You see what we did there?

The trailer for the next episode of Sam and Max is up, and once again the young’uns have done a great job with it. (I had recommended a parody of “In Search Of” for the trailer, but everybody said they didn’t know what that was. Then they laughed and pointed at my gray hair and told me to go to bed).

The inexorable march towards season 2 continues! I can guarantee that this is the funniest video you’ll see linked from this blog post.

From what I read on the internet and hear from my family’s Amazon wish lists, it’s close to Christmas time. It’s hard to get really in the spirit of the Most Wonderful Time of the Year when I never really know what time or even day it is.

See, the problem is that I get a cold every year around late November/mid-December, but this year’s different. My immune system’s apparently decided that it’s tired of getting kicked around every year, and this time, it’s going to fight back. The problem is that my immune system is, like its owner, a fairly meek and mild-mannered white guy who doesn’t exercise much. By resolving to take on the young punks who are encroaching on his neighborhood, he’s just proving himself to be pathetically impotent.

Which is all a long-winded way of saying that I’ve been headachey and unable to breathe through my nose for what feels like a month now. The antihistamines and decongestants I’ve been taking are labeled “non-drowsy,” which is technically accurate: I vacillate between hyper-awake, where it’s physically impossible to close my eyes and I feel like I can see through walls, Matrix-style; and comatose. Neither of those is, technically, “drowsy.”

I’ve been getting no longer than 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep at a stretch, and it happens at completely unpredictable times. Last night I got home from work at about 8:30 or so, sat down on the couch to sort through whatever mail the cat hadn’t already eaten, and pulled out the laptop to get some writing done. The next thing I knew, it was 2 AM and I was bolting out of bed, because I had to warn Molly Shannon that the guy she was about to give a big investment check to was actually a grifter, and he hadn’t actually developed a way to regrow limbs, but had an identical twin who’d lost an arm in a mountain-climbing accident. (Did I mention the weird fever dreams I keep having?)

So for the more lucid of you: I hope you’re all enjoying the oncoming Christmas-and-I-suppose-other-holidays-but-really-we-all-know-what’s-the-most-important-one season! To get in the spirit, here’s the first of three YouTube clips of David Sedaris reading his story, “Six to Eight Black Men:”

I saw Beowulf in IMAX 3D at the Metreon this afternoon. Anybody who has interest in this movie but hasn’t seen it yet for whatever reason, I’d say that 3D, whether it’s the IMAX version or not, is really the way to go. It delivers pretty well on the spectacle, and that kind of thing is pretty much the only reason to leave the house to see a movie these days.

Incidentally, I’ve always liked the pre-show they do at the Metreon’s IMAX better than the actual movie. They start the drums going and light up behind the screen to show you where all the different speakers are; as far as “look how bad-ass we are” marketing goes, it’s pretty cool.

As for the movie itself: did I mention you should see it in IMAX 3D? I think it says something that this one seemed calculated to carry through as a big Christmas season event movie for this year, and the attention has already pretty much worn out. It’s not that bad, in the end; it’s just kind of unremarkable.

The biggest problem is that a lot of the movie is just really, really silly. Not long after Grendel’s mom makes her appearance, it turns into something else, and it becomes pretty obvious that the absurdity of the beginning was intentional. The problem is that the absurd part takes up what feels like half the movie (I wasn’t keeping an eye on my watch, I can only say what it felt like).

You’ve got a bunch of actors from all around the UK and whatever faux-UK part of the US John Malkovich comes from, all done up in CG with paunches added or removed and a fetishistic attention given to moles and hair and stubble. And they’re all so loud that it annoys a really badly-designed Grendel to run in and start bustin’ up the place to get them to shut the hell up already. Then Ray Winstone’s modified head on somebody else’s really modified body comes in and promises to “kill yore mahnstah!” and strips naked for an extended fight scene that seems cut from an Austin Powers movie.

Then a bunch of stuff that’s not directly from the poem happens, and the movie turns into a cross between God of War and a late 90s post-modern liberal thesis on the themes of adultery and the role of man in an ancient poem. It was jarring to see the movie suddenly taking itself so seriously. And I guess if you were just expecting action and spectacle as I was, you could complain about its alteration from hero’s quest adventure story into deconstructionist reinterpretation of the hero’s quest and adventure story itself. But really, Neil Gaiman’s name is right there on the screenplay; being surprised at that would be like going in and being surprised that everything is computer-generated.

The only genuinely weird, complaint-worthy thing about the story is knowing how feminist Gaiman tends to be, and trying to reconcile that with the fact that Robin Wright Penn’s character still just comes across as a dead-eyed, emasculating bitch through the whole movie. Kind of like what you’d get if you crossed Eowyn from The Lord of the Rings with Hillary Clinton.

As I said, the 3D was well done. I’d been a little worried at having to sit through a 2-hour movie all in 3D, but it’s almost never gratuitous or headache-inducing. The CG isn’t quite as creepy as you might think, but for the most part it just seems unnecessary. There are moments where you’ll be impressed, until you realize that you’re impressed that a splash of water looks like real water, or some bearded dude swinging an axe looks like a real bearded dude swinging an axe. A lot of people slaved over a lot of workstations to reproduce something you could get just by turning on a camera.

The more spectacular stuff, that really depends on its being CG, all struck me as extremely competent, but artless. Sure, you need CG to have a guy flying around on the back of a big golden dragon, but in terms of screen time, those scenes are relatively brief and not particularly memorable.

The only scene in the movie where doing it all in CG paid off, was the first meeting between Beowulf and Grendel’s mother. That’s the scene that’s in all the trailers and promotional material. It’s got a great look to it, it feels like an interesting place, and it creates a truly memorable image. (And again, they cross the line into silly when they give her high heels).

But you’ve still got to wonder if it was worth the effort, though. Angelina Jolie looks like an artificially-constructed person anyway, so you’d think they could’ve saved some cash and just put her in a gold bodysuit and started the cameras rolling. And I guess it’s encouraging for all of us chubby, hairy guys, that we now have the technology to turn Ray Winstone into a young buff dude. But if you’re looking for a guy with a weird accent, muscles, and a disturbingly hairless body, I’ve got to wonder why you don’t just cast Gerard Butler or something instead?

Sometimes I think game companies would be better off if they just dispensed with the marketing, and just mailed the game directly to my house and deducted the cost directly from my checking account.

I mean, there’s really no point in even pretending like I’m going to avoid buying Patapon the second it’s released in the US. A Japanese drum-based rhythm game where you use little armies of guys to attack monsters? I’m feeling violated.

It’s a shame it’s on the PSP, though.

I realize that fun with Babel Fish translations is old news, but I’m really enjoying how it handled this Russian review of “Ice Station Santa”, the first episode of Sam & Max season 2.

The only part that I can read is the reviewer gives a 55% (yikes! whatever happened to glasnost?), but the translation makes it sound so much worse. It’s not a game review, it’s prophecy, or the Book of Revelations. I recommend listening to Carmina Burana while reading the translation:

They rose from the ashes. They replaced measurement. They returned in order to take vengeance upon nasty, unreasonable lyudishkam. They will stop not before how. Name by them — the not on the staff police.

Telltale is today proposed to love and to respect, as almost the main stronghold of classical kvestostroya. I love it for a feeling of humor, respect for the rich dzhedayskoye past and blame for the excess regalias. Disorderly to poke by mouse is accepted in fleshe — where here classics?

Division on “good” and “poor” is terrifically popular in Americans. Good Lincoln — poor Lincoln, good Hugh Bliss — Poor Hugh Bliss, Good Santa… Certain, to always simpler translate the kept balance means from the feet to the head, having at one stroke overcome division between reality and absurdity, than to stretch the chain of analogies, to harden natures. Although it is complicated to require depth from the comics, it will not injure to adventure. Alas to me, alas.

Whom now you will astonish by evil Santa By klausom? Why not Iisus, not mother Theresa or check, at the worst? Idea to scrape the favorite of the children Of grincha with the pot-bellied grandfather, who spoils flues, zalyapana by the hands of lazy scenarios. Telltale — not of the squeamish. They began from the robot- philosopher, set By klausom to the house of detectives. Hopes, that house will destroy, and the detectives remove- after all of vosvoyasi, were not realized. Familiar views cut eyes. Finally darkens the mood of rendezvous with Soda Peppers, by debilovatymi Fricks from Season 1. Trinity lurked in the cottage in the region of the north pole, where heroes it will bring in in to the flame of retribution. And instead of the brutal handling above bezdaryami max it fills up by their snows. On whose it to side?

But the gone balmy old man sat down inside and he allows to approach no one to himself, firing from the automaton. In order to banish its seized demon, for associates it is necessary to find… not priest, no. Four riders of apocalypse, four tiny figurines. Rejoice, reactionaries, sobiratel’stvo returned.
[...]
Azh it was wanted filth to make ready. It heard, sent to kopam and President rat with the beetle after the cavity was capable to the coup d’etat… Probably, they will lie.

How to undertake the baking of means, developers decided to probe the related connections. Here to you, if you please, the entire family of beetles in the collection. In rat also it did not manage without the wife and the son. Son, by the way, is sick with the strange matershchinnoy misfortune and pours “pipami” through each word. To crown it all us they will introduce to the daughter To lefti, and at the same time also by its bar. Thus boarded up bar, where they released earlier not for what honey cakes. Excess occasion four additional series to hold pigeons more closely for the apartments.

What point-and-click horrors hast thou wrought, Telltale?

No Country for Old Men is about as close to perfect as you’re ever going to see in a movie. Not a single shot is unnecessary. The pacing is perfect; both for the movie overall, and for individual scenes that feel as if they were meticulously orchestrated down to a fraction of a second. Almost all of the performances are absolutely dead-on (the mother-in-law felt like she’d just come in off the set of “Mama’s Family”). The dialogue has a perfect rhythm and it perfectly conveys the character. There are no artificial moments; I’ve heard real people use exactly the same cadences and expressions as these characters. The plot stays completely true to the characters and the theme. The sound design is flawless. The suspense scenes are so perfectly executed, they act as a reminder that yes, movies can make you feel something. The movie has enough confidence to show exactly what it needs to, no more and no less. There are no cheap gimmicks, easy outs, or implausibly pat resolutions.

If any filmmaker other than the Coen Brothers had made this movie, it would probably be his masterpiece. The problem is that it was made by the Coen Brothers, so you have to unfairly compare it to their other movies.

And I ended up disappointed, because it just seems superfluous. They’ve made movies that convey all of the “meat” of No Country for Old Men, in a single scene. We already know they have an almost sadistic sense of how to make the perfect suspense scene; they proved that the second the newspaper hit the screen door in Blood Simple. We already know they can convey despair (Barton Fink, The Man Who Wasn’t There), or blind rage (Miller’s Crossing), or coldly senseless violence (Fargo). This movie just felt to me as if it were made by extremely talented filmmakers who happened to be big fans of the Coens. Because ultimately, it’s missing its soul, that spark that separates very, very good work from genius.

Before I’d seen it, a friend described No Country for Old Men as “kind of like Fargo, but not funny.” That’s pretty accurate, except I’d take it even farther and call it the anti-Fargo.

They’re very similar movies. Both are about honest cops in a relatively simple and peaceful environment, being exposed to genuine senseless evil, all because of a basically ethical character who makes a single immoral decision. But where Fargo had moments of humor, No Country for Old Men is almost completely humorless. Where Fargo is ultimately uplifting, No Country for Old Men is relentlessly nihilistic.

One of the criticisms frequently made against the Coens is that they’re too arch, too concerned about the style of their movies to care about real characters. I’ve always thought the opposite: they genuinely love their characters, they like hearing them talk, they like seeing how they react to situations, and they like seeing them come out stronger in the end. (Except for Blood Simple, which is really just a bunch of suspense scenes taking advantage of the fact that all the characters are impossibly dense). I don’t get that sense from No Country for Old Men; they don’t hate the characters, they just really don’t care that much about them at all. I mean, they’re all going to die eventually, anyway, so why bother?

After the final monologue and the cut to black, I just felt kind of cheated. Definitely not because I was expecting a quick and easy resolution (spoiler: there’s not one), but because it just hung there, as if I were supposed to be impressed that it didn’t give me a quick and easy resolution. It struck me as sophomoric, in the literal sense: I felt like I’d just had to listen to two hours of a talented but pretentious college sophomore who’d just discovered Nietzsche.

And I just sat there in the dark, thinking, “Really? ‘Evil is everywhere, and life is random.’ After all this time, that’s all you’ve got to tell me?” For a moment, I thought I saw my father in the distance carrying a horn filled with fire, but as it turns out it was just the usher telling us the movie was over and it was time to leave.