Weekly Review Round-Up
Current mood: cantankerous

A new Geeking Out is in the works, but in the interim, here are some blurbs from everything I've reviewed this week--as well as links to the full pieces in case anything piques your interest. Clicking the title will take you to the reviews.

Bully: Scholarship Edition: Bully, Rockstar Vancouver's open-world high school simulator, suffered from bad timing upon its initial release. The PlayStation 2 version launched just as many of us were making our move to the Xbox 360, and while the game wasn't ignored, it seemed that most of its press came courtesy of lawyer/professional blowhard/psychopathic circus clown Jack Thompson. Thompson, who has a well documented vendetta against Rockstar's flagship franchise-Grand Theft Auto-started up the anti-Bully bandwagon before he'd even seen the game. I believe his best sound-bite was calling it a "Columbine simulator". Anyone who's actually played the game can take a moment now and laugh at Thompson's rampant stupidity-if you weren't laughing already, that is.

Anyway, luckily enough for those of us who missed the PS2 version, Bully has now been ported to the Xbox 360-with better graphics, more stuff to do, and all the irreverent humor and teenaged angst one would expect to find in your typical John Hughes flick.

American Skin: Bruen has crafted a heart wrenching and unrepentantly violent tale that mixes human carnage and blacker-than-the-devil's-soul-humor with enough pathos and pop culture references to make Quentin Tarantino blush. No small feat for a book that runs only 280 pages.

Rogue: After sitting on a shelf in the Weinstein's impenetrable film vault, director Greg McLean's killer crocodile flick, Rogue, finally hits DVD (with a brief stopover in a few theaters for posterity's sake). Is this newest entry in the ever-burgeoning monster crocodile/alligator subgenre (which has seen the release of this film, Primeval, Lake Placid 2, and Black Water all in the very recent past) the one predator to rule them all or is Rogue just another pretender to the throne?

The Wheelman: I stumbled across novelist/comic writer/Editor-In-Chief of the Philadelphia City Paper Duane Swierczynski after spotting his latest novel, Severance Package, in my local Barnes & Noble (review of that one forthcoming-if I can fit it in somewhere). After devouring that crazy tale in a single sitting, I set out to find more of this guy's work. Figuring it best to start at the beginning (I'm a sucker for tracking the evolution of artists I admire in chronological order), I grabbed a copy of Swierczynski's debut novel, The Wheelman. I was rewarded for this action with a rip-roaring tale that not only heralded the arrival of a serious new talent in crime fiction, but a book that certainly should be adapted to the big screen.

Hellevator: The Bottled Fools: Once you get beyond the unbelievably stupid title (Media Blasters' Tokyo Shock division apparently thought it would be great marketing to take the original title, The Bottled Fools, and spice it up by adding the completely awful "Hellevator" in front of it...), The Bottled Fools reveals itself to be a very interesting low budget Japanese genre film. Perhaps the best way to describe it would be to say "imagine if Shinya Tsukamoto remade Cube" Sounds pretty wild, but interesting at the same time, doesn't it? Well, that's basically what this particular film plays like.

You Kill Me: You Kill Me is a solid little movie (courtesy of IFC films, so you know they didn't break the bank when it came to the budget) that's just quirky and indie enough to appeal to the arthouse crowd while remaining funny and familiar enough to engage mainstream audiences. It won't change your life, but it almost assuredly will keep you entertained for 90 minutes. Sometimes, that's all we really need.

8:02 PM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Geeking Out: 7-2-08
Current mood: discontent

Sorry this entry is about two weeks late. As usual, there's no excuse for it, really--just me being lazy.

Not much to report here from Casa de Bracken. It's summer in Oakland so that means one day it's 85 and the next it struggles to get to 60, but that's okay with me. It could stay 60 all summer long and I wouldn't complain. Maybe next month I'll have something more exciting to talk about here...

Inside: I don't know if you realize this or not, but the French have finally discovered something they're good at (other than waving the white flag): making horror movies. What started with High Tension has morphed into an entire gallic horror renaissance over the past few years (and just in time--I can't take anymore of these fucking Asian girl ghost movies). High Tension has always been the best of the bunch--until now.

Inside's premise is simple: Sarah (Alysson Paradis), a young photographer is very pregnant. Unfortunately, four months earlier, she was in a bad car accident—one that left her husband dead. Now, it's Christmas Eve and she's slated to deliver her baby the next day. Still depressed at the loss of her love, she spends the evening home, alone—at least for awhile anyway. Things become much more intriguing once La Femme (Beatrice Dalle) arrives on the scene. La Femme is a complete psychopath, desperate to claim Sarah's unborn child for herself—through any (and I do mean any) means necessary. What ensues reminded of a number of films, most notably Yukihiko Tsutsumi's 2LDK (wherein two women in one apartment engage in a heated battle to the death) only with much higher stakes and an off-the-charts gore quotient.

The film is amazing--it's one of the most brutal things I've seen in a long time, filled with great gore, two fantastic performances (especially the one from Beatrice Dalle), and a final sequence that's so haunting it will scar you forever. This is horror cinema at its finest.

Snuff: Snuff is the latest novel from Chuck Palahniuk (best known to most people as the author who gave us Fight Club). This isn't Chuck's finest work by any stretch (in fact, in some regards his writing style is starting to feel a little formulaic at this point and far less shocking than it used to--despite this, I'd still sell my soul to be able write like this guy) but it should please his legions of devoted fans--like me.

Porn legend Cassie Wright is set to end her career with a bang--or better yet, a gangbang. She plans to shatter the world gangbang record by fornicating with 600 men on camera. Snuff is the story of what happens in the green room while 600 dudes wait their turn to take their place in the annals of adult film history. Told from the perspectives of three men--number 72, a virgin, number 137--a TV star looking to revive his career, and number 600-- a porn film legend, Palahniuk creates a tale of tragedy, horror, and humor. In his typical fashion, Palahniuk has littered Snuff with lots of weird information about the inside workings of the porn industry (including various mentions of Annabelle Chong's gangbang from a few years back), facts about Hollywood stars and what they've done to make it, and his usual biting social commentary. Weighing in at 197 pages, this is more a novella than a full-fledged novel, and the ending isn't the greatest, but Palahniuk's B game is better than most guys' best work. If you're a fan, grab it now. If you've never read Palahniuk but are an adventurous book fan, this is still definitely worth checking out.

Finally, we close with something I really wanted to Geek Out over, but just couldn't.

Mother of Tears: I'm a card-carrying member of the cult of Dario Argento. Argento's films occupy numerous slots on my top 10 horror films of all time list and if you asked me to name my top 10 filmmakers in general, Dario's definitely included. That being said, it's always sad to watch your idols start to lose the magic that made you love them in the first place. For Dario, it's been a long process, full of peaks and valleys. Every time I see something like Do You Like Hitchcock and think he's totally done, he returns with something good like his two Masters of Horror episodes.

That being said, I was always wary of him making Mother of Tears. For those of you who aren't familiar with Italian horror, Mother of Tears is the third film in a trilogy started way back in 1977 with his masterpiece, Suspiria (and followed up by the equally impressive 1980 film Inferno). The films were about a trio of witches who secretly rule the world from their castles in Germany, New York, and Rome. Anyway, ever since Inferno, fans have clamored for the third film in the trilogy. Most of us assumed Dario would never make it--and we were right for thirty years.

However, now Mother of Tears, that long-awaited third installment of the Three Mothers trilogy, is playing in the US. I went in hoping for the best and expecting the worst. Optimism is for chumps.

I'll give Dario this--he apparently knew that there was no real way to recapture the magic of Suspiria and Inferno after three decades (and utilizing two writers who had nothing to do with the earlier films) so he just went all out on this film. The result is a deliriously stupid movie that features some pretty decent gore work but also runs at least thirty minutes too long and has what may be Asia Argento's worst acting performance to date (which is really no small feat when you think about it). Don't even get me started on the "poncho of doom" that kicks everything into motion. Is it nice to see Daria Nicolodi and Udo Kier? Sure. Is it cool to hear about Suspiria's Suzy Bannion in passing and see sketches of the Mother of Sighs and Mother of Darkness's houses? Yeah. It's just that the rest of the movie is pretty meh overall.

Maybe I'm too close to the source material--being a hardcore Argento nerd, that could certainly be the case. Even though I tried to temper my enthusiasm for the film, maybe I had higher expectations than could have ever been met. My wife (who likes Argento but hasn't written 80,000 words on his films and career like yours truly) and stepdaughter (who prepared for Mother of Tears by having her first viewing of Suspiria--which necessitated me giving a lecture on the aesthetics of Italian horror cinema and the work of Argento in particular before she was allowed to push play) both thought it was ok.

I guess I sort of know how the hardcore Indiana Jones fans feel now. They waited twenty years for Jones to come back and what they got was Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. We waited thirty years and got Mother of Tears. Both prove that sometimes things we love are probably better left in the past.

And that's it for this month's Geeking Out. Tune in next time when I'll rant and rave about...something.

Currently listening : Then What Happened? By J-Live Release date: 2008-05-27

8:57 AM - 3 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment

Geeking Out: 5-15-08
Current mood: blah
Category: Blogging

Another month, another Geeking Out. Lots to talk about this month, so let's just dive in, shall we?

Grand Theft Auto 4: Might as well start off with the 800lb gorilla in the room, the newest GTA game. With GTA4, Rockstar has further blurred the lines between videogames and cinema. The story of Slavic immigrant Niko Bellic's quest for fortune, power, and revenge feels like a videogame merging of the cinema of Michael Mann, John Woo, Johnny To, Beat Takeshi Kitano, and Sam Peckinpah. It's like Cronenberg's Eastern Promises, only playable. It's got everything we've come to expect from a GTA game--violence, vulgarity, hilarity, challenge, and a wee bit of pathos. It also has something that most of the other games have lacked--a main character who may have some sociopathic tendencies but is also very easy to identify with. Truthfully, for me, what makes this GTA game so endearing (and so much better than the games that have come before it) is the cast of characters. In typical GTA fashion, players will encounter a steady stream of quirky criminals, but a few (like Little Jacob, Brucie, and your cousin Roman) are so intriguing and interesting that you come to care about them a lot more than you did in characters found in GTAs past. The game is not perfect, but it's very close. It's GTA with tweaks, better graphics, an easier to use (though still not perfect) aiming system, and characters you actually come to care about. There's a lot of 2008 left, but this has to be the early favorite for Game of the Year honors.

Man Vs. Wild: I've read all the stories about how Man Vs. Wild is staged and fake and frankly, I don't give a flying fuck. This Discovery Channel show is easily the best thing on the network. Host Bear Grylls (who I might have a bit of a man-crush on...and please, let me never type the phrase "man-crush" ever again) might find himself in staged situations (to show you how to overcome them) and might return to a base camp every night, but this dude could survive in these situations if he had to. The guy's been up Everest--he's a tough SOB. Anyway, each week the show drops Grylls into some insanely inhospitable part of the world and he has to survive while showing you how to do it if you ever find yourself in a similar situation. What ensues is an hour of watching the guy show you how you can make your own urine drinkable, eat off dead animals and various kinds of vegetation, and make sure you have a place to sleep at night. It's compelling TV--even if you're not very likely to ever find yourself in a situation where you'd need the information.

Gutterballs: With a title like Gutterballs, you could be forgiven if you thought I was going to talk about some weird comedy about bowling (maybe some kind of low-budget Kingpin or something). Instead, Gutterballs is a new slasher film from Ryan Nicholson (who made the entertaining stalk-and-kill flick Live Feed a few years back). Paying homage to the '80s slasher flicks (which was the heyday of the form) Gutterballs is like a fond trip down memory lane. After a brutal rape happens at a late night bowling alley, a masked assassin (known hilariously enough as "the Bowling Bag Killer"--no doubt because he wanders around with a bowling bag on his head) begins offing the teens involved--in some truly creative and brutal ways. Filled to the brim with '80s slasher film prerequisites (nudity, sleaze, and gore), Gutterballs is essential viewing for anyone who remembers the days when horror cinema was synonymous with masked slashers instead of torture porn. If Ryan Nicholson keeps making films like these, he's going to become one of my favorite horror filmmakers.

And there you have it. Tune in next time when I'll be talking about Chuck Pahlaniuk's new novel Snuff and some other cool crap.

Currently listening : 6 Feet Deep By Gravediggaz Release date: 1997-09-16

4:27 PM - 2 Comments - 1 Kudos - Add Comment

Geeking Out: 4-15-08
Current mood: sick
Category: Blogging

Man, three months since the last Geeking Out? I'm a slacker...

Actually, I was in Florida til the end of February hanging out with the family, then I came back to Oakland and got the flu that wouldn't end, followed up by a sinus infection. I'm just now starting to feel a little better. I'm behind on everything (the website hasn't been updated in ages, despite the fact that I have like twenty reviews ready to go up) and new writing has been sporadic. Top that off with me watching the Penguins dismantle Ottawa in the playoffs...and well, I'm just way behind. But, enough with the excuses--let's talk about what my big nerdy ass is excited over at the moment.

Lost Odyssey: I'm a big videogame nerd and I've always loved RPGs. Lost Odyssey is the latest offering from Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi's Mistwalker Studios. Spanning four Xbox 360 discs, this is a pretty massive game that's traditional almost to a fault. Random encounters, turn-based fighting, people with amnesia...it's like RPG 101. And yet, somehow, it does all these little things right--things that make the whole of the game greater than the sum of its parts. Some of the stories in the game are so well written that they could have been collected into a book. Some of the moments that are supposed to be emotional actually become that instead of just pantomiming it in videogame fashion. It's not without its flaws, but it's certainly a better game than some of the review scores have indicated. Plus it kept me busy for 70 hours--that's less than a dollar per hour of entertainment.

Half the Blood of Brooklyn: Charlie Huston's latest Joe Pitt novel finds the vampire tough guy working as an enforcer for the neo-hippy Society clan, watching his girlfriend waste away to advanced AIDS, and sent over into the wilds of Brooklyn to deal with a clan of Hasidic Jew vampires--or in other words, just another typical day for Joe. Huston continues to write some of the most compulsively readable noir-esque fiction out there today, even if this is the weakest book in the series so far. Half the Blood is good--it rips along at a breakneck pace never letting up until the last sentence, and Huston's prose makes me weep with envy, but the book itself feels more like a set-up for the next book in the series than it does an actual stand alone piece of fiction (the earlier books managed to work as both). Personally, I think vampires are generally boring and totally played out--but Huston's so good that I actually look forward to reading about the bloodsuckers lurking in the shadows of Manhattan.

Check back next time when maybe I'll have finally seen Dario Argento's The Third Mother.

Oh yeah, only two more weeks til Grand Theft Auto IV.

10:51 AM - 2 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Geeking Out: 1-15-08
Current mood: tired
Category: Blogging

Not much happening here at Casa de Bracken, really. I left my job at the comic  shop because the commute was starting to suck. Christmas was cool. I'll be in Florida from January 30th through February 26th, so if you want to see me, let me know. Generally, when I come to Florida some sort of calamity happens and I don't get to see a lot of folks. Hopefully we can eliminate that this year.

And now, on with the show.

The Girl Next Door: If I were a quote-whore film critic, I'd undoubtedly start talking about the cinematic adaptation of Jack Ketchum's novel The Girl Next Door as the "feel bad movie of the year". Not since Gaspar Noe's soul-crushing Irreversible have I seen a film that left me so despondent once it ended. This is not a condemnation of the work of Ketchum, director Gregory Wilson, and screenwriters Daniel Farrands and Phil Nutman—in fact, it's the exact opposite. For many years, Ketchum's book had been deemed all but unfilmable. So intense and bleak, his novel length meditation on the banalities of evil and the amoralness of childhood was simply something mainstream America would never accept in the form he'd envisioned it. Forget the fact that it was based on the real life case of Sylvia Likens (which took place in Indiana in 1965)—events like these are best swept under the rug, written off as an aberration even when the news reports of similar crimes indicate it's far more the norm than we'd care to admit. It's only now, after languishing in various stages of development for what seems like an eternity, that Ketchum's unrelentingly dark portrait of the American underbelly finally comes to the big screen—with all its horror intact. If I were doing a top ten list of horror films from 2007, this would be my number one pick.

Exiled: Johnnie To's story of conflicted gangsters (who'd been friends since childhood) looking to make one big score while determining just where their allegiances lie isn't exactly groundbreaking material in the world of Hong Kong cinema. The entire heroic bloodshed subgenre of films has focused on these sorts of stories since the days when John Woo was a "hot young action auteur"—it's a narrative path that has been well traveled throughout the last two decades. Despite this, To brings his own unique worldview to the proceedings—and the end result is an operatic merging of the standard triad gangster flicks, the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone, and the stark violence found in the cinema of Takeshi Kitano. Exiled ticks along like a finely tuned Swiss watch—its outcome as inevitable as the passage of time itself. It is arguably the finest film of To's storied career (even slightly edging out The Mission—a film the seems like a prequel to Exiled), and a glowing example of just how relevant Hong Kong cinema can still be even a decade after the return of Chinese rule. Check it out and see one of the world's more underrated filmmakers at the top of his game.

Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions: Final Fantasy Tactics was hardly the first Strategy RPG to appear on a console, but even today, roughly a decade after its debut on the Playstation, it's arguably the best game of its genre. War of the Lions is an updated port for the PSP--and one of the must own titles for Sony's handheld. With deep gameplay (thanks to an engaging job system) and a new retranslated story (which actually makes sense most of the time now...) there's enough here to warrant a purchase. However, the additon of new jobs (like the Dark Knight class), additional battles, cooperative play, and beautifully animated cutscenes make this package even more impressive. The only negative is that the game features some odd slowdown when casting spells (you'll hear sound before you see animations finish)--and the fact that the game is going to eat up 50 or more hours of your life. If you missed out on Tactics the first time around, or just want to take a trip down memory lane, War of the Lions is a must buy.

And with that, another month's Geeking Out is in the books.

Currently listening : Riders of the Storm: The Underwater Album By Boogiemonsters Release date: 09 August, 1994

10:10 AM - 4 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

New Reviews at TheHorrorGeek.com
Current mood: sleepy

Hey all,

Just a quick blog to point out I've got some new reviews up at my The Horror Geek website. Check them out if you're bored or curious. Also expect a new Geeking Out very soon.

Hatchet Review: Hailed as "old school American horror, Hatchet mostly lives up to its billing.

Rise: Blood Hunter: Even a topless Lucy Liu can't save this mess...

Live Free or Die Hard: It's not horror, but how can I not talk about the latest exploits of John McClane?

Wrong Turn : Dead End: The inbred cannibals are back--but is this sequel any good? Read the review and find out...

Election: No, I didn't review a Reese Witherspoon flick. This is Johnnie To's Triad epic, Election.

And there you have it. Expect more as soon as I get off my lazy ass and write them (including The Girl Next Door--the film based on the Ketchum book, not that shitty comedy--Flight of the Living Dead, Reeker, Who Can Kill a Child? and more.

Merry Christmas.

Mike B.

Currently listening : The 8 Diagrams By Wu Tang Clan Release date: 11 December, 2007

4:55 PM - 2 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Geeking Out: 11-26-07
Current mood: tired

Man, time does fly--doesn't seem like it's been over a month since I last posted one of these things. As usual, no real reason for the long delay (although I did start one a few weeks back and scrapped it because I didn't really have anything I was all "geeking out" over--rest assured, I'll never just slap crap in here in order to post a new blog).

Of course, work is eating up most of my time--who would have thought a 25 hour a week job would destroy my life? It's not really 25 hours though, once you add in the drive time and all that jazz. Plus, it's spread out over 5 days...which is not good.

When I'm not working, I've been playing a ton of Guitar Hero III...which brings us to what I'm Geeking Out over this month.

Guitar Hero III: The funniest thing about GH to me is the fact that it's made me appreciate songs I used to hate (Freebird), opened my eyes (or is it ears?) to stuff I'd never really bothered to check out (Stevie Ray Vaughn--who I really like), and made this hardcore old school hip-hop fan stop air-scratching long enough to play a plastic guitar. GHIII is pretty much everything you've come to expect from the franchise at this point--lots of cool songs (and as the game has gotten more popular the songs are usually masters instead of cover band versions), lots of things to buy with your gig money, and lots of crazy guitar action. The only real new addition is the inclusion of boss battles. At certain points in career mode, players will take on Tom Morello, Slash, and the Devil himself in a "dueling banjos" like guitar face-off. My only complaint with the game is that activating star power occasionally leads to slowdown. This isn't really an issue if you're playing on easy or medium--but on hard or expert, this can screw up a perfectly good combo. That problem aside, this is another solid entry in the franchise (which is good after the misstep that was Guitar Hero Rocks the 80s). Between this and Rock Band, your rhythm based party game needs have been more than met.

House Infernal: Gore King Ed Lee's latest is the third installment in his "Infernal" series, a group of novels that take place partially in our world, partially in Hell. Lee has imagined the netherworld as a large metropolis run by Satan himself, filled with things both horrifying and grotesque. The city is sort of the opposite of our own metropolitan areas--buildings are made of shit, bone, and other assorted disgusting things and the denizens are constantly on the lookout for Hell's gestapo, who appear out of nowhere and mow down the citizenry (which doesn't kill them, but often transfers their soul to whatever's near and still alive). Lee's essentially crafted his own mythos with these books and may have assured himself a kind of literary immortality (much like Lovecraft did with his Elder Gods stuff). His take on the inferno is unique and intriguing, even if in this outing he seems to lose a bit of the magic (hell's minions seem more like Harry Potter bad guys this time out than the fear-inspiring monsters of the earlier books). House Infernal is easily the weakest of the three books to date, but that doesn't make it any less fun for fans of the extreme brand of horror Lee has always been famous for. If you miss the days when the Splatterpunks ruled the horror section, then Lee is someone you should check out.

Eternal Sonata: While the Xbox 360 seems hellbent on being the shooter fan's system of choice, occasionally a game slips through that doesn't have you using guns to kill everything in sight. Eternal Sonata is a Japanese role-playing game that blends the typical fantasy-esque settings of the genre with ties to the real world. One of the game's main characters is Frederic Chopin--yeah, the composer. Chopin winds up in this alternate world while he lays dying back on Earth. Like all RPGs, he meets up with a rag-tag group of guys destined to fight the great evil threatening their world. The story really doesn't matter though (because, honestly, it's pretty lame)--what does is the gorgeous cel-shaded graphics and an engaging Tales-styled battle system. Visually, the game looks like a cartoon come to life. I've never been the biggest fan of cel-shaded graphics, but the work here is top notch. Sure, it all looks a little girly--filled with pastel colors and characters who look like they stepped right out of an anime episode, but that doesn't diminish how great the game looks. The battle system is even more impressive--creating a mixture of traditional turn-based action mixed with real-time elements. This is one of the rare games where I actually didn't find myself running from encounters late in the game because I was sick of fighting. The game's only shortcomings are the fact that most of the achievements for Xbox Live can only be unlocked on a second playthrough (really, who has time to play through the same 40 hour RPG twice?) and the bonus dungeon in the game had no save points in it (or at least I didn't encounter one in the 4+ hours I spent in there...) Other than those minor issues (neither affects the core game experience), gamers tired of shooters and all their derivative subgenres should give this game at least a rental.

And there you have it. Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. I'll try to get another one of these up before Christmas...

Currently listening : Of Gods and Girls By Mr. J. Medeiros Release date: 24 July, 2007

9:34 AM - 4 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Geeking Out: 10-9-07 Edition
Current mood: cranky
Category: Blogging

Not much happening here at Casa de Bracken since the last blog, but here are the updates.

The Definitive Slasher Guide (featuring two reviews from yours truly) has been delayed. It was slated for a November release, but some late additions necessitated bumping it back to early 2008. Not a big deal, really, especially since the additions to the book are cool. More on this as we get closer to it actually coming out.

For proof that my life sucks (but not in the traditional way everyone's life sucks), this was in my email last night:

FOCUS FEATURES

invites you to join
DAVID CRONENBERG
for cocktails on behalf of

EASTERN PROMISES

Thursday, October 11th
4:00 PM- 6:00 PM

Il Cielo
9018 Burton Way
Beverly Hills

I love David Cronenberg (I mean, this is the guy who made Videodrome for fuck's sake) and on my list of cool people to have a few drinks with, he's right up near the top. Unfortunately, I live nowhere near Beverly Hills (despite most people thinking all of California is Los Angeles)--it would be a six or so hour drive, and I have this thing called a job that would probably be really pissed if I wandered in today and said "oh yeah, by the way, I'll be gone Thursday and Friday since I'll be having cocktails with David Cronenberg". See, my life doesn't suck in the "nothing cool ever happens for me" way--instead it loves to throw really cool shit right under my nose with the knowledge that there's no way in hell I'll ever actually get to partake in it. That's worse.

If you're at all interested in videogames and whatnot, my review of Persona 3 is now up at GameCritics. You can check it out by following this handy-dandy link: Persona 3 Review

Anyway, enough about that stuff. Keep in mind I'll be hitting the big 3-5 next Thursday (October the 18th). I won't shill for gifts, but it's a good way to move up the Mike Bracken social list--which means you could get drunken calls from me at 3 in the morning where I bitch about the fact that I could have had drinks with David Cronenberg if the universe wasn't always conspiring to keep me down.

Now, on with the show.

Halo 3:  We might as well start with the "biggest single day entertainment release in history". Funnily enough, when I got my original Xbox (back at launch--I was one of those people who was there from day one) you had to buy a "bundle"--which meant the game stores were gouging you for the privilege of getting an Xbox by forcing you to buy three games and some other assorted crap with it. I picked out my three games, but Morrowind (which was supposed to be a launch title) got pushed way back. So I had to pick a replacement. I got Halo. I wasn't really into first person shooters back then so I wasn't all that excited about the game. In retrospect, I'm glad things worked out the way they did. Halo was a really great game followed up by a mediocre sequel. How does the third game compare? Well, it's better than part two, but not as good as the first game.

Before we go any further, let me clarify something: I don't give a flying fuck about multiplayer. I can think of nothing worse than spending a few hundred hours playing Halo 3 on Live with a bunch of squeaky voiced 12-year-olds calling me "fag" and listening to them throw tantrums when they lose. Seriously, I'd rather listen to Celine Dion "sing" for a week or two than endure that. So, while I'm happy to hear that multiplayer in Halo 3 is the greatest thing since Jesus turned water into wine, it has no bearing on my thoughts about the game.

That being said, I played the single player campaign on heroic and beat it in around ten hours I'd guess. Was it cool? Very. Does it have a bunch of flaws that should have kept the major review sites from giving it perfect and near perfect scores while giving Bungie a handjob in the process? You bet. The game's single-player campaign never feels very epic for starters. That's a subjective thing, sure, but I never felt as though I was really in some major battle for Earth's survival. Does that bug me? Not really. I guess I just expected some more epic battles on a larger scale than  what we got. Didn't detract from my enjoyment of the game.

What did were two things: the Cortana level and the fact that Bungie actually had several sequences where they stuck a moving ship on top of a goddamn matte painting background. Let's tackle that second one first. How cheap is it in a game that's the showcase title of a console to stick a ship on a picture of a scenic backdrop? You couldn't be bothered to make an actual background for those few seconds of cutscene? Jesus, it's like it's 1995 or something...

So, that last thing is me be a nitpicking dick--I know that. It still bugged me the few times I saw it. I can't help it--it reminded me of that Simpsons episode where Homer is Poochie and they "fix" his final episode by slapping some silly uncolored cels into the scene to say he went back to his home planet. It sticks out like a sore thumb. Anyway, the Cortana level is far worse. I understand that The Flood are part of the game, but Christ...making you fight them through that narrow corridor level is just annoying. I think it's as bad as the library in the first game, to be honest, and after so many people bitched about that, you'd think Bungie would have learned their lesson and found a better way to implement the Flood into the game. Apparently, they didn't.

All that bitching aside, it's a really good game. I've heard people complain about the graphics--but I think they look great. The gameplay is as fun as it always has been, and while I'm not a fan of the ending, I think it's nice that they actually sort of gave us one instead of taking the easy way out and stringing this cash cow along for forever. Is it Game of the Year? I can't say for sure--but it's definitely in the top 3 of 2007 so far--warts and all.

The Vinyl Underground: The first issue of this new Vertigo series hit comic shops last week--and I thought it was pretty damn spiffy. First off, anything Vertigo does is worth a read. In a world buried in a seemingly never-ending avalanche of super hero comics, Vertigo bucks the trend and does comics that appeal to people who want something more than guys flying around in tights. Hellblazer, Y: The Last Man, DMZ...all cool books from the Vertigo line. Vinyl Underground continues the tradition. It plays a bit like Hellblazer in that it has a group of guys solving occult-tinged crimes in London, but it's also very different. Where Constantine works alone, the Underground is made up of four very different but undoubtedly quirky characters: A son of a disgraced soccer star who's a DJ when he's not tracking down things that go bump in the night. A porn star pyromaniac who doesn't have sex. A pedophile. And last but not least, a daughter of some kind of African tribal shaman--who just so happened to be engaged once to the soccer star's kid. It's always hard to judge a new book on one issue, but so far, I'm intrigued. If you like edgier comics with adult content, grab a copy of The Vinyl Underground now--that way, in a few years when it's grown into a comics mainstay you won't have to pay a fortune to get all of the back issues.

And there you have it. Only two things this time out, but check back next time for my thoughts on Ed Lee's House Infernal, Charlie Huston's Joe Pitt book, Eternal Sonata, and maybe even the 30 Days of Night movie.

Currently listening : Long Live the Kane By Big Daddy Kane Release date: 25 October, 1990

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Geeking Out: 9-8-07 Edition
Current mood: sore
Category: Blogging

So, it's been a few weeks since the last edition of Geeking Out--and that's because I actually have news. I know, most of you are used to seeing me just say the delay between entries was because I'm lazy. I'm still lazy, but I've had some other stuff on my plate as well. So, allow me to regale you with all the current happenings here at Casa de Bracken.

First off, I got a job. I'm currently working for Black Cat Comics in Milpitas, which is just north of San Jose. I always wanted to own my own comic store, but this is the next best thing. I basically get paid to go into work and read and talk about comic books. It's a really fun job--and would be perfect if I could get a nice chair installed behind the counter. Standing on my feet all day is killing me. Other than that, I can't complain.

In writing related news, I've been asked to contribute two reviews to Hadesgate Publishing's The Definitive Slasher Movie Guide. I'll be penning critical analysis of two of my favorite slasher flicks of all time: Dario Argento's Opera and Michele Soavi's Stagefright. The book is supposed to be published in November of this year--so I'll post something up when it's available in case anyone wants to check it out.

Last, but certainly not least, THE BOOK is still moving forward. I've finally sent out a few queries to publishers and hope to hear back from them soon. Of course, anyone's who's ever submitted a query or a story for publication consideration already knows that it takes publishers and editors forever to respond...I expect that will be the case here as well. I have a few more places to query on the list, too...but at least some progress is better than nothing.

Enough about me, though--here's what I'm geeking out over at the moment.

Rob Zombie's Halloween: I'm not entirely geeking out over this--I'm actually still pretty torn up over how I feel about it. I will say this, though--if you're one of those online douchebags bitching about how awful it was and you only saw the bootleg workprint, shut up now. The final version of the film was fairly different than the workprint floating around out there--and while it may not change your opinion entirely, no one cares what you thought about a version you weren't even supposed to see to begin with. That being said, I came out of the experience liking things I expected to hate and being disappointed with things I expected to like. For example, I figured the "childhood Michael" stuff Zombie was adding would be terrible. In Carpenter's version, Michael is simply the embodiment of absolute evil--there's no more motivation than that. I assumed that by delving into Michael's home life and upbringing, the character would be weakened--but I was wrong. I found a lot of the childhood stuff pretty fascinating, honestly. On the other hand, I thought I'd love Malcolm McDowell as Loomis and I was more "meh" on that than anything. I never expected anyone to replace Donald Pleasence, but I thought it anyone could do that crazy/obsessed thing that Pleasence was a master of, it would be McDowell. Malcolm's not bad--he just plays the character in a very different way than I imagined he would. I also expected the remaking of the traditional Halloween climax to be pretty cool, but it felt like it really drug on for me. Sure Danielle Harris has a nice rack, but other than that it all felt like "been there, done that". Oh, and I really missed Dean Cundey's crisp cinematography. Rob's films always look so grimy that I want to run up and wipe off the screen (which is a benefit in something like The Devil's Rejects), which didn't really help this film at all.

All that being said, I liked the film overall. Carpenter's original is still the masterpiece, though. If you haven't seen the remake and liked the original film or Zombie's other flicks, this one's definitely worth checking out.

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3: I'm doing a full review of this, the latest installment in the popular Japanese RPG series, over at GameCritics.com so I'll be brief here. You can read the full piece in a week or two. I'm a huge fan of this series, partially because it's one of the few RPGs out there to set their stories in modern times instead of some rip-off Tolkien universe or sci-fi setting. I like the series even more because it's always about demons, the occult, and lots of weird stuff. Persona 3 is pretty much what hardcore fans have come to expect from the series: an engaging story, brutally difficult combat, and a long quest to reach the end credits. It's not your traditional Persona game though in that the standard "make deals with demons to get them to fight alongside you" system has been scrapped for the most part. Now, the game is one part dungeon crawler, one part high school simulator. Players have to go to class, balance their social interactions (to get stat bonuses and stay rested for battle) and fight. It sounds really weird, and it is pretty strange at first, but once you get into it, it's pretty damn awesome. It's too early to pick my RPG of the year (especially since there's a lot of good stuff I haven't managed to play yet and still scheduled to come out during the holidays), but if I had to vote today, Persona 3 would win hands down.

Comics: Since I'm working at a comic shop, I'm rediscovering my love for comic books...so I'll probably throw a few titles into Geeking Out columns when I've read something I really liked. That being said, there were several titles that came out this week that were good. Amazing Spider-Man starts a four issue story arc wherein either Spidey and Mary Jane are getting divorced, Mary Jane is gonna die, or Aunt May is gonna die. No one know what's going to happen yet, but the first installment of the story was good stuff. Personally, if someone's dying, I hope it's Aunt May. She's gotta be like 130 years old now...Vampire book Thirty Days of Night launches Red Snow, which combines vampires and Nazis (you can't really ever go wrong with vampires and Nazis in my opinion), and the comic book Season 8 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer gets a new installment featuring Eliza Dushku's character Faith. All three of these books are worth checking out.

And there you have it--everything's that made a mundane life worth living over the past few weeks. Check back soon for more--including my thoughts on Hatchet, Brian Keene's Dead Sea, Kung Fu High School, and more.

Currently listening : As the World Burns By Arsonists Release date: 24 August, 1999

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Geeking Out: 8-17-07
Current mood: sore
Category: Blogging

Welcome to another edition of Geeking Out--the semi-regular blog where I regale you with all the cool stuff that has my nerd-sense tingling.

Not much to report here from Casa de Bracken. I will mention that Stephen Graham Jones' Demon Theory is out in a trade paperback edition (I geeked out over it awhile back) and that a quote from my full length review made the back cover. Great book--and even cooler because now I'm on the cover and cited inside in the copious (and entertaining) footnotes. Other than that, I'm just sitting around being bored, trying to sketch out my second novel (factoring in all the things I learned from fucking up the first one), and looking for an extremely part time job to get out of the house once in awhile (and by extremely part time, I mean like a day a week, two at most, unless it's something really cool). This has been a lot harder to achieve than it sounds...

Anyway, enough blather about me--on with the show.

Brian Keene's Dead Sea: I know, I'm always shilling for Keene. I can't help it--I remember Brian from the Horrornet days, when he hadn't sold a short story and now he's a successful novelist with a throng of hardcore fans. That's not the only reason I keep mentioning his stuff here, though--he's also a damn good storyteller. Hell, this whole zombie literature renaissance is attributable mostly to him. I know he hates being identified as "that zombie book guy", but in the grand scheme of things, there are probably worse things people could call you. Anyway, Dead Sea is Keene's return to the zombie subgenre. This isn't a sequel to The Rising or City of the Dead, but instead a more traditional zombie story (as only Keene could tell it), sort of Romero-esque, but with Brian's own unique spin on things. When undead rats start attacking the citizens of Baltimore, a zombie epidemic spreads quickly throughout the city. When Baltimore catches on fire, Lamar (a gay black man--not your typical zombie slayer) joins up with other survivors on a decommissioned military ship and sets out to sea...where the zombies can't get them. However, Hamelin's Revenge is a dangerous disease, and jumps species almost at will. How do you survive in a world where even the animals can become the undead? You'll have to read the book and find out. While not as strong a book as Keene's Terminal (which is probably still his best novel to date), Dead Sea is a fun romp through a world Keene knows intimately. Few people can write apocalyptic fiction like this, but Brian's got it down to a science--even the ending, which is something I could totally see Romero doing in one of his films (and have seen, to a degree--at least thematically). If you're tired of hacking your way through all the bad zombie novels out there, grab Dead Sea. It'll tide you over til Brian gets around to writing another book in The Rising/City of the Dead cycle.

Film Crew: Hollywood After Dark: I've still never forgiven the Sci-Fi Channel for pulling the plug on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Life without Mike (or Joel), Crow, and Tom Servo has been rough. I can riff movies and television, but at not at the rapid fire pace these guys did--and watching bad films is nowhere near as much fun without them around to point out all the flaws. Fortunately, after a several year hiatus (which has seen a large number of MST3K episodes appear on DVD and Mike and Kevin Murphy pen several books) the guys are back. They're not back as the MST3K guys, but instead a new group: The Film Crew. The Crew is comprised of Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy (Servo), and Bill Corbett (the second Crow T. Robot). They now work for a rich guy named Bob Honcho, who wants the guys to provide commentary tracks for all the movies out there that don't have them. Naturally, this leads to them being forced to sit through lots of bad films--which the ridicule mercilessly. Their first job is Hollywood After Dark, a 1968 crapfest starring future Golden Girl Rue McClanahan as a stripper. You might be thinking "Hm...young Rue as a stripper...how bad can it be?" Pretty bad, actually. McClanahan doesn't look any younger than she did on The Golden Girls and her acting is even worse here than it was on the show (which I didn't think was possible). The guys ridicule it mercilessly in typical MST3K fashion (the only real difference is that there's no silhouette of them at the bottom of the screen), but since this is direct to DVD they aren't bound by a network's standards and practices...so it's a little bluer than your typical MST3K episode. It's not a curse-fest, but a few of the jokes are more adult oriented. Personally, I liked it. As mentioned, this is the first DVD release, with several more in the pipeline. If you miss MST3K as much as I do, or never got a chance to see it when it was on, grab these discs.

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King: I don't know that I'd say I'm entirely "geeking out" over this, the newest expansion to the massively popular World of Warcraft (a game that runs my life it seems--you'd get more blogs if I could tear myself away from it more often), but it's worth mentioning. On the one hand, new content is always appreciated (despite the fact that I've not seen all of the content from the previous expansion yet) and new quests and new loot are cool too. I'm not wild about raising the level cap again (I can live with the experience grind, but replacing epics with lowly greens sucks--and having to farm entirely new epics is an even bigger pain in the ass), but if leveling from 70 to 80 is as easy as it was getting from 60-70 it shouldn't be too terrible. What really worries me though is that I see Blizzard rushing things solely for a few raiding guilds who've beaten all the content. The implementation of new stuff in the previous expansion basically made everything that came before outlands pointless (no one does those old instances anymore--you just grind like a madman to 58 so you can head out to the land of milk and honey) and I imagine the same thing will happen here. Sure, we all love new stuff--but is it really necessary when over half of the game's population hasn't even been to Gruul's Lair, let alone SSC or Black Temple? Most of us never made it to Naxxramas or The Ruins of Ahn'qiraj in the original game--and most of us never will now because no one does them anymore. It would be a shame if the same thing happened to all of these instances from The Burning Crusade. That being said, unless something drastic happens, I'll be there on day one, leveling with everyone else while bitching about having to do it all over again. I just wonder how many of WoW's "casual players" (who make up the bulk of that 7-9 million subscribers they're always crowing about) are going to stick with it.

Anyway, enough complaining. Check back next time when I'll have thoughts on...well, something.

Currently listening : Resurrection By Common Release date: 25 October, 1994

8:54 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment