STYLE KILLS SUBSTANCE WITH A BIG ASS SWORD: WET THE VIDEO GAME

Tron Evolution, The Matrix, Avatar, Blade Runner ... these are movies that are known for very distinct "looks" Looks achieved through special effects, CGI, cinematography or usual a combination of both. I think they are all successful movies, I think they are movies with stories far deeper than their glossy (or gritty) surfaces and yet it is those very surfaces, that distinct look, that helps to tell the story.

All these movies have style. They also have, in my opinion, as substance but it's a substance that you can't truly appreciate without that style.

These considerations can be applied to another visual medium: video games. One of my favorite video games was Max Payne (and its sequel) never to be confused with the so called movie of the same time. Max was drenched in style, from the world weary Noir narration, to the comic book like panels to the distressed colour panel. It was one of the first games that I played that struck me as being truly cinematic. And it had a story, a fairly good mystery story with some compassion. So style, with substance.

Which brings us to the latest game I'm playing. Like all the games I prefer, it is a first person shooter, an action game with an intriguing protagonist. It is so drenched it style it may leave a stain. But substance ...?

I give you Wet, the video game.

Look at the cover, say the word Wet again ... OK enough of that, don't be crude. No on second thought it's OK to be a little crude but it isn't that kind of game. Well, not exactly.

Wet is an action game. It features Rubi Malone, a modern day gun .. and sword ... for hire. The game is all about Rubi. It is a third person shooter and you control Rubi as she moves through a sleazy crime world on some kind of path of mayhem.

Rubi is a lot of fun. She is an over the top female bad ass. Living in some kind of run down plane graveyard in Texas called the Boneyard, Rubi is deadly with her twin pistols and her sword and she is all kick ass and rough edges. Think of her as Kill Bill's the Bride's redneck cousin. There is, in fact, a lot of Tarantino influence in this game. It is presented as a grindhouse movie, complete with cheesy drive in style intermissions, a scratchy old film filter and when Rubi dies (and in my control Rubi dies a lot) we get melted film frames.

I like this game because it does not shy away from its less the B Movie aspirations. In most games of this sort, you must control your character's health. They get shot up and their health falters. Usually you refresh their health by find a med pack, or taking pills ... Rubi drinks a bottle of whiskey then tosses it into the air and shoots the crap out of it. Yeh, she's a real debutant. Wet likes to play with video game conventions. In most games you can gain points or unlock features by collecting objects throughout the world. In Wet, Rubi collects little cymbal banging monkies. I don't know why. I'm not sure I want to know

A common trait for most shooters is, of course, weapons. Rubi starts out with her sword and twin revolvers. You can unlock more weapons as you progress through the game. But Wet is not a game that hinges its playing experience on logic. It any other game I've played, ammo or the lack of it becomes an issue. Not here. If you stick to Rubi's six guns you never have to reload and you never run out of ammo. Hell, why let reality intrude with the girl's bad assery.

Rubi can not only shoot and slay multiple enemies with one swipe of her sword, she can move. Like another one of my favorite games, Mirrors Edge, you can make Rubi jump, slide, wall run, flip, vault, swing and all other manners of acrobatic moves ... and she can still shoot while doing all of them. I enjoyed the character of Faith in Mirrors Edge, she was skilled and brave. But I fear Rubi would be a bad influence on her. Or maybe keep her tied up at the Boneyard for god knows what kind of shenanigans.

Rubi is beyond your usual chick bad assery. Rubi may be a little bit insane. At certain moments in the game, Rubi will shoot someone point black and get blood blow back on her face .... when this happens, she goes into Rage Mode. The graphics change into red and white line drawings, blood becomes black and oh my goodness there is a lot of black. None of it makes sense. But oh my goodness, it sure is fun

Wet has Rubi's blade slicing through bad guy torso's and its tongue firmly implanted in its cheek. There are a lot of little bits of just pure goofiness. There are moments in the game where Rubi has to ride in elevators. We observe her through security cams. Most of the time she taps her foot and impatiently jabs the button; no waiting for our girl, there is whiskey to drink and bad guys to explode. Fair enough. But then there is the scene in an elevator where Rubi suddenly produces a harmonica and begins playing ... It is a truly special "what the fuck" moment

Another fun thing about Wet, and one of its strongest components is the music. This game has one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard. Dozens of bands provide songs that are definitely out of the Tarantion-Rodriqez camp; hard fast jangly punky twangy southwestern drum driven darkly comic gems. The first time Rubi goes into Rage Mode the lyrics are something like "my girl friend is insane, 4 out of 4 doctors agree she's a menace to society" Seriously, how fucking cool is that.

So Wet has style .. 60's era matte black huge finned Cadillac sized style. But does it have substance. Well the story well, really isn't. I haven't finished the game but I can see that clearly story isn't an issue here. This isn't about story. This is about putting Rubi through her paces, giving her dozens and dozens of bad guys to spatter, giving her the opportunity to slide upside down, down a ladder with her legs while she unloads with her twin pistols ..

It's about fun, story be damned. Elements are thrown in here simply for the sake of making you laugh and say "holy shit, that's cool" I can sometimes accept that in movies and I'm even more willing to do so in a video game. Yes, I've played games with very compelling stories but in the long run, I just want to waste a little time, enter a entertaining world or meet and fun character.

And Rubi Malone is fun. Just don't tell her I said so. I'm not sure she has a sense of humour. And trust me, I don't want to piss her off

SEVEN SAMURAI ... TO INFINITY

Seven is the number. Seven samurai. Seven cowboys. Seven space wanderers. Seven women. Seven other samurais, well six, plus a robot ...

Many stories, several genres, even different media but all one inspiration. The inspiration being The Seven Samurai, the 1952 movie by Akira Kurosawa that deserves the status of classic as much if not more than most movies.

Iconic is certainly the word you can use to describe this movie. A movie that at first glance is very Japanese; set in that country's feudal history it is a story of honour, of devotion and of a way of life that that for all that honour could not possibly sustain itself.






Yet there is a universal aspect to the story, or fighting men with nothing left to fight except for the very honour of fighting itself. For men who in their honest moments of reflection could find little honour in their past so decide that perhaps, at the end, they would find honour in folly ... of seven warrirors, pitting themselves against impossible odds, defending a village against bandits, all for a handful or rice.


It is why the story has been adapted, or translated you could say, by so many other story tellers all over the world. The most famous example of this resulted in another iconic movie: The Magnficent Seven, the classic western by John Sturges. Another one of my favorite movies of all time, the Seven spawned serveral sequels that were although entertaining, never achieved the glory of the original

The plot of this movie follows the originally fairly faithfully in most regards; poor villagers, beset by bandits, inlisting the fighting skill of a group of men for little pay. In this case it is gunfighters instead of samurai but the spirit is the same. Samurai is more atmospheric, Kurosawa is never afraid to take his time building his stories; Magnificent Seven is more stream lined but both films get the most out of their characters. Toshiro Mifune's peasant-turned-warrior from Samurai finds an unlikely home in Horst Buckholtz the German actor playing Mexican .. but it still works.

From the iconic past of Japan and the United States, Roger Corman's Battle Beyond the Stars takes the seven into the future and into space.





After the success of the original Star Wars movie, a lot of B grade space operas came oozing onto movie screens and direct to VHS (if you don't remember VHS you may have no point reading this blog but of course there is no point to this blog) but this one stands out. Mostly for its sense of humour and its unrelenting allegience to the conept of the Seven, right to the inclusion of actor Robert Vaughn, who was among the cast of the original Magnificent Seven. The movie is a lark and if you take it as such, it's a lot of fun. It is not however the only sci fi interpretation of the Seven but I'm getting ahead of myself.


From feudal Japan to the American old West to goofy outer space our next tale of the Seven takes us back to feudal Japan but with a couple of differences. The most significant difference is that in this story, Obakemono, is that the seven are all women. The other difference is that it is not a movie at all, it's a graphic novel.

Written by Finona Avery and illustrated by Billy Tan, this is a standalone story associated with Top Cow Comic's long running Witchblade universe of stories. It is the Seven, featuring magic with an all female cast. I really enjoyed the feminine take on the story. In Kurosawa's Seven women were not ignored but they played a very traditional role, a supporting role. As they do in the western version as well. I've always thought that an all female Seven was overdo and it is handled very well in this story.

There have been many many variants on the Seven story but I'm not going to list them all here. That isn't the point of this post ... yes yes yes there is no point this blog really but you can't blame a fella for trying.


What inspired this post was a particular take on the Seven story which I recently encountered. Like Battle Beyond the Stars, it takes the seven into the future and like Obakemono it takes them in a new medium, this time, Japanese anime. I give you Samurai 7.

This was a series that originally ran in Japan in 2004, produced by Gonzo Studios. I recently bought all 27 half hour episodes as a deluxe box set. This interested me because this is a new Japanese interpretation of a Japanese classic. So these are samurai, not cowboys, they are all male, they have Japanese names, they use swords and once again are being paid in rice. And rice features prominantly in this story as it could not in most other cultural renditions.

This is Japan, feudal Japan, but it is a future feudal Japan. It features such anime favorites as gigantic flying robots, slightly smaller ambulatory robots, swords with even more abilities than usual, cybernetics etc. But this future is still a feudal system, with an emperor, lords, merchants and a samurai class.

The story is set after a long penultimate war that has seen the era of samurai replaced by the era of merchants. Commerce has replaced the katanna as the weapon of choice. The war is thought to be the war to end all wars (gee where have we heard that before) and at the end of it, there no longer seems a need for the samurai. Most become ronin while others, still hungry for war, transform themselves into the aforementioned giant flying robots.

Said robots become bandits, terrorizing villages, robbing them of their hard won rice. And guess what ... one village decides to take a stands and goes out to hire themselves some ronin.

Most of the story is very much a remake of the Seven Samurai, the story is even credited to Akira Kurosawa. Some scenes gave me a little chill of prescience, I knew what was coming because some of the shots mirrored those of the original. There are some differences, a love interest is changed and about half of the episodes pick up after where Seven Samurai left off but the feel is pretty much spot on.

There is honour won and lost, there is fealty, heroic battles, betrayal, misunderstandings, and standing tough for the sake of standing tough. It all fits well with the futuristic setting. I've always been fond of the romantic notion of swords being wielded on flying ships, it's very Edgar Rice Burroughs. The futuristic setting also makes possible the transformation of Toshiro Mifune's rambunctious farmer-turned-fighter character into a huge "robot samurai" This interpretation actually works better than that of Buckholtz in Magnificent Seven. The robot is good for laughs but also capable of some touching moments.

The animation in the series is a bit uneven; the flying robot bandits and certain backdrops are rendered in an almost 3 dimensional detail where other backgrounds and some characters are barely above Saturday morning cartoon levels. The story starts out slow, with a bit of uneven pacing, and some of the secondary characters, like a young girl who ends up tagging along, are just downright annoying. Other characters new to the story, like a new evil emperor work extremely well.

All of this proves how timeless Kurosawa's original story really is. And while I enjoy Samurai 7 because it is another Japanese interpretation, Kurosawa was influenced by many other story telling cultures; in fact, he was a big fan of Western movies which lends a lovely irony to the creation of the Magnificent Seven.

The story of a small group of people, strangers thrown together by circumstance, going to their deaths for a handfull of rice and a shot at redemption certainly has a lot of appeal. Additional to that there is this sense of a passing time, a passing era, and those left behind, be they samurai or cowboys. Samurai 7 hits this point particularly well and for being an anime series it is not afraid to dive into the bittersweet essence of the thing.

There were Seven. There are Seven now. There will be Seven in the future. Count on it.

THE RAILWAY CHILDREN: THEATRE REVIEW

This weekend Collette and I attended the first play in our season of Mirvish Production shows. The play is The Railway Children. Apparantly based on a famous novel that has had TV and movie versions, none of which I have seen so I went into it "blind" one could say.
I knew a couple of things about this production. They built a 1,000 seat theatre especially for this play. The Roundhouse Theatre is just south of the Rogers Centre, by the Steamwhistle Brewery in what was, appropriately, a former train yard. And I knew that it featured a full size steam train nick named Vicky.

The staging was very impressive. The audience is seated on each side of a pair of train platforms that the run the length of the theatre. In the middle of the two platforms are the "tracks" represented by a deep gutter. Not only does the train run in this alley but so do pieces of stage, representing various locations in the show; a living room, a kitchen, the railway office etc. At one end of the tracks is a set of stairs leading to a kid of bridge, actors pass over this bridge as well as on the platforms, the moving stages and in the gutter itself.

Watching the cast run up and down the long platforms and up over this bridge, jumping from moving stage to the platform I concluded that the actors must be in some terrific shape to achieve all this.

The big steam locomotive only makes a couple of appearances. Other times the trains are represented by sound effects and flashing lights. At one point the main characters enter a railway tunnel; as they drop down on to the tracks, a pair of sheer black curtains are pulled the length of the stage, giving us a sense of darkness and constriction.

The staging was very imaginative but unfortunately it may have been the best thing about the show. The acting was solid enough, especially from the three actors who portray the titular children recounting a story from their youth.

What disapointed me was the story itself. It is based in Edwardian England and tells the story of three children and their mother who's middle class London life is torn asunder as their father is sent to prison, unjustly accused of espionage. The family moves to the rural Three Chimneys to begin a new life in poverty, where the trains present the kids with their escape from a drab reality.
Again, I no nothing about the source material. There seems to be something there. There is the father's situation, which is never fully explored in the play. There is the character of a Russian, fleeing the czar for his radical writing and again, never fully explored. There is the mother, a woman in this era who supports the family by her writing .. again, never fully explored.

There is poverty and a train collision and politics but every time the story seems ready to delved into some sort of dramatic depth, we are pulled away from it. There is no conflict in this story and very little tension. We are given a very bland and generic story of three children and their very luke warm adventures. It seems to me that this story has been very gentrified, made a family friendly as possible, and in so doing is about exciting as white bread soaked in milk.

The problem is, I don't know how much this will appeal to children. Yes there are kids in it and there is the train but I think a lot of kids will find this boring. I know I did .. we'll leave my child like or childish status out of this

The Roundhouse theatre is lovely, very intimate, though the acoustics were not great. For such a small space I had to struggle sometimes to hear the dialogue. The staging was imaginative but the star of the show shouldn't really be a giant train.

But it was.

THE HELLO FUTURE COMPETITION: A SHARED DISSONANCE - THE HAIRY VERSION

The following is a verbatim post from my other blog, Idiot With A Camera. That blog was created specifically to track my progress creating a video for the Vimeo, Hello Future competition but as I have now submitted the video, the two blogs are merging.

I've been enjoying going through the other videos submitted to the Saatchi and Saatchi Hello Future video competition As of this posting there are over 200 videos posted. The deadline is today so I'm not sure how many more will be submitted but they do seem to be coming pretty fast and furiously.

It is utterly fascinating to me to see what different people do with the same inspiration. I've looked at most of the videos but of course I'm particularly interested in those that used After, the same song as I. That is still the least popular choice but it's interesting that those videos seem to be the ones now coming in right at deadline. Could be because it's such a damn long ass song. It is, in fact, the longest song by a good two minutes or so.

A few things came to mind as I watch all these videos. Firstly that for these skilled and dedicated amateur film makers, the overwhelmingly most popular weapon of choice is the digital SLR, primarily some version of a Canon SLR that records HD video.

I can see why these cameras are popular. The image quality is outstanding due to a combination of huge image sensors and superb optics. Using a DSLR gives you access to a large range of lenses and it gives you the advantages; focus control, depth of field, exposure, etc. It is also a relatively light piece of gear. Also most of the have the option to record video at 24 fps (frames per second) which mimics the "film look" so often sought

That film look is not something I actively seek. I love the look of video. For most of the projects I work on, I don't need them to look as though they've been shot on film. I am not a movie maker, I'm a video maker. Even if I make a fictional video expressing abstract ideas I like the look of video and it's possibilities

I still love the look I achieve with my Canon XL1. It is a standard def mini DV camera but it has a superior lens and 3 good sized image sensors. It is definitely old school, all the buttons I need to operate on it are within the reach of my fingers as I hold it, no annoying menu's to scroll through as I have on my Sony

Now, I am very impressed with my Sony. I bought it to replace my old Samsung standard def tape based handycam; its image quality was fairly low but it was small and portable and I liked to carry it in my pocket and mostly used it to take video of the girls and when Collette and I are out and about. These videos end up on this blog and I wasn't terribly concerned with the quality.

When I went looking at a replacement cam I would have been happy with another mini DV cam but those simply are no longer made. And I admit to the advantages of a cam that records on to a hard drive; you eliminate some of the physical issues you encounter with tape and if your hard drive is large enough, you can record a lot of footage. I liked the Sony because its small and I can record about 60 hrs of high quality footage on to its hard drive. The fact that it records in HD was not immediately important to me but I have to say, I'm very impressed with the quality of the footage. It doesn't record to 24 fps but the optics are pretty impressive.

Still, most of the videos for the Hello Future competition wanted that "film" look and most of them got that, with a deeper contrast ration than 30 fps and greater control over the colour temperature.

Let's leave the technical aside. I want to concentrate on the creative aspect. This competition featured video makers from all over the world, at all different quality levels. The film school kids were out in force and a lot of their work was quite impressive. The little film production companies are well represented and not surprisingly a lot of that work is of really high quality. And the artists ... the computer artists, the digital artists, the photographers even the musical artists all came to play and I really enjoyed watching their videos. They offered perspectives that never would have occurred to me.

What surprised me was how many common elements we chose to include in these videos. Mysubmission features speed altered images of traffic, subway trains, the city at night. Turns out a lot of other people felt that same inspiration not just with my song but with the others as well.

I made a video that tried to portray emptiness and lonliness surrounded by millions of people. I knew that this was not the most original of concepts and a lot of others shared this idea.

The overall theme of the competition was Hello Future. Some folks tackled this in a very literal fashion: Robots, post apocalypse, cyborgs, plague, evolution .. all on display. I think my take was a bit less literal but fairly obvious and I'm in good company. Some approached the theme of the future on a very personal level, illustrating it through the degradation of personal relationships for instance.

Some chose to ignore the theme or perhaps tackled in a way that just escaped me. Power to them. My original concept for my video had nothing to do with Hello Future. When I reread the brief and understood that this theme needed to be an element in the video I at first thought "I don't really care, I'm making the video I want" But as I thought about it and began to figure out how I could introduce the future into my video it actually helped solidify my theme. And it gave me a clearly defined ending which had eluded me up to that point.

Vimeo is a website that is intended and designed to be a community for video makers. Mostly I use it as by far the best option to host videos, videos I generally create to show on The Hairy Edge but it is kind of nice to dog paddle in the shallow end of the movie making pool

My other blog is often about inspiration. This competition was all about inspiration, for myself and hundreds of others. As disparate as our videos may be, we all shared that same inspiration.

SELF PROMOTION WITHOUT REMORSE

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was inspired by the Hello Future video competition hosted by Saatchi & Saatchi and Bug Video and Vimeo, featuring the music of Moby, to try to create an entry.

Well, with the entry deadline on Monday I have indeed submitted a video

To watch my take on the Moby song After, please take a look here If moved to do so, please feel free to comment on that page

To take a gander at all the submissions (and you should) find them here

If you're interested, I detailed my silly little adventure in the creation of this video on my other blog The Idiot With A Camera

Judging starts soon, with the top 10 semi finalists being announced around June 10 and the winner being crowned June 24

I entered this competition because I love Moby's music, I find it very cinematic and fun to imagine movies to and it was great he was making these songs public domain to allow Idiots With Cameras the legal ability to do so. I haven't made a "movie" or any kind of creative video since I was in college (we didn't have cameras then, we just drew stuff really really fast) and I have some time on my hands, and new little HD cam .. and the entries had to be in HD

I honestly didn't enter the competition to win, I'm the kind of person who find inspiration from outside sources and I always do best when someone else sets the deadline. Looking at the other entries, there are some talented serious movie makers out there. I'm a commercial editor and writer and my camera is usually focussed on the dogs or some adventure I'm sharing with Collette.

It was fun to dive into a pool where I haven't swam in a couple of decades. I really enjoyed creating the video and I love seeing what other people did with the same inspiration.

UFC 129: HANGING OUT WITH A FEW OF OUR FRIENDS

OK now that I've posted my rant about the uber corporate greed of the UFC, it's time to talk about the events of the weekend. I attended a little free "fan festival" at Dundas Square on Thursday, then Collette and I went to the big even, UFC 129 on Saturday night.

The fan fest was a free event, held on a cool drizzly day which wasn't a bad thing, as it kept down the ravenous crowds that went to the fight and to the pay-to-enter Fan Fest also held this week.

There were a few tents on the square, one of them holding various pieces of UFC memorabilia.

Among other things in the truck was the only authentic touring UFC belt ... not exactly sure why I should be excited about this, but here it is
A few fighters showed up to sign autographs, including perennial lightweight contender John Fitch ..

... self-styled mma badboy Josh Koshcek ...
Koshcheck and Fitch remained on stages but light heavyweight Ryan Bader walk around the square, letting anyone pose with him for a picture and even allowing a rather dubious young man demonstrate his "kung fu" moves. Security wanted to move in my Bader waved him off; the person in question probably weighed about 145 pound while Bader could rent out his back as a highway billboard.
But this soggy little "festival" was merely a precursor for the real deal: UFC 129 at the Rogers Centre (that's the Skydome for us old farts)
Collette and I (and 55,000 of our closest friends) entered our corporate coliseum to watch our heavily tattooed and endorsement bedecked gladiators do battle. We got there in time to watch the first fight at 6 pm and stayed till the very end, some 12 fights later.

The UFC promised us spectacle and that, overall, is what they delivered. Hundreds of computer controlled lights, dozens of video screens, some 80 feet wide (and from our seats in the 200 level, we needed those) and a sound system powerful enough to be used by police to disperse crowds.

Beyond spectacle, the greedimaniacs at the UFC knew what we wanted ... the fight card was stacked with Canadian fighters, most from Montreal and a few from Toronto, such as lightweight Mark Bocek. Eight Canadians in all including the main draw of the fight, welterweight George St-Pierre who defended his title against American Jake Shields. The Canadians did well, winning most of their bouts. Local boy Mark Hominick lost his quest for the featherweight belt against Jose Aldo, but showed a lot of grit, including fighting through a goose egg on his head the size of a Gemini space capsule, and taking the champ to the mat in the final round and pounding the tar out of him .. too little too late perhaps, but the crowd reacted with a roof raising roar.

The two loudest roars of the night came at the entrance of two particular fighters. No surprise that Canadian champ St-Pierre got a crushing ovation but so did an American: UFC hall of famer Randy Coture, fighting in the last bout of his long career. Now, Randy has said this before, but he is 47 and I don't see another comeback, even for Captain America.

Overall we got what we came for: Lots of actions, knock outs, many fights not needing to go to the judges score card. George won, which is what we wanted, even if it was not the most thrilling fight of the night.

There is an adage that in the right circumstance, a crowd can become its own character, that it can be a factor in a sporting event. Local fighter Claude Patrick has said that the first time he slammed Daniel Roberts to the mat he could feel the crowd respond .. so he kept slamming the man and won the match.

I've been to the Rogers Centre many times but I have never seen as it was Saturday night; absolutely filled to capacity. Literally, every seat in the stadium was occupied. And although there were more than a few young men intoxicated before the first leg kick was thrown, most were there for the same experience and the tens of thousands of us were united for a common purpose: To see these highly skilled and strongly motivated athletes kick some ass

Records were set. The largest crowd ever for a mixed martial arts event. Tickets sold to patrons in just about every country on the planet. And of course, more money stuffed into the UFC's pockets than ever before.

The greed of the UFC still leaves a rather bad taste in my mouth but I have to say, as a fan, I left the dome very satisfied. We saw some great fights, many times I was driven to my feet and I bounded with some of the fans around me.

But I'm not taking any of them home.

Here's a video with highlights from the fan fest and from the fight itself. The fight footage was recorded on Collette's new Panasonic DMC-TS3 waterproof pocket camera.

UFC 129 from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.