Mud

Mud is a limited release picture (so far) which I was fortunate enough to have released in my city. If perchance it is in your area I highly recommend seeing it as it is easily the best film that’s going to come out for another 4-6 months and could well be the best film released this year. It centers on Matthew McConaughey playing a would be homeless person on an abandoned island in the middle of a water moccasin infested river; a dangerous place to be sure. He’s visited by 2 young strapping middle schoolers and he immediately begs them for food. Yet, Mud is a mysterious individual and intrigues the boys who continue to help him for the rest of the film.

I won’t spoil the rest of the plot but suffice to say it deals with numerous powerful themes and has multiple extremely well done father-son relationships that contrast with each other remarkably. The film’s other message is basically “don’t trust women,” but it isn’t done heavy handedly and it’s not universal. Obviously the director or writer or someone had issues with a divorce as either a youth or an adult and this is his way of dealing with that period of his life.

This movie could have been bad for a huge number of reasons, the subject material is difficult, the acting had to be good from almost everyone, and it still delivers. The script is excellent, several of the scenes are extremely memorable and scream “Oscar worthy performance,” and the film ends well even though it easily could have gone off the rails. Even the one mediocre scene in the picture is used to tie up another loose end and teach another morality lesson; while that entire subplot is perhaps unnecessary it does serve to better flesh out the teenager’s character (who is the protagonist).

In addition to the basic more obvious thematic elements there are also very strong rich vs poor, urban vs rural, and law vs vigilante dichotomies that play out in the picture. One of the last fringe elements of rural American life is  being threatened both internally and externally; but it is wisely constructed in the sense that there is no over-arching political message that the film embeds here (as would usually occur); it’s simply a sort of mournful look at the late game impacts of Manifest Destiny gradually destroying the locals’ way of life. Mud is superb, well-acted, well-constructed, and badly advertised; I can only hope someone goes to see it as a result of reading this.

Iron Man 3

Ah summer movie season begins. Actually this year had a pretty loaded pre-May slate, the best of the bunch was Oblivion and that is probably the best movie that’s going to come out; so go see that before it goes away. Iron Man 3 is the best Iron Man movie, but eh it’s sort of dicey describing why that is. The movie is a very solid action flick with good CG, excellent acting, and superb usage of humor. But it doesn’t have anything that elevates it over Avengers and certainly nothing that scrapes the surface of the Dark Knight. Guy Pearce could easily deliver a “Joker” performance but this movie didn’t want to do that quite clearly. Trust me when I say Guy Pearce is a better, or at least more proven, actor than Heath Ledger was and probably one of the top 5 working actors around; it’s a shame that he wasn’t in more mainstream movies to this point but at least he finally seems to be getting his due.

The plot of this film is odd to say the least, it’s just not very good. However the writing (or improvised dialogue) is excellent and almost all of the character interactions are done extremely well. Basically there’s some DNA magic that makes people into Superheroes, but they’re evil superheroes so Iron Man has to stop them! It uses worldwide style of events and scale but then uses Ironman to save the world when the Avengers had just done so only recently; I don’t think the choice of villain type really fits. Another tech genius, sure, but just plain old superpowers is weird.

The pacing of the film is also just a bit off, there’s an extended sequence with only a few action scenes and even though that section of the film is well constructed and superbly well-acted (the best kid – hero interaction bar none) it just doesn’t fit with a big blockbuster action flick. It’s mature and intelligent comedy crossed with “dumb” action, almost every scene has at least some humor and some of that is ridiculously great. Ben Kingsley is awesome, Guy Pearce has incidental dialogue that is amazing, Robert Downey Jr. has the best “Troll” humor line maybe ever; but the design and character of the action doesn’t jive with it. As someone who can appreciate mature humor (it’s much less over the top humor as was in the previous Iron Man films) as well as dumb action movies I can’t say I desperately wanted both in the same picture.

Lastly the final battle sequence is a bit anti climatic in how it ends, the action itself is fine; above average CG combat with odd fighting game parallels; but it doesn’t have a Terminator 2 style ending equivalent scene to punctuate it. Not to say the action is as good as T2 in general but the villain(s) are basically terminators and you have to deal with them as such.  This is a good action movie that will make you laugh, and for a lot of people that is really all they want out of the first week of May. I re-iterate: go see Oblivion, it’s a cross between 2001, The Truman Show, Tron Legacy, and Star Wars; what could be better?

Injustice: Gods Among Us Impressions

Amazingly I bought a game for $60, in appreciation of Netherealm's previous efforts in MK vs DC (okay) and MK9 (awesome); and the community is fairly enjoyable for the time being. I imagine it'll grow tiresome within a month or two, but until then I shall enjoy myself immensely. To quote myself (from a forum post):

Speaking of Se... err Lex, I went like 26-12 in ranked matches including a 10 streak, sadly after the 9th win I had a player disconnect upon joining a match (not midmatch just in the joining phase, even prior to reaching the character select) and that somehow broke the streak. Lex's charge/air charge is a noob killer and that seems to be a majority of players, there's noobs, crappy deathstroke users (3-3 sadly, Lex isn't great against the stroke), people that have clearly been playing the game for 50+ hours, and a few average guys like me. It's also not too hard to combo into Lex's super with some triangle juggling.

I did run up against a 100-40 guy that I destroyed though so who knows. As far as fighting games go I play extremely smart but I have little or no interest in memorizing extended button sequences so I'll be good for a while here until people start dishing out longass combos one after the other (Superman seems to have a ridiculous one for starters). I also went up against a dude who was 160 and 40 with 100 disconnects, kicked his ass twice and he d/c'd both times, I guess it's nice that it shows the number but his rating was still like 1650 (no clue what mine is thanks to the presently broken player card system, at least for checking your own), one of those times was mid streak but it didn't break the streak nicely enough.

After that I went and got the King of the Hill trophy, and wonder of wonders this game actually has intelligently designed trophies so more than 0.5% of the playerbase will be able to 100% it! No ridiculous combo challenges as far as I know (though difficult challenge tower stuff instead, way more interesting) and no ranked streak trophies (but you do get ingame rewards for doing so). I went 10-0 without a sliver of challenge in the room I was in but people started asking me to switch characters so swapped to Wonder Woman and promptly lost to a horrible player; couldn't remember her moves only the square square triangle lasso whip combo of doom for beating the demo on hard.

Turns out there's a 25 streak reward which I could've gotten I imagine but will be tough to get a few weeks in the future; damnable niceness (albeit this saved me having to sit in that room for another 30 minutes). There's separate ones for ranked/KoH/player match streaks, but KoH and player match overlap. Ranked 25 I've got some mild chance of getting for about a week and then that's all over.
Good lex maneuvers: Jump in heavy, back forward heavy still in midair, or jump in heavy, ground heavy, back forward heavy (or down back heavy). Lex's air charge will hit ground targets unless its at the peak of the jump, though this does make it easy to get hit with fast projectiles as well.

For deathstroke it depends how good the guy is really, have to get in close where you can mostly dominate but have to be wary of the spinny sword retarded shit, if he spams nonstop then duck low until he starts doing low shots; then jump and do an air charge and repeat as necessary until you're on top of him, trying not to get blocked. If the guy's great (unlikely) then you'll probably lose but the same could be said for every other character.

What makes this game great relative to MK9 is there are very few "stun" moves; which really hamstrung non Scorpion/Sub-Zero et al users and made it very unappealing to play with them, near as I can tell the only stuns are environmental or things that burn super meter. Personally I find R2 + button to be terrible to reach for doing EX moves so I rarely do them; but doing the super itself isn't too bad and is generally worth saving for at least for Lex. Out of 50ish matches I saw a grand total of zero stage transitions, if that gives you an idea of how obfuscated and difficult to pull off those moves are; plenty of R1 chucking stuff though. Beating the demo (4 fights) on Very Hard took 2 hours, beating a whole bunch of random people 35 times took less, and I was able to bring even the pre-release combo champions down a round for the most part.

If anyone wants to spar on PS3 let me know, PSN is Valgresas; would be interested in getting good at someone other than Luthor after 100 wins; won't take too long at this rate.

(Another forum post)

Ended the day at 50-18, guess mid game DC's do count. Only had one mirror match, Lex seems like a top 5 character though so wonder when that'll change. Lex vs Green Arrow is an incredible amount of fun since Green Arrow's projectiles aren't instantaneous but still generally powerful and Lex is excellent at closing the distance. I've seen a fair number of Aquaman projectile spammers even though his strength seems to be up close, they're mostly terrible but I thought it odd. Rating is at 1502, the disconnect champion I was talking about earlier is number 5 on the leaderboard, 240-40 but it doesn't list his D/Cs, not entirely clear how D/Cs affect anything considering, but I guess technically I can say I beat a top 5 player twice, even though he sucked.

A really good Green Arrow that was 200-40 was the best match all day. I've played 4 or 5 of the top 20 players, only about half of them seem to know bullshit combos due to pre-release nonsense, the rest are pretty legit. After a bunch of relatively easy matches earlier I had a lot of close calls that were tons of fun to end the day.

(Yet another forum post)

Almost up to 100 wins with Lex now, one of the first in the world based on how few Lex players there are, still just the one mirror match. Only Killer Frost seems more unpopular somehow. Ordinarily a character having tits is enough to make them at least vaguely popular in any multiplayer game but huge props to the Injustice community for shunning Catwoman and Killer Frost, and even though Raven is a bit overpowered she's pretty rare too. Probably switching to Frost for player matches after Luthor, she has the best on demand projectile in terms of damage though there's no EX version, somewhat limited moveset but certainly seems to be a decent character, granted Lex is way better but evidently no one likes his sexiness yet.

Got another 10 ranked streak, this time appropriately rewarded and I think the little icon you get for it is one of the best I've seen so get it while you can gents, will be a tough one in a month or two. Projectile spammers appear to be about 20% of the playerbase, if all of those were Deathstrokes that'd be an issue but it's varied; the only character that seems thoughtfully designed from a pure projectile perspective is Green Arrow, rest just spam the same couple of moves over and over; granted I'd almost prefer it if there were no projectiles but this is a fighting game after all.

Superman and Aquaman appear to be the best two characters, and Superman spammers are probably the most annoying, Lex is probably 4th or 5th due to how incredible his air-charge is. If you want to expedite matches using the environment Watchtower's main area seems to be the most reliable source of things to chuck on a regular basis, particularly if you start on the left and gradually move to the right as the match goes on. I had a 4 streak and a 7 streak in survivor mode but for some reason the leaderboard recorded it as an 11 streak with 1 loss, hurray. That's probably the most fun if you're playing against average players and you're competent, not quite as stifling to them, they can't bitch at you for not switching characters (you can't), and there's always a chance they take you out over the course of a few rounds or you die to too many environment hits or something.

In other news I completed the tutorial and did a few stage transitions! Batman is the most popular character by far though not really annoying in any way so I don't have a problem with that, Green Lantern is second and he has that lame instagrab at range, but aside from that not a particularly annoying character. Joker, Superman, and Deathstroke round out the top 5, but fighting 8 or 9 Deathstrokes out of 120ish matches isn't that bad, he's no Ken/Wesker/Scorpion. Superman is not as overpowered as he was in MK vs DC but probably still slightly better than Aquaman.

Innocence and Innocents

Amid working at an extraordinarily efficient pace in my new job I've had the opportunity to return to that old mainstay, Three Kingdoms, perhaps the finest novel ever written (and one of the first). In view of this and a question asked of me recently I paraphrase a tale from the novel. Cao Cao on the run from the tyrant Dong Zhuo is forced to seek aid from a family friend. He is accompanied by Lu Bu's eventual strategist Chen Gong, an extremely honorable man.

Suspicious of their host Cao Cao investigates a nearby barn where 8 innocent civilians are preparing a feast for him and his companion; but thinking them a murderous party they act impulsively and slay the 8 civilians. On the way out from this calamitous event they meet their host on the road; Cao Cao insists he must leave at once, but then retreads upon the host and slays him as well; so that the word might not get out of the previous atrocity committed. Cao Cao is certainly at a vulnerable state in this point and the move is tactically sound in the vein of self preservation; he even states "Better to wrong the world then have it wrong me." The duality of these 2 events; one an accident and the other wholly intentional is incredible. While the first act was terrible it wasn't premeditated, but the later act of killing his host is a deliberate action to murder an innocent in order to save one's self. These are but 5 pages from a 2400 page book, filled with riveting tales of the same ilk; but yet they resonate even today.

My question is: Is there a point at which killing an innocent civilian in secret to save yourself is good enough for society to be justified? By John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism any action must be considered based on the amount of happiness that it will produce; can the disruption of your personal character, cognitive dissonance, and guilt alongside the death of the innocent be countered by the later societal impact of your demise. If you're say Alexander at his peak, or Bonaparte, or Hannibal and your death would throw your nation into chaos; can you justify this act? In the future you save millions of civilians; is the loss of one innocent and your personal innocence enough to negate that action?

Personally I value the lives of innocents above all else so it would take quite the thing; the first impulsive act I would likely have never performed; preferring to outwit the ambush at the point of attack rather than act uncertainly upon potential benefactors. But the second act is what gives me pause. 1 life or millions; what is the choice, how much happiness is lost, how much is your salvation worth, how much is the world's salvation worth? Indeed the Messiah himself may have thought of such things, both literally and figuratively. An inversion of his ultimate sacrifice. Can another's unwitting forced sacrifice save the world, as it were? Is it ever worth considering such an action?

The eventual end here is probabilistic. What is the expected value of your death upon society, what is the expected value of your loss of afterlife and the loss of the civilian; assuming that is the highest cost to be paid here? Naturally for everyone alive in almost the past 2 centuries it would not ever reach that level; but in the past there have been such men who were in pre-eminent positions. Cao Cao himself would eventually be in such a position; but at that point in his life it was not clear and the act is extremely selfish. Can one selflessly preserve one's self for the betterment of society through a single horrific action? Certainly a lofty thought experiment this; and something to consider. Justice is not so convenient as to align perfectly with morality; even in the absence of a flawed judicial system; it is naive to think you can prevent your own corruption, your own moral depreciation; speaking as a person of the highest moral standard. Deterioration is inevitable; though never unforgivable as Barabas and Christ's companion on the cross would point out; but could you forgive yourself for such a cold, calculated act? Questions without answers these; eternally pondered yet not solved. Yet.

Bridges and Blenheim

Amidst volunteering at a local hospital I've had an opportunity to catch up on my book backlog; and lo a new blog series has started! The first book I read was "Battle For Europe" as I did not know a great deal about campaigns relating to John Churchill, The Duke of Marlborough, Eugene of Savoy, nor Louis XIV. Napoleon spoke with some admiration of the first two, particularly Eugene and I'd like to see if there's much to learn from their campaigns (most often there is). Marlborough is oft referenced as the best British land general; though naturally still in the shadow of Horatio Nelson overall, and Blenheim is his signature victory.

I do not wish to discuss the overarching implications of the battle but instead to focus on a specific event and how that can be viewed and learned from. The battle took place on August 13th, 1704 in Hochstadt, Bavaria directly north of the Danube (the longest river in Europe). The Franco-Bavarian force was arrayed in a superior defensive position, with the two flanks of Marshal Tallard's central force being well guarded by fortified towns and the center having a four meter wide creek. The author suggests this was the pivotal point of the battle; the ability to defend this central crossing effectively.

Fording a river is a frequent military quandary to this day and the general school of thought is that attacking while the enemy is still in the midst of crossing the river is the best option. A second option is to fortify your side of the river and dissuade the enemy from crossing altogether (which could have varying implications but would be unlikely to be decisive except in shifting the focal point of the conflict). Tallard, however, took neither of these courses and instead decided to charge upon the foe with his esteemed Gendarmie cavalry force; though said force performed underwhelmingly in this battle and when the counter offensive finally began Marlborough's force had aligned four lines of troops; a rather powerful beachhead. The French failed to break through here and so began the main phase of the battle. Eventually Tallard's force in the center was utterly routed and the marshal himself captured; while the position of fighting was defensively sound they had failed to account for a necessary retreat route and thus thousands of men drowned in the Danube and thousands more were captured.

However this did not need to happen as obviously a more decisive and forceful action to repulse the crossing of the stream would have effected a different result, as would a simple fortification and defensive holding. France and Bavaria maintained a local numerical superiority in this battle and holding defensively would have worked reasonably well; while a decisive defeat may not have been dealt a tactical victory could certainly have been attained. Though I posit a fourth potential strategy; perhaps not one for Blenheim in particular but in defense of a forded river one could lure the opponent into a weak center in a similar fashion to Hannibal's masterpiece Cannae and then converge simultaneously on the disparate front and the troops still crossing the river; with pontoons and support a potential counter crossing to cut off retreat in this process would be quite functional. Though a difficult maneuver to perform a merging of Cannae and Frederick the Great's Rossbach could allow for an exceptional victory to echo across the ages.

However, Blenheim; though certainly a significant battle historically, is not all that tactically interesting; apart from the mysteries of having 3 concurrent small conflicts on the same battlefield with only a modest amount of support from either wing. This battle should be hailed as a catastrophic failure on the part of Tallard; Marlborough simply took advantage. However he did not take advantage in a particularly interesting nor innovative fashion and thus his contribution as a commander is somewhat limited in comparison with great semi-contemporary European marshals; Turenne, Conde, Frederick the Great, Gustavus Adolphus, and Napoleon. I have yet to come to a determination as to Eugene of Savoy's merit and shall investigate this matter further.

Academy Awards

2012 was a very solid year for movies, with several viable Best Picture nominations and 2 of the best super hero movies ever made. Additionally I actually went to the trouble of seeing most of the major nominees and can give a decent projection as well as an informed opinion on who should have won. I've yet to see Argo or Django Unchained, but aside from Best Director snubs those shouldn't factor in too heavily. I don't have an opinion on every category, but I will provide what I can for most. The biggest thing to note this year is how arthousey and obscure most of the nominated films are; thus reducing public interest in the spectacle significantly.

Best Picture

What Should Win? Lincoln is the most complete film of the year with some of the best performances, it gives an insightful look into American politics past and the various wheeling and dealing necessary to defeat slavery in an all-North congress. James Spader and Tommy Lee Jones give the best comedic performances of the year alongside Daniel Day Lewis' always excellent presence as the man himself. Zero Dark Thirty is certainly a solid film worth seeing but it isn't all that memorable apart from historical context and will probably fade swiftly into distant memory.

Favorite: Lincoln, though Argo has a shot due to backlash over Best Director.

Snubs: Avengers, Skyfall, and The Dark Knight Rises. Well this is pretty simple, they expanded the nominee list for Best Picture so they could include peripheral films that wouldn't actually win, and these three movies literally carried the box office this year, without them it would have been absolutely disasterous and apart from just being solid movies they deserve recognition for saving the industry.

Best Actor

Who Should Win? Daniel Day Lewis of course, but that's not to knock several people who weren't even nominated. DDL is an academy favorite and always delivers compelling performances. If anything his not winning for Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York sealed his victory of the next 2 Oscars and maybe going forward in perpetuity. He's also not a huge celebrity and takes huge breaks between films, so he doesn't have to be nominated every year like Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep in order to win several times.

Favorite: Daniel Day Lewis

Snubs: Ben Affleck for Argo, Javier Bardem for Skyfall; Skyfall has the best villain in Bond movie history and supporting actor is overcrowded (he also has fairly extensive screentime) so why not put him here in recognition of his efforts. Ideally we'd have another year where DDL and Javier won simultaneously; as both most certainly deserved it; but alas.

Best Actress

Who Should Win? Well I actually don't know, nor does 99.9% of the American populace; but it's safe to say Jessica Chastain is a solid choice. Even though her character is almost certainly fictional the constant juxtaposition of a male dominated profession and a female key participant works wonders in Zero Dark Thirty and makes her excellent performance all the more memorable.

Favorite: Jessica Chastain

Snubs: Marion Cotillard for The Dark Knight Rises, just a superb performance all around and delivers the key twist that almost no one saw coming. Of course post apocalyptic dystopian future movies are almost as unlikely to be nominated as superhero movies, if The Road is any indication.

Best Director

Who Should Win? At least one of the Snubs of course, most notable being Affleck and his continued hatred for the Academy continues to pay dividends. The direction is the weakest part of Lincoln as the film could have been 20 minutes shorter and been much tighter and engaging but Spielberg insisted on having completely extraneous seasons at the beginning and the end alongside historical speeches, that while effectively given, are completely unrelated to the plot. The Emancipation Proclamation is all that was needed to engage the audience and please historians alike.

Favorite: Steven Spielberg

Snubs: Hoo Boy, the category with more better deserving snubs than the entire list of nominees. Affleck, Bigelow, Nolan, Tarantino, Joss Whedon, Sam Mendes. Really it is unfortunate that Spielberg is going to win by default as this would have been the most interesting category to debate and any one of the above 6 would have been more interesting victors; even the assholes.

Best Cinematography

Who Should Win? Well this one's actually extremely debatable; Skyfall has some incredibly shot parts and combined with Javier Bardem's performance it is able to add a huge amount to the film and solidify it as one of the top 3 Bond movies depending on your preference. Roger Deakins is the best in the business and has yet to win this award, so why not pick Skyfall. However personally I was more interested in Lincoln's visuals, but that's probably a historical bias.

Favorite: Skyfall

Snubs: Zero Dark Thirty is the big one here; no clue why it isn't nominated as it would be yet another one that would be difficult to debate between alongside Skyfall and Lincoln. I haven't seen Life of Pi so I can't really comment on how that competes, but this is one of the best indicators of a rewatchable and interesting film as how a movie is shot determines quite a lot. Prometheus could also have been a potential nominee.

Overall not as good a year as 2010 and not nearly as good of choices for nominees, but certainly a fantastic year for film and snub discussion. Unfortunately the early spread this year, despite being massively overpopulated, has failed to deliver on almost all counts; the exception is Arnold's return in The Last Stand which sadly hasn't been a particular box office success.

In the future I'll be discussing a very interesting topic which is fairly new for this blog and additionally a comparison between Arkham City and Arkham Asylum; as I've recently gone back to them.

Zero Dark Thirty

Zero Dark Thirty is an excellent film/docu-drama. Every major event that happens in the movie is historical and it’s left to the audience to determine the rest of its historicity and accuracy. Since the vast majority of the characters are CIA operatives they all have dummy names and even the depictions of those in higher offices aren’t officially named in the movie at any point. Obama isn’t even mentioned by name and is simply titled “the President” the few times he’s mentioned (though there is an interview prominently displayed in the background of one of the scenes).

This film had an odd development route as it began pre-production before Osama Bin Laden was actually killed, thus there are basically 2 predominant story arcs and kind of 2 protagonists.  Ordinarily this would make such a film extremely disjointed but the way they handle the second protagonist makes it work and one might say it is convenient. We basically see the whole film from the eyes of said second protagonist, played by Jessica Chastain, while the first eventually fades into the background.

This film doesn’t really have any staggering surprises; there’s one extended setup in which the outcome is fairly obvious to anyone not aware of the historical event referenced (such as myself), and that’s maybe the film’s biggest weak point but it does provide a “killer” motivation to the main character. But again it’s all very convenient. Every character in this film seems to be based on an actual person, except for the main character. Now I’m sure there were about 5 different people that had her role in different situations and several of the things she says (and things that happen to her) were probably actually said at specific points, but overall her existence is a bit too plot convenient.

I do not think the protagonist being mostly fictional is bad for the film, In fact it probably drives the film’s plot forward the best way possible. However if Osama hadn’t died I do think the first protagonist is an actual person and thus made the character immensely more interesting in retrospect. It’s just a curious way to look at the film. Jessica Chastain may very well win an Oscar for her performance in this movie, which is certainly a solid choice; but a direct reflection of an actual person in a docu-drama appeals to me more. Apart from that the depiction of the assault on Bin Laden's compound seems to be roughly 95-99% historical with very little intrusion on the part of the director to either vilify or overly praise the participants; and is quite interesting in general.

Note: I still have to see Argo but other than that fairly prepared to write an Oscars post a la 2010, I also saw Drive recently which I think deserves a review and maybe some additional praise for 2011 as not quite as terrible as once believed.