Album Review: Journal For Plague Lovers by the Manic Street Preachers

When I was in my senior year of high school, one of my favorite things to do after school was to take the bus to Tower Records and go shopping for new music. As I've said before, I loved Tower because, although it was a chain, it was one of those places where music fans congregated to judge each other. There was always a sense of hostility in the air, and a constant feeling that you had to be ready to defend your purchases, but that was what I loved about it. It was a place where you could debate and hear different perspectives, even if they were expressed rudely.


One of my most memorable experiences there happened when I bought The Holy Bible by the Manic Street Preachers. First of all, its album art is very... interesting, so I was a little nervous about showing it to the guy at the counter. When he picked it up to scan it he took a good long look at it, and all he said was "I liked the book better."

Ever since then, I have loved that album. It's one of my favorites of all time, not only because the songs are incredible, but also because it has one of the most interesting back-stories of any album ever. MSP consisted of four musicians, one of whom, a guitarist, was named Richey Edwards. Richey always displayed signs of mental instability, such as when he mutilated his arm during an interview. His grand philosophy involved making a spectacularly good album and following it with a spectacularly good tour, and then disappearing from the public eye forever.

The band released two albums and an EP before working on The Holy Bible. At that time, Richey suffered from severe anorexia and depression and was confined to a mental hospital, where he wrote most of the lyrics for the album. Because of this, The Holy Bible is what I like to call an unintentional concept album; it was a window into the mind of Richey. The album received enourmous praise from critics who were also terrified of it, and Richey came with the band on tour. Towards the end of the tour, Richey checked out of his hotel and was never seen again.

The Holy Bible is, to put it lightly, a deeply disturbing album. But you can't tell that if you just listen to it passively. The band's lead singer, James Dean Bradfield, wrote all of the music, which is much more pop-friendly than the lyrics. (I also think that the songwriting process of this album was really cool, since it was the opposite of what most bands do - the guitarist wrote the lyrics and the singer wrote the music.) The Holy Bible is one of those albums that sneaks up on you. The first time you listen to it, you'll probably think "this is a nice album." The second time, certain lyrics such as "I don't know what I'm scared of, or what I even enjoy," "I wanna be so skinny that I rot from view," and "I am an architect, they call me a butcher" will jump out at you, and by the third time you listen to the album you will be petrified with fear and depression. The Holy Bible is like a good Hitchcock movie; it scares you, but you still appreciate it and enjoy it.

Anyway, after that album the band acquired a poppier sound and a more positive outlook and released Everything Must Go, a solid but fairly straightforward album. Since then most of their material has been pretty boring, but they just released a new album called Journal for Plague Lovers that was hyped up to be the next Holy Bible, complete with lost Richey lyrics.

One look at the album cover and it's obvious that this album was at least an attempt to re-create The Holy Bible. The album cover's font is even the same. But did this album succeed at re-creating The Holy Bible? That's what I aim to answer in this album review.

Let's look at the first song on the album, "Peeled Apples." The first thing you'll notice (if you're familiar with The Holy Bible) is that the opening bassline is insanely reminiscent of the opening bassline to "Archives of Pain." We're only 5 seconds into the album and it already sounds similar to The Holy Bible. To answer whether or not this is a "classic" MSP song, let's look at the following checklist:

Does the song have a jagged-yet-hooky guitar riff?      Check

Is the production minimal?     Check

Reference to Noam Chomsky?    Check

So far, this looks like a solid MSP album.

On to the next song. This one is immediately noticeably different from "Peeled Apples." Namely, it's obviously supposed to be the really poppy single. But what's that lyric? Something about a married man fucking a Catholic? Yeah, this is definitely still Holy Bible-style Manics.

As for the rest of the album, the one thing I will say in it's favor is that it has WAY more variety than The Holy Bible. Probably the biggest complaint I've heard about that album is that it gets really, really samey and kinda boring towards the end. I don't think that can be said as much about Journal. "This Joke Sport Severed," with it's strummed acoustic guitar and string arrangements, sounds like stuff from Everything Must Go, while "Marlon JD," with it's electronic drums, doesn't even sound like any Manics song I've ever heard before. Basically, you won't get bored while listening to this album.

I do have one minor complaint, though, and I'll phrase it as a question: where are all the quotes? On The Holy Bible almost every song either started or ended with a quote that had something to do with the song's lyrical content. For example, "Yes," a song about prostitution, opened with a quote from a documentary about prostitiution; likewise, "4st7lb," which was about anorexia, had a quote from an anorexic person, "If White America Told The Truth..." had a quote about Ronald Reagen, and "Faster," which was probably the climax and the most nihilistic song of the album, had an insanely memorable quote from 1984. But there are no quotes to be found on Journal! What happened? Sure, the quotes on The Holy Bible were a little pretentious and gimmicky, but they really tied together all the songs on the album and made it more cohesive. Still, that's just a minor complaint.

I think what you can gather from the last two paragraphs is that while The Holy Bible was meant to be a grand statement taken as a whole, Journal For Plague Lovers is more like a simple collection of songs. Which isn't a bad thing. If anything, it makes the album a little more unpredictable and exciting. And believe me, all that nihilism and despair from The Holy Bible is still there. Journal For Plague Lovers was meant to be the spiritual successor to The Holy Bible, and that's definitely what it is. While it isn't The Holy Bible, it sounds more like that album than any other Manics album. It is easily my second favorite Manics album. So if you prefer the scary depressing Manics to the happy pop-friendly Manics, you'll definitely like their new album.

Belated Album Review: Easy Star's Lonely Hearts Dub Band (Also, why I don't like Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band)

No, this isn't a really really belated review of a Beatles album that I spelled the name of wrong. The album I'm reviewing was released a few months ago this year. It was produced by the Easy Star All Stars, who are known for other reggae cover albums, such as Dub Side of the Moon and Radiodread. I haven't listened to Dub Side of the Moon (a reggae version of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon) very much, but I own Radiodread (a reggae version of Radiohead's OK Computer), and to be honest I don't like it very much. The Toots & The Maytals cover of "Let Down" is absolutely incredible, better than the original in my opinion, but the rest of the album kind of falls flat, especially by comparison. To be fair, this is partly a matter of personal taste for me; I love old-school reggae that doesn't have lots of production, and most of the album, notably excluding "Let Down," is really production heavy. But I also think that there are other issues as well; for one thing, Radiohead's music doesn't always work as reggae. It was a noble effort for the All Stars to tackle the 3/4 time "Subterrainian Homesick Alien" using a genre that is almost always in 4/4 time, but the end result shows why reggae is almost always 4/4. It's kind of boring (well, so is the original song), and it just kind of sounds like, well, a reggae band trying to play a Radiohead song, rather than a reggae band making a Radiohead song completely their own. 

Anyway, tribute albums usually suck, so while I didn't particularly like Radiodread, I wasn't disappointed by it, since I didn't expect to like it in the first place. For that reason, I was pleasantly surprised by Lonely Hearts Dub Band. 

Now, just for a little background information, I don't like the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles. I think it's one of the most overrated albums of all time, mainly because it's all over the fucking place musically. It's a concept album with no concept. The band starts out by introducing themselves as an imaginary band, which is a pretty cool idea, but then they just drop acid around track 3 and forget about the concept entirely. By the middle of the album they start introducing a magical kite and bastardizing Indian music and we have absolutely no idea what the fuck is going on. I've heard tons of hippie assholes tell me that the album's so cohesive, which is bullshit. We have a sitar song next to an old-timey woodwind ensemble one. How the fuck is that cohesive? I've also seriously heard people say "man, Sgt. Pepper is so great! It's got all the classics on it, like Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane." (Those songs are from Magical Mystery Tour, which is my favorite Beatles album, because it's cohesive and has all the classics on it.) And don't even give me that bullshit about how it's better when you're stoned, because all music is better when you're stoned. Why do you think dub music has an audience? Using that argument is like saying "Don't say McDonald's tastes bad, it's better when you're hungry." Of course Sgt. Pepper sounds incredible stoned, but an album that's actually good will sound even better! Sgt. Pepper is also proof that people don't necessarily make better music when they're on drugs. Frank Zappa did way cooler shit in the 60s, and he never smoked weed in his life. If Frank Zappa had done drugs, he probably wouldn't have recorded Uncle Meat and would have wrote something shitty like "Good Morning Good Morning" instead.

Anyway, I don't like the Sgt. Pepper album. If you want to read more about why it sucks, read this fantastic piece by Jim DeRogatis. Also, just to clarify, some bands, particularly They Might Be Giants, have made exquisite albums that have absolutely no musical consistency. They're a band who knows how to pull that off. The Beatles never were. That's why no one ever listens to the white album all the way through, and if you say that you don't skip "Revolution 9" you're a pretentious asshole.

Anyway, the fact that I don't like Sgt. Pepper probably made me like the reggae version of it way more, even though I love OK Computer and didn't really like its reggae version, which is strange, but also kind of makes sense. Since I love OK Computer, I didn't really want anyone messing with its songs (except of course for Toots & The Maytals. They can mess with any song they want as far as I'm concerned. Everything they touch turns to gold). On the flipside, I don't like Sgt. Pepper, so I like the fact that someone is actually making it's songs good. Now to be fair, the original album does have a lot of good songs on it... oh, wait, I checked the track listing, and it actually only has one really good song on it: "A Day In The Life," which, despite how I feel about the album, is my favorite Beatles song ("Eleanor Rigby" and "Happiness is a Warm Gun" round out my top 3. I guess I like all the morbid, depressing Beatles songs). But still, not all of the songs on the album are bad. Sure, "Within You Without You" goes on for way too long and is just George trying to recreate "Norwegian Wood" and "Love You To," the Beatles were on way too much acid when they wrote "For The Benefit of Mr. Kite," and "Good Morning Good Morning" just sounds like a cartoon exploding, but all of the other songs on the album are solid and just suffer from this lack of consistency. But the great thing is that Lonely Hearts Dub Band solves this easily. It's impossible for a reggae album to suffer from a lack of consistency. The only thing a reggae album can suffer from is too much consistency.

LHDB really shines because it makes the entire album consistent and really allows the actual songs to shine, rather than get covered up by bizarre, self-indulgent production. The other thing that's great about it is that it has fucking amazing guest artists on it. The track listing reads like a list of reggae all stars. We have The Mighty Diamonds, Max Romeo, Ranking Roger, Steel Pulse, U-Roy... shit, everyone on this album is fucking incredible. So now it's time for the song by song review process! (BTW, you can listen to the whole album on youtube, so I'll be providing links to each song.)

The first song essentially serves the same purpose as it does on the original album: just an introduction. It's not particularly exciting, but then again, this song never was the high point of the original album either (that might be another reason why the original suffers: it has a weak opener). The next track, Luciano covering "With A Little Help From My Friends," is a million times better than anything Ringo has ever done, including drumming for the Beatles (ok, I admit that was a little too harsh). The original version of this song just kind of lumbers along and has no passion in it, but Luciano's version manages to be both upbeat and mellow, and has terrific vocals.

Next we have "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds," which I will henceforth be abbreviating as "LSD." I've thought for a while that LSD would make a great reggae cover; I always imagined it starting out with just a sick descending bassline and some phenomenal reggae singer doing the first verse over it, and then you'd hear a pickup of high-pitched snare drums before the chorus, which would be upbeat and full of sound. This version pretty much starts exactly how I imagined it, but I think the drums come in way to early. Still, it's pretty cool. Frankie Paul is great, especially when he changes the lyrics a little to include a reference to the Ethiopian flag (cellophane flowers of red gold and green...). Still, I think the song should speed up a little more at the chorus. But that minor complaint doesn't keep this from being an awesome cover.

"Getting Better" by the Mighty Diamonds is truly phenomenal - old school reggae style performed by old-school reggae greats. It incorporates the jagged guitar line and tight harmonies from the original Beatles song perfectly. "Fixing a Hole" is the "Let Down" of this album. Originally an average song, it's saved by an insanely talented singer, in this case Max Romeo. It's also odd how some of the lyrics to this song resemble the lyrics of Max Romeo's own songs. Basically, this is another nearly perfect one.

Next, we have "She's Leaving Home," the one which I was most nervous about. How are they gonna take a harp song in 3/4 time and make it reggae? Kristy Rock's answer? Go the completely opposite direction: make it upbeat in 4/4 time with prominent horns. No depressing song has ever made me want to dance this much. This is one of the highlights of the album, just because of how daring the arrangers were. In fact, the original was one of the most daring ones on the album, so in a way the reggae cover is appropriate.

I was also worried about "For The Benefit of Mr. Kite," but this one has Ranking Roger on it, and he can do no wrong. Mostly your typical reggae fare, but it's Ranking Roger, and the parts where he toasts are awesome. Plus the fact that they were able to make this bizarre, strange song typical is impressive.

Next... what the fuck... it's Matisyahu. Doing "Within You Without You." I never thought I could hate anything so much. It's about as bad as I expected it to be, and it's appropriate that they gave the most pretentious song to the most pretentious singer. But this kind of interrupts all the good vibes that the album had before. I don't like the strings, I don't like the sitar, I don't like the song, I don't like the fact that it's 5 minutes long, I don't like Matisyahu. This one's skippable. In fact, this one is inconsistent with the rest of the album, which is what I hated about the original.

The other thing which makes this song suffer as a reggae song is that, as Jim DeRogatis points out, the original version has no rhythm. One of the defining features of reggae is its rhythm. To take a song with no rhythm and turn it into reggae is really challenging, and I wouldn't expect anyone to pull that off. Especially Matisyahu.

Ah, the next one makes me feel better! "When I'm 64" is such a cheery song, perfect for reggae. Somehow, the original was too cheesy, but this cover just makes me happy! It's got a sick beat, a sick bassline, a sick melody, and that trombone just takes me back to my high school skanking days. I didn't even expect this one to work so well as reggae, but I think this is a case of the cover being better than the original. My only complaint is that Sugar Minott had a great opportunity with the line "doing the garden, digging the weeds," and he didn't do anything with it. Still, I really wish I had had the idea to turn this song into reggae when I was in a ska band.

"Lovely Rita" is another song that was made to be turned into reggae. It's upbeat, it's happy, it's in 4/4 time. But I think Bunny Rugs could have done a better job with this one. It should be a little faster, the drums should be a little bit more high pitched, the vocals should be a little less airy... but the fact that he invites Rita to get high with him is pretty awesome, and so is the trombone solo, although I wish that part were longer. The song picks up when he starts toasting. 

Next we have "Good Morning Good Morning," which I would say is the worst song on the original album (although there are some other really bad ones). If anyone could save it, it's Steel Pulse, a fucking incredible reggae band. And they do save it. Steel Pulse are another band that are just always solid. Seriously, just listen to that song, or watch any video of them live. If you're looking to get into any reggae other than Bob Marley's Legend album, Handsworth Revolution by Steel Pulse is a really good place to start (I'd also recommend the Trojan box set Originals and the soundtrack to The Harder They Come). Anyway, this song rocks. Steel Pulse rocks. 

The next one's a reprise of the first track? Who cares?

Actually, it's pretty sick. Give it a listen.

Finally, we have "A Day In The Life." As I said before, this one is my favorite Beatles song. You might think that because of this I wouldn't want it to be covered, but in fact this is another one that I've always thought would work great as reggae. To be honest, this version doesn't work as well as I expected. But this one's really just a matter of personal taste. As I said before, I'm more of a fan of older reggae, and this one's a bit more dubby. I always imagined the reggae version of this song (which I always imagined being called "A Dub In The Life") consisting of a main part that sounds more like the bridge of this version, and more of a ska rhythm on the bridge. But this one's still good. I just didn't like it as much partly because of personal taste, and partly because I love the original (which I guess also falls under the category of personal taste). Still good though.

Anyway, LHDB is a solid, solid album with lots of high points and only a few low points which really aren't very low. This is in contrast to the original, which is so all over the place that all of the points on the album are too far away for us to see their location. No offense to all the hippies out there, but I like this one better than the original. And I don't think that's really an insult to the Beatles. I think it's a complement to their songwriting abilities that their songs can so easily be played in other genres. As I kind of implied before, Sgt. Pepper is really an album that got bogged down by self-indulgent production. Most of its songs are good; it's just that on the original album we're not really allowed to actually listen to the songs. All we can listen to is the bizarre, random shit that was put on top of them. LHDB allows us to listen to what was going on underneath the sitars, woodwinds, echoes, and animal noises. It makes the album consistent, which compensates for its biggest weakness.

And in case anyone replies by saying that I can't understand the impact the album had when it came out (which you really aren't allowed to say unless you were there at the time), I've already prepared my response: Sgt. Pepper doesn't sound good now. It sounds like a relic of a time when people thought that bombarding our senses with absolutely no subtlety was a good idea. A classic album should be timeless. Sgt. Pepper isn't. It just sounds like it was made by a bunch of hippies with too much money.

(BTW thank you for reading the whole thing if you made it this far. I'm aware that this post was way too long).

Righteous Anger: "Food Inc."

Before I begin, this is going to be a little rant-y and digressive and angry as far as reviews go, and I have a strong feeling that this reaction is exactly what the filmmakers wanted. But the question is, how to direct the anger? Make a big change and start buying local produce? Go after the agribusiness conglomerates? Go completely off the grid (as one friend is doing), as it were, living entirely vegan off of fruits and berries? I choose the other option, namely blogging about it for the internet to read, and then letting everyone make their own decisions after I've criticized their ways. I think a movie review is in order before the ranting begins. "Food Inc." is our subject for today, a documentary with heavy input from both Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan and a tone somewhere in between. It's wide-reaching in its specifics, but the basic target is agribusiness and how our food has become so preposterously mechanized and industrialized. This takes on a merry cinematic assault on the various large corporations and their evils: inhumane conditions for animals, inhumane conditions for workers, putting chemicals into food, lack of sustainable farming practices, and a general deviation from all that is natural and good. Unfortunately, that's a lot of subjects for a single movie to hold, especially one that I remember clocked in at about ninety minutes. This leads to a kind of disjointed feeling in the otherwise logical presentation of arguments. However, the arguments are all pretty simple- by looking for cheaper and easier food, we've managed to tacitly induce a world in which agribusiness corporations milk us for our money in exchange for environmental aberrations and food that doesn't make us much healthier. A few of the segments are especially good, though, such as one in which the Monsanto corporation is exposed; they managed to patent a gene in soybeans (which, in addition to corn, make up the vast majority of our food, says the film) that made the soybeans resistant to pesticide. Because they patented a gene, they've made it so that if a farmer saves seeds from non-patented soybeans, the farmer can legally be charged with patent infringement. Evil shit right there. There's also the sad story of a young boy who died from e. coli as a result of agribusiness negligence, the standard tales of how we are breeding chickens and cows to grow unnaturally large, so large that they basically are grown like plants (because the poor animals can't walk or move on their own accord). And then the animals get to be mistreated on their way to slaughter, which takes place in all of eleven (I think it was eleven, in any rate some preposterously small number) slaughterhouses in the country. The bad guys largely remain faceless, except for some semi-morally ambiguous characters (a farmer perfectly content to make money off of unnatural chickens, Wall-Mart execs expanding into organic food), and the heroes are many: farmers fighting the power, being abused, or simply shaking their heads sadly about the decline of their noble profession. The best are one semi-nutty farmer in Virginia, who takes a rather gung-ho approach to growing the best food he can naturally and locally, and another farmer who sadly bemoans the state of soybean growing, but offers the closing words of hope in such a rousing manner that I couldn't help but be moved to cheer inside. But for all the heroes, stories, angering statistics and discussions with Eric and Michael, the film still doesn't offer much new advice. Basically we know it all: buy locally, read labels, learn what's in your food, and every one can make a difference. I guess after all that stored indignation I was prepared for more of a manifesto, a shared plan for the audiences to meet up and rebel, schematics for kidnapping money-grubbing execs, but instead it's just the same schtick that we grew up hearing. Anyways, my final judgment here is that this is a standard documentary, a little boring in some of the CGI infographics but with above-average interviews; while the end message is not new, it is still hopeful, which is important, and the powerful drive that the film arouses in viewers can definitely be put to a good use, so long as viewers aren't overwhelmed and fail to do anything. Review vastly too long and now over. Now, almost a week later, I don't have as much ranting and bile within me for the "how to change the world" proposed section of this post, so here's the short and sweet version: watching "Food, Inc," the obvious solution to me was the bleakest one: there are just way too many people on this planet for us to continue living in this way. And by "living in this way," I'd like to imply that there is a huge cultural aspect to the general world-is-ending problem, but specifically in the problem addressed by "Food, Inc." Basically, I see it boiling down to an American cultural desire and belief that everyone can achieve whatever they want, which is all fine and good until people start expecting to be able to eat whatever they want all the time, and cheaply. This leads to weird shit, like tomatoes in winter and fresh swordfish in the Midwest. Which would be fine if people wanted to pay the exorbitant costs of being able to eat what would be considered luxury food items in a natural world. But instead, agribusiness sees the opportunity to make a little cash and, using the power of capital to invest and coordination of transportation and all sorts of technology, manages to provide these food items (which should be considered artificially occurring) for a relatively cheap cost. Then lots of people buy them (because everyone wants to be able to do whatever they want whenever they want) and agribusiness gets very rich and can use this capital to keep on perpetuating the system. The people are happy because they can have sushi in North fucking Dakota and get food for vastly cheaper, freeing up more money to spend on useless shit like cable TV with nothing on and third cars and what have you. I'm starting to lose it here, but I hope you catch my drift. Main points: people want whatever they see everyone else having, especially the wealthy. They also want cheap things. Agribusiness uses their clout and all sorts of unnatural production and transportation measures (read bad for the planet) to provide what the people want for less. Then agribusiness profits while the people are contented, and the cycle perpetuates. Of course, that doesn't even begin to get at the problem in its entirety, because everything connects. In order to deal with this problem in its entirety, we'd have to solve for poverty, a way for people in large urban areas to get food directly from the farmers, a way for the price of good food to go down, a way to get people to listen, and oh my god my brain just short circuited from not being able to deal with this mess that we've managed to get ourselves into. A practical solution is for people to just realize, culturally, that if you live in the Northern hemisphere, you can eat tomatoes in the summer, and can preserve them for the rest of the year. Or that certain foods should be really expensive because of the energy that goes into producing them, like beef. Little things like that. I'm finding myself turning into a crotchety old man these days, and one of my favorite refrains is for a return to pre-industrialized revolution society, when there was no globalization and you only worked when there was work needing to be done. I realize it's an impractical ideal, and that there was mad plague back then, but there's something to be said for living a more natural lifestyle, one where we ate what was in season or around, and didn't haul food from all the corners of the globe to fill our ravenous western appetites. I think that if we can manage to think (as Michael Pollan says, bringing it all home) about where the food comes from, and realize that if certain foods don't make sense (like non-seasonal fruits and veggies), we probably shouldn't be eating them, then we'd be on a clear track to fixing this problem of food ceasing to be real food. And the impractical solution? Jack up the price of gas, vastly improve public/rail transportation, and bring back a village lifestyle to rural communities. People would have to focus on eating locally (too expensive to transport lots of food all over the goddamn place), and farming villages would be able to provide the food by rail to the major urban areas. Also, village life seems so cool. Go read "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and tell me that's not how we should all be living (minus the incest). And hopefully the pandemic won't come around just yet, because that will be nature's solution to this problem, reducing the number of motherfuckers on the planet demanding more food than they could possibly need, and eliminating the number of dudes out there who start blog posts and don't finish them for a week, thus forgetting everything they wanted to say and consequentially ranting aimlessly to the finish.

Left 4 Community love: A Review of New Add-On Campaigns

So, there's a new Add-Ons manager for Left 4 Dead, and it's pretty sweet. It allows for basically one-click installation of third-party campaigns and mods. This has led to a huge surge in the use of community campaigns. A HUGE one. I don't have numbers, but every time I've looked for games, at least a third of campaigns in the browser that show up are third party. Community maps never get that kind of attention. This is awesome, and it's exactly where PC developers need to be going, because this is the shit that makes the PC awesome (It's also the shit that makes us PC gamers pretentious, but hey, we're only pretentious because we're better). So, with this surge in community awesomeness, there's interestingly enough, a few campaigns that have stood out as being more popular than others. I've played them, I've played the shit out of them, they were delicious, and have definitely kept my interest in a game that supposedly lacks DLC. Let's take a look at them, shall we? First off, Death Aboard:

From what I've seen, Death Aboard is the most popular Add-On campaign by far, and for good reason. It's freakin' great. It was the first full custom campaign to come out, so by the time the manager was available, many of the bugs in the campaign had already been ironed out.

But anyway, in Death Aboard, you start off in a dark and eerie prison complex, and have to find your way from the maze of dark corridors of the prison complex through some sewers to a prison yard, all the while fighting undead inmates. From there, you enter the prison yard, and break out into some urban area, and then to the docks. Use one of these as a safehouse, and then enter the huge cargo ship.

This is one of the coolest parts, the ship is beached, and on it's side, so you have to adjust to the screen being tilted at about a 30 degree angle or more sometimes. There's a lot of water damage and rust, and you must climb up railings and such with caution. You exit through the ships propeller, in one of the most difficult panic events I've come across, and dash into a beach house.

From there you climb up a cliff to a lighthouse for the finale, where you are rescued by a freakin' hot air balloon.

So already, we see there's a ton of creativity here. The only part that I would say really lacks anything is the early prison levels, since they tend to get repetitive. I mean, it is a prison, so the repetition doesn't seem unrealistic, but there's definitely some copypasta going on in some of the corridors. A minor gripe really. The panic events there are also pretty easy even without much planning (and I play everything on at least advanced).

But man, does the ship make up for it, by leaps and bounds. It's been months since I was genuinely scared by L4D until I played that. Even after replaying it several times it is extremely difficult to tell where the hoard will come from. That's something the official Valve maps don't have. There's also an extremely difficult panic event where you try to open the large metal door to get out through the huge propeller. Here pretty much no matter what you do, you will be surrounded by zombies. God help you if a boomer comes.

I'm making it sound a little unbalanced. It's not like it's impossible to do, but on expert I haven't been able to do it in one try. It's tough, but it's set up for some of the greatest gaming moments I've had in months.

The lighthouse finale is actually a tad easier than the boat, though not by much. It reminds me of Zombie D-day, as you're sitting on top of a large beach/hill/cliff/lighthouse, and you can see the hoards come from miles away. This is the opposite of the ship, but works just as well in creating fear, because after unloading a few sniper rifle magazines into the mass of zombies running toward you, you'll realize there's still a ton more. Oh shi-

This would make the tank easier to defeat, but (spoiler) he doesn't always come from the beach, and I've found myself struggling to keep up with the group as we rush from the lighthouse back down to the beach, being pursued by a towering inferno. You also get rescued down by the beach, so there's a ton of different ways to do the finale, all of which are challenging, and really fun.

Wow, that was bit longer than I wanted, anyway, let's check out Night Terror:

Night Terror is significantly more buggy than Death Aboard, but it's totally forgivable, because Night Terror is just filled with awesome. Night terror isn't really a coherent campaign or story, but instead, each level is just something awesome. It was created (mostly) by Nipper, who did a bunch of weird (but awesome) CS 1.6 maps like crazytank. The first level is the mansion from 28 Days Later. You have to progress through it, and there is (of course) a panic event where you hold out in front as the zombies come across the lawn. You really feel like you're in the movie for this one. The second level is an almost exact replica of the Haunted Mansion ride in Disney World. There is a ton of attention paid to detail here, and a lot of work was done to replicate the tacky effects and holograms, all of which become actually scary when zombies come swarming out of every grave. There's even a panic event where you trigger a cart and ride through the graveyard, all the while defending against MASSIVE (and somewhat unbalanced) hoards of zombies. If you make it through, the cart quietly pulls into the exit area, as if nothing happened. It's a great moment. The next level brings you to the freakin' Mines of Moria from The Lord of the Rings. There's a lot of attention to detail in this one as well, though the actual mines get pretty repetitive (the giant hall with pillars is pretty much just that, a lot of pillars). The Tank actually always comes at the same time in this one. Right when you cross the bridge of Khazad-dum, a tank comes where the Balrog does in the movie. And here's the kicker: the fastest way to kill the tank there, is to have one of your members sacrifice himself and jump off of the bridge, the tank will follow, killing you both. FLY, YOU FOOLS! It's fucking epic, and fucking amazing. The next level I'm actually kind of embarrassed about, as I assume it must be from some movie, or book or something, but I can't put my finger on the reference in this one. It's still enjoyable, though, and reminds me of a classic jungle level from Serious Sam. It's jungle ruins, with long corridors lit by moonlight. It is the weakest level. There's not a lot of memorable events and some copypasta is pretty apparent. Though, all is made well when you discover that the next level, the final level, is the cabin from The Evil Dead. You enter through the cabin, and go through a passageway to the wierd, vortexy version of the house from The Evil Dead 2. There you hold out, and get rescued through a vortex, headed toward The Army of Darkness. It's thoroughly enjoyable, though not as difficult as it should be. Still, you will be satisfied. Well, these are going on a tad longer than I'd want, so I think I'll leave Dam it! and Back to School for part 2. Night Terror and Death Aboard are really must-plays, so get out and kill some zombies!

Diverging Worlds

Alright, so for my first official post as a writer for The Tartar Sauce, I've violated one of my cardinal rules of internet movie reviewing: don't wait too long, otherwise things will begin to suck as immediate impressions fade away. But I think we're gonna be okay today, because my complaint is critical and concrete, namely that in deviating too far from the original books, this "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" shenanigan ceases to be a part of the same magical world that Rowling started and now belongs firmly to the studios and whatever director happens to jump on board for the next installment. First, a disclaimer: I am a chronic re-reader of books; I've read most of the Harry Potter series at least twice, more so for the older books (except the second book. Fuck the second book), and I have a pretty sound memory for detail and the nuances of Rowling's storytelling. I also went back and read the sixth and seventh books again at the beginning of the summer, just because. So I walked into that midnight showing full of knowledge and a deep respect for the imaginative work that the films attempt to pay homage to. Time for our first major digression: the Harry Potter series is wonderful. It might not be groundbreaking in the sense of Joyce or similar dudes, and it might not even qualify as great literature, but it's a story of the old school, a tale of magic and clear-cut good and evil, and Rowling tells it with charm and good grace. Seems to me like these days, stories aren't the same as they used to be. They're derivative, designed to be serialized, oversexed and overviolenced, and generally just not very good. To me, the imagination and tradition and, for lack of a better term, balls have fled the field of storytelling, only to be replaced by mediocrity and money-grubbing tendencies. Harry Potter was a welcome deviation from this depressing norm: a wild retelling of our tedious modern world, done with a sly and subversive sense of humor coupled with a wild sense of joy for the rampant use of magic! Magic actually says it all- the books are magical, fun and elating, and even a little bit morally elevating. Here you have young Harry, a dude kind of fucked around by the non-magic world, given the opportunity via wild powers to run amok and enact revenge, but instead he stays true to Spike Lee and does the right thing. Admittedly my biggest complaint with the books is the lack of a moral gray area, but sometimes it's comforting to see moral absolutes occasionally, the traditional story of good and evil. But it's this moral absolutism that saves the series when it, as one of my friends complains, kind of loses the fun by becoming just another story of good guys vs. bad guys. It's the world of magic that's at risk, so the traditional story gains epic status. Rowling built a world that everyone loves and wishes to be a part of, and then threw it into peril. We've got three elements: a universally beloved dazzling/imaginative world, a traditional tale of the battle between good and evil, and sheer good storytelling ability. We might not have touched on this topic as much yet, but it's what ties everything together. The stories proceed at a good pace, the background details aren't overpowering, but are enough to provide flavor while simultaneously obscuring future key plot elements (Peruvian Instant Darkness powder anyone?), and at the same time providing a wonderful tone, some might even go so far as to call it magical. In a wildly convoluted paragraph, that is why the Harry Potter books are great, and anyone who disagrees can argue it out with me later. It's time for movie reviews. This, these, my above reasons for the universal pleasure Harry Potter brings, is why the movie was so weak. It's one thing to have a significant case of deviates-from-the-book-itus, but it's another thing to fuck with tone and central elements and then go and brand something as a member of the same species. "Lord of the Rings" shaves off some plot elements (understandable, as Tolkien went kind of nuts with the background information), but maintains the same spirit of the original books, and actually in a more accessible language than the sometimes impenetrable books. This new breed of "Harry Potter," however, isn't really anything like the books, rather in name only. We've got a short Harry (the subject of many an actually funny joke), overly CGI magic that's not as fun as overwhelming, the expected major deviation from plot elements, only in surprising new directions, like the elimination of fight scenes and the addition of extraneous scenes, and a general sacrifice of the subversively cheeky tone that characterized the books. I know the sixth book is the dark book, but the text didn't read that way. So why must the movie be so dour? It's not all bad though. The actors do a fine job, especially the professors: Alan Rickman is a wonderful Snape, the dude who plays Slughorn is also pretty cool, even though he's not at all what the book says he should be, and our trio of heros do fine work as their lovely selves. Draco Malfoy also gets a nod for being more involved than in the other movies. The central thing of it is that none of this really messes with our conceptions of what the characters were like in our imaginations when we read the books because none of the characters really resemble anything from the books. This is a good thing in the sense that our reading, imaginary world is still intact, but bad because the movie suffers in comparison. On its own, it's a not too shabby story of magical kids growing up and being awkward about relationships, with some talk of Horcruxes thrown in. It's just the comparison that makes it weak. This is by no means a Harry Potter film, just a pretty good variation of a much better theme. Slightly disappointing, but not without its merits.

Cool Thing Of The Week: An Adventurer is You!

So with LucasArts unloading its back catalogue on steam, and Monkey Island getting both a facelift and a new episode, adventure titles seem to be coming back into vogue. I have no less than 3 adventure games to finish on my to-do list (Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, and Sanitarium) and yet I find myself waylaid by a low-budget production by a pair of insolent limeys. Been There, Dan That is the first game in the series, and it's bloody hilarious. It's a classic point-and-click - right clicking cycles through possible actions, left clicking interacts with objects and the environment. The protagonists - Ben and Dan, of course - merrily adventure their way through alternate-dimension locals, bantering back and forth about everything from shitty American beer to how exactly Ben knows which objects are useful to pick up and which are safe to leave behind. It's full of references that seasoned adventure fans will love, and coarse (but brilliant) humor for everyone else. It's irreverent, clever, entertaining, short, and most importantly, free. Once you've finished it (and hopefully tossed some of a bizarre "L" shaped currency to the creators) then it's time to fork over a whopping $5 for the sequel Time Gentlemen, Please! Which is bigger, flashier, and even more irreverent (in the options menus, there's a slider labeled "Racism.") The story follows immediately after the end of the first game, and while it provides a quick recap for those who haven't got the time for fun you really should play through the first one...er...first. I'm not really going into the plot details because I don't think I'll be able to do it justice, but I will say this: The main antagonists are armies of Cloned Nazi Dinosaurs. Really, there's not much more for me to say. If you enjoy adventure games, you will enjoy these. You might enjoy them even if you hate the genre - the mental leaps required to figure out the puzzles are refreshingly clever and logical, unlike certain abominations. Buy 'em. Play 'em. Support clever people who write fun games. Also, Gibbage is pretty fun, too.

Fanedits

This may be old news to some, but I just watched The Phantom Edit and Attack of the Phantom for the first time recently. For those that don't know, basically a rather talented fellow took the first two Star Wars Prequels and made them less shitty through some clever editing. The first movie, Attack of the Phantom, is a large improvement, but still comes out as an average sci-fi film. Must of the edits involve a noble attempt to turn Jake Loyd's Anakin Skywalker into a compelling character, and a large reduction in "comical" aspects of the film (Jar-Jar is still present, although much reduced. In fact, you actually don't mind him as much when he's not in your face all of the time.) It turns out that when alot of redundant dialogue is cut, Qui-Gon becomes a bigger bad-ass, Obi-Won becomes competent, Anakin becomes appealing, and the funny parts become funny. It's a marked improvement. Attack of the Phantom, on the other hand, goes from a shitty movie to a good one, albeit one with embarrasingly stilted acting at times (because blue screen acting sucks, as a general rule. Acting is reacting, and it's hard to react to nothing.) Thanks to the Phantom Editor's alterations, Anakin goes from whiny brat to a tragic character that, while still a total creepster thanks to Hayden Christensen's leering, the audience can at least identify with. The love story actually works, ironically because almost all the scenes involving "romantic" dialogue have been excised. Less is more, and all that. Best of all is the commentary track where the Phantom Editor explains all of his decisions. It's intelligent, fascinating, and really makes you appreciate how important the editor is. Most of the fan edits that followed were basically people making Star Wars "they way they want it," but The Phantom Edit and Attack of the Phantom are all about applying George Lucas' original principles to his own films. Check them out. I can't really link to them because an overweight man in a stormtrooper costume will likely come on behalf of lucasArts to kill me, but you're all savvy internet peoples. Just be sure to try and find the DVD (4 gig) versions, as those have the commentary, which I feel is pretty important.

Yet Another Sandbox Title: A Review of Prototype

Ugh, I thought I'd never write a review here, it's not like there isn't enough already out there, and no one comes here for reviews, so anything I write about games I tend to try to stay away from just reviewing them, but everything I started writing about this game just turned into a review - or something close enough to a review that it might as well be a review anyway. Anyway:

Ok, Prototype is an "open world" game, which means an inevitable comparison to the Grand Theft Auto series. So here it is: Prototype is like GTA, except you're an unstoppable killing machine, and the zombie apocalypse is involved.

Sound interesting? Triple-A titles tend to do that. Oh yea, this is a big title:

I'm a huge GTA fan and a huge open world fan. I love open world games because they're stress-free. If you don't want to worry about a story, you don't have to. You can just drive around, doing jack shit, playing around with guns and explosions without any motivation to do anything. It's great, and I spend hours doing just that. It's actually rare that I finish the storyline of any given sandbox title.

My latest sandbox game that I'd been sinking countless hours into was GTA 4. Though, it kept pissing me off. You see, I kept longing for the days of GTA 3 and Vice City, where jumping off of the tallest building wouldn't kill you, the cops couldn't take three shotgun blasts to the chest and still shoot, there were tanks, helicopters with missiles, rampage mini-games, and the main character actually wore their seat belt.

I was also sick of the wonky controls. Too often I would try to climb up to a ledge, but instead would vault over it and fall 50 feet to my death. Cuz that's what I wanted. Or I'd be firing an RPG on top of a building, but the game decided that I wasn't actually aiming at the FBI agent below, but the ledge at my feet, and I'd have to watch myself get blown to bits in slow motion. This happened in the earlier games as well, but it wouldn't kill you, so you could do the health cheat afterwards and go back to killing. Sure, the graphics in GTA 4 are better, but hey, the developers name is Rockstar, not Glam Rockstar.

Um, anyway, imagine my delight when I found a game where the main character not only is completely unaffected by gravity, but is also mostly unaffected by explosions. Though he could probably lose the overly-angsty hoody and popped collar.

You are Alex Mercer, a guy who wakes up in a morgue having lost his memory, but gained ridiculous super-powers. Which I would say is a pretty decent trade off. He goes on a hunt to try to uncover why he is the way he is, and kill the people responsible not only for doing this to him, but also for releasing a virus on Manhattan that turns the city into zombies. Or something like that. The story's actually not too bad if you're into the whole "governments are evil" thing. It's told fairly well, cutscenes aren't painful, and voice acting is decent. It's not Deus Ex good, but maybe it's Deus Ex 2.

Though, like Painkiller, It's not really the story that's important. What's important is that you can tear an innocent civilian in two with your bear hands, and absorb their body for health. Your power is basically you can alter yourself at a genetic level, and turn your arms into claws, a giant blade, Hulk fists, a whip thingy, and a giant shield. You can sprout spikes from the ground, shoot tendrils from your palms, and morph into anyone you absorb. There's an absolutely huge list of powers and moves you can buy with experience points (called "evolution points" in the game, which is pretty lame) that you obtain for doing pretty much anything.

In this way it's almost like an RPG, you can choose what powers you'd like to upgrade and taylor them to your playstyle. It's actually what kept me playing the game, because I knew if I finished just one more level I'd get acces to a new ability.

Actually, I'm sick of telling you what the game is about, go read (or skim) the Wikipedia, and Metacritic entries for the game. Good? Ok, moving on.

First, huge props to the devs for the PC version. I was very pleased. There was no apparent DRM of any kind, except for a CD check. The install was simple and went on without a hitch, there was automatic gamepad support, as well as keyboard support, which I know sounds weird, but it's outrageous how many games I play on the PC where, during a tutorial, the game will say something like "Press [Left Trigger] to aim." and I have to open up controls to see what they're talking about. But none of that here. The game also ran exceptionally well on my middle-of-the-road system (and man, it pains me to say that, since just two years ago it was top-of-the-line. Damn you moore's law). I was able to crank up all the shinies (even vsync and AA) and run it at my native resolution of 1680x1050. The game ran smooth and never crashed, which is saying a lot for a 1.0 release. It's really great to see a game that is actually a final product, and not a buggy POS that needs 3 or so patches before it's even remotely playable (here's looking at you, S.T.A.L.K.E.R). The graphics themselves are not really that great, They look almost last-gen with higher res textures, which is unusual for a big title. The game still looks damn good, though. And again, it's not about the graphics as much as it is about killing people. Plus a lot of effort was put into the animations. Everything is very fluid and killing people is very, very satisfying. Most people say that you really should use a gamepad for this game. I used both, and found that I actually liked the keyboard and mouse better. It all comes down to personal preference, but if you're worried about it then I can say it was definitely a better experience with the keyboard and mouse, as the difficult combos and such are simply easier when there's more buttons. Ok, so moving on to that actual game. It starts off really great, once you get past the tutorial levels. But as the story progresses and things move on, the game actually gets significantly worse, for a variety of reasons: 1.) The more powers, abilities, and attacks you gain. The more difficult it becomes to control your character, so what used to be a simple jump or climb, is now a quadruple flip into a glide attack that destroys a city block. It makes simple things like grabbing people (which becomes more and more important) very troublesome. There were many times where I'd try to pick up a gun next to me, but instead would blow up a tank across the street with ground spikes, sending the entire military after me. 2.) The difficulty curve, while somewhat linear, is kinda cheap. So you took out 50 soldiers in the last level? How about 100? You thought 7 tanks and 3 helicopters was easy? Well how about 14 tanks and 6 helicopters? It makes things much more chaotic than they need to be, and combined with reason #1, becomes extremely frustrating and predictable. 3.) The boss battles suffer from the same problem as the difficulty curve, but also, they're FUCKING RIDICULOUS! But not in a good way. Not in the epic way. I remember one of the major boss battles (spoiler) where you fight a main character, Elizabeth Greene, who is literally a giant puffy vagina on a stick. I timed it, and it took me 45 FUCKING minutes to beat her, and I didn't die once. That's just too long. She had so much heath that it just becomes annoying. Here is a 2 part video of a guy doing it in 15ish minutes (which is still a long-ass time for a boss battle), though he has upgrades which you don't have in that portion of that game yet, and has obviously fought her before: Notice she has 4 HUGE HEALTH BARS! WHY ON GODS GREEN EARTH WOULD YOU DO THAT! She spits rocks at you, shoots heat-seeking green energy thingys, sends hunters at you (which are sort of like the zombie equivalent of tanks) as well as a ton of other attacks, and zombies, and the military is also fighting you with everything they have. It's as if the developers realized that they'd made your character too powerful, and tried to compensate. The last boss battle is also stupidly difficult, though a little less absurd. 4.) The missions are rerepepetititivtivee as fuck. Here's the objectives for one of the missions near the end of the game: 1~ Destroy a helicopter before it leaves the area. 2~ Destroy two helicopters before they leave the area. 3~ Destroy three helicopters before they leave the area. 4~ ok, I'm not telling you this one. See if you can guess. That's right, FOUR HELICOPTERS! YAY! AWESOME GAYME DEZINE GUYZZZ! 5.) Free-roam gets less and less appealing as you progress through the game. There is a zombie infection slowly spreading through the city, and while it IS cool to free-roam around a zombie apocalypse for a while, it is a novelty that quickly wears off and I ended up yearning for the ability to explore just plain-old Manhattan. The game makes up for it with the ability to, once you've finished the story, start a new game with all of your existing powers retained. which is cool, but at the beginning you lack the ability to hijack choppers and tanks, which again makes free-roaming not as fun as it could be. 6.) The targeting system is abysmal, and again gets more annoying the more enemies there are and the more chaotic the missions get. So often I'd try to aim at the giant boss charging at me, but the targeting system would decide that it was more important to focus my wrath upon the taxi behind me. All in all though, a whole lot is forgivable when you go back to the fact that you can run through cars and crowds of people with a giant bio-blade. Free-roaming is still a real blast. And not all of the missions are a total bust. Did I mention the bio-blade?

The stealth aspect is actually really well done. It's pretty simple, the devs weren't really out to try anything new and wonky, but what's there is solid and it works. basically one of your powers is the ability to morph into other characters. So to infiltrate a base, you'll consume and morph into a general, then just walk in. It's pretty cool, and you can escape the military this way in free-roam. There's also the affectionately named "patsy" ability, where you accuse others of being you in disguise, and get to watch the other soldiers hesitate, then open fire. It's great. So, overall, this isn't a game that's going to stand the test of time. It's not going to win any awards, and it's not really deep or insightful. But hell, it's a damn fun game, and really, isn't that what we're going for here? I mean c'mon, there's over 20 animations just for eating people. As well as hundreds of other ways to reign destruction and terror upon a city already dealing with a zombie infection. If the missions annoy you, just blow off steam by attacking a military base and watch as the puny soldiers cower at the might of your bio-blade. I've certainly got more than my money's worth, and I'll continue to blow shit up for at least the near future. In fact, I think I've found my new go-to sandbox title.

Guest Writer Julian Suhr: "Drag Me To Hell" Review

It's my pleasure to offer you another guest post from Julian Suhr, author of the movie review blog Never Mind The Bats. Enjoy.

I'm kind of at a loss as far as reviewing "Drag Me To Hell" goes, largely because I really don't like horror movies. I can't see the point of needless fear for fear's sake, especially as we begin to live in increasingly terrifying times. Of course, I have an elaborate double standard at work: I like horror movies that I like. Zombie movies are fine, as were "The Host" and "Let The Right One In." And I don't consider Hitchcock movies to be horror (even though the ones I enjoy are more thrillers, but whatever). My taxonomy breaks down like this: movies may be scary or what have you, but a horror movie is one with no point other than to terrify the bejesus out of the audience well after the actual viewing experience is over, and for no real reason of improvement or deeper meaning. It's kind of an extremely subjective definition, as what it boils down to is "whatever doesn't leave me quaking at little noises late at night isn't horror," but I think I've got a point, although my definitions might be a bit off. Take a zombie movie, "28 Days Later." It's pretty goddamn intense throughout, kind of scary, but all in a survival way. Zombies are simply a threat that needs to be dealt with; eliminate the threat and life proceeds as usual. To get further analytical (I spent the cold month of January in a film class on zombie movies, which may have been damaging to my long term mental health, so you'll have to bear with me), "28 Days" can be viewed as an anti-Hobbesian fantasy about the futility of absolute government power, resulting corruption, and the occasional importance of living life nasty, brutal and short (simultaneous thanks and apologies to Christian, the man who is responsible for me bringing this interpretation to you. I have a sinking suspicion that my Hobbes might be a little bootleg, but the core idea seems solid enough). It's also a really smart movie beyond the philosophy and my parantheticals, with heavy post-apocalyptic images, allusions to 9/11, and plenty of other stuff that I can't remember at the moment. Basically, my favorite zombie movie, because the badass zombie violence serves a purpose. Zombie movies, as I was shown in January, provide a means of addressing real-world problems through apocalyptic and audience-friendly scenarios; kind of like satire, but with a lust for human flesh. And I think that the same can go for all other sorts of intelligent horror movies. I've already praised "Let The Right One In" for being as much about human nature and brutality as it is about vampires, and I'm sure that there are other horror movies out there, all excellent, that are about more than the monsters or spirits at hand. We could oversimplify things and refer to these things as "good" horror movies, and they all have the common characteristic that they don't terrify as much as other horror films that use cheap shock tactics and irrational decisions. In these "good" horror films, the real fear is of something deeper psychologically or philosophically than immediate suffering at the hands of evil beings. This fear leads to contemplation instead of adrenaline rushes, and therefore is less terrifying. But I fail to see the point or pleasure of watching something that uses the power of films to exploit audiences via fast cutting, grotesque special effects, and ominous music only for the sake of scaring. Shitty action movies, sure, they're escapist fluff (although I want the two hours of my life that "Hitman" took back). Shitty comedies can be okay as well; I know a guy who loves incredibly mediocre romantic comedies because he finds them unintentionally hilarious, which also brings us to the sort of movie that's so bad it becomes funny, a distinction that defies genre. But I will never for thelife of me understand people who enjoy horror movies. All that rather brings into question my credentials for reviewing a horror film, doesn't it? But "Drag Me To Hell" is unquestionably a horror movie, and one deftly made at that. Setup, as usual, is simple: a loan officer, desirous of promotion, denies a loan extension for an old woman. Poor choice, because this old woman is some kind of a witch-gypsy capable of cursing people. She does, and then young loan officer (forget the names here, and don't feel like looking them up, because they don't make a difference) is tormented by demons, causing her to try and break the curse. It's that simple, but it's very well done. Sam Raimi uses all manner of little tricks and slights-of-film to convey a sense of lingering dread, and we do get rather emotionally involved with young loan officer, which is of course the problem: once we care about a character, we make their problems ours, and then cower in fear. The acting is good, the dialogue inoffensive, and the colors and images (I have no idea why I still remember this) very pleasing and full. Even the special effects are subtle. Like I said, this is a very accomplished horror film. And that's exactly the problem- I can't help but feel a little betrayed by Sam Raimi for making a straight-up scary movie. This was supposed to be a funny horror movie; indeed, "Evil Dead" was invoked in many reviews I read. Unfortunately, all the humor is very subtle and plays second fiddle to the main task of terrifying me with lurking demons and other fucked-up repugnant shit, to paraphrase Jules Winnfield. From what I've seen of "Evil Dead"- and I need to see more- everything is firmly tongue in cheek, lead by Bruce Campbell's wonderful self-assuredness. There is no Bruce Campbell here. Young loan officer girl grows more and more terrified as the movie progresses, only occasionally saying something approaching one-liner quality. The humor comes from the incredible pettiness of the offense (a loan deserves this? really?) and the occasional grotesque torments inflicted upon young loan officer girl, including being puked on thrice and having to wrestle a dead body twice. If there was more of this, and it was all campier, everything would have been a celebration of horror's absurdities, and I would have been a happier camper. Instead, Raimi turns his talents to a straight-up machine for scaring, with no redeeming ending or message. It's very good for what it is, and what it is isn't at all my bag, and leaves me feeling a little frustrated with humanity. Come on guys, do you really need lurking demons to make you fear for a few blissful hours? Read a newspaper. Apologies for length and subjectivity. I really didn't have a lot to say critically due to firmly entrenched opinions on the subject matter, so I decided to foist said opinions upon you. Enjoy, and hopefully join me in my quest to end pointless horror.

Guest Writer Julian Suhr: "Up" Review

Well this is kind of cool, writing over here. Established readership is nice, as well as a sense of legitimacy that comes from actually writing for somebody else's blog! Oh goodness this is exciting. And actually kind of weird, because I am in fact writing this on my own blog (because it felt unnatural to write a blog post in Word) before sending it over. So this is preemptive excitement I'm experiencing and deciding to share with readers who might not have a tolerance for oddly self-indulgent introductions dealing with the process of
writing the introduction. Cool stuff. Well, if you managed to deal with that we'll get along fine during the rest of the review. Which is what I'll be getting to in good time, like right now.

So anyways, our movie for today is "Up," without a doubt the touching-est Pixar movie to date. The premise seems more geared towards unlikely comedy of the sort that Pixar manages to pull off miraculously (silent robot love story anyone?) and that leaves all my friends slightly skeptical. A crotchety old dude by the name of Carl, dissatisfied with his elderly lifestyle, decides to literally uproot and flies his house to South America
via lots and lots of balloons to keep an old promise. But a young boy scout type stows away, and the resulting dynamic of young vs. old and grumpy vs. energetic will ensure hilarity on all of their adventures. Right? Kind of. What the premise and trailers fail to mention the reason Carl is a crotchety old dude: his loving wife is dead. She was a woman of spunk and spirit, full of life and big ideas (as the opening montage shows). Their relationship grew from a shared passion for adventures that never materialized, and with her dead Carl is left to confront missed opportunities of youth, the frustrations of elderly life in a changing world, the reality of mortality, and pretty much capital-L Loss and despair. Pixar handles these themes very gently if not exactly subtly; that opening montage sums up all the joys of new love, the excitement of growing up and living life, the slow disillusionment of growing old and realizing that one still works as a balloon salesman at the zoo, the realization that your dream in life is not only unfulfilled but swiftly becoming unattainable, and then a profoundly touching sadness as Carl becomes a widower. It's enough to make even a cynical bastard like myself get a bit dusty. The decision to fly the house away isn't all fun and games either, as Carl's house stands in the way of a gigantic development project and is threatened with what is effectively nursing home arrest. So we've got more going on than a crotchety old dude on an adventure. Carl is doing this as one last hurrah, a decision to finally go and have his life adventure when everything else seems bleak, and as a way of dealing with grief and moving on.

Carl isn't the only one with problems either: the boy scout type, a kid named Russell, is along for the ride to get a merit badge (helping the elderly! Funny!) so that his father will actually pay attention to him at the awards ceremony (child abandonment! Not so funny). And there are even more subthemes, like the disenchantment of meeting a childhood hero and a wildlife conservation message, but what's at the core of the movie is the way Carl comes to terms with his loss (put in the Strangeloveian sense, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love What I've Got Now In Life). But the movie doesn't suffer for all these additional themes. One of the perils of writing reviews long after a movie comes out is that I get exposed to other critic's opinions (because I love reading movie reviews), and then have to try and ignore them or make them my own while I write the review. In this case, I feel the need to address the criticism that "Up" tries to go in too many directions. I respect you Joe Morgenstern, but this is simply not the case. "Up" is a movie of enhanced whimsy, as evidenced by the balloon-elevated house and talking dogs and gigantic bird, so it can't be as tightly wound as a Hong Kong thriller or "Chinatown." All these different thought and ideas get enough deliberation during the film (or deliberation proportional to the significance and importance of the idea), and the movie is richer for them. There's kind of a dreamlike quality to the way that everything kind of floats together, and I was satisfied with the way everything was addressed in the end.

But this defense of themes brings us closer to one of my favorite Pixar topics, namely that they use really grown-up concepts and ideas for a kid's movie. Case in point, go watch "The Incredibles" again and tell me that the Nietzschean overtones are age appropriate, never mind the violent deaths and torture. Blatantly not a kid's movie. The same went for "Wall-E" (apocalypse? Environmental ruin?), although admittedly not as seriously as in "The Incredibles," and it goes again for "Up". Kids simply won't understand grief and loss on this scale. This is a movie about the desperation that sets in when life is near its end and you've lost all you've cared about. Little kids simply won't get it, and if they do understand then they'll be exposed to something so way beyond their ken that it'll be scary. The movie is stronger for these adult considerations, speaking as an adult viewer, but it leaves me to question Pixar's target audience, yet admire their big brass balls. Who else could do a kid's movie about a grieving widower?

And who else could make it so damn funny? We've covered the deeper aspects of "Up," so let's get down to what redeems it from being an animated drama of heart-wrenching proportions. The humor is wonderful- a bit darker in some cases (Carl at one point imagines dropping Russell out of the house), but with impeccable timing and great warmth. Much of this owes to Pixar's great understanding of human interactions, like when Carl's wife (age five) climbs in his window, chats his ears off, and then, on leaving, says, "You don't talk much, do you? I like you," which out of context seems kind of boring but in context, with her spritely line-reading and timing, is absolutely charming. And they know dogs as well as humans- the talking dogs are wonderful while they're not being sinister, especially the doggiest dog of them all, Dug, the only non-Rottweiler, Doberman or Bulldog around. There's a squirrel fixation, tennis ball fixation, and a great bit with the "cone of shame." I'm swiftly realizing that dissecting humor isn't funny, so I'll also mention that the part with the giant bird had me crying with laughter, and move on. I suppose the final thing to say goes without saying, this being Pixar: the voice acting, animation and music are all top-notch and wonderful. This is destined to be a great movie, possibly better than "Wall-E," (although technically very different) and definitely as good as
"the Incredibles."

So that's a guest post. Hope all you new reader types enjoyed. I'm not sure whether or not I'm sorry to have started on such an upbeat and good movie; reading praise is pretty good, but more often reading a review of a terrible movie is even more fun. And there wasn't even anything absurd to harp on in "Up." Ah well, such is life. And I find myself stuck without a good closing word, so I'll do the text equivalent of slinking slowly out of the room by ending with an awkwardly long sentence, such as this.


Julian Suhr writes the movie review blog Never Mind The Bats, which has been on our blogroll forever, and which you should read religiously if you don't already. When he's not reviewing movies, he's probably DJing, playing the sax, or listening to funk.

Enter the Bobbicus

Good Day All! My good friend and former hallmate BackdoorAngel has graciously invited me to join the ranks of contributors to the mighty The Tartar Sauce. My shtick here is videogames. Reviews, reminiscences, rants, commentary, and anything else I can think of about the medium. Just so y'all can know where I'm coming from, I started 'gaming' on my Packard Bell PC with a copy of Duke Nukum (that's not a misspelling, Apogee called him Duke Nukum '\because they thought 'Nukem' was copyrighted) that my godfather gave me. I remember quite clearly receiving that first floppy, with the homemade label on which was neatly written "DN1: Property of CK." That and the sound of the floppy drive as it accessed the disk. For those of you who haven't played it, the original Duke game was a sidescrolling shooter in which our tiny orange-skinned pink shirted hero battled the nefarious Dr. Proton in Shrapnel City. Man, this game was awesome. Memorable enemies, great settings, tight gameplay, and best of all no sniggering about a certain overdue sequel (this was before Apogee even became 3D realms.) Good times. Later, my dad bought a game called Red Baron (packaged with A-10 Tank Killer.) I still regard this as one of the most immersive games of all time, even though it looks like this: First of all, if you turned on all realistic settings, it had a fairly accurate flight model (I, of course, usually turned off damage to my plane, resulting in many a frustrated pilot blasting away in futility at my invincible ace. In my defense, I was about four years old.) Turning on "Realistic Navigation" was especially interesting - you were expected to navigate by observing landmarks (mountains, rivers, railroads, etc) and consulting a number of maps that came in the box. This was probably the coolest thing I had ever seen. A videogames with paper maps? That actually mattered? Awesome! Red Baron also had the single best manual in the existence of computer games. Yes, there was the obligatory set-up, controls, troubleshooting, and whatnot, but after that was done there were approximately 50 pages of historical background on WWI, focusing on aerial combat, There were biographies of aces, description of tactics, a detailed timeline of the air war, and best of all, full color diagrams and specifications of all the aircraft featured in the game. I have yet to see anything like it since. It's not just that the manual was thourough and detailed, plenty of sims have such things. What still amazes me is the amount of effort that went into immersing the player in WWI by placing him in the correct mindset and giving him (or her) all the information necessary to think like a combat aviator in the Great War. A-10 Tank Killer I didn't play as much, mainly because it was complicated and hard. I never quite figured out how to operate missles, so I usually just turned off all realism and went around blowing stuff up with the avenger cannon that never overheated or ran out of ammo while all range of anti-aircraft weaponry bounced harmlessly off me. At times I wouldn't even take off, simply rolling around on the ground like a glorified tank blowing up anything that showed its face. Anyway, the next major phase in my gaming life was none other than Command & Conquer. I recieved C&C95 Gold Edition from a friend for my birthday , and immediately found that my computer couldn't handle it. I read and re-read that manual over and over again until my family got a new computer (I remember reading the Dell magazines and being wowed at the $3,000 machine that was a whopping one gigahert pentium 4.) My one requirement was that it be a Pentium processor and have at least 100 mb of hard drive space - enough to run Command & Conquer. When I finally could run it, I learned most of what I know about modems setting up dialup games with my friends (for the record, dialing up somebody to play a computer game and then hearing somebody pick up the phone and start asking who's calling through the speaker on your modem is pretty freakin' funny.) When Red Alert came out I bought it and played it. When Tiberian Sun came out, I bought it and played it. I pre-ordered Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge and loved both of them. This series will always have a fond place in my heart, despite the sharp decrease in charm following Westwood's dissolution. Command & Conquer was my first time in conflict with the ESRB, as it was rated T for teen and I was not, in fact, a Teen, something with made my mother hesitant to allow such a purchase. The second and much more difficult battle was Half-Life. I played it at a friend's house, loved it, but couldn't buy it at home because it was rated M. My mother, God bless her, is one of a very small number of women in the world with enough sense to review the content of the media she buys for her children. At the time I hated it, but now I'm quite glad of having that sense of responsibility drummed into me. Anyway, this introduced me to pirating - I couldn't buy the game, so I downloaded it over my 56k modem over several nights, when everyone was asleep. Through Highschool I started broadening my interests, exploring lots of classics thanks to Home of the Underdogs and sites like it. I installed X-Com on the computers at my job, bought Mount & Blade when it was in version .650, and played all sorts games. FPS, strategy, God-Games (I was absolutely enthralled by Black and White. Never finished it, but damn it drew me in) Flight sims, RPGs, pretty much everything except Puzzles. Most of my finest purchases were off the discount rack at major retailers - its where I found Freespace, Fallout, Deus Ex, and countless others. Today I mostly play PC games, and I've fallen off the "waiting for next big release" bandwagon and started exploring older games that I've missed. I think videogames can be art if they are treated as such. Instead of traditional reviews, I'll be offering up 'critiques' of games here, as well as essays on the industry and medium. Occaisionally I'll be firing off a "Check this out!" post, as well. I hope people can derive at least some sort of entertainment from my ramblings, and if not, well, there'll always be pretty pictures. Until next time - Bobbicus

TV Review: Dexter

For the past year or so, everyone and their mom has been telling me to watch the show Dexter. They would say things like, "It's so darkly funny," or "It's got such a great concept," or "It's got the coolest opening theme." Well, finally one of my friends sat me down and essentially forced me to watch a couple episodes of Dexter, and I was immediately addicted. That night, I downloaded the first two seasons, and about 3 weeks later I'm done with them and ready to write a glowing review.

Everyone and their mom is right about Dexter: it is, for lack of better words, absolutely fucking bomb. For those of you unfamiliar with it, its eponymous main character is a good-natured guy who cares for his girlfriend and sister and is well-liked by everyone in the Miami police department, where he works as a blood analyst. He also has a hobby that no one knows about: he's a serial killer. His adoptive father, a cop, taught him how to kill people when he realized that Dexter was not going to be able to control his urges. His complex moral code can essentially be boiled down to: "Don't get caught" and "only kill people who deserve it." At the beginning of the first season, Dexter is able to successfully keep his outward appearance and his huge secret entirely separate from each other and lead two lives that influence each other but never mix together. That's the back story.

The TV series was based on a series of novels, and as a result the seasons are structured like novels in a series; each season tells one story with the same characters, and each episode is like a chapter in that story, usually ending either on a positive note or with a cliffhanger. In season 1, the Miami police department is investigating a murderer known as "The Ice Truck Killer," who freezes his bodies before displaying them in elaborate ways for the police to find. Dexter senses that the killer is somehow connected to him and knows about his secret, and as the mystery comes closer to being solved more and more of Dexter's secrets come close to surfacing. Season 2 raises the stakes even more; it begins with scuba divers finding the bodies of all of Dexter's victims and the police investigating Dexter without realizing it, collaborating with the very person they're trying to catch. These stories put incredible twists on the genre of detective fiction. In most detective stories, we're trying to figure out who committed the crime and why they did it, and we want nothing more than for the detectives to uncover the entire story. In Dexter, however, we don't want Dexter to be found out; we want the detectives to be led down the wrong path, and we want to see how that ends up happening. Season 1 is a brilliant piece of detective fiction. When we first realize that the Ice Truck Killer knows about Dexter, we don't know who the killer actually is. We want to find out why the killer knows Dexter's secret, but at the same time we don't want the secret to get out. Because of this, rather than hoping for one explanation of the crime, the audience of Dexter is led to hope for two explanations: a real one for the viewers, and a fake one for the detectives. While the audience wonders what the Ice Truck Killer's real story is, they also wonder how the detectives will figure it out in a different way that doesn't involve Dexter. To make matters even more interesting, the Ice Truck Killer's identity is revealed to the audience (but none of the characters on the show) about halfway through the first season. So about halfway through the story our method of watching and solving shifts from trying to figure out who the killer is to trying to figure out how and why he or she (I wouldn't want to give anything away) is killing, and how the detectives will be led to the killer eventually. Season 1 is suspenseful, intriguing, and incredibly well-written.

But season 1 looks like nothing more than a classic whodunnit in comparison to season 2, which is more of a bizarre, fucked up psychological drama involving adultery, guilt, failure, a character with kind of a reverse Oedipus complex (I don't know if there's a psychological term for when a woman wants to have sex with her father), and an incredibly intricate web of lies that is simultaneously woven and torn apart by every single character. Season 2 toys with the audience's emotions; episode 3 ends with everything being seemingly resolved, but the last episode begins with the audience wondering which innocent characters' lives will be destroyed because of Dexter's actions. This is because, as stated before, season 2 revolves around Dexter's victims being investigated. It's another example of a murder mystery where we want to see what the fake solution will be; we want to see how the facts will point to someone else taking the blame. In the end, someone else does take the blame, and it raises a lot of questions about morality; while an innocent person's life and reputation are forever ruined, is it worth it for Dexter's sister and girlfriend to have their lives and reputations be saved? Ultimately Dexter is not the one we're worried about; we're worried about those who are close to him, and by the end we're wondering if it would be better for Dexter to turn himself in. Season 1 and 2 are very different; while I was incredibly satisfied with the end of season 1, the end of season 2 left me very uneasy. But that's the point. As said before, season 1, which is on its own very complex, looks like a straightforward murder mystery compared to season 2, which is a journey into the human psyche and a brutal look at morality.

But while Dexter is definitely heavily influenced by murder mysteries, it is also a very character-driven drama. In most detective stories, characters fit certain archetypes, and they don't have any purpose in the story other than leading the detective to find out who the killer is. This couldn't be farther from what Dexter is like. Some of my favorite stories are ones where the writers created a bunch of interesting, complex characters and put them all in some situation to see how they would interact with each other. Boogie Nights, The Watchmen, and to a lesser extent The Big Lebowski are all great examples of this type of storytelling, and so is Dexter. While on one level it fits the formula of detective fiction, it, like The Big Lebowski, also heavily revolves around the personal lives of its characters, which are all complicated in one way or another. A couple of my favorite characters are Angel Batista, an honest, kind detective whose good nature sometimes leads him to be taken advantage of by others, and lieutenant Maria LaGuerta, a political machine who craves media attention, but who is also shown to have a sensitive side at times. But my favorite character by far is sergeant James Doakes, a hardass, badass, no bullshit cop who is the only one that senses that Dexter is hiding something dark, since he has his own personal demons as well. As an added bonus, nearly every character on the show is absolutely gorgeous, and the cast is very diverse as well. We have white cops, black cops, Cuban cops, and one Asian American cop, all of whom have equally fucked up personal lives.

One criticism that I've heard about Dexter is that it's completely unrealistic. But who cares? It's TV. Every great show that I can think of (except for maybe The Wire) is completely unrealistic, and that's part of what makes them great. Despite the great writing and philosophical statements, that's all that Dexter really is: fucking great TV. It's full of witty one-liners and double entendres, ridiculously insane plot twists, and a cast of characters who are all sleeping with each other. But Dexter manages to be a little bit more than that as well. If you're in the mood for a great story with lots of great characters that sometimes manages to make you think about big ethical questions but always manages to entertain, then I'll be just one more person who tells everybody that they should watch Dexter.