Harry S. Plinkett

Have you seen Harry S. Plinkett reviewing the Star Wars prequels trilogy?

All three movies are reviewed in excrutiating detail in three videos (70, 90 and 110 minutes long, respectively) and the reviews are devastating. Plinkett shows how Lucas himself destroyed the whole amazing mythology he gave birth to decades earlier, thus proving that he apparently never truly understood it. But what I love the most in them is how thoroughly Plinkett dissects Lucas’ movies and gives an analysis of what is awesome in the original Star Wars trilogy, and, by extension, what sucks in the prequels. He gives numerous examples of what went wrong and why, and believe me, there’s many more reasons they suck than Jar Jar Binks, Jake Lloyd and horrible dialogue – Plinkett doesn’t even spend that much time on these, probably because everyone else in the world already did. No, he notices myriads of stuff more subtle and better hidden that those evident ones, things that we never noticed – but our brains did.

Especially funny parts of the reviews include Plinkett proving the blandness of characters of Episode I using a clever experiment that included characters from the original trilogy and some of reviewer’s friends, listing things Anakin did well and wrong when courting Padme, and comparing the trilogy as an attempt to create a character story around Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader with another famous character story in film, “Citizen Kane”. But the most valuable point he makes is how ironically the rise and fall of Anakin (as well as the rise and fall of William Randolph Hearst, the real-life prototype of Charles Foster Kane character from Welles’ film) mirrors the change that occured in George Lucas himself, “going from an idealistic young filmmaker wanting to rebel against the system to becoming the system” – the same point is also made in the 2010 documentary “The People vs. George Lucas”, which I also saw recently (and recommend).

Before you go and see them, be warned though! The videos are quite disturbing in places – the first 20 seconds of first review set the tone of his type of humour, and if you have problems with them, you may not like the rest. The Plinkett persona (actually a character created by Internet reviewer Mike Stoklasa) is presented as a borderline senile psychopath who kidnaps and murders women (prostitutes mostly), butchers animals and does many other, horrific things. This is done so well that sometime during watching “The Phantom Menace” review I actually thought that maybe he really is a psycho, and I’m just indulging his sick mind by watching his videos on YouTube. I turned them off at that point and refused to continue until I saw the outtakes of the reviews, in which I saw that it was all staged – I saw the make up, the actors, and the props. Now I can watch his reviews (and he made some more, aside from the Star Wars prequels, including “Avatar”).

And in the end Harry S. Plinkett – the same psychotic sadist – makes a beautiful and very true point, that “in the end all the computers in the world can’t generate the most basic thing that a movie needs – an emotional connection with the audience.”

Highly recommended! (if only for people with hard stomachs and distance to what they see)

http://redlettermedia.com/plinkett/star-wars/

Come Get Some!

“I don’t know whether the humour is worse, or it’s just not as fresh as it was in Duke Nukem 3D”, said my friend about Duke Nukem Forever. “I think it’s the same,” I replied, “but we are fiftees years older.”

In 1996 Duke Nukem 3D blew our minds. It was completely new experience of interacting with the game world – you could tip a stripper, pee in a urinal, sing on karaoke, play pool… You even had a chance to demolish a whole building, trample shrinked enemies or smash frozen ones into pieces by a well placed kick! Plus, it was full of pop culture references (“Aliens”, “Predator”, “Terminator”, “Doom”…) and finally -  there was the Hero: huge, muscular blonde guy, delivering macho one-liners with a voice in which you could hear those gallons of beer he drank and hundreds of cigars he smoke.

He was The Duke. He was obnoxious and foul-mouthed, and – just like the scantily-clad ladies in the game – we loved him.

The developers quickly announced a sequel to be released soon. So we waited. And waited, as the gaming world changed around us. Revolutions came in the meantime – Half-Life introduced scripted sequences, System Shock 2 and Deus eX introduced RPG elements, countless WWII games added more reality to game combat, making all games look the same greyish-brown – and we all forgot about Duke. We only heard his swan song in May 2009, as 3D Realms studio – the developers of Duke Nukem Forever – ceased to exist. It seemed we’d never see him again.

Then, in February 2011, followed by collective gasps from die hard fans all around the world (I actually know such people), the news came that Duke is back and will DEFINITELY see the light of day in May.

The trailers looked… disappointing. They gave me absolutely no reason to believe that this is not just more of the same outdated essence of the 90s, copied and pasted into the world of 2010s. Duke Nukem Forever looked exactly like fifteen years ago: it’s still the same obnoxious, muscular blonde guy, delivering the same macho one-liners, while killing the same enemies with the same guns, even tipping the same strippers. Why on Earth would that be of any interest to anyone who hand longterm relationships with Gordon Freeman, Sam Fisher and agent Denton over the last decade?

Well Here We Are Again...

Want to know how to make a perfect sequel to a memetic video game that defined a generation? Take example from Valve and how they approached Portal 2, a sequel to the game that made thousands of people pee themselves every time they hear the word “cake” (I know such people too). In Portal 2 – which is some 2-3 times longer than the first – you will encounter the word “cake” exactly once, and only if you pay attention. The Companion Cube also appears just once. The rest is completely new – the whole backstory, amazing locations, new (and better!) ending song, plus the whole co-op experience. It was very bold of them to remove everything that made the first Portal so awesome.

Wait, everything? Were those really baked dessert and a metal box with heart painted on its side what made Portal so great? Or maybe was that a perfect mixture of gameplay innovations, clever puzzles and wonderfully served black humour? Because if so, then Portal 2 actually is more of the same, only the developers were clever enough to pick the right things to keep, and added enough of the new.

And that is how you make a good sequel.

Having said that, I just remembered Mass Effect 2, The Witcher 2 and Deus eX: Human Revolution await me in the near future…

Thom Yorke

Dear diary,

I fell in love with Radiohead. Does that make me Thomosexual?

It happened last year after my friend, Cracked, told me about ten easter eggs hidden in famous albums. Two of them were on Radiohead’s works, so I decided to give them a listen, starting with 1997′s “OK Computer”. Before I knew, I bought it and was listening to it repeatedly, intertwined with decade later’s “In Rainbows”!

But when I wrote on the Wall that I like them more than Porcupine Tree, some people said I’m just saying that because they’re new (for me, at least) and that it’s just an infatuation that will pass. How can they know? And why one of them, my friend and a huge Porcupine Tree fan, recommended me “Kid A”, an album released in 2000 and quoted by several sources to be one of the best of the “noughties” (i.e. the 2000s)? Yeah, good job, Lipton, way to undermine your favourite band! Because now over half a year has passed and still Radiohead works better for me than the Porcs. Dear diary, how can it be only an infatuation?

Of course I still deeply respect Steven Wilson and everything he does, with and without Porcupine Tree, and admittedly he had some great times, to name a few: “Stupid Dream”, “A Smart Kid”, “SHUTdown” with O.S.I., first half of “Lightbulb Sun”, first half of “In Absentia”, first half of… See, that’s the problem with Porcupien Tree: they have some awesome songs, often very poetic and with deep thought, but for some reason it’s tough for me to sit through a whole album of theirs. They start well, but then the excitement drops, and usually around the middle, after 5 or 6 songs, I either start over or change to something else – usually a half of a different Porcupine Tree album. And the boys called me a slut…

With Thom Yorke I experience things I never felt with Wilson… I can listen to any album (of the three I know so far) time and time again! They aren’t shallow collection of songs, like the others, they are deep they often flow one into another, and if you take a song away from the context of the album it just doesn’t make such an impression. Even those like “Optimistic”.

At the first glance, the title and a more upbeat, catchy tune – so different from the others – seem like it was supposed to be a commercial hit for repeated broadcasts on the radio. But it was never released as a single! And then you may notice the lyrics:

This one’s optimistic
This one went to market
This one just came out of the swamp
This one dropped a payload
Fodder for the animals
Living on animal farm

See how Radiohead makes fun of the people who come to their shows just to hear that one song? And believe me, it sounds much, much better in the context of the whole album than alone. It’s exactly as my aforementioned friend said about such Porcupine Tree songs as “The Sound of Muzak” or “4 Chords That Made a Million” – a catchy pop-rock songs that appeals to everyone, so everyone listens to it, and maybe someone of them takes notice of the lyrics once and realizes: “hey! It’s actually about something!”

Now I just can’t wait when Radiohead will come to my town to give some concert (which may happen, since they just released a new album, “The King of Limbs”), so we could have some more intimate moments…

"Black Swan"

So, “Black Swan”, right?

I don’t know why I keep doing this to myself. I hate horror movies. I’m so easily scared by them (or any movie, actually), and yet time and time again I go and watch some scary flick. There was spanish “El Orfanado”, there was “The Happening” (to all who want to say “‘Happening’ was scary?” I have an unpolite retort prepared, so better not), I even have some movies based on King’s novels and stories (“1408″, “Needful Things” or “The Mist”) and I keep convincing myself that one (sunny and bright) day I’ll watch them, but who are we kidding? I won’t gather the courage to do that… until one day I will and put them on, and then curse myself from behind the cushion throughout the whole movie. And, of course, promise myself I’ll never watch any horror. Until the next time.

My fiancee says I’m a masochist. She may be right.

Anyway, “Black Swan”, right?

It’s horrirying. I left the cinema on shaking legs and had to sit it out on a chair outside. I’d gladly sit it out inside, but after that movie I really really didn’t want to be left alone in the cinema, because the movie is pretty paranoid – I felt really uneasy walking through the empty corridors back to the gallery.

I actually considered leaving the cinema during the movie because I was so afraid – not afraid of what was happening, but of what may happen onscreen. I analyzed it a little and realized that I’m not afraid of gore (of which there is plenty, as usual for Aronofsky, which was the main complaint of my friends about this movie – but really, after seeing fork being stuck in palm of a hand in “Requiem for a Dream”, “Swan”‘s nailfile in a cheek was nothing special), but what really terrifies me are things and people suddenly appearing or acting differently. Old cliche – you look into a mirror in the bathroom and everything’s ordinary, you open the cabinet behind the mirror, get something and close it again, and somethings different there – I get shivers even writing about it. And it’s such an old cliche that I could anticipate when it will happen. I was wrong most of the time, but watching a movie always in such anticipation was NOT a pleasant experience. Ii wasn’t the movie that was frightening – it was the fear itself.

But I stayed and watched it to the end, and it was… really good. Not pleasant and I know I’ll never watch it again (while I saw “Requiem…” several times, mostly when showing it to other people), but it was great. It’s a movie about the price of the pursuit of excellence (sickness, paranoia, self-loathing) and it’s multi-layered, which I recently realized is an essential factor for being a Work of Art.

I heard opinions that it’s pretentious, but that’s no problem for me – I’m pretentious too ;) which I also realized recently. But thanks to those opinions and some negative reviews I didn’t set up my expectations too high, and probably thanks to that I liked “Black Swan” so much.

Though I’m sure some nightmares are in order…

An epic ending to the third installment of Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells” series. The second album, released in 1992, was nothing special – just a song-by-song remake of the first that, save for a few moments, only made me compare it to the original, which always shone in that comparison.
Fortunately, with the third album Oldfield took a different approach and created something new and much better than part II (although, of course, far from the first). And it ends epically with those two pieces that should be listened to together.

11. Moby, “Extreme Ways” (from “18″, 2002, and “Bourne Ultimatum” soundtrack, 2007)

The Bourne Trilogy are the best spy movies ever – better than my previous favourite, “Spy Game”, or any Bond flick (even the new ones, which, by the way, wouldn’t be that awesome if it weren’t for Bourne, as their realistic approach was greatly inspired by it).

And while I like to return to those movies once in a while, it wasn’t until recently that I actually noticed that amazing piece of music, starting with that distinctive high pitched sound playing over the last shot of the movie, and then accompanying the end credits. In the franchise’s first installment it was just instrumental, and later it contained Moby’s vocals.

Sometimes I just play only the credits of the movies, just to listen to that song combined with the movies’ last scenes.

BONUS TRACK: 12. Mike Oldfield, “Amarok” (from the album “Amarok”, 1990)

This single, 60-minutes long “song” that makes the whole “Amarok” album was a big “screw you” to Richard Branson and Virgin Records, made by Oldfield because of contractual obligation, but nevertheless it remains an amazing and epic work. I first gave it a listen several years ago, when I first got it. I saw how long it is and decided to sit that hour out and listen to the whole of it – just because it was so long. I managed to do it, but never came back again… until last year. I gave it another try. I didn’t finish, but over the next days I realized that some pieces stuck in my head. So I tried again, and then again, and again, and the unbelievably complex and everchanging piece started making more and more sense…

Now I know it by heart and can always remember what will come next. I also noticed all those more or less subtle messages pointed at Branson and when I return to this album-song I’m always in awe for Oldfield and his ability to make music that while being an artistic kick in someone’s ass, still is unbelievably awesome.

***

That was the year 2010. Let’s see what 2011 has in store for me. The hopes are high because there are new albums released or to be released by artists I follow (Coheed and Cambria, U2, A Silver Mount Zion…) that I still haven’t listened to.

It already started well, with the amazing end credits song from “Mass Effect” game I finished recently:

And with that I wish myself a musically great year 2011!

2010 for me was the year of rediscovery of Mike Oldfield and listening to his other stuff besides “Tubular Bells”.
I gave this song a try because the piano theme from “Bells” can be heard in the beginning. It paid, because the whole song – inspired by a nearly-fatal plane flight Oldfield experienced – turned out to be great and, despite very 1980s sound (and the video), it has a complex structure. The lyrics are dramatic but optimistic – I cry almost every time I hear the “our thoughts with you / rider in the blue” line.

6. Queen, “Was It All Worth It?” (from “The Miracle”, 1989)

Last year was also the year of proper listening to those Queen albums I never gave a real chance. That’s how I discovered a song on “The Miracle” that I never knew before (partly because it was never released as a single) – a great rock piece in which Queen reflects on their career since early days until then. Many people’s (including John Deacon) favourite song on this hit-infested album.

7. Michael McCann, “Icarus” (from “Deus eX: Human Revolution” soundtrack, 2010)

The prequel of the Greatest Video Game Ever is due to be released in April 2011, but the awesome trailers are up to be seen, and the soundtrack in the background was so popular that the publisher’s released is as an mp3 file for everyone to download. Now I sometimes put it on a loop and listen to it at work. Fantastic and moody piece for a game with huge potential. I just hope it’ll live up to the enormous expectations…
But, as one YouTube commenter said:

Even if this does turn out to suck, it’ll still have given us some astonishingly badass trailers.

8. Radiohead, “OK Computer” (1997) + “In Rainbows” (2007)

A great Cracked.com article gave me a stimulus to finally give a listen do this band I heard so much about, and I started with their most popular album, “OK Computer”, intertwined with their latest release, “In Rainbows” to create a whole new super-album that sounds so perfect as a whole that I just can’t pick one single song from it.

9. Infected Mushroom, “Heavyweight” (from “Vicious Delicious”, 2007)

One day my friend Paweł was in a mood for listening some music that Last.fm provided him. He was also in a mood to bother me at work, so he was sending me title after title. Because I like to work with music in my ears, I youtube’d song after song that he recommended. They were all nice pieces of illustrative, ambient music that sounded like soundtracks from video games. Nice music, but nothing really caught my attention… until “Heavyweight” came along.
This over nine minutes long piece was so amazing that I stopped youtube’ing whatever Paweł sent me afterwards and just played that one on a loop for the rest of the day (it reminded me of  Future Sound of London’s “Dead Cities” album). And then I dug for more.
Infected Mushroom is an Israeli band that plays some elctronic/ambient/rock pieces, some of them with lyrics either sung or rapped (or both, Archive-style). They have weaker moments (eponymous song from “Vicious Delicious” album), but the rest makes it up for them beautifully.

(to be continued…)

Here is the list of by 11 best music findings of the year 2010. Why eleven? I don’t know, I just counted at them and that’s how many there were ;)

1. Tina Rhema

I’ll start with my greatest discovery of 2010. On a Toastmasters Speech Contest in Warsaw in May there was a girl from Berlin, giving a very moving speech about a very tough topic. The emotions got to me despite the language barrier (the speech was in German) and I almost cried even before I knew what was it all about. That girl was Tina Rhema. Of course, she nailed the contest.
Later I had the chance to talk to her and we spent the whole evening discussing numerous topics, from small to really heavy ones, and it was amazing. It turned out that Tina sings, and because she had her guitar with her that day, she agreed to play some of her own songs for us. This is the result:

Tina is working on her album now, and you can listen to some songs on her MySpace page. I heard some more, but those three she played that evening are my absolute favourites. “Valley of Decisions” – the one featured both on her MySpace page and in the performance above – is even better in that crude, acoustic version I had the pleasure of hearing live.

2. Jefferson Airplane, “Somebody to Love” (from “Surrealistic Pillow”, 1967)

My company’s Toastmasters club adopted the name “Flying Toasters”, because we provide IT solutions for air travel industry, and also “Flying Toasters” was a legendary Windows screensaver from early nineties, so it’s connected with the history of computers. But the screensaver was not the first appearance of these winged kitchen appliances – the first Flying Toasters showed up on the cover of Jefferson Airplane’s 1973 live album, “Thirty Seconds over Winterland”. This was why I decided to finally give a listen to that American psychedelic rock band from the Woodstock era, and thus I discovered such classics as “Somebody to Love” or “White Rabbit”.

3. Czesław Śpiewa, “O Tych w Krakowie” (“Of Those in Kraków”, from “Pop”, 2010)

Czesław’s second solo album was a much more courageous (both musically and lyrically) follow up to his extremely successful “Debiut” album from 2008. This time most lyrics were written by Czesław himself, with less influence from Michał Zabłocki, and there are also songs in English or with mixed languages.
Although the album opens with Polish version of my favourite song of Tesco Value (Czesław’s previous band from Denmark), “Along Came a Spider”, it’s much shorter and calm here than the crazy and psychedelic original, therefore for this list I picked more catchy and awesome song about how people from Poland’s current and former capitals don’t go along very well.

4. Kontrust, “Bomba” (from “Time to Tango”, 2009)

This song is on this list because of it’s video – the most inadequate and funniest music video I’ve ever seen. The song itself is great and so is the video, but those two combined create pure awesomeness and make me laugh every single time I watch it.
Plus, that chick from the band is Polish!

(to be continued…)

New Year's Resolutions

The year 2010 has great in many aspects – all the Toastmasters conferences in many interesting places, all the great people I met on those occasions, the Szlachetna Paczka charity action – a lot to do, and all very satisfying.

Last year was also great culturally – I finally gave a proper listen to Mike Oldfield’s works other than “Tubular Bells” and in last weeks I fell in love with Radiohead (thus becoming “thomosexual“). Also, all those movies and books…

Wait. What movies? What books?

Unfortunately, in these areas last year was poorer than ever. I may have read about four to five books, and only one of them – Carlo Ruiz Zafon’s “The Shadow of the Wind” – an actual real novel (in the meaning that it was neither from Star Wars franchise nor written by Stephen King). As for movies, I can’t even say for sure the number of my visits to cinema last year was double digits. That’s horrible, especially when I remember those years when I watched 30-35 movies in cinema a year…

That’s why, for the first time in my life, I made actual New Year’s Resolutions for 2011. I’ve never done it before, but this time I decided to give myself some goals to make my life more cultural. That’s why I decided than in the year 2011:

* I will watch at least 200 movies (NEW movies, i.e. ones I didn’t see before – watching movies again does not count);
* and of those at least 20 in cinema;
* I will read at least 10 books (not necessarily novels, but stuff like Toastmasters manuals do not count);
* I’d also like to go to a theater or a concert at least once, but let’s see what’s played, so I’m not giving any numbers here.

I’ll report on those achevements on this blog as I fulfill them, and I already made the first step on New Year’s Eve party, when we watched the movie “Hangover” – actually good American comedy about an aftermath of a bachelor’s party going wild in Las Vegas. Much like “Dude, Where’s My Car?”plus clever (not always, but enough) comedy (and minus stupid aliens).

Meanwhile – Happy New Year, everyone! :)

Lost

“Lost” is over. The series finale aired on May 23rd, I finally watched it last Sunday, and I feel… empty.

But no need to feel sorry for me – this is the good kind of “empy”. The kind you feel after finishing a long, great novel, where you had time to get to know and love the characters. The kind of “empty” many people felt when they finished reading “Lord of the Rings”, and I myself felt it when I was done with “Watership Down” or “Deus eX”. I guess the word “empty” is not really accurate here, then. I think from now on I’ll go with “fulfilled”.

The feeling comes from that in my opinion “Lost” is in the world of TV series what “Lord of the Rings” is in literature, and “Deus eX” is among other video games – the genuine Masterpiece. The kind of work that is or should be a model for all other works of the same art, but, at the same time, I don’t believe anything ever will come to top them. They are kind of an ultimate goal that could never be achieved, but everyone should try their best to follow. And I don’t mean every TV series from now on should be about a deserted, mysterious island. I just wish every TV series would really try their best to be as groundbreaking. Unfortunately, right now I don’t see anything that could even be considered to be the follower of “Lost”.

The Lost Supper

But you know what is best about “Lost”? It’s that it’s over. Not like some daily soap that you watch out of sheer custom, because you just want it to be over, and quite frankly, if the characteres weren’t so damn stupid it could be over some 100 episodes ago (hello, “Majka”!). In the case of “Lost” it being over is great, because the creators really show their respect for the viewers. They’re not trying to milk the same cow for as long as possible, producing season after season, not resolving any mysteries but just adding more and more ridiculous plots (hello, “The Pretender”!) or adding yet another season, because the magic numbers say viewers are not bored with it yet (hello, Dr. Grey, say “Hi” to your diagnostician friend from New Jersey and the ladies from Wisteria Lane!).

No. Just like “The Lord of the Rings” is a trilogy, and in the end the heroes float away from Gray Havens, and there won’t be fourth part, “Lost” was long ago planned for just six seasons, and it’s impossible to extend it any further – the series finale undoubtedly shows the characters’ journey is over. They too, in a way, sailed away to never come back. And they left exactly when they should – not allowing me to grow bored with the story, and closing every plot thread and filling any plot hole that I needed them to. Of course, they didn’t answer every question that was raised, and there were weaker moments, but come on – in a series of over 120 episodes no-one can possibly avoid any slips – even “Lord of the Rings” has them (hello, Tom Bombadil!)

But the myth arc and the universe of “Lost” for me is so complete that I can find the answers and fill the holes myself if I want to. I know many obsessive fans were disappointed, but I really feel sorry for those who lack in imagination so much they need every question answered directly. For me, this brilliant series ended exactly when and as it should.

I feel fulfilled. Thank you, J.J. Abrams, Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof.

Now I’m waiting for what you do with “The Dark Tower” :)