Ahoy, Cap'n! Shameless Plug Off The Port Bow!

But it's not for me! It's for my friend, a first-class horticulturist, ferret owner, knitter, and dyer, who has been selling her yarn privately and through local yarn shops and now has her very own online shop through Etsy.com up and running:

Dandelion Knits

I've used her Merino Superwash and Blue Faced Leicester sock yarns, and she custom-dyed some worsted weight yarn for me to make a stunning felted tote, and it's all gorgeous, comfortable, pleasant-to-knit stuff, and the worsted makes gorgeous smooth felt. Also, she is very swell. So you should order some beautiful, comfortable yarn for yourself or the knitter in your life, confident in knowing that you support someone who rocks. :D

So, about Harry Potter...

Yes, I realize Harry Potter is old news. However, seeing as how I just read it for the first time, it is, as they say, news to me. So, a brief overview of what stood out:

First, I had been warned that J.K. Rowling's strength is not writing, but storytelling - an assessment with which I entirely agree. Harry Potter probably shouldn't win any "excellence in writing" awards, but I found them nigh impossible to put down, and I feel they'll make excellent read-aloud books. They are engaging, entertaining, interesting, and altogether pleasant. I should mention here that the reason it took me so long to read them wasn't because I was a snob about them being "too popular", but because I didn't want to get into something that so many people were alarmingly obsessed with. Yep, I fell victim to Harry Potter's charms. There is a pair of hand-knit Hufflepuff socks in my near future, and I am no longer concerned that, if I knit a yellow-and-maroon striped Mary Poppins scarf as I've been wanting to for several years, people will assume it's a Gryffindor scarf instead. This would be an acceptable assumption.

Second, being a Christian and active in a church community, I had also been warned that Harry Potter is an occultic evil which will encourage children to engage in witchcraft. I had also heard the extreme opposition, being that Harry Potter is actually a Christian story because it's about the power of love and because there is a Bible verse pertaining to the Resurrection on Harry's parents grave. Now having read the whole shebang, I disagree with both positions. For starters, the only element of magic in Harry Potter that comes close to being occultic is the Divination class - the teacher of which is presented as little more than a harmless fraud whom Dumbledore humours. Though it is eventually revealed that she has been gifted with a grand total of two true prophecies in her lifetime, where they come from is not explained, and her divination through tea leaves and crystal balls is presented as something fake which reveals nothing. After reading Potter, I'm actually quite troubled by the dearth of accusations about its occultic nature, because this is a very serious and dangerous accusation to be throwing about on such flimsy grounds.

Of course, not being occultic doesn't automatically make a story Christian. For me, the single most interesting and important thing Harry Potter has to offer to the Church is its thorough exploration of redemption without Christ, particularly demonstrated through the storyline of Severus Snape. As much as Dumbledore talks on and on about how love is the most important thing, and love conquers all, and it's all about love, he turns out, through his interactions with Snape, to be the biggest hypocrite in the series. Dumbledore offers Snape redemption in works, but can do nothing for his broken soul, and even abuses it further by taking advantage of his feelings for Harry's late mother, Lily. He begins his control over Snape as a young man by telling him that, if he really loves Lily, he will work for Dumbledore against Voldemort, and what could be a good thing turns out to be very cruel as we learn that Snape's "love" for Lily was little more than a very painful, broken, dangerous obsession. The first major climax of the series, at the end of The Half-Blood Prince, features Dumbledore forcing Snape to destroy himself even further for "the greater good". As I read it, the great hero of the tale who champions love is someone whose primary practice is using people. Dumbledore is the ultimate embodiment of what happens when we believe the ends justify the means, even if the ends are good. Harry Potter is a fascinating exploration of a life which I don't know, but am very happy to have this opportunity to understand. I'd go so far as to say it's essential reading for the Christian who wants to better comprehend the world they live in.

All this to say, Harry Potter is a worthwhile read. The films suffer from unsuccessful scripts, but they do have extraordinary art direction which makes them worth the time.

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.)