Something worth reading

Right here.

I ran into a bet linked through Penny-Arcade about the nature of art and videogames. It ended up the next day at the New Yorker reading about the decline of reading. I have to say that it was an interesting journey and certainly one that I found to be highly interesting. The basis for all this was a wager on how videogames will evolve within our culture. The threads that were followed were diverse, and created a discussion about the nature of art, entertainment and how we judge culture.

In the end, video games, TV and Movies are a different type of media than books, and they cause different types of stimulation. Reading a book allows you to populate the world and characters with your own vision of them. The act of being entertained is more participatory and imaginative. On some level video games represent a reflection of this ability, while the plot involved may be straight forward, the best games allow you to interact with it, color it and make your own choices based on it. It's not the same as reading, as the world is shaped and colored by other peoples imagination, but it's less passive than TV or a movie, where everything is following someone else's idea of what is interesting.

Personally I prefer books, I like having the time to pursue tangents and minor characters in my own imagination before continuing with the authors story. It's why I dislike movies based on books, since they tend to calcify my image of the characters and the setting. Also, they tend to be rubbish, but that's not the key point. It's interesting to note that the best horror films tend to work on the same premise - that what you can imagine is more frightening than what the film can show you. Alien used this to its great advantage and once the alien was revealed the franchise became action movies instead of horror. In the end a book requires a level of interaction and a skill set the dwarfs that of video games, it's simply a skill set that is much easier to acquire (literacy) and a type of interaction that we encourage more (imagination.)

Take your B12, skip your B13

I'm a Luc Basson fan and have been for some time. As a writer and director he's made some fabulous movies, including The Fifth Element, The Transporter, La Femme Nikita, and one of my personal favorites Wasabi. So I've been psyched for some time to see District B13. Regrettably I then rented and viewed the film, and suffered for it. B13 ultimately a look at French culture and a political commentary about how France is losing contact with the forces that made her a great democracy. This theme - the center of old France rebelling against immigrants and hoodlums has become a major theme in French entertainment.

I first really noticed this in the success of Notre Dame de Paris, the most recent musical version of the old Hugo book. The ultimate struggle in the musical was not over Esmeralda, but what to do with these gypsies who've helped build Notre Dame, but now want to live in France. Authority (Phoebus and Fleur) drive the out and kill them, showing the cracks of immigration in modern France.

B13 has the same topic, but is far more heavy handed. This could have been alright, a lot can be forgiven in a film that is basically an action flick. But B13 spends to long setting up it's (admittedly awesome) protagonists, and then spends the rest of the film grandstanding about political issues and equality. There was potential here for a film that makes a message about the direction that France is heading through an entertaining action film, but it was never realized.

I have a knife. We all have knives. It's 1183 and we're all barbarians!

I finished up my reread of A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin. I found that going back to reread this series was harder than I had expected it to be. The first time I read the books they were great. A fantasy series by the man who wrote the Wild Cards series? A fantasy series with little to no magic, where the real villains and heroes are all human? And it's based on the War of the Roses? There was no downside to beginning to read these books.

The writing in them is very well done. The characters act like real people. They have flaws, and merits, and often they come from the same traits. Life isn't idyllic and kind, and people die with realistic regularity. The politics of the kingdom that Martin creates is convoluted and realistically portrayed, with favors and knowledge used to usurp the throne. The characters all change, and there are few if any mono-dimensional people in this world. At times that feels like it's almost getting out of hand, but Martin does maintain the primary plot and works to limit the desire to wander, following the next interesting lead.

I have a vision of the perfect Game of Thrones experience. I doubt that it's actually possible, but I'd love to be able to see the stories in the form of the giant web that they create. With each chapter a thread, and the stories twisting together and then moving apart. It's what happens in the books, but I'd like to see it graphically, and be able to jump from one section to another or follow a story from start to finish.

There still isn't a downside to reading these books. So go out and read them. I'll wait here until you do.

Did you? Good.

A few points on rereading the books: The mysteries in the books are much more notable and I noticed peoples flaws much more than I did the first time through. I also had more trouble following characters who I knew were doing to be dead soon. This is especially difficult when the first book can be aptly subtitled "The Tragedy of House Stark." Stark also being portrayed as the "good guys."

In John Snow news I'm more convinced than ever that he's the son of Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen, and that Lyanna went away willingly with the crown prince. When King Robert is talking about avenging Lyanna's capture at the battle of the Trident, Eddard's first thought is of the secret that Lyanna made him promise to keep. Not of pleasure in revenge, or duty to family, but Lyanna's final secret. Combined with Starks answers about John - "he's of my blood" not "he's my son" and his anger at the besmirching of anyone else’s honor with rumors that they're John's mother... because he knows who John's parents are and can't tell anyone, but can't let a harmless lie circulate either.

Ok, now I really want the next few books to come out. Argh.

Adventures in media, pt. 2

I'm still working through the land of media that aren't books. This is a land that (due to not owning a television) is populated by three kinds of media. Movies, delivered through netflix and streamed through netflix. A service that I can say has never let me down over the years and I'm hugely satisfied with. TV showes from the same source, and TV from bittorrent.

It's that last source that's consumed much of yesterday. Giant robot space battles are hard to set aside, and Heroic Age delivers them with an almost unseemly haste. Compared to my other Anime downloads (Bleach and Naruto Shipodden) things happening all over the place. And those two titles are by no means slow, nor do they suffer from what annoyed me so much about the genre in college. This is something that I'd refer to as the DBZ effect: episode after episode of characters looking back and forth "powering up" and looking like they're having a difficult time with number two for episode after episode.

That stated I did work my way through the first third of Game of Thrones last night, so look for my forgone conclusion of a review in the next few days.

Little Reading Here

It's been a wee bit busy in Madison of late. The recent snow deluges have certainly granted me some free time, but that has largely been eaten up with other persuits. And the joy of my computer/DVD player and Netflix is finally letting me make some progress on my appreciation of non-wood pulp based media. But that's not really what this is about, so I really need to catch up on my books, or I'll have to start reviewing things that I've already read, without rereading them. And I'm fairly certain that counts as cheating.

Secretary was a good movie, I'm glad I rerented it to watch it all the way through. I'm not sure if I like the office or the love story more. The office was an interesting story about the personality of the lawyer, while the love story was much more about the main character. Either way, the actin was great, the family was wonderfully disfunctional, and her competing suitors parents made me cringe delightfully.

Plan B is just Plan A with more explosives

I'm taking my time with Quicksilver, and so far I'm happy that I am. I fear I have developed an in book crush on Eliza. I suspect that I was meant to.

The real reason for the delay is work on a setting for my Game of Thrones RPG. It's always fun to populate a little corner of someone elses world, but I'm also trying very hard to stay in the background of the plotline of the author. I'm likely going to reread the GoT series aka Song of Ice and Fire by Martin, so you'll be seeing the books reviewed here in the next month.

Personally I'm looking forward to the foriegn service exams in March. Who doesn't like pondering what they'll be doing with their life?