Boston Babblings

Once more into the darkness...

2011-10-29T17:43:00.004-04:00

I think this blog still exists purely for me to post about Sleep No More. It seems to be the only thing that gets me motivated enough to write.

After a road trip in March to see the newest reincarnation of Punchdrunk's Macbeth/Hitchcock nightmare mashup, I sort of figured I was done with it. At that point, I'd seen it four times - three times in Brookline, MA, and once in NYC. I'm not foolish enough to think I'd seen everything - the way that show is put together, you could go every night for a month, and still find something new. But I'd seen a lot, had an amazing experience every time, and even gotten some spectacular solo interactions with the cast - an amazing bonus reserved for just a handful of lucky people every show. I could continue to go back and see more, explore more, but I didn't need to anymore. Plus, especially with the move to New York, it's an expensive habit to form - $80 a ticket minimum, and all the expenses that go with a weekend trip to Manhattan. I love the show, but it seemed like the end.

Then it kept getting extended. Never too far - a couple weeks further every time. I kept an eye on it, because I do love it so much, and I'm thrilled to see it doing well enough to warrant an extended run. When available tickets hit mid-to-late October, my wife and I started discussing how insane Sleep No More would be around Halloween. The show is such a creepy, surreal trip anyway, we could only imagine how over the top they would go if given the excuse.

Then the show got extended past Halloween and into November. Only odd thing was that tickets were blocked off from Wednesday 10/26 to Halloween night this coming Monday. Clearly they had something special planned, and wouldn't it be cool if we could go? But the message on the website was that those tickets were being held for VIP guests on an invitation-only basis, so we figured we were out of luck.

When the email came with our invite and promo code that would allow us to purchase tickets for that week, we barely thought about it. Our wedding anniversary had just passed, so we had a bit of extra money, and before we really discussed it too much, the tickets were bought for Thursday the 27th. We had both already gotten that week off from work - completely unrelated to Sleep No More's schedule; that was just the last week it seemed that we'd be able to get together. Everything sort of fell into place.

Two days later, I still love that show. I will admit to being... disappointed is the wrong word. The show is still incredible. I had an incredible time. I still saw things I've never seen before. The New York show seems to have grown and expanded in the last six months, and really developed past what it was in its early weeks and months. My only regret is that there were so many people.

I feel bad even saying it, because a huge part of me wants as many people to experience this as they possibly can, and also wants Punchdrunk to become a household name - if you look at some of the events they've been doing in Europe, they're moving in the direction of becoming the next Cirque du Soleil, the go-to group for truly fantastic, off-the-wall experiences. But all four previous trips into Sleep No More, across two cities, I always found moments of quiet. Moments where I was alone in the set, able to carefully examine a document, or watch the minutiae of a character's business. There were times when I would be the only person to witness a small scene between characters, because the rest of the audience were having their own adventure elsewhere. There's something truly special about that. And that was much harder this time around. It seemed like there was always a crowd to fight through to see a pivotal scene, or too many people to dodge when the character you're following suddenly breaks into a sprint. It just seemed crowded. Oftentimes, when I came across anything involving a major character, there would already be such a crowd gathered that I would just head off in another direction - there's no way I could get close enough to see anything anyway. I don't know if this was the standard amount of people that attend every night, or if they boosted their capacity for the Halloween week, but it certainly seemed like more people in the space than there had been before. Maybe in March, we just got in before New York figured out what a gem they had in their city.

Again, there's almost shame attached to this. I feel like an idiot who complains when their favorite indie band hits it big - like it's no longer fun when everyone else likes them. I still want everyone who is even remotely interested in this sort of thing to go check out the show, because it's absolutely worth it. My only hedge now is that I might recommend checking them out on a weekday night. It's a bit cheaper (not that the show isn't worth the more expensive weekend tickets), and there may be less of a crowd with you.

I will say this about their Halloween extravaganza - Sleep No More and Punchdrunk can throw one hell of a party. If you happen to have tickets to any of the Halloween week shows (only three left at the time of this post), you're in for a treat, though a pricey one if you're looking for some liquid motivation. The party in the ballroom was a lot of fun, though not quite my scene. I do wish they had made it clear that other parts of the set would be open for less raucous celebration - my group might have stayed a bit longer had that been the case. But if you're looking for an amazing night out in one of the cooler places you'll ever get to party, it's worth it.

Once again, I feel like I'm good with Sleep No More. I've been scouring the internet for months for more news on "Punchdrunk Travel," their next project that was rumored to kick off in September, but I've never found more news. I'm ready for the next thing, and I think I'm cool with not seeing Sleep No More again. Yesterday, I saw a note on Twitter that they had extended to December 30th, with the 31st listed, but not available. I bet they'll throw one hell of a New Year's Eve party.

And if I were to get an invite, I might just change my mind...

A new project...

2011-08-02T20:20:00.002-04:00

Inspired in part by my previous post:

The Near Fall Journal

What Is The Near Fall Journal?

Should be fun!

I Enjoy Pro Wrestling... and So Does My Wife. SWERVE!

2011-07-29T15:57:00.000-04:00

June 7, 2010 was the day my wife began a slow-but-inevitable transformation into a (reluctant) pro wrestling fan.

If I remembered that date off the top of my head, I’d be a much better fan than I am. No, this is why we have Wikipedia. The date is nothing important, but the angle kicked off on WWE’s Monday Night Raw was what caught her eye and caused her to pay a little more attention, give a little more credence to the shows at which she usually just rolled her eyes. My wife claims that she has to fall asleep on the couch for a couple hours before going to bed, or else she won’t be able to get to sleep. So our nightly ritual typically consist of watching something we both care about until she’s about to crash, and then I put on something that I like that she considers background noise – and wrestling very often fit that bill. But that night in June, she was apparently more awake than usual…

I’ve been a pro wrestling fan off and on for most of my life, with a particular upswing in the last couple years – having a DVR made a huge difference in that respect. The WWE’s product has had its ups and downs over the last couple of years, but the past year has seen a couple angles started that showed real promise of opening the concept up to newer audiences – not all superheroes and goofy real-life cartoons. What CM Punk is doing right now on and off WWE TV is a great example – a little more realism, making the whole saga a little more relatable.

On June 7, 2010, Raw seemed to be business as usual – they were in the middle of the dreadful guest host gimmick, and this particular night was “Viewer’s Choice” night, making everything that much worse. (Side note: I’m all for giving fans what they want, but shows like this prove that some people just don’t know what’s good for them). Anytime Morgan was awake while watching wrestling, she typically gave a running commentary of just how goofy it was – not that I can blame her for it. For the first hour and fifty minutes of Raw, it was clear this was not going to be the night to change Morgan’s mind about wrestling.

The John Cena/CM Punk main event had her attention a bit more – Punk’s good for that, even at the tail end of the dying Straight Edge Society gimmick. But just as Raw went into their 11 PM overrun, something happened that even made her sit up and take notice. The debut of Nexus, led by Wade Barrett, was unique and special because it wasn’t something that WWE often allowed people to see on TV. Individual characters were always fair game, including the onscreen version of Vince of McMahon, but taking shots at the company or the product wasn’t something you’d normally see. So when the former NXT participants came down to the ring, decimated the company’s poster boy in John Cena, and then proceeded to tear the ring and ringside area apart… that was new.

One of the most telling points for me was when they tore off the mat to reveal the plywood that makes up the ring surface – I don’t think that’s something that most people realize. With the acceptance that pro wrestling is fake/fixed/planned/etc., I think a lot of people expect that the ring is a giant mattress of some kind to make sure the performers don’t get hurt. So seeing plywood laid on a steel frame was probably an eye opener to some people – my wife included – and if nothing else earned the performers a bit more respect.

The biggest impact from the segment was that it was produced in a very unique way: there was no commentary, and no one on the microphone. The cameras were picking up everything that was going on, but the performers were not playing to the mounted camera side of the ring like they will in a match – most shots had something going on in the background. They involved people who wouldn’t normally get that into the action – ring announcer Justin Roberts, commentators, cameramen and producers, referees. And the icing on the cake – the crowd shots. Starting with the attack on Cena, but escalating as Nexus tore down the set, you could tell that people in the crowd weren’t really sure what was going on, but they knew this was not a normal Raw event they were at.

The thing about most pro wrestling fans that I’ve met, myself included, is that we know it’s fixed. And the WWE has stopped trying to sell it as a legitimate sport, branding themselves “sports entertainment.” But that doesn’t mean it can’t be enjoyed – did knowing that Lost was fiction and not a documentary get in the way of people liking the show? The typical question I’ve heard is that people would rather watch MMA or boxing because “at least that’s real.” And if that’s what you’re into, enjoy it. I personally don’t really like people getting the crap beaten out of them when it’s “real.” I also enjoy the storytelling aspect of wrestling. Granted, there have been a lot – A LOT – of crap stories over the years, but every so often they find one that hits home, reenergizes the fan base, and maybe even grabs them some new fans.

Common consensus is that WWE dropped the ball with the Nexus storyline – it jumped the shark right around the time that Cena was “fired,” because that stretches the line of plausibility just a little too much. Now just over a year since their debut, Nexus has basically disbanded, and included only one of the original members of the group at the time of its demise. WWE missed a huge opportunity to launch Wade Barrett, the original mouthpiece of the group, into superstardom. Even the addition of the CM Punk could only stretch out the inevitable demise, and the group’s final death knell came from Punk picking up his much more exciting current storyline. But the promise of what WWE put together on that night made it the most exciting storyline they’d had in years. It came out of nowhere, immediately thrust eight brand new talents into the spotlight (something WWE has always been extremely hesitant to do with new talent), and took a direction that no fans could have expected. That first night – and honestly, most of the first couple months – had fantastic execution that just fell apart by the end.

After the Nexus angle petered out, my wife continued a quiet transformation. She was awake a bit longer into Raw. She’d make comments about performers she liked watching – Randy Orton, Kofi Kingston, CM Punk. I could show her clips of ridiculous spots from matches (the Randy Orton-Evan Bourne RKO clip was a personal favorite), and she appreciated them in a way I don’t think she had considered before. And then came the most recent turning point, one month ago when CM Punk sat down on the entrance ramp in Las Vegas and delivered one of the best promos anyone has ever given. While it’s completely awesome in its own right, it shared a bit with the Nexus angle in that it was completely unexpected, unlike anything the company had done recently, and carried a much more realistic tone than most other storylines. For the first time, she wanted to see what happened next. She wanted to watch Raw the next week. We even threw around the idea of ordering the Money In The Bank pay per view - but really, WWE? $55? Really?

The first step is admitting you have a problem.

Time will tell how the current Punk angle plays out, or if what comes next will hold her interest, but I think it speaks well of the current state of the WWE product that they were able to hook a new fan who prior to the new direction had no real interest whatsoever. I’m sure that she’s not the only one, either.

On a recent episode of ESPN’s BS Report with Bill Simmons, CM Punk talked about the current state of pro wrestling: “A lot of people are embarrassed about pro wrestling. I don’t think anybody needs to be. My goal is to make this shit cool again.” I admit to being one of those people, but seriously, what’s the point? Anyone who is going to nitpick your interests and hobbies surely has one of their own equally deserving. So well done, CM Punk. I don’t know if wrestling can once again be classified as “cool” yet, but you once again have my outward support.

Returning to an Incredible Nightmare

2011-01-16T14:56:00.001-05:00

In the course of one month in 2009, I posted twice about the same piece of theater, ART & Punchdrunk's Sleep No More. I actually had a third piece almost ready to go, but after re-reading it, I realized I didn't really have anything new to say, outside of "people who come here to disrupt the performance suck," and never posted it. If you've had any real world contact with me in the past year and change, there's a good chance we've spoken about it. I admit, I was somewhat obsessed. Those two posts can tell you the long story of why, but the short version is that the show got me more involved and excited about a theatrical performance than anything else I'd ever seen or experienced. It was just. That. Good. And like many people, I was disappointed to think that I might never get to experience Sleep No More again - it was a limited run, good things come and go. I get that. It's also part of what makes it so special.

Well, to hell with that. I'm doing it again: Sleep No More NYC

Running for just 6 weeks (March 7th - April 16th) in NYC's Chelsea neighborhood, this time Punchdrunk is taking over... I'm not really sure exactly. It looks like it's a fairly general retail/warehouse space. From what I can tell, part of the building has been used to host a seasonal haunted house called Blood Manor New York for the last couple years; another piece of it used to be an upscale nightclub; still another was recently a Sprint retail location. I have no way of knowing how much of the building they'll be using until the show opens, but after my experience in Brookline, I have complete faith in Punchdrunk to make the absolute most of whatever space they have.

The website is branded for "The McKittrick Hotel," which to save people the Google search (cause I already did it!) is the name of a hotel in Hitchcock's Vertigo, where one of the main characters "vanishes" and loses the detective tailing her. From what I can tell (having never seen Vertigo... gonna take care of that shortly), it's not a major scene in the film, but Punchdrunk is using that element of disappearance to set the stage for their incredibly unique telling of Macbeth. Here's hoping they're able to make it as atmospheric and incredible as the transformed Lincoln School in Brookline. That's actually one of the reasons I'm so excited - the territory is familiar, but the setting isn't. With the design and atmosphere being such an integral part of the show, I can't wait to see what new spin Punchdrunk can put on the show I loved so much.

I've already got my tickets booked - for a 11 PM entry, no less - MIDNIGHT MACBETH NIGHTMARE! - and will be there with full anticipation with my wife and a pair of cousins. If you are in or can get to the NYC area anytime during the run, I highly recommend it. It's one of the most remarkable experiences I've ever had, and while it's certainly not for everyone, if you let yourself buy into their premise and presentation, it will push you, challenge you and thrill you in a way not many other forms of entertainment can. Highly, HIGHLY recommended.

Johnny Baseball

2010-06-04T14:07:00.002-04:00

American Repertory Theatre, Cambridge, MA

6/2/10

I didn’t hate it until really close to the end. So I guess that’s saying something.

Let’s get one thing really, really clear first. I am the polar opposite of the target audience for this show. I don’t like musicals. Big strike one there. I’m also a pretty serious Red Sox fan – I’d wager that I know the history better than the average fan, which puts ART in jeopardy of pissing me off if they get too cute with the artistic license. So I had a sneaking suspicion I was going to be cranky when the final curtain fell on this one.

So the fact that the first four-fifths of this was mostly inoffensive to me is fairly high praise, considering the circumstances, even if I ended up walking out with an awful taste in my mouth thanks to the last 20 or 25 minutes.

Another caveat – before I go on the inevitable rant about what I hated so thoroughly near the end, I want to stress that I think the vast majority of people who would even consider going to this would probably get a kick out of it. The music is more fun than not, all of the performances were strong (more on that later), the production elements are really nicely designed and put together really well. 100% of my issues with the show fall in the lap of the writers, and not any of the other countless artists and staff involved in the production. I firmly believe that there are a lot of people who will connect with this show in a different way than I did, not be bothered at all by it, and have a wonderful time. In fact, that’s definitely the impression I got from some other guests at the post-show opening night gala.

But where theatre is an entirely subjective experience, I can’t speak for those who had a pleasant time from open to close. I can only speak for me, and talk about my experience. And my experience as a historically-informed Red Sox fan found a script that slowly deteriorated over the course of two hours until finally, in two connected moments, it spat on the long, storied, damn-near-mythologized history of this team. A history that is revered by the team’s fans and some of its players, current and from years past. A history that has undoubtedly made a red “B” in blue trim one of the most recognizable entertainment symbols from the past century. All I could think about as I walked out of ART last night was that the writers of Johnny Baseball, one a member of Red Sox Nation himself, had no respect for the team, its fans, or the specific players who gave us the most exciting, rewarding sports moment of the last 90 years.

Johnny Baseball follows Johnny O’Brien (Colin Donnell), an orphaned rookie pitcher with a helluva fastball who works his way up to the Boston Red Sox during Babe Ruth’s (Burke Moses) final season with the team in 1919. Ruth takes the fellow orphan under his wing, and introduces him to Daisy Wyatt (Stephanie Umoh), a young African-American jazz singer just finding her way in Boston. Sparks fly, of course, and as Johnny’s career takes off and his romance with Daisy deepens, the two of them must confront the realities of race relations in the early 20^th century.

Their story is told through an old African-American man, who is sharing it with a young Red Sox fan. They also happen to be sitting in the Fenway Park bleachers during Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS against the Yankees. Eventually, the stories merge, and the audience sees a what-if scenario of the progression of the fabled Curse of the Bambino.

According to ART’s website, Johnny Baseball “traces the origin of the Curse to a collision of three orphaned souls… these three lives contain both the reason for the Curse and the secret to its end of the bat of Big Papi in 2004.” When you’re dealing with a mythos like the Curse of the Bambino, of course everyone is entitled to their opinion. But I have a very hard time swallowing that opinion when it relies on a very selective list of conceits that don’t really jibe with the legitimate history of the Red Sox. Without going into any details of the surprises and reveals throughout the play, the authors (Richard Dresser, Robert Reale & Willie Reale) sort of mangle some of the important aspects of the story. Their curse starts – and it has a very clear, active “start” – in 1948. But if you’re really going to play with this particular story, and you decide to bump the generally accepted start date of The Curse by nearly 30 years, you damn sure better give a good reason why the Red Sox, the greatest team in the first 15 years of the modern era (1903-1918), failed miserably for the next thirty years… and then got cursed. Why should I believe that 1948-2004 was a vindictive (if not undeserved) curse placed on the team, but 1919-1947 was just really bad management? To me, that just seems sloppy.

I’m also not at all pleased with the implication of how the curse was lifted. The writers drops two clear, contrived and cheesy instances of deus ex machina onto the end of the play – watching the otherwise-beautiful lighting and set flicker and flash as the hex was placed made me want to scream – and instead of being at all enlightening, or even all that interestingSox Nation finally got satisfaction after 86 years of heartbreak because one selfish bastard decided he’d punished people enough, and recanted his curse at the perfectly convenient moment.

The issue is that in the same two hours that the play is touting baseball’s place in American history, it’s also implying that the game itself has no actual impact or importance on its own – it’s merely a social mirror to what’s going on in the country as a whole, vulnerable to the whims of those involved in it. It’s a very contradictory when compared with the group sitting in the bleachers, watching this infamous game, and all of the stock they’re placing on it. In one song, they all plead with God for “One More Run,” because that’s clearly something important enough to them to make such a high request. In another, “Do or Die,” a couple’s entire relationship is dependent on the outcome of Boston’s season. Do these two contradictory messages really belong in the same show? If the point is to show the pointlessness of fans placing such importance on inconsequential games, then sure. But that’s not very generous to the fans you’re likely trying to lure into the theater to watch the show.

Of course those are overblown examples – of course they are, this is musical theatre. But you’ve got one hand setting up the sanctity and importance of baseball and this team for so many people over many generations, while at the same time the other hand is showing just how meaningless the entire sport is – the 2004 team, heroes to unexaggerated millions, don’t even factor in. They were just in the right place at the right time.

Talking with my fiancée after the show, she was a little amused (but not at all surprised) by my fury, and came up with a pretty good reason why I was mad. “It’s blasphemy!” she said. And that’s partially right. I am pretty well wrapped up in this team, and the ups and downs of their seasons, and have been for the better part of 15 years (I know, I’m a rookie compared to some of the long-suffering fans. That’s still three-fifths of my lifetime, so cut me a little slack). So to have someone twist this mythology in this way certainly pisses me off on a personal level, but that’s not the bulk of it. Being angry about blasphemy is being angry because someone disagrees and has the gall to talk about it in front of you. Much more than that, I’m angry because in writing what was disguised as a love letter to the game, these guys ended up disrespecting it, disrespecting the Boston Red Sox, specifically the 2004 team, and every player who made that historic World Series title possible. And that’s infuriating to me.

Dismissing the accomplishments of that team as a happy coincidence completely undermines the game and the place that baseball or any other athletic competition holds in our society. Admittedly, that place might be a little higher than it ought to be at times (BEAT LA!), but this is a Trojan horse into the minds of the fans who revel in those sports and pastimes.

I don’t want to end this on that sour a note, so let me just say that until the writing took that very unfortunate turn, I was fairly amused for the first good chunk of the play. First off, the set is gorgeous, featuring a very versatile set of Fenway bleachers, set on casters and able to be rearranged into different configurations. It allows for a nice variety of levels and dimensions without getting repetitive, even though you spend a good amount of time looking at different ballparks. I’m also pretty sure ART rebuilt their entire deck and stage to accommodate the show, pulling out what would have been considered “orchestra” seating to create side sections, performing the show on a thrust that gives much more of a ballpark feel. Even the light grids above those sections are reminiscent of the field lights at Fenway. Nicely done. There’s also a fantastic moment when Ruth hits a home run during a game – a combination of lighting, blocking and performance that perfectly and hilariously imitates film from the time period. Pretty sure I laughed louder than anyone else in the room on that one.

The performances are quite good, as well, in particular from Johnny “Baseball” O’Brien himself. Colin Donnell finds nice moments throughout the play to highlight Johnny’s growth. He hits small-time pitcher well; his starstruck introduction to Babe Ruth is hilarious; he picks up an appropriate swagger as his stock rises, and then finds a wonderfully contrasting darkness and bitterness as an older Johnny lives out the rest of his life wondering what could have been. It’s a really nice progression that Donnell handles with ease.

I wish I could say the same about the romantic plotline, but I don’t think it’s a good thing when you view the female lead and love interest as an extraneous character. The story seemed stunted, and the actual courtship between Johnny and Daisy felt condensed into about half of the amount of time it needed to have to really carry any weight. You only see two or three meetings between the two of them, and none of them really hold the significance to generate the impact the relationship is supposed to have later in the play. I think this weakness also led to some of the less-inspired directing in the show –when given nothing significant to portray emotionally, the scenes fall flat and stretch too long, often ending up with Daisy staring off into space longingly while Johnny stares longingly at the back of her head. Elsewhere, Diane Paulus’s directing is sharp and fun, highlighted by a raucous scene in a Boston brothel where all ten or twelve characters onstage never run out of things to do. Despite the writing’s shortcomings, Stephanie Umoh is charming and sweet as Daisy, and her voice will blow the roof off that theater for the entire run of the show. The scenes featuring Daisy as a jazz singer, though inconsequential to the show as a whole, really do a great job featuring Umoh’s talent.

The show’s ensemble is equally strong, with standouts in Burke Moses, who spends most of his onstage time playing Babe Ruth, and Jeff Brooks, who plays a collection of older characters including early Sox catcher Wally Schang and controversial (yet legendary) Sox owner Tom Yawkey. An honorable mention also goes to Alan H. Green, whose short turn as a certain legendary player produces a lot of laughs and the best song of the show. The modern-day crowd scenes portray some unwelcome but not uncommon (and, admittedly, not entirely untrue) stereotypes about Boston fans, but they also produce some of the most enjoyable songs in the show. The opening number “Eighty-Six Years” is catchy, goofy fun, and also lays out the history for those who might not be intimately familiar with it.

I’ll say it again: there’s a lot to like here, and maybe I’m being petty by letting those two moments ruin the entire experience. But those two moments are crucial to the plot, and in my mind forces all of the show’s credibility to come crashing down. They ruined an otherwise enjoyable night at the theater for me, and one that obviously still has me fuming a day and a half later. If you don’t care as much about the history as I do – and there’s no reason you ought to – forget the entire middle section of this review and go enjoy a peppy, sweet musical with the Red Sox as a backdrop.

But you most certainly will not see me there again.

Why the “Online Pass” in Videogames is a Terrible, Terrible Idea

2010-05-24T17:26:00.004-04:00

Fitting that this will be the first post after PAX East.

There’s been a couple of announcements recently that are pointing toward an alarming trend. EA announced last week that starting with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2011, all EA sports games would ship with a code inside the box that grants access to the “Online Pass” for that game. Once the user entered that code, they’d have access to some premium downloadable or online content that would be released by the publisher.

Oh right, and they could play online multiplayer.

No big deal, right? It’s in the box, everyone gets one when they buy a (new) copy of the game. Oh, you bought a used copy from Gamestop, Glyde or Amazon? No code? Well, you can buy a code for $10. Everyone’s happy!

I disagree.

Here’s a little story. The first videogame I remember buying for myself was a tiny little game called Half-Life, which came out in 1998. If you’ve played videogames at all in the last decade, you probably know what Half-Life is, and you know what it (and publisher Valve Software) has become. I bought Half-Life cause it looked cool. I was 14. I was correct. It was cool. One of the best things about Half-Life was the multiplayer system. It worked out of the box better than any other I’d seen, and probably beats most systems to come out since. Further proof of that is that Valve hasn’t really changed their matchmaking system since then. It just worked, it worked well, and that’s all there is to it.

It was also free.

Well, as free as something can be when it’s part of a $40 purchase. Bottom line is that once I got the game, so long as I had an internet connection, I was good to go. All the features of the game were there, unlocked and ready to go. I bought Half-Life new, but I bet it would have worked that way if I’d gone into Gamestop or EB Games and bought a used copy as well.

Fast forward to 2010, and that system – one that you pay one price for a product, and that product belongs to you – seems to be falling apart a little. EA’s announcement; THQ announced the same thing for UFC Undisputed 2010; Ubisoft, already making friends for their restrictive PC DRM that forces you to be connected to the internet while you play Assassin’s Creed II (if your connection to their DRM-approval server drops, you get booted out of the game), is talking about their own online pass program.

All of these – every single one – is a way to squeeze a bit more money out of your customer base. And in an industry where the price of a game has jumped by $10 with every new console generation, that’s not cool.

I bought a used copy of Mass Effect 2 through glyde.com. I knew when I bought a used copy that I wasn’t going to have access to the Cerberus Network, EA’s built-in news feed, without coughing up some more money. That was a little disappointing, because I knew they would be sending out some free content to subscribers, running some contests and whatnot, but that’s not why I bought the game. I bought it to play Mass Effect 2, in its entirety, as shipped, and I could do that without the Cerberus Network. Am I missing anything by not having that access? Maybe. But I bet if they put out something mind-blowing, I’m going to hear about it, and that might be enough to get me to cough up ten more dollars.

EA’s Online Pass and other similar programs handicap used games from the very start, especially when you’re talking about sports games. I buy sports games to play single-player franchise modes, but I’m in the minority – most people buy sports games to play online with their friends. So now, if someone’s trying to save a few bucks by buying a game used, they can’t use a feature that has been part of the gaming industry since the late 70s?

How do you get this message to parents buying the next Madden game for their kid, and see this used copy over here, which looks exactly the same as the one over there, only this one is five bucks less? They bring it home, the kid pops it in, and suddenly he’s disappointed with a gift because he can’t get online. In fact, in order to get online, the game is now going to cost more than the new copy.

I started getting a little worried a couple months ago, because there was (and still is) a growing trend of games that are offering release-date DLC. If you have this extra content ready for the day the game is released, why isn’t it just on the disc, part of the game? At least a good number of these publishers have the common sense and decency to make release-date DLC free. But just like online pass programs, what it points to is a new fragmenting of content. It’s the ugly stepsister of the microtransaction model that Facebook games are making enormous right now. Why package everything into a game – every feature, every outfit, every mission, every team, etc – when you can put the bare minimum in and then charge a little extra for everything else?!? IT’S GENIUS! SELL PARTIAL GAMES FOR FULL RETAIL PRICE, AND THEN STUFF WALLETS EVEN MORE WHEN PEOPLE COME LOOKING FOR THE REST OF THE GAMES!

I understand the copyright argument, I do. And I know game-related piracy have made the gaming community a little more difficult to trust. But this isn’t the way to regain that trust. Remember, EA/THQ/Ubisoft, you’re the big scary company, and we’re the tiny little gamers. I don’t think it’s unfair to say that you ought to be the ones taking the first step.

There are ways to convince us to buy new games that don’t involve punishing us when we don’t do it. And you’re already doing them! When I preordered Red Dead Redemption on Amazon last week, there was a promotion where Amazon would send me a code that would be redeemed in game that would give me a set of golden guns that only Amazon customers would get. I know Gamestop had a similar promotion. A reward for buying new? Cool!

It’s value-adding for loyalty, not restriction for frugality. The issue a lot of publishers have (though you’ll never hear them say it) is that they get a cut of every new game sold through the game retailers. Not true for every used game. They see none of that cash. And Gamestop puts out some pretty nice numbers for their used game sales. Can you blame them for wanting a piece of that action? But if the problem is that the retailers are selling your products without giving you a cut, it seems to me that that is something you might want to work out with the resellers, not take out on your customers.

Besides, even if the publishers aren’t seeing money from the used game transactions, it’s still potentially very helpful to them. After I bought my 360, I bought a used copy of Assassin’s Creed from Gamestop. Ubisoft saw none of that money. But you know what I did a year later? I walked into Best Buy and bought Assassin’s Creed II the day it came out. Cause the first game had made me a fan. By punishing used game buyers, you’re potentially stunting your fanbase growth. If the kid who buys Madden 11 used can’t play online, and loses interest in the game because he doesn’t want to spend the ten extra bucks for a basic feature, how likely is he going to be to pick up a new copy of Madden 12? Or what if that same kid decides he doesn’t mind being without multiplayer, and decides to buy Madden 12 used as well, because he doesn’t need that feature that has suddenly become an extra, not a basic reason to buy the game.

Bottom line, I’m concerned about the idea of breaking games into pay-by-the-feature. If that were going to go the way of paying $40 for a game with no multiplayer, and $60 for the full game, that’s fine. But it won’t. It will keep games at $60, and then another $10 for multiplayer. It’s a slippery slope, and one I’d rather the industry not start heading down.

PS - another excellent side note raised by the guys over at IGN Game Scoop is that if you own an Xbox 360, you may very well already pay a premium for online contest in the form of Xbox Live. I know it's different companies, and technically a different service, but that feels an awful lot like double-dipping to me.

PAX East Tomorrow

2010-03-27T21:44:00.000-04:00

For those of you interested in that sort of thing... you'll note a new box over on the right there. I'm spending the day at PAX East tomorrow, so I've set up a little photo depository. I can't promise a ton of pictures, or that any of them will be any good, but if you're not at the show and you want to see what I'm looking at, take a peek over there.

Becky Shaw @ Huntington Theatre Company

2010-03-19T14:24:00.002-04:00

Becky Shaw by Gina Gionfriddo

Directed by Peter DuBois

Seen Friday, 3/12 @ Huntington’s BU Theatre Mainstage

Becky Shaw is funny. In a really, really mean way. Which of course makes it worlds funnier than it would be if it were nice. This is about the least politically correct play I’ve seen in a long time, and that’s entirely to the benefit of the play. If you decide to write a mean-spirited comedy, you have two choices: you can either play the cruelty for a bit and then allow your characters some revelation that forces them to change their ways, or you can commit to it and… for lack of a better term (cause Tropic Thunder introduced the BEST EVER term), go “full retard” and keep your characters as mean-spirited as any ever written in entertainment. Gina Gionfriddo is committed, and for that, I thank her.

That’s not to say that the characters aren’t likable. Far from, actually. Walking out of the show, my fiancée and I both agreed that Max (Seth Fisher) was by far the most abhorrent character in the show, and yet we both loved him. He says awful things. By most people’s definition, he does some awful things. But he’s just like anyone else (OK, he’s just like me) except he’s got no filter. He says what he thinks, no matter who those comments might end up hurting. It may make him look like an awful person, but even that’s not exactly black and white, because he is fiercely loyal and dedicated to the Slater family, no matter what. He’s certainly not the nicest person in the world, but does he really have to be? He knows what is important to him, and fights for it. I don’t think anyone can fault him for that.

The story starts out in a New York City hotel room, where Max has brought mother and daughter Susan (Maureen Anderman) and Suzanna Slater (Keira Naughton) together to discuss the family’s finances following the passing of the family patriarch. Apparently Suzanna’s dad wasn’t quite the businessman everyone thought him to be, especially in his later years, and now the family is more or less broke. That sets up both ladies for a bit of culture shock as they need to move away from the privileged life they had previously led. Susan gets by with her new twentysomething boytoy Lester (whom we never see), while Suzanna – much more affected by her father’s death – takes comfort, at least for one night, with Max. Max is as close to being family as one can be without blood or marriage, but that doesn’t stop them from distracting themselves from the financial disaster the Slaters are facing.

Fast forward a bit, and we find Suzanna married to someone who is not Max – a sweet guy named Andrew (Eli James) that she met on a group ski trip. Four months and a quickie wedding in Vegas, and the happy couple are now living in suburban Rhode Island and just barely making ends meet. Suzanna thinks it’d be a good idea to set up Max with a girl from Andrew’s office, so a double-date is planned and Max arrives to dryly deride everything about Suzanna’s now-“pedestrian” life. Enter Andrew’s coworker, the sweet, apparently-naïve Rhode Island girl who gives the play its name. Saying Max and Becky hit it off would be… inaccurate at best, but they end up heading out on their own for what turns out to be the worst. First date. Ever. From there, we get to watch as friendships, marriages and all thresholds of sanity are tested in every which way, and along the way no one is spared from being the butt of a brutal joke.

And it works so well. The jokes, particularly the ones at Becky’s expense, are well-executed and perfectly timed (and, by the end, REALLY well-deserved). In fact, the cast as a whole has a really good rhythm going. Max and Suzanna in particular work exceedingly well together. There’s a perfect mix of familial, platonic love and blatant attraction, and the history there is made clear enough from the beginning of the show that the combination never tips into creepy territory. These are best friends who will always be best friends, but even that can’t stop Max from displaying his clear adoration of Suzanna. He’s protective of her and her family to a fault, especially where it concerns her husband, but that’s a shield that doesn’t apply to him. He will often dump all over Suzanna and her decisions, always in hilarious fashion. Fisher and Naughton hit their marks just right and sell everything about their relationship with a tone that allows the audience to appreciate and relate to that particular brand of love, even as Max says something awful about Suzanna’s life choices. Though it may not seem so at first, this story is about the two of them and how they grew up together, with the ultimate lesson being that sometimes you need to make a tough choice in order to point your life in the right direction, even if that direction moves you into territory that isn’t as comfortable or as safe as the way you’ve lived in the past.

The rest of the cast is equally fun. Anderman doesn’t get nearly as much stage time as the others, but she makes every moment worthwhile, particularly when discussing her late husband and his alleged indiscretions. It’s a brutal take on a high-society woman who took a tough fall but has thus far refused to acknowledge it ever happened. In parts she reminded me of Martha Rodgers on ABC’s “Castle,” which is a good thing – just the right mixture of upper-class grace (even if the legitimacy is questionable) and a biting tongue that spares no one in her life. James’s Andrew initially comes off as the weakest of the bunch, but you quickly learn that it’s not an issue of performance, but the result of a deeply flawed and naïve character who’s wishy-washy because he doesn’t really have any idea what he wants in life. For better or worse, he’s stuck with Suzanna, and we get to watch him work out if that’s really what is best for him in the long run.

And then there’s Becky Shaw. She doesn’t really come into her own and show all the cards in her hand until into the second act, when she meets up with Max for the first time since their disastrous date – a meeting that she seems to need, but Max wants absolutely no part of. Wendy Hoopes puts Becky through a transformation so brilliant, so devious and so… mean that for the first couple minutes it seems out of character, only because her persona in the first act was so beautifully sincere and believable. But once you figure which personality is really Becky, it makes the whole change so rewarding, and suddenly turns Becky not only into a fascinating character to watch but also into a very worthy foil for Max, and in the final scene leads to some of the most hilarious interactions I’ve seen onstage in a long time. It doesn’t matter how you look at it… one way or another there is one constant about Becky Shaw: the bitch is crazy, and the show is better because of it.

What I found interesting and unique about the script is how we come to realize Becky is nuts. On face value, the show isn’t all that unique – it’s a couple different standard “slice of life” stories wrapped into one package – but the presentation is the difference. Where a lot of other plays of the type do most of their communication through open discussion of feelings and emotional processes, Becky Shaw says a lot more through everyday marital arguments and family quibbles. In fact, the people who are much more verbally open emotionally are at best seen as weak (Andrew) and at worst called (and proven to be) completely freakin’ insane (Becky herself). Whether or not it was Gionfriddo’s intention, the derision of a character like Becky Shaw provided me with a nice little piece of theatrical parody which made her character progression all the more enjoyable. Even independent of Becky, scattered throughout the show are a couple beginnings of emotional diatribes and stereotypic overshares that are swiftly mocked as ridiculous. Naturally, most of the mocking comes from Max, ironically the only character who could probably use a proper examining of his feelings).

The technical aspects of the show are extremely well-managed, if not groundbreaking. Peter DuBois’s directing is nice and relaxed; nothing ever felt forced or seemed to get in the way of the very conversational dialogue style the cast managed so well. The sets were nicely functional, and did well to distinguish between the personalities in the show (see Andrew & Suzanna’s Rhode Island apartment vs. Susan’s Floridian sitting room). One piece that did stand out nicely was the music choices, pretty much used only during scene changes, but the sound nicely matched the modern, urbanite style some of the characters so desperately clung to.

Ultimately, though, the show is held together wonderfully by the cast and the writing. Gionfriddo’s got a pretty damn funny show, and on the nose delivery from the entire ensemble makes it a pleasure to watch. It’s maybe not for the faint of heart – these are “real people” who use real language (many words have four letters), which has never bothered me, but I was happy to find myself giggling along with a good portion of the audience, many who looked to me to be prime examples of the Huntington’s subscriber base (twice my age, and probably twice my income to match). Either the crowds in Boston’s traditional theater scene are loosening up a little bit, or Becky Shaw is just a damn funny show no matter who you are; I know the latter is true, but I’ll hold out some hope for the theatergoing regulars as well.

Paradise Lost

2010-03-14T13:04:00.006-04:00

Paradise Lost by Clifford Odets

Directed by Daniel Fish

Seen 3/5/10 at American Repertory Theatre, Loeb Drama Center

There’s nothing wrong with ART’s production of Paradise Lost. It hits all the points it tries to hit, and very easily draws the intended parallels between the 1930s that Clifford Odets writes about and today. It’s also not particularly difficult to imagine a family today having struggles and setbacks of the Gordons; you hear about them in every human interest story on the nightly news, or any time a politician needs a story about “Main Street.” It’s all very believable, all very timely. And all that might even work against the production, because by the time the curtain falls for the final time, it just might not be that interesting to watch anymore.

The story revolves around the Gordon family: Leo (David Chandler), who runs a handbag manufacturing business with a business partner; his wife Clara (Sally Wingert), a driven matriarch who very clearly runs the family; their older son Ben (Hale Appleman), a former Olympic runner who hasn’t really found his place post-Olympics; their daughter Pearl (Therese Plaehn), a quiet piano prodigy; and their younger son Julie (T. Ryder Smith), a financial superstar who has become sickly for reasons unknown. Coming in and out of their lives are an assortment of neighborhood characters that are vague enough to be found anywhere, but specific enough that the audience can point to any of them and say, “I know that guy!” Through three acts we watch Leo’s business spiral, Julie’s health get worse, Ben deal with an uncertain future, and Clara fight to hold everyone together and survive as a family. It’s a pretty stereotypic post-Great Depression story that has gained new relevance in light of the world's recent economic issues.

If I had to choose, I think I’d have to place blame on some design and directorial choices, and maybe on myself for believing too much hype about the director. Director Daniel Fish has a reputation for doing some crazy things, but I feel like that drive only made it about halfway through the production. The design is fairly abstract, and at face value pretty cool. One of the best elements is the use of video projected onto the backdrop behind the performers. Sometimes it’s used for atmospheric effect – the entire cast starts the show by watching the end of a movie together – but most of the time it’s used with live video to give the audience a different perspective on the stage action. That’s especially beneficial because a good deal of the action in Acts I and II take place significantly higher than the audience if you’re seated at floor level, as I was. It’s useful to get a better view of what’s going on off on stage left when the actors themselves are obscured by the dining room table. There’s a particularly good use in Act II as things start to fall apart for Leo Gordon and his business partner. Without spoiling anything, Leo’s partner introduces him to someone who can potentially “fix” their business in a particularly insidious way. The fixer is played by T. Ryder Smith, who also happens to play Leo’s son Julie, but there’s a nice negative filter used on the projected video that allows Smith to portray a much more treacherous nature that he had on his own as Julie, which furthered the distinction between the characters and added to the treacherous atmosphere of the scene.

Beyond that, though, a lot of the technical elements fell a little flat for me. At seemingly random times throughout the play, characters would pick up wireless microphones and use them for dialogue. There are some times when it was very helpful – again with the moments when you couldn’t quite see what was going on over near the wings or upstage – but many times they were used when actors were front and center, and their dialogue didn’t really strike me as needing to be accentuated in that way. It’s very possible I missed something, but it just didn’t work for me.

It also struck me as odd that Fish had all of these out of the box technical elements at work, but his staging itself was very straightforward. There are some seemingly clunky blocking decisions - characters staying onstage long after they should have left, and it isn't clear if their physical presence places them in the scene, or if they are there representing something more abstract. Again, it just doesn't quite mesh with the otherwise relatively straightforward staging. Again, there’s nothing wrong with traditional blocking combined with abstract design, but it seemed to me to draw more attention to what was out of place – the design – than it drew to the story being told. The story is very timely, so one would think you’d want the focus there. It almost seemed as if the ability of the story to draw relevant parallels was taken for granted, and so the creative focus moved elsewhere, but all it did was draw attention off the story and performances, which should have been the stars of the show.

And if you’re paying attention, there are some shining stars here. Clara Gordon, Leo’s wife, is brilliantly portrayed by Sally Wingert. Her performance is very engaging, but it’s also a credit to Odets as well; this is by all definition a modern woman in the 1930s script, something Wingert accentuates with a ferocity that no one else on stage can match. She’s got the independent, speak-her-mind attitude of a flapper out of the ‘20s mixed with an undying dedication to her family that truly convinces the audience that if anyone can keep a family together in light of all the crap thrown at the Gordons, it’s Clara.

Also of note is Karl Bury as Kewpie, Ben Gordon’s best friend who turns out to be not so good for him. Bury has a history on Showtime’s “Brotherhood” and HBO’s “The Sopranos,” both of which he channels for Kewpie’s small-time con personality. He strikes a good balance of clearly being terrible for Ben and this family, but also clearly caring about them. It’s a tough note to hit to put someone you claim as your best friend directly in harm’s way without degrading the friendship to nothing, but Bury does it well, and his guilt in the final act over what happens to Ben is a genuine as it is well-deserved.

Leo’s business partner Sam Katz (portrayed by Jonathan Epstein) and his wife Bertha (Adrianne Krstansky) also rise to distinction thanks to a particularly potent breakdown in the second act. It struck me through the first act that Sam was probably in the most “real” situation in the show, trying to keep Leo’s floundering business afloat, but once you hit the end of the second act you realize that Sam is on much more unstable footing than the Gordon family; the Katz family spiral is much more accelerated and precipitous than the Gordon family’s, and the Katz demise, while in less focus, has as strong an impact as the main story.

The rest of the cast is a little more muddled, though no one is out of place. I’m not sure if the issue lies in performance or writing. At various points throughout the play everyone is given their moment of focus, but there’s such an overwhelming malaise that hangs over the script that it takes a spectacular performance to break through that and be noticed.

The malaise is not misplaced – both the period of the setting and the modern time it alludes to deserve a melancholic attitude. And hope does fight through in the end – once again in the hands of Wingert’s Clara, who stubbornly (in a good way) INSISTS on maintaining her family’s pride, however damaged by tragedy and circumstance it might be. There’s no doubt why ART and Fish chose to preset Paradise Lost now in 2010, but some weakly-written characters and questionable design choices hold it back from being the poignant commentary it might otherwise be.

A noble experiment...

2010-01-16T21:26:00.003-05:00

In yet another effort to reinvigorate this blog and give some direction to my Netflix queue, I'm gonna give something a shot.

Every Best Picture winner. In order. Mostly.

I'm not gonna set a bunch of parameters on this like a deadline or
anything like that, cause there's a damn good chance I'd never hit it. There's a damn good chance I'll never finish this. But I was looking over the list of winners of the past, I realized how few of them I've seen. Of the 81 movies that have received the award, I've seen 23 of them - 28%, which is a relatively acceptable percentage, but I know I can do better. Also, considering only 8 of the ones I've seen were released prior to me being born, I have much more significant coverage in the last 25 years than I do in the first 56 years of the award's existence.

This presents some challenges for me. One thing I am committing to doing is watching the ones I've seen again. That'll be great in some cases (On the Waterfront, Schindler's List, Shakespeare in Love), and painfully difficult in others (Crash, Amadeus), but I'm gonna do it as a way to give those movies that I saw a long time ago or that I saw only once another chance with a fresh set of eyes and a different perspective. There's also some movies that I've actively avoided over the years based on poor recommendations (Ben-Hur, The English Patient) that I will buckle down and watch for myself, so we'll see how that turns out.

I can't promise a full review of every movie - I've found the time I spent actively reviewing movies actually made me less enthusiastic about watching movies, because I felt I was always looking at them with a more critical eye, and thus not enjoying them as much. But I will pop on and give a quick update and a general impression after each one. There's also three winners - Wings, Cavalcade and Tom Jones - that Netflix does not have either streaming or on DVD, so I'll try to track those down if I can, but they may appear out of order... especially since Wings was the first-ever recipient.

I know there are likely better lists of better movies I could use, but I still enjoy the Oscars to a point where I see this as an exercise worth my time, no matter how stretched out the experiment might become. I'll definitely be putting things in between the winners from time to time, and there may be stretches without an update - my workload at the office will pick up as we head toward the summer, and I'm also planning my wedding for September - but eventually I'll be able to knock 58 more titles off the "you should see this" list.

Let's see how it goes...

Pinbal Wizard

2009-11-22T11:13:00.003-05:00

I'm a huge pinball fan, even though I can't remember the last time I played. When I went to Vegas last year, one of the places I really wanted to go was the Pinball Hall of Fame & Museum, which at the time was essentially a shack a mile or two off the strip that someone was using to store their collection of pinball machines old and... less old. Unfortunately, because of the distance from the strip and the fact that the Nevada desert is really freakin' hot, we never got over there. Apparently the Hall of Fame has recently moved to a much larger location a lot more convenient to the strip, and is now operated by the Las Vegas Pinball Collector's Club - probably a little more equipped than one guy, but I'm sure that one guy is still very much involved.

Anyway, I've always been a little sad that pinball machines have disappeared from convenience arcades and a lot of standalone arcades. For a long time, if you went into a bar, restaurant or anywhere else that had a small arcade section for customers, there had to be a pinball machine there. That's not really the case anymore - you're more likely to find a Big Buck Hunter or Golden Tee. Not that there's anything wrong with those games, but I miss being able to easily find pinball. I've always said that when (yes... when) I'm rich and famous and am building my dream house, one staple of my amazing game room will be multiple pinball machines. Apparently it's now getting harder and harder to find them in working condition, so if I'm going to have them in my fantastic abode, I'd better get to the rich and famous part.

Someone's posted a very interesting read on what exactly changed in the amusement industry that ultimately contributed to the decline of pinball. It's a good read, you should check it out. And then you should get a roll of quarters and go find a pinball machine. Just for old time's sake.

Beer blog!

2009-11-16T19:39:00.003-05:00

Not really worth posting, but may I direct your attention to the Boston Beer Garden, my new blog documenting my new foray into the world of home beer brewing. The first batch is in the fermenting bucket as of an hour ago, and we're on our way! Go check it out!

For the benefit of the Facebook readers, it's at http://beerboston.blogspot.com

Sleep No More, Take II

2009-11-07T21:39:00.003-05:00

Doing something I don’t think I’ve ever done with a limited-run piece of theater (thus excluding my 5 or 6 trips to see Blue Man Group), the girl and I took a second shot at ART and Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More on Tuesday. Again, I’ll try not to give anything away…

Second time around was definitely different from the first, and that’s both good and… less good, though I wouldn’t go so far as to say bad. We had heard that there had been some changes since we saw it the first time (which was during previews), not the least of which were some cast changes. Some of the original British cast members were moving onto other things, so they were being replaced by new recruits. It’s always interesting to see the differences in a role when played by different people, especially something like this that is so interpretive and subjective to begin with.

But we’d also heard that some scenes had been reworked, so we were interested – not that we’d know, since there was no way we had seen everything the first time around. So we picked up some tickets and headed over for the earliest entry time, to give ourselves as much time to explore as possible.

By now, it’s well known that the experience starts in the Manderlay, a reconstructed speakeasy in the middle of the school. This is still the best possible intro, because even in what can sort of be considered a “lobby,” the experience is immersive and totally convincing. We headed in, and this time the two of us purposefully split up the minute we donned our masks, also parting ways with a couple of friends that we had run into on the way to the school. I ended up taking a different entry point to the show than I had last time. And away we went!

The first thing I noticed was that the anticipation I had felt last time was still there, but this time around I wasn’t tentative at all. I dove in head first, and I think I inadvertently set the tone for some of the other people in the room with me. Like I was the first time, they seemed reluctant to touch anything, and kept a pretty safe distance from the lone actor in the room. Meanwhile, I was flipping through books, searching through letters on the counter, and watching the performer from a much shorter distance than the rest of the group. I noticed a lot of people doing the same shortly after I had, so in my own small way I hope I encouraged people to involve themselves as much as they could from the very beginning.

I definitely felt more free to go wherever I pleased, in part because of all the emotions the scenes still send through you, fear wasn’t one of them this time (safe, horror-movie fear, not actual fear). I felt comfortable from the outset this time, and I was much more ready for anything and everything. It let me seek out the dark corners, and be much more willing to meet the actors and the mood halfway. I got there last time, but I think I got a full 3 hours of experience this time, where last time it might have been closer to two.

And experience I did. In all, I think I saw three or four scenes that I had seen before, but even those I was able to explore from a new perspective, and see how the new additions to the cast handled the events. I also took many different turns in order to see as much new as I could, and it was well worth it. I’m shocked that a piece of theater can have this much replay value, but I definitely can see myself going back again. I’ve got a friend who would love it, so I want to go and see her reactions first-hand. It was also interesting to meet back up with my friends in the bar after, one of whom was there for her first time. It’s always cool to be reminded of those more visceral, first-exposure reactions when you’ve been removed from them for a month or so.

What truly amazed me this time around was that there were still so many scenes that are so well-played, so perfectly executed, that they still really got under my skin. There’s an ending to the last cycle that I had missed the first time – it’s either new, or we missed it in previews because the fire alarm went off halfway through the night – that is so perfectly done that it elicited a gasp from the entire crowd – and most of that night’s guests were gathered in the room at the time. Also intriguing looking back is what I didn’t see – there were rooms I remembered from the first trip that I never happened upon this time, through no choice of my own… my journey just didn’t lead there this time.

If you haven’t seen it yet, go. If you have seen it, go back, especially now that you’ve got an idea what you’re in for. The show and the cast will still find new ways to surprise you.

You need to see this.

2009-10-10T22:28:00.000-04:00

Last night, my mind was blown.

I've got a degree in theater, and I think by most standards for the industry, I'm a bad theater student. Frankly, I don't like weird stuff. Most of the time, it's not because I don't get it. Very often, I get the point that is trying to be conveyed through unconventional means of presentation, but very seldom do I ever feel that the point is made more effectively than it could have been made in a more straightforward production. Being weird for the sake of weirdness has always annoyed me, because it seems selfish. It doesn't seem to me to be done for the benefit of the audience. It's done for the benefit of the performers or the artists who are putting the show together. And that's fine, but if that's the case... why are you making me pay to see it?

What I saw last night completely redefined what I thought of as theater. It's not something that will ever replace conventional theater, but I think it could do more for the idea of the theatrical experience than anything else I've ever seen.

It's called Sleep No More. It's been brought to Boston (Brookline, actually) by the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, but the project belongs to Punchdrunk, a theater group out of London. They first performed the show in London in 2003, and the run in Brookline marks Punchdrunk's American debut. And they certainly have me interested.

Sleep No More is a reimagining of Macbeth as a Hitchcockian thriller. For this production, they've taken over the old Lincoln School on Boylston Street in Brookline, and transformed it into... something else. I want to be very careful how I phrase things, because the best way to walk into that building is knowing nothing at all. Their new setting is reminiscent of the '20s or '30s. You start your experience in a small but beautifully appointed speakeasy that was dropped in the middle of the building. From there, you don a mask (which I think is for the comfort of both the performers and the audience), and are let loose to explore the hallways and nearly fifty transformed rooms over four levels of the school.

Some of the rooms are appointed in a pretty standard theatrical fashion - sitting rooms, dining rooms, offices - while others are much more imaginative - on one floor, there's a dune of black sand that makes its way through three or four rooms. In some rooms, there's little done to hide the fact that this used to be a school, even if that room's design doesn't fit a school at all. Other rooms, especially in the basement, are fully transformed into something else... anything else.

As you wander through the rooms, you'll encounter characters who are at the very least reminiscent of the characters from Macbeth, if not the characters by name. They'll go about their days, usually completely unaware of you and your fellow audience members, interacting with each other as if you didn't exist. My girlfriend described the feeling as being ghosts, with free reign to travel wherever you see fit and observe anything (and I do mean anything) and everything these characters do. One really cool way to experience the show is to pick a character and follow them. Everywhere. At no point did anyone go where the audience couldn't follow, so you really get a complete, unbroken experience. And if you pass a room or another character that looks more interesting, just break off and explore that room, or follow that new character. The actors are on a cycle that repeats at least once over the course of the night, so if you think you missed something after you stopped following someone, you can always try to pick it back up again later.

There's very minimal dialogue in the show, and that's for the better, I think. The actions, movements and relationships might become a little too defined if the characters were allowed to speak out loud, and the show would lose a very surreal, ethereal quality that helps make it so fascinating. It also means that when characters do talk, it's that much more important, and you need to pay close attention.

The one thing that I was worried about for this format was how well I would be able to follow the plot. You really have no restrictions on where you can go - if you can open a door in the school, its part of the show and you're welcome to explore. It does make for a very disjointed connection with the plot, but in the end I found that really didn't matter. There's a quote from a review in the Guardian newspaper of the London production: "... although you will need more than a passing knowledge of the play to make the connections, I suspect that the experience is sufficiently novel that, even if you had never heard of the play, you would take a puzzled pleasure in the evening." The performers are strong enough that you'll feel the full intensity of emotion just by watching and, if you're lucky, interacting with them. And those emotions will run the full gamut of possibility. The venue and scenes are constructed in such a way that you will see and feel everything. You'll find humor, you'll find sadness and joy, you'll be attracted and repulsed, and you'll definitely feel every hair on the back of your neck stand at attention more than once.

It's really a surreal experience. Very shortly after it began, I found myself standing in a hallway, completely alone. It very easily could have been a scene from The Shining, but sustained for the nearly three hours we wandered through the place. My girlfriend and I got separated right at the beginning, and despite crossing paths a couple more times during the course of the evening, we always opted to part ways again and explore on our own. It's a compliment to the atmosphere that they have created in there that even if you came with someone (and you should, so you can talk about it after), you really want to experience this by yourself.

At the end, they reopen the speakeasy to you so you can have a drink (which you'll probably need) and swap stories with other spectators. After talking to my girlfriend and about half a dozen other people, it became very clear that despite technically attending the same show for nearly three hours, we all had wildly different experiences. My girlfriend saw a character I didn't know existed. I saw rooms she never came across. It's remarkable to build something like this and have it really allow for that much repeat attendance. I just went last night, and already I'm dying to go back and find other routes, other rooms and other experiences. I hope I've given you an idea of the show without giving much of anything away, because there's really no replacing going in completely blind and seeing where the show takes you.

Here's the warning - this is very much a show for adults, definitely an R rating. Only adults. Nudity abounds, and there's a number of things that happen that are unquestionably too intense and mature for kids. The Shining reference holds, but you need to add in a little Session 9 or Eyes Wide Shut - and of course some Hitchcock - to really get the idea. It's eerie, it's unnerving, and I'm sure it's a better experience when you don't have to worry about what sort of trauma you might be inflicting on your child.

Right now, it's scheduled to run through the end of the year, but I wouldn't be shocked if it gets extended - it's not like the school will be used for anything else, and I really hope this becomes insanely popular. If you're interested, I've got three pieces of advice: 1) Abandon any preconceived notions you have about the play, the characters, or theater in general; 2) Be ready to go along with anything - the show and the experience will be better for it; and 3) GO.

For tickets, click here. Or go find out more about ART and Punchdrunk.

A side note: I'm completely shocked that I ended up writing this. I've been consistently unimpressed with ART for years. For a long time, they've been the closest thing Boston had to professional avant garde theater, but I've always got the impression they were doing what I said I hate: being weird for the sake of being weird. It was almost like they were expected to do it, so they did it without a legitimate reason. That's not to deride anyone who has worked there in the past, I just... it always felt stuffy, and full of "importance" and "purpose," and none of that appeals to me. This show is full of "feeling" and "emotion," and it's incredible. In my mind, ART is back on the proper road. Their production of David Mamet's Marriage was fantastic, Sleep No More is hands down one of my favorite productions of anything ever, they've got a really cool-sounding version of The Great Gatsby coming next year... I can't remember the last time I was excited about ART. It's cool. Now let's just hope they don't screw it up with Red Sox Nation...

Forgot one!

2009-06-17T17:08:00.003-04:00

Can't imagine how I forgot this one, since it probably prompted some of the deeper TV-fuelled discussions this season...

Lie to Me: ... is really, really good. It's probably great. Over the course of the
season it became a show that I watched pretty quickly after airing, though that had a lot to do with the girl liking it a little more than I did. There's a lot of little details and touches that make the show and the cast work really well, and Tim Roth is the ultimate glue that has to hold the show together, and he pulls it off easily. The show's only sticking point is the "science," and not even the conceit of the science - that actually comes off pretty believably, especially in Roth's hands. The show is shot well enough that it accentuates the "micro-expressions" that Roth and his crew are supposedly experts at detecting, to the point that you can easily jump right on top of them and play along, like any good procedural should let you. It's actually in the hands of the cast that the science falters, as though they don't quite believe it themselves. Talking about work gets everyone just a little too stiff, and it doesn't come out quite right in conversation. Maybe it's a lost in translation thing... the rest of the time, the cast is great, and the premise allows a lot of room for expansion, even away from the typical legal procedural fare. I get the impression it was a big success for Fox, so expect them to pour some more money on it over the next couple years. B+

TV On the Brain, Part I

2009-06-06T20:32:00.007-04:00

So we're safely through this past TV season, we're safely past upfront presentations, so let's take a little look in both directions to see where we're going and where we've been.

PART I - The Past

FAIR WARNING - I figure enough time has passed that I can talk about the ends of these seasons without fear. If you're waiting on watching something, be aware.

Tony "Soulpatch" Almeida's much hyped return - very much hyped, considering ads were running for it when the season was supposed to premiere in early
2008 - played out... OK, I guess. For the show, I'm not entirely sure I like having his whole triple-agent turn be entirely motivated by revenge, though I can see how it makes sense for the character. But they've now left a character alive who serves very little original purpose. To put Tony back into government service is ludicrous. But they've already played the recurring villain card (Nina Myers), and it lasted FAR too long. I was fully expecting Soulpatch's double-agent run, but I sort of thought they'd be keeping him on the favorable side, in case audience reaction demanded an extended, multi-season return - and let's be honest... it wasn't like Carlos Bernard has other plans.

Interesting things done with Jack's character, though, clearly designed to pull him back from some of the over-the-top torture they've put on him in the past. They didn't go quite so far as to condemn the character, but he did an OK job of letting the world know that's how he felt about himself. Kim Bauer's return was good enough, though not great enough to make me want to keep her and the family around (sounds like I'll have to get used to that idea, though). The addition of Renee Walker, though, is the best thing this season had going for it, and apparenlty Renee will factor into the the newly-revitalized CTU that will be protecting NYC next time around.

A good season, not the best (2 or 3), and certainly not the worst (6, and a damn waste of James Cromwell). It's biggest sin is probably being a transition season as they try to rework the show into something new without losing the elements of the show and of Jack Bauer that keep people tuning in. B-

Battlestar Galactica

It took me WEEKS after it aired to watch the final three episodes. They had a lot of questions to answer in the last half of the final season, and most questions they knocked out of the park. The ending could very well have come half an hour earlier, after that kickass space battle. Instead, they dragged the show along for a bit longer, and muddled a lot of the
pleasant finality they had delivered. I understand why - lots of people, and I've no doubt the cast and crew were among them, wanted some closure for these characters. I didn't necessarily need it, and I think it weakened their finale a bit. But holding that up against the rest of the season doesn't do the show justice. The fact is the last ten episodes were held off for longer than was comfortable for a lot of people, and more often than not they gave the payoff that we all needed. A

Big Bang Theory

One of my favorites this year, and probably the only sitcom on TV right now
that can get away with a laugh track. The rhythm works well enough that while the laugh track is going (and cueing those who need it that a funny just happened), the characters get a nice awkward silence that they've really come to play really well in. Most notably this season were Penny and Sheldon, who both got a little more fleshed out as independent characters. Where the first season sort of looked like Leonard's show - so much of it revolved around him pining for Penny, and never really gave anyone else (including her) room for much depth - this season spent time focusing on the other characters, Sheldon specifically. He really came into his own as a driving force for the comedy on the show, and in doing so made an even more important change - he became likable. That'll be a huge boon to the longevity of the show. And I hope it has those legs, because I enjoy the heck out of it. It also has the distinction of the theme being one of the last new original songs put out by the 5-member version of Barenaked Ladies. *sniff* That wins points with me, anyway... A

Burn Notice

I can't really write a full review of this one because I feel like I watched it so long ago... and honestly, I can't remember a ton of what happened. I do remember it was fun, though, and there's definitely a place on TV for that. Jeffrey Donovan annoyed me much less this time around, Bruce Campbell was just as awesome, Gabrielle Anwar was still wonderfully insane, and Tricia Helfer was a fun addition. Season 3 just started, and all I can say is I'm looking forward to more of the same... even if I don't entirely remember what that same is... B

Castle

I dislike police procedurals.
They've all come to look the same to me, and this one is really no different. But I like it. Nathan Fillion is a huge part of that, for what he brings, but what Rich Castle brings to the show (his family) is another big part of my enjoyment. The personal touches with his daughter and mother are always fun, and it adds some depth to the character to show that despite dealing with the gruesome all day long, he goes home and plays laser tag in his apartment with his daughter (meaning: he's a giant kid to compensate). The rest of the cast is really fun too. The cases are not overly unique, but there's gotta be somewhere where these shows run out of steam, right? Nathan Fillion handling cases makes them much more interesting to me anyway. B+

Chuck

Somewhere along the line, Chuck became the show I most enjoyed this season. I enjoyed it a lot last season too, but somewhere in the middle this year it hit a stride that it never quite found in #1. It helps that the
principal cast became as reliable as any team on TV. A huge portion of the show's success (and a huge reason there was such a push to get the show renewed) lies in the hands of Zachary Levy, Adam Baldwin and Yvonne Strahovski. Honorable mentions go to the supporting cast, especially in the second half of the season to Sarah Lancaster and Ryan "Awesome" McPartlin, and to very clever and appropriate guest star casting. What got the show into just the right spot was the ability to balance the big season-wide plot arc with the episode-to-episode stuff that gives the rest of Chuck's world something to do. Without Ellie Bartowski freaking out about her wedding and harassing Chuck about it, the show becomes a pretty standard fish out of water show with a spy coat of paint. His friends and family make it special, and that's what makes it worth watching. I can't wait for next year, but NBC's making me. Jerks. A

Dollhouse

How this survives another year, I'll never know. Dollhouse had a premise much bigger and more promising than they were ever able to deliver. There's no one person or department to blame... the writing was clumsy sometimes (most of the season, most noticeably episode #3, "Stage Fright"), at times a lot of fun (episode #2, "The Target"); the acting was unbearable at times (Eliza Dushku, Tahmon Penikett), but then it sometimes hit its stride (Eliza Dushku, a couple moments with Tahmon Penikett, Harry Lennix, Olivia Williams), espiecally with the supporting cast. It was like they told us the concept and how high it would allow them to go... and then were too afraid to aim that high. I'll admit that I have my doubts about Eliza Dushku being able to carry a show like this on her back, but there were sparks of ability that won't let me write her off. She CAN do it... she just HAS to do it consistently. The ending seemed a little off; it was always clear things were going to circle back around to a confrontation with Alpha, so the twist with Dr. Amy Acker seemed like a band-aid to lend an aha moment. That's not to say it didn't work, just to say that it could have been executed better. In fact, moments that worked but could have been done better is sort of the running theme of the first season... maybe if Joss Whedon gets his hands a little dirtier and guides the show more he can get it into Firefly shape... though those hopes might be a little high. C-

House

Full of all KINDS of fun, all of which congealed into a hard-hitting conclusion that I have to imagine kicked all fans in
the gut. The return Amber, in the form of House's subconscious, certainly made for some interesting moments. The payoff on the House-Cuddy tension was fantastically evil, and drove home the final dramatic moments of the season really well. And then there was Kutner... clearly the story of the season, and played in such a way that has to make you wonder how much time Kal Penn gave them to do some rewrites (if any were necessary). In the episode, Kal Penn's conspicuous absence would lead you to believe that he had sort of pulled this on the writers out of nowhere, but the way it factored into the rest of the season made it clear this was not a quick edit. It will definitely be interesting to see how they handle the first couple episodes of the new season. Now if only we can get rid of Jesse Spencer and Jennifer Morrison. And for god's sake, give Olivia Wild and Peter Jacobson their due with some face time in the credit sequence. A-

The Office

This was the year I finally
broke down and started watching it, and it was at least worth it. It's probably the only show I view as filler at the moment - I typically watch it when I get up some morning, because I don't have a huge need to watch it the day it airs. I also typically save it to watch when I'm by myself, because my girlfriend doesn't like it. It is one of the few shows that is perfectly contained in 22-24 minutes - long enough to string together a coherent plot, but not long enough for the batshot-insane characters to get on your nerves (unless they are supposed to). I tried watching this when it first premiered, and I couldn't stand it. I'm glad it hit its stride, and I'll be keeping it around as a nice during-breakfast time waster. B

Parks and Recreation

Didn't quite get there for me. The Office-style humor was certainly there (on a level of awkwardness that made my girlfriend cringe and refuse to watch it), the characters camea from a similar place, but... the payoff wasn't on
the same level. For one, I found it really, really hard to find Leslie Knope likable. I see the sincerity, and I can appreciate that, but she's got too many quirks built-in to bring out the awkward comedy that I can't quite get past. You can like Michael Scott on The Office and laugh at him in the same moment... Leslie erred too often on the side of pathetic for her to garner the same affection. P&R is also lacking the guy who's in on the joke - it's the reason Jim has become the center of The Office, because he's the man on the inside for the audience. I think that's supposed to be Ann here, but she's a little too sweet and a little too naive to really see through the haze and be able to laugh at the bullshit with us. The supporting cast is fun, but I feel like in trying to find characters who came from the same place as the Dunder-Mifflin crew but aren't copies of them, they lost some human elements that would have made the people more real. I can't say for sure that I'll keep this one on the DVR schedule next year. D

Prison Break

There's nothing like a 5-month hiatus to really kill the flow of a TV show. What ended up being the final season had developed a nice little pattern, and a nice
new format to counteract the trainwreck of ridiculousness that plagued season 3. I've heard more than one person refer to it as some sort of weird A-Team/Dirty Dozen combination, and I was down with that. But when it was put on hiatus after Christmas and then... not taken off hiatus for a couple months, it seemed pretty clear that it was done. When the axe finally came down, it gave a good opportunity for the writers to tie up loose ends that have been hanging for years. And they did well, for the most part. The one I have an issue with is THEODORE BAGWELL NOT BEING DEAD. Seriously, I have no real emotional attachment to many of these characters, so they can kill off all they want to send the series out with a bang, but I thought it was understood that T-Bag had to be at the top of that list. Ah well. The big twist at the end was so obvious that I was pretty sure they would avoid it, but I guess I gave them too much credit. Regardless, it made for a fun watch this year, and was probably the only show other than Chuck that I took care to watch within a day or so of it airing, because crazy and out there though it was, I actually wanted to know what happened next. A-

There's one show missing from this that I watched on a very regular basis: Fringe. I actually haven't finished it yet... I missed recording the first two episodes after the mid-season hiatus, and I haven't sat down to watch them just yet. I'll get to it. I swear.

Next up, I'll take a look at the summer shows (Present), and try to figure out why exactly they got dumped there, and then a look ahead to next season (Future) to see where all this stuff is going, and to see what in the new crop of pilots might claw out an existence on the airwaves. So keep an eye out for those.

Stewart v. Cramer: Jim Cramer gets Crossfire'd

2009-03-13T11:42:00.004-04:00

I’m sure that the interspheres, blogoverseses and twitternets have been exploding since Jim Cramer’s Daily Show interview aired 10 hours or so ago. I haven’t looked at any of the responses, because I wanted to put up one of my own.

First off, the interview. Really, if you have any thoughts or concerns about the economic crisis this country is in, you ought to watch this. It’s three parts, and below is the first.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jim Cramer Unedited Interview Pt. 1

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

First things first – Jon Stewart is absolutely right on a great many things here, not the least of which is that it is unfortunate that Cramer is the one taking the brunt of this assault. It – Stewart’s contention that CNBC essentially failed to inform its viewers of an impending economic collapse, thus exacerbating the problem – is not Jim Cramer’s fault. He shares some blame, because he is a commentator on the network – arguably the highest in profile – but the failure rests with everyone at the network. And not just that network. Bloomberg News, Fox Business Channel, the business and economic departments of every major news outlet – they all can take a chunk of the blame. But Cramer is the one who spoke out and engaged Stewart. On the Today show this past Tuesday, March 10th, in response to Meredith Vieira’s question about Stewart’s criticism of CNBC, Cramer said, “A comedian’s attacking me! Wow! He runs a variety show!”

Belittlement like that doesn’t work to discredit Stewart in this case. It actually elevates Stewart to a much more credible level, because the unspoken response from Stewart really ought to be (and was): “Yeah, I’m a comedian. So why the hell am I the only one calling you out on this?” The exchange had already gotten quite a bit of media coverage, and not all of it was sympathetic to CNBC or Cramer himself. Ridiculing the guy calling your spade a spade is never a good idea when that guy is a master of ridicule himself. And now, Cramer had motivated Jon Stewart. And somehow, they convinced Cramer to come on the show.

Seemingly unbeknownst to Cramer, Stewart had found an interview Cramer did with TheStreet.com in 2006. In it, Cramer talks pretty openly about things he did when he managed a hedge fund that bent ethical and legal limits, including stock short selling, where you bet on certain stocks to fail, and how he would manipulate the market in order to manufacture the results he wanted. All this is alarmingly similar to the practices that got us into the current banking mess, and it all begs a simple question, which Stewart pointedly and repeatedly asks… if Jim Cramer knew full well this stuff happens, and that it bends the law to the point of breaking it, why wouldn’t he tell people? More than that, because Cramer makes the point that he does try to expose short selling (which is true), why does he tell people on Mad Money to invest in stocks that are prime targets for this sort of shorting?

Again, this is a lot against Cramer, and that’s not fair. He became the face of this because he was the one who took offense. The issue is that being offended by an accusation is a really hard position to defend if the accuser is correct. Cramer comes up with all kinds of egg on his face for that one. But the larger issue that Stewart keeps trying to get to, with Cramer as Exhibit A, is the culpability of CNBC and other financial news agencies in the financial crisis. The most pressing question, and one that all of these new outlets really need to ask themselves, is who is the intended audience of these shows? It’s a more difficult question than it was five or ten years ago. When CNBC took on its current financial news format in 1989, or even when Bloomberg TV launched in 1994, I would guess that the viewing audience consisted mostly of economic professionals. Now, I don’t think that’s the case. I have friends who got stock portfolios as graduation gifts. Playing the market is becoming a much more common thing, aided in part by mainstream integration – most high school economics classes play a stock market game. Cramer openly said that the format of his show was designed to appeal to a younger audience. The question is if the content of these networks changed from catering to the professionally connected set to helping the broader audience. Stewart criticizes the ads that CNBC runs for Mad Money, calling into question the tagline “In Cramer We Trust.”

And he’s right. If the financial experts (I’d throw that in sarcastic quotes, but they are certainly more qualified for that title than I am) couldn’t catch the warning signs and predict the economic collapse, should we trust them? Even worse if those guys know full well that the positive market situation prior to the collapse wasn’t going to last, but went on TV and told people to play along with it anyway. If they are telling people to invest money in the types of funds and options that allow investment bankers to make this high risk, high reward bets – and a lot of them are former Wall Street-ers, themselves, so they KNOW this is what is going to happen – doesn’t that make them as guilty as the people making the bad gambles?

Cramer doesn’t really have a good answer for anything in the interview. I’d chalk part of it up to being caught off-guard and unprepared – did he really think he was going to go on the show, after everything Stewart said about him and his network, and laugh it all off with Stewart? Doesn’t he ever run into Tucker Carlson at a NBC Nation party and remember what happened on Crossfire in 2004? – but the real problem is that there really are no answers Cramer can give Stewart, especially after clips from the TheStreet.com interview are aired, and Cramer knows it. The guy looks like he’s on the verge of tears about 6 minutes into a 20 minute interview. He keeps trying to bring it back to being goofy and funny and entertaining, something both he and Stewart usually bank on, but Stewart’s not having it. He really takes Cramer to task, and time will tell how and for how long that will hang over Cramer.

What fascinates me about this stuff is the position Stewart is in that allows him to do stuff like this, be taken seriously, and then go back to telling jokes the next day. After his appearance on Crossfire, Stewart opened the next episode of The Daily Show with, “So… how was your weekend?” He made a couple allusions to what had happened, but then went back to jabs at the Bush Administration. A couple months later, CNN announced that Carlson’s contract wouldn’t be renewed, and six months after that, the show was dead. Stewart’s appearance is pretty commonly accepted as the final nail in the Crossfire coffin. Will that happen to Mad Money? I doubt it… Cramer has become the celebrity face for CNBC, and has been very open with criticism toward both the former and current administrations. He’s a very capable front man, and where the problems at CNBC stretch far beyond him, any attempt to replace him would probably be met by the same scrutiny, if not more. But Cramer hurt himself significantly by underestimating Jon Stewart.

Stewart has worked The Daily Show into a very unique position. He can easily argue both sides of the coin – yes, his is a comedy show. Yes, he is a comedian. His famed response to attacks on his journalistic integrity on Crossfire was that the lead-in to The Daily Show was “puppets making prank phone calls.” It provides him a very easy out in the face of criticism, and an accurate one. On the other hand, The Daily Show is, for all intents and purposes, a legitimate news program. They get press passes to all major political events, including both major party conventions this past year. They have become a required appearance for anyone of political influence who feels a need to garner support among the 18-35 crop. And an uneducated look at the Nielsen ratings shows The Daily Show outpacing all of the network nightly newscasts, though that’s debatable – on March 4th, the only day I could find ratings for Stewart’s show, he pulled in 2.11 million viewers. The same week, NBC Nightly News averaged 1.86 million viewers a night (9.3 million for the week split over 5 days), ABC averaged 1.69 million, and CBS averaged 1.29 million. Coincidentally, Mad Money on March 4th pulled in 294,000 viewers.

So Stewart has the audience. But that sphere of influence only extends so far, and he knows it. There’s no telling how many of his viewers are watching the show for news and how many are watching for entertainment only. But based on the Cramer interview, and my own personal opinion… if anyone has the mandate to speak for the best interests and thoughts of this generation (Y, Millennium, whatever it is), it’s Jon Stewart. And in situations like this, people better shut the hell up and listen. What makes Stewart’s position work is that he’ll fully admit that he’s not an expert, that he’s not really a journalist… he’s a guy. A lucky guy who has been granted access to people and ideas that most guys don’t get. He’s like Joe the Plumber for the 18-35 set, except he doesn’t suck. He will be the first to ridicule you for the criticism you’re taking from a comedian. But just because he’s a self-deprecating comedian doesn’t mean he’s wrong. He really seems to be calling it like he sees it.

And if that common-man view dictates that on some subject he needs to turn the comedy off, you know something hit a nerve. Jim Cramer could sit down and have a thousand tearful interviews with every news anchor from a “legitimate” news outlet on Earth, and I doubt that anything would have the impact of Jon Stewart ‘s interview last night. If you’re a financial commentator, or a banker, or economic insider of any kind, and Jon Stewart brings you on Comedy Central, looks you in the eye without a hint of a smile, sarcastic or otherwise, and feels the need to tell you that the economy of the United States “isn’t a fucking game,” you know something has gone horribly awry. And it’s upsetting and alarming that Stewart seems to be the only guy saying it. Everyone else reporting the news should be ashamed and embarrassed that the best friend from the fine Adam Sandler masterpiece Big Daddy beat them to the punch on this one.

But at the same time, more power to Stewart. He’s really embraced how his role has evolved, and I suspect that he had a strong hand in deliberately crafting that role after taking over the show from Craig Kilborn in 1999. Indecision 2000 was the real launching point for the show as it currently exists, and his coverage of every major political story since then has only strengthened the show and his legitimate claim as the voice and messenger of this generation.

Taken

2009-01-31T22:30:00.003-05:00

Yeah, yeah, it's been a long time. I suck. Get over it.

Taken

* * * * * (out of five)

Assuming that people like some complexity, Taken might be a hard sell. It just doesn’t mess around with any of that. It’s a thriller. It knows it, you know it twenty minutes in, and you never forget it until the very last second. Frankly, there’s not a lot of character here. There’s not a lot of background. There’s not a lot of relationship development. And honestly, there’s not a lot of moral consideration, all of which might turn some people off. But if you walk into this movie looking for a good time without any needless complications, you’ll walk out satisfied.

Liam Neeson, who owns the movie every single second he’s in frame (and there are very few Liam-less frames in the whole 90 minutes), plays Bryan Mills. There are really only three things you need to know about Bryan. A) He used to work as some sort of covert ops agent for the US government, a job at which he was very good, B) he is extremely meticulous and detail-oriented, and C) he loves his daughter, Kim, but didn’t get to spend much time with her growing up because of work. All of these points are bluntly established within the first twenty minutes.

After some exposition establishing tension between Bryan and his ex-wife (Famke Janssen), who now lives a much better life with her new, rich and present husband, Kim (Maggie Grace) asks her parents for permission to spend a summer in Paris with a friend. Bryan is skeptical, something that initially reads as overprotective, but it’s sort of understandable – without details, it is established that he has seen much more bad in the world than most people, and wants to shield his daughter from that if possible. But eventually he relents, with a number of seemingly-controlling conditions, and off she goes. Naturally, everything that could go wrong does go wrong within a matter of hours, and Bryan flies to Paris with a presumed 96-hour window to find his daughter before the trail runs cold.

Liam Neeson is not a guy you look at and immediately think “action hero,” but he doesn’t have to be, because this is not that kind of movie. Bryan isn’t a hero. He’s not even trying to be a hero. Bryan is dangerous, and Bryan has a goal. He knows exactly of what he is capable, and as far as we know there is no line he won’t cross in order to attain his goal. Compared to most other lead characters, this could very well come off as a flat character, because he doesn’t demonstrate many of the humanizing qualities we’ve come to need from action heroes in order to justify their actions. Difficult decisions, especially those that might result in violence, pain or death, are typically given heavy consideration. This is not a concern for Bryan Mills. It’s not that he’s sadistic – at no point does he enjoy what is does. It’s not even that he’s immoral. It’s all about priority, and in his case, doing what he needs to do to find his daughter outranks any moral consideration he might otherwise have.

There’s the potential for commentary about Bryan’s life in the times leading up to or following this particular moment – what training made him this way, if he comes to regret his actions, etc. – but while those might be interesting ideas to explore, they aren’t this moment. For that, credit writers Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen. Most of their scripts are action-based, but this sort of stripped-down single serving is relatively new for them (see Banlieue 13). They focus so completely on one situation, they’re able to really perfect the telling of this story, this moment, without other side plots getting in the way. The film is a straight line, from abduction to the end, and it is tense for the entire run. It’s really beautiful in its simplicity – sidetracks would have required more time to explain, and almost certainly would have lost the momentum of the main story.

Neeson’s not going to win any awards for this one, but I doubt there was any intention of that going in. This is a film about a man unleashed, and Neeson handles both extremes flawlessly. His stillness and quiet is often impressive, and nearly as frightening as his very, very violent outbursts, because to this guy, those are both means to the same end, equal tools for the same job. It’s Neeson that makes Bryan Mills dangerous, not his training or ability. But at the same time, it’s Neeson’s early sincerity in his love for Kim that justifies for the audience his actions later on, even though there’s absolutely a vindictive edge to some of the violence. Neeson’s total commitment to the black and white nature of what he’s doing sells that not only is Bryan doing what he must, but the bastards had it coming. There’s a recurring idea of focus that Bryan keeps coming back to – he exhibits it in everything he does, and he reminds everyone with whom he has contact of its importance. That idea really wraps up what Neeson brings to this part – a tunnel vision-esque focus that sets the pace and the mood for everyone else who has the pleasure or misfortune of being in Bryan Mills’s life.

The only issue with the film for me was the directing, car chases in particular. It’s a long-held complaint that didn’t get any better here… the best way to sell action and suspense in fistfights, in car chases and in tense scenes is to show us what the hell is going on. Showing Bryan’s car swerving in and out of oncoming traffic, hearing and feeling near miss after near miss, with the occasional look at Bryan’s reactions, will be much more tense than fraction of a second cuts that just end up being spatially confusing. I understand that the idea is to get a frenetic, stressful blood boil, but it doesn’t work for me. It’s stressful, but only because I get frustrated when I can’t see what’s going on. Anyone who wants to put a car chase in their movie ought to be forced to watch Tarantino’s Death Proof and take notes.

Other than that, Pierre Morel does just as well here as he did in Banlieue 13. He knows the story Besson is trying to tell, and knows the best thing he can do is stay out of the way. Besson and Kamen are working through Neeson to create this guy’s life and Morel is there to put it on film. He does well enough, but no one is exactly making it hard on him.

Neeson and a tight-as-hell script are the reasons to see this one. Why it got dumped in a crap slot like the end of January, I’ll never know. It’s much better than that. But it sure was a nice distraction from the cold. Appreciate it while you can.

Also up on eFilmCritic.

My New Toy: Week 1

2008-12-04T20:40:00.003-05:00

Call it an early Christmas present or momentary retail weakness. Regardless, last Friday, I walked into the Best Buy across the street from my office and walked out $300 richer, a shiny new Xbox 360 under my arm. My original Xbox has been thoroughly worn, and the DVD player was starting to choke on me… that combined with a little bit of extra cash prompted the buy.

Thus far, I’m very happy and impressed. I bought the Pro Holiday bundle, which came with Kung Fu Panda and Lego Indiana Jones. Because I bought it on Black Friday, Best Buy threw in Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground and NBA 2K9 for free. I also tacked on Dead Rising for some zombie-massacring fun. Since, I’ve also added Assassin’s Creed, Grand Theft Auto IV and a Nyko charging station.

The system itself: I know it’s got a more powerful system to cool, but I was a little surprised at first how loud it was. Loud enough to make my cat sit up and wonder what the hell was going on. This is very handily solved with the recent addition of full-game hard drive installations. At first, I didn’t notice the change after committing GTA IV to the hard drive, but after paying attention for a minute, it makes a HUGE difference. Less noticeable for gameplay (at least for that title), but the system becomes whisper quiet, which is nice.

The first thing I did was jump on Live (I picked up a 3-month gold membership to test drive the Netflix functionality – it’s awesome), downloaded the New Xbox Experience™®©, and made myself an avatar. It’s cool… it’s not something I see myself spending any huge amount of time on, especially if they do something stupid, like make you pay for new options. A few winter-themed options did pop up free of charge this morning, so hopefully that is the route it will take. I poked around on there for a bit, downloaded a few demos, and browsed the video library. Overall, I’m very pleased with the equipment itself. I take probably a little too much pleasure in the idea that I can just turn on the damn thing with the controller. I know it performs the job of a basic remote control, but it’s not something I’d ever had in a console before, and it’s a nice perk.

Onto specifics:

Netflix: Not a game, but definitely worth mentioning. The Netflix streaming support is probably the item that pushed me toward the Xbox, and prompted me to actually pull the trigger on the thing. In time, I actually suspect my girlfriend will use it more than I do – I work nights, and she watches quite a few “Watch Instantly” things in the browser when I’m not home. Now she can do most of them from the couch, which is cool. I pulled up a couple things just to see how it worked. The verdict is very, very good. The time from selecting “play movie” to the movie actually playing spanned about 30 seconds, max. Compared to something similar, like Amazon Video on Demand on Tivo (which I also use occasionally), it’s a huge step up. The video quality is slightly less awesome, and Netflix’s instant streaming selection is still limited (by time period and recognition, certainly not by volume), but the immediacy and ease of the thing holds it high. I’ve only watched a few TV episodes all the way through, but I got nary a hiccup. It’s really impressive.

LEGO Indiana Jones: Not to go too far in depth into something that everyone probably already knows, but this is also the game I’ve sunk the most time into so far. It’s goofy, it’s fun, it’s cute… The LEGO series has done a remarkable job of playing straight to fans of the franchises they use, satisfying them while at the same time making a very approachable and appealing kid’s game. I’ve currently plowed through Raiders of the Lost Ark, and am on the rope bridge in the final section of Temple of Doom. I’m also the type of person who will go back and unlock every little thing. The game is simple, but that’s not a bad thing. It looks pretty good too, noticeably cleaner that the LEGO Star Wars games I had for my original Xbox. It’s a good one.

Dead Rising: This was the first 360 game I ever played, at a buddy’s place after he got his for Christmas a couple years back. I remember imagining the possibilities it presented, and really, really wanting it. Having it now, it definitely meets those, but there’s one major problem. The text – all the text – is WAY TOO SMALL. As if I didn’t want one already, this game is really making me wish I had a bigger TV (I have a 19” tube). Until I get one or at least get to play it on a bigger one, Dead Rising sessions will probably just consist of running around the mall finding weapons, with no real regard for the missions, since I can’t read what any of them are anyway. At least running around the mall is fun all by itself. The minute I found a hardware store, I knew I was golden.

NBA 2K9: First off, I was shocked to see Best Buy throw this in for free, because it's still a new game, only two months old. I’m not a basketball fan, per se, but living in Boston
during the past year made it pretty hard to ignore (I’m sure people say the same thing about baseball, but being a huge Sox fan, I don’t see that as any sort of intrusion). I was in Vegas during the Conference finals this spring, and spent a good part of my last night there sitting in the sports book at the MGM watching the Celtics-Cavs game. Thanks to that, I do have a decent knowledge of the players. Also, my brother is a huge C’s fan, and he played basketball (and I watched him play) for as long as I can remember, so I have a decent understanding of the game. Which all leads up to this game sucking me in. And I SUCK at it. It’s cool that the control scheme is laid out in a way that gives experienced players a more organic way to use more complicated moves that the computer has traditionally handled… I’m just not nearly good enough to use it. My Celtics are off to a 1-4 start, thanks to the Bucks sucking slightly more than I do.

Other cool stuff in there, too… the “2K Network” does real-time score updates for the sports world. It’s a system that will probably tempt me to get the next Major League Baseball iteration, even though I have a grudge against 2K for prematurely ending the fantastic MVP Baseball series when they scooped up the exclusive MLB licensing. And the basic controls do make a lot of sense – a lot of games have used the right analog stick as an action control mechanism, and I think using it for shooting in basketball makes the most sense out of any I’ve seen. The game is absolutely fun, even for a non-fan… I’m just not sure I’m patient enough for it.

Assassin’s Creed: I remembered the reviews coming back for
Assassin’s Creed, which was supposed to make a huge addition to the open-world sandbox style that GTA perfected, and they weren’t as glowing as people thought/hoped they would be. The big complaint is that the game is repetitive. And that’s absolutely right. When you’re in Altair’s robes, every mission you do, you will do basically the same things – target your mark, get close to them, hit a button to do something relatively passive. It works, but it gets old pretty quick. Where the game makes up its points, though, is the visuals. You can be frustrated as all hell by the repetition, but climbing to the top of a View Point is the closest thing to breathtaking I’ve ever seen in a video game. It’s very cool. I also like the extent to which they take the open-world idea. It’s similar to GTA: San Andreas, in that if you want to get some where, you better commit to the time it takes to do so. Obviously, the Holy Land becomes a little bit tighter than it actually was, but it takes a couple minutes on horseback to get between cities. A nice touch. Combat is satisfying, as well. The basics are, again, repetitive, but the kill animations are fun to watch, and constantly creative. It’s enough to keep me going.

GTA IV: I got this on Tuesday, and it has sucked this week away. I’ve tried to play it as this guy living his life, and it makes for a much more
varied gaming session than most other games of the type. First, I’ll do a story mission. Then hang out with a friend. Then maybe take a girl out on a date. Pull in a couple fares as a taxi, go shopping for some new clothes, then another mission. There’s a huge selection of crap to do, and it has kept me very interested. Niko Bellic is by far the most interesting character Rockstar has given us in this series, as he’s the first with a real history to unravel. Whether or not you allow that history to inform decisions you make is obviously your decision, but it makes for some very interesting in-car conversations with those close to Niko. The fact that there are certain people that are closer to Niko than others is a huge accomplishment. There’s a legit bond between him and his cousin, and I find myself taking extra care to call the girl Niko is dating after every couple missions. What Rockstar has put out is a slice-of-life Sims. It’s not as detailed in some areas as the Sims, and much more specific in many areas, but in the Sims, I feel like I’m watching what life could be like. In GTA IV, this IS someone’s life. It’s great.

The control scheme and interface are fantastic. The cell phone is the best tool they’ve ever given a character – CJ had on in San Andreas, but it was inactive as far as the player was concerned. This is a cell you can use to make plans, get missions, get help and many other useful things. It’s a great addition. The camera angle for driving is a little odd… it’s slightly offset to the driver’s side of a car by default. It works well, but I’ve found myself switching to first person to get a better feel for what’s going on in my immediate vicinity. The high-speed chases that GTA has become famous for are even better than ever – the RAGE engine is probably the best thing to ever happen to vehicle-based games. Traffic acts real, and speed FEELS real. It’s incredible. The combat system is greatly improved, with region-specific aiming working much better, and the cover system making much more sense than the awkward squat-behind-a-box-and-pray system of the previous games. Most impressive to me is the fullness of the minigame system. Bowling, pool and darts all work really well, probably as well as the best web-based or standalone retail title. And they’re fun, which is shocking and new.

I haven’t touched multiplayer yet, and probably won’t until I beat the single-player… I want to see where the story leads first. I highly, highly recommend anyone with a 360, PS3 or PC pick up the game and give it a shot, so long as the requisite GTA sex and violence doesn’t bother you. I’m not very far through, but it’s already one of the most interesting and complete gameplay experiences I’ve had in a long time.

I downloaded a couple of demos, to see some of the newer stuff the system had to offer – The Force Unleashed and Mirror’s Edge were most notable. Both were fun, but I feel like Mirror’s Edge is going to get hurt by mission structure. The best thing they could do for that game would be to give you a “free run option,” where you just get into the city and go nuts. The Force Unleashed demo is limited to force grip, push and lightning, but the sheer fun of throwing people around and watching them react to that will go a long way. TFU I will be picking up at some point. Mirror’s Edge…. I think it has to be a little bit cheaper.

One last quick note – I also picked up the Nyko Charge Base, so I wouldn’t be dropping a ton on batteries for the controllers. I only got it yesterday, but thus far it seems great. It’s a smart base, not timer-based, so it will detect when a battery is full and turn off. It looks decent, and contains the controllers when you’re not using them. The only downside is that the lights are REALLY bright, but if that’s my only complaint, life is good.

So far, I’m very pleased with this purchase. Like I said about Dead Rising, the biggest downside is that it makes me want a larger TV even more than I already did. Ah well… one thing at a time…

Left 4 Dead Demo Impressions

2008-11-19T19:05:00.003-05:00

This probably would have been more insightful had I posted it when I intended to – before the full game got released – but whatcha gonna do? It’s almost appropriate, actually, since Valve’s first game, Half-Life, turns 10 years old today.

I’m still in more or less the same mindset about Left 4 Dead, which is…

… I’m not convinced yet.

I’m not sold on the game, which is actually a little upsetting to me, because Valve Software is yet to do wrong by me. I remember basically draining my savings account to pick up the original Half-Life the weekend it came out, and have snapped up every other game Valve has released just as quickly. I was planning on doing the same with Left 4 Dead, but I started getting a little hesitant the more I read about it. I initially had 3 main concerns:

1) Graphics

2) Variability

3) Single-player

Graphics: … but not in the way you might think. Yes, the Source engine is starting to age, but as far as I am concerned, it’s aging very well. It seems to me that with each new use, (Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode 1, Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Team Fortress 2, Portal and now Left 4 Dead) Valve has found pretty significant ways to squeeze some new life out it. I’m sure it helps that it was developed in-house, since it allows them to tweak and re-tweak it as they build on it. My fear with Left 4 Dead was that they would abandon it and require a dual-core system, as they are starting to become more commonplace – at least in system requirements, if not in home PCs. My PC most definitely does not have one, so I was enthused to see that not only was I not automatically disqualified by my system, but I was pretty well supported. Even though I was basically running it in 800 x 600, I still got a very respectable framerate, and I was very content with the overall look.

One thing I’ve always thought the Source engine and the guys at Valve do particularly well is texturing. They have a way of making everything look real – not photoreal, but legit and honest – without draining system resources. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure I want my game to look photoreal. What they’ve done in the Half-Life series is still very convincing and makes sense, but still maintains a certain level of fantasy that sort of reminds the player that it’s just a game. I like that. I also appreciate the stylized choice they made with Team Fortress 2. In that case, it immediately erases any nags of “reality” that might drag the game down, and makes it much more welcoming for certain ideas that have become integral to the game – rocket jumping, a double-jumping scout, invisibility – stuff that would have been out of place had they clung to something more grounded and real.

In the graphics department, Left 4 Dead fits pretty nicely in the Half-Life style. It’s close enough to be convincing, but so close that it’s disturbing or unnatural. It looks good, I can run it and enjoy it on my current system (though nowhere close to maximum settings), and it presents a certain style that is notable artistically and that absolutely fits with the zombie B-movie aesthetic they’re aiming for.

Variability: I’m honestly a little torn over this one. On the one hand, there’s something to be said for putting everyone on a very level playing field – everyone can do the same stuff, the only difference to be had is based on a decision you make about what weapon to carry. It’s almost a nice change from something like Team Fortress 2, where there is (or should be) a ton of strategy involved in choosing a class. On the other hand, I can only assume that in a zombie apocalypse that certain people would survive for certain reasons, and that not all of those reasons would be the same. So to have the four characters pretty much identical beyond the model, voice and attitude (none of which are controllable by the player) seems a little short-sighted to me. That being said, I don’t really know how to rectify the situation without getting into the class balancing issues – something Valve has started addressing with the class updates in TF2. The class element brings a degree of uniqueness to each session – you can choose your class based on how you feel like playing the game that particular day. Now, because I’ve only played the demo, I can’t speak to the Versus mode, which sounds like it has a little more variation thanks to the boss zombies. That may very well take care of my reservations, but I haven’t seen it. I can certainly see both sides of the fence on this one, but I think I fall on the side of customization, which isn’t where Valve was going for this one.

Single-player: I love single-player games. For awhile growing up, I didn’t have an internet connection that could really support decent online multiplayer, and in college I couldn’t afford to pay for an Xbox Live subscription, so I really came to appreciate a well-executed single-player game. Valve has most certainly championed that, taking the shooter genre to levels it had not previously seen with the Half-Life universe. I’m sure a little bit of it has to do with the fact that in most multiplayer games… I get my ass handed to me. I’m not bad, I’m just nowhere near as good as the people who really know these games and dominate the servers. I’ve never snubbed multiplayer – Battle.net, Team Fortress Classic and now TF2 have constantly grabbed gaming hours – but in most cases I’ve never even considered multiplayer until I beat the crap out of the single-player campaign. For me, it’s like an extended training ground. And to that extent, Left 4 Dead works. Playing the bots offline definitely gets you comfortable and prepared for the online play. Heck, more than that – because switching to online co-op adds other thinking humans to your team, multiplayer becomes easier on paper. What is disappointing for me is that lack of difference. There’s nothing unique or more in-depth about the single-player campaign in this one.

Admittedly, that’s by design. Valve made it very clear what they were making. It was designed as a co-op game, with single player as an option for those who want a break from other people. I get that. But I think there are ways they could have gone that could have made the game a little bit deeper, and filled in some of the gaps in the game’s background story (again, I realize it was designed to function as four different “movie” campaigns. I’m just tossing around some ideas). What about giving each character a personalized “origin story” of sorts? Show Louis fighting his way out of his overrun office building; we could find Francis with his back to the wall as his favorite dive bar is surrounded by the newly-infected; Zoey could have a whole campus to get through in order to connect with the others; Bill might have been at the local veteran’s hospital – or holed up in his basement gun room – when the disaster hit. They each find their way to a common point, thus begins the No Mercy campaign. There’s also, I think, a good opening for some sort of Sole Survivor mode. Expanding it beyond a time trial should be left to better minds than me, but if you look at something like Dead Rising, there’s certainly an appeal to being the only one left and surviving by any means necessary.

I don’t think the demo really showcases everything Left 4 Dead has to offer, nor should it. It’s a demo. But there are certain sections that aren’t clear to me – I’m still a little fuzzy on the AI Director – outside of triggering the horde in different places at different times, I didn’t notice any real change in gameplay in my dozen online sessions. I think a taste of Versus mode would have been very helpful, at least for me, to see some of the variability I was looking for in play styles. Some sort of preview - maybe not necessarily playable, but something - of the other three campaigns would have been nice to see what you’re in for with the full version. But it’s not like they can shove everything into a single demonstration, because there’s no surprises left for the buyers.

In the end, there’s no doubt that Left 4 Dead is a good, fun game. The first horde rush two minutes into the demo will tell you that. I just wonder about its longevity. I also wonder if its longevity as a whole would be vastly different than its longevity with me specifically. Maybe I went in looking for something too specific from the game, but the fact is I didn’t quite find what I was looking for, and if I’m going to drop $50 on a game, I really would like to know that I’m getting something with a little staying power. I pre-ordered Half-Life 2 and beat it in the first weekend. I still play through it once every couple months. I don’t see the depth in Left 4 Dead that excites me. And because of that, I’ll definitely be waiting for price cuts.

Don’t get me wrong… Left 4 Dead will make a lot of people very happy. I just won’t be one of them. At least not yet.

Hate in Post-Election America

2008-11-05T21:00:00.002-05:00

There was going to be backlash. Whichever way the vote went last night, there was no possible outcome that was going to make everyone happy. Despite the electoral college landslide, President-Elect Obama will enter a country more ideologically divided than any other time in recent history. This election, these campaigns and these candidates brought out the absolute worst in people, both intentionally and not. Both campaigns have slung accusations at each other that have been misleading at best and outright lies at worst. A sample:

- Barack Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961. Hawaii became a US state in 1959. As far as the law is concerned, via the 14^th Amendment of the Constitution, that makes him a natural-born citizen, and eligible to hold the office of the presidency, despite his father being a Kenyan citizen. Not often mentioned during this campaign was John McCain’s citizenship status, which could just as easily been the subject of partisan screaming. McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 when it was under US control. Why wasn’t this brought up? Because it does not affect his citizenship. A law passed in 1937 and legally applied to all prior births in the US-controlled area granted citizenship to anyone born there, not to mention the fact that both of McCain’s parents were citizens, granting him citizenship that way. Neither one is an issue.

- Barack Obama is not a Muslim. Nor does it matter if he is a Muslim. We all know when and why Muslim became a dirty word in this country, and it’s painfully unfair to all Muslim-Americans who want the exact same things that anyone else does. Like anything else – conservatives, liberals, Democrats, Republicans, members of every possible religious faith, Red Sox fans and Yankees fans – the craziest members are the ones that find the reason and means to shout louder than everyone else, and ruin it for the rest of us. This country has a long history rooted in religion, but not just one. The Pilgrims, the founders of this country we all take such great pride in? They left England because the Church of England had an interpretation of the Bible that they found far too lenient. From them Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson and others all left Massachusetts for religious intolerance to form Rhode Island. Utah was founded when Mormon pioneers fled religious intolerance in the Midwest. All these groups have now reconciled and integrated back into the rest of the country. When are we going to allow Muslims to do the same?

- John McCain is not George W. Bush. He earned his maverick status through the early and mid-90s, breaking with his party and building a reputation for work across party lines. More recently in his career, he has moved into a more traditional conservative position, even boasting about 90% agreement with the Bush Administration. These two claims proved difficult if not impossible to reconcile.

- Barack Obama is not a socialist. Or a Marxist. Or a communist. The tax reform he’s proposing does something that has significant precedent in the US. Because of the massive economic struggle America now faces, the market is reacting by raising the prices on a lot of goods, causing the basic cost of living to rise. Average wages, however, have not risen at the same rate, creating a pretty clear discrepancy and issue. Obama’s plan does “spread the wealth” to a certain extent, but the increases to individuals making over $250,000 a year should not be anything that creates the sort of pinch those making significantly less than that are starting to feel. The basic premise behind the tax changes is that for those Americans who have been able to realize their American Dream and become profitable because of it, they will now be called to give something back to those who are still struggling to do so. Considering that many of the people in those upper echelons who will get a tax increase made their money providing goods and services to those who will get the decrease (meaning the lower group gave the wealth to the upper group), this doesn’t really seem like all that radical an idea. It’s also no designed to “level the playing field.” No single tax break, unless it was truly extreme, would ever be able to moderate the wealth of citizens across the board. That would be dangerous, outrageous and would never, ever get through any governing body.

- Barack Obama is as much a terrorist or terrorist sympathizer as John McCain. Bill Ayers, Rashid Khalidi, Jeremiah Wright, Charles Keating, John Hagee, Sarah Palin, Tony Rezko.. Everyone has skeletons. Some of them are not nearly as big a deal as anyone thinks, and neither candidate is as close to any of them as the other would have you believe.

What has been most disturbing to me is that since the numbers started coming in, the outpouring of hate has been tremendous. I thought it reached a fever pitch somewhere in late September, when the crap being shouted at rallies for either side was stepping way over the line. The one rational thing it tells us is how painfully divided this country is. You need look no further than McCain’s own supporters booing him when he announced he had called to congratulate Obama; posts on forums all over the web are starting to bring out the crazies (Fox News wins the award for the first mainstream website to have a commenter suggest that the President-Elect ought to share something else in common with JFK… I’m sure you can figure out what). There is no doubt that Barack Obama has his work cut out for him starting January 21^st, but look at it this way. In 20 months, a little more than a year and a half, he won over half the country. He now has four years to win over the other half.

Here’s hoping… good luck.

VOTE!

2008-11-04T09:25:00.002-05:00

It doesn't matter who for. Just vote. When our country works, this is why. Every vote that lifts a candidate nearer to elected office really only means one thing: that candidate works for one more person. By casting your vote for John McCain, Barack Obama or any of the third party candidates, you claim your little piece of ownership in this government.

Our system, flawed though it is, is designed to allow us more control than any other country on earth. It gives us each a voice. Use yours.

JD Drew: Great man? Or GREATEST man?

2008-10-17T11:54:00.004-04:00

OK, I certainly didn't expect that.

**Drew's 2-run homer (courtesy ESPN.com)**
>

I've certainly been holding out more hope than some of my friends and family this week, but going into last night, the situation certainly looked grim for the Red Sox. Heck, halfway through the game things looked pretty grim. But once again, the Sox proved that when their back is against the wall, they play better baseball and get more ridiculous luck than any other team. Ever. My fear, of course, is that they've somehow conditioned themselves to ONLY win in this manner, which will make every playoff run incredibly painful. But heck, if that's what it takes...

There's an argument that this was due. David Ortiz has had his worst playoff performance since emerging as Big Papi in 2003. He's hitting .167 in the postseason this year, compared to a .387 mark through the first two rounds of the playoffs last year. Last night's giant home run was his first of the 2008 postseason. JD Drew, the guy who picked up Ortiz's slack when Ortiz was out healing his wrist this summer, was certainly doing decently in this off-season, but hadn't shown the Papi-like knack for clutch hitting that he started showing in last year's playoffs. And Dustin Pedroia, the guy who started the scoring last night with a perfect RBI single, has been really the only Red Sox player to be consistently hot through the ALCS... it was only a matter of time before the rest of the team started bringing him around.

I make no illusion that I might be able to call this series right now. The ball is still in the court of the Rays, but last night the Sox demonstrated that calling them out of the playoffs is premature unless the World Series has already started without them. If nothing else, it guarantees an interesting 2009 campaign. The Rays, no doubt, are gonna be good, probably great. B.J. Upton and Evan Longoria are poised to become the next big superstar 1-2 punch in the majors. I think the Rays will replace the Yankees as the team for whom Sox fans will always keep an eye out.

When I left work last night around 10:15, it was 7-0 Tampa Bay. By the time I got home and turned on the TV, the 7th inning had just ended, and the Sox had brought the game back into questionable territory at 7-4. I think my neighbors hate me for the noise I was making for that hour last night. One thing's for sure... I need to find a way to swap my night shift tomorrow for the day shift. There's not a chance in hell I'm missing this.

New review: Religulous

2008-10-15T16:25:00.002-04:00

Saw the Bill Maher documentary last night... my review is up over on the movie blog and at HBS. However, the review format isn't really the best way to get out a lot of what I felt about the movie, so expect to see something more in depth up here in the next day or so.

Presidential Debate #2

2008-10-08T17:42:00.002-04:00

I’ve not yet done a political post, not because I haven’t had things to say, but I do feel like it’s something that needs to be handled with a certain amount of care. This blog’s readership is too small to really matter, but… I don’t want to play myself off as a partisan hack. That being said, I’m a 23-year old recent college grad living in Massachusetts making less than $50K a year… I don’t think it’s hard to figure out who I’m behind.

Last night’s debate was, I thought, much more evenly matched than the first one (all things considered, I thought Obama trounced McCain in #1). McCain’s campaign has turned up the volume on attacks against Obama, truthful or not, and the Obama campaign has done a decent job of keeping pace and attacking in their own right, but the change was largely McCain’s. Going into last night, the format didn’t really lend itself to maintaining the sort of attacks McCain had been using… or so I thought. Though McCain was certainly the more aggressive of the two in his language and approach to questions of record and judgment, Obama certainly didn’t take any of it sitting down.

But there are a bunch of things that pissed me off. Like these:

ANSWER THE DAMN QUESTION! I think over the course of all 3 debates, maybe 6 questions have been properly answered, and at least three of those answers came from Joe Biden, a VP candidate. The best question of all three debates was submitted via the internet last night, when someone asked if health care was a privilege, a right or a responsibility. Credit to Obama for answering the question (a right)… before he went three questions back and continued a political attack on Obama. McCain gave about half an answer, saying it was a responsibility, though he never specified WHOSE responsibility it was. Again, he then charged right back into an argument that had dominated the three previous questions. The best answer of all three debates goes to Obama, who finally answered a point-blank question: Someone in the audience asked what benefits he might see from the bailout package. Obama gave a fairly thorough explanation (though somewhat oversimplified) that if these companies went under, there were some ramifications which involved payrolls not being met. The details weren’t perfect, but the idea of how such a massive economic failure would affect people not involved in the stock market or mortgage industry had yet to be addressed. It was good to hear someone offer up some explanation as to why every citizen ought to be funding this thing when a fairly small percentage is actually involved. This is the area of Obama’s style that I am least happy with – he can’t simply answer a question, so to hear him doing so was greatly appreciated.

Answer ONLY the damn question. I get it. These guys were instructed by their campaigns to take all of the shots that have found their way into your most recent stump speeches. But especially in this format, where the questions are coming directly from voters – meaning this is what we ACTUALLY WANT TO KNOW – do us a favor and stay on topic. If they have a zinger that actually relates to the question, go for it, but there was one point when both candidates felt a need to clarify tax policy and take shots at the other’s policy exaggerations from three questions previous. It ends up shortchanging the next few questions, and reduces their “intimate interactions with the voters” to live-action campaign ads. Both candidates were guilty of it. Some credit to Tom Brokaw for repeatedly reminding the candidates about time and subject restraints, but I do wish they’d give the moderator the ability to blatantly confront a candidate when he’s going off on something completely unrelated to the question. Of course, if that were the case, Sarah Palin would have been shut down for the entire ninety minutes last week.

The catchphrases of this campaign must be stopped. In no particular order, the words or phrases I’m looking forward to never having to hear/hear about again after November 5^th:

Wall Street vs. Main Street
“My friends”
Lipstick/pig/lipstick on a pig/etc.
Maverick
Scranton, PA
“That’s more of the same”
“That’s not change we can believe in”
Joe Six-Pack
Pork-barrel
Commander-in-chief test
Sarah Palin (OK, that was cheap. But good god… even if McCain wins, can we send her back to Alaska?)

In 10 easy phrases, I daresay I summarized 80% of every speech that has been given by any of the four candidates for president or vice president in the last month and a half.

Early returns from the debate showed Obama winning, which I mostly agree with. I think the fact that McCain was able to be somewhat effective with his attacks without losing his temper was key. There were points when he went to far – referring to Obama as “That one” in one of his responses. If he had let any more disdain like that show through, I think it would have hurt him quite a bit, but he kept his cool.

Ultimately, I think it’s an easier road right now for Obama. He’s the one people are getting to know, without having to fight off previously held opinions (those established or promoted by his opponents notwithstanding). McCain would normally have the advantage of being the established candidate that people were already comfortable with, but the fact that he’s campaigning on a platform filled with things he’s changed his position on isn’t going to do him any favors. Interestingly, that’s actually working against him on two levels – stuff on which he legitimately was a maverick or on which he broke with his party, which got him points with independents, he’s now toeing the party line on. Other things (and in some cases the SAME things) on which he’s agreed with Republicans he’s now needed to back away from in order to attract those independents. It’s something of a mess, and something Obama doesn’t have to deal with because he hasn’t been on the national scene for very long, for better or for worse.

One more month to watch these two fight it out. Regardless of who wins, what everyone – candidate, Congress and constituents – all need to realize is that come January 21^st, there’s a ton of work to do.

Red Sox, Bill Simmons, Manny Ramirez and the first game of the playoffs

2008-10-02T17:28:00.004-04:00

In early August, I wrote a rambling piece about the Manny Ramirez trade. It clocked in at about 1700 words and I think did a pretty good job of expressing my feelings on the whole thing. Now ESPN Sports Guy Bill Simmons, formerly known as the Boston Sports Guy, has outdone me 5 to 1. While half of this city ate the bull they were fed and said good riddance to Manny, there’s still a good portion of people – Simmons and my brother included – who aren’t exactly pleased with the trade. One game into the 2008 playoffs, I can’t say I blame them.

Simmons hits it on the head in a few different places – that Scott Boras is quite possibly the real villain in all of this is probably the most impossible to prove and still the most likely. Like he said, the man wasn’t getting paid unless Manny signed a new contract somewhere, and Scott Boras always gets paid. That despite all the crap that was piled on top of Manny in his last few months, I still can’t root against him or wish that the guy does poorly. But most importantly, Simmons is right that Manny’s good moments over seven-plus seasons greatly outweigh the bad, and no one is taking that away from us.

Going into the Red Sox division series with the Angels, who were by far the best team in baseball (to be fair, their division sucked, ours did not), it’s difficult not to wish for the comfort of Manny hitting behind David Ortiz. Instead, we get Manny’s replacement Jason Bay hitting behind a barely-recovered J.D. Drew… hitting behind Kevin Youkilis… hitting behind Big Papi. It just doesn’t have the one-two punch we’ve enjoyed for the last couple years, nor does it instill the same sort of fear in opposing pitchers that the Dynamic Dominican Duo were so good at exploiting. To be fair to the rest of the team, the Sox have had a different feel to them all season – Ortiz wasn’t the monster he’d been in previous seasons (Manny’s absence behind him during the last few months probably impacted this a bit, but not enough to make up the difference); Drew, after erasing any doubts about him in the last year and a half, went down for the stretch and I’m sure caused some grumbles last night; Mike Lowell’s similar absence in September was definitely felt, and the Coco Crisp/Jacoby Ellsbury lampoon in center field was not nearly as effective as many would have hoped. On the bright side, Kevin Youkilis and Dustin Pedroia are fighting each other for MVP candidacy, and I don’t think anyone in April would have guessed that Jon Lester would start Game 1 of the playoffs and kind of beat up on the best team in the league like he did last night. It’s a different team than it has been in the last couple or four years, and to Boston fans, that’s scary. Because the last four years (re: 2004 & 2007) were the best years EVER.

I think it’s still going to take some getting used to. This series with the Angels will be the first real test. I doubt we’re going to see seven innings from Dice-K tomorrow, and with Josh Beckett’s oblique still a question mark for Sunday, these coming games have the potential to expose the soft underbelly that is the Red Sox middle relief. We’ve still got to get comfortable with the “get on base by any means necessary” strategy from Youkilis and Pedroia – even though they’ve been doing it for a few years now – because it’s not the baseball-destroying postseason fireworks we’ve come to expect. We’ve gotta trust the young guys. Papelbon, Pedroia and Lowrie help – Buccholz, Hansen, Delcarmen (and ultimately Ellsbury, I think… at least for this season) don’t. The team is still gluing together the consistency they’re going to need if they’re going to go back-to-back.

I’m still not sure on the Sox chances in this series. I'll admit, I like them more now than I did 24 hours ago, but again, the Angels are the best team in the MLB this season. One interesting point – the Angels won the season series against the Sox 8-1. The last time the two teams played was July 30^th. Manny Ramirez was traded to the Dodgers on July 31^st. Will this matter? I don’t know. You can be sure that if the Sox win the series, someone will claim that it does. I’d rather be able to chalk it up to a team that finally meshed, finally hit their stride together and finally got all of the vital components healthy and focused. But I don’t think we’d ever really know.

The one thing I do know? If the Red Sox make it to the World Series, I want to play the Cubs. If the Red Sox DON’T make it to the World Series, I want the Dodgers to. I still like Manny, and have no ill will toward the guy. But I don’t want to play him. Say what you will about Manny’s somewhat-suspicious resurgence after the trade. I’m willing to believe that he was just in a better mood and more focused because of it, not that he was actively holding anything back. But I don’t want to play a streaking Manny Ramirez (which he will most certainly be, if the Dodgers make it that far. No one else is going to carry that team through the playoffs like that), and I don’t want to find out if Manny can be vindictive.

On a related note, the final thing that Simmons nailed in his piece: for the love of Ted Williams, let the Dodgers step up and re-sign Manny. Because if they don’t, the Yankees will. Hank is just crazy enough to push for it. And psychological damage of seeing Manny in pinstripes aside, I don’t want to play in Manny’s division. The emergent Rays are bad enough. Them plus a resurgent Yankees thanks to Manny’s power? I’m just not ready for that.

Hah! Take that!

2008-10-01T11:40:00.001-04:00

A new post! On the OTHER blog!

Review of Eagle Eye is up. Enjoy, either at the movie blog or at Hollywood Bitchslap/eFilmCritic

Dennis Lehane

2008-09-24T15:47:00.000-04:00

The girl and I went to a book signing last night with bestselling local guy Dennis Lehane.

At this point, most people know him as the guy who wrote Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone. I got to know him a couple years ago, flying back from Florida after a visit to family down there. I stopped in the airport bookstore and picked up Sacred, which features the same characters from Gone Baby Gone. It was a great read, one that I very nearly finished on the plane trip from Florida to Maine, but I didn’t think too much of it after that.

Flash forward a few years later, and my current girlfriend sort of reintroduced me to Lehane, because she and her father both love his books. The Kenzie-Gennaro detective novels are great – they are really great portraits of Boston, both in description and attitude. Getting to hear Lehane talk about those characters, however briefly, was a real treat.

He was promoting his new book, The Given Day, which revolves around the 1919 Boston Police union strike, walkoff and riots, along with the events that led up to them. I haven’t yet read the book (still working through Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union), but after the reading last night, my interest is certainly piqued. After reading a short chapter, Lehane took about a dozen questions from the audience, mostly revolving around his writing process and the experience of watching his work get translated to the big screen. It was a fun talk, and if he’s coming anywhere near you, it’s worth it. (Dennis Lehane’s tour schedule)

After the talk at the Coolidge Corner Theater, we all went across the street and got in line for the signing. I had picked up the book before the talk, so we jumped right in line. It was actually the perfect wait – the line was definitely moving, so he was getting through people, but it was moving at such a pace that made it clear that he was taking a minute to talk to everyone when they got to the table. When we reached the front, I had the opportunity to ask him about the film rights to the new book, which I had seen a report on. It’s a particularly perfect storm for me, because not only is Lehane a favorite of mine, but the director currently attached to the project is Sam Raimi, hands down my favorite. Lehane said that was the current situation, which he was pleased with, because he loved A Simple Plan (as do I… sadly underrated, somewhat forgotten movie of Raimi’s. Surprising since it picked up two Oscar noms). Sadly, Lehane said he didn’t have an awful lot of input on the director besides standing off to the side and giving the thumbs up. We’ll see how it goes.

All in all, a good night. If you like Lehane, or you’re a historical fiction junkie (as I am becoming), he’s definitely worth a listen.

Zune 3.0 Update

2008-09-18T19:23:00.000-04:00

Months back, I got a first-generation 30GB Microsoft Zune through club.live.com. It’s Microsoft’s casual game site, designed solely to promote the Live search engine. Play the games, get the tickets, get free crap. There’s one particular game that I can blow through in about 2 minutes and get 25 tickets. After many months of doing this, I cashed in and got the Zune. The price was definitely right, and it’s a nice little device. Certainly removes any need for me to get an iPod, which I really, really don’t want anyway.

Microsoft just released a software and firmware upgrade on Tuesday, and all around, this should be what allows Microsoft to take a small chunk out of the Apple iPod armor. A lot of it is optimized and improved if you have a Zune pass ($15 for unlimited song access as long as you have a pass), but the functionality is there for everyone.

On the firmware front…

Games. It’s a small touch, and it drains the battery life with new speed and efficiency, but I have a 25-40 minute commute on a bus or train to work. Zoning out with music on and playing poker is fantastic.
Clock. It’s a tiny little digital thing in the upper right corner, but it was sorely needed.
Device-based song buying. I don’t have a Zune pass, but this update is increasingly making me feel that it might be worthwhile. If you do, there’s now a couple different ways you can find some new music. The first, most direct way is to search for it by name. That’s what the Marketplace button allows you to do. You can also browse top song and album lists, and download straight to the player. You can also tag songs for download if you happen to hear something you like on the player’s FM tuner. I’ve read this doesn’t work quite as well as one would hope, mostly because the formatting isn’t perfect on station tags, but the idea is a great one. Radio is still how most people discover new music, and this lets people immediately tag songs they like to be added to their collection.

On the software side:

MixView. The big addition is MixView, which presents a graphical take on song and artist relationships. It’s a lot of fun to use, and if you have a Zune pass, it can be a great way to quickly expand your collection. Starting on any artist, song, album or Zune user, related items pop up around that item. These can be other songs by the same artist, artists who influenced that artists, artists who are influenced by that artist, etc. It lets you pretty quickly jump from point to point and find new stuff fast. I guess it is comparable to Genius, which shipped with the new version of iTunes (which I am yet to use, because I kind of hate iTunes*), and that the general consensus is that Genius has a slightly more standardized recommendation engine – more consistent quality recommendations – while MixView combines some quality, some boneheaded, and some mind-blowing recommendations. And MixView is prettier.
Channels and Picks. Recommendation-based content that you can subscribe to in order to find new stuff. I think one is for podcasts, which I may try out, but the other is for songs, and only works with a pass.

Despite the renewed focus on a pass, the new stuff is definitely worthwhile. The pass really is a good deal, too, if you can spend an hour or so a month finding new music you want. There have been rumors about an iTunes subscription system for awhile now; I’m shocked they haven’t pulled the trigger on it yet. I do understand the aversion to music subscriptions, but I think there is a market for people who will spend a little bit of time finding new stuff they like, new releases and old. I’m not quite at the point where I would do it (I have enough auto-charging subscription services in Netflix and Tivo), but I definitely think it would be worth the money.

* I do. I hate iTunes. It has become something that I begrudgingly use, because of all the instant-access music stores – iTunes, Rhapsody, Amazon, etc. – it has the best selection by far. But it’s just such a pain in the ass. If you’re an Apple person, it’s fine. The songs you download from iTunes will play perfectly well on your iPod, iPhone, iMac, iDock and fit perfectly into your little iLife. But I'm not. I have a PC and a Zune, cause the price was a helluva lot closer to right on those, and I wanted a larger selection of software (yes, I admit it. That means games). So if I use iTunes, which I inevitably have to every so often, I immediately burn and re-rip whatever it is I bought. Again, pain in the ass. The beauty of MP3s was that it seemed like we had finally hit a nice, decent-quality universal format that everyone could agree on. Then Apple had to mess it up. Granted, other people have jumped on the DRM bandwagon since, but Apple’s iTunes DRM was the one that really forced people to accept this as a standard.

Bruce Campbell in the New York Times

2008-09-18T12:27:00.000-04:00

Not sure how he pulled this one, but Bruce Campbell got a short profile in last Friday's New York Times. Blame his new stint on Burn Notice for the attention, but I don't think any fans are going to complain. It's short and sweet, but writer Joe Rhodes does nail one or two points on why people, myself included, like the guy. Specifically:

Mr. Campbell, with his masculine looks and comedic inclinations, seemed poised for a traditional Hollywood action-hero career. He moved to Los Angeles in 1988, did his share of TV drama guest shots, and had recurring roles on “Xena” and “Hercules” and his own series on Fox in 1993, “The Adventures of Briscoe County Jr.” But he was always just a little too twisted to be a leading man.
“I’m not interested in playing the straightforward square-jawed type. I never was,” he said. “I’d be doing soap operas and hourlong dramas right now if I was really into that. But I was always looking for stuff that was more off-kilter.”

For the rest of the piece, head over here: Bruce Campbell's Prime-Time Moment

On a related note for any Bruce fans who might stumble across this blog because I just typed his name, check his website for the city closest to you that he'll be bringing My Name is Bruce. Like he says, "Low-budget movies aren't released; they escape."

A Very Cool Day

2008-09-15T17:26:00.000-04:00

So because my company spends money to advertise, we occasionally get invited to events put on by media outlets as a sort of "thank you." Granted, they have to get fairly far down the list of advertisers to get to us, but every so often...

The Boston Globe had an event this afternoon. Softball at Fenway Park. My boss is nice enough to offer some of the baseball-themed events to me, so here's a taste. They had a miniature diamond set up in the outfield - no way we were getting on the infield. Afterwards, a mini tour of the park - box seats for some team history, press box for a rundown of the park's history, and monster seats for... well... to sit in the monster seats. One hour, and the three best seats I'll ever have. Afterwards, some free ballpark food at the Absolut lounge, and thus concluded my Fenway adventure.

Create a Free Slideshow

Not shown - my one at-bat in the softball game. I had a bat. I hit a ball. I reached a base. I can now forever say that I got a base hit at Fenway Park. A-MA-ZING.

The Manny Debate

2008-08-02T19:59:00.000-04:00

Figured I'd return from a nearly 9 month vacation to throw out a couple thoughts on the Sox. Fair warning... this ended up as much longer than I thought it would.

At this point, anyone who knows what a baseball looks like is probably aware that the Boston Red Sox shipped Manny across the country to the LA Dodgers this week, thus ending 7+ years of unpredictability and varied levels of Boston-based discontent for one of the best hitters who ever lived. Manny leaves with two World Series rings, a World Series MVP, and lots of memories, though not all of them are about him playing great baseball.

In return, the Sox wind up with former Pittsburgh Pirate Jason Bay. There's more to this deal - Boston also sent Craig Hansen and Brandon Moss to Pittsburgh, while the Dodgers sent Andy LaRoche and Bryan Morris to Pittsburgh as well. But I'm in Boston, so I'm gonna look at the impact of the two big pieces - Manny and Jason Bay.

I will say from the start that, given my choice on the matter, Manny wouldn't have gone anywhere. Attitude issues aside, the man is a threat to beat the leather off of a baseball every time he steps in to bat. I have no reason to believe that this would have changed over the next two months had Manny stayed in Boston. But Theo Epstein does not (yet) ask my opinion about roster moves and adjustments, so Manny was sent packing.

Over his tenure as The Powers That Be at Fenway Park, Epstein has gotten more right than he has wrong. Bronson Arroyo for Willy Mo Pena? Wrong. Edgar Renteria? Wrong. Kevin Cash over Dougie Mirabelli... ugh. Even Coco Crisp and the offensive black hole that is Julio Lugo... wrong. But on the other side... Pedroia. Youkilis. Papelbon. Ellsbury. Lester. Buchholz (despite current struggles). Drew (even though we all hated him until the World Series last year). Dice-K. Okajima. Potential in Masterson and Lowrie.

Theo knows how to separate out the good from the bad. The trade of Nomar Garciaparra in 2004 was a gut-wrenching, heart-breaking affair... but ultimately, it was the right move. It dropped pressure in the clubhouse, and let the team get back to being that... a team. From Theo's perspective, he had the very daunting task of looking at this one player, a player who had for years been the face and heart of the team, and saying whether or not that was worth keeping him around if his play was suffering. Weighing Nomar's value as a symbol or character against Nomar's actual value at shortstop and in a batting lineup... I don't think I could have made that call. But he did. And four years later, the Red Sox have 2 world titles. After a lackluster stint with the Cubs, Nomar only played in 62 games for the Dodgers in 2005. This year, he's played in only 27 of their 99 games. And his numbers have never touched those of the late '90s. Love the guy, but the Sox dodged a bullet. (Keep in mind, this isn't Nomar's fault. Something happened when he was hit on the wrist in late 1999, and the most dominant shortstop in the game never got back to that level. Had Al Reyes never thrown that pitch, Nomar might never have changed from the next Ted Williams.)

Pedro went a similar route. Apparent bad blood between the two sides, with repeated claims that Pedro had been disrespected by the management. This was again, sad as it was, a player in decline. He, like Nomar was absolutely stunning at the turn of the century. 23 wins, 313 strikeouts in 1999. Won Cy Young, finished 2nd in MVP voting. Similar numbers in 2000, an off, injury-shortened year in 2001, back to good old Pedro in 2002 and 2003. The Grady Incident in the ALCS was the killer. One inning too many. That was how close Pedro came to deleting the Red Sox ugly history. Pedro's number in 2004 were by no means bad, but they lacked the dominance that he had shown previously. Once again, Theo had to look at this guy, weigh the emotional value vs. the baseball value. Once again, baseball value had to win. And once again, Theo was right. Pedro declined his offered contract from the Sox... he seemed insulted by the contract offered. He signed with the Mets, had one good season in 2005- good for that Pedro, but mediocre for Pedro the Baseball God. Fro 2006 to the present, he is 15-11 in 38 games, mostly because he hasn't been able to get through the last two years without a significant injury. Another potential catastrophe avoided.

Incidents since have been smaller. Johnny Damon was a textbook example of Theo's negotiating process, which is setting a value on a player and not going over that value. The Yankees apparently valued Damon more than the Sox did. What really seemed to lower Damon's value in Theo's eyes - and what the Yanks didn't see coming - was that Damon's speed and versatility were on their last legs. He by no means done as a player, or as a good player, but the attributes that made him unique and attractive to the Sox were on the outs. On a side note, the personality lobotomy he apparently had to endure when he shaved his facial hair - a requirement of joining the Yankees - didn't help him on any fronts either.

Curt Schilling is another chapter that is still being finished. Controversy arose that Schilling knew he wasn't healthy prior to the Sox signing him to a one-year deal for 2008. Schill hasn't thrown a pitch in a regular season game this year. At this point, it's really just his word against his, and it could very well never get conclusively resolved. Personally... it doesn't seem like Schilling's style. On top of that, I think the Sox were right to sign him to the deal, if only to get the guarantee that Curt will retire with the Sox. He's a definite Hall of Famer, and if that $8M guarantees that he ends his career here, where he made such a profound impact, so be it.

All that leads me to Manny. In 7 1/2 seasons with the Sox, Manny belted 294 home runs, averaging just over 39 a season. His other offensive numbers are equally impressive. Every Boston year but last year, Manny earned a Silver Slugger award. But that's the trick. Last year. Last year, his HR production dropped to 20 from 35 in 2006, which itself had dropped from 45 in 2005. RBIs dropped similarly. Once again, he's still one of the best hitters in the game, but that doesn't mean quite as much as it did two or four years ago.

Bottom line, really, is that Manny is getting old(er). He turned 36 in May, and his numbers are doing what you would expect from any slugger in his mid-30s. He's still more than capable, and if the game is on the line and Manny's at bat, Dodgers fans can feel good, because they have a chance to win it. But the Red Sox have made it clear over the past couple years that they will do whatever they need to do in order to contend. At the end of this year, the club held a $20M option on Manny. $20M for a 36/37 year old slugger in decline to play on the Sox in 2009. Because it is Manny, this isn't necessarily a bad deal. Like I said, every at bat is a potential screamer over the wall. But with Jason Bay, the Sox get a guy with numbers not too far off from Manny. They have him next year for $7.5M (the last year of the deal he signed with the Pirates before 2006). And all of that is in a guy 6 years younger than Manny. If Bay can hold his numbers on the pace he's on now, the deal is worthwhile. If he improves, and Manny at all continues his current decline this year or into next year, the trade was a steal. Unfortunately, I really don't think we'll know the final outcome until the end of the regular season at the earliest.

What has become somewhat bittersweet about being a Red Sox fan is that the vast resources at Theo Epstein's disposal allow him to always get the best of the best. Trust me, I am in no way complaining that the Sox have the money to get anyone they want. It's great when those players are at the top of their game. What makes it difficult, and what Theo is apparently better than I am at dealing with, is the attachment. As fans, it is sometimes difficult to take a player that is beloved and recognize that it is time to move on. Nomar and Pedro are prime examples of this. Fan favorites doesn't cover it. They were icons. Despite that, Theo recognized that as good as they were, it had reached the point where he could put together a better team without them. He did it. He made the tough call. He took some heat for it at the time, but history has proven him correct. Will it with Manny? I don't know. But I trust him.

To a certain extent, I almost hope that this is a "bad" trade. Not that Jason Bay falters, but that Manny rebounds and puts up numbers in LA that are so stellar they remind us of Manny in 2001-2004. Because great as he is, he doesn't have much time left where he has a chance at those numbers. I hope he tears up the NL West just like he did the AL East. (I can say that with some confidence, since the chance that any team from the NL West would be meeting the Red Sox or any team from the AL in the 2008 World Series are very slim. I doubt even Manny at his best can handle that burden.) I hope he gets the deal he wants from someone at the end of the year, even if it won't be the Red Sox. Ultimately, I find that I can wish Manny well and send him on his way with no ill will, despite all the controversy, because like so many of the great players who have come and gone through Fenway Park, I know that we had him at his best.

Thanks, Manny. Good luck.

The bi-monthly update...

2007-12-08T21:12:00.000-05:00

I think I may very well be the world’s worst blogger. My apologies to the two of you. Anyway, a rundown of what’s been happening down this way

- I got salaried. It’s nice. Somehow, I wound up keeping the same job I’ve had since my sophomore year of college, but now instead of doing the tour guide thing that I was doing, I’m doing their accounting, managing the marketing mailings, and slapping together an outline (slowly but surely) of the next project. So now they’re paying me enough to justify working me like a dog J and also giving me insurance, paid vacations, all the good stuff. I like the work and the people well enough that I have no problem putting off my eventual westward movement another year or three.

- I saw some movies. Since we all know I’ll never actually get around to writing full reviews for them, here’s the minis:

o American Gangster: Meh. Decent enough, but nothing hugely special. Denzel is basically playing the same guy he’s been playing for the last fifteen years, and Russell Crowe is better in 3:10 to Yuma.

o No Country for Old Men: Tied in my head for best movie of the year thus far with the aforementioned 3:10 to Yuma. Josh Brolin is great, Tommy Lee Jones is great, Javier Bardem is goddamned scary. I expect one Oscar nom to be thrown at the Coens for Best Adapted Screenplay, but I fear Brolin and Bardem might cancel each other out for acting nominations. It’s a shame. Jones might have a shot at a supporting nod, though.

o Rape of Europa: I saw this awhile back at the Coolidge, but in light of Pear Harbor Day yesterday, I feel it warrants mentioning. This is a documentary about what happened to what the Nazis referred to as “Degenerate Art” during their conquest of Europe – anything owned or produced by Jews, and spoils of war from Russia, Poland and any of the other countries affected by the European theater of World War II. It also talks a bit about the US concerns for art once they came into the war – it’s a scary thing when you’re talking about carpet-bombing cities in Italy that are home to some of the greatest sculpted, painted, and architectural masterpieces in the world. The military established a group called the Monuments Men, one of whom would be attached to the very first units to enter a city after Allied bombings. It was their job to see what could be done to preserve or rescue the priceless pieces of art that were at risk because of the attacks. Amazing stories, all around. The sheer volume of cultural wealth that was unearthed during and after the war – and the amount that is still missing – is staggering. It’s well worth a look. Check out RapeofEuropa.com for more information, and to see if it is playing near you.

- Another cheap plug – a buddy I went to college with is now appearing in a web series. It’s a fun little story about a group of friends at a fictional college. He plays Shucks, and it’s well worth a look. They just posted their second episode over at Fivetosix.com

- On the Sox front, this Santana trade rumor crap is not really what I wanted this off-season. I was kind of looking forward to people clamoring after our players, and Theo completely shutting them down. I was hoping for a deal to lose Coco and Lugo to get a new shortstop, but that’s not happening. The big thing that bothers me about the Santana rumors is that Jacoby Ellsbury is involved in them now. Lester, I didn’t really have a problem with. Good kid, decent pitcher, great story, but we’re kind of loaded at the front end for next year (Beckett, Schilling, Dice-K, Wakefield, the possibility of Buccholz), and I would gladly slide Buccholz into the bullpen for a year while Santana tears it up. But I don’t want to lose Ellsbury AND Lester. That strikes me as too much. From the looks of things now, that’s not going to happen anyway. I kind of feel like if there was a deal to be worked out there, it would have happened by now. It sounds like the Twins would have been willing if both Ellsbury and Lester were available, but Theo said no way to that – so far. Hopefully it’ll stay that way.

- For the first time, everyone in my family is coming down to my brother’s place in Cambridge for Christmas. It’s an idea that sprung up from my other brother, because he and his wife are going to be down here to see her family for Christmas, and wouldn’t it be easier if we all did so we could all be together? It’s cool, cause it saves on travel costs (Jay and I aren’t taking the bus up north, nor trying to lug any packages to or from), and it slims down on the number of people who are present. The last few years have been a little nuts – don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy having the entire extended step-family around, cause there’s lots of cute kids who seem to get cuter each year, but I wouldn’t mind cutting down and slowing down a little bit, either. Besides, we have the cutest of the cute (my niece), so we win. At some point in the next week or so, I’ll head out to Cambridge to help Jay lug a tree back to his house and get it into a stand. In the meantime, I still haven’t gotten my mini tree set up at home, because we have a cat now, and I’m pretty sure she’d tear that thing to shreds if we didn’t do something to prevent it. I’m gonna get some of that spray cats don’t like the smell of, and douse the damn thing.

I got a Zune! For FREE! I had an RCA Lyra, which held 4 gigs, and was pretty decent, if a little underimpressive. But a few months back, Microsoft started club.live.com, which is a very badly-veiled advertisement for their new search engine. Thing is, you play the games on there, earn tickets, and then cash them in for schwag. I was saving up for one of the Xbox 360 Pro bundles, but they pulled it off the site. That made me mad. So I cashed in all the points I had, and nabbed a 30 gig Zune. Naturally, they have recently put the Xbox back up as a prize, but since they’re not shipping any till April or so, I’m not too upset. The Zune is pretty sweet. A hefty firmware upgrade after I got it added all the wireless capabilities… the sound quality is good, I’ve been downloading some silly video podcasts… and I have my entire music and picture library on the damn thing, and it only takes up 4.32 gigs! I’m a happy camper.

Yeah… that just about covers the last few months. I got a year older in October… didn’t really notice. I think I’ve past that point where birthdays begin to lose some meaning – I’m not gunning for gifts, and I’m past the point where there are friends constantly around who want to celebrate by drowning our livers. It was low-key and nice. Much like the rest of my life right now. I can handle it.

Till next time… whenever that might be…

In the books

2007-10-30T22:13:00.000-04:00

Another baseball season over. We couldn't have had a better ending. It `csort of feels like we're sneaking more and more toward total playoff dominance. 2004, we had the sweep, got beaten down for three games, and then won eight in a row to pick up the championship. Two rough years... we'll forget those ever happened. This year, the sweep of the Angels, picked up the first game, then three frustrating losses one after the other. Luckily, if there's one thing 2004 taught Red Sox Nation, it's that you can never, ever count this team out, even if it looks like there's not a shot. Seven games, seven wins later, and we had a pretty kickass parade today.

Once again, the Sox enlisted the Boston Duck Tour boats to carry the heroes of the day. I don't think the turnout was quite as huge as 2004, for a few reasons. It was a weekday... though I'm not sure that alone stopped anyone who already happened to be in the area. Mainly though, it wasn't as big a deal as it was last time around. Of course, that's not to say it wasn't a huge, huge turnout. And I was psyched to be a part of it.

The video segments kind of suck, but keep in mind this is all off my cell phone, and edited in about an hour in Windows Movie Maker.

Highlights for me:

Jon Papelbon - just like everyone else. At this point, this kid is the biggest reason to watch this team. Per pitch, he is equal to Beckett for intensity, and is just all around fun to watch. If every game he successfully closed got the same reaction as the last few, then even Kansas City would be a thrill.
The Bullpen - Fox was making jokes about it all month, but the Stomp stuff the guys out there have going on is a riot. Their duck boat was armed with a few single drums so they could amuse themselves and their fans.
Dropkick Murphys - I have never heard of a band or other celebrity-type group getting such a boost off of a sports team like this. For the Murphys to be adopted by their hometown team must be incredible. And anyone who can claim to have had their career revived by the World Series Champions AND Martin Scorcese? Doing OK.

An awesome day, and a great end to an awesome year. The new season can't start soon enough. But before that? Winter Meetings!

Fall TV-in-Progress review

2007-10-14T13:39:00.000-04:00

Fall TV In-Progress Review

So I’ve actually had a little bit of time to check out the new TV season. It’s nice. The networks have recognized that the people most likely to tune in religiously to a show are on the nerdy side of cool, and they’ve started playing to that in more ways than one. In some cases, it’s working. In others, it’s petty, shallow, and lame.

The Good (of the new)

Chuck
Far and away the Best New Series winner. It’s a cast of likable - if a little typical - characters, and even the ones you’re not supposed to like (Adam Baldwin’s NSA agent John Casey) are so clearly having fun that you can’t help but like them. The writing is nice and witty-snappy-smart, and the writers took notes from Heroes Vol. 1 about how to build a nice story arc. Chuck (Zachary Levi) is a pretty typical TV loser – clearly working well below his potential, and bound to reach that at some point in the show’s lifetime. The thing is, he owns the geek in there without remorse. Sarah (Yvonne Strahovski) is the epitome of super-sexy-spy girl, and she does it well, but she also makes it believable that she would give Chuck the time of day. Sadly, I’ve only seen the pilot at this point, so I don’t know where the show is going yet. It will be fun to see.

The Big Bang Theory
Yes, I started enjoying this one before I found out Barenaked Ladies did the title theme, though that helped. Again, a likable cast who aren’t shying away from making these guys serious nerds, not hunks disguised as nerds. Not as progressive as it could be – the four main nerds are still the brunt of most of the jokes, but most of the stones are cast by their own. The humor pretends to be as smart as its characters, but in reality it’s all dumbed down, but it still works for a laugh. What sells the show is the dynamic between the four nerds, and how everything changes when you introduce Penny (Kaley Cuoco, a serious TV vet at 22) into the mix. It all works because while the social status gap is clear and obvious to everyone involved, Penny still legitimately likes these guys.

The Bad (of the new)

Bionic Woman
Lame, lame, lame. The premise for this update is presented with the same “what-if” idea as the original, which might work if we hadn’t been inching much closer to that if over the last twenty years. I don’t find Michelle Ryan particularly interesting, nor any of the supporting cast – save Battlestar Galactica vet Katee Sackhoff, but even she’s not enough to get me into another episode of this one.

Journeyman
It’s Quantum Leap, minus everything that made that show good (re: Scott Bakula, Dean Stockwell and any sort of soul). No thanks.

Cavemen
No, I haven’t seen it. But come on. It’s a sitcom that sprung out of a car insurance ad campaign. This tripe was barely tolerable in 30-second doses. I can’t imagine how painful 22 minutes at a time is.

The Unknown

Cane
Probably the most heavily advertised of the shows I have no interest in. Jimmy Smits is not gonna get me into a show, and a show about a sugar empire (They try to say it’s a rum empire, but its sugar, kids)? Meh. It’ll find an audience, but not me.

Pushing Daisies
I’ve heard from a few different sources that this is probably the best new show on TV, but I haven’t gotten there yet. Chi McBride and Kristin Chenoweth is a good start, and the premise does sound fun. It might be a DVD pick, but I might give it a shot at some point.

Moonlight
I couldn’t tell if they were trying to pick up Angel fans with this, or if they were trying to make it really clear that this had nothing to do with Angel, but either way I think they cancelled themselves out. I caught part of one episode, simply because of Jason Dohring’s presence, but I don’t think his underuse is going to be enough to keep me around.

Samantha Who?, Aliens in America, Carpoolers, Kid Nation, Back to You, Private Practice, Gossip Girl, Dirty Sexy Money, Big Shots, Women’s Murder Club

This is all the stuff I just don’t care about enough to try. I’ve either heard nothing, seen nothing, or don’t care to look into them. Sorry.

Now for the returning shows. A mixed bag here… here’s the stuff I care about…

The Good (of the old)

House, M.D.
Because really, how can House not be good? So long as Hugh Laurie is doing his thing, it’s really a win-win situation. His new team is getting narrowed down, with some promising and some designed to be disliked, and at least they found a way to keep the old guys around without being stupid about it. It’s only a matter of time before Omar Epps is back in Princeton as well. The new girl (“13”) and Kal Penn are destined to hang around for awhile, I think, but I’m not sure who will fill out the rest of the team. Wilson and Cuddy are as amusing as ever, and I’m ready for another fun season.

Heroes
I’m gonna put this under good, but I must say I have my reservations. This season doesn’t look nearly as put together and polished from Day 1 as the first season did, but I think that might be due to them finding such a hit on their hands, and expectations being so high. I’m not sure I like how things have been split so far… what’s good is that they’ve clearly recognized two of their most popular characters (Hiro and Peter Petrelli), and decided to give them in particular a little more depth and intrigue. Hiro’s story I’m cool with – this take on Kensei is a fun way to fill in their fun little mythology. Peter, I’m not sold on yet. I am assuming his exploits in Ireland will eventually uncover some sort of plot that will lead him back to the “Boogeyman” character who’s going after the old heroes, but right now, it looks more like they are aiming him toward a spinoff, which I know they’re not, but I don’t like the direction yet anyway. Still, lots of good stuff to look forward to – the Parkman/Mohinder/Noah team is cool, Claire is getting predictably anxious (even if I hate hate hate her new boyfriend, who is just bound to turn on her/die at some point), they’re just getting around to Nikki, lots left to explore with Nathan, and Kristen Bell’s debut is still on the horizon. Straighten out Peter, get Hiro back to help at some point, don’t waste the massive amount of talent they’re sitting on, and it’ll work out to another solid season.

Bones
I haven’t seen all of the new ones, but it seems like they’ve started pushing forward with the romance angle with renewed vigor. This is the only show that I’m really OK with absolutely no character evolution at all – most of the Jeffersonian supporting cast hasn’t really changed since day one – even Zack’s constant references to how he’s changed since returning from Iraq are made with full realization that he hasn’t changed a bit. And that’s why it’s funny. My only gripe thus far is that it looks like there’s a new department shrink, played by someone other than Stephen Fry, and that, I am not cool with.

The Bad (of the old)

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
Admittedly, this is a show for which I have no love to begin with. However, my girlfriend is somewhat obsessed, so we tend to catch it on Tuesdays. I think it’s my payback for making her watch Veronica Mars, which I could never get her to love nearly as much as I did. I’ve always found it boring, but the cases they investigated, while repetitive as all hell, were at least usually satisfying in their repetition. The last two weeks have been some miserable, miserable TV. Blatant rips at the predator-harboring nature of “Second Life” and other online non-“game” communities? Come on. This exceeds a simple warning of the dangers of such communities. And then last week? Clarissa and Beaver? Seriously??

The Unknown

Prison Break
I haven’t kept up with Scofield this year, though not because I didn’t want to. Opposition to Chuck is an unenviable position this year, I think. I will catch up eventually, as my brother tells me it’s still as insanely, improbably fun as it was last year, but I haven’t gotten there yet.

24
Naturally, since it’s not on the air yet. I gotta say, I’m nervous. Last season seemed to be stretching me a little more than even I wanted, and I give 24 a pretty wide acceptance of basically anything. The return of Soul Patch Almeida is promising, but I can see where it could also be a big disaster. Thankfully, the showrunners are aware that the show is in need of a different direction, and seem to be willing to give it that. News from Fox about the first different direction being nixed for budget constraints isn’t encouraging, though. We’ll see what happens.

So that just about covers what’s on my TV. Naturally, a lot of this is getting pushed to the side for the next two weeks or so while the Sox make their postseason drive – even my faves Chuck and Heroes are gonna have to wait tomorrow night. Nothing else show-wise has popped onto my horizon, but if it does, you know I’ll be back…

2 down, 9 to go

2007-10-07T11:14:00.000-04:00

Prediction, cause in the end, the result is all that matters: Sox 5, Angels 2; Sox advance to the ALCS.

There's no denying that the Red Sox are rolling right now. Between the pitching match-up, the offensive dominance, and the general morale the Sox players must have coming into L.A., I've got absolutely no reason to believe that the trend will change. Here's why:

Pitching

On paper, these two are nearly a dead lock this season. Weaver (13-7) finished with a better 2007 record than Schilling (9-8). He threw ten more innings than Schill, but also allowed 13 more hits and 9 more runs. Weaver wins in strikeouts - 115 to Schills 101 - but Curt only walked 23 to Weaver's 45. Schill's control has been impeccable all year, especially in the second half when he's noticeably been mixing in more changeups and cutting down on the splitters. Weaver threw 10 1/3 innings against the Sox this season in two starts, going 0-1 with a not-too-solid 6.97 ERA. The hitters did their damage, 8 runs with a .311 average. Schill fared better against the Angels, going 2-1 in 3 starts with a better-but-still-less-than-awesome 4.05 ERA. Anaheim got him for .263, but got to him for 9 runs - but that's kind of OK, considering Schill threw 20 innings against them. 3 homers given up apiece. It's a real close match.
As far as I'm concerned, though, this is Schilling's stage. This is what he does. It's not just the sock. I mean, the sock is a big part of it, but it's not just that. The reason Theo went after Schilling in the first place was his part in starting the Yankees' current ring drought with Arizona in 2001. He strives for the big game, he thrives in the big game, and he will deliver tonight. Is it going to be 2004 for Schilling? No, I think that guy is gone. But it's going to be the new Schilling that we've seen in fits and starts this season - a veteran who executes as well as anyone in the league, so long as he remembers that he can't blow guys away with power anymore. And honestly, there's probably a part of Schilling that has a little comfort knowing that even if he doesn't shut the door tonight, Josh Beckett is ready to slam the door tomorrow night. Certainly no one wants that, but working with a safety net guarantees a better show, because the performer has that extra confidence.
All that being said, who knows? Jered Weaver has never made a playoff start. Maybe he will step it up to a level that will equal or top Schilling, and he'll keep the Angels in this thing for another night

Batting

Manny's back. Vlad is not. Papi is Papi again. Sounds like 2-0, Red Sox. Oh wait...
No, seriously. I think everyone on the team is going to take some momentum off of Manny's walk-off the other night. They go into Anaheim as the team to beat, with morale and momentum on their side. These players feed off that feeling, I think better than any other team in the league. The Sox and the Yankees do it best, and right now, only one of those teams have given their fans anything to cheer about.
Ball mashing - ten AL guys have hit homers in the playoffs thus far. Ten guys representing three of the four AL teams. Guess who isn't represented.
We've got guys on streaks like nothing else. Drew has picked up the pace since September. Ortiz is looking more and more like the guy who threw the whole team on his back for the last three years. Mike Lowell is an RBI-hitting robot dressed like a third baseman. Manny is, by his own admission, a bad man - that three-run shot Friday night put him 2nd on the RBI list for the playoffs, behind Kenny Lofton. Then there's the wild cards - Dusty, Youkilis, Varitek, even Coco and Lugo will produce sporadically, and the first three are prone for hot streaks. Pedroia should be getting his Rookie of the Year trophy soon, and a nice showing in the playoffs can only help that.
The Angels have only managed 3 runs in the first two games, and all three came off of Dice-K, who, let's face it, hasn't been quite what we expected. He certainly wasn't bad, especially not for a Major League rookie, but it's gonna take another season or two to get our money's worth for $100M.
The Angels guys who got those 3 RBIs? Cabrera, Figgens and Mathis are 3-for-20 in the series, hitting a painful .150, and not a home run in the bunch. Our guys? Manny, Drew, Lowell, Papi and Youk combine for 10-30 - .333 ain't bad. 3 homers from the group thus far, and 10 walks - Papi has 5 by himself, with an ass-kicking OBP of .889. And with Manny looking like himself again, they're gonna have to start pitching to Papi again.
No. Vlad.

Fielding

OK, I don't really know anything about fielding. But Youk and Dusty do ridiculous things on the right side, Lowell's got a Gold Glove and snags anything in his area, and we're not paying Lugo for his bat. Coco is a sprinting, diving machine, so as long as we can keep Manny from doing something stupid (like overrunning the bounce on Friday), we should fare OK. For the Angels... Cabrera is always solid, as is most of their infield, but I think Vlad on DH duty is hurting them in the outfield. That's a cannon they could use, especially since the Red Sox have a fast team (Lugo, Coco, Dusty, Youk - remember that inside-the-park homer this summer? I was at that game - and Ellsbury off the bench).

So yeah. Sox in 3, and a nice rest until the ALCS. As for the Yankees? I'd like to see them swept off the playoff map, especially with Clemens making his 18th "last start ever," but the Yankees don't go like that. They'll push it to at least a 4th, and quite possibly a 5th game. Clemens will hold on just long enough to get a win, before turning it over to Chamberlain, the real pitcher the Yankees ought to be building around. Of course, they will need some offensive help. At the beginning of the season, there were shirts being sold around Fenway that said "A-Rod: Mr. April, Miss October." The Yanks got to October, but A-Rod seems to be neutered. The first two games of the series with Cleveland, the clear-cut AL regular season MVP has gone 0-for-6 with 3 Ks and 2 walks. No homers, no RBIs, NOTHING. Maybe he will remember to turn on the hitting machine this afternoon, but oh well. Honestly, I wouldn't mind seeing that series go five games, cause regardless of who wins, they will go into the ALCS tired. And then the Red Sox, who I SWEAR are going to sweep this afternoon, will pick them off on their way to the World Series.

2 games down. Magic number is 9. GO SOX.

Week of 10/5

2007-09-29T19:25:00.000-04:00

Hard to believe it's October already. Which means that award season is right around the corner. Luckily, this week we don't have anyone begging for Oscars. I'm sure it'll be coming shortly... just not this week.

The Heartbreak Kid
The frontrunner for this weekend reunites a team of people who all helped launch each other into fame. Bobby and Peter Farrelly helm The Heartbreak Kid, with Ben Stiller as their star for the first time since There’s Something About Mary. For the Farrelly’s this is a big landing, because have they never since achieved the same sort of popular success as Mary. For Stiller, it’s almost a reemergence. Not that he’s been gone, but, his output has decreased – aside from Night At the Museum, Stiller didn’t have any other starring vehicles last year, a poor follow-up to 2004-2005, when he was all over the place. I’m not a huge Still fan, but the funniest he’s ever been was in a Farrelly movie, so hopefully they can replicate that here. Honestly, if I end up seeing this one, it will be more for the beautiful and talented Michelle Monaghan, who’s popped up in a lot of projects I enjoyed (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Mission: Impossible 3, most recently), and will hopefully save what looks to be an unjustly lackluster adaptation of Gone Baby Gone later this year. She’s a pleasure to watch doing almost anything, so hopefully the Farrelly’s will let her stretch her comedic chops here, and not leave all the laughs to Malin Akerman. The screenwriters are an odd mix here – Scot Armstrong has a long and commercially strong comic resume, while Leslie Dixon has a much more varied and arguably less promising background. The Farrelly’s involvement is expected and more or less welcome, and who knows how much newcomer Kevin Barnett contributed? Overall, it’s a nice mix, but at first glance I begin to wonder if we might have too many cooks… The previews here are funny, every bit as indicative of bad taste á la Farrelly as anything else they have done, but they are starting to wear thin on me. It also looks like Monaghan’s role is unfortunately firmly supporting, with Akerman’s obnoxious tendencies making up the majority of the interactions. All that said… it’s the Farrellys. There will be some laughs, and people will know what to expect going in.

The Seeker: The Dark is Rising
I know nothing. I know it’s yet another adaptation of a young adult fantasy novel (RE: The Golden Compass, The Chronicles of Narnia, Eragon… god damn you, Harry Potter), and that makes me immediately cautious. I know nothing about the books they are based on. From an initial glance at the cast, I recognize only Christopher Eccleston, which tells me nothing, really. Director David Cunningham is unknown to me. The biggest plus this one has going for it is the presence of screenwriter John Hodge. Cause he adapted Trainspotting. And now he’s doing… a kid’s(ish) movie? I don’t get it either. This genre is the fad right now. It’s like zombie movies 12-18 months ago. When it rains, it pours. I probably won’t drop the money, so let me know how it is.

Once again, the best-looking option this weekend is a limited release, but this one is really limited…

Michael Clayton
I admit that this one doesn’t look like it’s anything too special, but if you let George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson and Sydney Pollack all chew the same screen, you’re going to have my attention. It really does seem like a pretty straightforward legal thriller, but I’m holding out hope that something spectacular attracted those three talents and Tilda Swinton, other than a nice hefty paycheck. Writer-director Tony Gilroy is helming for the first time, but his screenplays are promising – all three Bourne movies… and we won’t hold Armageddon against him. This one opens in New York, L.A. and Toronto this weekend, but the rest of us should see it next week.

Next week, a sequel to a period piece, inspiration sports blah, blah, blah, Tyler Perry, and yet another depiction of New York’s underbelly dominate the wide releases. Major markets get some slightly varied options in limited release, including an interesting-looking remake and a quirky comedy about a blow-up doll.

Week of 9/28

2007-09-13T18:21:00.000-04:00

Not a whole lot this week - mediocrity seems to be the order of the day.

Feast of Love
I really can't tell you a damn thing about this one. I think I've only seen one trailer for it, and it's one that I hunted down on Coming Soon myself. Simple idea - wax philosophic on all variations and incarnations of love. Harmless enough, if not done before. I guess the idea is to tie that sort of meandering to some intertwining stories and see how it goes. They put together a nice enough cast for it: Morgan Freeman, Greg Kinnear, Selma Blair, Fred Ward, amongst others; some of those people make my ears perk up when I hear them attached to something. Not so much with this one. I'm sure it will be sweet and heartfelt and nice, but I just don't care that much.

The Game Plan
I admit it. I enjoy the Rock. I'm a pro wrestling fan from way back, and it's cool to see someone jump from dominating in that entertainment arena to earning mainstream fans and credibility in Hollywood. No one has done it as well as Duane Johnson. You could argue for Hulk Hogan, but I think more people recognize him than legitimately like him. Besides, barring that godawful reality show, almost all of his accomplishments were confined to the ring. And then there was Suburban Commando. Oh dear...
I think the Rock got a lot of points for being the only consistently funny thing in that mess called Be Cool. He was funny and likable and good, which was more than could be said for many of his more experienced costars. Unfortunately, since making the leap to leading roles, he hasn't had anything to blow people out of the water yet. I contend that this is due to Richard Kelly's Southland Tales being buried somewhere - Richard... please, for the love of god, finish that thing so we can enjoy it. This is a step in the right direction - comedy, where The Rock needs to dwell for a while before anyone will want to see him in anything more challenging - but gads, haven't we seen this enough?

Successful guy has everything he wants.
In comes unexpected cute kid to muck everything up.
Guy doesn't know how to be a dad, hilarity ensues.
Father and kid bond and learn to make it work.
Hallmark moment.
Everyone gets a paycheck and goes home.

It's a tried-and-true process, and I'm sure it will be nice enough, but it's just not something I care to see him in. Plus, every time I see the trailer, I like it a little less. I don't really know why... I think it's just wearing on me. It probably doesn't help that it's been shown in front of everything in the Boston area, because most of the football scenes were shot at Gillette Stadium. Ah well. I'm sure it will find an audience, as these types always do, and hopefully it'll let the Rock jump to something a bit more interesting soon.

The Kingdom
The most promising of the wide releases this week, and that's not terribly encouraging. I feel like this one has been shuffled around quite a bit, because the material is awfully volatile. A US team is sent to Saudi Arabia to investigate a bombing at a softball game. Worse: The field was on a US base, and there were casualties. A really quality cast was put together to pull this one off - Chris Cooper and Jamie Foxx up front, Jennifer Garner as the girl, and Jason Bateman wondering how the hell he squeezed this in between "Arrested Development" and that Zach Braff thing. Director Peter Borg has a very interesting pedigree, mostly in comedy, but Friday Night Lights (both the feature and the TV series pilot) probably got him this job. I'm a little underwhelmed by the trailer, but I will probably hit it to see Chris Cooper chew some scenery and be awesome, and just to see if Bateman is going to be able to shake off Michael Bluth and complete his career resurgence.

As for the limited runs, there's this:

Se, jie (Lust, Caution)
Ang Lee's spy thriller has been making waves since its first screenings for some pretty explicit content. Getting slapped with an NC-17 over here isn't going to help. Lee's one of the best visual storytellers in the game, so any explicit scenes are at least going to be beautiful. Beyond that, I know very little about it. I'm still undecided on this one. The story is intriguing enough, but I don't know... it's not something that has piqued my interested for any reason other than the controversy.

Next week, October comes in with two comedies and another blatant sodomy of young adult fantasy. Harry Potter, what have you done to the world?

Guster!

2007-09-13T18:08:00.000-04:00

Saw a pretty kickass show on Saturday night - Guster at the Bank of America Pavilion. There were other people there, but do they really matter? Really?

I say that, but I didn't see any of the first opener, and I only saw the last two or three songs of the second one. The second wasn't bad. Name's Bleu, and their defining quality, as far as I can tell, is that their lead singer really, really wanted to be a rock star. Not the most talented guy in the world, musically, but he's got enough heart and energy to blow pretty much anyone else off the stage. I've never seen anyone so thoroughly enjoy themselves as a rocker, and so completely wallow in their fifteen minutes and gleefully wield the power it allows them. He was fun to watch, even if only for a few moments.

Guster actually played the best show I've seen in awhile from them. I was disappointed that they made no special entrance, something that has become an odd tradition at their Pavilion shows, but they made up for it by blasting through five songs from four different albums in rapid succession to open the show. When they finally slowed down, Ryan couldn't hide how funny it was that one of their shows was being sponsored by Budweiser. Or that the event was called "Disorientation." Greatly amusing.

A good long set, quite a bit of variety mixed in there, too. Almost everything off of Ganging Up On The Sun, but that's sort of a given. I'm happy to see "Happier" taking up a spot as Regular Encore Song, cause it means that people love it as much as I do.

A couple of drinks with some friends at a little bar on the waterfront after the show, and then home to bed. A good night. Good times had by all. Yay Guster.

Week of 9/21

2007-09-08T11:31:00.000-04:00

Things looking a little better this week, with one solid wide release surrounded by a variety of standard fare. First up:

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Competing for title of new kickass western of the year, Brad Pitt plays the legendary outlaw in the twilight of his career, while Casey Affleck plays the young member of James's gang who eventually turns a pistol on his leader. While I'm sure there will be scenes reminiscent of harder westerns, including 3:10 to Yuma, the previews show this one as more contemplative. Pitt's style from the past few years comes out strong, looking like he's going to give some quality depth, thoughtfulness and personality to an infamous criminal. I'm not completely high on Affleck - I have high hopes for Gone Baby Gone in a few weeks - so I'm hoping he'll show something off here. Being set up as a coward in the title of your film doesn't seem terribly promising for your character, but hopefully he'll be able to show some depth to equal James. The trailers have a bit of a stylized feel, which isn't at all a bad thing... I'm just worried that this has a chance of going the way of The New World, which I heard from all accounts was beautifully done, amazing in the visuals, but pretty much devoid of anything else.

Good Luck Chuck
As a general rule, I hate Dane Cook. It's one of those rules that I live by, really. Nothing against the guy - I don't find his stand-up all that funny, but I can certainly see why people might. Just not my style. The fact that he's somehow jumped from that into being a major star kind of makes me angry. But good for him, I guess. All that being said... I might see this movie. It actually looks somewhat funny. The premise is pretty standard - Chuck is cursed, because every woman he sleeps with will meet their true love in the next man they date. This is all well and good if Chuck is just looking to get laid, but when he meets the girl of his dreams, he becomes seriously concerned that his "gift" may very well backfire and steal her away. The trailers actually have me laughing pretty consistently, mostly because they're giving Jessica Alba this accident-prone angle that's letting her have more fun and more personality than she usually gets. Director Mark Helfrich makes his debut here, mostly serving as Brett Ratner's editor, but we can't judge one director by the people he associates with. Let's just hope he didn't pick up too many pointers from Ratner. The writer has worked mostly on small TV shows, with one or two episodes per, so whether or not this is funny is a complete crapshoot. Here's hoping.

Into the Wild
Another one that I'm relatively torn about. One one side, I have an extreme aversion to Sean Penn. To me, he is the poster child for self-important blowhards. In addition, I have no real love for the book. Krakauer's novel is interesting, to be sure, but it never quite reached legendary status with me that it did with others. On the other hand, I really like Emile Hirsch, and some of the other casting choices (Vince Vaughn, William Hurt, Zach Galifianakis and Catherine Keener) got my attention. The trailers look good, but they may almost be a little too put together, a little too clean, for the type of story Penn is trying to tell. I'm hoping that Penn found a good story and will focus more on telling that as opposed to trying to bring out the "meaning" of it. Powerful stories - including that of Chris McCandless - will develop meanings on their own, so hopefully Penn won't get too heavy handed with it. Considering the tepid response to his last pet project (All the King's Men), I'm hoping he handles this one a bit more gently.

Sydney White
I admit to knowing absolutely nothing about this movie. Kind of proud of that, actually. Synopses tell me that it's something about hot nerd princess Sydney White leads a nerd revolution at her school. Basically, if you like Amanda Bynes, you're already going to see this. If you don't, then you're probably not. Can't fault someone for knowing their audience, I guess.

Resident Evil: Extinction
I find it really hard to believe that RE: Apocalypse made enough to justify a third movie, but I suppose there are enough zombie-philes out there that will hit all of these movies. It's the new sheep genre, I think. I guess the post-apoc Vegas set they made looks sort of interesting. At least they picked a city that wasn't New York to mess with. And I guess Milla Jovovich needs to work somewhere.

Next up, a couple things that have been pushed back repeatedly, and a limited release of Ang Lee's new NC-17 flick that got banned in China. Hulk 2? I doubt it.

Week of 9/14

2007-09-07T17:36:00.001-04:00

Yes, I set up a new blog because I found the film-centric on too restrictive. Yes, my first posts are a preview for a ten-week film season. I get the hypocrisy here. Moving on...

The second week of fall feels a lot like the summer - lacking. After two promising films we got today, next week is looking pretty weak, at least for wide releases. We have:
(Picture clicks head to IMDb for all the info you could ever want)

The Brave One
To be honest, I really can't bring myself to care about this one. The racial overtones seem so heavy handed, it feels like this one is shooting to be this year's Crash, but without the ill-advised awards. On style and plot alone, I have a hard time differentiating this one from that Kevin Bacon revenge flick - something awful happens, main character flips out and seeks revenge. Apparently a really bad, unfortunate-looking makeover is a major part of exacting your revenge after the death of a loved on. Coulda fooled me. A definite pass for me - what happened to Jodie Foster, by the way? OK in Inside Man, I'll admit that, but before that, Panic Room is the only thing I remember, let alone the only thing that even remotely piqued my interest.

Mr. Woodcock
Aside from Billy Bob Thornton as the title character with an obvious name gag, can you give me one good reason to see this movie? Sean William Scott doesn't count. Funny guy, I admit. This is a pairing that could, with the right motives, be very funny. But frankly, Billy Bob hasn't had the right motives for a couple of years now. The last time I remember enjoying him was either Love, Actually or Bad Santa, maybe the two most varied Christmas movies to feature the same actor in FOREVER. Again, pass. Somehow, I ended up owning School for Scoundrels. Guess where that is? That's right. Still in the plastic.

So that's kind of depressing. Fortunately, if you're in a major market, you have a saving grace in limited release next week. However, even limited offers a mixed bag:

Across the Universe
I think this wins the award the trailer I am happiest to get rid of this year, narrowly beating out The Simpsons. Julie Taymor's Vietnam pseudo-protest film, which will inevitably draw connections to Iraq, has been pretty heavily pushed in front of major releases for most of the last six months. I get it. It's a nice, La Boheme-esque tale that shows artistic expression at its best, making a clear statement about one's priorities and involvement in the world around them in the process. Think Moulin Rouge, but without the shred of subtletly that Baz Luhrman was able to unearth. Hell, they even cast Jim Sturgess, a nearly perfect Ewan McGregor look-alike, in the male lead. AND they named him Jude. I wonder what late 60s tie-in they can make here. Taymor seems to be stretching to make this one relevant and original by drawing on one of the more accidentally original movies of the last couple of years, and I can't see this doing anything but falling flat on its face. If you like musical films, I'm sure you're already there, but honestly, what is here that you can't get from the aforementioned Luhrman film for the stylistic touches, or, for the contest, from the vastly more interesting-looking Forrest Gump? (Yeah, I never thought I'd write that sentence either.

Luckily, to counterbalance all of this, those of us in major markets get:

Eastern Promises
Here, we get arguably three of the best performers of the last ten years (Viggo Mortensen post-LotR, Naomi Watts, and international favorite Vincent Cassel) under the direction of David Cronenberg, who delivered my favorite surprise of the last few years (2005's amazing and disturbing A History of Violence). The plot puts Mortensen in a similar situation - a hidden identity violently and unexpectedly being revealed, with Watts doing the revealing. Frankly, I have no idea what Cassel is doing in the movie, but he is one of the few people in Hollywood who can really do no wrong. All three have proven many times that they are willing to go wherever a script or director needs them to go, and make things as ugly and gritty as necessary, and this darkness is the area when Cronenberg really thrives. Cassel's Hollywood roles have not yet allowed him to show the complexity of which he is capable, but I think this is where he will be able to break out. Cronenberg seems to have found a suitable battery mate in Mortensen, each one helping the other break away from their more genre-defined and driven pasts. The trailers look like a nice twist on the usual gangster story, and if A History of Violence is any indication, every other element will be well worth the price of admission as well.

Next week (9/21), five wide releases compete for box office bucks, headed up by another western (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford) and a long-overdue novel adaptation (Into the Wild). That should be posted tomorrow... stay tuned.

Fall Movie Preview

2007-09-07T14:51:00.000-04:00

I've tried to do season previews before, and I've never quite gotten them decent enough to post. No more of that. This one is getting done. As it is, I'm already a week behind - this weekend offers 3:10 to Yuma and Shoot 'Em Up, two of the higher films on my must-see list for the fall.

3:10 to Yuma
Yuma looks like someone is dumping money into a quality western, working with people who want to make a quality western and tell a good story. The trailers have been solid from the beginning, and Christian Bale is one of those guys who will get me into just about anything. I'm more hit or miss with Russell Crowe - he gets points in this one because I very much liked the last western he did (Sam Raimi's The Quick and the Dead). I still haven't managed to get Walk the Line into my DVD player, but I hear nothing but good things, so director James Mangold behind the wheel on this one is tentatively ok by me. The way I see it, westerns are one of the most fun genres to watch, because you're playing in a world where there are inherently no rules. In every other genre, there are societal rules, and your film stands out primarily by how you break those rules in order to present an original story or idea. To me, a good western feels like something that started with a blank canvas. Just like everything else, the genre fell prey to idea sniping, piggybacking and copycats, but Yuma looks like something I haven't seen in awhile. Yes, I understand the hypocrisy in hoping for fresh ideas and originality from a remake, but that's the vibe I'm getting off of this one. I think I'm going to preface that cinema trip with The Proposition, an Aussie western from 2005 that I've heard great things about. It's sitting on my coffee table via Netflix right now.

Shoot 'Em Up
Changing gears more or less completely, Shoot 'Em Up looks stupid. Real stupid. But stupid in the best possible way. I can appreciate when a film completely identifies the audience it is gunning for, and makes no concessions for other groups. This one is clearly going after the action video game crowd, and what it looks like they've come up with is a no-strings-attached actioner: competent star that I can easily believe as a badass, a beautiful girl, a truly evil, scene-chewing villain, and a shoestring plot that puts them in the same room with guns in their hands. As far as I'm concerned, this is the stuff that Clive Owen was built to do. The guy's not the most charming or convincing guy out there (I need something else at the level of Children of Men in order to be convinced otherwise), but tell him he needs to be the uncompromising badass, and you'll get exactly what you need. I've never been a huge Paul Giamatti fan - there are more downs than ups in my mind when it comes to him - but his over-the-top crazy guy looks to fit perfectly here. And I'm all for Monica Bellucci in roles where she's just supposed to be sexy. In an interview I skimmed at one point with writer-director Michael Davis, he started describing one of his sequences (the helicopter thing, I think), and the interviewer stopped him and asked if maybe it wasn't a bit over the top. Davis absolutely agreed that it was, but said he did it because "he'd want to watch it." Directors approaching movies as fans can be a very dangerous thing - I'm pretty sure that's how we got Michael Bay - but in the right hands, this can come off beautifully. Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg are, I think, the perfect example of that. So long as Shoot 'Em Up commits to its concept without taking itself remotely seriously, we should be good. Everything I've seen indicates that none of this should be a problem.

I'll be back with a by-the-week preview as soon as I can be. I imagine at least next week will be up today. Until then...

Lookee, a new blog...

2007-09-07T11:57:00.000-04:00

I was starting to find my movie-centric blog (moviematt.blogspot.com) a little too restrictive, and I think I might be more inclined to keep this one updated a bit more regularly.

And I'll do that... soon. I swear.