Melancholia

"Melancholia" is the latest film by Danish "national hero" Lars von Trier. It stars Kirsten Dunst as Justine and Charlotte Gainsbourg as her sister Claire.
The movie begins with Justine's wedding. After a failed party, her husband leaves Justine and she falls into heavy depression. Claire attempts to nurse Justine back to health, while the rest of the world is obsessed with a huge "hidden planet", which is moving towards Earth. Rightfully so, because it happens to hit Earth and destroy all life in the Universe.
Lars von Trier has a very unique handwriting when it comes to making movies. Beautiful and well composited wide shots are mixed with shaky handycam closeups, making his films both powerful yet very personal; sotrywriting seems to ignore conventional rules, still the flow is flawless. However, there isn't much in "Melancholia" that hasn't already been seen, it's like "Antichrist" without horror. Also, the social awkwardness  of a failed celebration reminds too much of another Danish film - "Celebration" ("Festen") from 1998. And the whole "big planet comes and destroys everything" aspect isn't as dramatic as it was probably planned.
If you've seen Antichrist, then you remember how the movie focused on one couple so heavily that all the other character's faces were blurred out. Watching "Melancholia", you can see why - most of support characters are stereotypes and caricatures. Although Kiefer Sutherland has a very powerful presence, anchoring the unpredictable actions of mentally unstable main characters. While watching the film, I couldn't remember, where I had seen the actor who played the shy groom. Wikipedia helped, that was Alexander Skarsgård, main character of HBO's "Generation: Kill".

Should watch that again. In high res....

Saiko

Glemm's design

So now Saiko's Food n' Guns has a proper design.
Many thanks goes to glemm, whose blog you can find at http://m6te.blogspot.com/.

Saiko

From Dust

"From Dust" is a so-called god game from Ubisoft, in which player takes control of the prime elements to help a tribe survive and reach it's goals. Depending on where you direct your followers, player gains various abilities to manipulate the nature even further and can even call tsunamis and build mountains. It happens to be a very charming and technically impressive game. Yet the gameplay feels kind of shallow, as if there should be more to do in this game. You start a level, direct your tribe where they need to go, use some new abilities, build a few hills, next level, rinse, repeat... There isn't much challenge (except the last level which I haven't beaten yet, arrrgh!) and the whole experience feels a bit empty. Then again, the game only costs 15 euros at release and it's a download-only title, so it shouldn't be viewed as a full game.
Now to the really bad part...
The PC port for "From Dust" is just awful! A player controlled world-manipulating game with water physics and majestic world sounds exactly like something that PC-gamers want to test their new graphics cards on but alas, we can't. Not only that, there are no graphics options other than resolution, which is crazy. The game looks jagged and textures are muddy, there has been reports of locked FPS and screen tearing. And to top it all off, the game requires a constant internet connection despite Ubisoft officially claiming otherwise before launch. I'm pretty sure the reason behind all this was incompetence and not cruel intentions but this was enough for Steam (as online distributor) to offer refunds to people who bought the game.
I don't know what's wrong with Ubisoft. Their neglect to PC gamers and insisting always-online DRMs are getting constantly worse, as are their games. Think it through guys, consoles aren't getting any younger and the next next generation is far from sight! At the same time, new PC parts are getting better and cheaper. The PC crowd will rise again, and ignoring them is not a bright idea. I mean, have you seen what GTA 4 (also originally a very crappy port) looks like these days?

Rant over, I rest my case.

Saiko

Way Back

Recently I happened to watch "The Way Back", a 2010 film by Peter Weir ("Master and Commander", "Dead Poets Society") starring Ed Harris and Colin Farrell. It tells the story of a group of prisoners who escaped from Siberian Gulag and walked all the way to India.
Movies about struggling to freedom seem to resonate well with almost everyone ("Shawshank Redemption" still being number one of Top 250 at imdb.com) but "The Way Back" isn't particulary involving. You don't get to know the characters very well and the escape itself is so brief and confuzing that you're stuck with thinking "this is it?". However, it appears that "The Way Back" is somewhat of a slow burner and it gets better when the long journey goes further. The viewer feels the hunger, exhaustion and mental stress of the ragged band of escapees as they reach China, only to find out that China too is taken by communism. Cold and merciless Siberia gets replaced by a vast dry desert and just surviving becomes a real test of strength and willpower.
Still, the whole movie seems like somewhat of a missed opportunity. It jumps impatiently from one sequence to another and doesn't ever really pay off. The characters remain foggy and their motivation for pushing themselves to the very limit makes little sense. The whole project might work well if it was all an epic true story that simply needs to be told but this is not the case. "The Way Back" is simply "inspired by" a tale of some guys who might have escaped Gulag at some point. As a work of fiction, the movie unfortunately doesn't hold water.
Yet, it's not a bad a movie. "The Way Back" is still a quite human story about survivalism and the crimes of Communism. Plus, Saoirse Ronan gives a strong performance and Colin Farrell tries to be a russian thug. That's something worth seeing I guess.

Saiko

Limbo

Danish 2D platformer "Limbo" was released last year for XBox Live Arcade and was very well received. It depicts a small boy waking up in limbo (a mythological place between heaven and hell) and tries to survive in this surreal and hostile environment. Now the 1-year exclusivity has been lifted and us PC gamers (also PS3 gamers) got a taste.
Damn...
There was some discussion awhile back (spawned from ignorant rantings of film critic Roger Ebert) whether computer games can be art or not. Well, the artistic value of "Limbo" can not be ignored. At first you may think it's just an artsy-fartsy black-n-white Super Mario remake or whatever but it's not the case at all. "Limbo" has a soul and a very unique eerie atmosphere, yet it makes absolutely no compromises when it comes to it's execution: perfect sound design, masterful use of light and shadows, intriguing puzzles, good animations... The main problems are the game's short length and a very abrupt ending.
The talent and dedication behind this game should not be ignored and I'm very much looking forward to Playdead Studio's next projects.

Saiko

Beavis and Butt-Head

It's hard to believe that Beavis and Butt-Head will actually be returning. You don't see a lot of shows returning after a 14-year (!) hiatus. Also, judging from the footage presented here, it's pretty good. Apparently the whole concept has aged well and the new stuff seems to be a nice blend of old and new.
In case you didn't know, Beavis and Butt-Head were pop icons back in the 90-s. The main stars of this MTV show (people used to watch MTV back then) were two sociopathic teenage boys, who only cared about scoring (which they never did), heavy music and nachos. In addition to spending their time on playing with dead animals and the like, Beavis and Butt-Head reviewed music videos. Usually their evaluations fell into two categories - "this rocks!" or "this sucks!". Mainly the latter.
It was fucking awesome and I can't wait for the new stuff. The creator of the show - Mike Judge - has been busy with "King of the Hill", "Office Space" and "Idiocracy" in the meantime so here's hoping that his wit is as sharp as ever. The new episodes premiere on October 27th.

Saiko

Venetian Snares

Here's something that really blew my mind. Venetian Snares is a Canadian electronic music artist, whose style might be compared to Aphex Twin and Squarepusher. Odd number time signatures and hardcore samples don't make for an easy listening but once you get into it, you can't come back. This particular video fits a great track perfectly, shame it's only available in quite a low resolution. Beware some ear-damaging sounds in the middle of the video.
Venetian Snares is confusingly productive, making it hard to navigate in all the albums. From what I've listened myself, I suggest "Detrimentalist", especially tracks "Sajtban" and "Eurocore". Check it out!

Saiko

Diablo 3 is going to have real money auction houses

It was recently confirmed that Diablo 3 - the upcoming action RPG by Blizzard - is going to include auction houses, where you can change in-game items for real money. As you might guess, there has been some riff-raff about it on the internet. People are worried that this will encourage "gold farming", reward real-life wealth instead of game skill and push players to crime among other things. Meh, I say. The real-money items market is going on for Diablo 2 anyways, why not make it legal and safe. Sure, some kids will have deluded ideas that playing the game will make them tons of money and use it as an excuse to abandon their social, education and/or work life. Sure, some Chinese guy is going to sell his kidneys and eyes for a new Monk staff. Crazy world, I know... But playing the game and achieving it's goals takes time and time costs money, so some people are willing to make the monetary sacrifice. It's quite natural.
I'm more worried by the lousy cutscenes and art that as been released recently by Blizzard (like the Demon Hunter trailer you can see above). Diablo 2 is one of my favorite games of all times (if not THE favorite) and I still play it every now and then. I know I will be playing Diablo 3 a lot when it comes out. It might be even this year, though it doesn't seem very likely. I'm a bit more worried about the game's constant need for internet connection. It's not an MMO youknow. Syncing online and offline play is quite possible these days as far as I know.
We will be talking more about this game...

Saiko
Read more about it: Eurogamer Diablo III preview

Sucker Punch

I've always thought of Zack Snyder as one of my favorite directors. Watchmen, Dawn of the Dead, 300 are true new-ages movies, speaking fluently in the beautiful language of film. Visceral yet poetic, energetical but visually stunning, this is a directing style I get. And now there's Sucker Punch...
What a mess...
I mean really: a musical with crappy music, an action movie with bad action, a simple minded mindfuck... What is this film really trying to be? Everything at the same time? There's samurai demons, nazi zombies, robots and dragons - all crammed up in a Moulin Rogue style chick-flick? Poor Zack is in way over his head, no aspect of this very ambitious project works.  The visuals are average at best, the cast is remarkably weak, plot vague and uninteresting.
I have no idea why Zack Snyder made this film - whether he lost a bet, had a serious drug problem at the time or promised an orphan to turn her story into a Hollywood blockbuster, this has to be the low-point of his career. I really hope he recovers though...

Saiko