Frozen's snowman mascot continues to freak me the hell out.

I get the economics behind children's entertainment. I get why Avatar has all those cutesy hybrid animals. I get why every princess movie needs a Flounder or a Chip or that chameleon in Tangled (which in itself was kind of an awesome about face on what girls should keep as pets).

Which brings me to this... this, thing:

"A flash of lightning illuminated the object, and discovered its shape plainly to me; its gigantic stature, and the deformity of its aspect more hideous than belongs to humanity, instantly informed me that it was the wretch, the filthy daemon, to whom I had given life."

English Major!

It's design is so lazy, yet simultaneously overproduced. Looking at it is like staring the soulless bureaucracy of Disney filmmaking in the eyes and I don't like what I see. It feels like one half of the production just couldn't be bothered to give two sh*ts (design), and the other is pulling all their dead weight (everyone else). If I directed this I'd make sure Olaf was either the most visually intersting character in the film, or that he was barely in the trailer and had absolutely nothing to do with marketing material.

It's gentle swinging hips follow you around the lobby and it is all you will see when you close your eyes at night.

Shockingly, we don't live in a world where we can just wish ourselves to the helm of a new Disney property. But what I do get to do is watch from the sidelines slowly and ominously shaking my head while judging a book by it's cover. You know what kills me though? I like Josh Gad. I really really do. He deserves better than this forgettable, by committee, homunculus.

The Stanley Parable DEMO Review.

You may think it odd I would review a demonstration of a product, being that I haven't actually experienced said product and would literally be judging a book by it's sales pitch. But we aren't talking about books, we're talking about video games! So stop being silly.

I've played quite a few demos in my day, but never before has a demo actually failed to produce a demonstration. In the 15 to 17 hours I spent with the Stanley Parable demo (I couldn't see the sun so time was obviously meaningless) all I saw was a so called "narrator" falling over himself to impress upon me the worthiness of his product. An endeavor in which he failed most spectacularly.

I experienced nothing down there, absolutely nothing at all. No tantalizing foreshadowing, no dramatic irony, no existential guilt, not even a sliver of angst or regret. How dare a narrator tell me how to feel?! It was beyond insulting. Both intellectually and logically... and emotionally.
 
And almost physically.

Perhaps the narrator would be better served in a different vocation, one in which he is not so hilariously ill suited. I am not sure which, so don't yell at me. Just know that The Stanley Parable demo is a spectacular failure of both epic and prodigious proportions.

Now will someone PLEASE... tell me why I can't stop crying?

It's absolutely brilliant.

Frictional's SOMA has me wide awake.

Things have been a bit hectic for me lately. Not so much work related as resume and cover letter related... *sigh.* I've seriously considered calling this the Every Other Daily Crackpot. But back to business. I love horror. Correction: I love horror done right. Which means I'll see one foreign horror film every two years, and one American horror film every 6 years. That's the time it takes for the global film industry to get it right. I'm talkin' El Orfanato, the original Paranormal Activity, and The Conjuring. I love great horror, and I have little to no patience for chaff.

The greatest thing about the golden age of indie gaming has been a respectable return for the horror title. Starting with Amnesia, running through Slender, and all the way up to Outlast, the last few years have seen a much better track record in gaming than in film. You may know that Amnesia's devs didn't work on "A Machine for Pigs" and I've been dying to see what Frictional was up to in the mean time. Well... now we know.


                        

 Yup. I've got my wallet right here and... what's that? 2015!? 

Well, dang.

Oh yeah... Amalur wasn't half bad.

Maybe you've heard of Amalur a couple years back. Or maybe you heard about how it's publisher was run by (and into the ground) by pitcher legend Curt Schilling. The long, sad, story of 38 studios is worthy of several  posts and Monday morning quarterbacking. But that's not gonna happen just yet, because I'm pretty distracted by the one product they did manage to ship: KoA: Reckoning.

I played it for a good play through and a half about two years ago, thought it was ok, put it down and didn't touch it again until last Saturday. I'm having a ball. I now know how big it is (gargantuan) how good the story is (not very), how convincing the acting is (uniformly better than Skyrim's), and if certain crafting recipes snap the game's economy like a twig (you bet'cha).

Armed with my tapered expectations and a whole season of Superego running in the background, I was ready for what, if anything, held up. Almost everything did, surprisingly. It is a truly massive single player RPG with fun and fluid real time combat; as well as a rewarding leveling system that lets you mix and match the traditional thief, warrior, mage, fare. Not to mention a deep blacksmithing skill that let's you name all your stuff! I love crap like that. I've got a dagger named "Brutus's Brunt" and a frost staff called "The Witch's Spit." Love it.

But while I am skipping conversations and using fast travel as early and as often as I'm able, there is something that gives me pause. That is Grant Kirkhope's amazing score:

The publisher's tarnished reputation aside, this is absolutely worth your time. So what if the story is kind of a mess? So what if the last third becomes appallingly easy if you're even half invested in any crafting skill? It's beautiful, fun, and spectacularly well made. Plus, isn't it free for PS Plus users right now?

Come on, it straight up looks fun, admit it!

Gravity Review: Slipping the Surly Bonds of Hype

I want call this a science fiction epic, but I'm not sure that applies. I mean it technically is fiction, and about science, but there's nothing remotely fantastical about it. This could happen, we have the technology. In that sense a movie about a mining disaster is sci-fi. But enough abut that crap, I'm here to shout what you've already heard everywhere else, that gravity is amazing. That somewhere between 2001 and Die Hard is a masterpiece of dramatic tension and Newtonian physics. That you should choose to eat dinner afterwards, and that all the technical Oscars this year belong to it.

You will believe you're trapped in space. There wasn't a single moment I doubted where I was. The fact this movie used so much green screen you could make the argument it was an animated film is astonishing. You need to see it in IMAX, but if that's too rich for your blood, the 2D theater experience is almost just as good. That's right, I've seen it twice, it's that unique. That's the best part about Gravity, you've never truly seen anything like it. It's slavish commitment to the awkward physics of anti-gravity is absolute. You feel just as helpless as Dr. Stone, which reminds me of the other surprising thing about the film.

I would have bet money years ago that I'd never see an award caliber performance form Sandra Bullock. Don't get me wrong, I love her to pieces, and I've paid good money for her films good and bad. But I see her getting another Oscar for this. Her character progression is phenomenal. A realistic reaction to the petrifying death sentence of her situation with a bad-ass streak that only get's stronger with time. Gravity's "all is lost" moment is hard to get a bead on at first because it seems like every other scene is an "all is lost" moment. But you'll know it when you see it, it's a performance so quietly heartbreaking, it earns floating anti-gravity tears. That's amazing, because that's ridiculous.

But I do have a bone to pick with wardrobe. I know this was an expensive movie to make and I don't want to wade into the gender politics required to make an $80 million movie with a female lead. I just don't think Bullock pulling a "Ripley" was necessary. Sure Cuaron does his damnedest to make it a visually metaphorical scene, but a panty shot is a panty shot and it's on the wrong side of voyeuristic.

You just want to reach through the screen and give her a hug.

That's a nit pick, I'll admit it, I'm usually the last person to complain about Sandra Bullock's legs. But even so, it's an easy scene to put out of your mind for the rest of the roller coaster ride. And buddy? It's intense. Even if you groan through all the banter and character development (Stone's back story is pretty clunky) the action beats and oxygen based ticking clocks are the new high water marks of dramatic tension on film. I've never heard an entire audience collectively gasp for breath before... it was priceless. If you're sick of the deafening cacophony of modern action scenes, know that the best bits of gravity take place in almost total silence. It's terrifying.

So do yourself a favor and dig your fingernails into an armrest for 90 minutes. This is the kind of film making that makes the tide rise. The kind of movie that makes everyone in the business try a little harder. It may not have the ponderous atmosphere of Kubrick's masterpiece, but I assure you he's beaming in his grave all the same.

Damon Lindelof's Mea Culpa.

I actively hate the last 10 years of M. Night Shyamalan's career. A shocking stance for a film critic to take, I know, but bear with me. He's just so aggressively set in his ways, so intrenched into his most irritating shortcomings as an artist. He cannot, and will not, take criticism. When the tide first started to turn against him after The Village (the last film of his I actually liked) what does he turn around and do? He casts himself in his next film as a prophet, whose critic is mauled by wolves.

It's crap like that which frustrate me the most. He's not a William Castle type, reveling in the shlock he makes with a knowing wink. No, he's a deluded hack who refuses to even address his issues, let alone attempt to fix them. Which brings me to Damon Lindelof. I think he's a talented writer who's earned his place at the table without being too mainstream. Aside from Prometheus, I think his career has been rock solid. But like M., he's got problems. He can get a story off the ground like a champ, but his landings are rocky at best. I didn't actively hate the Lost finale... but I could have waited a whole year for them to make a TV movie to get it right. Now that I think about it, that whole last season was a non starter. As soon as the temple showed up I crossed my arms and said "Sh*t. They're not wrapping up a damn thing." And they didn't. It wasn't the disaster many have claimed (did you see the crap they pulled on Dexter?!) But there was a ton of room for improvement.

The last couple years has shown a more defensive and bitter Damon who got increasingly irritable about answering, over and over, why he made the Lost ending suck. That would make any of us bitter "You know that business you helped start 8 years ago? Why did you suck at it so much?" Come on guys, we would all punch that dick in the face. So when Breaking Bad ended softly and satisfyingly (review inbound) Damon got this tweet: "Did you see that, Lindelof? That's how you end a show."

How did he respond? Brilliantly:


"I agreed to write this piece because I am deeply and unhealthily obsessed with finding ways to revisit the Lost finale and the maddening hurricane of s*** that has followed it, I am Walter White. Arrogant. Conceited. Selfish. Entitled. Looking for ways to blame everything and everyone but myself, even though it is perfectly clear the situation I find myself in is of my own making. And here's the worst part: I'm still naive enough to believe I can attain some level of redemption." 

"I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really...I was alive."


Bravo, sir. And thank you for your humility. We did not deserve it, but you gave it anyway. I hope you grow as an artist from this, and that others will follow... I really liked Into Darkness, too. So there's that.

What I've been watchin'

Derek.

I, like most of you I'm assuming, cringed when you heard Ricky Gervais would be playing a mentally retarded man in a nursing home. I felt like his heart was in the right place, but I put it on the back burner for a week or two. That was a shame, because it's a soberingly honest show with nothing but love for the handicapped. Mentally or otherwise.

It doesn't make the character of Derek precious or anything. Like the criminally underrated "The Ringer"it shows the handicapped as they are. Not too dim, not too likable, just human. My biggest mistake was thinking it was a comedy, but like Orange is the New Black before it, I adjusted to how bleak it was going to be. The first five minutes felt like an entire episode, that's how draining it is. This is not a "curl up with a cup of tea before bed" kind of a deal, you gotta be ready to feel for the twilight years of your fellow man. Derek's sh*t is real, I guess we have Netlix to thank for that.

But that's not to say it isn't funny, hamster on a piano is gonna be stuck in my head for weeks, but it is more of a character piece. Karl Pilkington plays along as the caretaker the best he can. If you don't know the back story on the guy you may have no idea what I'm talking about. But watching the look behind his eyes that scream "I can't believe Ricky talked me into this" adds another extra layer that makes him even more strangely endearing. 

So... yeah, it's pretty damn good. Somber, but poignant. It's worth a shot.