What I've Been Doin' (Part 1)

This week, I am taking a bit of a vacation, so I am going to do a two part series of the stuff I have been reading, watching, playing, and listening to. Enjoy!

Kooky

I recently bought this in a pack with Windowsill (which I’ll talk about later), and it is a Czechoslovakian movie that I have wanted to see for a while now. It is the story of a sick boy and the adventures that his teddy bear, Kooky, have in the woods. The story is “Valvetine Rabbit meets Pan’s Labrynth,” except it is not nearly as emotional as the former, and has none of the tension of the latter. The movie as a whole isn’t great (though I should note I watched the dubbed version, and stuff could have been lost in translation), but the scenes with Kooky in the forest are phenomenal. The use of puppets mixed in with real world animals is both magical and technically impressive. Most of the puppets are seemingly made out of real world, everyday things you can find outside, and the way they move is both funny and fluid. Then having those puppets interact with real foxes, boars, ants, birds, etc. make some of the cinematography fit for a nature documentary. Perhaps not the best story, but the movie is saved by its visuals. Glad I watched it.

Musicology

Musicology by Oliver Sacks is about how the human brain processes and deals with music. It is a fascinating book, and Sacks’ scholarly, but accessible, writing is top notch. For me, Musicology isn’t just about music, but it is about how people consume art and why they do so. Seeing music as something like linguistics, and how learning how to make music can change the physical shape of the brain, is essential information for anyone curious about both the human brain and mind (did you know there was a difference?)

http://www.itstartshear.com

Equal parts melodic and haunting, http://itstartshear.com is a great album by itself. What really makes it stand out (as the URL album title suggests) is the interactive web site that serves as both the linear notes and the message board for the album. In this age of digital music, it is great to see somebody really trying to make up and add value to music that can be so casually downloaded, listened to once, and then never do anything with ever again. The album itself completely stands out on its own, and the entire thing is a must listen, but it means a lot to me when an artist puts in that little extra effort to give the customer back something that they may appreciate. The album can be downloaded from the site itself, but I found myself wanting to pay just in able to support the album (though the higher quality music files when you pay doesn’t hurt either). My first early candidate for album of the year so far.

Windowsill

Windowsill is a deceptively simple PC game that relies on absurdity and changing rule sets in order to keep things interesting. The game is about getting a small little blue cart from windowsill to windowsill by finding out how each room works and getting the key to the next door. Each windowsill is weirder than the last, and the game is much more about exploring how things even work than necessarily how to solve anything. As I am playing the game, I wonder if a child with a more malleable brain might be better at this than my more hardwired adult brain. What makes it fun to play though is that it is more about the joy of finding out what you can do rather than the frustration of what you can’t do. Each windowsill is so weird looking and confusing at first, that it is a revelation whenever the player can get something to do anything. In some ways, it feels more like a toy than a game, but it is when the absurdity is really turned up and leaves the player up a creek without a paddle that it really gets good. It is a game I would recommend to anyone, even if they don’t typically like video games, it is just that different.

FEZ

FEZ, on the surface, looks like a cute, innocent, 2D XBLA (Xbox Live Arcade) game with the gimmick of being able to rotate the world 90 degrees to both change the perspective in order to jump from platform to platform. If you dig a little deeper though, FEZ is actually about breaking codes, learning languages, and playing archeologist in order to both solve puzzles and find out what happened in this world you are lost in. I have played it for a while, and got to the point where I have seen the credits in the game, but I have barely scratched the surface of what the game really is. While I am sure this mystery could bother many people, I found myself happy to explore a world I just don’t really understand yet. It made wandering the landscapes much more interesting when the symbols and marks found throughout each level aren’t just pretty designs, but actually mean something. I realize that I have an entire quest to undergo, and that I may not even be able to figure it out on my own, but I am excited to go down that path and see if I can uncover the mystery. Blocks, blocks everywhere, but not a one that I understand what the heck they could mean.

Talking About Video Games

I find that talking about video games with people can be a problematic proposition. Despite video games being incredibly popular around the world, actually trying to find something that multiple parties can relate to I sometimes find is an exhaustive process. Perhaps this is because most the games I play just aren’t played by everybody else. I find myself in the same situation with music as well; I don’t try and go for the most obscure, but somehow following what I like has lead me to some things that people have never heard of.

As far as music goes, that is probably just me being weird, but at least with music, I can be content at least knowing that the music that I love is only a listen away from being known, video games are not that easily accessible. Even if it is some free game that I can link over facebook, it is the effort of playing games that I feel put them in another category of inaccessibility.

I wonder if that is why video games seem to be portrayed as either simple throw-away toys or as violence simulators. Actually playing a game and understanding the mechanics isn't something that a person can grasp without actually taking time to understand them can be a problem for some people. I wonder if this is why there seems to be such a wide gap of understanding between people who are fans of the medium and others that don’t want anything to do with it.

Video games, no matter what video games like to dress themselves up as, when you boil them down they are mechanics, and these mechanics can be used to teach the player. Most of the time these mechanics are just used to tell the player whether not they are doing well, but they can also teach the player other things. For example Pac-man is mostly about getting points, but could it also be about the mass consumerism of the Japanese 1980’s? Well, the game probably wasn’t made with that idea in mind, but it wouldn’t be that large of a leap to say that could be a factor of why it was so popular in Japan. The mechanics are the most important of a video game, but at the same time, they are probably the hardest thing to discuss. It is all so subjective.

That is why presentation is so important, because it allows the player to put the mechanics in context. Then that context allows the game to make jumps in logic that could only be made with the assumptions from the player based on the context. The context is a way of conveying the mechanics, but they shouldn’t be confused for the message of the game, despite what the game developers want to try and make the player believe. Which is not to say that people shouldn’t enjoy games on their contexts, but that focus of the presentation alone says more about the player often times more than the game.

Perhaps video games are just something that as more and more people play then they can be understood for what they are: another way to entertain and teach people things. As time goes on, I think it will become more clear about how people should view these things that millions of people have come to enjoy, but until that time, I think that people like me to talk about them. Not because I have to, but because I think I want to see video games enter a space where they aren’t judged on their covers, but for the entertainment and for the things they allow people to experience.

How I feel when I am sick:

BLARRGGGG
ARG WHEN IS THIS GOING TO END
me sleepy so sleepy, meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhh

Sorry ladies and gentlemen, I have been pretty sick this week so I haven't been able to write anything all week. I am taking the prescribed meds my doctor gave me, so hopefully I will be all better next week and have an extra good blog entry. So, I will just leave you with a few thoughts before I go.

-Toast is great, but it is even better with pizza on it.
-Losing your voice sucks, but it does kind of make you sound raspy and cool.
-Being sick also makes me extremely comtemplative, but it also ruins my focus on anything else
-Do people enjoy the orange design? I need to change the design on this blog one of these days.
-I was orignally going to put up a blog I did about Friday the 13th in 2008, but I don't think it held up very well, so I did this weird bullet point blog thing instead.
-I honestly think that people who base their feelings about somebody on their twitter are crazy. Maybe this is the first sign that I am getting older or something, but twitter just seems like nonsense, and the fact that it has gotten popular just confuses me. At least it seems to help people organize for democrazy, that is something.
-Facebook is also silly to me, but at least it is very entertaining.
-I really liked Justice's Audio, Video, Disco album, but absolutely nobody talked about it as far as I could tell. I only knew about it about because I found it at a listening station in Tsutaya.
-I would write more about video games, but I am afraid that I would write about them too much and this would just become another video game blog. Maybe I should start a separate blog to do that?
-Amazon not allowing mp3 sales outside the US? WHAT'S UP WITH THAT???
-I have so many movies I want to watch. I just need to make the time to watch them.
-Hey, this bullet point style is pretty fun, but I think I'll end here. Have a great weekend everybody!

Woody Allen and Annie Hall

Recently, I was listening to a interview with Woody Allen (with Terry Gross), and the biggest thing I got out of that interview was how Woody Allen’s pet peeve was how everybody seemed to think they knew him from his movies. It was something I was a little astonished by, because I could not figure out how he could not be empathetic towards these people. Woody Allen has directed, wrote, and starred in movies where he was a Jewish comedian in New York. Since this is rather similar to Woody Allen’s own life story, it would almost be silly not to think that those movies are somewhat biographical. Woody Allen goes on and says stuff about how not only was he not the nerdy guy in his movies, but he actually was a great baseball player and could have been in the MLB if his passion for movies hadn’t taken over. I would hate to sound unreasonably skeptical, and maybe I am just not fully aware of the body build of baseball player back in the day, but imagining the skinny and feeble looking younger Woody Allen in the MLB sounds like a joke that he himself would set up.

So, with this new background information about how Woody Allen feels about his own image portrayed in his movies, I decided to watch Annie Hall. I actually thought I had seen Annie Hall before, but as I watched it recently, it occurred to me that I think that I had seen so many specials analyzing the movie, that I just tricked myself into thinking I saw it. I had always assumed that Annie Hall was just a linear love comedy about a relationship, but as I watched the first few scenes, it occurred to me that wasn’t what the movie is about at all. Annie Hall is about the memories and thoughts of Woody Allen’s character and his obsession with the heroine of the film, who shares the same name of the title. It isn’t so much of a romance movie, as it is a break up film as seen through the male perspective. Annie Hall starts with the Woody Allen character with his thoughts on the matter, and proceeds to insert many scenes that could have only come from the imagination of the main male protagonist. In fact, it becomes a little bit fuzzy whether some scenes in the movie are actually happening or if they are just another creation of the male protagonist’s brain. It is what gives Annie Hall a surreal but intimate feel.

Though Annie Hall is a great movie, it is not hard to see why Woody Allen would object to having his personal life compared to the protagonist’s, Alvy Singer. While the two seem rather similar, the movie does not make Alvy Singer the most sympathetic character. The movie may be from Alvy Singer’s point of view, but it is this insight to his thought process and what he really thinks that allows the audience to see what is both good and bad about this person. While both parties are responsible for the break up, the audience gets to see mostly how Alvy Singer makes the relationship fall apart. That is also another point of the story, the audience only gets to see what Alvy Singer remembers about the relationship and how he sees it, the audience hardly ever gets to see what is in Annie Hall’s head, and even when the audience does get a glimpse, it is unclear whether it is really what Annie Hall thinks or it is just what Alvy Singer thinks she thinks. Though the movie is about a character similar to Woody Allen (including a scene where he is making something that looks like it is parallel to the making of Annie Hall itself), the key is realizing that being able to obfuscate, change, being able to take personal experience and knowledge of the other people of the world, and mix and match to make a unique experience through film is what makes cinema an art form. Annie Hall probably wouldn’t be as good as it is if it was just a documentary on a break up, so Woody Allen being able to infuse his humor and insight into relationships into a movie is pretty incredible.

That being said, I think part of the reason why Annie Hall is so beloved by audiences everywhere is because they believe that the movie gives some insight into the Woody Allen’s life. Despite Mr. Allen’s complaints, perhaps he should be more appreciative that he created a movie so completely believable and honest that people could confuse it for real life. Or maybe I should appreciate that Woody Allen cares about what people like me think in the first place, because he certainly has enough money and talent to completely ignore his critics. In the end, any sort of creative work may reveal a part of the artist that they may not want to be misinterpreted, and I think it is our duty as an audience to respect the potential risk that revealing an intimate part of yourself can bring. That is the only way to foster honest and compelling art that relates to the human experience.