Greg Sanders

Review: Where the Wild Things Are

I remember the pictures from the book more than I remember the story, so obviously I’m not a purist.  In event, I thought the adaptation was great but at the same time is certainly not for all kids.  That said, I know little about child development, so find some other reviewer if you need specific tips on if this is right for your kid.

There are rather scary bits as well as a heavy dose of psychological realism combined with troubled personality types.  The sugar that helps the dark parts go down is first and foremost appropriate absurdities of childhood combined with Max’s storytelling ability, Jim Henson studios created monsters, and to a lesser extent the neat backdrops.

My one sentence summary would be to take the comic strip Peanuts but merge the real life adults personality-types with the fantasies of the Snoopy oriented strips.  Thus, the joy of childhood oriented trailer is fairly deceptive though cool in its own right.

I’d say catching it in theaters is probably most important for muppet monsters/Dark Crystal fans.  If you care less about that sort of thing, it’s probably okay to catch it on DVD.

Review: Evil Dead, the Musical at the Landless in D.C.

The Evil Dead musical was an amusing little parody of the Sam Remi/Bruce Campbell horror films of that name.  There were also some references to Army of Darkness thrown in, but by and large no scenes from that film.

I hadn’t seen the Evil Dead movies although I am a real Army of Darkness fan.  Seeing them certainly wasn’t necessary, but interest in horror parody is.  So if you haven’t seen Army of Darkness, see that first really.

In any event, there was a good dozen songs or so with original tunes, the tunes sometimes showed up  more than once, but as far as I know they were all original to the musical.  The show had some different people than the original Broadway cast, but from what I’ve listened to on the Amazon page above, I think the singers compared well.  My favorite pieces were all in the second half: All the Men in My Life Keep Getting Killed By Candarian Demons, and the whole Necronomicon dance sequence.  That said, as the title of the last song attests, it’s worth noting that this song parodies the misogyny of some horror flicks more than it subverts it.

Beyond the singing, which to my pleasure was consistently easy to understand, the acting well suited the material and the lead did a good Ash.  The technical direction was definitely limited by the size of the tiny DCAC stage and I’m guessing a lower budget than the Broadway show, but on the whole it was successfully evocative and fun.  On the whole, at $25 and with the inconvenient but pleasant trek to Adams Morgan from Woodly Park Metro I’d recommend this for those excited by the idea of an Evil Dead musical. 

One practical note: there is some samurai film style blood fountains that splash the audience.  If you want to play it safe, you may wish to bring your own tarp.  They sell garbage bags with appropriate holes in them for $1, but if you’re my size those want cover your legs at all.  I used a newspaper for that purpose.

Image take by Laura Darby who had been kind enough to invite me

Quickie review: Demon’s Lexicon

Modern urban fantasy book with an interesting variant on an old staple that I won’t reveal in this review.  There will be an upcoming blog post describing how we got the book signed, but I’ll save that for my wife.

Basic universe setup: there’s a parallel demon universe and people with magical aptitude need to make deals with them if they want real power.  The deals involve sacrificing people to let the demons experience our world, which means the mages are pretty uniformly evil. 

Points of note: it’s a fairly dark book, not so much because of the fair number of evil magicians, but because the protagonists were willing to take fairly extreme measures.  Some of them I wasn’t comfortable with, but I don’t think we’re necessarily supposed to be. 

The magical sub-world was fairly well defined and made a good amount of sense, although the integration with the larger world wasn’t particularly covered.  That said, the failure to work out real world implications of magic tends to be a given in urban fantasy, so I’ll accept that. One oddity though, possession was fairly big in the book and caused rapid deterioration in the subject; however, the fairly logical albeit evil solution of chain possession to save the original victim was never discussed.  Maybe in the sequel.

Resident Evil 5: Follow-up failure

Downloaded the RE5 Demo and so far my main impression has been that I agree with Patrick Klepek that I don’t like the controls at all. (As a side note, I was sad to learn that Klepek was leaving the MTV Multiplayer blog, sounds like budget cuts.  I’ll miss his writing and hope to follow him elsewhere.   Here’s his twitter feed for any other fans out there.)

So far I’ve died a several times on the marketplace scenario and had the game crash twice.  Not the most auspicious beginning.    Part of the problem is probably that I don’t really know the RE4 controls, so I’m starting from scratch here.

I’d remembered to download the demo because the controversy around the game is flaring again.  I do like Coates rejection of the “it’s just a game” defense.  If games can’t handle critiques they don’t merit respect.  Having already critiqued the trailer, I’m withholding further judgment until I can get through the bloody demo.  That said, I do think the addition of the Sheva Alomar character certainly does help some.  It’d help more if both she were playable in single player mode, though at least she is available in co-op.  I do love the rise of co-op gaming even though I don’t tend to have guests over to play shooters with.

That said, even if things are better, I don’t buy that it means the original complaints were overblown.  I stand by my critique of the trailer for one.  For the defense, here’s a L.A. Times article that quotes Karen Dyer, the actress that played Alomar:

"When the clip came out, Sheva wasn't in it because she hadn't been created yet. Once people get to hear the whole story and meet Sheva, I think they'll see that there's nothing racist about it. In the game, she gets together with Chris Redfield to try to help her people. I think it's a balanced portrayal" of black people.

I hope she’s right, but even if she is, the fact that her character wasn’t created yet when the protest broke out shows the utility of complaining.  They may well have planned a local guide character anyways, but the criticism was early enough to have the potential to influence those decisions.  Raising warning flags gives developers the chance to correct course earlier in the design process.  The idea isn’t to score points, it’s to make a positive change.

In the Shadow of the Moon

In the Shadow of the Moon is a superb documentary about the Apollo project.  It features extensive interviews with ten astronauts (of the 24 ones that went to the moon).  They're all impressive and Wit a lot of them I feel I could sit and listen to their stories all day.  Particularly Mike Collins who is the funniest of the group and Alan Bean who often seems the most human.  Also, fun fact, Buzz Aldrin's other nickname is "Mr. Rendezvous" and it isn't because he's known for romantic liaisons.

The film weaves together all the Moon missions and there's a lot of great footage.  I really got a feel for the whole range of the Moon missions including the landing.  The landing was fairly new for me because I have seen Apollo 13 which of course didn't make the landing.  Also, all the footage is original, there's no CGI whatsoever, and that is of course much different than Apollo 13.

I'd recommend this film to any space buffs that want to know a bit more of the human side.  That said, this isn't a drama, it isn't about the families or the supporting engineers, its about the astronauts.  Another side note, not surprisingly these are all white men, there's a bit more diversity in the background shots and the control room though.  Not great, but a bit more than I expected given the time.  I suppose when we go to Mars the astronaut pool will be even more impressive as they'll have more people to draw from.

As a final note, I felt some sense of loss.  What the heck are we doing now that compares to that?  Although now that I've thought about it for an hour or so, I think in a lot of ways the internet is the Moonshot for my generation.  We all have seen it grow those who had the technology to do so have contributed some to its content or structure.  I think it's an accomplishment to be proud of.

That said, the space race will be back, its just hard to say how soon.  I figure the next round will have one of two triggers:

1. The PRC kicks America in the pants by getting to the Moon themselves.
2. Someone, quite possibly one of those entrepreneur burning money on the issue, figures out how to lower the price of breaking orbit by an order of magnitude.