Unfair Design

Hello and welcome back to Eccentric Spheres.

Today I have to keep it a bit on the short side. I caught a nasty little flu last week, and the bastard is still kicking my ass all over the place.

Anyway, I ran across this video called “Devs Play”, over at DoubleFineProd's channel on Youtube. If you go to about the 18 minute mark, the developer of the old Lion King console game talks about how they were ordered by Disney to make the early game really hard to play.

The reason for this is, or rather was, the rental market. Back in the day when rentals were the big thing, the movie industry got a slice of every rented movie, but no one got anything for rented games. So the clever chaps over at Disney figured out that if you put in a huge spike in difficulty around level two, renters would get frustrated and go out and buy the game, in order to finish it.

Now, my brother and I used to rent a console and some games every now and then. Usually the SNES, but even the old NES once or twice, and I remember how this actually was a thing. In the Aladdin game, in order to escape the Cave of Wonders, you have to ride the magic carpet while lava chunks fly at you at high speeds. It was insanely hard to try to remember the pattern, and I suspect this artificial difficulty spike was the reason.

If this strategy actually worked or not, I can't say. I doubt anyone can, but for us it didn't work. Seeing as we rented the console as well, there was no way we would ever buy the game anyway. If it was too hard, we would just shrug and put it down in order to play something else.

The video is pretty interesting, so check it out.

I'm off to do some more coughing and sneezing, but I'll see you next time. Until then, have a great week!

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kILeyo1iv0A&feature=youtu.be&t=1085

The Gunman

Last week I happened upon a movie I had completely missed. I was watching a WatchMojo video on Youtube about great sniper scenes in movies when they mentioned The Gunman (2015).

As I said, this movie had completely gone under my radar, but the scene was good and the synopsis seemed okay, so I gave it a shot.

What we have is Sean Penn in one of his, in my opinion, best roles ever. He is a private security contractor (mercenary) in the Congo. He's in love with a relief worker doctor, but he suddenly has to leave Africa, leaving her behind.

A few years later, he's back in the Congo this time digging wells when mercenaries try to kill him and he realizes that he's a target for elimination. Find out who's behind it, etc. etc.

The story isn't that original in and of itself, but it's how the movie has been built up that makes it good. Good pacing and overall wonderful timing.

Terrier (Penn) is a highly skilled veteran soldier, but age and illness is catching up with him and he has to be clever to succeed. This is a welcome change from the super soldier that usually headlines action movies, and the main reason why The Gunman is more a thriller with a lot of action than an action movie with an actual plot.

The supporting cast is excellent, with Javier Bardem, Ray Winstone and Idris Elba leading the pack. There are no bad actors here, but it should be noted that Idris Elba is monstrously underused. For such a high billing he's barely in the film.

It's a pretty movie, to be sure, over all very well done. The fight scenes deserves a comment though. I have railed against the deplorable tendencies in modern films to over use shaky cam during fights. In this film, the fights are a bit shaky, sure, but not too much. It's never a problem to understand what's happening and unusually, they miss a lot. No one is a god-like marksman, in fact I'd say most bullets miss the targets. This is a nice deviation from the usual Hollywood machismo.

Bottom line, I liked this film. I recommend The Gunman if you want a good action/thriller.

Until next time, have a great week!

Robo-Dancing and the Soul

In 1987, I was in sixth grade and two movies were all the rage in my school: Dirty Dancing and Robocop. In fact, 1987 was an amazing year for movies. To name but a few we have; Fatal Attraction, Good Morning Vietnam, The Untouchables, Lethal Weapon, Predator, Throw Mama from the train, La Bamba, The Living Daylights, Full Metal Jacket, Wall Street, Spaceballs etc. etc.

But for this bit of armchair psychology we'll stick to dirty Dancing and Robocop. I'm sure it's no surprise to anyone that there was a clear divide between the genders as to who watched which film.

All the girls were swooning over Patrick Swayze, and the movie in general. It's not difficult to see why. The tall good looking older guy who desires the young woman enough to stand up to her domineering father with, Nobody puts Baby in the corner. Of course, dancing has been used as a metaphor, and indeed substitute, for sex for ages. So it's no wonder that the girls were going gaga over this film.

Just as it's no wonder that all the boys were supremely uninterested in it. For us it was all about the opposite, the action. If you look deeper into Robocop, you find a pretty complex movie about corporate control over the civilian sector in the absence of a functional government. Drugs and crime gone rampant in a city both financially and morally bankrupt. And at its core, the question of what it means to be human. After all, Robocop is more machine than man, so it really becomes a question about transhumanism and the soul.

But let's not kid ourselves. We were all going, and then he shot the guy. Did you see how he punched through the wall and grabbed the dude? And that guy was all melted, it was so cool.

We didn't even know the word transhumanism. It's not why we loved the movie.

Even though it's been thirty years, I can still remember how the girls would roll their eyes at us boys and sigh, so immature, because we preferred Robocop over Dirty Dancing. And they were right, we were immature, we were twelve years old. But so were they.

I don't know what they were expecting from us. It's not as if any of us could have suddenly morphed into Patrick Swayze and whisked them away to a cornerless land of dance. My brain was at least not ready to start processing the concept of romance. However, it's not like we hadn't noticed girls at that age. The Italian singer Sabrina had popped onto the scene (and almost out of her bikini) with her hit Boys (Summertime Love), and I promise we had noticed her...

It's a well known fact that girls mature faster than boys, at least sexually. I wonder if boys don't mature earlier when it comes to accepting the concept of violence. Not just that they play War and Cowboys and Indians, but that boys naturally accept their role in an inescapably violent world much earlier than girls. If we go back to the Stone Age we see the same pattern that still holds true today, even with gender diversity and trans-sexuality.

I actually don't really know where I'm going with this. The idea popped up in my head when I woke up this morning, long before I had any coffee. Maybe there is no point, maybe the point is that we shouldn't try to change too quickly and too soon. AI is around the corner so it's possible that transhumanism is on the agenda again, and it's those who don't change who will like Baby, sit in the corner.

Alright, that's enough of that. Until next time, watch one of the great movies from 1987 and have yourself a great week!

It's Monday

And my brain is mush. I have a ton of stuff I should do today. Thus, I don't have anything insightful or witty for you today.
Instead, I have to rely on the wits of others, in this case a young Stephen Fry. Hopefully I have something better for you next week.

Until then, have a great week!

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9YcWLqjb9k

The Keep

In 1981, F. Paul Wilson published The Keep, a horror novel set in WWII Romania. The movie has been on my radar for quite some time, but I never really got around to watching it.

Then Bookbub had the book on sale for 0.99 cents, so I grabbed it. I wanted to read it before finally watching the movie, and so I did.

Romania, 1941 before the German invasion of Russia. A group of soldiers led by Captain Woermann arrives at The Keep, in fictional Dinu Pass. A greedy soldier intent on loot accidentally releases an old evil called Molasar, which starts to kill one soldier per night. The captain sends for help, which arrives in the shape of SS-Sturmbannführer Kaempffer and his einsatzkommandos. The officers knew each other form the first world war and their mutual antagonism is a relevant part of the plot. The killings continue and the Germans discover that Jewish professor Cuza is the closest thing to an expert of the keep there is. He is forcefully taken to the Keep by the SS and the Romanian Iron Guard together with his daughter Magda.

At the same in Portugal, a strange man named Glenn becomes disturbed, and grabbing his belongings, hastens to Romania.

I'm not going to explain more of the plot than this, to avoid spoilers.

Even though the it all sounds a bit cheesy, the book is actually pretty good. The pressure brought on by the killings which are clearly supernatural adds tension, as threatened soldiers are prone to lash out. I enjoyed it from start to finish, especially since Wilson writes good characters, but the film, well, that's another question entirely.

The movie, directed in 1983 by Michael Mann (Last of the Mohicans, Heat) is awful. It has three problems in my opinion.

The biggest reason for it's ghastliness isn't Mann's fault. His original cut was 210 minutes, which the studio refused outright. They had it cut down to 96 minutes, after which Mann disowned the movie altogether. The cuts really savage the plot. I knew what everything meant because I read the book, otherwise I would have been completely lost. Very little makes any sense in the film as it stands. It jumps around, it rushes through the plot so fast at times that what for example, should be a blossoming romance is boiled down to a weird surreal sex scene. Things like that.

The second problem is it's extremely 1980's style. Even though it's set in 1941, it has an electronic soundtrack by Tangerine Dream, and it sounds terrible. In another movie it would be fine, but in a WWII film it's awful. There are also several special effects and shots that are completely out of place but were popular in the 80's. It looks at time more like a music video for Kate Bush, than a horror movie. This is very much Mann's fault.

Finally there are the inevitable changes. Surprisingly, the film is mostly very faithful to the book, but the most glaring changes are really irritating. First, Magda is changed to Eva. Why? Magda is a perfectly functional name. Silly change. Secondly, a priest is added to the film. He replaces the innkeeper from the book, but there is also an innkeeper in the film. So why bother adding a priest that serves no purpose? Worst of all, Molasar is completely changed. There is a very good reason why he looks like a pretty stereotypical vampire in the book, but in the movie he is an odd Golem-Demon-Smoke-Monster. So incredibly dumb. So are the way in which he kills. In the novel, he kills in bloody, shockingly gruesome ways, but in the film, it's all a light show. Terrible...

I would like to actually see Mann's 210 minute cut, but it is lost in the mists of time. Because of this I can't go into all the things that are missing from the book. He may well have filmed them, but lost them on the cutting room floor.

End summary: do read the book, it's in my opinion worth it, but avoid the film at all costs.

That's it for this time. Until we meet again, have a great week!

Tenebre

Many years ago, during the heyday of my obsessive horror watching, I had a chance to see Dario Argento's Tenebre (1982).

This movie is considered by many to be one of his finest works, but I loathed it. I found it uninteresting, long winded and frankly boring. I enjoyed the ending, but that was it.

Looking back, I'd say I came in to the film with the wrong expectations. I had previously seen and enjoyed some of his other movies like Suspiria (1977), Inferno (1980) and Opera (1987). Suspiria and Inferno are part of a loose trilogy of supernatural horror, and I liked them well enough. Opera was and still is, one of the most stylish horror films I've ever seen.

At first I thought that the lack of anything supernatural in Tenebre might have been what was wrong with it. But Opera is also without anything supernatural, so that wasn't what I disliked.

Last week, I was itching for an older horror classic and tripping over Tenebre, I thought, why not? I have certainly seen worse movies since my first outing with ol' Tenebre. You know what? I actually liked it.

As I said, there is nothing supernatural here, it's a thriller with slasher elements through and through. I'd even question if it really is a horror film at all. It sits on the fence between genres, I suppose.

A mystery writer goes to Rome on a book tour for his latest hit, Tenebre, and becomes involved in a police investigation of a deranged killer who murders those he/she sees as deviants, using the novel as inspiration. The killer also sends the writer gloating notes after each kill.

This is the plot in a nutshell. We get to see each kill in sometimes very bloody detail, which is what separates it from a regular whodunnit or serial killer thriller.

The plot is simple, which is a boon as you try to figure out who the killer is before it's too late.

Argento has done a great job from a technical standpoint. The film is visually wonderful, a real joy to watch, with some amazing shots. The general mood is both surreal and realistic at times, which heightens the violence rather than distracts from it. There aren't that many kills overall, which again is good for the balance of the film.

The biggest “problem”, is the soundtrack. Tenebre was shot in 1982 and Synth Pop was the order of the day. If you can't stand that, stay away.

What we have here at the end of the day is a pretty stylish 80's thriller with some partial nudity at times, a very gory ending, shot with real skill. It is American-Italian, and some actors are clearly dubbed, but it's well done and works.

I can definitely recommend this movie. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it is a good stepping off point for Italian horror cinema.

That's all folks, until next time, have a great murder free week!

Pioneer in Horror

Hello and welcome to another issue of Eccentric Spheres.

Today, I have an interesting documentary about one of my favorite writers, H.P. Lovecraft. He is concidered by many to be (one of) the father(s) of modern horror.
This documentary includes interviews with many luminaries of the horror genre, including Caitlin R. Kiernan, Guillermo del Toro, Ramsay Campbell and many more.

So enjoy this fascinating look into the creative genius behind the popular Cthulhu Mythos:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17tj18qpJf0





Until next time, have a great week!