American History A thru X... Featuring the Quest for Love

TELEVISION:

Roots
Miniseries, 1977

Roots: The Next Generations
Miniseries, 1979



The TV miniseries adaptation of Alex Haley's Roots has loomed large in the background of my psyche ever since I saw it as a child in 1977.  I subconsciously expect everyone to have seen it and integrated it into their view of American history, and it sometimes shocks me when I realize that I'm talking to someone who doesn't understand the less-than-idyllic perspective of this country that Roots makes clear.

Roots and Roots: The Next Generations (henceforth to be referred to collectively as "Roots" unless otherwise specified) tells the story of one branch of author Alex Haley's American family, from "the African" Kunta Kinte, brought to America as a slave before the Revolutionary War, on up to Haley's publication of Roots: The Saga of an American Family in 1976.  Haley has always called the book a work of "faction," being based on what facts he could glean from oral family history and surviving records, with gaps filled in by the general truth of African-American history and out-and-out fictive storytelling to make the whole pastiche tell a story.



The Saga of an American Family

The long, long journey begins with Kunta Kinte, a young African tribesman in the area now known as Gambia.  One day in the 1760s, he was out looking for a tree to carve into a drum when he was captured by white slavers and packed like merchandise into a ship's hold for delivery to the American Colonies, enduring the horrors that we now understand such a journey to have entailed.  Kunta, we are shown, resists more than most and ultimately suffers the consequences for his untamed spirit.  He's whipped severely and eventually has half of one foot cut off to keep him from running away again.

In addition to a general desire for freedom, part of Kunta's motivation for running away is to see another slave from the ship that he has fallen in love with, but he eventually "jumps the broom" with Belle, a born and bred American slave.  They have a daughter whom he names "Kizzy," a word from his tribe meaning to "stay put."

But Kizzy doesn't stay put.  She grew up alongside her owner's daughter, who thought it would be funny to teach her to read and write.  When Kizzy gets older, she forges some travelling papers for a fellow slave she had fallen in love with.  This leads her owner to sell her to a much less "gentlemanly" farmer, who has a particular fondness for the sexual company of young slave girls.

Kizzy has a son by him named George.  He grows to become an expert cock-fighter, gaining the title Chicken George.  Unlike his mother and grandfather, George is not a born runner.  His prowess with the roosters grants him something of an elevated status, though less than that of a "house" slave.  It's only later his life, when he grows in his perspective of his owner's abuses and betrayals that he sets his sights more and more on freedom.  George marries Matilda and they have a son, Tom.  When their owner falls on hard times, he hires out Chicken George to a wealthier man who can still afford high stakes cock-fighting, promising George his freedom when he returns in three years (a promise he has betrayed before).

Three years turns into significantly more, but as promised, George is granted his freedom when he returns.  Unfortunately, free blacks are not allowed to live in the county where Matilda and Tom are owned, so George is absent from their lives for years at a time.  They are finally reunited when the Civil War frees them all.  This, roughly, constitutes the arc of the original Roots miniseries.

In The Next Generations, Tom takes the stage, leading the family out of slavery and the abuses of sharecropping. Tom is able to carry over a marketable skill from slavery and earns what is for a freed slave, a respectable income as a blacksmith.  This puts him in a leadership position in the negro community, which in turn sees him courted by white politicians.  When the Klan becomes active, he starts notching a code into the horseshoes of suspected white men, thus revealing their identities.  Turning them in backfires on him, and race relations in town go from antipathy to antagonism.

This places him on the front line of political betrayal as politicians lobby for their support as voters, while competing to be the biggest racist available for the white vote.  When the whites conclude that it would just be easier to deny blacks the vote, it's Tom who bears the humiliation of literacy testing and insulting denial of his rights with measured dignity.

Tom's daughter Cynthia courts and eventually married Will Palmer.  Will has had the good sense to see an opportunity for stable work and proved himself to the owner of the lumber yard.  He keeps the business running despite the aging, unreliable, alcoholic owner and eventually the community leaders (including the bank that holds the mortgage) ask him to take over operation of this essential community function.  The Palmer family grows into the middle class, which naturally begets resentment from ignorant white farmers.

Will is able to send his daughter Bertha to college where she falls in love with Simon Haley, the son of a poor sharecropper.  Simon's father decides he can't afford any more useless schooling for his son, but Simon is committed -- not just to elevating himself, but the race.  He spends a summer working as a Pullman coach porter.  He experiences the betrayals of corporate America and witnesses the traps set for the working negro -- both the external; such as company spies trying to shake loose potential union agitators, and the internal; such as gambling addiction.  He dedicates himself to sticking it out, and in a chance encounter demonstrates dignified customer service and thoughtful humanity to a patron who turns out to be the publisher of the Saturday Evening Post.  When he shows the faith to return to school without being sure where he's going to get the rest of his tuition, he finds that the publisher has already paid it, provided that Simon had the will to take a chance on himself.

No sooner than Simon has completed his bachelor's degree (literally no sooner, in fact, on the very day), he joins the army to serve in World War I, with ideas of elevating the image and position of American negroes through service.  The negro soldiers are given the worst jobs and treated as cannon fodder, but he survives.  He returns to an America where news photos of black soldiers with guns have paranoid racists terrified beyond reason, and Simon and his friends are caught up in the Knoxville race riots of 1919.

After that, Simon and Bertha are finally able to get on with their life together.  Simon earns a Master's Degree in agriculture and goes to work helping farmers to get the most from their land without sucking it dry.  As you might expect, poor white farmers react adversely to an educated black man suggesting what they should or should not grow on their land -- or in most cases, the landowner's land.  When a landowner tries to swindle a black sharecropper, Simon is literally caught in the crossfire.  Simon and Bertha have three sons, including Alex Haley.

Alex is resistant to his father's plans for him, dropping out of college at 17 and ending up in the Coast Guard, at Simon's insistence that military service would do him good (seemingly forgetting the Hell that it was for him).  While serving in perpetual kitchen duty in the Guard, World War II breaks out.  At a church-sponsored dance for servicemen, Alex meets Nan, whom he courts chastely over the course of several dances, and eventually marries, apparently on the crest of teenage hormones.

During the war, Alex develops a talent -- and a cottage industry -- for writing love letters on the behalf of his shipmates to their girls.  This begins to pull writing into focus as his passion.  After the war, he's so committed to writing that he ignores his wife and children, and they eventually leave him.  He continues to struggle to get work and scrapes by writing for magazines.  Magazine assignments include interviews with the George Lincoln Rockwell; head of the American Nazi party, and Malcolm X.  The latter turns into a full book length autobiography, which was Haley's first high-profile work.

Following this, he begins to take more and more of an interest in the family's oral history of "The Old African" Kunta Kinte and the generations that flowed from him.  Again, he becomes obsessed with his work, neglecting his relationship with his then girlfriend.  He follows the threads of history through what few records remain, and finally talks a publisher into funding a trip to Gambia to complete his research.  In Gambia, he is introduced to a griot (storyteller) from the Mandinka tribe, who tells him the story of the tribe, including the capture of Kunta Kinte.  The circle is complete.




Now, there's obviously a lot more to the story than this, and I did a deliberately incomplete job of summarizing it, but I felt it was necessary to provide some framework for the considerations to follow.  I left out a lot of the horrible treatment perpetrated against Haley and his ancestors, and I also left out most of the occurrences of white conscience, but they are there in the series.



The Goods

As a production, Roots is showing its age, much in the way that Kunta Kinte showed his age by turning from a young LeVar Burton to a middle-aged John Amos in the space of six years.  It didn't have the highest production values to begin with, being a television production of the 1970s.  Many scenes look like the product of the Universal back lot.

The performances, in particular, have not aged with the greatest of grace.  Many of the actors are suited to the tastes of another age and there are some over-the-top, stagey, or just -- ahem -- not-so-good moments in the acting.  It plays as melodrama more than drama in places.  Then again, there are still plenty of powerful and touching moments.  These things will matter more to some than others.  We're living in an age where naturalism is a given expectation for many, and yet Halle Barry and Renee Zellweger have both won Oscars, so there's that.

For film buffs, it's fun to watch just for the stars bursting from the seams.  From Ed Asner and LeVar Burton to James Earl Jones and Marlon Brando with most of the black actors of the 70s, Henry Fonda and Olivia de Havilland in between.

One of the weaker links in the series is the music.  There are many times when it seems really inappropriate in tone.  This is owed largely to a lot of aw-shucksy good-ol'-times-in-Dixie banjo in awkward places.  The variations on the primary Roots theme, however, maintain a sense of consistency as one family thread weaves through time.

That being said, the narrative remains powerful, creating an engaging emotional link between the viewer and the characters that threads throughout the history of the United States.  Where something like (the perfectly good) 12 Years a Slave presents us with an isolated story of one black man who was made a slave, Roots gives us a greater context for this experience.  We see it from different angles, in different times, with a broader inclusion of the families it involved.  And then we see that history evolve as America evolved, and the lineage of one family connected, generation by generation into a time and America that we more closely recognize as our own.  It takes it out of isolation and makes it ours.  It disallows us from treating our history as something separate from our world today.  This is still one of the most important things to have ever run on broadcast television and it's a shame that it isn't run more often.  It ought to be part of the curriculum in American schools, public or otherwise.



Fact, Fiction, "Faction," Factions and Truth

As I mentioned earlier, Haley calls Roots a work of "faction," which is to say that it a blending of fact and fiction.  It's a given that he wasn't present for two hundred year old conversations, but as it turns out, some of the presumed facts were not necessarily so.  Shortly after the miniseries aired on television, Haley was sued for plagiarism by another author, and settled with him, admitting that certain parts of Kunta Kinte's story had been inspired by a book called The African by Harold Courlander.  Furthermore, not all of the details about Kunta square up with historical records.  On top of this, it is alleged that the Mandinka griot Haley met may not have been a griot at all, but told the story he believed Haley wanted to hear.

Because of these inconsistencies, you will find some people on the internet declaring the entire work a lie and a scam.  Racist organizations and individuals use these elements to discount the entire narrative because, frankly, it makes them and their racist pappy and grandpappies look bad.  Poor them.

Roots may not be entirely factual, but it is TRUE, and in a way, that's better for all of us.

In the late 60s and early 70s, as black cultural awareness was exploding, the concept of digging into one's familial roots was fostered, but not originated by Alex Haley's Roots.  It's fairly normal human behavior for one to want their family to have a significant heritage, a qualitative pedigree.  Look at the Mormon obsession with genealogy or the importance many Southerners and Midwesterners place on "blood kin."  Whole swaths of the Bible are dedicated to who allegedly begat whom.  All over the world, we have people who are unable to let go of centuries-old ethic divides that fall somewhere in the range of irrelevant-to-outright-destructive.

Everyone wants to feel good about the place they come from, because for much of the world, this is what tells them who they are.  It's normal.  It might not be the healthiest thing for us, moving into a much smaller, much more fluid world, but that's normal human behavior.  No sane person ever said that humans were sane people.

For African Americans, the pursuit of this knowledge and the desire to make peace with who and where they came from is much, much more reasonable than most.  They had that stolen from them.  They had the fact of their birth treated as a kind of sin, to be punished in the harshest possible way by the most extreme of possible hypocrites.

Not only do we look to our heritages for identity, but also for validation.  We have a latent impression left over from everything from tribal to monarchical culture that our ancestors make us special.  I am by no means letting the United States off the hook with this behavior.  The sense of entitlement exercised by the wealthy is just as stupid and sick as any inbred prince (see: Romney, Mitt; Bush, George W. ad nauseum).  Speaking from my own experience; while I never had much interest in my own family's lineage (outside of Cherokee connections), there were exactly 2 points of interest for me pertaining to my family tree.  One; that on my mother's side, we are alleged to have descended from Peter, the "Little Dutch Boy" who stuck his finger in the dike to hold back the flood.  Two; that on my father's side, my Oklahoman grandmother's research showed that we were descended from Godwin, Earl of Wessex.  The reason that I, as a young person, took an interest in these two particular points in my lineage was that they seemed special, which meant that I could be special; that I was heir to bravery and nobility.  (It's perhaps befitting the disappointments of adulthood to now discover that The Little Dutch Boy isn't even a Dutch story and it seems that Godwin managed to back both sides of the Battle of Hastings still come out a loser.)

I'm hardly alone in this behavior.  And again, it makes a lot of sense that African Americans, who for so long had been treated as less-than-human might want, like any of us, to have that general desire to belong as much as any human, and that personal desire to be special -- especially a writer like Alex Haley who had a hard time just feeling accepted by his own father, who had achieved so much in other fields.

Normal.  Understandable.

So when Haley began filling in the gaps of his family history, it's both normal and understandable that he would fill it in with things like the bravery of Kunta Kinte in resisting the slavers, and the dignity with which he endeavored to keep the language of his people alive in his bloodline.  We don't know the facts of his case, but we DO know for a fact that someone resisted, and paid the price, and that someone struggled to keep a sense of identity alive, not necessarily in Haley's lineage, but in the totality of the African American experience throughout 400 years of slavery.

That it's not necessarily true of Haley makes it essentially true for all who share in the legacy of black slavery.  The collective narrative is enriched.  While it may matter to Alex Haley to connect his family to various important moments in Black American History, what matters to everyone else is that the history of black people in America is part of ALL Americans' history.

This is also, by the way, why "Black History Month" robs us all.  What we are really talking about is American History, with a focus on the contributions of Black Americans.  There was once a time when it made sense to make it more proprietary and pride based, but it's time that it was folded into ALL our histories the same way that we should ALL be folded into an equitable society.

When we couch things in the context of "sides," we rob ourselves and others of the truth, and in so doing, we are further robbed of the opportunity to grow from it.



And Now a Word About THAT Word...

The word is "nigger," and now I'm done using it.*

Roots, however, uses it a lot.

That is not a valid reason to avoid Roots or to hide children away from it, because when Roots uses it, it uses it in context.

Context is the single biggest thing missing in our national sort-of-discussion-but-really-just-reactionary-agenda-pushing about "The N Word."  When I used it, just about, I used it in the context of discussing the word.  That is something that a thoughtful person in a free society is allowed to do.  I didn't use it in the context of a person or even a race, but in the context of the word itself.

Roots -- or rather the characters IN Roots -- use it in its traditional historical context, and in our modern context, we see it with a new perspective and meaning.  When it's used by one character against another in Roots, it is intended as the deepest of debasements.  It's use is intended to rob human beings of their humanity, to indicate that their purpose is limited and subject to the whims of others.

When, however, we hear that use in our time, it has a meaning that goes beyond the intention.  When it's used now, it means that the speaker wants to mean the old meaning, which really tells us about the user.  So the stigma that has been placed on using the word is not a law, is not a threat, but is the burden of the implications of its use.  No one is (or should be) telling others that they cannot legally use the word.  However, using the word as a debasement tells all of the rest of us that YOU, sir or madam, are a racist piece of shit.  THAT is the meaning of the word in a modern context.  Being racist is not okay.  We know this now, and those who resist knowing that have made the CHOICE to be WRONG.  Not wrong like a bad answer, but wrong as a state of being.  Where the words say "You can't say that," the meaning is "You can't say that... if you want to be seen as a decent human being."

For those who are feeling like arguing with me about the application of context right now, consider the following two scenarios:

• A Tea Party Congressperson uses the word in an email.
• Ice Cube uses the word in song.

Yeah, not exactly the same thing, are they?  I'm not exactly comfortable with either use, but I accept that context colors the meaning and the level of offense.  Once we accept this, then we can move on to some finer distinctions.

So, when Roots uses it -- and it used it a shocking amount for something I watched on network television as a child (to my current perspective) -- it uses it in context.  The white characters use it as a debasement.  The show does not.  The black characters use it as victims of said debasement.  When Quentin Tarantino uses it in his screenplays, he also uses it in context.  In Django Unchained, he used it in exactly the same context as Roots, and in exactly the same context as 12 Years a Slave.  Accusing Tarantino of being racist for writing the words into a racist character's mouth is like accusing Steven Spielberg of the Holocaust for writing it into Schindler's List.  So yeah, we're done bitching about Quentin.

I'm not going to get into the hair-splitting finer points of how the word is used within the African American community today.  Contextually, I've seen about 3 or 4 different uses & meanings for it, but that ain't my particular cross to bear.  Instead, I'll simply offer this story...

One day, when I was working as a paraeducator for disabled and/or behaviorally challenged students, I got hoodwinked into serving as a school bus monitor on one of the short busses.  These were kids whose histories of behavior made it untenable for them to remain in an ordinary neighborhood school.  Because I had been sandbagged with bus duty and they did not know me, they decided to stir shit with me just because they didn't know how not to.  The ringleader of the group was a chunky black boy, probably around 12 years old.  Having worked with plenty of these kids by that point, I took a position of eye-rolling semi-amusement, and I volleyed his impotent and illogical insults back at him by turning his words around and giving them back.  When he saw that he wasn't getting the kind of reaction he wanted, he made a comment about "what kind of nigger" he was (*okay, done using it NOW).  Now me, I don't use the word unless I'm discussing it in context because I hate what it says about both the subject of its use and the user themselves.

As soon as I stopped responding, he crowed with victory, knowing that if I had used it, it would mean my job, and if I hadn't, it meant he won the volley.  In either case, this was a kid who had learned to take even smallest cheating victory, because there was very little victory of any other kind in his life.

How tragic, I thought, that he would accept a word that debased him and his people as a shortcut to petty victory.  How much sadder then, to think that this was certainly not a tactic that he had invented himself, but picked up from the polarized behavior of an American culture that prizes reactionary legalism over the truth gathered from widening our perspectives.

And that's all that I have to say about how it's used in the black community.

Now, the way that it's used by whites is a godforsaken disgrace.

I will sum this up in a brief discussion of not-a-doctor Laura Schlessinger, who DID use the word, repeatedly and on the air, with a black caller.  The "point" she was trying to make by hijacking a discussion about the caller's interracial marital problems was why she wasn't allowed to use it when many black people were still able to.  This is hardly a unique complain amongst conservative culture trolls, and it's as wrong-headed as pretty much everything else about them, but more pointedly so.

First of all, the question itself is false.  No one is saying that she CAN'T use it.  Constitutionally, she can and there is no law on the books anywhere in the nation that says she can't.  What not-a-doctor Laura is REALLY saying is "Why can't I use it without bearing the responsibility of how its use defines me?"  She wants to be racist without being seen as "a racist."  This vehement resistance to the meaning of words is pretty hilarious (you know, the pathetic kind of hilarity) when you consider these are the same people who claim the world will end if the word "marriage" is redefined.

Sidebar: My definition of "marriage" has changed several times, just as

a matter of living my life and learning more about myself and others.

Are you sure you really mean to be saying what you're saying about

yourself when you fret about about what it means in the lives of

people who are not you, because it's pretty brave of you, admitting

that you're that craven, weak & stupid.

Could go on.  Won't.  The incident led to the end of her awful career of being shitty to people and telling them how to ruin their lives by accepting her version of morality, as it should have.  She can say it all she wants in the privacy of her own personal hell.

Anyway, that was the roundabout way of saying, yes, Roots has THAT WORD in it, and yes, THAT WORD is offensive, but Roots uses it in its appropriate context.

It should be offensive.  

A large part of American history is.

The question is what we choose to learn from it, and we're not learning if we're not talking about it.

It's Not What It Looks Like...

 

FILM:
Best Man Down - 2012
Written & Directed by Ted Koland



Best Man Down is not what it appears to be, and that's both its blessing and its curse.

It was evidently promoted (a misleading term in its own right) as a comedy, which it absolutely is not.  You would further believe it to be a comedy from the presence of Justin Long (Waiting..., Dodgeball, Zack & Miri Make a Porno) and Tyler Labine (Reaper, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil), but you would believe incorrectly.

While the film benefits from this misdirection in setting up certain expectations from Labine's character, Lumpy, and then allowing the characters and the viewers to learn from this mistake, not all viewers like to be challenged, and tend to blame filmmakers rather than accept that they may have been wrong.  For example, the correspondent reviewer on RogerEbert.com prefers to blame the film for all the things it's not rather than updating their expectations once the film demonstrates that it's something else -- which is a damned shame, because that was one of Ebert's greatest gifts as a reviewer.

Lumpy (Labine) is the best man at Scott and Kristin's wedding (Long and Jess Weixler, respectively), despite the fact that Scott and Lumpy have drifted out of each other's lives as adulthood has gotten more adult.  Naturally the one getting married is eyeball deep in discussions of responsibility and the burden of expectations.  The opening sets Lumpy up as your basic "big fat party guy."  He gets way too drunk and embarrasses himself not so much as the couple; specifically the overly-anxious bride who accepts/invents a large part of those burdensome expectations. 

Up until now, you could continue to be forgiven for thinking this was going to be a comedy.  Then Lumpy dies, in fairly dark fashion.  If it had been a comedy, there would be a dozen different ways to play this scene, but writer and first-time director Ted Koland chooses none of them and I believe that's purposeful.  It should be uncomfortable when the best man dies at the wedding, and it should leave an emotional taint on the memory.

Scott feels responsible for taking care of Lumpy's arrangements, and it's only much later that we learn that Lumpy had any family at all.  While the question could be raised as to why the family didn't take care of things, there would appear to be clues to explain Scott's willingness to take it on himself.  It was Scott that cut Lumpy off at the bar and sent him off to bed, and he feels guilty about that; rational or not.  This is compounded by the sense of guilt for growing apart and "succeeding" in the adult sense while Lumpy seemed to backslide, despite the fact that he borrowed money from Lumpy, which creates an even deeper sense of guilt.

So Scott and Kristin postpone their honeymoon to take care of the funeral, and to track down one of the few names in Lumpy's cell phone.  In doing so, they discover that Lumpy was not exactly who they thought he was, although they're not always sure they want to find out what there is to know.  Again, the appearance of things can be misleading, and one's own expectations can color their vision in ways that says more about the expectations than the individual.

The perverse burden of expectations is examined further through the characters of Scott & Kristin's relatives.  They're surrounded with self-centered demands and myopic notions of right and wrong, and while they accept and endure these expectations, they make themselves crazy and expect the worst of others.  Scott is so on-edge that he got himself fired from his grown-up job, unbeknownst to Kristin who has a nice little anti-anxiety med dependency going just to cope. 

They initially expect that the name "Ramsey" in Lumpy's phone refers to a classmate from law school... then learn that he had quit school the previous year.  Then they think it might be a girlfriend... and discover that it's a 15 year old girl from a small town.  This does not reassure them.

Meanwhile, throughout the film, we've been getting glimpses of Ramsey (Addison Timlin) and her life.  Her mom is a flake, because of/resulting in her relationship with her dirtbag meth-head boyfriend.  The boyfriend, having so little "self" upon which to base his impression of himself, attempts to mimic his idea of what a "Man" should be by dominating the women in his life, and dragging the clearly-2-to-3-times-his-IQ Ramsey down to his loser level by bullying her into shoplifting cold medicine for meth.  The film sidesteps darker implications, or leaves it up to the audience to fill in.  Those familiar with the realities of rural and small-town America may tend to color-in these pages with darker crayons than others.

We're also treated to a flashback that explains how Lumpy and Ramsey happened to meet, but this too leaves us uncertain about the nature of their relationship.  Like the characters, and much of the rest of the film, I think it depends on what expectations the individual viewer brings to the proceedings that determines how they will interpret this before the "big reveal" at the funeral.  It's not necessarily the most effectively managed mystery, but it makes for a good story as Scott and Kristin find their expectations challenged, and their eyes opened.

Going into the movie, I had few expectations, and most of those were wrong.  Once it began to reveal itself, I found elements that I strongly related to, and those played a large part for me in my ability to understand and connect to characters and events.  As a result, I ended up being deeply affected by the story, the narrative of discovery, and the characters of Lumpy and Ramsey in particular.  Your mileage may vary, but I think it will get you there, if you let it.  I was also able to allow the film to show me what it was, rather than remaining stuck in any preconceived notion of my own, and that, after all, was the complete and absolute point of Best Man Down.

We're Gonna Need A Bigger Bottle

FILM:
Grabbers - 2012
Written by Kevin Lehane
Directed by Jon Wright









Anyone who tells you that they aren't making them like they used to simply isn't looking hard enough.  Now I'll grant you, at the Hollywood blockbuster level, they're definitely making them differently, but in Ireland, evidently, they're making them like the Spielberg/Zemekis/Dante/Donner class of the 1980s -- with one big difference; no obnoxious kids!

When a meteor crashes into the ocean near Erin Island, off the coast of mainland Ireland, the local citizens begin disappearing almost immediately.  A pod of dead pilot whales washes up on the shore.  This just happens to coincide with the arrival of Garda Lisa Nolan, a career-oriented officer from the big city (Dublin) who chose to spend her vacation time picking up a different kind of policing experience while one of the village's two resident officers takes holiday.  The other officer, Garda Ciarán O'Shea is a self-pitying and self-loathing marginally-funtional alcoholic, and he treats her with open disdain.  Meet-cute achieved.

The rest of the cast is filled out with the tart and colorful locals in this one-pub town.  With the help of a daffy old fisherman, a gawky biologist and the pub owner, they figure out that they are threatened by blood-sucking multipods that need little more than water to live.  They eventually discover that alcohol is toxic to the creatures, and with a rain storm on the way (a lot sooner than help from the mainland), naturally the only thing to do is to keep the whole town safe with a grand lock-down piss-up!

Like the characteristic films of the 80s, Grabbers keeps it light even in the serious moments.  Each scene is infused with a tone of fun on one level or another.  Most characters know each other well, so they're able to have a playful jab at each other, and the visiting officer's lack of familiarity offers them the opportunity to take some advantage with what she doesn't know.  The music particularly enhances the spirit of classic Spielberg.  It's like John Williams mashed up with your standard Irish sounds and themes -- an urgent, brassy orchestra, with a few extra flutes and such.  It really keeps things moving.  When I first read about the movie, I thought it sounded a little bit like Shaun of the Dead with aliens.  Now, having seen it, I find myself recalling the likes of Jaws and Gremlins even more.

The Road Worriers

FILM:
Time for a quickish little round-up of films from 2013 that (for the sake of thematic cohesion) included road trips, to lesser or greater extents.

Nebraska - 2013
Written by Bob Nelson
Directed by Alexander Payne

Road Trip: Billings, Montana to Lincoln, Nebraska (and back)


Nebraska is a film that knows how to play the spaces between the notes.  Bruce Dern plays a man who has never wanted much from life.  This changes when he misinterprets a letter from a magazine publishers' sweepstakes, he becomes determined to get to Nebraska to collect his winnings, despite the fact that he's no longer allowed to drive.  His son, who feels like he knows nothing about his father, is tasked with accompanying him on the journey and keeping him safe -- mostly from himself.  As it turns out, his son (SNL's Will "MacGruber" Forte) only knows slightly less about his laconic father than his father knows about himself.  Nebraska brought David Lynch's The Straight Story to mind for me, but it definitely has its ow story to tell.  I think it will mean a lot more to you if you have had a taciturn Midwesterner in your life.  Its pacing recalls both the sparse conversational patterns of Middle America's Scandinavian sons, as well as the slowly shifting landscape of its highways.

Inside Llewyn Davis - 2013
Written & Directed by Joel & Ethan Coen

Road Trip: Greenwich Village, NYC to Chicago, IL (and back)


I would ordinarily go out of my way not to spoil the end of most movies, but I'm going to tell you something very important about Inside Llewyn Davis.

He does not commit suicide or otherwise get killed in the end.

I mention this because I found myself unwilling to fully invest in Llewyn and his story due to what seemed to be foreshadowing from the very first scene.  Also, the Coens have embraced "down" endings increasingly over the years which has led me to form less empathetic relationships with their characters.  It was only after the film ended and Llewyn didn't hang himself that I began to empathize and realize that... Llewyn is kind of me.

Llewyn is a frustrated folk singer struggling to make a creative place for himself at the dawn of the folk music scene on the early 60s.  His former singing partner DID commit suicide, and he literally cannot give his solo album away.  During the week covered in the film, his mean existence goes from hardscrabble to desperate -- so much so that he can't even give up effectively.  A surface viewing of Llewyn indicates that he's an asshole.  He's certainly called one often enough.  But a deeper look suggests that these are the panicked and often defensive flailings of a man treading water, and losing strength.

The Way, Way Back - 2013
Written & Directed by Nat Faxon & Jim Rash


Road Trip: from childhood to young adulthood; also to Cape Cod (and back)

The Way, Way Back is sort of a mix-tape dedicated to the 1980s, and not just because of its throwback soundtrack of radio cheese.  It particularly reminded me of Meatballs, but told from the perspective of the gawky kid that Bill Murray would take under his wing.  In this case, Sam Rockwell plays the early 80s Bill Murray type character and Liam James is Duncan, the 14 year old loner.  Duncan is forced to ride in the "way, way back" of a vintage 1970s station wagon (those of you who know will have already guessed that), to and from summer vacation with his mom, and her boyfriend and his daughter.

I almost didn't watch this film, because it opens with such an uncomfortable scene between Duncan and his mom's boyfriend, Trent (Steve Carell).  Trent is controlling and demeaning toward Duncan, interpreting his role as "new dad" (despite the lack of any such invitation) in a way that we can be pretty sure that he experienced himself.  While constantly pressured from all quarters to cheer up and become sociable, Duncan is never really offered the opportunity to do so.  His mom is primarily interested in keeping Trent happy (a fear reaction to the callous dumping from Duncan's father), Trent is a domineering prick who's more interested in turning Duncan into him than finding out who Duncan might already be, and Trent's daughter is just enough older (and thoroughly self-involved) to only notice Duncan's existence when it annoys her.  The adults get caught up in their friends and Trent's daughter in hers, and Duncan sits, trapped, on a fishing boat in a life vest with nothing to do and nowhere to go.

Until, that is, he finds a flowery pink girl's bicycle in the garage at the beach house and starts venturing into town on his own.  It's there that he meets Owen (Rockwell) and his colorful coterie of cohorts at the Water Wizz water park.  It's there, through their acceptance and encouragement that he finally comes alive and learns that he doesn't have to hate himself to become something more than scared.  It's fortunate that Duncan takes center stage and while the conflict with Trent remains present, Trent himself gets nudged into a supporting role.  Upon reflection, the film does cheat a little bit by giving Duncan a shortcut to victory over the seeming inevitability of life with Trent's emotional abuse, but Trent's self-centered nature does make it seem like a natural progression.

Writer/directors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash would have grown up in the 80s, and The Way, Way Back plays like a love letter to the summer vacation movies of the era -- in the good way (Easy A, yes. Take Me Home Tonight, hell no).  I loved the crap out of this movie, and it will definitely be added to my list of the year's best films.

Philomena - 2013
Written by Steve Coogan & Jeff Pope
Directed by Steven Frears

Road Trip: London to Ireland; Ireland to the United States (and back)


If you've gotten tired of seething with rage at the abuses of Catholic priests, friend, have I got a film for you.  Philomena will have you seething with rage at the abuses of Catholic nuns before it's done.

The film puts a face on the stories of the babies effectively stolen from their mothers and sold to Americans, and the girls from whom they were stolen while essentially indentured to the convents.  That face is Judy Dench's, in the role of Philomena, who finally opens up to her daughter 50 years later about the son who was taken from her.  The daughter gets in contact with Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan), a former reporter and disgraced ex-Director of Communications for the Labour Party.  The film is adapted from his book.

They set out on a journey, both physical and emotional, to locate Philomena's son.  The sisters at the convent are, shall we say, unhelpful at best.  Through Sixsmith's research, he's finally able to find a lead that takes them to the United States on their quest for Philomena's son, and answers.  There is much that is predictable in the story, which is somewhat natural given the similarity of mother/child separation stories, but there were a few surprises as well.  That's really irrelevant, however, as the meat of the story comes from what Martin and Philomena go through and learn along the way.  Martin's a bit of a snooty Oxford twat, which isn't a terrible stretch for Coogan, but he's much better rounded as a human being here than many of his more broadly approached performances in the past.  Given the the most recent role most people will have seen Dench play is M in the Bond films, it's almost startling to see her in a meeker, but still disarming role here.

Through all that Philomena goes through, she struggles to find a safe and sane approach to faith despite the patterns of control and abuse that the nuns used to make her so meek and ashamed.  As the film is told from Sixsmith's perspective, but it primarily driven by Philomena's story, I would have liked to spend a little more time with her internal conflicts, but that's really just a hunger for a third scoop of ice cream when you've had two scoops with your pie already.

There's a certain, hm... pornographic predictability to most mother/child separation tales, and a niche audience for that consistency.  Philomena is the one for the rest of us.

The "Best" Movies of 2013

2013 was a year of great change in the "film" and "television" "industry."  Traditional definitions of "film" and "television" became blurrier and the "industry"struggled to keep up with the changes.  Sadly, few of those changes applied to improving the state of story craft.  Growing pains abound.

My standard caveats apply here -- This is a collection of the films I liked best and I make no claim to scientific procedure, objectivity or non-bias.  It's a myth that they exist in Art.  Nevertheless, I call my annual revue a "Best of" because my perspectives are at least as valid as most, and because no one Googles for "Movies Tim Liked."  I can only include the movies I've seen, and I mostly see the movies that interest me.  So that's how that works.

This article may be amended as results filter in.

(Updated 1/30/2014 to include Dallas Buyers Club)


Drama

Dallas Buyers Club - 2013
Written by Craig Borten & Melisa Wallack
Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée


The theme of transformation runs deep in Dallas Buyers Club.  The three primary actors (Matthew McConaughey, Jared Leto & Jennifer Garner) all transform themselves into their roles, certainly as far as our established expectations of them are concerned.  The men both lost a lot of weight for their roles as sufferers of HIV in the early (and particularly ignorant) days of the AIDS epidemic.  Leto further transformed himself into a man endeavoring to transform himself into a woman.  Garner transformed herself into a woman whose beauty and charm are not defining characteristics.  But the central story is the way that McConaughey's character, Ron Woodroof is transformed from a bird-doggin' cowboy & hustler (rife with bigotry and narrow definitions) into a man who discovers a passion for his own life and the lives of others.  He's made a life & lifestyle of being unattached and undependable, and through the process of forming, running and defending a medicinal buyers club for other HIV patients, he becomes attached to the lives of many, depended upon for their lives.  The acting here is simply extraordinary.  Their transformations are earned through the lives that they've led and the ways that they've been affected by others.  This is, bar none, the best, most honest character development of the year.  Bravo. 

The Wolf of Wall Street - 2013
Written by Terrence Winter
Directed by Martin Scorcese

I am surprised to find myself including this here, because I fully expected to hate spending 3 hours with such aggro asshole characters.  I'm also somewhat surprised to be classifying it as a Drama.  It's easily one of the funniest movies of the year, but I don't necessarily consider that comedy.  The laughs come from the stupidity and excess indulged by the characters, but in their proper context, these things should appall us.  It's a testament to Scorcese's abilities as a filmmaker that we can find such irredeemable scumbags so likeable.  In ways, it's even a horror movie where characters lose their minds and self-destruct, only to spread their zombie virus to a greater, unsuspecting population.  Whatever it is, it's deeply engaging, constantly entertaining and eventually leaves you with something to think about. 


Captain Phillips - 2013
Written by Billy Ray
Directed by Paul Greengrass

Greengrass' direction gives the film a constant sense of momentum that overcomes the viewer's foreknowledge of this recent event from the news.  He's the ideal director for what is essentially a 2 hour chase scene.  Even if WE know what happens, Tom Hanks portrays a Phillips who does not.



 


Dramedy

Her... - 2013
Written & Directed by Spike Jonze

If you have not yet made your peace with Joaquin Phoenix's face, Spike Jonze has made it his business to see that you do.  The reward for spending so much time with his face is that you also get to spend a lot of time with Scarlet Johansson's voice.  Jonze takes a simple idea -- a sad and lonely guy falls in love with the artificial intelligence in his computer's operating system -- and uses that to explore much more human themes.  If you start asking all kinds of stupid geek questions about the sci-fi, you've already missed the point.

Her... isn't about technology.  It's about humanity.



About Time - 2013
Written & Directed by Richard Curtis


About Time is the "Her" you haven't heard of.  Like Her, it uses a simple science-fiction conceit as a conduit for exploring themes of life, love and loss in a gently-paced, contemplative way.  In this case, the conceit is time travel.  Once they turn 21, the men in Tim's family are able to travel back in time, within their own lives.  There are no Terminators here, no slingshots around the sun -- no special effects at all, in fact.  It's not even about time travel, but about savoring life and cherishing what matters.  Posters tout the film as coming from "Love Actually" director Richard Curtis, but jaded skeptics can be encouraged that this is also Black Adder co-creator Richard Curtis.  It's a thoughtful and tender look at the lessons that Tim's special perspective affords him as he navigates through his young life.  Really, just a beautiful little motion picture.










Comedy

In A World... - 2013
Written & Directed by Lake Bell

Oh wow, I just loved the crap out of this movie.  Lake Bell plays a woman with aspirations of making it as a voiceover actor in movie trailers like her industry-legend father, despite a male stranglehold on the business.  Why did I like it so much?  Well, it had a story with a beginning, middle and ending.  It's filled with endearing characters.  Even the unlikeable characters are likeable.  It's really the characters that make it.  I found that I didn't only care about the central plot, but the little subplots and side characters.  Heck, I hoped they'd all get lucky.  I would gladly spend more time in a world... written and directed by Lake Bell.



The Brass Teapot - 2013
Written by Tim Macy
Directed by Ramaa Mosley


Now I don't know about you, but I kind of thought that Juno Temple stole every scene in which che appeared in Killer Joe, which is how I found my way to The Brass Teapot.  A young couple that just can't seem to get it together discovers an ancient teapot that rewards its possessor when they cause themselves pain.  Hilarity ensues.  The story gets a little silly and the screenplay doesn't always follow the threads of logic, but it does so in service to its emotional themes and the laffs, of course.  It's like a really good game of "What Would You Do?"  Juno Temple steals the teapot, and the show.



The To Do List - 2013
Written & Directed by Maggie Carey


The To Do List is an early 90s teen comedy made by the people who grew up on them.  Aubrey Plaza finished high school as the expert in everything but irresponsible teen sex, so in characteristic form, she makes a list to address her personal enrichment.  This leads, as one might suspect, to many disastrous and painfully funny situations and all appropriate tripping over emotions.  Plaza is adorable, hilarious and fearless.










Animated

The Croods - 2013
Written & Directed by Chris Sanders & Kirk DeMicco


I tend to be a skeptic about Dreamworks Animation.  They don't aim as high as Disney and Pixar and as a result they hit the mark anywhere from marginally to drastically lower.  The Croods is one of their absolute best.  The simple concept of following the adventures of a caveman family as they seek a new home open the door for themes of family, love, fear and growth... as well as some pretty relentless hi-jinks.  It's kind of a wonder that the film  got past whatever department it is at the studios that worry what the Bible Belt thinks.  Beyond the obvious evolutionary themes, the metaphors about paranoia and ignorance run deep.  Extra points for a husky female protagonist without the slightest of royal leanings.



Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 - 2013
Directed by Kris Pearn & Cody Cameron
See link for writing team


The first movie turned a 30 page picture book with no actual plot into a surprisingly funny feature length adventure.  The sequel picks up immediately after and keeps the party going.  Flint and the gang are back, and out of their elements the regular world following the megafood destruction of Swallow Falls.  When the megafood goes wild - literally - Flint teams up with his childhood science hero, Professor V, to get to the bottom of things.  But is the threat what he thinks it is?  Dunt dun DUN!  Just as zany, just as funny as the original.  No princesses.

Frozen - 2013
Written & Directed by Jennifer Lee & Chris Buck


Bring on the princesses!

Disney's CG animation has really hit its stride.  The art quality (GORGEOUS) is second to none -- even Pixar -- and the content is all Disney.  Gender roles notwithstanding, Frozen's princesses Anna and Elsa each face their own unique struggles with loss, loneliness and sadness.  Much of this can be blamed on their STUPID, STUPID PARENTS who make one choice out of fear that very nearly destroys both their daughters -- but (ahem), that's not what the movie is about.  I found the story to be one the the most emotionally resonant in Disney's catalog.  While I, personally, do not need musical numbers in my animation, I understand and accept them as characteristic of a Disney production.  That said, the songs in Frozen SUH-HUCK  These are THE WORST songs in any Disney film that I am aware of.  Like, Top 40 radio bad... TODAY'S Top 40 radio.  At least the upshot of that is that they're forgettable.





Action

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire - 2013
Written by Simon Beaufoy & Michael Arndt
Directed by Francis Lawrence


Catching Fire succeeds in all the places where the first Hunger Games frustrated and disappointed me, and it does most of the things that the first did well even better.  Purely in terms of story, we get more and deeper from both the characters, and the bleak world in which they live.  I had a hard time enjoying the first because I simply couldn't get caught up in rooting for one victim over another.  I was frustrated by the lack of address to the problems of their society.  Catching Fire goes all-in.  The political landscape becomes central to everything that takes place.  There's much more context and meaning, and it makes the entire movie better.  This is one of the few occasions in which less Stanley Tucci is a good thing.  Further, the replacement of Gary Ross with Francis Lawrence is a great boon.  Ross' annoying-as-all-hell shaky cam is gone, giving us a camera that respects the epic nature of the tale.  It's a shame that Hunger Games didn't shoot with this team, but better late than never.  Catching Fire establishes the feverish momentum to propel the series into its 2-part conclusion.



The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug - 2013
Directed by Peter Jackson
See link for writing team


Bigger, wilder, and more apocryphal than the first!  Chapter 2 sees the company of dwarves through Mirkwood to Mount Doom, setting the stage for the Battle of the Five Armies.  More than any of the Tolkien films before, this one feels like Peter Jackson has learned how to play with all his tools a good deal more.  What am I telling you for?  This is Jackson's 5th Tolkien film.  As a viewer, you know if you're in or out by now... but if you haven't gotten to this one yet, just know that it's more and better.



Elysium - 2013
Written & Directed by Neill Blomkamp


Blomkamp is back with his style of believable, near-future sci-fi.  Elysium is the name of a space station where the world's richest people have fled to escape the poverty, overpopulation and environmental crises from which they have profited for so long.  Meanwhile, back on Earth, things are pretty desperate and dismal for Matt Damon and the rest of the humans living under the robotically enforced thumb of Elysium's plutocratic leaders.  This is one of the most believable futures we've seen in years.  It is, in many ways, a horrific manifestation of our fears.  We know that we're on a path to a future like this, but we feel powerless to stop it.  I think that sensation gives Elysium a unique dynamic.  We're not merely concerned about the characters' futures; we're concerned about our own.

The corniness of the villains threatens some of the verisimilitude, but by mercy's grace, they make up a small percentage of the film.  Jodie Foster should be stopped from doing foreign accents henceforth.  It's like they really wanted Cate Blanchett or Tilda Swinton and told Jodie just to go with that.  She gnawed the digital scenery.  As did Sharlto Copley as the psychotic unfrozen caveman mercenary.  They both could have dialed it back about 50% and we'd still hate them just as much; just for the right reasons.




Horror

Warm Bodies - 2013
Written & Directed by Jonathan Levine




This is sure to keep me out of the Hardcore Zombie Lovers' Club, but then I never sent in my application.  Told from the perspective of a teenage zombie, Warm Bodies twists and violates several of the conventions of the traditional zombie movie, including the most unforgivable; having the gall to end with... hope.  It's been unfairly lumped in with the likes of Twilight for blending a classic monster with a teenage romance, but heart, humor and characters with more depth than Twilight's paper dolls make all the difference.  This is a strong contender for my favorite zombie movie ever, simply because it so refuses to be a "zombie movie."



The Conjuring - 2013
Written by Chad & Carey Hayes
Directed by James Wan


The Conjuring is a good, old-fashioned, crap-your-pants haunted house and possession story, told for modern audiences by James "SAW" Wan.  As such, it benefits in terms of some deep, bone-chilling frights, but it also suffers from a slightly overblown Act 3.  Most people won't care; the intended audience in particular.

Insidious: Chapter 2 - 2013
Written by Leigh Whannel
Directed by James Wan


Jennifer Lawrence and Matthew McConaughey are probably the only people in Hollywood to have had a bigger year than James Wan.  Not only did he have The Conjuring in theaters, but he also released Insidious: Chapter 2 (while filming the next Fast & Furious).  This sequel accomplishes the never-before-imagined feat of not only being as-good-if-not-better than its predecessor, but actually makes the first film BETTER by making more sense of its mysteries.

Unless Chapter 3 completely bones it, the Insidious films are on track to becoming future classics of horror.







Observations:

A lot of these picks happen to have the same writer and director.  One suspects that that's no coincidence.

Rob Corddry is in both In A World... and Warm Bodies, and he gave really surprising performances in both.  It's really nice seeing him display tenderness and vulnerability for a change.

Yes, it's true that my own tastes tend to favor a certain kindness in the film's content.  I believe that this isn't JUST because I'm such an inveterate softy, but because so many of our films have become more crass and cruel.

The Human Equation

FILM
Eva - 2011
Directed by Kike Maillo
See link for writing team


Eva is a Spanish science-fiction film in a class similar to the likes of Her... or About Time.  While the fiction is based in a scientific conceit, it's not about the "sci-fi."  There are no laser battles, no one-dimensional villains.  It's about human behavior in the context of the impact of technology.

Young and ridiculously good-looking robotics protege, Alex Garel returns to his hometown after a ten year absence, stirring up all kinds of emotional conflict within and between him, his brother, his ex (now married to his brother) and his mentor.  Despite his brilliance, Alex has left a trail of unfinished projects and hurt feelings in his wake.  It's one of those projects that draws him back to the university.  His goal is to design a free-willed robotic child.  To get an exceptional robot, he needs to find an exceptional child upon which to base the personality profile.

Now, there wouldn't be much of a movie if he didn't find one.  The one he finds is Eva, a precocious and energetic 10-year old.  At their first meeting, she teases him about being a pervert for his interest in her.  She challenges his expectations and he finds himself fascinated by her, both professionally and personally.  The fascination is deepened once he discovers that Eva is the daughter of his ex-girlfriend and his brother.

Eva's mother, Lana, is a robotics professor and recognizes his interest.  She pleads with him not to pursue the matter (perhaps too forcefully) and he agrees, but Eva has become fascinated with him as well.  As they spend time together, questions about the past creep in, old feelings arise, and Alex entertains thoughts about the road not taken.

While Daniel Brühl is tasked with much of the heavy-lifting in the role of Alex, the movie wouldn't work without first-time actress Claudia Vega selling the idea of Eva as exceptional.  She's charismatic and precocious, waking up the narrative from Alex's disaffected melancholia whenever she's on screen.

This is also director Kike Maillo's first feature film, and he keeps it thoughtful but constantly engaging.  Everything on the screen is beautiful, from the actors to the snowy mountain town to the technology.

Having seen a few Spanish films recently, I've noticed that they look just like American films, except everyone is prettier.  The robotic technology of 2041 takes on a variety of forms.  Some are based on current experimental robotics.  Some look like extras from the Jawa scenes in Star Wars.  Many mimic organic forms including those that are thoroughly human in appearance.

The visual design of the computer tech may be completely illogical, but it's all for the sake of beauty.  The holographic interface resembles raindrops in a spiderweb, and individual apps spin in the air like glass tops.  Alex's personality programs bob and twirl in the air, echoing Jim Woodring's enigmatic jivas, which reflect the forms in Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur themselves.

Eva is an intriguing and involving science-fiction for grown-ups.  It's filled with beauty, but perhaps its greatest special effect is its humanity, and a debut performance that infuses the whole thing with life. 

2013 in Video Games

2013 was a pivotal year for the art and commerce of video games.

The financial model has become increasingly crass and more tightly controlled by interests who see only the dollar signs removed from any other context.  Over the course of the last console generation, we've seen the compulsive consumers not-merely cede, but outright throw away any notion of demand-based economics or sanity-based purchasing.  Online has become The All, and the heavy hitters like that just fine because it gives them more opportunities to nickel-and-dime the customers, while assuring that prices remain high and play-life becomes shortened.  In the true soul of insecurity, gamers are only validated when playing with other gamers.  Everything must be scored, measured ad ranked.  The single-player narrative experience certainly reached some high creative marks this year, but it's also been commercially marginalized in favor of the economics of compulsion.

On top of this, the new consoles came out, which lock-in the changes of the past generation and lay the groundwork for even more drastic changes.  Microsoft, in particular, overplayed their hand.  Their proposed plans for the Xbox One made it clear that it was designed first with the executive wish-list in mind.  The most drastic power-grab was the intention to lock game discs to specific consoles, thus ending the used-game market.  This would allow them to keep game prices artificially inflated for as long as possible.  The idea is that they should call all the shots, and the consumer should do what they're told.  That is not true capitalism, my friend.  Coupled with corporately driven legislation, that is fascism defined.  A low level fascism, sure, but also symptomatic of the direction of most American industry.  In a show of disgust that I frankly didn't believe them capable of, video game consumers balked at Microsoft's plans, and the company had to walk back a few of its "features."  But the hand has been shown, and one would have to be a fool not to see that these represent their goals for the next five years.  Whatever they don't phase back into the Xbox One, we can be sure they will do that and more with whatever follows it.




So my choice for Game of the Year comes as an antidote to these depressing industry trends...

A new Grand Theft Auto would always be in the running for Game of the Year, in any year it comes out, but GTAV wins this time not ONLY for the way its stepped up its game, but also for the way that it bucks and repurposes industry trends.

When GTAIII came out, it satirized American life through our crime movies.  But it's been 12 years since then, and GTA is now as much a part of American culture as the films to which it paid homage.  GTAV now goes directly for the jugular without any misdirection.  Thanks to its new 3-character narrative, this is the most intelligent, mature and nuanced GTA yet... and the most over-the-top.  It breaks further away from the traditional structure where missions are doled out by a series of crime bosses.  The missions are more directly tied to a narrative based on the characters' needs and desires.  They're more emotionally motivated and add up to a more authentic experience.  The world is also the most immersive and livable yet, and I keep catching myself, realizing that I can't do all the things it seems like I should be able to do.  Here's hoping the next game goes deeper rather than bigger.

While the series places the highest priority on continuing to be itself despite trends, GTAV does include an online element.  This too refuses to be "just another" and rather than a strictly controlled and monetized experience, it's offered for free and designed to empower players to create their own gameplay experiences to share with others.  It was unfortunate that so many entitled punk-ass brats threw such a mighty tantrum when it wasn't instantly perfect upon launch.  The beautifully stupid irony of it is that the game satirizes them mercilessly, and they respond in true ignorance.

On a personal note, I'm really hoping that Rockstar doesn't take us back to Liberty City anytime soon.  Since GTAIII, we've had 4 games set in their version of New York City, and I'm ready for something else.  I've written to them to say as much, and to plead with them to consider a 1970s San Francisco (San Fiero in GTAmerica).  Outside of LA and NYC, SF is our most unique city, and it was fertile ground for crime stories, both real and fictive, throughout the 70s.


My Disappointment of The Year #1 (other than the industry itself) was Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.  I'm not one of those people who lives to bitch about COD online.  I have really enjoyed their post-WWII games, and the first Black Ops has been my favorite of the series, so I was really looking forward to Black Ops 2.  Sadly, it seems to have taken criticisms of the series as a wish list.  Despite claims of more choice, this is the most funneled gameplay yet, and despite being funneled, it often does a poor job of heading you in the right direction.  It doesn't feel like a game often enough, and scripted moments pop up far too often and progress far too slowly, which really puts a dent in the narrative and the experiential flow of things.  Furthermore, it suffers from more of the same crappy scripting that made Black Ops irritating in places, only worse.  Also, the new "non-linear" RTS portion is terrible, and comes with the least intuitive control scheme of this console generation.

The thing that really damages the game as a whole, however, is that when one does get to play, there are several sections (if not whole levels) where there is just far, FAR too much shit on screen.  It gets hard to know what you're even supposed to be doing or who you're supposed to be shooting.  The level design, the interface and the scripting just do not work together here the way that they did in the first Black Ops.

And on top of all that, it's a stupid story (I use "story" loosely) terribly told.  It's also a grave insult to the lead character from Black Ops.  So, so disappointed.  Shame on you, Treyarch and Activision.

Disappointment of the Year #2

Ouch, this one hurts even more, but Assassin's Creed III is just a crime against the series.  The mission design, scripting and control interface are at war with each other, and the player gets caught in the middle.  Now, past AC games have certainly had their problems with glitchy code and occasional stupid deaths from things failing to work as they should were the price one paid for having such beautiful, code-rich open worlds with so many places to climb.  AC3 takes that as free license not to give a shit.  Every single mission I have played so far has included mission-busting code and/or design.

For example, let me tell you about what should have been a very simple mission requiring one to escort John Adams a few blocks across town.  First, he tells you to follow him... except he will only follow you.  Then, when you find that there are Redcoat checkpoints set up, he tells you that he will show you how to use underground tunnels... only he will still only follow you.  Lead character, Connor, says that he can get where they're going quickly by rooftop, which Adams specifically tells him not to do.  As it turns out, rooftop is the only way to get to the tunnel entrance without getting attacked by guards -- something that you are rewarded for avoiding.  Furthermore, while testing ways of getting to my goal while following the orders I was given by Adams, I did happen to get mobbed by soldiers and killed because the attacks that were supposed to come with a warning symbol, giving me the opportunity to counter.  No warning came and I took a thrashing. 

That's just one example of how the design, the scripting and the code completely failed to work together, but it's hardly an isolated incident.  There has been something wrong in every single mission I've played so far.  Without actually knowing, I'm just going to guess that this is one of those games that Ubisoft developed at multiple studios, splitting up tasks between people who spent very little time in contact with one another, assuming they even spoke the same languages.

In addition to magnifying the flaws of previous ACs, they attempted to tweak the controls and ended up making them even more problematic. Functions are oddly mapped, and sometimes double-mapped.  Escort missions map the Stay/Follow command to the same button one uses to drop from a ledge, so you can lead someone to a rooftop, but if you have to take them back down again, you'd best plan on getting creative.  Yes, it's as stupid as it sounds, and it's that flavor of stupidity that one will find throughout.

Finally, aesthetically, Colonial America is sun-baked ass next to Renaissance Italy & Turkey and the Medieval Middle East.  Tree climbing in the wild is nowhere near as fun as it should be, and too few trees are climbable at all.  It's really a damned shame, because it seems like there might have been a pretty decent story somewhere in there.  Shame on YOU, Ubisoft.  This is a vastly profitable series.  You can afford to treat it with some effin' respect.

There's more than one turkey in this photo

So, 2013 may very well have been the beginning of the end of video games (as we know them).  There's obviously some creative passion out there, but one really has to question whether that will continue to find fertile ground, untainted by chemicals fertilizers and genetically modified greed.

2013 in Music

I have never cared less about popular music than I did in 2013.  Let's all just admit it; most popular music sucks dog-ass these days.  Rock n' roll doesn't rock anymore.  I just can't work up half an ounce of give-a-crap for all the chanty, twee post-alt pop rock, and that's the inoffensive stuff. 

For my own part, I listened to jazz, funk and soul almost exclusively.

That being said, one name did pop up, and that name was Pharrell Williams.  Two songs grabbed my ear this year, and they both featured him.





Evidently he also had something to do with "Blurred Lines" but I like myself too much to allow that one in my ears.