Quantum of Solace is a movie about two things: chases, and over-editing.
It seems like the makers wanted to make a movie about a guy getting chased, and/or chasing a character, over, and over, and over. The movie starts off with a car chase in a tunnel at the side of a body of water, and then the chase ends when Bond gets back to his lair. Then, the film only gives us about 10 minutes of exposition in a brief interrogation scene before throwing us into a foot chase across Spain or whatever random European country Bond is in now. After this lengthy foot chase is over, we are told through an over-extensive use of technology, marked bills, laundering money, plot elements, and blah blah exposition, that Bond must now go to another random European country to find another random bad guy (the Bourne similarities are already lining up). In this new country, Bond enters the bad guy's hotel room and fights him off in classic Bourne style with a pen and a q-tip before walking outside and hap-hazardly coming upon the movie's female lead. This scene eventually leads Bond to get on a motorcyle and start a motorcycle chase of the female's car. Just when that finishes, we get some more exposition about needlessly-confusing events that priorly occurred, and then the female character's alignment gets thrown off to the "good" side for convenient plot reasons. Bond proceeds to chase after the newly good female character on his motorcycle, only to jump off his motorcycle onto a boat, whereupon a boat chase starts. After this, it appears that the movie has exhausted every form of transportation usable for chase sequences when it once again proves you wrong. Bond eventually gets on an airplane in the middle of the desert in order to start an airplane chase with his fellow enemy airplanes, thus giving this movie the honor of containing the most varied chase sequences ever.

The second item that the movie does exceedingly--not well--(imitating the Bourne Supremacy in the process) is over-edit every single shot and action sequence to the point where you start to lose sense of what is going on. Straight from the get-go you get a The Dark Knight-esque zooming in camera technique, but Quantum interrupts this serenely panning camera by repeatedly chopping in flashing splits of different shots. Even in every action scene in the movie, it constantly switches the camera angle every time a different action is preformed. Villain lifts up his arm to stab Bond? Switch the camera angle. Bond turns his head to dodge? Switch camera angle. It's annoying to have to reorient yourself every split second in an action scene, because then you lose the idea of what's going on. I'm pretty sure it's quite possible to pull off an exciting and daring action sequence without changing the camera angle every 0.8 seconds.

That being said, is it a bad movie? No, not really, but it's not a very good movie either. The entire movie is just a concoction of action and/or chase sequences in a variety of European countries fueled by some arbitrary plot reasons primarily focused on revenge. After all is said and done, there is not much more to be talked about.

Worth Watching? If you want action, but not story.

Thoughts On Pan's Labyrinth

I didn't get it.


*SPOILERS*



*SPOILERS*

There are two stories going on here: the story of Ofelia who is given three tasks by a mystical faun in order to prove her worth as a princess (um, what?), and the story of the guerrillas versus the soldiers which involves a cast of characters, betrayal, and intrigue, resulting in lots of people getting killed off.
As far as the story is concerned, I didn't really get how this was supposed to work. The main problem of the story is that the girl doesn't know if she is a princess and must do 3 tasks to prove it?
Anyway, what I did like was the parts of the movie where the fantasy world interacted with the real world and had consequences that impacted the plot and the characters. These would be the parts where Ofelia ruins her dress, the mandrake root has a weird, allegorical impact on the baby, and the final sequence of the movie where you don't know what's going to happen.
However, despite whatever qualms I had about it, I thought the movie really picked up during the second half, and had some great scenes, such as the one with the baby-eating-feast-man. It was very reminiscent of the Mummy-Stare-Freaks in Zelda, or entering an unknown dungeon in Oblivion.
In the end though, the movie completed on an unusual note, making me feel like I missed something or just didn't "get it." It would appear that the movie would be good to those movie viewers who could decipher some obviously hidden meaning, putting all the scenes and actions into perspective, but I find it hard to be enjoyable since I don't understand what all the undertones mean (though they appear to obviously be religious-based).
I watched Spirited Away, and I knew there had to be some hidden meaning, but I didn't have any clue what it meant. Did I still enjoy it? Yes.
In Pan's Labyrinth, I felt as if I had to get the hidden meaning for the movie to actually be enjoyable. At least that's my experience.

Worth Watching? Yes, to draw your own conclusions about it.

And seriously, how many times is the director/cinematographer going to do scene transitions by panning the camera over the giant black tree/post/pillar/rock/wall to lead us into the next scene?

Logan's Run (1976)

The more I watch SCI-FI, the more I see the same plot-lines and elements repeating themselves. No, I'm not bashing any specific movie here or accusing them of copyright-infringement--I just thought it's interesting to see how these same plot elements continually resurface in the SCI-FI genre, either by accident, or because it's just an integral part of the genre.


Other Works that have something in common with Logan's Run
Minority Report - Both have the main character do a job, then become the victim of his old job, and then try to run away from it.
Blade Runner - Both main characters are contracted to kill special beings.
The Giver - Both main characters live in a perfect world that has a dirty secret.
Portal - You're in a dome, and you must escape by going through the unseen sections of machinery and junk.
1984 - Living in a world with no escape, you hear of a rebel organization on the outside and must escape.
Planet of the Apes - Dystopian future that uses famous landmarks to showcase time's effect on the world.
Aeon Flux - The whole world is trapped in a dome and people become "renewed."
Minority Report and 1984 again - Right before the end the main character seems to be on the losing end, and miraculously gets out of the jam (or in 1984's case... *SPOILERS! NOO!*)
Brave New World - Babies in bottles, absence of marriage, something else I can't remember.


There's probably more, but that's ALOT of stuff in common with only one movie, Logan's Run. As for the movie itself, it was okay, I liked it, but everything it did has been done better in other movies, books, and video games... namely the ones above. And I was thinking, if this movie was remade, it would probably be better, and then I was like, "Woah!"

Innovation in Adventure Games

Over the years I have grown tired of this thing called an adventure game, this thing where you control a character, walk around, pick up items, trade items, and solve quests. I grow tired of the standard, overused, generic adventure game model, with generic settings, and generic puzzles.

Generic Adventure Game Settings: Pirates, Detectives, Average Joes who get thrown into crazy adventures, Police Men, generic space stories, or stuff like that.

Generic Adventure Game Screenplay: Start the player out with a goal to open a door. To open this door he must solve a series of convoluted puzzles in a group of locations by doing inane things that could only happen in an adventure game. He will talk to random people by saying "Hello," "Can I have item?", or "Bye." He will trade items with characters, use locks on keys, and then finally get the one inventory item that will open the door. He will open the door only to face another arena.

Adventure games need innovation. Adventure games need new design mechanics, new features, new settings, new problems, and new screenplays that don't involving talking to random strangers and then trading items with them.

That's what I tried to do in La Croix Pan. I tried to add a new element to the standard "Walk," "Interact," "Look," "Talk," bit. I added a new verb "kick" to that sequence. I tried to incorprate a new setting into adventure games, one I had never seen before, one in World War II. I tried to change the adventure formula by adding in a sniper action sequence, which I haven't really seen in any recent adventure games. I tried to prevent myself from adding a whole sequence of unncessary puzzles just to solve one puzzle.
For example: I didn't add a whole 20 minutes of gameplay just to open one door. That would never happen in real life. You don't walk around an abandoned French village picking up random items in random rooms, and then combine them together to create a lock pick just to open this one door.

I don't want to play another game where I control a character who can walk around a town, talk to other characters, and then trade items in a seemingly adventure-game-esque world. There are so many other settings that could be explored in adventure games instead of this generic screenplay that seems to be recycled ever since the first Monky Island game was released.

Give the player new and interesting goals, and new ways to acheive them, in new and different settings. I'm tired of adventure games; I want something "innovative."

Books & Authors

The last three books I tried to read I couldn't read. NO, they weren't too hard. YES, they were kind of boring. But the real reason goes something like this:

So I pick up Grapes of Wrath, and as usual, I open it up and read the panels. Then I read the front and back cover. I see these quotes by people I've never heard of saying how great the book is, and then I see a picture of the author (John Steinbeck) in his "I am one of the world's greatest writers and I wrote a great big book which everyone will remember me for" pose. The pose basically has him staring into the camera in a slightly menacing look with a cigarette in his hand or something.

Anyway...

I couldn't finish it because of this scene about a turtle that was too symbolic and open to allegoristic interpretation.

So, x# of months later, I pick up the Invisible Man. Once again, I go through my "analyze a book without reading it by reading everything on the book-but the book" procedure. And once again, I find a picture of the author. He's also in his super egotistical pose with another cigarette.

I actually start to read the book and I couldn't read it anymore because it was too dramatic and the scenes were just so ridiculously illustrating the point that the author was trying to make. It's like the character's life is just one bad nightmare day after day, just to make this STATEMENT that the author is trying to say.

So that's 2 books I couldn't read.

Then I pick up the Painted Bird by this other dude who I've never heard of. I grudgingly look on the back cover only to find another black & white picture of another author in another menacing pose.
It's scary to find authors like that.

So then I read the book and I just can't read it because I know it's going to be super grotesque, dramatic, painful, and all that stuff that makes a book "amazing."

Bad excuses.