The Verge is a tech site run by Vox Media in the United States of America. It is launching its games news site called, for some reason, ‘Polygon’. Those are the facts. Now, as ever when it comes to commerce and journalism, things get fuzzy.
Let’s watch this advert about for what Vox would like us to believe is ‘documentary’ called Press Reset: The Story of Polygon about the making of the advertising-driven website covering video games at the bottom of this piece.
Certainly, as another strand of the entertainment complex, the video game industry is worth celebrating. I agree. Some video games are good. Many people who make video games are good too. Celebration is what annual, voted on awards shows are for. It is not what news and reviews and interviews are for. Those are there to inform (maybe entertain) readers and, in the case of video games coverage, consumers.
Some people who write about people who make video games, who review games and who do interviews (me, I do that) are okay too. Some of us and some of what we do are necessary to inform consumers of video games about those products. Some of us can also be of value in informing game makers where they have progressed or regressed the industry from which we all make money. But, when all is said and done, we hacks, writers, keepers of journals and blogs are largely there to provide a service to our readers.
As I was told early in my career, “It’s great that you want to right a novel, the door to your house is through the exit of this office. I’ll buy a copy of your book when it comes out. Now, tell the readers whether this widget is any good.”
Times have changed a great deal since then. The New Games Journalism has much to say about this. From a “Manifesto” drawn up in 2004 by Keiron Gillen, who stated in the piece that:
“If Games Journalism is just a job to you, you really shouldn’t be doing it. The word should be “vocation”.”
Star Wars
I was interested to see broadcaster, writer and champion Blue Peter host wooer, Charlie Brooker, having a wee troll on Twitter regarding Star Wars. Charlie, in a mischievous attempt at entertaining himself by riling the fans of Lucas’ mismanaged baby, decided to play the Stars Wars is rubbish card on the social networking site. It was a fairly transparent trolling but it got me thinking on what I feel about Star Wars – or more specifically the ‚”real” Star Wars, Star Wars pre-1997.
“Is Star Wars rubbish?” I asked myself. Well yes, yes it is. Despite being a fan of the original trilogy I’ve long accepted that it’s the Dame Edna Everage-esque rose tinted spectacles I wear that make me dust off my DVDs from time to time. And it’s those same spectacles that cause me to still get a lump in my throat when Ben Kenobi takes one for the team, or make the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end when whiny yokel Luke turns off his targeting computer. These emotional responses occur despite me knowing that the dialogue is corny, that there’s a distinct feeling that our George is making it up as he goes along and that the whole thing has the depth of your common or garden pantomime. A pantomime most likely starring Billy Pearce.
Ah, “emotional responses”.
That’s just it, isn’t it? For a lot of people of a similar age to me Star Wars as a piece of cinema transcends critical assessment. Why? Well, it’s because it is something we are emotionally bound to. It is something cherished and treasured because, like a certain smell or a particular piece of music, it evokes feelings and memories more powerfully than any clever use of mise en sc√®ne or insightful dialogue could ever achieve.
If Star Wars is the evoker of feelings and memories it is many different things to many different people. Below is what Star Wars is to me.
1. Star Wars is being bought my first action figure (Chewbacca) by Mum from Taylor and McKenna in Milton Keynes. That shop never seemed quite as good after it became a Beatties.
2. Star Wars is my Dad digging me a huge hole in the sand when we were at the seaside. He wanted to build a dam but I wanted to feed myself to the sarlacc. He probably knew then and there that I’d never be a piping engineer like him.
3. Star Wars is me trying to move my friend’s Raleigh Bluebird using The Force. I swear it moved once, honest.
4. Star Wars is sitting down with my family to watch the television premieres, Dad pressing record on the top-loading JVC VHS recorder just before it started. I still remember all the adverts; “The wa’er in Majorca don’ taste like wot it ough’ a”.
5. Star Wars is my Dad teaching me how to ride a bike and telling me to “use The Force, Simon” as he let go of the saddle. I then proceeded to crash into the apple trees at the bottom of the garden. Thanks Dad.
6. Star Wars is being told by my Dad that the actor who plays Admiral Ackbar was; “born like that”. Again, thanks Dad.
7. Star Wars is being envious of my friend, David Moore’s toy B-Wing. I wonder what David Moore is doing now? Does he still have his B-wing?
8. Star Wars is going to Leighton Buzzard Library Theatre to see Return of the Jedi, my first trip to the cinema. Okay, maybe calling Leighton Buzzard Library Theatre a cinema is somewhat charitable but it was still AMAZING.
9. Star Wars is arguing with school friends over who was going to be who at playtime. I always ended up being sodding C-3PO. Or Leia.
10. Star Wars is my Nan and Granddad coming to visit and bringing me the Princess Leia Boushh disguise action figure. Man, I miss my Nan and Granddad.
What is the meaning of YOU telling ME how to run the game?!
David Williamson’s The Club could never been made today.
Forget the fact that it’s about Aussie Rules from the old VFL; that it was actually set and filmed in one of the biggest names in that code, Collingwood. Concentrate on the performances and the script.
Concentrate especially on the downfall of Graham Kennedy’s character, Ted Parker. Or there’s the smug dope smoking scene. Or the ‘intellectual’ sports star Geoff Hayward, hated by his teammates until…
Script excerpts such as the one that follows still resonate – now but think “Asians” instead of “New Australians”:
Jock: A marvellous high mark you took last Saturday. You just seemed to go up and up! Geoff Hayward: Yeah, I felt like Achilles. Jock: Yes…[laughs] … Who’s he? Geoff Hayward: A Greek guy who could really jump. Jock: Ah, yeah yeah. Well some of these new Australians, you know they could be real champions, if they forget about soccer and just learn to assimilate
Following on from my previous post about the fact you can add “…Of Blood!” to nearly anything and come up with a Cult Movie, I’d like to introduce the equally as good “…Of the Damned!’ with this Aussie ‘classic’ from 1975.
The title says most of what you need to know. It’s an inn, it’s for the damned. There’s sex, violence, mystery and, of course given that it’s an Aussie flick made in the 1970s, it’s got John Meillon.
Meillion gave an absolutely cracking performance as the tragically foolhardy Sir John Kerr in The Dismissal.
So now, Inn of the Damned! “A big picture set in a Big Country”.
I went for my triannual trip to the cinema last night. Went to see Ryan Reynold’s tour de force, Buried. I’ve got one thing to thank Buried for, it reminded me that I needed to get a copy of Russian Ark. Both have intriguing theatrical devices:
Russian Ark is a single Stedicam shot for over an hour as the filmmaker, Alexander Sokurov, helps us explore Russian history from the 17th century via a tour of the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg.
Buried‘s device is a bloke in a box and no other on-screen visible cast members. It stars Ryan Reynolds (Two Guys and a Girl, National Lampoon’s Van Wilder) as ‘simple truck driver who goes to Iraq to make money for his family Everyman guy’ Paul Conroy. Within moments of meeting Paul in his box, I could totally understand why someone, anyone in fact who had met him, would want to incarcerate him, three feet underground, in ‘one of those old wooden coffins’.
Fortunately, EveryPaul has a Blackberry with a good signal, nearly half of its battery left and incredibly quick broadband. He’s also got his anti-anxiety pills, a small flask of spirits, two glow sticks and a torch. Despite apparently being a non-smoker, he’s also got a spectacular Zippo lighter; it’s hard to light but once in action would shame a M2A1-2 flamethrower, which he uses at any given opportunity.
Opportunities include when trying to phone for help – a genuinely savvy move despite one laboured again and again by the “Don’t put me on hold” gag. Yes, for some reason, EveryPaul does not find the light from his Blackberry to be sufficient. He must also use his oxygen-sucking Zippo to illuminate his box when making phone calls.
He calls for help a lot. He calls his wife in the USA, his calls his mother-in-law in the USA. I assume it’s his mother-in-law. He reacts to her in the same way as most old mother-in-law jokes do, but he gets to call her a ‘cunt’ not a ‘battle-axe’ once he’s hung-up in a fit of pique, edgy stuff. He calls the State Department in the USA; he calls his employer (not Blackwater) in the USA; he calls 911 in the USA.
He never gets around to calling his local office in Iraq.
Also, because the people who have put him in the box have taken the one emergency number EveryPaul was given, presumably one in Iraq, he can’t call that. He’s not memorised it. Maybe this is me, but if I was an Everyman truck driver who had gone to Iraq to feed my family, I would have tattooed that number on the inside of my eyelids and the outside of my wrists like an exam cheat with intense purpose.
Paul is not about that kind of thing. Nor is Ryan Reynolds. Ryan is about acting. He acts the shit out of that box. He emotes, he grunts, he insults everybody he calls, sometimes he doesn’t even answer the phone because he’s so fucking angry… Ryan is so fucking acty that once or twice I forgot the screaming, fucking angry voice in my head fucking screaming, “Just fucking die you cunt fuck!”
The edginess is catching, obviously.
The Aint I Cool site really rates BuriedThankfully, the anonymous captor has left EveryPaul’s anti-anxiety pills in the old fashioned coffin, the kind they make from wood.
He does so, with a slug of booze and some of the absolute best ‘drinking booze and eating pills’ acting I’ve seen ever, or more accurately heard. Ryan eats the fuck out of those cunt pills and sucks that booze down like a motherfucker, he genuinely makes glugging noises that should at least gain an Academy Award nomination.
The premise though, is a brave one. The Bloke-in-a-Box genre has not been well-served even by the likes of Buried Alive (‘Hell hath no fury like a man buried alive!’). Sure, Uma Thurman in her Kill Bill 2, ‘Chick-in-a-box’ role is the high water mark, but even she didn’t last an entire 16 hour movie.
No, the movie I am calling, “EveryPaul IS Bloke-in-a-Box”, is not 16 hours long, it just feels as if it is.
Make sure, however, to stay in your seat (or fast forward) for the scene in which HR director of EveryPaul’s employer, Alan Davenport (played by Stephen Tobolowsky), steals the movie.
Oh, and Kevin the CGI snake… now that is high point of hilarity and studio bosses screaming, “Give Ryan some fucking action to fucking act! Ryan needs to fucking act!”.
Anyway, I picked up a copy of Russian Ark today.
2/5 – this indicates that I want those 16 hours back and I will become violent to anybody who even gifts me this as a DVD or Blu-ray.
The Verge is a tech site run by Vox Media in the United States of America. It is launching its games news site called, for some reason, ‘Polygon’. Those are the facts. Now, as ever when it comes to commerce and journalism, things get fuzzy.
