A Dance with Dragons

I think if I had been reading this series all along and had been waiting for this book for six years, I'd be a little disappointed. Luckily, I was waiting for less than two. While a bit of that feeling is still there, overall I loved the book while I was reading it and just enjoyed seeing more of that world. The Game of Thrones TV series is a worthy adaptation, but there's only so much you can show in ten hours, and getting back into the books, I was reminded of the almost absurd amount of detail within the writing. People make fun of George R. R. Martin for being fat, and he calls himself a "talented eater". His passion for food definitely shows up in the book, as pretty much every meal a character gets within sniffing distance of is described in detail. It's something I didn't really notice before, but after it was pointed out, it was kind of funny to see how much time is spent on just what people happen to be eating while wars are planned and secrets are revealed. It's not just the food that gets a lot of attention, pretty much everything you could want to know about the world is spelled out, from family trees to clothes to heraldry, sometimes repeatedly. It could have resulted in tedium, but I love the setting as much as anyone, and I love the focus it gets in these books.

The story definitely slowed down during the fourth and fifth books, which take place mostly in parallel. After a certain point characters and locations from the fourth book start appearing again, though generally it's just to give us a quick update on their situation before jumping back to the main threads of the story in this volume. The problem with the book is not the world count, or the increasingly large number of subplots sprinkled all over the world, it's just that not quite enough forward progress seems to be made in most areas. I think these two books came out of a planned skip forward in the series' timeline that ended up not happening, and there's a feeling of waiting in many of the characters' stories. Some POV characters are in positions of authority and mostly just try to manage their current situations, others make an expected progression in their personal arcs and then just drop out of the book completely.

There doesn't seem to be much of a climax to the story, things do get pretty exciting and even significantly game-changing near the end, but because of the staggered way all of the plots end up finishing, it sort of feels like Martin just decided to stop writing at a certain point after failing to find a suitable climactic event. I know he has a fairly significant amount of the next book already written, and I think he probably just cut it off to keep it to a semi-reasonable word count. Not that the cliffhangers he set up aren't intriguing and good fodder for speculation during the wait for the next book, it's just the way the story has swelled over the years make it hard to have everything seem totally cohesive. All that said, I had a great time reading the book, and continue to hope and believe Martin has some sort of plan that he's driving toward. He recently admitted that he might have to write three more books instead of two to wrap up everything, but if that happens, I'll try to appreciate the extra time spent in Westeros more than I rue the extra years of waiting for the ending.

Movie Update 11B

I couldn't fit all the labels I wanted into one post yesterday, so here's even more movies. The label issue was so severe I couldn't even neatly divide the films into themes! Labels!

The Earrings of Madame de...


A fancy French movie about fancy French people. There's nothing really wrong with this movie, I just didn't find a whole lot to love about it. The cast is solid, including Vittorio De Sica as an Italian man that the leading lady falls in love with, who I know better as the director of The Bicycle Thief. This movie doesn't really have the power of that one, but tells the story of a married woman who becomes attached to a pair of earrings she sold after her lover buys them back for her. My favorite part was just the way the film played with the idea of never actually giving you her name. Otherwise, it's a nice little romantic drama, mostly worth the time it takes to watch.

High Noon


High Noon is sort of the 24 of the 1950s. I liked it a lot more than I really expected. It has a similar problem to the last Gary Cooper movie I saw, where he was too old for his love interest, in this case Grace Kelly before Alfred Hitchcock got to her. In this case it didn't really hurt the film though, because his character is more likable and the story isn't about their relationship. It's about a lawman ready to retire, but dragged back into conflict before he can, as the whole town seems to turn against him during his darkest hour. The film is mostly in real time, as everyone anticipates the arrival by train of a criminal he had originally put away, apparently back for vengeance. He tries to rustle up a posse, but doesn't get the support he anticipated, and there's a fantastic sense of concern and dread as he runs out of options while the clock slowly ticks towards his likely demise. It's a pretty realistic movie, with an ending that has heroism without being too dramatic or fantastic. One of my favorite Westerns.

The Rules of the Game


I'm not sure anyone from the 30s had a better idea of how to shoot a movie than Jean Renoir. This is another fancy French movie about fancy French movie, although it's one I found more to latch onto in. It's an ensemble piece about the fickle lives of aristocrats, as they bounce from lover to lover without realizing the pain they cause. Renoir himself is among the cast, and they do a solid job of quickly selling their relationships and setting up the entanglements that eventually lead to the surprising and effective ending. Pretty darn good movie.

Samurai Rebellion


This one just seemed a bit too slow to me. I love Masaki Kobayashi's work (unfortunately I'm already almost out of films he made that are actually available), but Rebellion wasn't quite up to the power of Harakiri or the breathless scope of The Human Condition. It actually probably has roughly the same pace as Harakiri, and might even be quicker. But that film was coated in a pervasive, almost oppressive tension that seemed likely to snap into chaos at any second, and while Rebellion has a sad story, there just isn't that feeling. Toshiro Mifune was probably getting a bit old at that point to carry a whole movie on charisma alone (though he still handles the swordplay well), and Tatsuya Nakadi does a lot with his few scenes, but the character he plays is intentionally pretty neutral. It's a solid, no-nonsense samurai film, one that could have benefited from being pushed a little in either a darker or more fun direction.

Movie Update 11A

Life goes on, and I continue to watch a number of films that I have never seen before. I'm running out of "classics" in the instant queue at this point, and I don't know if I'm going to keep that when Netflix switches up the plans in a couple months. But I'll keep watching movies. 11B goes up tomorrow.

The Conversation


Sandwiched between the first two parts of The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola made this film, a much more intimate and inward-looking affair. Gene Hackman does a great job (I find it amazing he was already 44 when this was made, but I hadn't realized he retired years ago either) as a surveillance expert who becomes worried by the content of a conversation he is hired to record, and reluctant to hand it over to his client. He's surrounded by a great cast, notably a young Harrison Ford as his main contact with the client, John Cazale as his spurned partner, and a brief appearance by Robert Duvall. It's mostly a character piece, and the script and Hackman's work do a great job of bringing a quiet by interesting man to life. Things do get hairier later on, with some surprisingly shocking moments as it reaches the climax. Nice anti-Hollywood ending, too.

The Hustler


I feel like Paul Newman was sort of a singular talent that came into his own in the 60s, and since he didn't have any direct competitor like Robert De Niro versus Al Pacino, some people my age overlook how amazing of an actor he is. There's no ongoing debate around him, he's just an amazing actor. Could be making crap up, though. In The Hustler he plays a pool shark, and while there are extensive pool scenes in the movie, it's more about the turmoil of the character, who realizes he's not who he thought he was after a game against Jackie Gleason's Minnesota Fats goes bad. George C. Scott is also great in the movie, and it's just a fun film to watch despite some pretty dark material towards the end. The good kind of sports movie that's not really about sports.

MASH


All I really knew about Robert Altman before seeing this was he made movies with ensemble casts that talked over each other, and that's certainly the case here. It's a Korean war movie that's really about the Vietnam war, and showcases funny actors rather than comedians trying to act. The three main characters are military doctors played by Donald Sutherland, Elliot Gould, and Tom Skerritt who don't care much for proper chain of command or behavior for their positions. It's not really realistic how cavalier they are with their mistreatment of other officers in the movie, but it's a satire, and it works. I didn't think it was an amazing movie, but I did enjoy watching it go through its paces, and there are a number of memorable scenes, even if some don't quite pay off or go on too long. I can definitely see how some producers looked at it and saw a way to make a series out of it, after removing some of the racier stuff. I assume I'll continue to never see it, but you never know.

Play Time


One of those movies that I didn't really love, but I appreciated the immense amount of care and craft behind. It's hard to say what Jacques Tati's deal is, beyond a lot of wide shots filled to the brim with little bits of physical comedy in every corner of the screen. Play Time is a film where dialogue isn't very important, and I could easily see the whole thing working almost as well with no subtitles at all (it's already a mix of French and English), or even as a silent film. It's about a tragic future version of Paris, where all of the famous landmarks people love have been replaced with plain buildings filled with sterile cubic offices, steel floors and chairs with squishy cushions. Humanity still shines through though, as Monsieur Hulot and an American tourist bumble around the trade shows and turn a disastrous restaurant opening into a heck of a party. I think the whole thing could have greatly benefited from chopping as much as half an hour off, but there's nothing wrong with any individual scenes. You can just only take so much whimsy and clever visual comedy before it all seems like the same stuff. Still a solid film.

Bayonetta

It would be hard for a video game to be more ridiculous than Bayonetta without becoming intolerable. Plenty of games have gone in a similar direction with over-the-top action sequences and absurd stories and presentation, but I can't recall seeing one take it all as far as this game. It helps a lot that the game knows very well that it is ridiculous, and is sort of winking the entire time. Bayonetta is sort of the typical sexy bombshell protagonist that sometimes gets exploited, but her feminine proportions and the camera angles she's shot at are so insane that it's obvious her entire existence is tongue-in-cheek. It helps that she has such a delightfully wicked personality. But anyway, she's far from the only wacky thing in the game. The whole premise is that three different realities live on top of each other; basically Earth, heaven, and hell. Witches and sages serve the dark and the light, and they can travel between the realities. Bayonetta is a witch, and she kills the hell out of angels through the entire game in order to prevent someone from resurrecting God. The plot isn't that strange for a Japanese game, but the panache with which the world is brought to life and then repeatedly exploded is pretty exceptional.

I guess it speaks to how much I like God of War that I often like these kinds of stylish action games best when they remind me of it. I've had plenty of fun with the kinetic, desperate action of Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden, but that action is about all there is to them besides some silly cut scenes serving a boring plot. A lot of what I really like about God of War is how it invests you in all of the mayhem you cause by getting you on Kratos' side, and making the setting seem like it exists beyond the hallways and arenas you're fighting in. Both of those are definitely present in Bayonetta, along with the simple platforming sections and gigantic boss fights. All it's really missing are the interesting puzzle elements, with those bits usually boiling down to finding the right object to smash. It's still a game that focuses mostly on the combat, which is fine when it's as crazy and enjoyable as everything else about the game.

They do a good job of slowly expanding your options in battle - Bayonetta starts with a fluid and entertaining two-button combo system, an arsenal of fire four guns (two are strapped to her heels), the ability to slow down time for everyone else with a well-timed dodge (the complete absence of a block button means the combat is always fast paced and intense), and a magic meter that lets her use her hair for especially damaging blows or execute torture attacks, which are the baseline for the absurd brutality she puts her foes through. As the games goes on you pick up some new moves and weapons that expand your choices and keep things fresh. Unfortunately, the game was a bit too hard for me on normal after a certain point, and rather than replaying levels to pay for upgrades and items I opted to switch to easy mode. The game was still a lot of fun the rest of the way, but I felt like I was missing something - I didn't manage to find any new weapons after a certain point, and the way some things became automatic in that mode made it seem like I wasn't getting the full experience. Still, I appreciated the depth and smoothness of the combat, even if I didn't fully master it myself.

The regular fighting makes up most of the gameplay, but Bayonetta does find occasion to mix things up. The light platforming elements did the job of giving you a break from the insanity to observe the strange world the game takes place in, and there are a few opportunities to use vehicles in specific sequences that are their own brand of out of their mind. It's a tight eight hour experience, only really dragging towards the end when it seems like the game should have ended already and just won't. If an overly long denouement is the only real mistake caused by the game's everything-including-the-kitchen-sink approach, then the project is a remarkable success. The PS3 version of the game is famous for its technical inefficiencies, but I guess it's been patched enough to where it really isn't a major problem at this point. The loading times were generally fine, and while I did notice some slowdown, it only seriously impacted the gameplay in a single (large) room late in the game. Considering how much stuff was crammed in the game, I thought it was fine. It looks pretty nice too, though the use of mostly-still frames in certain cut scenes felt kind of cheap. The voice acting is marginal but Bayonetta herself is great, and the music works even if it's a bit repetitive. There also seems to be plenty of stuff in the game to extend its life beyond the initial play-through, especially if you're skilled enough to unlock it. At the price you can find it for now, Bayonetta is definitely one of this generation's best pure action games.