Whatever you do, don't answer the "Call of Juarez"

I had my first encounter with RedBox over the Labor Day weekend. Impressive. The entire process of renting and returning a movie or game from a RedBox unit is intuitive, simple and, best of all, cheap. I rented a PS3 game for one night for $2.12. No matter how terrible the game, you're pretty likely to get $2.12 worth of fun out of it.

Sadly, I put that idea to the test right off the bat by renting 'Call of Juarez: The Cartel'. I thought I was renting a western-themed game. As you can see, the front artwork features an old hardcase in a wide-brimmed hat and duster aiming a double-barrelled shotgun at the 'camera'. Western iconography all over this thing. "Oh good," I thought. "A 'Red Dead Redemption' rip-off." Even warmed-over imitation 'Red Dead' would feed my hunger for more old West video game action. At least until the next Rare-produced 'Red Dead' title comes out.

Much smaller though, are the lady and gent on either side wearing contemporary clothes. Wish I'd noticed them before I'd rented.

From the press release: "As with past Call of Juarez games, Call of Juarez: The Cartel is from inception to execution, a Western shooter."

It's actually not. It's a crime game. Instead of running your avatar around saloons and liveries and ranches, your avatar runs in and out of the ghetto, the barrio, strip clubs, and gang hideouts. Blecch. Not to mention the hazy backgrounds, the repellant characters you either play or run with, and sub-par shooting experience. So I got took a little bit. But with Redbox, even the terrible video-game rental experiences don't sting so bad because it's only one night, and it's only $2.12. So to sum up, Redbox: good. Call of Juarez: The Cartel: bad.

A Song of Ice and Entitled Jerks

Just finished reading a fascinating article about George RR Martin in The New Yorker. Martin is, of course, the author of 5 novels that will eventually make up a 7-part series called 'The Song of Ice and Fire'. As some of you already know, I've been obsessed with these books for the entirety of 2011. My poor, put-upon wife has borne the brunt of my fixation. She's had to endure, among other things, incessant playing of the Game of Thrones soundtrack, constant humming of the 'Game of Thrones' theme, rambling discourses on the differences between the HBO show and the book it's based on, forecasts on the scenes likely to play out in season 2 and how well they'll play, filling every other stray silence with updates on characters from the new book, "A Dance with Dragons" which I am sipping one chapter at a time, and more than a few times, my taking on the patois of the series, affecting a Renaissance festival-y faux-English accent, and holding conversations in this voice. Even though I can see how deflating it must be for her to see her husband this way --- after all, it's not possible to get farther away from the Alcide-ideal than a grown man drawing a Nerf sword from his thumb and index-finger scabbard and shouting random character names from the series -- I'm helpless not to do it. So yeah, I need to get out more and read other things. I know.

Anyway, the New Yorker article. It's a profile of Martin written shortly before the publication of book 5, and it focuses on his relationship with his fans, particularly those who've become not just ornery at how long they've had to wait for this latest tome to land, but highly critical. Some of them so annoyed as to start their own websites (like, "Is Winter Coming?") where posters and commenters bash Martin and his work ethic. It's a fascinating look at where the relationship between popular genre authors and their fan-base stands, how it can sour, and asks some interesting questions. Like, what exactly does an author owe his fans? Anything? And is the sense of entitlement that creates this frustration generational?

Worth checking out.

You Got Served by a Fiddler on the Roof

I haven't actually seen either of these movies, but mashing these two movies together seems pretty inspired.

Enjoy it, ya herd?

One More Inception Post

Oh but this made me laugh.

(Hat tip to The Daily Dish)

Musings on a White-out Tape Dispenser, and Newsmap

There's a curved indentation molded into the plastic of the Bic Wite-Out tape dispenser, just to the southwest of the 'W' in 'Wite-Out', that you can put your fingernail into and, without much effort, get the whole thing to spin around really fast. Satisfying torque. Aside from the noise of the twirling, which is a kind of hollow, blunt scraping sound, you could really just spin that sucker forever and not really have to worry too much about it skittering across the desk.

Anyway. It's slow at work.

Unrelated and marginally more interesting, a co-worker pointed me to this site today: Newsmap.

Newsmap presents all the news items of the day in colored blocks of various sizes, color representing what sort of news it is (world, national, sports, etc.), and the size representing how many articles related to this story are extant on the web. I'm sure it's a bit more complicated than that, but the resulting display is simple, clean, and very user-friendly. If you bring your cursor over a news box, a pop-up window comes up with the a short summary of the story. When you click the box, you're taken to a new window/tab. Me likey. Doubt it'll streamline my surfing much, but it gives a nice overview if you're in a pinch and want to get caught up on the Right Now right now.

From the Creators of South Park, Team Inception

Hi-frickin-larious.

Franzen's New Book and New Look at Jack London

Book excitement. Jonathan Franzen's new novel, "Freedom", his first since 2001's brilliant "The Corrections", will be released on August 31st. And the reviews! The New York Times calls it "both a compelling biography of a dysfunctional family and an indelible portrait of our times" Others are similarly glowing. I cannot wait.

Also, a very interesting article on Jack London from Slate.com. When I was in school and my teachers talked about London, they mentioned briefly that he taught himself to write and then assigned us his short story about the wolf. Or whatever it was about. What we didn't learn was that London was a devoted socialist as well as an inveterate racist. Now I'm not one of those guys who think a writer's biography is just as important as their work, but some of that biographical information might have been useful to know while reading to, you know, place his work in some context.

School always seems to find a way to make fascinating people, places, and things much less so, doesn't it?

A Bit More on Inception

I went on so long writing this comment in response to Craig's comment on my "Inception" post, I thought it might be better to just post the whole thing up here.

First, do go to the comments section and read Craig's comments -- the details he noticed are awesome and seem to put the case beyond a doubt that Leo was trapped in a dream (and also show I was only paying some kind of half-attention). I particularly liked this observation: "There are no establishing shots or lead ins to scenes. Everything starts in the middle, causing you to maybe ask "How did I get here?", not unlike the test they mention in the movie." That is so true, and another great and subtle thing Nolan did to give the whole movie that dream-like quality that's only really apparent after you leave the theater.

Craig also asked: "Why would Dom's subconscious produce so much exposition? Have you ever explained how something works to yourself in a dream?"

I actually feel like I have woken from dreams where I've had what seemed like elaborate concepts explained to me, and during the dream, all that exposition seems so cogent and well-written but it's logic fades shortly after waking, if any stays at all. So the exposition aspect felt correct to me.

Which made me think of an alternate interpretation.

After the movie, the wife and I followed the 'it was all a dream' concept to one possible conclusion: that the concept of 'shared dreaming' that was so integral to the plot was itself an elaborate figment of the dream. We dismissed it because if that were true, all the film's action would be just so much dreamy irrelevance. If nothing of the film can be accepted at face value, then what was the point exactly?

But thinking about it now, it does seem plausible and even narratively legitimate that the concept of shared dreaming was part of a dream. The film, all a dream, could have been the story of a smart guy trapped in a coma or life-support or whatnot, experiencing his subconscious's last best attempt to wake him from his dream and into real life, ending with Leo's failure to rise to that challenge. Because the whole idea of shared dreaming -- with that nifty, never-explained old reel-to-reel-style equipment they were able to just dream up at every dream-level -- did seem sketched in, just present enough to plausibly get the plot and action flowing. Again, to me, very dream-like.

So if it is all a dream, even the shared-dreaming conceit, a lot of the film still works. If Leo were in a coma, the people he cares about most would make appearances, and when they did, strong emotions would accompany them, as they do in the movie. Extreme grief, guilt, and terror in the scenes with his wife, Marion Cotillard, warm regard and affection in the scene with Michael Caine -- maybe the people whose accompanying emotion is most intense are the people closest to Leo in real life. If this is so, one wonders then who Lucas Haas's character might have been to him, as his departure from the movie seemed to particularly wound Leo.

Leo's subconscious, knowing he is not awake, could very plausibly "build" this elaborate dream-plot so that Dream-Leo can confront questions of 'Am I awake or am I dreaming?' which may help him understand his plight so he might then wake from it. Which is why, perhaps, when it is safe within the dream's structure, the dream sets up multiple circumstances where Leo can "practice" waking up, from all those dreams within dreams, to give him the courage to do it the final, most important time. Maybe the end of the climactic sequence, where all of Leo's teammates are waking from one dream after another, is his subconscious's most direct assault on Leo's conscious mind to get Leo himself to wake.

Just a possibility. Some of this stuff I feel like I could argue with myself about ("...but if that's so then the whole Saito sub-plot which was so awesome isn't as awesome. And if that's so, the whole move becomes purely a technical exercise in precision without any real identifiable heart.", etc.) but I think the movie is left open to interpretations like that. I almost feel that the Nolan brothers might even have some page-long "secret script" that explains What-was-really-going-on, but then that may be overestimating Nolan, which I guess is possible.

But it's also just fun to talk about this movie.