Link Dump

1 Comment / Link Dump, Neal Stephenson / /

Time is short, so just a few things I’ve found interesting lately:

  • Star Wars Fan Documentaries: I realize that the phrase “fan documentary” probably made you throw up a little in your mouth, but these amazingly comprehensive movies are actually quite well done. They’re built on top of the base of the Star Wars movies themselves, but they feature all sorts of production notes, commentary from cast/crew, and are even sometimes re-cut with alternate takes, deleted scenes, concept art, and original audio. Creator Jambe Davdar must have spent years pouring through Star Wars minutiae to put this together. I haven’t watched all of the videos (there’s a lot of them), but so far, it’s great stuff.
  • The Most Ridiculous Thing that writer/artist Dan McDaid has ever drawn. It’s also pretty awesome.
  • Game Dev Story – An iPhone video game about… well, making video games. A meta video game, if you will. I don’t play a lot of iPhone games, but I heard the guys talking about it on Rebel FM a few weeks ago and it was only $0.99 so I figured I’d give it a try. It’s kinda addictive, despite the fact that the critics never rate my games well.
  • Space Stasis – I haven’t read this yet, but it’s an article by Neal Stephenson, so I’m looking forward to it (apparently a new novel is coming this year as well, though the news has been suspiciously quiet about that so far).
  • MST3k says: Packers win the Super Bowl! – They somehow knew!

That’s all for now!

The Video Game Sequel Problem

Video Games / /

Astute readers may have noticed that my blogging about video games has slowed considerably. I haven’t written anything about video games since late-November, and that was a tasting notes post that only touched on what I was playing. The last real video game post was from August, and that was a review of a book about video games. The last post where I focused on an actual game was in May (for Killzone 2)! As you might guess, I haven’t been playing much in the way of video games.

Looking at my collection, I can narrow this down to when I started playing Grand Theft Auto 4. I think there were several factors that kept me from getting into that game. Of course, one is a standard complaint this generation, which is the way missions are structured from a usability perspective (i.e. if you fail a mission, you have to retrace several steps before you can even retry). I realize that this was one of the first games of this generation and they’ve apparently implemented a checkpoint system in the DLC (which I don’t have), so I guess I can cut it some slack in that respect, but that doesn’t make it fun to play. However, the biggest problems I had with the game are things that are endemic to a lot of video game sequels.

When you start the game, you’ve got very little in the way of weaponry and it takes you a while to get to an even reasonably powerful weapon. Your access to the city is very limited, as are the cars you can steal. Now, starting small and earning more powerful weapons is a time-honored video game tradition, as is the expansion of access as you gain more power. But is it really necessary for GTA 4? In most respects, this game is the same as GTA 3 (this is, in itself, another problem, though not one I’m going to focus much on in this post), which was made almost a decade ago at this point (of course, GTA 4 was made a few years ago, but still). Though you can’t tell from the numbering, there have actually been several games between those two mentioned. And every one of them starts you off with limited weapons and limited access to the city. Is that really necessary?

It’s a tricky problem though. Someone who’s new to the series might very well appreciate the slow approach. There are a lot of mechanics to master in the game, so jumping right in might be overwhelming to a new player. But for long-time fans of the series, it can be excruciating to go through the paces yet again. This is most certainly not a problem that is limited to the GTA series.

One particularly egregious example is in the God of War series. The protagonist of the series, Kratos, has these nifty blades that are attached to chains, allowing him to swing them around in many acrobatic maneuvers. In the first game, they’re called the “Blades of Chaos”. Towards the beginning of GoW II, you get an “upgrade” to the “Blades of Athena”. Despite being nearly identical in appearance and functionality, you suddenly forget all of the advanced attacks you had learned on the “Blades of Chaos”. Really? So Kratos gets a pair of identical blades, but now he forgets how to spin around with them (I believe this move is called the “Cyclone of Chaos”)? And starting the player off with all the powers from the previous game, only to take them away because of a lame plot point? That’s not cool. The same thing happens at the beginning of GoW III.

Other recent sequels I’ve played recently have similar starts. In Uncharted 2, you start with melee attacks and freakin dart guns. You don’t get a proper pistol until at least an hour or two into the game (and that’s not exactly a powerful weapon either). This is apparently a longstanding issue. David Wong wrote about this years ago, giving one great example from Half Life 2:

Barney hands you a crowbar

“Gordon, the whole world has been taken over by a race of malevolent aliens. All of humanity is depending on you. Here’s a goddamned crowbar.”

As Wong notes in his article, it’s nice that “earning bigger, fancier weapons is a reward to keep us playing. But don’t make us start with a weapon we probably have in our real-life garage (hey, thanks for the wrench, Bioshock).” Now, Wong was making a general point about underpowered starting weapons… but it becomes doubly annoying when you’re playing a sequel to a game and you have to start back at the beginning again.

Again, this is a bit of a challenge for game developers, since they don’t always have the luxury of assuming that everyone played the previous installment (indeed, their goal is to expand the market and sell more than the previous game, so they have to plan for that possibility). I recently picked up Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction and haven’t had any problems… but that’s probably only because this is my first Ratchet and Clank game. I’m sure fans of the series were a bit annoyed at starting the game with limited weaponry, and I’m sure that if I pick up A Crack in Time, I’ll it will suffer from the typical sequel problems…

The most obvious solution is to allow existing players to skip forward somehow. In the case of GTA IV, that means making more of the island available right away, as well as letting you pick up more powerful weaponry and nicer cars. For Ratchet and Clank, it means having more weapons available right from the start. The problem with this solution is that the developer either has to code two introductory sections of the game, or they have to make sure the game is well balanced for both the experienced and new player (this is probably a lot more difficult than it sounds). For an open ended game like GTA IV, that is probably more feasible than for a more cutscene and story-oriented game, like Uncharted 2. That being said, if it’s a sequel, one would assume that the game is popular enough to warrant the extra expenditure.

One thing that might be interesting is to tie this into Trophies/Achievements. If the system can see that you’ve played the previous game, perhaps you automatically load the player into the experienced track. Of course, that assumes that the sequel is on a game from the current generation (of the games mentioned in this post, the only one that really qualifies is Uncharted 2, though you could make a case for God of War, since they released an upconverted version of the last-generation games on the PS3)

The only game I’ve played recently that got this right was Call of Duty: Black Ops, where you get a pretty great weapon right from the start. But then, I haven’t played the multi-player yet, and I’m sure you have to start at the bottom there…

Apparently there are some games that try to tie your decisions from the first game into the sequels. Mass Effect 2 was supposed to do that, but I get the impression that it wasn’t as big a deal as some were expecting. Of course, the first game isn’t even available on the PS3 (and my computer is too old to go that route), so I’ll be starting ME2 as a new player… but then, Mass Effect 3 is supposed to carry those same decisions on as well, so I guess we’ll find out. In any case, I find that concept encouraging, even if I haven’t actually played it yet. In the end, I don’t think every game will be able to get that far, if only because some games won’t have the luxury of planning for a sequel ahead of time. But there might be some simpler things you can do to mitigate the issue, and I hope more developers get creative in that respect.

Anecdotal

Arts & Letters, Culture / /

I’m currently reading Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age, by Clay Shirky. There seems to be a pattern emerging from certain pop-science books I’ve been reading in the past few years. Namely, a heavy reliance on fascinating anecdotes, counter-intuitive psychology experiments, and maybe a little behavioral economics thrown in for good measure. Cognitive Surplus most certainly fits the mold. Another book I’ve read recently, How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer, also fits. Most of Malcolm Gladwell’s work does too (indeed, he’s a master of the anecdote).

I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with this format. In fact, it can be quite entertaining and sometimes even informative. But sometimes I feel a bit uncomfortable with the conclusions that are drawn from all of this. Anecdotes, even well documented anecdotes, can make for great reading, but that doesn’t necessarily make them broadly applicable. Generalizing or extrapolating from anecdotes can lead to some problematic conclusions. This is a difficult subject to tackle though, because humans seem to be hard wired to do exactly that. The human brain is basically a giant heuristic machine.

This is not a bad thing. Heuristics are an important part of human life because we usually don’t always have all the information needed to use a more reliable, logical process. We all extrapolate from our own experiences; that is to say, we rely on anecdotal evidence in our daily lives all the time. It allows us to operate in situations which we do not understand.

Unfortunately, it’s also subjective and not entirely reliable. The major issue is that it’s rather easy to convince yourself that you have properly understand the problem, when in fact, you don’t. In other words, our incompetence masks our ability to recognize our incompetence. As a result, we see things like Cargo Cults. Security beliefs and superstitions are also heuristics, albeit generally false ones. But they arise because producing such explanations are a necessary part of our life. We cannot explain everything we see, and since we often need to act on what we see, we must rely on less than perfect heuristics and processes.

So in a book like Cognitive Surplus, there’s this instinctual impulse to agree with conclusions extrapolated from anecdotes, which is probably the source of my discomfort. It’s not that I doubt the factual content of the anecdotes, it’s that I’m not always sure how to connect the anecdote with the conclusion. In many cases, it seems like an intuitive leap, but as previously noted, this is a subjective process.

Of course, Shirky does not rely solely on anecdotal evidence in his book (nor do the other authors mentioned above). There are the aforementioned psychology experiments and behavioral economics studies that rely on the scientific notions of strictly controlled conditions and independent reproduction. The assumption is that conclusions extrapolated from this more scientific data are more reliable. But is it possible that they could suffer from the same problems as anecdotes?

Maybe. The data is almost always presented in an informal, summarized format (very similar, in fact, to the way anecdotes are formed), which can leave a lot of wiggle room. For instance, strictly controlled conditions necessary to run an experiment can yield qualifying factors that will make the results less broadly applicable than we may desire. I find this less troubling in cases where I’m already familiar with a study, such as the Ultimatum Game. It also helps that such a study has been independently reproduced countless times since it first appeared, and that many subsequent tests have refined various conditions and variables to see how the results would come out (and they all point in the expected direction).

Later in the book, Shirky references an economic study performed on 10 day-care centers in Haifa, Israel. I will not get into the details of the study (this post is not a review of Shirky’s book, after all), except to say that it was a single study, performed in a narrow location, with a relatively small data set. I don’t doubt the objective results, but unlike the Ultimatum Game, this study does not seem to have a long history of reproduction, nor did the researchers conduct obvious follow-up experiments (perhaps there are additional studies, but they are not referenced by Shirky). The results seem to violate certain economic assumptions we’re all familiar with, but they are also somewhat intuitive when you realize why the results came out the way they did. On the other hand, how do we know why they came out that way? I’m virtually certain that if you vary one particular variable of the experiment, you’ll receive the expected result. Then what?

I don’t mean to imply that these books are worthless or that they don’t contain valuable insights. I generally find them entertaining, helpful and informative, sometimes even persuasive. I like reading them. However, reading a book like this is not a passive activity. It’s a dialogue. In other words, I don’t think that Cognitive Surplus is the last word on the subjects that Shirky is writing about, despite a certain triumphal tone in his writing. It’s important to recognize that there is probably more to this book than what is on the page. That’s why there’s a lengthly Notes section with references to numerous papers and studies for further reading and clarification. Cognitive Surplus raises some interesting questions and it proposes some interesting answers, but it’s not the end of the conversation.

Update: I thought of a few books that I think are better about this sort of thing, and there’s a commonality that’s somewhat instructive. One example is The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, by Barry Schwartz. Another is Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. The interesting thing about both of these books is that they are written by researchers who have conducted a lot of the research themselves. Both of them are very careful in the way they phrase their conclusions, making sure to point out qualifying factors, etc… Shirky, Gladwell, etc… seem to be summarizing the work of others. This is also valuable, in its own way, but perhaps less conclusive? (Then again, correlation does not necessarily mean causation. This update basically amounts to heuristic, and one based on the relatively small sample of pop-science books I’ve read, so take it with a grain of salt.)

Again Update: I wrote this post before finishing Cognitive Surplus. I’m now finished, and in the last chapter, Shirky notes (pages 191-192):

The opportunity we collectively share, though, is much larger than even a book’s worth of examples can express, because those examples, and especially the ones that involve significant cultural disruption, could turn out to be special cases. As with previous revolutions driven by technology – whether it is the rise of literate and scientific culture with the spread of the printing press or the economic and social globalization that followed the invention of the telegraph – what matters now is not the new capabilities that we have, but how we turn those capabilities, both technical and social, into opportunities.

In short, I think Shirky is acknowledging what was making me uncomfortable throughout the book: anecdotes and examples can’t paint the whole picture. Shirky’s book is not internet triumphalism, but a call to action. I suppose you could argue that even the assertion that these opportunities exist at all is a form of triumphalism, but I don’t think so.

Link Dump

Link Dump / /

I had a busy weekend, so here are some interesting links I’ve run across recently:

  • Awesomest Action Movie Ever: I see short clips of amazingly weird movies like this all the time, but they never actually tell you what the movie is. Granted, it’s probably not going to be available in the US or Netflix, but still, it would be nice to know.
  • The Thomas Beale Cipher: Gorgeous animated short about a guy who is on a treasure hunt (I think). It’s based on a real story, a set of three ciphertexts created by the titular Thomas Beale. The ciphers still haven’t been solved, nearly a hundred years later. Some believe that the story is a hundred year old hoax, others contend that there is about $65 million in buried gold treasure out there somewhere. The filmmaker seems to have also embedded 16 hidden messages in the film, though I haven’t really looked to hard for any of them (I did a cursory search to see if anyone else had found them, but came up short).
  • Excitebike Shop: It used to be that you’d only see videos like this for the classics like Super Mario Brothers or Zelda, but lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of Excitebike parodies. Weird.
  • Snowy Trench Run: Another amazing video that would have gone unseen without the internet.
  • Weightless Cats – I can has gravity?: Where would the internet be without cats?

That’s all for now!

Lost

Arts & Letters, Movies / /

Over the past year or so, I’ve been making my way through seasons 2-6 of Lost. I watched the first season on DVD shortly after it came out, and after following along with the broadcast for a couple weeks of season 2, I resolved to stop watching until I had some indication that the show would actually end (i.e. I was worried the writers would continually make stuff up and withhold any answers indefinitely). I dutifully avoided most contact with the series until early last year. By that time, the writers had declared a definite ending point and from observations of friends’ responses to new episodes, I gathered that the show was picking up steam, rather than bogging down.

As you might imagine, given the fact that I pretty much ignored the series for a few years there, I’m not a huge fan of the series. I didn’t actively dislike it either, I was just never hooked or convinced that it was going anywhere interesting. But then there were some things I was able to glean about what was happening and then Netflix made all of the seasons available on their Watch Instantly service, at which point, I had no real excuse to keep avoiding it. I burned through season 2 pretty quickly, though again, I was pretty unimpressed. Season 3 was even more of a slog, though I had been warned that this was the case. Apparently during the course of Season 3, the writers/producers agreed on an ending (or at least, how many more seasons/episodes remained). There was an almost immediate improvement in the quality of the episodes, but again, I was not terribly impressed.

Don’t get me wrong, I was enjoying myself. I had no issues burning through a bunch of episodes all at once, and having the entire series at my fingertips made that prospect all too easy. Nevertheless, I never really had a problem taking a break either. Last year, I gave up Television for Lent. Despite just having started season 3, I had no problem staying away for 40 days. Later in the year, when I had finished season 5, but season 6 wasn’t available on DVD/Netflix yet, I wasn’t all that broken up about it. If this was a show that I loved, such delays would have been quite frustrating. As it was, I’m lucky I even remembered to check for season 6.

Ultimately, I’m glad that I did. I still have a lot of issues with the series as a whole, and even the last season itself, but in the end, I found it to be a worthwhile venture. I’ve tried to avoid Spoilers for most of this post, but there are some things you may not want to know and there are definitely spoilers towards the end of the post. To summarize my thoughts, I found the ending of the series to be emotionally satisfying, but not intellectually satisfying.

This is actually an interesting reaction for me, because I usually respond in the opposite way. For example, a few years ago, I saw the movie Capote and thought it was fantastic. The writing, the acting, the direction, cinematography, just about everything about the film was extremely well done. On an intellectual level, I found it amazing. On an emotional level, I didn’t connect with it nearly as well. I have no idea why. There were a couple of scenes towards the end of the film where I kept thinking to myself This is devastating! and yet, I never actually felt devastated myself. I only really recognized the devastation on an intellectual level. There are lots of other movies I feel similarly about, and it’s a real shame, because that feeling (or lack of feeling, as it were) leaves those films feeling a bit hollow in my mind.

Lost (at least, the final season) ended up being the opposite, especially when it came to the “Flash-Sideways” sequences. Nothing seemed to make much sense intellectually, but it was emotionally satisfying nonetheless. I’m sure there are tons of people who hate those sequences. They’re full of sticky-sweet sentimentality and schmaltz. I’m a guy who doesn’t mind a happy ending, but lots of people seem to hate them. You often see these people excoriating Hollywood cinema for this sort of thing, and to be honest, they’re not entirely wrong. But sometimes they are, and for me, Lost worked. At least, in that specific respect, it worked.

I think my problems with the series have primarily to do with a few early choices that the writers seemed to get away from in later seasons. First, the series initially seemed like a science fiction story. It is not. It is a fantasy. But the writers attempted to use tropes from SF to spice up their story (in particular, the Dharma Initiative and time travel subplots), and that does represent a bit of a problem because the explanation for a lot of the mysterious happenings on the island basically amount to something like “A wizard did it!” or “It was magic!” Even when it comes to the time travel stuff, there isn’t really any science in that fiction – it’s all fantasy. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with that sort of thing, but leveraging SF tropes implies a certain plausibility that Lost could never really deliver. Once I realized this, I became a little more accepting of some of the more ridiculous aspects of the series, most of which can be summed up as: The island is a weird place and Jacob has weird powers. However, I think there were a number of times when the series established some convention or set of rules, then went ahead and broke them for no other reason than that it would, like, totally make for a sweet cliffhanger. I think this is, in large part, why the series is not intellectually satisfying for me.

This sort of inconsistency was especially frustrating from a characterization standpoint. Jack and Kate love each other, but then Kate loves Sawyer, but Sawyer’s evil, no wait he’s just a con-man with a heart of gold, but then he does something evil again, but he’s really a good guy, but no, he’s only out for himself, but then he gets married and settles down and now he wants to kill Jack, but Jack loves Juliet, but Juliet is married to Sawyer even though she really loves Jack, but they’re divorced and did I mention that Sawyer is selfish and only looking out for himself but that he’s in love with Kate, no, wait, I meant Juliet and then Ben loves Juliet but she doesn’t really care, but Jack and Juliet are divorced and Kate and Jack are together but then they’re separated and Jack wants to leave the island, but only until he wants to return to the island because it’s his destiny, but no, really it’s Hugo’s destiny, but Jack still has some sort of destiny on the island and isn’t meth awesome!?

Now, here’s the thing: most of that is actually fine. I don’t have a problem with a character who changes their mind or goes through something traumatic and is changed in the process. The issue is that many of these changes happen only because the plot requires them to, not because of a natural outgrowth or reaction of the character. Even worse, the plot often doesn’t require such twists – they’re only included to make for a snappy cut to commercial or cliffhanger ending. So you get these weird character reversals where Kate wants to leave the island, but she doesn’t want to leave, but she does, but she doesn’t. All within the course of, like, 15 minutes. I don’t know, maybe I’m exaggerating. I didn’t make a note every time I thought to myself: Wait, what? Why would this character do that? Oh dammit, end of episode, fuck! But I know I had such thoughts often. (If I ever rewatch the series, I will try to document these occurrences).

Perhaps towards the end of the fifth season and leading into the sixth, this issues seemed to straighten out a bit. I didn’t have nearly as many problems during the sixth season. Maybe that’s because my brain was so addled by the previous seasons that I knew what to expect, but still, things seemed more consistent. Of course, this only leads to my next question, which is: What the hell were the first 5 seasons for again?

I mean, there’s a very basic conflict at the heart of the Lost universe. Jacob vs. Smoke Monster. Protect the magic golden light. That’s really it. The rest of the series is basically just some messed up people trying to work through some personal issues. Some of them think the island can help, most don’t, but in the end, the island brought them together and ultimately brought out the best in them (well, in a bunch of them). That’s all background though, and the aforementioned central conflict? It isn’t even revealed in the series until, like, late in the fifth season. We don’t even hear Jacob’s name until the third season, and even when we think we’ve seen him, we haven’t.

I can accept the fact that it takes a good amount of time to establish characters and their backgrounds and the series is fantastically complex when it comes to that web of character interactions, on and off the island, in the future and in the past. But did we really need 4-5 seasons of that before we got on with the actual story?

Well, this post is turning into a bit of rant about the things I didn’t like about the series, and that’s not what I initially set out to do. None of the above is to say that the series isn’t worthwhile. Indeed, much of it could be construed as nitpicks. I don’t think it’s possible to have a show air for 6 seasons and not have such nitpicks. Shit happens. A cast member want to quit, so you need to write a quick exit (bye bye, Mr Eko!). Other cast members demand way too much money and a couple others get a DUI so they all need to be written off. These things happen.

And even then, the writers managed to build a story with, like, a hundred main characters. That sounds like hyperbole, and I suppose it is, but it’s not that far off. What’s more, most of those characters are interacting, before, during, and after their stay on the island. The non-linear exploration of such connections is actually pretty impressive in its own way. If you’re a science fiction type, you certainly won’t be impressed because there’s no real explanation beyond “Magic” or “Destiny” or “Fate” or something, but there is something admirable about the number of characters and the extent to which their stories were woven together. The “Flashback” conceit was something I was quite dubious about at the beginning of the series, but the writers managed at least one shocking twist in that respect. The “Flash-forward” was a brilliant idea, and it was quite well executed. The “Flash-sideways” of the last season was a little baffling, but quite resonant from an emotional perspective.

So we come back to my basic feeling about the series: satisfying on an emotional level, but not on an intellectual level. I have my issues with the series, but it’s still a well produced, well written series that can get addictive at times (of course, I was able to stop when i wanted as well, but there were a lot of Dammit! Ok, one more episode! moments as the writers laid one of their cliffhangers on me – even some of the lame ones that break character are still compelling in some way).

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher

Arts & Letters, Movies / /

One of the themes of 2010 cinema has been a question of reality. Is what we’re watching real? Or is it a fabrication? Or perhaps some twisted combination of the two? Interestingly, this theme can be found in the outright fictional (films like Inception certainly induce questions of reality), the ostensibly true story that is notably and obviously fictionalized (a la The Social Network), and most interestingly of all, the documentary. Films like Catfish and Exit Through the Gift Shop are certainly presented as fact, though many questions have arisen about their verisimilitude. Joaquin Phoenix and Casey Affleck collaborated on I’m Still Here, a supposed documentary about Phoenix’s strange transition from a well known actor to a crazy aspiring rapper that Phoenix and Affleck have since admitted was something of a hoax (I have not seen the film, but from what I can see, many of the events certainly did happen, even if they were manufactured). In most cases, audiences don’t seem to mind the blurring of reality with fiction (this includes myself), so long as that blurring is made clear (that may sound paradoxical, but it is perhaps better understood as the main component of the Reflexive Documentary: movies that acknowledge the biases of the filmmakers and the subjectivity of the material at hand are more trustworthy than movies that claim objectivity). Indeed, one could probably make a case for the presence of fiction in most non-fiction stories. Bias, subjectivity, and context can yield dramatically different results depending on how they’re portrayed.

It is in this frame of mind that I picked up The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale. It was immediately obvious that I was in for something that blurred the lines between fact and fiction. As Summerscale herself acknowledges in the introduction (page XIII):

This book is modelled on the country-house murder mystery, the form that the Road Hill case inspired, and uses some of the devices of detective fiction. The content, though, aims to be factual. The main sources are the government and police files on the murder, which are held in the National Archives at Kew, south-west London, and the books, pamphlets, essays and newspaper pieces published about the case in the 1860s, which can be found in the British Library. Other sources include maps, railway timetables, medical textbooks, social histories and police memoirs. Some descriptions of buildings and landscapes are from personal observation. Accounts of the weather conditions are from press reports, and the dialogue is from testimony given in court.

Even with the acknowledgement, the book is an odd amalgam of embellished factual accounts of a horrific murder, straightforward biographical information of the titular Johnathan Whicher and the family Kent, and a survey of mid-nineteenth century detective fiction. There are times when Summerscale follows one of these three tangential threads too far, but for the most part, she manages to weave them together in a deft and engaging fashion.

The mystery at the center of the book concerns a gruesome murder of three-year-old Saville Kent in 1860. Local police bumbled through the investigation, eventually leading the government to dispatch Scotland Yard Detective Inspector Jack Whicher to the small town to investigate. Whicher sized up the situation and quickly came to the shocking conclusion that the murderer must have been a member of the Kent household. Everyone from Saville’s father to his nursemaids came under suspicion, though Whicher favored Saville’s half-sister, Constance Kent. However, Whicher had been brought into the case nearly a week after the murder. The evidence was mostly circumstantial and most leads had gone cold before he even started the case.

And it was a very odd case. It’s easy to see why fiction authors appropriated so much from the story in later novels. Every clue, every piece of new information, every close examination of the evidence at hand seemed to make the case less clear. Summerscale writes (page 75):

The family story that Whicher pieced together at Road Hill House suggested that Saville’s death was part of a mesh of deception and concealment. The detective stories that the case engendered, beginning with The Moonstone in 1868, took this lesson. All the suspects in a classic murder mystery have secrets, and to keep them they lie, dissemble, evade the interrogations of the investigator. Everyone seems guilty because everyone has something to hide. For most of them, though, the secret is not murder. This is the trick on which detective fiction turns.

Summerscale delves into the tricks of Whicher’s trade from time to time, and it does make for fascinating reading. I love to read about the devils in the details on which something like this murder mystery hinges. For instance, one of the mini-mysteries the case presents us with is a missing nightdress. This sounds like a minor detail, but Whicher immediately seizes upon the missing clothing as a precious clue. Summerscale takes the opportunity to describe the origins of the word “clue” and why Whicher was so keen on solving the mini-mystery of the missing nightdress (from page 68):

The word ‘clue’ derives from ‘clew,’ meaning a ball of thread or yarn. It had come to mean ‘that which points the way’ because of the Greek myth in which Theseus uses a ball of yarn, given to him by Ariadne, to find his way out of the Minotaur’s labyrinth. The wirters of the mid-nineteenth century still had this image in mind when they used the word… a plot was a knot, and a story ended in a ‘denouement’, an unknotting.

Then, as now, many clues were literally made of cloth – Criminals could be identified by pieces of fabric.

Summerscale then proceeds to detail several cases where Whicher himself managed to solve a crime due to the fortuitous discovery of unique or identifiable clothing, eventually concluding (from page 70):

The thread that led Theseus out of the maze was true to another principle of Whicher’s investigation: the progress of a detective was backwards. To find his way out of danger and confusion, Theseus had to retrace his steps, return to the origin. The solution to a crime was the beginning as well as the end of a story.

I have a fascination with such details, so of course I wouldn’t have minded if Summerscale indulged in more of such analysis, but it’s clear that she was trying to walk a tight line. I would be easy to stray too far from her focus on the mystery and the man sent to investigate, and she manages to walk that line well enough.

Whicher is an interesting man in himself. Most of what we know about him is in his police reports and correspondence. I would have loved to read more about the man, but from what I can tell, Summerscale has unearthed every conceivable piece of knowledge about the man, and still came up a bit short. As a plain-clothes detective, he obviously avoided attention as much as possible, which probably explains some of the missing information – for instance, there doesn’t appear to be any pictures or paintings of the main available. That being said, he’s certainly a worthy subject for study. He seems to possess keen observational skills as well as a knack for finding holes in a story and clues. He appears quite confident in his perceptions, though as the subhead of the book notes, he is somewhat shaken by the mystery at Road Hill House. His initial investigation yielded no convictions and he returned to London a different man, though I think calling this his “Undoing” is perhaps a bit of an exaggeration. Indeed, after Summerscale establishes the central mystery, I feared that the subhead implied that no solution would really be found.

Fortunately, there is a closure of sorts, though I will not spoil the book by delving too deeply into that here. Suffice to say that by the end of the book, we are a bit closer to what actually happened, though the inherent difficulty of rebuilding a picture of the past is one of the themes of the book. In today’s day and age, with TV shows like CSI showing what you can do with forensics in explicit detail, it’s easy to forget how difficult it would be to figure out what happened in the past (and to be honest, even given the advanced forensic technology available, shows like CSI still gloss over the difficulties of a murder investigation). Mr. Whicher had no such forensic luxuries in his day and had to rely on his cunning and intuition, perhaps moreso than would be comfortable with modern populations. Indeed, one of the undercurrents of the book is how England was reacting to the notion of a “detective” – a concept that was somewhat new to the world. Many felt that detectives were too intrusive and seedy, in it only for the money or glory. Whicher does not seem like that type though. He’s reserved and curious, confident in his prowess, but honorable in his manner.

Of course, I’m basing my opinion of the man on what could be argued is a partially-fictional representation of the man and his actions. This question of what is real and what is fiction is something that kept coming to mind while reading this book. Part of that might be the year in film, as previously mentioned, but I think other readers would find such questions arising when reading the book as well. Of the three main components of the story I mentioned earlier (murder mystery, biography, and survey of detective fiction), it is the latter that calls reality into question the most. There seems to be a general idea that quoting fiction in a formal argument is bad form, and as such I can see some people being taken aback by Summerscale’s book. While impeccably researched and sourced, she does give the book a flare you don’t normally see in non-fiction. As she mentions in her introduction, she uses many devices of detective fiction in her writing. She directly references detective fiction of the day, as well as authors like Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry James, and Wilkie Collins (Arthur Conan Doyle is not really referenced until later in the book, as Doyle did not start writing his Sherlock Holmes books until well after Whicher’s heyday). Some of these references are to non-fiction – Dickens interviewed Whicher, for instance, and Summerscale includes many of Dickens’ insights into Whicher and the case at Road Hill House – but some references are directly from detective fiction. Again, some might find that inappropriate, but I’m sympathetic to such techniques, and I think Summerscale does an exceptional job mixing fact and fiction, to the point where I don’t think the book would be as informative or interesting if it didn’t mix those seemingly incompatible components. Ultimately, I think this combination yields some insights that a traditional scholarly effort might have missed, and I quite enjoyed the book for the way it treated both real and fictional detectives (page 304):

Perhaps this is the purpose of detective investigations, real and fictional – to transform sensation, horror and grief into a puzzle, and then to solve the puzzle, to make it go away. ‘The detective story,” observed Raymond Chandler in 1949, ‘is a tragedy with a happy ending.’ A storybook detective starts by confronting us with a murder and ends by absolving us of it. He clears us of guilt. He relieves us of uncertainty. He removes us from the presence of death.

It was a good read, and I would recommend it to any one interested in mysteries or the era. Special thanks to longtime Kaedrin reader and friend, Spencer, for giving me this book.

2010 Kaedrin Movie Awards: Arbitrary Awards

2010 Movie Awards, Movies / /

So we’re finished with the formal awards, but there are always some other awards that don’t really require a lot of nominees… and there are some movies that have something so uncommon that it’s worth bringing up. Interestingly, some of these awards have actually become a yearly thing, despite never really being conceived as such. In any case, here they are:

  • The “You know what happens when a toad gets struck by lightning? The same thing that happens to everything else” Award for Worst Dialogue: Skyline. Not even that talented thespian Eric Balfour could make this crap sound good. “It’s not exactly like we have a lot more bedsheets!”
  • The Proximity to Jason Vorhees Award for Heroic Stupidity: Piranha 3D. Of course, the gargantuan amounts of stupid present in this film actually constitute its charm.
  • The “I Can’t Believe They Went There” Award for Dumbest Plot Twist: Shutter Island. Scorsese is brilliant as always, but even he can’t undo the damage done by one of the dumbest plot twists ever. I also The Book of Eli, but then, there’s not quite the disparity between talent and dumb twist there. In other words, the dumbness seems appropriate for that movie.
  • Best Unexpected Gratuitous Nudity: Love and Other Drugs. I like Anne Hathaway. (I assume female audiences enjoy Jake Gyllenhaal as well).
  • Best Documentary About Wine: Blood Into Wine. In a move resembling Homer Simpson’s decision to attend Clown College, Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan bought and runs a winery in Arizona. This slickly produced documentary is an interesting look at the situation and well worth a watch.
  • Most Menacing Florist of the Year: Pete Postlethwaite’s character in The Town. Sadly, Postlethwaite recently passed away. He will be missed, as he always classed a movie up with his presence.
  • Most Surprisingly Mediocre Movie of the Year: Unstoppable. This movie about a runaway train* looked like it would be one of the worst of the year. Instead we got a competent and surprisingly fun thriller.
  • Best Underwater Ballet Sequence: Piranha 3D. This isn’t just the best underwater ballet sequence with naked women set to classical music of the year, it’s quite possible the best underwater ballet sequence with naked women set to classical music of all time. I suppose an alternate title for this award could be “Best Expected Gratuitous Nudity”, a companion to an earlier arbitrary award.

And that just about wraps up the awards for the year. Look for a top 10 list in a few weeks…

* Sorry, I forgot. It’s not a train, it’s a missile the size of the Chrystler building! Please accept my humble apologies.

2010 Kaedrin Movie Award Winners!

2010 Movie Awards, Movies / /

The nominations for the 2010 Kaedrin Movie Awards were announced last week. Today, I’ll be announcing the winners of those formal awards. Later in the week, I’ll cover less traditional categories in what we like to call the Arbitrary Awards, and at some point in the near future, I’ll post my top 10 of 2010 (this will most likely happen in early to mid-February). So let’s get this party started:

  • Best Villain/Badass: Dr. Heiter, played by Dieter Laser in The Human Centipede. I know, this category is lame. What a bad year for villainy. I seriously considered nominating “speech impediments” (from The King’s Speech), that’s how bad this year was for villains. I suppose I could add CLU from TRON: Legacy now that I’ve seen that, but even he is a bit of a lame villain. Ivan Vanko would have been a great candidate if the movie he was in didn’t suck so bad. The other nominees were fine, I guess, but in the end, I had to go with everyone’s favorite mad scientist, Dr. Heiter, played with a manic and malevolent swagger by (best actor name ever?) Dieter Laser, in one of the more aggressively disgusting horror movies of the year.
  • Best Hero/Badass: Mindy Macready / Hit-Girl, played by Chloe Moretz in Kick-Ass. Now this was a much more difficult category to pick a winner in, as there have been lots of great heroic badasses this year. There are a couple that definitely weren’t in the running (notably Tom Cruise and Angelina Jolie, though I enjoy both of their characters and their movies), but the rest were pretty much on a level playing field, though how could Hit-Girl not come out on top. I suppose there’s something of a controversy around such a young actress portraying such a foul-mouthed and violent character, but I’ll be damned if she wasn’t hysterically funny and totally badass at the same time. If the movie makes my top 10, it will most likely be because of this character and Moretz’s performance. At the time I wasn’t sure if such an aggressively juvenile film or the novelty of seeing an 11 year old girl swear like a sailor whilst eviscerating her enemies would stand the test of time. So far, at least, it has. I mean, how can this award not go to the character that responds to the seemingly reasonable inquiry of how to contact her in case of an emergency with this: “You just contact the mayor’s office. He has a special signal he shines in the sky; it’s in the shape of a giant cock.” Brilliant.
  • Best Comedic Performance: Kieran Culkin in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. I’m as surprised as you are about this one, but he was damn funny in one of the few movies I found really funny this year. I did seriously consider Chloe Moretz for this one, but then, she’s only in her movie for a short period of time overall, and a lot of that is really just action. This is really a category where none of the nominees really jumped out at me, so I really just gave it to the movie I thought best deserved to get a comedic award, at which point, Scott Pilgrim actually does stand out. Thats a lame way to pick a winner, I guess, but I really didn’t have any other good ideas.
  • Breakthrough Performance: Armie Hammer in The Social Network. Another difficult choice, though this time because there were too many good choices. The shortlist included Noomi Rapace and Jennifer Lawrence (and, ok, Emma Stone), but I ended up going with Hammer because I have to admit, I thought he was awesome in the movie AND that I didn’t even realize he was playing two parts (he plays both Winklevoss twins, a testament to his acting ability and the special effects used to pull off those scenes). In the past, this award has traditionally gone to someone I knew, but never expected much out of… Previous winners include Rosario Dawson, Mila Kunis, Josh Brolin and Tom Hardy, all people who I knew and underestimated. This years nominees were mostly young folks who don’t have much to their credit, which is very different than years past. Strange, but Hammer was really fantastic in his roles, and I look forward to seeing more of him…

    Armie Hammer in The Social Network

  • Most Visually Stunning: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. There seem to be two different types of visually stunning movie nominated every year – gorgeously photographed movies (for this year, think True Grit, Valhalla Rising, Winters Bone and Shutter Island) and movies that have lots of pretty special effects or animation (like Inception or the Secret of Kells), and I seem to generally favor the special effects for some reason. I’m not really sure why, perhaps because the films I choose tend to be more fast paced and have lots of visual pyrotechnics and creativity, like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. All of this year’s nominees are pretty great from a visual perspective though.
  • Best Sci-Fi or Horror Film: Inception. Not sure how much actual science is there, but Inception certainly has the look and feel of great science fiction and it evokes that great sensawunda feeling that makes SF so entertaining. It sets up a complicated set of rules and then subverts them, but it does so in an internally consistent way, which is what makes this movie so great. None of the other nominees really came close (i.e. this is the first easy category this year!), though I will note that I got a very similar vibe from the little-seen Triangle (even if that one’s even less of SF and more horror/fantasy).
  • Best Sequel: Toy Story 3. This is usually a very difficult category to populate, but this year there were several worthy nominees, though I have to admit that I let a few crappy ones in, notably Piranha 3D, which I allowed based solely on the power of one scene (which will come up when we get to the arbitrary awards next week). I also wanted to note that I was really surprised at how well Paranormal Activity 2 fit into the first movie. There’s some clear retconning going on there, but it fits surprisingly well. But in the end, how could I not give this to Toy Story 3? A fantastic movie, sequel or not, and it will most likely be finding its way onto my top 10.
  • Biggest Disappointment: Cop Out. I don’t know why I had such high expectations for this one, but I apparently did, and boy did it let me down. With the exception of Sean William Scott’s performance, the film is pretty bad. From the cheesy Fletch-wannabe music score to the crappy writing to the boring performances (Bruce Willis mostly just sleeping his way through the movie, while Tracy Morgan was entirely too unrestrained), there’s not much to recommend about this movie. I really like Kevin Smith’s movies, but I have to admit that I’m confused by this direction – if anything, he should be writing scripts for other directors, not the other way around. As for the other nominees, I didn’t really love Iron Man as much as everyone else, so the complete failure of the sequel wasn’t really a surprise to me. Splice would be most accurately described as an “interesting failure”, which isn’t that bad in my book. Mother was actually a pretty good movie, but it’s gotten so much play from almost every critic out there that I went into it with expectations that were way too high. And I wasn’t expecting that much out of Doghouse in the first place. So yeah, Cop Out was the natural choice for me.
  • Best Action Sequences: Kick-Ass. Another difficult category, and I’m a little surprised that I ended up with Kick-Ass, but it does, well, Kick-Ass. Part of it might just be the novelty of the young heroine (see Best Hero/Badass award above), but another part of it is that there simply wasn’t a ton of competition this year. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Inception were on the shortlist for this one, but I felt like Inception was driven more by its ideas than its action, while the action sequences in Scot Pilgrim seemed to get a bit repetitive and desensitizing by the end of the film. Kick-Ass was also sorta making fun of itself as well, which helps.
  • Best Plot Twist/Surprise: Triangle. Always a difficult category to talk about, as I don’t want to give anything away, but I found Triangle pretty consistently surprising. Once I got about 30 minutes in, some stuff happened, and I really had no idea where the rest of the movie would go, and that happens a couple times as the movie goes on. Like Inception, it’s got a lot of moving parts that all seem to fit together in the end, but which you don’t really see coming until they’re there. Of course, it’s important to go into the movie knowing as little as possible about it, but that shouldn’t be too much of a problem for this underseen movie. Inception was a runner up, as was Exit Through the Gift Shop, neither of which really employ conventional plot twists, to be sure (heck one of them is a documentary!), but both of which took me somewhere interesting that I wasn’t expecting. Catfish was kinda predictable and as critic Michael Phillips notes in the latest Filmspotting, The Secret in Their Eyes is like a really great two-episode Law & Order: Buenos Aires (if such a thing existed).
  • Best High Concept Film: Exit Through the Gift Shop. Always a difficult category to populate and pick a winner for because the concept is a bit nebulous to start with, but when I thought about this award and Exit Through the Gift Shop, it just made more and more sense. Here’s a movie ostensibly about street art, but which ends up examining the person who shot most of the footage in detail, then mercilessly critiquing the art world and hype and ultimately, even itself. The movie is critically examining the very idea of high concept art, so how could it not win? The runner up would have to be The Human Centipede, which is entirely reliant on the disgusting high-concept premise at its core (almost to its detriment).

    Exit Through The Gift Shop

  • 2010’s 2009 Movie of the Year: (tie) Black Dynamite and Mystery Team. There are no clear standouts here, and the two I ended up with are both flawed, but only in ways that I find kinda endearing. For instance, the faux-blaxploitation of Black Dynamite begins to wear thin towards the end, though there are several brilliant sequences in the film (such as the montage in the park where he’s kinda playing with his girlfriend). Mystery Team is a little too silly for its own good, but I actually really enjoyed that part of the film. Interestingly, almost all of the nominees here are pretty much comedies. Some have other elements as well, but they’re mostly comedies, which is strange.

Well there you have it. Stay tuned for the Arbitrary Awards on Wednesday and, eventually, the top 10 of 2010.

Link Dump

Lists / /

Just some links for your enjoyment…

  • Make it Stop: Dreamcatcher – Devin Faraci’s epic takedown of a bad Stephen King adaptation.

    It’s like this series of non-sequiters; the opening of Dreamcatcher is almost avant garde in how weird and unsettling it is. The movie opens by daring you to keep watching – “We’re starting with this nonsense, imagine where we’re going to end up!” And where you end up is a movie about shit weasels and Morgan Freeman’s baffling eyebrows.

    I’ve seen the movie. It was a while ago, and yeah, it’s pretty bad, but in a so-bad-it’s-good kinda way. Faraci addresses that sort of thing in his review, but I still think it takes talent to make something this bad. I don’t mean to say that they did it intentionally, but you have to have a certain level of ambition to make something this bad.

  • My Zombie, Myself: Why Modern Life Feels Rather Undead – Chuck Klosterman’s musings on why Zombies are so popular these days.

    You can’t add much depth to a creature who can’t talk, doesn’t think and whose only motive is the consumption of flesh. You can’t humanize a zombie, unless you make it less zombie-esque. There are slow zombies, and there are fast zombies— that’s pretty much the spectrum of zombie diversity. It’s not that zombies are changing to fit the world’s condition; it’s that the condition of the world seems more like a zombie offensive. Something about zombies is becoming more intriguing to us. And I think I know what that something is.

    Zombies are just so easy to kill.

    He’s got some interesting ideas, but on the other hand, this highlights one of the big problems with zombies. They’re so easy to attach meaning to that they quickly become meaningless.

  • The Rose in Winter – I suppose this is kinda like that Infinite Summer thing (that, uh, I never finished), but for Umberto Eco’s In the Name of the Rose (a book I do want to read at some point, not that I don’t already have lots of reading to do)
  • The Physiology of Foie: Why Foie Gras is Not Unethical – I’ve never actually had Foie Gras. It’s one of those weird things I only ever saw on Iron Chef (the proper Japanese version of the show, that is). As such, I never knew there was any sort of controversy around it, but this article is a pretty interesting look at where Foie comes from…
  • The Comics Curmudgeon – You wouldn’t think that some guy who analyzes the Sunday funnies would be compelling, but yep, it is.

2010 Kaedrin Movie Awards

2010 Movie Awards, Movies / /

It’s finally time for the 5th Annual Kaedrin Movie Awards! As of today, I’ve seen 69 movies that would be considered 2010 releases. This is on par with the past few years [Previous Installments here: 2006 2007 2008 2009], but a little less than last year. Regardless, this post marks the beginning of my end of the year recap (only a little more than a week late!) The categories are the same as last year, but will proceed a bit differently. I’ll post all the nominations today, but I don’t think I’ll be announcing one or two winners a day (as I’ve done the past few years), instead opting to announce them all at once next Sunday.

2010 has been an unusual year for movies. In particular, the first half of the year was pretty disheartening. It wasn’t until about mid-summer that things started turning around, and as I’ve been playing catchup for the past couple of months, I’ve been finding some diamonds in the rough from the first half. In the end, while I don’t think it’s been a particularly good year for movies, I think that abysmal first half has ruined the year’s reputation. That or the endless parade of mediocrity that seems to be this year’s theme. There are a couple of movies I’m still hoping to catch up with before I release my top 10, but there’s no reason to delay the awards for that. Besides, one of the points of these awards is that they allow me to give some love to films that I like, but which aren’t necessarily great or are otherwise flawed (as such, the categories may seem a bit eclectic). Some of these movies will end up on my top 10, but the grand majority of them will not.

The rules for this are the same as last year: Nominated movies must have been released in 2010 (in the US) and I have to have seen the movie (and while I have seen a lot of movies, I don’t pretend to have seen a comprehensive selection – don’t let that stop you from suggesting something though). Also, I suppose I should mention the requisite disclaimer that these sorts of lists are inherently subjective and personal. But that’s all part of the fun, right? So here are the nominees for this year’s awards:

Best Villain/Badass

It’s been a bad year for villainy… I was able to fill the category, but only by putting some real stretches on the list. As with previous years, my picks in this category are for individuals, not groups (i.e. no vampires or zombies as a group).

Best Hero/Badass

Heroes, on the other hand, are having a much more badass year. There were so many choices, I had to actually cut a few people off the list and I still ended up with a very large list… Again limited to individuals and not groups.

Best Comedic Performance

Another lackluster year for comedy. I ended up pulling a few unconventional choices into the list…

Breakthrough Performance

Interestingly, this is a pretty decent year for young actresses, as the grand majority of nominees are female. As with previous years, my main criteria for this category was if I watched a movie, then immediately looking up the actor/actress on IMDB to see what else they’ve done (or where they came from). This sometimes happens for even well established actors/actresses, but not so much this year…

Most Visually Stunning

Sometimes even bad movies can look really great…

Best Sci-Fi or Horror Film

I’m a total genre hound, despite genres generally receiving very little attention from critics. This is a category normally dominated by Horror, but there’s at least one solid SF nominee (and another two that are sorta mixtures). The list is still weighted more towards Horror, but a respectable showing for both genres:

Best Sequel

A surprisingly long list of options this year (in each of the 4 years I’ve been doing this, there’s only been 3 options). Now, at least one of these is a pretty bad movie, but I included it anyway.

Biggest Disappointment

Always a difficult award to figure out, as there are different ways in which a movie can disappoint. Usually, expectations play just as big a part of this as the actual quality of the film, and it’s possible that a good movie can win the award because of high expectations.

Best Action Sequences

This was a decent year for action, though not especially a standout year. This award isn’t for individual action sequences, but rather an overall estimation of each film.

Best Plot Twist/Surprise

Not a particularly strong year for the plot twist either, though there are a few standouts.

Best High Concept Film

This is always a strange category to populate because the concept is a bit nebulous, but nevertheless, there are a few interesting choices…

2010’s 2009 Movie of the Year

A 2009 movie I didn’t get to see until 2010… This is always a problem for the amateur movie lover. Towards the end of the year, 500 movies come out, but they only play in New York or LA for a grand total of like 3 hours (enough for 2 showings at each theater!) Plus, there’s always a movie I dismissed and neglected to see which I end up seeing a year later and loving. A few good ones this year (er last year, no this year):

Anyone have any suggestions (for either category or nominations)? Comments, complaints and suggestions are welcome, as always.

It looks like there isn’t a clear leader in nominations, but there are 4 films coming in at 4 nominations each: Inception, Kick-Ass, Machete, and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Nipping at their heels is a whopping 5 films with 3 nominations each, including: True Grit, Winter’s Bone, Triangle, The Millenium Trilogy Movies (perhaps an unfair advantage there), and, surprisingly, Paranormal Activity 2. Even more films have 2 nominations each, and more than that with just 1. Overall, 34 movies were nominated (not including the 2009 movies or the “disappointment” award), which is still a pretty good showing, I think. So I’m going to give it a week and then hopefully announce all the winners next Sunday, followed by some Arbitrary awards and (eventually) a top 10.