The Talk (Star Wars Edition)

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Because no responsible parent will let their kids grow up thinking that Greedo shot first. It's good to see that someone is thinking of the children.

Why Fight a Losing Battle, and other important questions raised by Halo

Last week, I was gifted with a copy of Halo: Reach, the latest (and, allegedly, final) game in that famous series. I was giving a friend the rundown at Bible study the other night, mostly going on and on about the fantastic gameplay but also setting the scene of the game. Chronologically, it's the first game in the series, ending where the original Halo begins. For those unfamiliar, Halo begins with your character receiving the news that he is the last surviving member of the Spartan army (the Special Forces of the future), the rest of it having been wiped out in a surprise attack on Planet Reach by the evil Covenant forces - in other words, Halo: Reach is about playing through the campaign in which you and all your mates are systematically dispatched by rampaging aliens. And my friend Greg made one of those laughy-frowny expressions and said, "why would anyone want to play a game that you know is going to end in everyone dying?"

Clearly, Greg is not a Halo afficionado. Those people need no story-based reasons to play Halo, and developer Bungie knows it, having introduced (with Reach) daily and weekly challenges over Xbox Live for both single- and multiplayer modes. I highly doubt a game with such a storyline would sell much if it were a stand-alone title, or the first released in the series. There are many excellent and interesting reasons why Halo has attracted a fiercely devoted fan base on an unprecedented scale, which I will not get into at this time as my mother-in-law glazes over every time I talk shop on video games, and she constitutes one-third of my regular readership. And Greg unsuspectingly posed a question that is important on other levels (no pun intended).

The Halo trilogy and its stand-alone offspring, Halo 3: ODST, are all about victory. Throughout the trilogy, even though the Master Chief is the last of his army, there's no real sense of grief or desperation about it. The trilogy's tone isn't "oh crap, I'm the last Spartan and all the Marines (and humanity) are depending on me", but rather "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I'm all out of bubblegum." It's a series with a story and atmosphere of victory. Similarly, ODST is about a squad getting stuck behind Covenant lines and escaping, while causing plenty of mayhem to the enemy and retrieving crucial intelligence along the way. You can't pass the game without getting everyone to safety, gaining a high-level Covenant defector, and seeing one of the characters win back his ex-wife. I don't think it's possible for a shooter to be more feel-good-rah-rah-victorious than ODST.

In summary, every Halo game made before Reach is about getting the win, and getting the win isn't just what gamers want, it's what people in general want. I feel safe assuming that sacrificing oneself to ensure someone else's victory is not a common fantasy or daydream. A lot of people don't even like games in which you have to help other characters sacrifice themselves to get the victory, because then you're not the hero - that was the major complaint about the fantastic The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. But that's what Reach is about: upon realizing that the battle is lost, you and your squad go all out and eventually give your lives so that someone else can win the war. Two-thirds of the way through, the story shifts from planetary defense to data retrieval, making sure that a critical computer program gets off-world to safety, and that program turns out to be the one essential for victory at the end of Halo 3. You and your squad give the hope of victory to everyone else. But none of you make it off Reach, dead or alive.

So why play, from a purely story-based POV? Well...I can't rightly say, in a general assumptive sense. There is something very poignant about helping ensure the war is won, rather than winning it myself. Speaking only for myself, I don't mind (and, in fact, rather like) games with goals like Reach and Oblivion, and I suspect a large part of that has to do with theology. The concept of fighting a losing battle is a strange one for a Christian, since an integral idea/truth of Christianity is the hope of the war already won, the irreversible triumph over evil and death incurred by the Resurrection. But there are many battles to be fought along the way, and we don't win them all by a long stretch, and anyways, we are not the heroes of the story. We don't barrel through life slaying all obstacles by the power of our own awesomeness to win the day. We are meant to and pledge to live not as heroes, but as champions. There's nothing poor or bad about playing a supporting role. And the idea of a sacrifice to keep hope alive, like the one you make in Reach, is not necessarily a pleasant idea...but it is beautiful.

So that's why I appreciate stories like Halo: Reach and others, aside from all the glorious technical/gameplay/etc. things that make the Halo series the only shooters I really enjoy. That is why I don't object to taking part in this particular losing battle.

White Collar

White Collar (being aired in over here on the local 'shows that are part of courses at X College/University' channel) sounds on the surface like a story some of us have heard too many times. And, for the first four weeks or so of its run, I felt like there was no point in watching it, because I own Catch Me If You Can, which is a fantastic film. Now that the first season's over, I'm pleased to report that my initial disappointment with White Collar was unwarranted.

While its supporting cast of characters is outstanding, the show revolves around the relationship and persons of Neal Caffrey, a twenty-something, internationally renowned (?) master forger, con artist, and art thief, and the only law enforcement officer who's ever caught him, a well-respected veteran grunt in the FBI's white collar crimes unit, one Peter Burke. The series opens after Peter's caught Neal for the second time, and after hitting a wall in a big case, Peter gets permission to give Neal a second chance in the form of a tracking anklet and a job as a Bureau consultant. The problem is, all Neal wants to do is be reunited with his ex-wife, who he believes is being kept from him by some of Peter's colleagues in exchange for stealing and delivering one of the most elusive, rare, high-profile artifacts sought after by private buyers in the world - a mysterious music box. What Peter wants is to not only help Neal stay on the straight and narrow, but help him want to stay there; all Neal wants is Kate, unwilling to believe that his master con artist ex-wife could be using him to recover the box with no intention of remarrying. While the reason for the government wanting the music box is a mystery, the real, central mystery of White Collar is who's right about Kate's motives. Neal clings to the belief that she just wants to be with him, and is the same woman he loved and married, while Peter suspects that Kate is not acting in Neal's best interests, and that his (Neal's) lot will improve if he lets her go and move on, taking the life Peter continues to offer him.

While the mystery of White Collar is who's right about Kate, the focus is not so much on the way people are deceived by others, but the way people deceive themselves. Peter is a man whose confidence and security comes from being himself, while Neal, the professional confidence man, has destroyed his self-confidence and security by devoting himself to being a wide variety of someone else. The show has an excellent contrast going between Peter and Neal that only really started clicking late in the first season - basically, Neal fools people by being someone he's not, while Peter fools people by being himself, letting them run away with their assumptions. Peter is a man whose confidence and security comes from being himself, while Neal, the professional confidence man, has destroyed his self-confidence and security by devoting himself to being a wide variety of someone else. And the brilliant thing is, we the audience have been fooled by Peter, probably because of the character stereotype created by just about every other show or film featuring a blue-collar law-enforcement officer paired with or against a suave, white-collar criminal. He's uncultured, he's a shlub, he's naive, he's single-minded - choose your character stereotype, and White Collar will boot it out the window. As the season unfolded, we saw good reasons why Peter is so well-respected by his employees and his boss. We saw Peter be a completely realistic man who can identify good food and wine - his wife has a business catering high-profile functions, and often uses him as a guinea pig before presenting menus to her clients - but just because he taught himself to recognize it and analyze it doesn't mean that he likes it, and his favourite meal is pizza and beer. We saw Peter be a law-enforcement officer who we can actually believe deserves his rank and tenure, and who we can actually believe is the only person who could catch Neal, because no matter how much Neal convinces himself he can hide things from Peter, he can't. Peter is not some idiot out of Neal's league who caught him just by being determined.

I'd like to touch back on that statement about Peter's security coming from being himself. This is also where White Collar is, thankfully, not like other shows. Peter isn't some ass who thinks that as long as he's being honest and "true to himself", he's doing just fine. He has the self-awareness (and a loving wife) to know when he's in the wrong and needs improvement, and he doesn't wield his being-his-selfiness (what?) like a weapon, the way popular asses like the main characters on House and Lie to Me do. He's the ultimate TV picture of someone who's mature, and calm, and has reached middle age content with their life. In other words, he's the ultimate TV abnormality. ;)

The biggest reason to watch this show is its believability, and its sensibility. Peter and his colleagues are not stupid, or easily deceived by Neal and his friends. Neal is a believable portrait of a young man in crisis, and his distress and inexperience are little match for Peter's contentment, and probably close to the equivalent of Neal's lifetime worth of experience both professional and private. A lot of shows that have boasted strong first seasons have tanked after getting popular or renewed (or both), taking the path of the lowest common denominator, and although the first season of White Collar ended with the proverbial bang instead of the potentially more interesting option, I have hope that it will follow in the footsteps of other recent shows aired on Access like Fringe and The Sarah Connor Chronicles, whose second seasons eclipsed their first to become some of the finest TV ever produced, hands down. (Not that I hope White Collar goes the way of the dodo the way TSCC did. Man, I miss that show.)

All that blathering to say: well done, White Collar! Keep up the good work! Your writers are fantastic!

Keepin' it Simple, Keepin' it Real: Inception

There's been a horrendous amount of bandwidth devoted to attempting to explain Inception, writer/director Christopher Nolan's most recent feature film. Virtual pissing contests to determine who "gets" the film best are running rampant, and even high-profile critics like Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman have written blog posts about how the film is so confusing and they just don't understand it, generously inviting heaps of responses in the comment section to the effect of what idiots they are.

I don't think not understanding Inception makes you an idiot. I do suspect it makes you someone who's determined to over-think things, or who just wasn't paying attention to the first hour and a half. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe, Marion Cotillard, and featuring Tom Berenger and Cilian Murphy, Inception is, put simply, probably the best heist film you'll ever see.

What? A heist film? But I thought it was a high-concept sci-fi something-or-other!

Well, yes and no. Inception is a heist film through and through, using the classic story of a broken master ne'er-do-well (DiCaprio's Dominic Cobb) going in for that one last job whose reward will help him get his life back on track, and get him out of the business for good. This being a classic heist, the job is shadier and riskier than usual. The film's first act sees Cobb assemble his team and explain the nature of the job to the audience; the second act begins with all the team's well-laid plains going quickly SNAFU; the third act pushes their problem-solving skills to the limit in order to get the job done and make it out alive. It's the setting that shoehorns Inception into the high-concept stratosphere - Cobb's not-quite-legal business is "subconscious security", that is, teaching (mostly corporate) clients how to prevent company secrets and intellectual property from being stolen right out of their dreams. And dreams are strange, nebulous, confusing things, which seems to be the starting point for much of the confusion surrounding this film.

The thing is, Nolan meticulously uses the first half of this nearly three-hour production for the purpose of explaining how dreams work, what the rules of his world are, what the story is about, and what to expect once the action starts. It is this careful explanation that makes that first half noticeably slower and clunkier than the films written by or with his brother Jonathan (such as The Prestige and the recent Batman films), but it's worth sitting and sifting through.

Most importantly, Nolan goes to great pains to repeatedly explain the final frame of the film long before the audience gets there. Don't be fooled by the reams of "what does the end mean????" floating around in cyberspace - its simply the culmination of the film's firmly-developed themes. Inception may be confusing to some because its anti-anarchist, anti-cyberpunk, anti-Animatrix story is not one I've seen before in a film dealing with dreams and reality. Simply put, its themes are as follows: there is such a thing as reality, there is such a thing as truth, and running away into your dreams is unhealthy, and a terrible solution to the hardships of real life. Reality and truth are good. These are not welcome ideas to the subculture that worships the Wachowski brothers. Also important thematically is the recurring question of what Inception's characters put more trust in: what they know, or what they believe. Mixed into a simple, straightforward heist film are some simple-but-complex philosophies, and I for one think Nolan did a fantastic job of mixing them. Also, it's just extremely pleasant to watch a straightforward story told very well. Inception doesn't so much have twists, because a well-told story doesn't need them.

In other words, if you've been put off of watching Inception because you've been given the idea that it's some incomprehensible piece of artsy-fartsy-sci-fi-mumbo-jumbo, I think you've been given the wrong idea. See it for the fabulous acting, mind-blowing art direction and cinematography, the interesting and important philosophical challenges, and the scene that, in my mind, serves to justify the existence and purpose of wire-work. It really is that good, that simple, and that comprehensible.

Brandon Bird-O-Rama!

I don't know where this guy came from, but from now on, I want to know where he's going! Check out Law & Order: Artistic Intent and Letters to Walken, in particular.

Oh, and McNinja/Axecop fans, part 1 of the crossover is now up on www.axecop.com! (I got the link to Brandon Bird's website because L&O: AI was advertised on drmcninja.com.)

The Wonderful World of Polish Cold-War Era Film Posters

This certainly warrants further exploration.

Axe Cop!

I have so many new things to write about! Tin Man. The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans. The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. The A-Team. Changes: A Dresden Files Novel. Red Dead Redemption. The Good Guys. Wilbur!

Lucky for you, I don't feel like writing about any of them write now. But if you are prone to ignoring everything I say, and think I'm just a big stupid droning prat, I beg you to set aside your instincts just this once and follow the link to Axe Cop.

As Mr. Monk would say, you'll thank me later.

Further Signs Of The Media Apocalypse

So our current Telus free preview is Teletoon Retro, and I am just tickled pink to be spending a Saturday morning the way I used to spend Saturday mornings: ejoying The Raccoons, Inspector Gadget, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show, Fraggle Rock (not technically a cartoon, but whatever, it's on), and happy to finally have the chance to watch Batman: The Animated Series.

This isn't to suggest that every cartoon made back in the day was animated gold. My friends and I can happily cringe while remembering such un-illustrious fare as James Bond, Jr. and Stunt Dawgs. Earlier this morning was a double-header of Thundercats, followed by G.I. Joe. And "new" doesn't generically equal "bad" - there have been a couple of stand-out weekend cartoons this decade, mostly Skunk Fu! and The Penguins of Madagascar.

The disturbing thing is, I've seen so many absolute crap new Saturday morning cartoons in the past five or six years that it came to pass that as I was sitting here, sipping coffee and watching Snakeyes and Shipwreck inflitrate a subway train full of Cobra soldiers, the thought running through my head was, man. They don't make cartoons like they used to.

That's right. I found myself wishing that current Saturday morning cartoons could be as good as G.I. Joe.

Let the Media Apocalypse commence!

Red Dead Redemption Original Soundtrack (OST)

Marketers, take note! The ultimate factor in convincing my husband and I to pre-order Rockstar Games' Red Dead Redemption, as opposed to waiting a year or two for the price to cut in half as is our usual game-buying habit, was not the free DLC or the map poster, but the free inclusion of the game's soundtrack with all pre-ordered copies. Soundtracks are expensive, game soundtracks especially so, and we figured we couldn't go too wrong gambling on a Western soundtrack - a relatively new genre, they're hard to screw up, and many a forgettable or outright crappy cowboy flick has been elevated by its solid musical score. And I can rarely get enough of the soundtrack from LucasArts' old PC game, Outlaws.

Red Dead Redemption is a solid game, memorable, intriguing, and fun, but its soundtrack is exceptional, a great listen even when separated from its in-game context. Composers Bill Elm and Woody Jackson have brought the Western musical genre into the present, doing two notable things most Western soundtrack composers don't: heavily incorporating both contemporary musical influences and musical influences from the time period their story takes place in. The end result is a lesson in what fusion should sound like. Elm and Jackson's skills have even created a handful of acid jazz-fueled tracks that would sound at home on Lalo Schiffrin's score for Bullitt, or even on The A-Team - but don't sound out of place here, on an album for a Wild West video game released in 2010. Mexican influences are also clear and present, which is swell seeing as how the game's second act plays out south of the border. The only place this album hiccups a bit is on its final track, a vocal number called "Bury Me Not On The Lone Prairie", whose lyrics and tone disagree with the game's conclusion and led me to believe that it would be soaked in hopelessness and despair, when its bittersweet ending was actually quite the opposite (much to my relief, though it was still quite emotionally draining).

The closing track's relation to the game's story aside, Red Dead Redemption (OST) is a basically perfect record. For music lovers, soundtrack afficionados, and anyone who likes a good Western, this is something well worth looking up regardless of whether or not you'd play the game.

Red Dead Bittersweet Irony

It is not uncommon, on highly anticipated game release dates, for obsessive/impatient/image-conscious gamers to "call in sick" so that they can try hot new titles ASAP. As I was standing in line at EB Games to pick up my anniversary present - a special ed. pre-order of Red Dead Redemption - observing the two-dozen-odd 18-35 white males surrounding me, trying not to be too self-conscious as the only woman in the room and cursing my coughs, sneezes, and especially cursing my fever, I couldn't help but take some amusement in the irony that, the first time I ever got a pre-ordered new release, I actually was sick.

Turns out the game's pretty sweet, too. More on that in sixty hours or so. I need to go sneeze some more first, and the cows need herding.

Iron Man 2

It's hard to sell a sequel to film critics. It's easy to sell them to audiences in a fiscal sense, but until Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2, the most recent good sequel in popular consciousness was Terminator 2. A good film with the word "2" in the title is a confusing beast for professional critics, a good comic-book film with the word "2" in the title doubly so. The resulting effect caused by Iron Man 2 has been reviews which say, "there was too much action, and not enough talking, booo", or "it was okay, but there was too much talking and not enough action. Booo." Would it surprise you to learn that I think neither is accurate?

Iron Man 2 picks up where the first film left off, with Tony Stark announcing his secret identity and showboating it like no one's business, with an appropriately ludicrous introduction that works because of how thoroughly Tony's character was cemented in Iron Man. No, wait, scratch that. Iron Man 2 picks up with Russian career prisoner Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) being given a reason to finally get off his butt and seek revenge for the apparent wrong done to his father by Tony's father fourty years earlier. Rourke is a careful actor, one who has a knack for making a character both over-the-top and down to earth at the same time, and that talent serves this film very well. One critic complained that "it's hard to fear a villain who wears reading glasses, chews toothpicks and coos sweet nothings to a pet cockatoo", but I'd argue that it is these quiet, matter-of-fact eccentricities - and normal things, like being pudgy and wearing reading glasses - that make Vanko so scary, especially when combined with Rourke's sleepy portrayal that seems to suit a man who's spent most of his life in and out of Russian prisons. And who (aside from Russian speakers) knows what he's actually saying to his bird? For all we know, it could be twisted and disturbing sweet nothings, like when Emily Watson moans that she's going to bite Adam Sandler's face off at the end of Punch-Drunk Love. At any rate, Rourke is a standout, producing a character who's also a believable person.

Though the cast is uniformly excellent, special mention must be made of Sam Rockwell as Stark's chief rival in the Department of Defense contracts game, Justin Hammer. Taking on the typically thankless role of the hero's less successful, less charismatic, less intelligent, extremely irritating foil, the film is Rockwell's to steal - and steal it, he does. His scenes with Mickey Rourke are just great, and he perfectly delivers what will probably be this film's most memorable bit of dialogue, in a scene in which he tries to sell Rhodey a new type of bunker-buster missile.

This film does have a bit of an awkward pace, but it's nothing to write home about, and what really stands out is how short the fights are. There's a decent bit of set-up, particularly when Vanko's alter-ego Whiplash is introduced against the backdrop of the Monaco Grand Prix, but when heroes and villains actually start hitting each other, epic boss fights last perhaps fourty seconds. It's like someone actually sat down and asked themselves, "if two people capable of causing massive destruction actually tried to kill each other, what would happen?" - this isn't two giants punching each other in the head for twenty minutes (*cough*Transformers!*cough*).

But, let's face it, the question I've been asked the most is, "is it better than the first film?" No. Is it Spider-Man 2? Not quite. Is it a solid film with great writing, acting, directing, and really great superhero action? Yes. Frankly, the only thing I'm truly disappointed with is that the infamous briefcase suit made a quick but crucial appearance - but there was no word on whether or not it harnessed the power of MAGNETS! Go for the movie, stay for the credits, stay for the scene after the credits, and look forward to the next Avenger film.

Good News, Everyone! It's Star Wars Day!

May the fourth be with you.

Am I Unhip? Ultimate Litmus Test No. 1

So I checked the radio this morning to see what was on...and the only reason I kept listening was because I thought they were playing The New Radicals.

I'm secure with who I am. And when 90's rock becomes the Next Big Nostalgic Thing For Those Who Weren't Born In That Decade, the way the 80's have been for the past few years, I'll be both a visionary and a trendsetter.

(At this time, I will neither confirm or deny that roughly two minutes after the disappointing realization that the radio was not in fact playing The New Radicals, I became suspiciously excited by the words "new music from the Crash Test Dummies." Maybe I am a visionary after all.)

The Book of the Long Sun

It seems to have been a long time since the phrase "Christian literature" was more than something good for a laugh. Ask people to name a fiction writer who's a devout believer, a deep thinker, and an excellent artist, and chances are Lewis, Chesterton, Tolkien will spring to mind. Thing is, they've all been dead for quite some time. And I've got nothing against older works (some of my favourite authors are dead! Ba-dum ching!), but as a lifelong rabid reader, and a Christian for about fourteen years now, I do have a big problem with artistic stagnation. I've read many fantastic books that embody Beuchner's idea of "the world expressing holy things in the only language it knows", but until these past two weeks I'd never read one by someone who I knew was embodying that idea intentionally - one of his characters even paraphrases the quote - and who's still alive and working, to boot! American sci-fi master Gene Wolfe has been described as "the best author you've never heard of". I'd second that motion. It's surely a sign of the apocalypse that Joe Haldeman has a Hugo, but Wolfe does not. However, the Hugos are a mob award, and something Wolfe does have is the admiration and respect of other writers, Neil Gaiman probably being his loudest and most famous fan. After reading The Book of the Long Sun, it's easy to understand why.

The Book of the Long Sun (comprised of Nightside of the Long Sun, Lake of the Long Sun, Calde of the Long Sun, and Exodus from the Long Sun, volumes published from 1993-1996) is a Dyson Sphere allegory set against the exploration of the fallout of false religion, and the free-will debate that was a very big deal at the time this story was written, as worked out by a writer who has spent many years considering and practicing the truth. Its protagonist, twenty-three year-old Silk, is an augur of the false gods, and the story opens with him receiving an enlightening vision from a largely forgotten, minor god known as the Outsider. The Outsider tells Silk that it is his responsibility to "save his manteion" (a sort of church/school/monastery, over which Silk presides), and that he should not expect to receive any help from the Outsider, as Silk is the help the Outsider has sent. Silk's interpretation of this command then sets off a chain of events which, in a series of four or five days, lead to a full-scale revolution in the city-state of Viron, with Silk at its head. Though he interprets the warning to expect no help as a warning that he will receive no help, help comes to him in such varied forms as a local high-profile thief, a couple of prostitutes, a quiet and timid nun, a talking bird with a serious fixation on fish heads, a "legitimate businessman", and even a few of the gods themselves.

It's hard to figure out where to begin discussing this story, because my main goal is to convince whoever's reading this to read it, and it's not an easy story to summarize, and probably even harder to sell. It's what is commonly referred to in literary circles as "hard" or "high-concept" sci-fi, a genre that isn't quick or simple, very off-putting in its appearance but ironically often more accessible to those who avoid sci-fi as a whole because it's primary concern is story, whereas "low" sci-fi is more concerned with setting and all the trappings of the genre. It's also a dense work of literature, and I don't mean long, I mean dense. Averaging under five hundred pages per volume, and totaling just over a thousand in trade paperback format for the whole shebang, The Book of the Long Sun is easily half the length of the average epic and/or high-concept sci-fi/fantasy story. However, nothing's missing, and no space is wasted. Wolfe accomplishes this in two ways that are somewhat radical in the literary world: first, he dispenses with traditional descriptive writing, offering visual descriptions only as immediately necessary. For example, when Silk first encounters one of the mechanical military "guard dogs" known as taluses, Wolfe offers a description of the talus only as necessary to convey the experience of encountering one. In other words, that initial description is visually incomplete, and it is only until later in the story - when it becomes important to understand what a talus looks like - that he paints the rest of the picture. It's an unusual device that takes some getting used to, but it leaves nothing out and it's absolutely brilliant. It keeps the story moving where other stories take a time-out to gawk. The second way in which Wolfe tells a full and thoughtful story in a flowing and economical fashion is by thinking. As anyone who reads this blog can attest, the hardest aspect of writing is communicating one's full intentions while being concise. The Book of the Long Sun is packed with big ideas, ethos, theologies and philosophies that Wolfe has evidently been pondering for years, probably decades, and which he manages to fully express in the space of two to four sentences. For example, towards the end of the second or beginning of the third volume (I'm afraid it's gone back to the library, so I can't be more precise), Silk has a conversation in which an android, explaining how the world is (having much more empirical knowledge on that count than Silk), makes a casual mention of how "chems" (chemical people) are more valuable than humans, because chems take seventy or eighty years to make, and are not easily replaced, but humans are quick and easy to make, and we grow them inside ourselves. It's a loaded thought on the value of life and casual attitudes towards sex; there's at least a whole semester's worth of bioethics class to be had out of that one brief exchange, and it is typical of Wolfe's writing throughout the whole story. It's intelligent, it's masterful, and it's art. It also makes the book one that's not suitable for reading in short chunks.

Originally, I flipped through the book and resolved not to read it because it was full of "made up" words, and I can't stand books like that. They get tacky and annoying very quickly. Then my husband sold me on the absolutely fascinating story, and I realized two very important things about Gene Wolfe. The first was that every other sci-fi or fantasy book I've read which is packed with alternate words for everyday things is a cheap imitation of Wolfe. The second was that his words aren't "made up" - they're either archaic and unfamiliar English, or logical progressions thereof. The world in which The Book of the Long Sun is set is one in which several generations have passed, and for the common folk language has morphed and evolved into a strange sort of bastard patois which, once you get the hang of it, makes sense and is also ingenious. For example, street people and soldiers using various forms of the word "chill" to refer to killing, or someone being dead. What's a current slang for killing? Putting someone on ice! British slang, mostly the offensive sort, works its way in to substitute for common American curses, like "shag" and its variants in place of "fuck" et al., which I find quite funny as a lot of people I know consider British cursing to be appropriate, to not be swearing, to be unoffensive, which is absolutely ludicrous, but it happens. My absolute favourite language twist of Wolfe's has to be the word "lily" substituting for "truth". We say "gilding the lily" or "don't gild the lily" to refer to embellishing something that's so perfect and beautiful it needs to enhancement or alteration. Just like the truth. Brilliant.

In the end, though, what makes The Book of the Long Sun truly worth reading is what makes any book truly worth reading: its deep and thoughtful message, one easily and often hijacked by hysteria and hyperbole, does not take precedence over the quality of the story. Nor does the quality of the story take precedence over the message, relegating it to a backseat. Here, message and story are equally important, depending on and complimenting each other, and quality and artistic integrity is never sacrificed as they all too commonly are when writers have a Big Idea. Anyone who's read a good book or watched a good movie that had something to say knows that there's no reason why story and message shouldn't coexist in perfect harmony. If you aren't sure what that harmony looks like, may I suggest reading Gene Wolfe. And if you've ever read an article about who sci-fi is the best genre for exploring and explaining the human condition, but weren't convinced, The Book of the Long Sun should be suitable proof.

Dialogues of the Week!

Oh, it's a close tie - between new episodes of Fringe and Human Target (shocking, I know).

From Fringe, Episode 2.16, "Peter", where Walter explains and confesses himself to Olivia after she has become able to see objects from the other universe, and now knows that Peter is one of them. In this scene, a flashback to 1985, Walter has seen his double (or, as he likes to call him, "Walternate" - isn't that great?) make a critical error in observation that will result in him missing the cure for Peter's terminal illness, thus ensuring that Peter 2 will meet the same fate as Peter 1, and resolves to cross over to prevent this from happening.

Dr. Carla Warren: Walter, I'm sorry, but you can't.

Dr. Walter Bishop: Yes, yes, I think I can.

Dr. Warren: No, I mean you can't. Shattering the wall between universes would rupture the fundamental constants of nature...

Walter: ...That's just a theory; we don't know it to be true.

Dr. Warren: It's a good theory, it's why we've been lying to the military and telling them it's impossible... Walter. There has to be a line somewhere; there has to be a line we can't cross.

Walter: (after a long pause) I've always considered you as a scientist, Dr. Warren, despite your personal needs for religious claptrap. I see I was wrong.

Dr. Warren: "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."

Walter: Don't you quote Oppenheimer to me!

It was a fantastic episode of what surprisingly became a fantastic show, packed with great twists on the standard cliches, and the series is well worth taking a look at. Caveat: you may want to avoid the introductions of most episodes, in which the deaths of the week usually occur, as those deaths are of the sci-fi/horror variety (think Alien or The Thing) and tend to be extremely nauseating.

On HumanTarget 1.10, "Tanarak", a standard tale of a mining company trying to cover up the nature of an unnatural, chemical-related death that's elevated out of the standardized drudge through great acting, great direction, doing things like watching Mythbusters (in the episode's climactic scene, main character Chris Chance grabs a flare gun to blow up a semi instead of using his sidearm, since gas tanks are made to not blow up simply by being punctured or shot - but a flaming puncture is a whole other story!), and, of course, great writing. This week goes again to Jackie Earle Haley's Guerrero, as he blackmails the mining company's corporate fixer:

Guerrero: (entering the startled fixer's car) Whoa, hey Taggart! Been awhile!...Oh yeah, I get it. I could be recording this, right? If I were you, I wouldn't say a word either. So here's the deal. I know you're working with Agrius. You're scrubbing evidence over this whole propylide mess, and I also know, dude, even if you destroy it all, you're keeping one folder for yourself, the one with the really good stuff in it. The one that guarantees you get paid on time, they never mess with you. Problem is this: this company's going down, bro. I think we both know there's no reason for you to be anywhere near it when it does. Make sense? ...Oh, what's in it for you? Dude. How about doing the right thing? How about just the satisfaction of knowing you helped a really good person out of a rotten situation (breaks down snickering) dude, I'm messing with you! I know where you live! And you know it! Tom's Diner, Nineteenth and Pine. Just leave the folders in the back booth by the can, okay? Tell your wife I said hi. (exits the car) See you, Taggart!

The cherry on top here is really that, in a three-man operation, the smallest one is their creepy, dangerous thug. It's a great running visual.

They Live at the Road House!

A question often* posed to me is, "Elly, just how much awesomeness can one weekend hold?" Well, there was the time I watched Hard Boiled, Where Eagles Dare, The Transporter 2, and Speed Racer all in one such time span, and about nine years ago my first true all-night movie marathon consisted of The Core, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Mystery Men, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn, The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, some random episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000, both the David Lynch and Sci-Fi Channel versions of Dune, and possibly UHF. That was epic. Caroline, if by some slim chance you've stumbled across this page, I'm pretty unhappy about having lost your contact information and forgotten your last name, so leave a comment, okay? You rock.

This time around, only two films were in play...but they contained so much awesomeness between them that their memories belong beside those mythic weekends remembered above: John Carpenter's classic homage to 50's sci-fi, They Live (1988), and the late great Patrick Swayze's legendary homage to some martial arts style whose name escapes me but which often pops up in Jet Li films, Road House (1989).

They Live stars Saskatoon native (hi folks! Thanks for the comics!) and former wrestling villain 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper as a simple drifter known only as Nada who's hitched across the U.S. from Detroit to L.A. in a Great Depression-style journey to find work. He lands a construction job and sets up camp in a shanty town filled with other transient workers and poor folk, whose food needs are looked after by the church across the street, a church at which strange comings and goings take place in the middle of the night and whose basement looks like a combination drug kitchen/counterfeit sunglasses operation. When the church is violently raided one night by a small army of cops, Nada discovers that the sunglasses are what all the fuss is about, as wearing them makes him feel like he's just ordered a big meal from a drug kitchen. Aliens walk among us! They've taken over and are sucking the life out of Earth! They look like the ghouls from Fallout 3 mated with the villains from Mars Attacks!! And if you're not wearing the special sunglasses, they look just like regular people! Conveniently armed with two pairs of said sunglasses, Nada enlists the help of fellow drifter Frank (Keith David), and together they set out to kick their bubblegum habit once and for all and show those lousy aliens the door. Or the window. Both work.

John Carpenter's films work because he never forgets what they are. He never tries to treat a completely ludicrous premise as anything but, choosing instead to jump in, latch on, and have fun, as demonstrated in films like Big Trouble in Little China and my personal favourite, Escape from New York. This same work ethic can also turn out rock-solid dramas, like his 1984 sci-fi horror classic The Thing, which is of the same quality as the literal mother of them all, Alien. They Live is not a drama, and it looks like Carpenter had lots of fun with that fact. With his brilliant use of black-and-white Sunglasses Vision, a hero who's not the sharpest tool in the box, and such famous lines as "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass...and I'm all out of bubblegum" (referenced in legions of movies, shows, and The Dresden Files) and the less-famous line "Brother, life's a bitch - and she's back in heat" (which concludes the longest dirty fight I've ever seen on film, clocking in at nearly six minutes), all topped off with a Hong Kong-style twist and a horrifically funny final shot which now rivals The Lost Boys for my favourite ending to a ridiculous movie, They Live contains almost too much awesomeness for one film to hold. Which is code for, if you think that contrived and melodramatic action films like the ones homaged in Hot Fuzz are in fact deep and serious, you'll probably think that They Live is a stupid failure. And hey, even if you watch it for what it is, you may still think it's a stupid failure. That's okay. You'd just be wrong. ;)

FUN FACT! Keith David worked with John Carpenter prior to They Live, with a chilling and memorable role in The Thing.

MASS EFFECT FUN FACT! Keith David also provided the voice of Captain/Councilor Anderson in Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2.

CRAZY COINCIDENCE FUN FACT! Keith David also has a small role in...

Road House (which I keep confusing with From Dusk 'Til Dawn, which takes place in a roadhouse), which aired on TV the day after They Live, is a film my husband taped because it is, and I quote, "mythic". Mythically awful, mythically awesome, take your pick; it certainly deserves its allegedly legendary status. Starring Patrick Swayze as a nice young doctor of philosophy who can't find work philosophizing and is instead famous in bar circles for being one of the best bouncers in the U.S. (I am not making this up), Road House sees Swayze's Dalton accepting a job offer to turn around the reputation of the Double Deuce, an incredibly seedy, sleazy, violent small-town bar which happens to be owned by a nice older man who wants to see the place get cleaned up. Obviously, all problems stem from the fact that the town is owned and controlled by some seedy, sleazy, violent tycoon rancher, which may leave some readers wondering whether or not Dalton will have to save the town and hook up with the tycoon's ex-wife. I think I'll leave you hanging.

If Road House's awesomeness factor and Patrick Swayze factor are not enough to catch your interest, consider also that the Double Deuce's house musician is the late great blues man Jeff Healey (one of Canada's finest contributions to music), and that while he had a decent TV career before co-starring in Road House, this still may be the only time you'll ever see Sam Elliott (Tombstone, The Big Lebowski, Ang Lee's Hulk) with brown hair. He looks dangerous, like he's going to come flying through the window to kick your ass at any moment! It's wild! It's like seeing Ben Kingsley with hair in Searching for Bobby Fischer, except that Ben Kingsley looks much scarier now that he's bald. This is not to say that Sam Elliott cannot look very threatening in his current white-haired state, but rather that Sam Elliott in Road House is a bit of an experience.

NOT SO FUN FACT! There is some brief but lingering martial arts-related grossness in Road House, of the level you'd expect to see in a Steven Seagal film rather than a Patrick Swayze one. Eeeeew. Hail to the 80's.

KIND OF BORING CONCLUSION! A highly entertaining pair of films.

*Never.

My Ten Best Friends are Talking Pies: Mass Effect 2

Mass Effect 2
BioWare Studios, EA Games
ESRB: M for Mature (Blood, Drug Reference, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Violence)

There are exactly three good things about the city of Edmonton: the good company, the public library, and BioWare, that august game studio which brought us Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate, Jade Empire, Star Wars: Knight of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age: Origins - in other words, more high-quality fun than you can shake ten to twelve sticks at. Sometimes, good things fraternize with each other, like when you find out that some of the good company you keep works for BioWare. The ultimate irony of the video game developer is that the good ones who work for good studios are way too busy developing games to have the free time to play them, and one in particular makes good use of this irony by combining it with his delight for gift-giving, and so it came to pass that in the space of three months, I've had the superb luxury of playing two games a week or two after they were released as opposed to waiting a year or two for the price to fall into my tax bracket. One of those was Dragon Age: Origins, which I've been meaning to blurb about for a while now, is ridiculously entertaining, and has just released an expansion pack (Dragon Age: Awakening). The other one, you may have surmised, is the highly anticipated Mass Effect 2, which I'm playing on an Xbox 360.

Beginning shortly after the attack on Citadel Station that served as the climax of the first game, ME2 is set around (surprise!) a fresh encroachment of Reapers and their new lackeys, the Collectors. Human colonists are disappearing in huge numbers throughout the lawless frontier Terminus Systems, and the Citadel Council doesn't appear to be doing too much about it - meaning neither, seemingly, is the Alliance Navy. The game opens with Commander Shepard and the Normandy nearing the end of a long geth patrol, being sent to a system in which ships have been going missing, the official speculation being to blame geth (the synthetic villains of the first game) or slavers. Of course, the official speculation is dead wrong, the Normandy is lost, and after a long series of negotiations (further explained when meeting an old friend in the game's second act) what's left of Shepard's body ends up in the hands of Cerberus, that shady, biological experimenting organization whose entire base of operations in the Attican Traverse you may or may not have destroyed as a series of side quests in the first game. Two years later, Cerberus has put you back together because they believe you're humanity's best hope against the Reapers, and Cerberus insists that their primary goal is to protect and advance human interests. They provide you with a ship, a crew, and the information you'll need to prepare for that ultimate battle, and off you go.

BioWare games tend to have outstanding writing, and ME2 has (unsurprisingly) set a new standard. With an eight-author crew co-headlined by Star Wars novelist and BioWare regular Drew Karpyshyn (Mass Effect, Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire), ME2 features a solid cast of archetypes and cliches removed from their boxes and turned into whole, satisfying, engaging characters and storylines, with very few exceptions. Honestly, the only aspect of the writing I'm disappointed with in ME2 is the missed golden opportunity to pay tribute to the classic running joke from John Carpenter's Escape from New York ("Snake Plissken? I've heard of you! I thought you were dead!"). As in the first game, there is a Paragon/Renegade scale in lieu of the standard RPG Good/Evil scale (cue Bill Bailey's slide whistle), in which Renegade dialogue and actions are blunt, aggressive, usually focus on the Big Picture, believe in "live and let live", and that the end justifies the means, while the Paragon is diplomatic, polite often to naive excess, concerned with the small-scale personal elements that form the big Picture, and believes in intervention and that that the end never justifies the means. The fact that neither the Paragon or Renegade actions are always good/wise or bad/foolish choices, coupled with the facts that both paths contain hard to stomach decisions and work towards the same main goal, is what makes the Mass Effect story so interesting to play. Also very interesting, it is made quite clear in-game that decisions made in regards to loyalties and alliances in ME2 will have significant impacts on the outcome of ME3. Decisions carried over to ME2 from ME1 save games did not have as blatantly big impacts in this game as I'd expected, but a quick peek between the lines suggests that they will become very important in the story's final installment. I'm also very interested to see how the writers will handle the fact that most if not all of your squadmates can end up dead by the end of ME2, and how that will affect save games carried over to ME3.

While we're on the subject of dead squadmates, it should be noted that in spite of the big fuss made over the fact that the suicide mission that ends ME2 can in fact be a true suicide mission - even Shepard can die, rendering the whole playthrough null and void since if this happens there are no do-overs and you will be unable to import it to the sequel - the game tells you repeatedly what to do in order to ensure that everyone makes it home. The only way to lose people at the end of the game is by ignoring those instructions and/or making obviously foolish or illogical tactical decisions. There is a critical point after which, if you don't begin the suicide mission immediately, you will lose some or all of the random NPCs floating around the Normandy, but this is easily avoided for experienced gamers who know that heading for your objective is always the last thing you do - and for the inexperienced gamer who gets trapped here, the game tells you in two different places at this point that delaying the mission will help ensure squad survival but sacrifice the crew, thus giving you a clear choice instead of an unwelcome surprise. And while I hate losing usable characters, it would be interesting to see which losses will make a difference in ME3, since I can only think of three instances during the suicide mission in which you can ensure a specific character's demise - all others are chosen at random by the computer. At any rate, my point is, it is impossible to unwittingly lose any of your ten specialists, or your Shepard - it must be done deliberately, through ignorance or choice, so if you haven't played yet and are nervous about this, don't sweat it.

In other story-related news, ME2 also does a great job with romantic sub-plots. They are considerably more interesting and evolved than ME1's, make strong efforts to avoid boring cliches, run the gamut from poignant to cheesy to hilarious (see previous post), and those who protested against ME1 on grounds of moral degeneracy for including a relatively tame, optional sexual cutscene will be pleased to note that there are no similar cutscenes in ME2. There is, however, what could be perceived as a significantly higher fetish content, as two of the three gender-specific love interests for a female Shepard are aliens, and all three characters available to both Shepards for sexual flings are female, with one being an alien Amazon and another being - I am not making this up - an alien sex vampire. Read into that what you will. Someone on the writing crew may have been poking fun at this business by including the galaxy's first "titillating alien magazine" as an in-game shop item, kind of like Three Dog's "weather forecast" taking a shot at the excessive gore in Fallout 3.

On the boring technical side of things, the main edge video games have over any other entertainment media I can think of is that, due to continual and rapid evolutions in computer technology, it's a very rare and embarrassing occurrence for a game's sequel to not surpass its predecessor in almost every way. BioWare doesn't have a habit of letting gamers down, and ME2 is no exception to that rule. For starters, it runs smoother than any other game I've played to date - it doesn't even pause while saving. There are some obvious ways in which this was achieved, most notably in your ship's layout. While there are four levels on the new Normandy, as opposed to two on the original, separating the ship into those load zones makes a huge difference in how the game runs, dividing conversations across three decks. Also, not having a personal inventory is probably a big factor. Sure, you can acquire a decent amount of armor and ordinance over the course of the game, but significantly less than the average RPG selection, and they're stored in different locations. Guns are kept in weapons lockers found aboard the Normandy and in various locations during main quests, and these are the only places to swap out your weapons - you can't carry more than one of each type on your person. Armor is divided into parts (helmet, chestplate, etc.) and stored in your shipboard cabin, and that is the only place you can swap your armor after completing the game's introduction. All this to say that the game doesn't have to remember nearly as much content in each save as it did in the first game, which had a 150-item personal inventory. As well, upgrades are no longer items, but permanent additions to weapons and armor once found, bought, and/or unlocked.

This inventory system also contributes to more interesting tactical decisions than were available in ME1. The limit of one weapon of each type can be a hard call at times, because the developers did a great job of giving each grade of weapon a different purpose, meaning that the "higher"-grade weapon isn't necessarily the one you want. You can have a mini-nuke, but it's not the most practical heavy weapon, it's tricky to use and you cannot get off more than one shot even at full ammo-carrying capacity, and there's a lot to be said for a good old-fashioned grenade launcher - which in this game happens to require a good deal of skill and practice to use effectively. Likewise, a more powerful sniper rifle or shotgun may not always be more practical than its weaker, rapid-fire version which carries three to four times as many rounds, and oftentimes which weapon is better for the job seems to rely on your character class. For example, the high-caliber Widow Anti-Material sniper rifle (unique to Soldiers and Infiltrators) virtually guarantees, when paired with sufficient upgrades and skill, a one- to two-shot kill even on "Hardcore", and for an Infiltrator is the kind of weapon that explains why some people name their guns. However, the weaker Viper rifle is arguably a better pick for Soldiers, who do not have the passive "sniper time" slowdown unique to Infiltrators, but who do have the class-specific "Adrenaline Rush" ability, which in this game pairs a total time dilation with increased weapon damage - meaning that the slow-firing, slow-reloading, one-round chamber Widow is largely impractical for the Soldier on "Hardcore" or "Insanity", but the rapid-fire Viper (with twelve rounds to the chamber and fourty-eight in the clip) can have first- and second-tier enemies dealt with before Adrenaline Rush times out (2-5 seconds). Combined with the fact that, unlike the first game, there are class restrictions on weapon use (ME1 only had restrictions on effectiveness), the combat is much more interesting than it used to be.

ME2's leveling system is another significant change from the first game, with fewer abilities and only four ranks of each, requiring a total of ten points to fully upgrade each ability . That may sound like leveling up is a breeze, but the way squad points are awarded in ME2 - combined with a 30-level cap - makes for some tough decisions for your squad. However, if you're not happy with your decisions for Shepard, one upgrade available after the game's halfway point is the opportunity to re-distribute your points at any time aboard the Normandy provided you have the necessary resources (or you can always exploit the "infinite squad points" glitch, but that's kind of lame). It's a fantastic system that allows you to specialize your abilities in accordance with the mission you're about to undertake, and really ties the game together as specialization is a big deal plot-wise in ME2. While we're talking about missions, my absolute favourite gameplay aspect of ME2 is the ability to, from the load menu, restart whichever mission you last began, allowing you to change your weapons or squad and providing the choice to skip the hassle or take the challenge if it turns out that you chose the wrong tools for the job. The restart option for any mission, main or side, will remain available until you begin a new mission. It really is a fantastic enhancement to the gameplay. As well, you can unlock non-essential main quests (what?) by completing side quests. Unheard of! Absurd! Fantastic.

One of the big advertised features for ME2 was the fact that you can change your class and appearance on imported ME1 games. I was really excited about that, because while ME1 was a big deal at the time for how much you could customize your appearance, I was never very happy with its presets, never quite able to get the look I wanted, and after seeing how far BioWare upped the customization ante with Dragon Age, I was totally jazzed. Which means I was also totally bummed at first when I discovered that ME2 has the same toolset as ME1 - all the preset faces are the same, all the eye/nose/mouth shapes and hairstyles are the same, and there's no additional fiddling around that wasn't present in the first game. I got over it because it makes sense. Another big advertised feature currently unique (as far as I know) to the Mass Effect series is its combination of facial customization and fully cinematic dialogue, in which your character speaks and runs a wide range of facial expressions. These have been really nicely toned up in ME2, and I can't see how it would work so well and run so smoothly if you could go wild with customization. Also, though I can't find a way to save it on the 360, there is a code at the bottom of the customization screen which encompasses every aspect of your appearance, meaning that if you got a really good face and you just want your next character to have different hair, you can write down that code and enter it next time to get that same face instantaneously. For someone who takes their customization seriously, and spends what some may consider a disgusting amount of time getting it "just right" since I'll have to look at it for the next 40+ hours (especially if I run a second play on the same ME2 character, for which you cannot change appearance or class), this is a very big and welcome deal.

The only kind of big downside to ME2 is that the combat AI, at least on the 360, has some weird issues that tend to get you killed three quarters of the way through a huge multi-wave fight for no good reason (though I should note in the game's defense that its well-planned autosave system will only require you to restart the fight you got killed in, not the entire mission). For starters, you can only regain health by taking cover (no medi-gel for you!), and it's not always clear what stationary objects the game does or does not consider to be cover. There are also many instances of the AI making you stand up out of cover if you tap a button too fast when changing weapons or issuing commands, which causes a whole lot of instant death on higher difficulty levels. And while the ability to vault into/out of cover can really come in handy, it can also really screw you over if you tap the left stick in just the wrong way, as can that same tap accidentally running you into something the game considers to be a corner or wall, which will also make you stand up, and if staggered by an attack, you can't take cover until regaining your balance...by which time you'll probably be dead. It also seems that the squad AI has more problems the higher your difficulty level, at least I'm noticing a huge shift from "Veteran" to "Hardcore", though this could simply be perception based on the fact that "Hardcore" is, um, harder. Squad members will also sometimes randomly get out of cover, and if you don't send them to just the right angle, they'll shoot at their cover instead of at the enemy, or simply not fire at all. There have also been a lot of times when I've ordered a squad member to use an ability, and they just...don't. And I may be too busy to notice that they didn't, until it's too late. This is probably a button time-delay issue, though time-delay doesn't explain why squad members sometimes repeatedly turn off their specialty ammo in the middle of a fight. All that being said, the combat is overall more interesting than it was in ME1, especially since the main story fights tend to involve being ambushed on the enemy's turf, with little or ineffective cover, and there are a lot of other big quest fights in which it's more effective and more efficient to learn how to move around a battlefield rather than try to depend on cover. However, "more interesting" also tends to mean "more frustrating"... :)

Of course, there are scads of little features that have made wonderful additions to ME gameplay, like the new and greatly improved minigames for hacking and circuit bypass...but listing them all would make this post even more long and boring then it already is. ;)

Lionhead Studios' Fable series was and is infamously sold on the hype of being an RPG in which all your actions affect the world around you. The first installment, enjoyable though it was, didn't take this premise anywhere close to as far as advertised, and neither did the second installment which, though having excellent gameplay, lowered the bar in spades by continuing to hype this feature while still forcing all serious plot decisions of consequence on the player, decisions which were, in my opinion, rather thoughtless and other less complimentary adjectives, resulting in a game whose completion provided no satisfaction whatsoever and in which "affecting the world around you" really only meant whether wandering NPC's think you're the cat's pyjamas or the devil's right hand (wooo! Hard-core!). The Mass Effect series showed Fable how it's done, resulting in two engaging, outstanding, utterly satisfying titles whose decision-making aspects command repeated playthroughs for the sake of seeing what their consequences will be, and in which combination. Though I got it for free, Mass Effect 2 is some extraordinary bang for your buck, and with how many hours of thought-provoking entertainment it offers, the downside even bigger than the combat AI issues is that it takes an awful lot of self-discipline to not spend way too much time playing this incredible game. The upside? It'll keep you plenty busy while waiting for Mass Effect 3. Enjoy!

Dialogue of the Week

This week's gem which you probably shouldn't use in general public conversation comes to us courtesy of everyone's favourite Mass Effect 2 vigilante sniper, on the subject of not rushing relationships to fourth base:

Garrus Vakarian: Well, you know me. I always like to savour the last shot before popping the heat sink.

[awkward pause while him and Shepard give each other weird looks]

Wait. That metaphor just went somewhere horrible.

Dialogue Of The Week

Heard on Human Target episode 4, "Sanctuary":

(Chris and Winston are stranded with the guy they've been hired to protect in a remote part of Quebec (vive La Belle Province!), and in sore need of a contingency plan.)

Guerrero: (answering his cell) This is Guerrero.

Winston: It's Winston! Where the hell have you been? I called you, like, thirty times in the last ten minutes! Alright, listen. I thought this job was straightforward, but things have gotten kinda complicated, and we're gonna need your help.

Guerrero: Busy today dude. Sorry.

Winston: You're "busy"? Chance and the principal are in danger. What the hell could you be so busy with that it can't wait?

Guerrero: Winston, my life does not revolve around you. As hard as that may be for you to believe, I'm on another job.

Winston: Another?...Look. Fisher and his crew are here, now Chance is stuck up on that mountain with those psychopaths. Now, he told me you know a chopper pilot down in Montreal, and I need him here fast...

Guerrero: Well, I know who he means, but that's not really an option. We kinda had a falling out.

Winston: Well, can't you apologize?

Guerrero: Yeah, if I had a time machine, or a hell of a Ouija board....Listen, you're gonna be fine, man. You're, uh, capable.

Winston: "Capable"?! Who the hell do you think you're...

Guerrero: Gotta go.

Human Target

Thanks to increasingly high audience impatience and financial pressure to perform, TV shows have been getting off to stronger starts these past five or so years. Where it was once understood that pilots would be kind of awkward but just enticing enough to convince viewers to give a show some time to find its legs, the average program now has to hit the ground running in order to have a fighting chance - and most of the good ones still don't survive. Human Target, one of the newest residents of the airwave jungle, has hit the ground running through a U.S. Army obstacle training course with flying colours. What I'm trying to convey with that clumsy analogy, which probably came from having just read a chapter about boot camp in the memoirs of Major Richard Winters, is that the first three episodes of Human Target to go to air have been some very good TV that seems to be doing its best to avoid being a genre cliche.

The premise of Human Target is a very easy one to cliche, as it revolves around the business of a small private security company whose M.O. is to use their high-end clients as bait in order to draw out and apprehend their would-be assassins, robbers, whatever. Staffed by an operator (Chi McBride), a freelance information specialist (Jackie Earle Haley), and, of course, the field operator who acts as an unconventional bodyguard (Mark Valley), they're a legal business, not off the grid like the A-Team. They're also, as demonstrated to solid comic effect in the third episode, very well-connected. Although his history is still a bit spotty, it's been implied that main character Christopher Chance (Valley) has a CIA and/or U.S. Army Special Forces background, and that his past work has earned him a lot of favours in high places waiting to be called in, which also helps with legal side of things.

What is so far making Human Target work, strong acting and writing aside, is its eschewing of standard "special agent for hire" conventions. For example, on basically every other show in the genre, Guerrero (Haley) would be an omnipotent computer geek inept in every other aspect of life. On Human Target, though Guerrero knows his way around a computer and then some, he really is, as I referred to him above, an information specialist. He has contacts, he does legwork, he finds the missing pieces of the puzzle through a wide variety of means for Chris and Winston (McBride). And the best part is, neither him nor secret agent man Chris are omnipotent. They're smart, resourceful, and very well-rounded, but they don't know everything. In the second episode, when a fire in a plane's cabin put the pilots out of commission with smoke inhalation and Chris had to step in and help out, he may have a pilot's license but had, reasonably, never flown a 747, which meant he didn't know squat about its landing gear...but he did know where the cockpit manual was, and consulted it. Later in the same episode, when faced with a problem in the plane's wiring, he went to the pilot for help instead of phoning his tech expert, because Guererro's no expert on 747s - the pilot is. What makes Chris such a great character is that he knows how to use resources, and what makes Guerrero a great character, aside from not being an all-knowing, magical instant problem-solving computer nerd, is that he also knows how to use resources. This team is not an isolated one, which is very refreshing (not to mention plain ol' good storytelling). In the third episode, Guerrero had to keep an eye on someone who'd been poisoned with something that would eventually stop his heart, and his first move was to try to get a hold of his local contacts with medical training. When that fell through (one in prison, the other dead), he went to find a defibrillator, and while sitting around waiting for the need to use it, he read the manual. That's right, he didn't already know how to use a defibrillator, but as he reminded a high-strung Winston, they put those things on school buses. He can figure out how to use one. I would never say anything bad about MacGyver, but I'm glad that the characters on Human Target are not his inferior wannabes.

The three main characters have distinct personalities, interact well together, and, most importantly, each have a different role to play (no pun intended). Guererro does legwork in his capacity as an information guy, and he gets stuff done, but he's no field operative - that's Chris's job. Winston doesn't seem to do much leg work at all, which is fine as he's well suited to and very good at his role as operator and coordinator. As for personalities, Chris is no James Bond or Sam Spade, nor is he a lone wolf or infalliable. He's successful because he doesn't work alone. And Guererro is no awkward wallflower. He's successful in his field of work because he's confident, aggressive, kind of scary, and knows how to deal with people, and has a great tick of calling everyone "dude" without sounding contrived. He's easily shaping up to be my favourite part of the show.

The other major point in Human Target's favour is excellent action, stuntwork, and fight choreography. It also helps that Mark Valley has not only done stuntwork before, but is a West Point graduate and veteran of Desert Storm, and the show makes good use of his physical talents. There's plenty of proper dirty fighting going on, in which Chris makes reasonable use of his surroundings, and the show's even had him fight two women without getting all Mr. and Mrs. Smith stupid (though they couldn't resist using the standard cheesy tango music to accompany a co-ed fight at a black-tie function). This show probably also has a bit more financial freedom for its all-important action sequences due to the fact that their excellent "B-list" main cast probably comes with a reasonable price tag, and you know what? The solution to that equation is high-quality fun that keeps a decent distance from sensationalism.

Due to the unwritten rule that you are no longer allowed to have a cop/buddy cop/spy show with an all-male cast, they have introduced a sexy FBI agent to whom Chris has deliberately made himself accessible, and although his business operates more or less above board and he has friends in high places, he's still broken plenty of federal and international laws over the years - if someone can find him and make a charge stick. His fingerprints are on file, along with over a dozen aliases, but is otherwise blank, and now he's given someone in law enforcement a face to go with the names. I can't imagine what they plan to do with Lady Agent, but I do hope it doesn't involve her joining the team (which has a rock-solid dynamic and is just fine as it is) or adding an unecessary and cliched plot tension involving trying to arrest Chris.

It would seem that Fox has high hopes for Human Target, because where I live it's currently serving as the lead-in for 24, a great way to build an audience and ensure stable ratings. This one may actually be around for a while. I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.

Sometimes, it's good to be wrong: Stargate: Universe

A while back, when the Sci-Fi Channel went through a revenue-based identity crisis and became the Syfy Channel (still looks like an abbreviation for syphilis), their flagship show was a new addition to the Stargate family. I was quite alarmed by the promotional materials for the show, what with it using words like "sexy" and "adventure" in the same sentence, and going on about how it's been specially made for people who don't like sci-fi, blah blah blah. As such, I made the skittish assumption that it was going to be Defying Gravity with a Stargate label, and resolved to stay away. Well, now we have Space, SyFy's Canadian equivalent, and now Space airs Stargate: Universe, and I all I can say is, I should have known better. The Stargate series happens to be quite fond of its good name, and not even the mighty SyFy channel can do anything to change that.

Stargate: Universe comes to us three years after the conclusion of SG-1 and on the tail end of Stargate: Atlantis's run; story-wise, that's also where it sits chronologically. Its premise is that the Stargate project - a military black op centering around the usage of wormhole technology created by a long-gone race known only as the Ancients - has finally found a nine-chevron address and the means to dial it, nine being the maximum number Stargates have. If seven chevrons gets you to another planet, and eight gets you to another galaxy, where the heck do nine get you? When the big day comes, and various troops, scientists, and dignitaries assemble at an off-world outpost to witness the first attempt to dial the mysterious new address, a surprise enemy attack throws a pretty big monkey in the wrench...and instead of getting everyone back to Earth, the project's lead scientist forces the new dialing sequence to completion, and everyone who survives the attack winds up on the Destiny, an unmanned, half-dead Ancient spacecraft with nothing but the clothes (and weapons) on their backs, and whatever they had the presence of mind to grab before running through the gate. Included in this group are a good but reluctant commander, an army medic who was coming to the deliberate end of her service, a solid young officer for whom the army was his only place to turn after a series of personal crises, and a large group of civilians including an MIT dropout who solved the equation that made the trip to Destiny possible, assorted Stargate Project scientists, a U.S. senator and his adult daughter, a ranking official from the IOA (the international body that oversees the Stargate Project), and the afore-mentioned lead scientist, Dr. Rush.

Hmm. Put like that, I can't help but hear the Gilligan's Island song in my head, but rest assured: the similarities between these two shows end at being stranded with a brilliant scientist and a beautiful but seemingly useless civilian.

The show's conflict stems from three primary plots: survival, the tension between cilivians and soldiers (particularly as pertaining to who's in charge), and the independent, hard to monitor actions of Rush, an extraordinarily talented pathological liar whose intellect is matched only by his disdain for others and his ruthless ambition and obsession to see the project through at all costs, a point of view not held by the mission's accidental military commander. As anyone familiar with the Stargate series would expect, the human interaction is of the highest quality and very interesting, as are the characters doing the interacting. Which is a good thing, because that's what SG:U is really about. Where SG-1 was driven by exploration and mythology, and Atlantis was primarily a military sci-fi, Universe is character-driven, which I suppose is where it becomes more accessible for those outside the sci-fi loop. With the regular, long-term Stargate script-writing collective behind it, this brand-new show has already put most everything else on the air to shame. It's even already put out a time-travel episode, Stargate's specialty, which fused everything good about Aliens and the original Predator with everything good about Stargate, and included the following sure-to-be-classic (at least in my house) dialogue exchange: "Well, this couldn't be any worse!" "I'm afraid that's a failure of imagination."

The only place I can see SG:U getting irritating soon unless handled in a very particular way is in the plotline involving Col. Young's visceral rivalry with Col. Telford, a pilot who was supposed to be the mission commander but was in the middle of a dogfight when everyone went through the gate. Young's crew has an Ancient communication system that allows them to contact Earth, even over a distance of several billion light-years, and involves trading bodies with someone at the other end, and Telford does his best to make sure he's almost always that person so that he can be involved with what's happening on Destiny. The way he sees it, Young stole his rightful position as mission commander. That's right, he'd rather be stranded aboard Destiny, because it's his mission, and he does his best to erode the crew's confidence in Young while insinuating his command agenda into their affairs. On top of that, with a lot of long-term bad blood existing between the two, Telford's got some heavy personal blackmail on Young and isn't afraid to use it without bothering to threaten first, hoping to do enough emotional damage to render Young incapable of command. While not an unrealistic character, as Young's opposite Telford is very intense, and I find that has a tendency to get tiresome fast on a series. But, Stargate is far superior to the average series, so we'll see.

Stargate: Universe isn't on at the moment, doing that irritating mid-winter hiatus thing that's now become a TV staple, but I'm looking forward to its return. As an added, bonus, the Stargate name should guarantee that this excellent new sci-fi won't go the way of the usual excellent new sci-fi (rest in peace, Sarah Connor Chronicles), that is to say it's not likely to be suddenly axed in two seasons or less whilst in the middle of a gripping story arc, and odds are it will be played out to its natural conclusion.