The only show that I’ve been obsessed with enough to keep up with exclusively in the last few years is Glee.  I realized that I was pouring so much energy in keeping up with the show that I might as well try something new with VDCC, my outlet for thoughts on different media, and have a blog series. Why not chat it up about Glee? Why, I think I might.

This post is a recap/review of episodes 1-7 and episode 8 (though separately), so beware of spoilers.  After this recap/review, there will be a recap/review of each episode thereafter (I hope).

So without further ado, let’s talk about singing.

Meet the Characters

If ever there were a tangled web of intrigue and outright lies, Glee has woven it.  Glee has a dramedy feel to it at times, and is very much like a soap opera.  Because of this, it’s hard to give a straight A-B of where we began and where we are in the series, so I’ll take a roundabout way and go character by character.  This is going to be long, so hang on.

This series about an Ohio high school glee club has many stars depending on its mood, but the only one who consistently shows up as a focus is Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison), McKinley High School’s star Spanish teacher and now glee club enthusiast.  Will has a part in every plot line, either directly or indirectly, known or unknown to him.  If the student body of McKinley High and all of the adults in the show are two sides of a zipper, Will is the slider that initially joins them together and, at times, is the only thing holding them together in the end.  This is important because the show uses him as a pivot point to tell every story in the series. As we will see, this is one of the only hinges that the show has, which may or may not be problematic.

Will used to be in the McKinley glee club fifteen years prior, when they won nationals. He doesn’t go on with it, though it is his dream, and becomes a Spanish teacher as a compromise to his wife Terri (Jessalyn Gilsig) who wanted and still wants him to become an accountant.  Terri is the perfect depiction of a harpy wife, who complains about working three days a week, four hours a day as an assistant manager at Sheets n’ Things.  Though Will and Terri are getting along okay, they still don’t have a lot of money, which dogs them throughout the first three episodes and comes up as a device later on. Will drives a car with a busted tailpipe, and Terri has an expensive Pottery Barn addiction that she tries (and fails) to hide from Will.

Will convinces the principal Mr. Figgins (Iqbal Theba) to let him have Glee Club, but he makes Will pay for it because of ambiguous budget cuts that Figgins pulls every other episode as a recurring plot device, and makes it a condition that they place in regionals and bring prestige to the school, but he also pulls some of Coach Sue Sylvester’s (Jane Lynch) budget for Glee, who then declares war on Will and his club.  Sue’s appearances are always among the series best moments.  Her dry lines, absurd life experiences (“I was on the strike team that took down Noriega…”), and (later on) her Sue’s Corner segment on the local news show (one was on caning children) are the funniest in the entire show.  Sue gets three of her “Cheerios” to infiltrate the glee club so that she can have eyes on the inside.  One of these Cheerios is Quinn Febray (Dianna Agron). Which brings us, in a roundabout way, to the “kids” in the series.

Quinn Febray is the president of the Celibacy Club, head of the Cheerios, and completely (and appropriately) two dimensional to start out with.  She wears a small cross necklace and is the only overtly Christian character on the show.  She is dating the football quarterback Finn Hudson (Corey Monteith), who is actually very insecure.  His dad left his family very early on, and he found his love of singing through the mullet-haired lawn painter his mom hired when Finn was young who used to play Journey really loudly.  Finn is a people-pleaser, first and foremost to his mother, but secondarily to everyone else.  When Will is trying to build the Glee Club to have twelve members, which is required to compete in glee club regionals, the counselor Emma Pilsbury (Jayma Mays), whom we’ll get to shortly, suggests that if he can lure the popular kids, everyone else will follow.  Will desperately plants some marijuana that was given to him by Sandy Ryerson (Stephen Tobolowsky), the ex-glee club teacher who was fired for inappropriate advances to one of his male students, and was able to guilt Finn into joining the glee club instead of getting detention on his permanent record. Also, by way of introduction, Noah Puckerman a.k.a. Puck (Mark Salling) is Finn’s jock best friend.

Which brings us to Rachel Berry (Lea Michele), the arrogant and conceited but extremely talented lead female in Glee.  Rachel is important because the Glee Club doesn’t have a chance to win without her, but Will constantly struggles with to negotiate with her.  Rachel makes a demand on Will, Will says he can’t in good conscience comply with the demand, Rachel stomps out, Will tracks her down and negotiates, and Rachel finally comes around.  This is already a too-familiar formula and we’re already on episode 8.  But the show does make a lot of effort to have the audience feel sympathy for her, as Rachel frequently says that, without Glee Club, she will have nothing else to show for high school.  She’s intensely lonely, partly because of her driven nature, but her loneliness only furthers her determination to be the best.  It is partially due to this determination to be the best and only perform with the best that she puts pressure on Will to find her a proper leading man, which he delivers in the form of Finn.

The rest of the squad fulfills a range of outcast stereotypes, which serves Glee’s purpose as it is a show aggressively about outcasts and failures.  There’s Mercedes Jones (Amber Riley), an insecure diva-type who becomes best friends (after crushing on him fruitlessly) with Kurt Hummel (Chris Colfer), the closeted-yet-flamboyantly gay boy who’s gets put in the dumpster every day before school and is increasingly insecure about his sexuality until he finally comes out to his father in episode 4.  Another character who we still don’t know much about besides she is another friend of Mercedes is Tina Cohen-Chang (Jenna Ushkowitz), who has a pitifully ubiquitous stutter. Artie Abrams (Kevin McHale) is the most hilariously out of place in his wheelchair, though he is one of the best singers in the group and also plays guitar in the musical accompaniment section, though we know little about him besides the fact that he is wheelchair bound and that is apparently enough for the writers of Glee.

Someone mentioned but not covered is the character of Emma Pilsbury, the school counselor. A germaphobe who’s germaphobia acts pretty curiously in some of the episodes (it seems like the writers forget it at will), she wears gawdy bows and big necklaces and is in love with Will. It’s painfully obvious to all around her, even to Will eventually, who doesn’t really discourage it.  Her semi-boyfriend, who really is just creepily in love with her though he knows she will never return his affection is Ken Tanaka (Patrick Gallagher).  He’s a large man who wears bicycle shorts and a fanny pack and sweats all the time, and is basically the antithesis of Emma and what she wants.

Recap: Episodes 1-7

So, somewhere between episodes one and two, this is where we begin – and then it’s off to the races.  Here’s an rundown of major plot developments between these beginnings to episode 7:

Terri tells Will that she’s pregnant, though she quickly finds out that she’s not really pregnant and that she’s having a hysterical pregnancy. Terri’s sister, who occasionally comes in and makes things worse, tells Terri that she has to keep it a secret from Will and just find another baby. Will has no idea, and apparently isn’t suspicious in the least when Terri won’t let him touch her stomach, which is actually padded with a device to make it look like she’s pregnant.  He tries to quit his job as a teacher to become an accountant, though Emma convinces him it’s not worth it.  He then takes a second job as the school janitor because Terri needs to stop working as much, so she says, and they need a new house because Terri won’t give up her craft room for the new baby.  It’s while Will is working as a janitor that Emma, who tries to help him by cleaning a pencil sharpener with a toothbrush for an hour, that their feelings for each other first come to the surface, though it was obvious beforehand that Emma really liked Will.  Ken descends upon her once he has an inkling that there is something going on between them and tries harder than ever to make her choose him.

Terri comes to her senses and tells Will to quit as janitor.  After being told by Rachel that the Glee Club needed a professional choreographer (an idea planted by Sue via her infiltrator Cheerios), Will has a crisis of confidence.  By weird circumstance, he soon thereafter starts an a capella boy band called Acafellas, which includes Ken, Howard (one of Terri’s coworkers), and the woodshop teacher.  They’re successful, but Will puts aside Glee Club, which tries to raise money without his help to hire a choreographer that costs thousands of dollars.  They end up getting him, but instead of breaking up the Glee Club like Sue had hoped, the choreographer gives them solidarity.

It’s around this time that Quinn tells Finn she’s pregnant with his baby because he accidentally, er, climaxed in a hot tub, though they’ve never had sex.  Finn is dumb enough to believe it.  Turns out it’s actually Puck’s baby, because he got her drunk at a party and they had sex.  He tries to tell her he can take care of her, but Quinn is more than opposed to the idea.  As we find out later, Puck is actually Jewish, which makes makes one wonder if this is a factor in Quinn’s refusal.  Finn comes to Will, who tells his wife about the situation at school.  Terri sees a possibility and descends upon Quinn and makes a deal to take her baby.

Kurt gets caught doing a dance video with two fellow Glee Club gals while wearing a leotard to Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” by his dad.  When asked what they’re doing, Kurt’s dancers come up with the excuse that he’s on the football team and is just working out.  His dad, in appropriate stoic disbelief, then tells Kurt to make sure to get him a ticket to his game. Kurt pulls a favor with Finn and asks to try out for kicker on the football team. The catch? That he has to dance to “Single Ladies” before a kick.  The team sucks, so Kurt fits right in, but then the whole team is asked to dance to “Single Ladies” to get them prepped for a play and as a distraction. It works, Kurt makes a field goal, and Puck and two other footballers come and join Glee Club, giving them enough to compete. Also, Kurt comes out to his dad, who does, thankfully, accept him.

Back in Glee Club, Rachel throws a fit for not getting the major singing part from West Side Story.  Sue has planted a trap, bringing back Sandy through blackmailing Figgins through a video he starred in for anti-embolism stockings.  When I referred to “ambiguous budget cuts” as a plot device earlier, this is exactly what I was referring to.  In fact, Figgins himself is a bit of a plot device, as he arbitrarily shows up and changes the game that the teachers at McKinley are playing.  Thus, Sandy’s reappearance as paid faculty when everyone else is suffering from budget cuts.  Anyway, he comes back due to Sue’s plan to collapse Glee Club by stealing Rachel away (“with four words – Liza Minelli, Celine Dion”) with a school production of Cabaret (the audition song has to be a Celine Dion number).  Rachel gets stolen away fairly easily, her ego being her Achilles heel, and Will is left to make something of what is left.  Thus, through a curious loophole, Will is able to bring back one of the best singers in the Glee Club his year, April Rhodes (Kristen Chenowith), who failed to graduate more than fifteen years prior.  An amazing singer who is also an alcoholic and random drug users (including horse tranquilizers at one point), she becomes an awful influence on the kids.  At the same time this is going on, Finn is trying his best to get Rachel back because he needs scholarships for college, which Emma told him he was more likely to get for Glee – if Glee can win.  He does some rather shady things, like allowing Rachel to kiss him and flirting with her shamelessly, which gets her to come back for him.  Then it’s announced by Puck that Quinn’s pregnant by Finn, and Rachel realizes that it was all a trick to get her to come back.  Emma convinces Will that he’s doing it for himself and not for the kids, or he would have gotten rid of April who came to a show drunk.  He sees her point and kicks out April, just in time for Rachel to come back, admit the error of her ways, and do the last number with the Glee Club (an amazing rendition of “Somebody to Love”).

Sue figures out what’s going on between Will and Emma, and decides to “break the man” rather than the club.  So she talks to Will’s wife about what’s going on, and convinces Terri to apply for the nursing position at school, though she has no nursing experience.  Figgins, eager to fill the position, allows her to take it with limited first aid skills.  Will gets really angry with her controlling nature and how he can’t get away from her.  She says she’s only trying to help with the bills.  At the same time, Will is upset that the Glee Club kids are being really lax about practicing, so he gives them reason to compete. He pits boys against girls, and they have to write their own mashups.  The winner gets to decide the song they perform at sectionals (the boy’s version is here).

Both teams don’t really care, but Finn, who’s been having trouble resting and is exhausted from all the stress in his life, goes to visit the nurse.  Terri starts quizzing him about his life, knowing that he’s supposedly the father of the baby Quinn is having, and weirds Finn out.  Terri gives him pseudoephedrine, basically speed, to pep him up.  He gets really hyper, and gives it to his friends, which leads to them doing quite a production. Kurt, who wanted to be on the girls team but wasn’t allowed, show his “allegiance” to the ladies by telling them why they were so good.  The girls partake as well, and do an outrageous mashup as well.

Figgins finds out about the drugging of the Glee Club and fires Terri, but not before she is able to get to Emma and tell her to back off of her husband. Emma does have enough gumption to tell Terri that Will deserves better, but Terri hits a nerve when she suggests Emma isn’t as good as she thinks when she’s going after a man with a pregnant wife. Earlier, Terri had talked to Ken about Emma and Will’s relationship, and convinces Ken that he has to propose to Emma.  He does so, basically guilting her into thinking she can get any better than Ken Tanaka, and, in heartbroken submission, Emma accepts.

Because Figgins sees Will as partly responsible for creating such a competitive atmosphere, he enlists the help of a responsible leader who has championships under her belt – Sue Sylvester.  Obviously, this is going to be a nightmare for Will, and it is.  Sue decides to pit the kids against Will and takes all of the minority students out to perform one number and leaves everyone else to perform on Will’s team, which is possible due to a bylaw in the show choir rulebook.  It almost works, but Will hits a nerve with Sue and triggers a rant that reveals that she doesn’t care, and that it’s more about getting to Will than doing well with Glee.  Again, the students band together against the adults, and Sue ends up taking a backseat with Glee.

While this is going on, Will takes charge at home and schedules an ultrasound for Terri and states that he will go with her this time.  She agrees, and she and her sister are able to blackmail the doctor into faking her ultrasound (this involves a curtain and some interesting theatrics).  Because Quinn’s baby turns out to be a girl, and Terri had already told Will it was a boy, this gives an opportunity for the doctor to “correct” his earlier statement on the baby’s gender.  Finn is meanwhile trying to convince Quinn to keep the baby, because he wants some control over what he thinks is his baby, but Quinn keeps rebuffing him, but there are hints that she would rather keep it than give it up too.

During Glee Club, when Will is trying to tell the kids that their differences are what makes them a good group, Sue tells Quinn and everyone else that she knows Quinn’s pregnant, and that it will be on the school reporter’s blog by the afternoon (something Rachel tried to stop by giving the creepy reporter kid her underwear), Quinn is devastated.

This, finally, brings us to episode 8.

Recap: Episode 8

There are five different storylines in this episode, which is impressive considering Terri doesn’t even show up.  Emma and Ken ask Will to mash Sisqo’s “Thong Song” and The King and I’s “I Could Have Danced All Night” for their wedding dance as well as give them dance lessons; Puck decides he should date a good Jewish girl and goes after Rachel; Ken forces his football kids to choose between Glee and football because he’s jealous of Will and Emma; Sue gets asked out by the anchor of the local news show she does a segment for and is actually happy for once; the entire school has turned on Quinn and Finn due to their fall from grace between Glee Club and pregnancy, and are ritually humiliated by the football team by getting grape slushies thrown in their faces.

Things end up resolving themselves somewhat symbolically with Will, Ken, and Emma. Will finally tells Emma he can’t mash the songs together because they don’t belong together, a fitting allegory for Ken and Emma.  Puck and Rachel don’t work out because of their love interests aren’t really each other, as Puck wants Quinn and Rachel wants Finn.  Ken relents when Finn asks him to drop the football practice that conflicts with Glee, which even Will couldn’t get him to do when Will told him he would discourage Emma from flirting with him. Sue, who was asked to a swing competition by the anchor, discovers he’s been cheating on her with everyone else.  This causes her to become an angry person again, and she promptly stops being understanding about Quinn and kicks her off the team,  making Quinn’s fall from grace complete.  Finn, who is able to reconcile Glee Club and football, though he was the only one not to choose Glee, becomes the hero of the episode for refusing to choose.

Review of the Show So Far

The first episode of Glee aired after the American Idol on May 19, 2009, but didn’t actually get under way until September 9.  Though it set up much of the story lines to come, it felt a little weird in tone.  Compare the pilot (rarely a good idea) to Episode 8, and it’s easy to see how convoluted the story lines have become.  The show is schizophrenic, changing between character development and plot, two dimensional characters and overexposed characters, conveniently placed plot device X and conveniently placed plot device Y.

The music, which has gone mostly unmentioned so far, is excellent.  The cast is full of great singers.  The choreography dives and rises in quality every week, but the songs are almost always great arrangements.  There are two types of music in Glee.  There is the personal, not-actually-happening type – we’ll call them “imaginary” – which is basically a monologue in song using someone else’s words (Quinn’s rendition of “Keep Me Hanging On” is a perfect example).  The other type is the actually-happening, or the “real”, songs, such as the aforementioned “Somebody to Love,” which was actually a recital piece.

All of these songs are intensely related to what’s going on in the show, which is indeed what makes it a musical. Yet the show is still rough around the edges and is having a lot of trouble finding its center. So the show revolves around Will, who has been unvaryingly boring, but the kids on the fringes only exist in group shots. The episodes switch directors constantly, and Joss Whedon has announced that he will indeed direct an episode. Characters show up, disappear, cause trouble, do nothing – all in very predictable patterns.

But is the show fun? Well, yes and no. Sometime it’s frustrating, and sometimes it is very sad and pitiful. But the rest of the time, yes, it is fun. And funny. But it is awfully frustrating for major characters to simply disappear because the writers have put so many plots in the story that they can’t put them all in a 45 minute episode.

That said, there are major problems with the show, but it’s holding somewhat steady on the ratings. Hopefully they’ll be able to straighten most of the problems out by the time the show takes a break in November.

So that’s the recap and mini-review.  My reviews of future episodes, which will be more indepth than this post which was mostly recap and little review, will be up at the earliest on Thursdays.

Hope to see you again next week!

I recently bought a PS3 and have been muddling my way through the unimpressive library of PS3 exclusive titles.  Having had an XB360 since early 2006 and a Wii for nearly as long, the PS3 and I have a lot of time to make up together.

Just recently I rented and beat Heavenly Sword, a “first generation” (meaning one of the first releases) title for the PS3.  As mentioned here and elsewhere on this blog, I have gotten to run through a few titles on the console that heavily use the Wiimote sensor.  When Sony announced the Sixaxis controller, critics immediately saw the feature as a gimmick that would try to rival the Wiimote, and pitifully at that.  But now that this faithful critic and all around observer has had a chance to lay hands on both, what’s the verdict?

To emphasize the point, I am only comparing one PS3 game to every Wii game I’ve ever played.  Very unfair odds on either account, but I’ve noticed some very interesting things that have led me to believe there may be a clearer winner than someone may think.

There are two main factors (that I have made up, along with most of the other terms in this article, in my benevolence and wise observance – any resemblance to terms or arguments in existence was unintended or accidental)  in the success of unusual game mechanics.  The first and foremost is the talent, skill, and imagination of the developers, or at least what appears to be the talent, skill, and imagination.  When Assassin’s Creed, a game that hyped the cloak and dagger aspect of the player’s character, allowed only three ways to execute cloak and dagger techniques, otherwise forcing the character to fight enemies rather than evade them, the gimmick actually broke the game’s promise and doomed it to $60 worth of mediocrity.  At first glance, one might see this as evidence of the lack of imagination on the game designer’s part, but Ubisoft claimed that time restraints kept them from building the game they wanted to build, which forced them to put in shoddy achievements/trophies to artificially extend gameplay.  Whether it was the skill of the designers or the interference of other factors, the designers failed to execute the game mechanic well (though I know plenty who would disagree – at least accept this as an example).

The other main factor in the success of unusual game mechanics is fit.  “Does this game mechanic actually fit into the context of the game?” This is where the Wii successfully fails a lot.  Though the most recent game I played on the Wii was Super Smash Brothers Brawl, which smartly made the Wiimote optional and Wiimote gestures even more optional, there are plenty of examples to be found of the Wiimote motion sensor being shoehorned into a game.  Wii games like Raving Rabbids, a party-style title made up of small mini-games, are perfect for Wii controls.  Yet other games, especially third party multi-console releases like Tomb Raider: Underworld, suffer due to the requirement of having the Wiimote gestures featured in games where it doesn’t belong.

Now that I’ve defined what I see as the two factors influencing unusual game mechanics, it’s time to apply them to the PS3 Sixaxis controller and the Wii Wiimote.  Let’s pretend that we’re in a gaming utopia where these two factors have been executed well.  Full of creativity and fit for combat, when put in a ring, which of the two survives?

As I said earlier, the only game that I have played that used the Sixaxis controls extensively was Heavenly Sword.  Because of this and the fact that I beat it yesterday afternoon, it will be the point from which all of my Wiimote comparisons are drawn.  To start, let’s go beyond fit and into the realm of integration.

Integration, or making a mechanic an essential and even desirable facet of gameplay, is something that the Wii usually does fairly well.  In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Link’s bow and arrow are easily used by pointing the Wiimote at the screen and pressing a button.  Granted, it looked nothing at all like shooting a bow, but that is completely beside the point.  The controls had been integrated to a point where their implementation was usually easy and mostly effortless.

In Heavenly Sword, a button mashing beat-em-up that sometimes puts on a flight simulator’s jet pilot’s jumpsuit and runs around the room screaming “raawrrwaeerreeer rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!“, the sixaxis controls are integrated in one instance surprisingly well and in another surprisingly poorly.  In the former pressing and holding square or “x” (depending on context) while handling a long-range weapon will zoom the camera in behind the projectile (this varies among rockets, cannonballs, and arrows, along with a few other extraneous objects thrown in).  While in this zoomed-in state, the player can start tilting the controller, gently driving the projectile (thus the flight sim reference) to the desired destination…sometimes.  This mechanic increasingly becomes more of a skill rather than a cool addition as the game progresses, and this helps with the mechanic’s integration into gameplay.  If the mechanic is mostly optional, then it becomes unnecessary and becomes a forgettable option.  While Heavenly Sword’s projectile-driving, so to speak, is technically optional, the game is nearly impossible without it, as there is no reticule to aim at very small, very far away targets.  The other instance in which the Sixaxis is used but is integrated very poorly is in actual combat.  Some of the combos require shaking the controller at the right moment as part of the combo button chain.  In the heat of battle, it seems silly to try and shake the controller a certain way to pull off a small number of moves that require it.

That last bit about poor integration also hits on another area that is intrinsically tied with the idea of integration – and this is implementation, be it awkward or convenient.  The awkwardness factor of shaking a controller in mid-combat is high, but it is rather small potatoes compared to some of the ways Wii games have integrated Wiimote controls.  I’m not sure if Nintendo forces Wii developers to include Wiimote specific gestures, but if they do, they are certainly the reason for the awkward implementation of the controls within Wii games.  As I mentioned before, this awkwardness is almost a given when it comes to multi-platform releases.

There is a lot to be said for all of these factors, but at its base, it’s all about design.  Depending on the strength of designs, whatever is built on top of it could be as stable as bunker or a house of cards.  Though the Wiimote is no card table, it certainly doesn’t have the foundation for a bunker either.  Because most games require the Wiimote to be held in one hand and its companion nunchuck in the other, the probability that the player’s hand won’t be in the proper starting position is very high, and the Wiimote depends on starting in a certain position, otherwise the controls are off (thus why it’s possible to golf in WiiSports while holding the controller in a number of positions varying from a “ping-pong champion” position to a “holy water flick of the wrist” position).  The Wiimote, while brilliant in its concept and marketability, leaves a lot to be desired.  And woe betide the designer who doesn’t tighten up the controls enough when dealing with the Wiimote – with the combination of card table + cards, the whole thing comes tumbling down.

Yet here, exactly where I thought the Sixaxis would fail, is where the it shines.  I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the reason the Sixaxis controller is closer to a bunker than a card table is because it’s held with two hands. It’s a shame that it might be that simple, but, to put it mathematically, the Wiimote in one hand is to a line through one point as the Sixaxis in two hands is to a line through two points.  A line through one point has infinitely possibilities for its direction, and that causes a lot of unpredictability and instability.  A line through two points has a defined course and has built in stability from those two points.  Or to put it non-mathematical terms, that s*** won’t work unless you’re holding it with two hands.

The Sixaxis integration and implementation in Heavenly Sword isn’t perfect, but not once did I have to “reset” my hands to regain control of the mechanic, where as I have not had a casual gaming experience with the Wiimote that I didn’t have to. I don’t necessarily expect these mechanics to be perfect, and I still think the Wiimote was the best innovation to come out of this generation of console gaming.  But when you’re first to do something, that means that you’ve given people a goal to shoot for and surpass.  The Sixaxis is certainly no Wiimote, not by a long shot, but it offers a few crucial things that the Wiimote, if it had come out a few years later, probably would have had in the bag.

So for now, off of the basis of one PS3 game vs. ten or so Wii games , I have to say that the Sixaxis was the most fun I’ve had with a motion sensing controller so far in this console generation.  There are surely Wii games that integrate these controls far better than I have given them credit for (in fact, if you know of any, please suggest them in the comments – I’m completely willing to revisit this later on), but Heavenly Sword’s use of the Sixaxis mechanic wins this round.

We’ll see how long that lasts.

At my local movie theater, fifteen of about twenty screens were dedicated to midnight or later showings of the film. Two lines wrapped around the building, one of them running up to the edges of the parking lot; another line trailed deep into the parking lot. I arrived an hour and twenty minutes early, and was one of the last people in the prepaid ticket line. The other lines, in which people had been waiting for hours, had not yet moved when the line for the 11:59 showing began shuffling inside. Guards and policemen were all over the theater, double-checking tickets and talking to suspected cutters-in-line. The theater I was in was packed to the rafters. Ladies and Gentlemen, the sixth installment of Harry Potter is here.

But is it worth all of the hubbub, hullabaloo, and rigamarole?

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince starts precisely where the last film left off – Voldemort is back, the evidence of which is in the eyes of a tired Albus Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) and the bloody face of the famous Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe).  Puzzling bits of intertwining plots and subplots begin to form, and we are left with only pieces that barely fit together. Dumbledore summons Harry for a seemingly unimportant job of convincing retired Professor Horace Slughorn (Jim Broadbent) to return to Hogwarts to teach potions; Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) has been burdened by an unknown but wearying task; Severus Snape (Alan Rickman) seems to have made a sudden switch in loyalties; Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) and Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) seem to be forever stuck in a tug-of-war of hearts; Dumbledore is constantly trying to solve a puzzle, which wears him thin at the seams.  For once, Harry seems to be the only one with most of his life together.  He even gets a new potions book, whose margin notes help get Harry ahead in Slughorn’s class, though the book itself soon turns into another mystery.

From the beginning David Yates lays the groundwork for a dramatic tale.  The moody lighting of the previous film Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is here, making for a dramatic mood from the first scene on.  In fact, very little of the film has any brightness about it, which is certainly a hint for the dark twist the long and winding saga of Harry Potter must take.  This tone would be heavy-handed if not for the masterful story-telling of Yates and the writer Steve Kloves, though it seems due more to the former than the latter.  There is a subtlety to this film of which we were only hinted was possible in Order of the Phoenix. The perpetual understatement of the story opens the film up to strong characters and a strong set-up for the last films.

That said, those looking for the action film of the summer needn’t look here.  There is little action throughout the movie, though if it suffers from the lack of it, it is hard to say.  The missing choreography of dancing wizards and witches hurling spells at each other serves as a disappointment to those who had become used to installments in the series that were punctuated by actors on wires.  Then again, these actors otherwise give their strongest performances yet – something which there would not have been time for had the action sequences been increased in scale and frequency.

So instead of action, the film specializes in a way on the strong emotions that course through these characters as they hurtle towards their fates.  There is anguish, despair, apprehension, anger, angst, uncertainty.  It is a like a sample of what the entire wizarding world must be feeling, knowing that Voldemort is indeed back to haunt them from beyond the grave, or so they thought.

As for the actors who best showcased these emotions, there are certainly three clear winners in this film – Emma Watson, Tom Felton, and Alan Rickman.  Emma plays a heart-breakingly believable Hermione in the straits of unrequited love.  Her intensity of emotion is the closest the series has come to breaking down the wall between actor and character.  For a moment, I absolutely believed Watson was Hermione the Fragile-Hearted, and I feel I owe my feelings of connection to the movie to her performance.  Tom Felton’s performance as Draco Malfoy was particularly emotional as well.  For the first time, parallels are drawn between the character and Harry, and Felton plays the burden of such a position very well.  As for Alan Rickman, his character of Severus Snape finally gets a chance to deserve all of the speculation and complications surrounding his character.  Even though his screen time is still minimal, Rickman is able to portray him as a full character, and much more so than in the previous movie.

For those who read the book with a passion and desire complete fidelity to the source in the film, be prepared for some key changes, especially in the final scenes.  One entire scene featuring Harry and the Weasleys was added in but is no where in the book.  On the other hand, there are some parts of the book that the filmmakers were loyal to that provide for some very annoying plot devices, such as the fact that Tonks and Lupin show up only once, and Luna, Neville, and Hagrid are reduced from their important roles to MacGuffins (though Neville is arguably much less than that).  Even Ron and Hermione disappear at one point, only to reappear when things have resolved themselves.  Ron becomes Harry’s jester and Hermione’s torturer, all good on paper, but in motion he becomes a one-dimensional figure, thus a pawn moved only for the sake of story.

So here we are, coming full-circle, ready for a verdict.  Is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince worth all of the hype?  It is certainly a very good film, full of drama, character, suspense, romance (though it is poured on so thick it starts to congeal around the edges), and even a little horror (the certain scene in mind is Michael Gambon’s best performance thus far).  Yet the pacing of the film, excellent by many standards, will have some wanting it to get to the point.  These movie patrons have a fair case, considering that Half-Blood Prince certainly shifts gears down.  Yet the story and actors in moving performances are more than enough reason to see the film more than once – if for nothing else than preparation for the end.

Artist: Stateless

Album: Stateless (2007)

Song: “Bloodstream”

Smooth, beautiful, and meaningful, Stateless has created a song that simply and perfectly embodies the aching of a love separated. Separated on what terms, one can’t be sure – but the connection between the speaker and the object of his desire has not dissipated. A haunting song that almost all of us can relate to, “Bloodstream” is different from the rest of Stateless’ self-titled 2007 trip-hop album. While other tracks are in different frenetic degrees but just as serious, “Bloodstream” stands out as the most memorable and poignant, though the rest of the album is certainly worth a listen, especially in the varied approaches this band has to its genre within the album, making it serve as a good introduction to the genre of Trip-Hop itself.

Suggested Further Listening from This Artist: “This Language”

First Listen Setup: This is another one for a dark room at night with no distractions.

Video below.

No promises, but I’m going to try and post a few things over the rest of the summer. I just renewed the domain, so it seems like I should at least make an effort, right? Right.

Upcoming: A few VDCC Radio posts, as well as a Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince review. I also have some reviews laying around that never made it here, so I will do what I can to get those up as well.

Happy Summer, Everyone!

This is a review of the XB360 version of the game.

Crystal Dynamics and Eidos did something that is nearly impossible for the fast-moving world of video games, where top-notch production and great story, gameplay, and innovation don’t secure success. That said, it’s harder to start a franchise and keep the quality up – which accounts for the declining quality of the Tomb Raider during the late 1990s/early 2000s. The “high low” of this decline produced Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness (2003), one of the worst games to grace the gaming world in terms of the disparity between money spent and the product itself.  With the franchise flatlining, there were only two options: let the series go down in disgrace, or reinvent Lara and her tomb raiding adventures.

Crystal Dynamics took over the series and released Tomb Raider: Legend (2006).  The game was not perfect, but nearly.  It was a fantastic return to the root of what made Tomb Raider so much fun in the first place, but it updated and upgraded in the places that matter – replacing clunky grid movement for free form movement, expanding Lara’s capabilities and arsenal, and developing new story lines that could keep gamers involved.  In short, CD brought Lara into this century and gave her a much-needed makeover (quite literally).  The developers continued this trend with a remake/reintroduction of the very first Tomb Raider game with Tomb Raider: Anniversary. (2007)  It gave people like me a chance to go back and play the first game with current generation graphics and without the frustration that comes from relearning the mechanics of a PlayStation game.  At the same time, it gave faithful Tomb Raider fans a chance to fall in love all over again with Lara’s original adventure.  The newest installment, Tomb Raider: Underworld (2008), held much promise and pressure, as it would hold the culmination of regained trust and faith in the series.  Sadly, Underworld is lacking, but it is certainly nothing the series can’t recover from.

The official teaser trailer for Underworld (below) starts out with an explosion, and we are thrust right in the middle of it – on the inside. While trying to get out with the mansion burning down around her head, the immediate question is

not why, but who? The game designers cleverly leave you to ponder this question as they throw you a week into the past.  Suddenly, Lara is back on the trail of her once-thought-dead mother, a continuation of Legend’s story, and is about to go diving into some ruins in the Mediterranean Sea. Soon enough, Lara runs into an old-friend-turned-enemy and an ancient foe. Realizing that she has to recover all of Norse god Thor’s weapons to find her mother, it becomes a race against her enemies to find the pieces and solve the mystery of her mother’s disappearance.

Underworld’s story is engrossing. Tying together the seemingly unrelated stories of Legend and Anniversary, Underworld throws us in a dark downward spiral with Lara. The narrative, along with the journal entries that are unlocked with each new development, reveal Lara’s desperation to finally know what happened to her mother and if she’s still alive and what Lara is willing to do – and compromise – to have closure. Out of all of the previous storylines that I’ve experienced, Underworld’s is the first to really delve into the anguish and pain of the otherwise tough and cold Lara Croft.

Without a doubt, Underworld has some of the most beautiful and expansive level environments to be found on any current system. Explore the beauty of an underwater temple, grandiose and awe-inspiring and size; find a hidden temple in Thailand; uncover a hidden city in Mexico. The world is Lara’s to travel to find the sources of the afterlife myths and discover the artifacts and ancients that inspired them.

Gorgeous level design aside, Underworld skips the details in unexpected ways. This game is, very unfortunately, not glitch-free. The physical glitches in the game are weird, but mostly harmless (Lara appears and reappears sometimes when activating mechanisms, and enemies often get stuck behind objects). Lara’s controls aren’t as responsive as they should be, and this leads to quite a few frustrating deaths. Probably most confusing, though not necessarily frustrating, of all is the save system. Autosaves and checkpoints are great in a game like Tomb Raider, but they are integrated oddly and haphazardly. On some levels, the checkpoints, indicated by a tiny high-pitched chime, were less than a few feet from one another, with no obvious reason as to why this was the case. These checkpoints end up glitching a lot, albeit often in the gamer’s favor (for example, if Lara jumps across a chasm and doesn’t get enough air but still triggers the checkpoint, she will restart at the checkpoint rather than where she jumped). The autosave system is a memory hog, and saves a different file for each level, instead of saving on top of one autosave file. By the end of the game, I had around fifteen different autosave files and only one of my own save files.

While the checkpoints and autosaves are bizarre but nonlethal, the camera is simply awful and, while not fatal to the game, can cause quite a few deaths for poor Lara. Many times I was not able to scope out a jump because the camera wouldn’t allow me to see one side or another or to train on an enemy that I could not follow as it ran around me. This led to more frustrated yells than the rest of the game combined.

In Legend, gameplay and replay value was stretched with “relics” and “artifacts,” hidden across each level. While not necessarily the best way to squeeze more time out of the game, the hidden items were actually an interesting addition to the experience because some of them actually had descriptions of what Lara had found – location specific items that were fascinating to read about in all their fiction-with-a-dash-of-fact. In Underworld (which is the true sequel to Legend), the relics and artifacts have been replaced with shiny diamond-type items that are the same everywhere Lara goes. Perhaps this won’t annoy others, but it smacks of the same off-handed afterthought that led to the “collect the generic flags for no reason other than the achievement” activity in Ubisoft’s bland action/adventure game, Assassin’s Creed.

Regardless of all the negative aspects and nit-picking, Underworld is engrossing and full of discovery and wonder. It’s worth wading through comparably inferior mechanics to experience the hidden worlds and fantastic story. It’s worth a good rent to jump into the abyss with Lara Croft and find the answers to her burning questions – which, before the end, will become your burning questions, too.

Artist: Broken Social Scene

Album: Broken Social Scene (2005)

Song: “Hotel”

It’s good to be in the groove of Christmas break, and I hope all of you out there who are on some sort of break are enjoying it as much or more than I am.  I’m hoping I will be able to use what free time I have left to give some much needed attention to VDCC and Adamant’s Fire.  In the few free moments I had in the last semester, I began contemplating the scope of VDCC very seriously.  This contemplation fixated almost immediately on the two most underdeveloped categories of this site: books and music.

Books are hard for me to review when I’m not reading any, and that, very simply, is the reason that I have not.  I would love to indulge in more book reading and reviewing, but I just don’t have the time.  For this, I would highly suggest using the Request-a-Review feature that I posted some time ago.

Music is a completely different story.  I listen to music constantly.  I just don’t acquire new or new-to-me music often, or even listen to said new or new-to-me music often.  This puts me at a huge disadvantage for reviewing music.  To be a music reviewer, one has to be in the scene.  As a teacher of mine once said, it would be possible for her to watch all of a year’s film/theatrical releases, but it would be very much implausible and impossible for her to listen to the thousands upon thousands of album releases in a year.  The reviewer whose job it is to keep up with the constantly evolving music scene has trouble staying up to date on the latest rising star while checking in on old favorites and standbys.  Obviously, I am not that person, and I have not tried to be.  Yet that leaves me to ask a very important question: Can Voice from the Depths of the Cultural Coil truly purport to be a media site if it doesn’t include music?

It’s complicated.  I want to keep the site broad because not doing so will draw only a certain audience that sees any value in what is said here, but I don’t want the criticism to be watered-down, vague, unknowledgeable, and an embarrassing show of what I don’t know.  (Do you know the difference between microtonal and microsound avant-garde styles? I didn’t think so.)

Music is deep, labyrinthine and arcane.  I know that unless I am dedicated to it and willing to remain faithful to an intense study of musical stylings and gear this blog toward that, I cannot hope to provide any sort of relevant critique.  No one asks the janitor to inspect a rocket ship, amirite?

So here is what I’ve decided to do.  I will offer up a song, album, or artist  that I am currently listening to, new or old, household name or unknown talent, in a periodic feature.  The ongoing series will be called “VDCC Radio” and will host a brief description about the work or artist(s).  I think this will be much more effective and beneficial to readers than my laboring over whether some thing is New York punk or L.A. punk and getting it wrong.

I will post the first installment of this soon.  I hope you all have enjoyed my meditations on the subject, as well as the changes I have announced.  Huzzah!

My third review is up at ObsessedwithFilm.com.  Please give it a click, a read, and some suppport.

Twilight

Also, if you are here because you clicked on the trackback link at OWF, here’s my Twilight book review.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Here is some reading material.

Chuck Klosterman reviews Chinese Democracy.

For more on my impressions of Chuck Klosterman and getting to meet him, as well as lamentations at the chance I let slip through my fingers, see my blog post at Adamant’s Fire.