Late to the Party: Operation Flashpoint – Dragon Rising
Authentic military shooter: sounds serious, doesn’t it? By negation it mocks those other inauthentic shooters. It’s the gaming equivalent of the Real Slim Shady. This ain’t no Utterly Butterly (and in line with their “I can’t believe it’s not butter” campaign, those women are men), it’s war son; and war is boring.
Late to the Party: Burnout Paradise – The Ultimate Box
I’ve never been a great fan of racing games. This is partly due to the active encouragement of repetition (to knock a split second off your time) but mainly because I’m a rubbish driver. I prefer to drive into other cars on a turn rather than brake, I only recently discovered what a racing line is, and I still haven’t a clue what is meant by torque. For all these reasons I think Burnout was made for me and if you scoffed at any of the above then Burnout is not for you.
Q&A: Ian Livingstone on the Importance of Computer Science to the Digital Economy
Ian Livingstone is the President of Eidos, and also co-author of the Next Gen report, a study that stresses the importance of the digital economy and the role teaching Computer Science in schools plays in its growth.
We were able to talk earlier this month at the Explay Festival where he gave one of the keynote speeches.
Late to the Party: Battlefield Bad Company 2
I couldn’t conceive of the difference that destructible environments would make to a game. In games like Red Faction it seemed to be little more than a gimmick. But in Battlefield it recreates the multiplayer in a way separate from all its opponents.
Matches become unique; you can approach a level with some sort of plan but depending on what cover is destroyed and what is left standing you are forced to adapt to your surroundings.
Visually, the destruction shows you which parts of the map have been most heavily contested. In one match we, as the attackers, had to descend a slope towards a construction site held by the defenders. At the start of the game the site was surrounded by thick concrete blocks. As the attackers we could use the wall as a point to regroup after descending the slope under fire. As the game dragged on, more and more cover was destroyed, leaving an open plain for the defenders’ snipers to pick off our troops. We were forced to change up our tactics. Our recon troops called in mortar strikes on their snipers; during which we drove tanks and armoured vehicles up to the threshold of the base. These worked as mobile cover for the infantry allowing us to attack the base. It was the most fun I've had online with a PG rating.
Review: Frontier(s)
Frontier(s)
Dir. Xavier Gens, France, 2008, 108mins
Not originally scheduled to run at the festival, Frontier(s) was played instead of Gens' new film The Divide after there was trouble getting the reels to the cinema.
Opening with a montage of riot violence akin to 28 Days Later, Frontier(s) focusses on a group of four robbers who have used the turbulent situation to their advantage and have made off with €100,000. Leaving Paris they split into two cars and make for the Belgian border. The first car, with the money, goes ahead to find a B&B for the night where the others will join them. In a Psycho-esque move the bank robbers become the victims to a cannibal family like that out of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The two are beaten and left in an old underground mine, the film goes all The Descent and has them set upon by weird underground creatures.
In the meantime, the other car arrives at the B&B. Asking to see their friends the owners take them to a farm/abattoir beat them and lock them in cages, much like those in Creep. All the robbers, bar one, Yasmine, are killed off in variously grizzly ways. Yasmine is to be forced into being wife to one of the family – apparently they're having trouble with inbred children and wanted to bring in some new blood. She escapes, the film becomes all actiony, and she kills them all in violent splattery ways.
Now, you'll have noticed that that was a very long synopsis and heavy on the references. That would be because this film is a very long film and heavy on the references. It's like a patchwork of every other slasher movie. Nothing is original. I found myself writing up a list of references whilst shifting in my chair through boredom. If you're simply going to copy and paste other films you're going to be horrendously predictable, it does not make for compelling watching.
The characters are dull and annoying. Nor are they consistent, Alex begins the film as the leader of the robbers, he wants to abandon anyone who'll slow him down, he seems like he abuses his girlfriend Yasmine, and yet part way into the film we're supposed to see him as a loving boyfriend and sympathetic character. The shift is unwarranted and rings false.
One of the laughably bad elements of the film is Yasmine turned killer, she goes between action sequences shivering and holding her arms a little by her sides like rag doll. Yet as soon as the sequence begins she switches into normal motion. The sequence ends and instantly she's back in the quivering walker. This is particularly noticeable after she's just been shooting a machine-gun in slow motion and dived out of an explosion. She goes from Arnie to cry baby in the space of a shot.
If any one of the film's references had been stuck with and expanded on this film world have improved. Instead we're forced to watch a generic clip show of a film.
Oh, I almost forgot, the family are Nazis. Yeah, because they couldn't just be cannibals, they had to be Nazi cannibals.
Review: The Last Screening
The Last Screening (Derniere Seance)
Laurant Achard, France, 2011, 81mins
Sylvain's cinema is to be closed by its owner and he is to be put out of a job. He hasn't taken this news too well, he denies its closure to his patrons, going so far as to ring up distributors to countermand his bosses orders and keep films coming in, plus he goes out each night and kills a woman. Then cuts off her ears. Then sticks those ears onto a picture of a classic female film star. Then hangs those pictures in his secret room where there is a portrait of his mother. Yeah, he could have taken it better.
Looking like one of the stylishly produced 80s Italian horror movies Achard makes excellent use of colour. Sylvain is surrounded in blues and his victims in reds. There is no subtlety to the technique but this isn't meant to be some grungy realistic horror, this is to be a dusting off of the old tool set and showing what it can do. And that is where the fault lies.
Beyond exhibiting some old techniques there is little point to this film. Its story is simple and predictable, the characters aren't particularly interesting, and too much of the film's reason for being is to look like it was made in the 80s.
One of the main problems is Sylvain. We follow his exploits throughout the film and he's just a little bit dull. He runs the cinema, goes out killing, returns with the ears, goes to bed, repeat. Although we learn about his childhood, it's far from upsetting because by the time we start learning it we've already lost interest in Sylvain. So good looking but ultimately vacuous.
International Short Film Competion Review Round-up – Part 3
My favourite day of the short films so far and also the last. The films on show seemed the least "short-like", tackling genres and settings the other two days avoided.
Part 3:
15 Summers Later (Dir. Pedro Collantes) - A ridiculously funny short about two acquaintances happening upon each other after a 15 year gap. One of them becomes insensibly angry that the other has a boyfriend despite turning him down 15 years ago saying she wasn't looking for a relationship. His anger escalates as the film continues becoming more and more comical.
Told through a single long shot the audience watches on as an outsider perspective. A position that affords perspective on this bizarre scene.
Handball (Dir. Anita Rocha da Silveira) - This confusing short is about sexual awakening, coming of age, and... handball? It's difficult to say for sure as scenes of flirting with boys are mixed with sitting in furniture shops. And the film ends in a brawl between to all-girl handball teams. It's a disturbingly violent fight and seems to have little place in the film.
The Barbican (Dir. Bartlomiej Zmuda) - Emil is on his way home to Poland, wage in hand, to pay his overdue rent and return to his girlfriend. At the station he finds he's lost his money. He sneaks onto the train and steals a man's wallet. Trapped on the train till it arrives at the station he tries to avoid the security.
This is a great little thriller, one that captures the panic resulting from getting caught committing a crime. But it begins with a questionable panel: 'Based on a true story'. The story is not so outlandish as to be unbelievable, nor so true to life as to need verification. It adds nothing to the film, and if anything is a distraction.
Checkpoint (Dir. Ruben Amar) - The story of 11 year-old Sulieman is told with no wasted time. His stakes are quickly established, he lives in the Gaza Strip having moved into town following the destruction of his village. There the boys have no school and spend their time thinking about women and how to get rich. Sulieman hears that the Palestinians will pay anyone who gets imprisoned by the Israelis. So Sulieman takes his toy gun and walks up to the Israeli checkpoint to be arrested.
The film is exciting both narratively and visually, 18 minutes is just not a long enough time to be spent in the company of this story. Evidently the director thinks so too. This isn't a short film, it's the first 20 minutes of a film that have been lopped off and served up as a short. The film ends with no foreshadowing, simply a cut to black. The setting and characters have been established but nothing is resolved (and this is not some roundabout way to suggest the lack of resolution the Gaza Strip brings to the people of Palestine and Israel). I want to see the feature that this film is so evidently meant to be.
Ghost (Dir. Dahci Ma) - A man is hiding out in a derelict apartment block after raping and killing a young girl. Our time with him is spent watching him suck chicken bones, draw ejaculate onto a cartoon penis, and even more strangely, watch the chicken bones come to life briefly as a puppet that then mimes having sex. This short suffers from a common affliction: it's compaction has made it very confusing.
Trains (Dir. Pavel G. Vesnakov) - After losing her job as a dish washer because her boss couldn't afford to pay her any more Tony goes to a loan shark to get the money she needs for bills. From there she goes to the side of a motorway to prostitute herself. Why? To get the money to buy her son a birthday cake.
The underlying message of the film is conveyed through news reports playing on radios and televisions that she passes but pays no attention to. They're reports of the growing economic crisis and the government saying that it will pass, people just need to tighten their belts. People like Tony can't afford to tighten their belt. The grim story is nothing new, but the news reports does give it a contemporary spin that lends it relevance.
Review: Futures Market
Futures Market (Mercado de Futuros)
Dir. Mercedes Alvarez, Spain, 2010, 113mins
My goodness this film has torn me. On the one hand it's slow moving, inaccessible, and ultimately dull, on the other, it manages to offer deep and nuanced view of our finance industry without a scrap of commentary and has become one of my favourite films of the festival.
There are three strands to this unconventional film. The first is the story Simonides and the importance of memory. The story goes that Simonides was at a party where the roof caved in, many of the bodies were so disfigured as to be unrecognisable. Yet Simonides, who'd been outisde at the time of the cave in, could identify all the bodies by remembering where everyone had been sitting in the room. Simonides is attributed as the founder of many means of improving memory. His role in the film is to show what our finance market has lost, a means of perspective.
The second strand follows the possessions of a deceased person. We never see who it is who's died, instead the segment fades in to an already empty house. We watch as different men come and strip the building bare. All the books are piled into boxes, the furniture is wrapped and carried away, the pictures too are taken off the walls and bound in paper. We go with the items to the market where they’re sold off to the crowd. Having not seen the corpse of the deceased their possessions become an intangible body, and with each sale that body is minutely dissected. It pains to watch shoppers walk over the books, breaking their spines, as it feels as though they're defiling the body that once owned them.
Finally, the third strand follows a chain of real estate development sales. It begins on the convention floor with companies selling to companies, investment seekers, and hotel owners looking for ways to get tips on making more money. We then follow some of these men as they begin selling to individual customers, others as they go to a cult-like motivational talk, and still more as they return the the stock exchange style selling pit.
If that seems a confusing set of strands to be cut between it isn't when actually viewed but that's because it doesn't feel as though a story has been constructed for us to follow per se. Instead the the three strands are alternately laid out in front of us to watch and make of them what we will. It requires great faith in the audience on the director's part. Speaking to people afterwards I know many got nothing from it and there were a number of walk outs. Yet, as well as this there were others who loved it. So Alverezhas been somewhat vindicated in her faith.
I don't want to give it an entirely ringing endorsement. Its means of presentation is admirable and evocative of other narrator-less documentaries like Koyaanisquatsi, but whereas that has the excellent score from Philip Glass and beautiful cinematography to entertain the viewer, Future Markets does drag. At points it becomes hideously dull. I'm glad I stayed to the end but I don't know if I'll ever watch it again.
Review: Big Man Japan
Big Man Japan (Dai-Nihonjin) Dir. Hitoshi Matsumoto, Japan, 2007, 113minsThis Faux documentary follows Dai Soto, a seemingly ordinary man living in Japan. Yet whenever the country is threatened by monsters Soto becomes Big Man Japan, growing to a huge ten stories tall before heading out to fight the creatures. However Dai Soto's role as the country's protector is in decline, late night repeats of his monster fighting bouts are receiving lower and lower ratings, his sponsors are dropping him, and the Japanese people are just getting tired of him and the damage he causes to the country. What we see is the final weeks of Big Man Japan's career.
Soto is a complex character who's flaws are wonderfully drawn by actor/director/writer Hitoshi Matsumoto. He's jealous of his grandfather's success and popularity that he can't emulate, he misses his daughter since his wife took her away, and more than anything he's bored. His job is tiresome and unpredictable, it has to be done but no one seems to recognise or reward him for it. Though even with its strong central character and its unusual premise this would have been a dull film if it weren't for the humour.
The story is played completely po faced, there's no nods to the camera and none of the characters are simple joke fodder. Even the men who lay out Soto's huge underwear - for keeping the big man decent post-transformation - do so with ceremony. The laughter starts in bubbles at the start of the film with the single members of the audience laughing sporadically around the cinema. By the film's end there were people standing up to laugh.
From its story, to it performance, right down to its rubbish cgi monster fights, Big Man Japan is a well-told comedy that any fans of the mockumentary genre should see. It's Spinal Tap meets Watchmen.