Tom Charman

Woah! TV TV TV! Going to Perth was like a television overdrive. My poor little iPod is packed with episodes of That 70s Show and Stargate SG-1. And then I return to more new Alias episodes… And then Mum and Dad finally get me the complete Yes, Minister. To think that at one point I was downloading Smallville.

The cheque… remains problematic. Canadians are nice, but difficult to contact, irritatingly enough. So I don’t have my $1,500 on the way any more, in a guaranteed sense. However my savings have almost reached 20″ iMac level anyway, so nothings getting between me and iMackey goodness.

In politics, I notice Labor have switched from one loser to another to lead the party. I use the term ‘loser’ in a factual way, not in a derogatory one, especially since Howard was a loser several times before he, well, won. Frankly, I don’t get politics. Is Beazley really the best they can do? For that matter, is Howard the best we can do? Where are all the charismatic, intelligent Australians?

Apart from me, I mean. I know where I am.

When a show starts getting crummy, I don’t normally expect it to get good again. Angel season five is probably an exception to the rule — but there were a few other mitigating factors in that instance: the loss of Charisma Carpenter, the reduced budget. Also, the season finale of the previous season was really good, and suggested that happy times might be returning.

The last episode of Alias, as you might remember, was a load of highly over-complicated cow dung, so I wasn’t expecting much good from the upcoming season. Until I read that J.J. Abrams kind of agreed with me about the last season, and had brought in some old Angel writers to help fix things up. Then I was hopeful, and as it transpires, my hopes were well-founded.

This premiere is better than recent Alias in almost every way imaginable. The thing that most commonly irritates me about Alias is the way you finish an episode and almost immediately forget what the hell everyone was supposed to be doing. Sure, you remember the set pieces and the good dialogue, and the Marshall scenes, but not what was actually going on. Well, I don’t, in any case, and I feel it’s because ultimately the story-telling in an average Alias episode isn’t considered as important as the character development. A bit of balance in this area is something that this episode delivers on. The goal of APO[ftn] in this story is reasonably simple, and their method of getting what they want doesn’t involve too many insane scenes of exposition setting up an almost completely irrelevant action sequence.

Well, alright, the action sequence is kind of irrelevant to the main plot, but it was cool, and flowed reasonably well. And involved a samurai sword.

The genius of the episode, however, is in the set-up. Let’s face it; Sydney working for the CIA was getting a little dull. Being a double agent is cool. Being a single agent gets a little straightforward. Especially when you’ve got evil double agents wandering around, it makes the good guys look simple and stupid — something that often happens in adventure drama, which is a shame. Your more exciting good guys are devious, involved protagonists, and they’ve found a way to push Sydney and Co. back into that model. Two words: Black Ops.

Alright then, at first, black operations sound a little daggy. But the CIA has decided that it needs a deniable unit who can do all the things that they, with their every move restricted by government pressure,[ftn] cannot. And so the CIA begins the SD-6[ftn] reunion tour (plus Vaughn). You don’t mess with what worked in the past when you have a comeback tour, so who’s in charge? Arvin Sloane. The man who had Sydney’s fiance killed. The man who had Dixon’s wife killed. The man who pulled Jack’s daughter into the spy industry under his nose. He probably did something bad to Vaughn[ftn] and Marshall too, but I can’t remember. The organisation is called APO, named after the “Authorised Personnel Only” sign on the grubby door leading to their ultra-secret location.

So suddenly, Sydney and her friends are really cool — wearing casual clothes, lounging around, breaking the law for the greater good. Your typical maverick behaviour. And they pull it off quite well. The odd group of characters assembled over the last few years now become a slick team of secret agents, and having them all working together and never having to deal with many CIA extras greatly enhances their coolness.

There are a few dodgy aspects to the episode, of course. The resolution to last year’s cliffhanger smacks too much of the real world of unavailable actors affecting the fictional world, with a touch of “we made this up during the season break” about it as well. The show also pushes the sex button a few too many times in the first half. Having Jennifer Garner in white lingerie is enough to sex up an episode — to then cut from this to her running and jiggling down a street made me feel somewhat patronised. It’s not like I can’t focus on a TV show without breasts to show me the way. In plot terms, the CIA choosing Sloane to be in charge seems a bit stupid, despite how good it feels in the narrative. But ultimately, this is the best season premiere I’ve seen in ages, and one that completely revitalises the series. Awesome.

Footnotes

1. I’ll explain later in the review. If you read footnotes in the way I do, though, I’ve probably already explained it and this bit is redundant.
2. Subtle semi-real world references in this episode, which I like.
3. The evil terrorist agency masquerading as the CIA which Sydney previously worked for, destroyed in season 2.
4. Though, having Sydney’s fiance killed is probably a good thing from where Vaughn’s coming from.

So, we went to the bank today to finally try to bank the $1500 Canadian security deposit for the Banff flat. Previous attempts with Matt, Andy and I in different states have met with failure, but with all of us in Perth, we thought we had a good shot. So we drove over to the Commonwealth Bank, without the cheque.

Twenty minutes later, we went to the bank with the cheque, a distinct improvement. Previously, the Cockers had been told that we’d all need to open a joint account in which to cash the cheque. Today we were told that yes, we’d need one of those, but we’d also need a whole bunch of assets with the bank in case the cheque was dodgy. So, no, you can’t have your money. Try next door.

And so we did, afraid that the curse of the cheque would follow us. But they said yeah, sure, we can send that to our friends in Canada who’ll bank it and send the money back to us and put it in Andy’s account. Just sign the back of the cheque.

The moral of the story being that Commonwealth Bank really suck. Or possibly that you shouldn’t count your chickens until the money’s in Andy’s account.

But these new funds will help greatly in buying all the shiny new Apple stuff released today. Well, actually I’m still after my iMac, which is slightly cheaper now, but there was a lot of surprisingly cheap stuff out. An even cheaper flash-drive iPod — the iPod Shuffle — and the Mac mini, a teeny little reasonable-spec Mac. Apple released their own Word Processor/PageMaker kind of program too, but I really don’t use word processors enough to bother with that. Sad, as it’s the most affordable thing Apple have released for a while.

Ah, don’t mind me indulging myself. It’s not too long until March, thankfully…

I saw a deeply tragic thing the other day. Coming home from work a shade early, just before peak hour, I saw two snails starting to leg it across the footpath outside the train station. They weren’t quite in the middle of the pavement yet, but come 5:30 they were going to be half way.

Those snails are dead, man, dead.

Ahem.

Hands up who can’t see the Heart in I ♥ Huckabees properly! I just booted up Mac Firefox and it was having issues. While we’re on grapefruit minutae, if anyone decides to start commenting again, I recommend doing so with a gravatar. Basically they’re little avatars that you can use on any website that supports them. So now there’s an email field when you’re making comments. But your email doesn’t get published or anything.

Hmmm… Important stuff…

I’m leaving for Perth on Tuesday, which should be excellent. Perth is a magical land where people swim and play games and sail and bum around. And American television has begun again, so all is right with the world, except for all those disasters and wars and stuff.

This is a funny, crazy film. I loved[ftn] it.

I’d love to just post a review like that. But then I wouldn’t have the length to have a cute picture of Naomi Watts.[ftn] And so, I must continue.

Let me first discuss the word “oddball”. I don’t like it,[ftn] but it gets used by a lot of people and so becomes a handy label. This is what most critics might call an “oddball” movie. Personally, I prefer the words “interesting” and “surprising”, but some people are just funny. Anyhow, if you find yourself liking these sorts of films, this one is a near-perfect one. Often, in your more interesting film, the pacing suffers and things get a bit weary or overly worthy. Huckabees never fell flat for me — there’s always something amusing happening, and it never stays still for very long.

The story is a cross section between a environmental struggle[ftn] against the huge retail chain ‘Huckabees’, and the philosophical struggle between two groups of existential detectives. The director, David O. Russell, previously made the fantastic Three Kings — a movie that perfectly balanced the line between seriousness and wit. In Huckabees, there’s not as much call to be serious, and the film spends very little time being so.

Albert Markovski is an aspiring poet trying to lead an incensed community group against the destruction of local greenery to make way for a new Huckabees store. As the film opens, his biggest problem is a peculiar coincidence, which he goes to a pair of existential detectives to solve for him. Due in part to their interference, but also due to charismatic Huckabees executive Brad Stand, things get wildly out of control very quickly.

This gives everyone involved an opportunity to be very entertaining indeed. Dustin Hoffman gets to be an old, grinning hippy type. Lily Tomlin gets to do completely insane things while all the time keeping a completely straight face. Mark Wahlberg gets to go completely nuts at various people, including Nate Fisher from Six Feet Under. Jude Law gets to be smarmy and sarcastic. Naomi Watts gets to be glamorous… at first, and then tremendously funny. Isabelle Huppert gets to be sexy and nihilistic.[ftn] And Jason Schwartzman sits in the middle and does a fantastic job of being the straight-ish guy.[ftn]

I’m not going to say any more about the film. If you’ve seen the trailer,[ftn] you know just what to expect. The script is great, the acting is great, the direction is great, the special effects are great.[ftn] If you like… those films that everyone calls oddball, you’ll like this one.

Footnotes

1. Note that I say “I loved it” and not “I hearted it”. This is because I can speak English. If you catch anyone saying “I Heart Huckabees”, shoot them please.[ftn] You’ll need quite a few bullets from the looks of things.
2. If the subtle trend towards pictures of cute girls in reviews is concerning anyone, please note the parade of ugly people in Andy’s recent Lost review and stop complaining.
3. It’s like “quirky”. Ugh.
4. People with little tolerance for poetry, environmental issues and a few other “left” issues might find aspects of the film irritating. At times I did feel like my opinions on the matter were being taken for granted.
5. That’s probably the word. Tell me if I’ve got it wrong.
6. Albert comes from the Arthur Dent school of characterisation. Although he’s perhaps just a little crazier than Arthur.
7. Best trailer I’ve seen in ages. No big spoilers, perfect idea of what the film is about.[ftn]
8. I’m glad we’ve gotten to the stage where digital effects are being used by more than just the big science fiction epics.
9. And by the by — you wouldn’t believe what a hassle it was to be able to use the heart symbol for the title of this review. There’s extra code in the workings of Grapefruit just to deal with that symbol. So stay tuned for the next computer game turned fiction piece: I ♥ Cortana.
10. Unlike the Ladder 49 trailer which makes you feel like you’ve watched the entire damn film already.

Welcome to 2005. Politically and internationally, things can only get better. Personally, if it’s half as good, I’ll be reasonably happy.

It’s nice to see how busy Grapefruit isn’t. I remember the good old days when reviews got pages and pages of comments. Now — nothing. Pah!

A common question when I returned from my time in Canada was “Did you fall in love?”[ftn] My answer was always “No, no, I have no thrilling romantic stories of travel and adventure.” Or occasionally just “No”.

But that’s a lie. I met a beautiful, amazing girl in Banff. Her name was Bastila Shan.

I met her at the races. I knew she was a prize the moment I saw her, yet things didn’t go smoothly at the beginning. She was uppity, and refused to treat me as anything even approaching her equal. But underneath there was an insecure charm that drew me in like some kind of force. When I was with her, it was like there was a mystical energy field controlling my destiny. When we kissed, it was like everything just disappeared.

Sadly for my struggling social life, Bastila was also a fictional character inside a computer game — Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, by Bioware.

I’m hardly qualified to write this review, really. My experience of role playing games is highly limited. I’ve started many of them, but rarely continued for more than a few hours’ gameplay. The list of these aborted games includes Ultima VII, Ultima VIII, Baldur’s Gate II…[ftn] Normally I’m scared off by the volume of options and sense of “sink or swim” in such games. It’s not something I’m proud of, but if a game just drops me in a town with only very wide, general goals, I try to avoid my responsibilities and just give up. Not unlike life, actually. Saving the universe can be just as boring as studying for an exam, sometimes.

Not in this case, however. Knights of the Old Republic manages to be very immersive and encouraging. It’s not as open, plot-wise, as some would probably like. In part this is probably a limitation of a console RPG, which has to simplify a few things. For a start, you can only have two extra party members at any one time — the others wait behind to hear your stories later. The plot is kept reasonably straightforward. Go to a new place. Exhaust all the minor side quests. Do your major quest. Leave. It’s usually pretty clear what the major quest is, so I rarely forgot to finish one of the minor ones.

You play some chump who has a peculiarly strong ability in the force. So peculiar, in fact, that you stand a good chance of being trained by the Jedi, despite being far too old to complete the training.[ftn] Meanwhile, there’s a nasty pasty called Darth Malak wandering around the universe, leading a grand Sith army, and generally causing problems. The Sith are the enemies of the Jedi, you see. Darth Vader was one. The Emperor was one. It’s just not a word that gets used very much in the films. But forget the films — especially the prequels — because this game takes place many, many years before them. This gives the game a nice distance from the movies, while still allowing strong links in terms of planets and mythology.

Choices are a big part of RPGs. Knights gives you many choices, usually between being good, being bad and not giving a damn. These have both technical and cosmetic effects on you. As you do good, your skin gets all nice and blue light shines down upon you in the character screen. As you do evil, you get all tattooed and ugly. Even your clothes change a bit — the Sith seem to have black and red standard issue long-johns. More practically, an evil player will be able to use evil powers more cheaply, and vice versa. This makes specialising in one direction the most obvious direction to go. Becoming perfectly good or evil gets trickier the closer you get, which makes sense, I suppose, but can be a shade irritating.

It’s much easier to be evil than good, by the way. Just like life, really. Take your standard person on the street. If he’s short on cash, you can give him some, if he’s being chased by people you can save him. But quite possibly, there’s nothing much good to be done for him. On the other hand, if you want to be evil you just have to pull his entrails out, string him up with them and hang him above his sleeping child. It’s the same in Knights.

While you will make many choices in your various quests, there’s really only one choice you get to make for the overall plot. That’s a shame — it would’ve been nice to have two or three at least. But I suppose they needed to cut down on their endings. The plot is however crafted ingeniously to make almost every action leading up to that point sensible for either an evil person or a good person.

Combat is handled well. I’m the kind that panics in a tight spot, but this game allows you to pause the battle and set in motion a queue of actions for each character to perform. You can then let things unfold, and change or add too the queue on the fly (or by pausing again). Very relaxing. The animation for the violence is pretty good, too. For basic maneouvres there’s a bit of variation in the sparring, which looks good. Sadly, the special moves, such as flurries and crushing blows, always look exactly the same, and don’t really interact with the opponent. Since in the end you’ll be using these all the time, combat becomes a bit less interesting as the game goes on, which isn’t quite what you’d expect.

Finally, I’ll talk about characters. In other RPGs I’ve often had trouble finding the characters interesting. Knights gets a little more sophisticated than some by always having recorded dialogue for every line,[ftn] and having the people moving with some limited body language as well as some basic lip movement. It’s almost like being there. Well, more like being there than most games I’ve played of this sort. I chalk my aforementioned crush on Bastila down to some excellent voice acting and good dialogue. Plus, she looks really hot in her Jedi bikini.[ftn]

Knights has a good story, fun combat, great dialogue and acting, lightsabers, and the chance to save the universe. Oh, yes, and destroy it, I suppose, if you’d like to do that. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Now excuse me while I go back to waiting for February’s Knights of the Old Republic 2.

Footnotes

1. Slightly more common was “Where’s my money?” Particularly amongst financial institutions, landlords and parents.
2. I think Baldur’s Gate 2 takes the prize for furthest I got — escaping a villain’s lair. After that I was all alone in a town, and someone took the most irritating member of my party from me. I didn’t feel much narrative impetus at this point and ended up wandering off.
3. Everyone’s too old to complete the training these days, though, so I wouldn’t worry.
4. Well, not exactly. Aliens are just on a loop of some standard indecipherable phrases, which gets a bit irritating. Kaaaashee koo, na?
5. Don’t look at me like that. Andy had her running all around the scorching sands of Tatooine in her knickers for hours.

The apocalyptic visions of tsunami damage are fostering a sort of quiet sadness in me. After terrorist attacks, there’s a level of anger involved, but this time there’s nothing to say, nothing to do, except help people. It feels creepy to be thinking “how much can I give and still have money for an iMac?” But it’s better than avoiding such thoughts by not giving any, I suppose. It’s easy to be selfish towards such large numbers. It turns out credit card rewards points can be turned into World Vision donations, so I’ve done that already.

My apologies for the lack of updates around here. I blame Andy for saying he would put up some reviews and then not doing anything. In my mind, I thought “Well, that’s Grapefruit sorted for a while, I’ll put my reviews up after Andy’s, spread things out a bit.”

Alright, not much of an excuse. I’ve got an I ♥ Huckabees review in the works too, so perhaps that will materialise. And I fully intend to get back to Firefly reviewing.

I can’t wait to get to 2005. It looks quite exciting. Entertainment wise — Knights of the Old Republic II, Doctor Who, Serenity, Star Wars III — and real life will start to get a bit more interesting too, given my imminent university finishing. And, of course, my iMac should come to me this year some time, too.

But moving back to entertainment — what’s everyone’s best and worst of 2004? Feel free to list them in the columns below. Or make them into an article for Grapefruit. Or, y’know, neither… Excuse me while I eat a roast dinner.

Sequels are so much easier to deal with as a movie-goer than normal movies. They add another useful question to the usual screening list one can use. Consider these:

• Did you like Ocean’s 11?
• Do you like Brad Pitt?
• Do you like George Clooney?
• Do you like Matt Damon?
• Have you, at any point,[ftn] liked Catherine Zeta Jones?
• Do you like Steven Soderbergh’s style?
• Do you like meta-textual jokes?

Now, if you answered “No” to any of those questions, this film might not be for you. But if not, this movie is great fun. Personally, I find Brad Pitt a very cool guy. I know there are some people out there irritated, but frankly, if I woke up one day as Brad Pitt I really wouldn’t mind at all. He has an excellent dry delivery for all manner of irony, which I envy terribly. He and Clooney have an excellent chemistry, always coming across as good friends. With both of them on the screen at the same time, it’s almost an overload of cool.

Luckily, there’s also Matt Damon’s rather nerdier Linus, who is possibly the best character in the film. He asks for a “more central role” this time, and gets it. His awkward attempts to be as cool as his two comrades — and pathetic sucking up to them — are great fun to watch. And then there’s Miss Zeta Jones, who is sexier than I’ve seen her since The Mask of Zorro. And with an excellent character to boot — by equal measures canny and innocent. The rest of the eleven… well, they don’t really get much to do, which is a bit of a shame.

The film starts off with Andy Garcia’s villainous Terry Benedict threatening each of the eleven menacingly (but with a shade of impotence, as all villains who have previously had their arses handed to them inevitably acquire). The group are forced to run off to find themselves some quick cash. But as they seek the best jobs they can find, someone is watching their every move, and manipulating them…

It sounds intriguing, does it not? Well, it is. The movie is funny, slick, entertaining and sexy. There’s great dialogue, there’s some good introductory thieving, and there’s hint after hint of something clever and cool going on in the background. What’s Ocean’s cunning plan going to be this time, the audience is thinking to themselves. And grinning in anticipation. “I can’t wait for the big heist,” they’re saying, and rubbing their hands with glee. “There’s twelve of them this time, they’re going to do something really clever.” But there’s something I have to tell you. I don’t normally give spoilers when reviewing films, but this one’s important. You really don’t want to go into the film not knowing this.

But it’s your choice.

Are you sitting comfortably?

Then I’ll begin.

THERE IS NO HEIST. The twist involves eleven people causing a distraction and stealing something from one guy. That’s what it all builds up to. The majority of the film is no set-up to anything. The good guys don’t actually turn out to have done anything clever — they just had better information.

I’m not saying the film isn’t great fun. It is. But if you’re expecting a heist movie, cast those assumptions aside. Focus on the romance, and the funny dialogue. Ignore the stupid frenchman and his lame breakdancing. Enjoy the ride. Even with the benefit of time, I still think having a sequel to Ocean’s 11 and not including any clever twist or heist is a big mistake, but clearly that wasn’t what they wanted. It’s possible it’s all some big joke that I don’t get. If this is the case, someone should explain it to me post-haste.

Footnotes

1. That is, before her icky marriage to Michael Douglas. Ew.