Jay Stephens’ blog Monsterama is great for anybody who’s a fan of cartoon monsters from the 50s - 70s (and everybody is, even if they don’t realize it yet). For the past year or so, it’s been particularly cool because he’s been tracing the concept and production of “The Secret Saturdays,” an animated series he’s developing for the Cartoon Network.

Digging back through the blog, you can find its initial concept as “The Cryptids”, inspired by Jonny Quest, the Herculoids, Alex Toth’s work in general, and his personal interest in cryptozoology. You can trace the development of it through the concept stage and into eventual production, and see how the idea grew to emphasize the family-of-scientists/Jonny Quest aspect. He’s posted some great background art, and it also sounds like they’ve secured some of the best voice-actors working today. Most importantly, see that it’s a cool idea going through the production process for a major network and still actually retaining most of its coolness.

Currently, he’s asking for followers of the site to weigh in on a name change being requested by the network. I can’t even remember the suggested title, and I just looked at the blog post not 15 seconds ago; it’s that forgettable. Cartoon Network has been shooting itself in the foot a lot lately, going crazy with attempts at re-branding and re-imagining the network from a just genuinely-cool, all-ages network focusing on animation; to a third-tier imitator of the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon that shows live-action movies like Spider-man for some inexplicable reasons. The title of this series just sounds like another attempt at that, to remove anything unique about it and have it get lost in the sea of Disney and Nickelodeon series. If you’re interested in this kind of thing at all, leave a comment at the link provided in Stephens’ blog, and help CN get their groove back.

I’ve been limiting myself to at most an hour of BioShock a night, plus I’m going through it very slowly, even for me. So I’m still only done with the first two levels. But if I waited until I was finished with it to write anything about it, then by the time I was done everyone would have already moved on to the next Next Big Thing. So here are my impressions so far. (And I’ll attempt to avoid the puns, so I won’t talk about its immersiveness or its depth).

Before it came out, I described it as The Shining plus The Poseidon Adventure. After playing through it enough to see how all its different systems work together, I’d say it’s more like The House on Haunted Hill plus an alternate-reality version of Ghost Ship that didn’t totally suck.

Now, if that sounds like a slam, I’ve got to point out that it’s not, which means I have to admit in public that I really, genuinely liked the remake of The House on Haunted Hill. It’s exactly what a 90s remake of a Castle horror movie should be — same cheesy story, same cheap scares, with slicker production values and some really creepy new effects (twitchy backwards-walking doctor guy in particular). But it’s still totally a genre movie.

The genius of Steven King’s first few books was that he found a way to disguise literature as genre stories — small-town pre-adolescent memoirs as a vampire story, religious fundamentalism and teenage alienation as a witch story, and every young man’s rite of passage with a demonically possessed car. The Shining used the genre of the haunted house story to talk about the frustration of writing and the deterioration of a man due to alcoholism; the movie expanded that to talk about the emasculation and deterioration of a man due to sheer existence.

BioShock does pretty much the opposite. It takes a brilliantly-realized setting, the full assortment of storytelling techniques available to games in 2007, and several hints at philosophy and morality, and puts them all in the service of a genre game — a first-person shooter. And it’s clear throughout that it was all by choice, not necessity. Every time it came down to a choice between telling a story or making a game, they chose to build… an action game!

It turns out that all the talk about ethical questions and philosophy and novel approaches to storytelling (all of which I’m guilty of perpetuating) are really reaching. Reading the pre-release stuff, I was concerned that they were giving too much away — why did all the previews give away the bit about choosing to kill mutated little girls to harvest their resources, when it would have been much more dramatic to leave it as a big reveal in the game? Well, as it turns out, the big reveal in the game is a screen with two buttons, one for “save” and the other for “kill”.

The “philosophy” isn’t much more subtle. Since Objectivism is such a shallow philosophy that seems designed for you to outgrow once you hit 18 and see how the real world actually works, there’s not a lot you can do basing a whole game around it. The game really just takes the basic premise and has enemies shouting out various Objectivist-inspired phrases. Think of a game that “explores Marxism” by having monsters run at you shouting, “The workers control the means of production!” and you’ve got the idea. The only subtlety so far is deciding whether you think the main villain is bad because he corrupted the Randian ideal, or bad because he was dumb and arrogant enough to fall for it in the first place. (And it’s clear that there’s more going on with the player’s character that isn’t revealed until later, so there could very well be more to it by the time the end game rolls around).

I don’t want to make it sound like the game is completely without subtlety, since it’s really an exceptional exercise in world-building. It’s unfair to leave the movie analogies at House on Haunted Hill and Ghost Ship; you have to throw in the genius of City of Lost Children to do the art direction justice. You really feel as if you’re exploring a fantastic place. The sound design is just excellent. And the music is just flat out great, right down to the choice of songs (”Beyond the Sea” and “It Had to Be You” and “God Bless the Child” were inspired choices).

So where something like Half-Life 2 uses a first-person shooter as an experiment in immersiveness to tell a great story, BioShock uses a cool story to make a first-person shooter. A really solid first-person shooter that’s a hell of a lot of fun to play so far, with a ton of great mechanics that work together well. And with production values turned up to the maximum.

It’s also the best example I’ve seen so far of realizing interactivity in narrative videogames. Not with branches or cheesy multiple endings; from what I’ve seen so far, the game is very linear. But within a section, you really do get to decide how to solve problems, and your choices do make a difference in the game. As much as I love Half-Life 2, still has the feeling of being “on rails,” slogging through sequences the designers have meticulously set up for you. BioShock is kind of like a violent skate park, as in all the tools — oil slicks, pools of water, turrets and cameras, and enemy spawn points — are clearly set up for you to accomplish something, but you’re given free rein to just play around in the environment and put the tools together however you like.

It’s not the great leap forward in videogame storytelling that I was expecting, but in my mind, it proves what a tremendous effect good storytelling has on the overall experience. BioShock is pretty good at everything it tries to do, and in some areas (like art direction and music) it’s outstanding. But the key to it is the whole experience, not just the storytelling. And although it’s made up of parts borrowed from dozens of different games (found recordings, a health and mana bar, power-ups, etc), it’s not hyperbole to say that the overall experience isn’t like anything you’ve played before.

The buzz around BioShock is getting monumental, and as a videogame fan with no stock in Take 2, I couldn’t be happier about it.

It’s got the Penny Arcade guys talking about storytelling and the narrative potential of games as art using lots of italics. It’s got the normally somewhat reserved guys at Eurogamer writing a breathless 10/10 review using the most superlatives ever used in a videogame review in any medium, ever, right down to a paragraph about how fun and addictive it is to play Pipe Dream.

And I think that’s just fantastic. We’ve gotten so beaten down by mediocrity, and so jaded about games in general, that it’s just nice to see people pretty much universally going absolutely batshit crazy for a new release.

I’ve played the demo three times now. The first time through, I immediately started in with the criticisms; what I didn’t notice, though, was the significance of what I was criticizing. The opening had such a big impact on me (I don’t want to oversell it for those who haven’t played it, so just suffice to say that it’s pretty damn cool) that it set the bar past “is it fun?” all the way up to “how well does it tell its story?” And I don’t know how many years I’ve been wanting videogames to mature to the point where we can talk about them in terms of storytelling and concept, instead of just gameplay mechanics.

My friend Seppo wrote about the game’s treatment of Objectivism, and it wasn’t until I was halfway through writing a typically long-winded comment that I realized: holy crap, we’re having an argument about the meaning of a videogame! On the internet!

Nobody mentioned the length of the game, or how much it cost, or how many weapons you get, or whether it supports multiplayer, or how many levels it has. Or complained about the voice acting, or about buggy A.I., or how the models looked. We were criticizing a game for its potential message. All the time I’ve been campaigning for better storytelling in games, I always thought of the goal as being pure storytelling, and never really considered the potential to let you explore ideologies.

And yet, here I am looking forward to playing a game that deals with the one ideology that annoys and offends me more than any other besides Satanism. Because I’ll happily die without having slogged through Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead. But put it in a format where I have some degree of control, and present it as The Shining meets The Poseidon Adventure, and I’ll pay you to tell me all about it. Hell, I’d even buy a “Left Behind” game if they managed to have an opening sequence and art direction as good as the BioShock demo’s.

Okay, that’s a lie. But still: it’s a good time to be an arrogant, pseudo-intellectual videogame fan!

There’s a scene in the the trailer for the upcoming re-remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where Nicole Kidman’s character is walking through a crowd of people and is warned not to show any emotion, because that’s how they can tell you’re still human.

Looking at the Rotten Tomatoes page for Stardust is a little like the opposite of that scene: you can easily pick out the people who panned Stardust, and identify those as people who have no soul.

Now, I didn’t love the movie, but I liked in an awful lot. Overall, it’s just charming and clever, smart where it needs to be, corny where it needs to be, funny and exciting more often than not, moving at the good parts, and imaginative throughout. It’s hard to find fault with it.

But not impossible: Robert De Niro’s character was endearing and played at just the right level until they took it a step too far and had him camping it up. Ricky Gervais’ cameo was just awkward and out of place and threatened to suck all the air out of the movie during the few minutes he’s on screen. And Claire Danes was annoying the hell out of me for the first 30 minutes or so she was on-screen, which is surprising because she usually has me in her thrall in seconds. (Like that Gap commercial, which doesn’t make me want to buy pants as much as it makes me realize my current pants have suddenly gotten uncomfortable).

Still, the movie does all the things an adventure story should, and it usually stays a step above the obvious and cliched. I’ve seen it compared a lot to The Princess Bride, a comparison that is just inconceivable. As much as I like The Princess Bride, it’s very much an 80s movie, with a very Zemeckisian sensibility and very much aware that it’s a story about stories. Stardust is very much a late 90s movie, minus the overbearing irony — it’s more of a straightforward fairy tale/adventure story, told cleverly, but without as much self-awareness. I doubt it’ll become a classic like Princess Bride has, but it’s definitely got at least Labyrinth-level staying power.

I’ve heard that the movie is more simple and shallow than Neil Gaiman’s book, which may be true. I’ve started the book a couple of times, but it’s never held my interest long enough for me to finish it. I think Gaiman may be one of the most imaginative story-tellers alive today, but I’ve never been able to make it through his prose work for some reason. After seeing this movie, I’m going to force myself to read Stardust and American Gods and Anansi Boys. Probably after seeing a bunch more movies and comic books, though.

The Xbox 360 demo for BioShock came out last night (a PC demo is in the works), and I tried it out for a little less than an hour. Key discoveries:

1. It’s awesome.
2. It looks like it may be able to live up to most of the hype it’s been getting.
3. They weren’t lying when they claimed it was a shooter; the emphasis is definitely less on character-building and stats like a “hybrid shooter/RPG,” and more on short action sequences. I haven’t played much of the demo, but I haven’t run into any real RPG-like stuff yet.
4. I have a fundamental problem with first-person shooters on consoles. The controls for the 360 seem to be as straightforward as you can get, and I still felt like I was fumbling around. I’m getting the PC version.
5. I was already sold by the time the opening sequence ended. But when I found out the first music you hear is a 30s-style jazzy version of “Beyond the Sea,” I pre-ordered the limited edition version with the soundtrack.
6. I almost wish it weren’t a videogame.

I should explain that last one, but if you’re the type who’s avoiding any knowledge of the game before you play it, you’ll want to avert your eyes. Because I’m about to ruin the best part of the demo (and presumably, the full game).

I’ve been thinking a lot about storytelling in videogames, and occasionally pontificating about it on the internet. Watching the opening sequence of the Bioshock demo, from the beginning to walking out of the bathysphere, I really felt like I was seeing a step forward. It wasn’t a huge spectacle like a Final Fantasy game, and there’s technically not much there that we haven’t already seen in Half-Life 2 and a dozen other first-person games. But in terms of how much they said and didn’t say, and how they seamlessly blended the interactive and non-interactive segments — you feel disoriented when you’re supposed to feel disoriented, frightened in the right places, confused in the right places — I was struck with the feeling that this is the kind of thing you can only do in a videogame. The plane crash is similar to the feeling I got watching the “Lost” pilot, except the stakes are higher: partly because you’re not watching Jack watch everything, you are Jack.

But then the videogame conventions started making themselves more noticeable. The ubiquitous radio exposition guy, telling you what to do. The pop-ups telling you what button to press and the effects of power-ups (perfectly acceptable in a demo/tutorial, but still…) The barely-disguised save points. The events that are so obviously pre-scripted that you can almost see the trigger boxes. And somehow worst of all, the on-screen encyclopedia giving you back-story and explanations for the different concepts of the game.

All of this stuff is necessary in a videogame, and faulting a game for having them is the most unfair of nitpicks. So I’m not faulting BioShock — having to decide between totally immersive storytelling and accessible gameplay, they chose the gameplay. I’m just left feeling a little disappointed and frustrated. Disappointed that it looks to be a fun first-person shooter with some great art direction and an interesting back-story, made by a bunch of guys who really liked Fallout and Half-Life and System Shock. Instead of a huge, revolutionary milestone in videogame storytelling.

And frustrated that I know there’s got to be some way to do world-building and exposition and have all the detail and back-story they’ve developed for BioShock, and present it in an even more subtle way than the respectable job they’ve done. I’m just stuck trying to think of what that would be, exactly. Would a player be able to tell the relationship between Little Sisters and Big Daddies without having some Irish guy in his ear, making it explicit? Would it help to have the main character talk to himself as in an adventure game, instead of insisting that he be silent like Gordon Freeman? How much do you have to show in the UI (current weapon, ammo, health) as opposed to relying on the on-screen version? Can a game still be fun if you have to learn how things work by trial and error, and end up dying a few times?

The two big stories on Yahoo news today:

The Chinese executive in charge of a company that distributed lead-tainted toys to the US has killed himself.

Whereas Karl Rove just resigned.

Just sayin’.

I’m one more movie closer to death, since I saw The Night of the Hunter last night. And it’s at least a dozen kinds of awesome.

A movie like this is really difficult for me to describe. Something like His Girl Friday is easy: it’s timeless, just as cool today as it was 67 years ago, so no qualifications are necessary. The Killers feels undeniably dated, but it’s still undeniably cool, and it has shots that are just perfectly composed. And Ace in the Hole (now available on DVD!) is over-the-top early 50s style, but is full of brilliantly unforgettable dialogue.

But how can you explain in words the genius fever dream that is Night of the Hunter? I submit that you can’t. So I pulled together brief bits of the most inspired moments, because I say the only way to believe it is to see it for yourself.

Edit: I had a six-minute clip included here, but thought better of it. I realized that it gives too much of the movie away, both in terms of copyright infringement and in terms of ruining the movie for people who haven’t seen it. It was a well-intentioned but misguided case of getting carried away with iMovie and thinking, “This is the best part of the movie, you’ve got to see this! No wait, this is even cooler!”

If I can pick a single favorite scene, I’ll put that one up. Until then, just see the movie. It’s sustained brilliant wackiness on a scale I never expected.

What do you think of that compromise, Ms. Winters?

I was really impressed with The Bourne Identity. I didn’t see it until the second movie had already been out on DVD for a while, so I’d already heard the consensus, that it was better than you’d expect from an action movie starring Matt Damon and directed by the guy who did Swingers. But even with the advance notice, I was still really surprised by how good it was.

So now The Bourne Ultimatum is out, and it’s been getting really favorable reviews, and they’re all completely deserved. It really is one hell of an action movie. I definitely recommend it to anyone, especially if you liked the first one.

And if you’re wondering whether to see it in a theater or wait for DVD, I’d recommend the theater. Not for the big screen — almost all of the movie is filmed with shaky handheld cameras — but for the crowd. About halfway into the movie, there’s an extended chase scene through Tangier that you can really only describe as masterful. When it finished, the audience was dead silent for a few seconds, and then just burst into applause. I honestly hadn’t realized that I’d been holding my breath for the last minute or so.

One of the things that impresses me so much about the movie is how they do so much with so little. Not so little action, or sets — they shoot on location in at least 5 different cities, and have a big, stunning car chase — but so little dialogue. It wouldn’t surprise me to hear that Matt Damon has less than 50 lines in the entire movie, and Julia Stiles even less. The plot isn’t all that convoluted, but still, for somebody as long-winded as I am, watching this movie is like seeing acrobats perform without a net. Aren’t the filmmakers afraid that the audience won’t get it? Don’t they want to explain that bit a little more? After having my intelligence assaulted by movies like The DaVinci Code and Transformers, it’s really nice to see one that just expects you to be able to keep up.

Reviewers are saying that this is the best in the series, but the first one is still my favorite. The second one, The Bourne Supremacy, had the most interesting plot twists; and the third one, The Bourne Ultimatum, has by far the best action sequences; but Identity was more complete in terms of setting up characters and how they relate to each other. I wasn’t that impressed with Supremacy; in the end I thought it was entirely competent but mostly forgettable.

Ultimatum is pretty much five extended action sequences strung back to back, but none of it is disposable or forgettable. They’re genuinely suspenseful, and they’re all filmed so as to give you no room for disbelief. There’s none of the detachment of spectacle that you get from most action movies; you’re convinced that everything is really happening, and the cameras just happened to catch it all.

And you can follow Ultimatum just fine without having seen the first two, but I highly recommend seeing Supremacy beforehand. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I’ll say that the epilogue of Supremacy plays a very important part in Ultimatum, and it’s really impressive how they structured it.

Edited to add: Reading a review by Stephanie Zacharek of Salon (warning: there’s a big spoiler in there for The Bourne Supremacy if you haven’t seen it yet) reminded me of another thing that really impressed me about this movie. It’s got a very clear sense of morality. More than you’d expect out of a movie this sparse, based on pure action. And not the pig-headed false patriotism of most action movies. It’s entirely human, not American, and it’s summed up in actions, not words. I’ve already spent more words describing it than the movie uses. It’s all basically summed up by a simple line from Joan Allen’s character after Bourne asks her why she does what she does; it’s something like, “That’s not what we’re about.”

Before the movie there were two trailers for Very Important Movies Starring Meryl Streep: Lions for Lambs and Rendition. I’m sure they’re going to be well-made. And I’m mostly sure that, in some sense, it’s important that they’re being made, that people are speaking up as best they can against injustice. But they still struck me as being insufferably self-important, dismissible as yet another case of liberal Hollywood poking its nose into politics. I liked that The Bourne Ultimatum dispensed with all of that, saying in effect, “it’s really not that complicated: People are important. Try not to kill them, or reduce them to simple ‘targets’ and ‘assets.’”