The Art of the Album: Weezer – Weezer (The Blue Album)

What You Need to Know: Weezer coalesced as many bands do, a loose alliance of friends and acquaintances who had their own instruments and enough skills to play them. They were signed as many bands have been signed, after playing some gigs and attracting the attention of record company honchos. They even had a stereotypical Pete Best moment, when original guitarist Jason Cropper left/was kicked out of the group and replaced by Brian Bell during the recording of this album.

There was absolutely nothing to suggest that this by-the-numbers band, an unassuming group of self-described geeks, would one day be hocking an album called Raditude with Weezer-branded Snuggies, or that they would blight the airwaves with a song as stupid as “Beverly Hills.”

But I digress. I’m writing about the one Weezer album I actually like, after all.

The Songs You’ve Heard: Primary songwriter and frontman Rivers Cuomo has always had a knack for singles, even in the band’s twilight years, and that all started here: Weezer’s first Weezer, affectionately dubbed The Blue Album, had three singles, and anyone who has been in college since 1994 has heard them: “Undone (The Sweater Song)” succeeds on the strength of a hypnotic guitar riff and quirky near-nonsense lyrics, “Say It Ain’t So” is a mostly-mellow rocker with a good riff and bassline, and “Buddy Holly” is as relentlessly poppy a song as has ever been released.

Many singles eventually become tired from overplay after a year or two, but these three are still firm party favorites a decade and a half later.

The Songs You Haven’t: Most of my favorite Blue Album songs aren’t the singles – take the quiet-loud dynamics of “My Name is Jonas” (please!) or the melancholy of “The World Has Turned and Left Me Here,” a song which succeeds in spite of stealing the basslines from at least two different Pixies songs.

Even the songs that don’t leave as strong of an impression – the insubstantial “Surf Wax America” and the nondescript “Holiday” – are good clean fun, pleasant to listen to even if they don’t get stuck in your head as readily as the rest of the songs.

The album’s closer, “Only In Dreams,” needs no excuses. A beautiful song.

Why I Like It: You would be hard pressed to find a harsher critic of Weezer than myself – I have something critical to say of every one of their released albums (yes, even Pinkerton, because I stopped being fifteen). I think part of that is because I am upset with them for never equaling or even approaching the quality of this album.

I’ve been asked what it is about the Blue Album that I like, and I’ve only recently figured out how to explain it – there are few albums that are so unflinchingly honest. You can almost hear Cuomo looking at his feet when he sings the nerdy autobiographical lyrics of “In the Garage,” and when he sings “Only In Dreams” you can see the crepe paper that the party committee hung in the gym for prom. Everything here rings true for me in a way that none of Weezer’s music since has – there’s nothing relatable about the weird celebrity lifestyle Cuomo speak-sings about in “Beverly Hills.”

At the same time, the album isn’t too honest like the oft-acclaimed Pinkerton. Listening to the Blue Album is like listening to a friend tell you about things that have happened to him – listening to Pinkerton is like getting that same friend drunk enough to be entirely too honest with you, and you both wake up the next morning wishing he hadn’t said anything. That’s as close as I can come to describing it.

Point being, no matter how many Raditudes or Make Believes the band makes as it slides further into irrelevance, Weezer still can’t manage to ruin their debut for me liked they’ve retroactively tainted the lesser virtues of so-so entries like the Green Weezer or Maladroit. I probably have a pretty heavily tinted pair of glasses on, looking at this album, but to me it manages to sound just as good now as it did fifteen years ago, and that’s no small achievement.

Desert Island Tracks: “My Name is Jonas,” “Say It Ain’t So,” “Only In Dreams”

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Parli Italiano?

At last, my marginal ability to speak and understand Italian comes into use. I have been gallivanting around renaissance Italy in Assassin’s Creed 2, the calls of merchants ringing in my ears – sempre fresca, sempre fresca! That’s always fresh for you rubes.

When Ubisoft released the game last November, Penny Arcade scribbler Tycho advised gamers to turn the subtitles on, as the game’s inhabitants speak the native tongue without bothering to translate for anglophones. Obviously, the mission-critical talking is done in English, but many nooks-and-crannies moments – produce sellers hocking their wares, street chatter, greetings and insults – spill out in mellifluous Italiano.

I studied Italian for a a semester in preparation for living abroad in Rome (ahem, Roma) and Florence (Firenze). While over the pond, I became a competent speaker of Italian, fully able to hail cabs, order drinks and embarrass myself in front of women (this is harder than you might think. Excessive fumbling with the language gets you adoring pity; it takes a careful balance of incompetence, crassness and intoxication to really humiliate yourself). So when a street vendor tries to sell me his fagoli, I know he wants me to buy his beans. They are sempre fresca.

Assassin’s Creed 2 has the most clipping errors I’ve seen in this generation; however, Ubisoft has polished the cultural ambiance to a fine, honeyed glow. Mio Dio, does it pay of. In something so simple as calling cities by their Italian name – Firenze, not Florence – shows a cultural fidelity to 16th century Italy. When I look down on the Repubblica Fiorentina, everything looks dead-on – the domes of the Duomo and San Lorenzo rise from the right places, with Santa Croce lords over the southern end.

I mean, I can almost make my way around the city without the mini-map, navigating from my memory of Firenze. Perhaps that’s the greatest compliment I can pay Assassin’s Creed 2, a gem of a title and a veritable handbook on atmosphere in gaming.

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A Peek Into Dante’s Inferno

Prerelease impressions of Visceral Games/EA’s Dante’s Inferno have varied greatly.  On one hand, I hear people saying, “Man, it sure is fun to play God of War on an Xbox 360,” and on the other I hear people saying, “Why the hell does the Devil want a pair of sweet-ass tits?”

Having played the demo (previously exclusive to the PS3, now out on Xbox Live), I can sympathize with both sides.

For one thing, Dante’s Inferno is silky smooth.  EA can’t release a presser without saying “60 frames per second” at least thirty times, coming off like some six-year-old who won’t shut up about that goddamn Alvin and the Chipmunks sequel – excuse me, Squeakquel.  At least EA isn’t lying; this game glides.  I don’t know why I’m seeing what I’m seeing (more on that later) but what I’m seeing looks technologically potent.

Such a powerfully competent engine suits the God of War-ripoff combat extremely well.  Like Sony’s last-gen cash cow, Dante’s Inferno asks little of the player in the way of combat prowess.  You’re invited to mash on buttons, perhaps memorize your favorite combo, and have at it.

Okay, so playing Dante’s Inferno can be fun.  But what about the other side of the debate?  The side that declares this a shameless attempt to cash in on hundreds of years of name recognition to help sell a game that is a shameless attempt to copy God of War.  Well, playing the demo left me with a lot of questions.  Mostly in the ballpark of “What the hell just happened?”

Who is this Dante and why do I care?  The demo (and presumably the game) opens with a cutscene that shows Dante, a soldier in the Third Crusade, stitching a red cross tapestry into his chest and, rightfully so, screaming.  He doesn’t wear a shirt.  He just has some magic fabric in his chest.  How is it magic?  Well, the camera zooms in on it and there are cartoons playing on it – cartoons with varying levels of animation (think one part medieval tapestry in motion, one part Animatrix).  It’s some sort of backstory, though I still had to delve into Wikipedia to figure this shit out. 

So Dante and his crusader pals raid the city of Acre.  After slaying a crap-ton of dudes at 60 fps (see above), he gets to the Citadel, only to be stabbed by some shmuck.  Then Death shows up, bony scythe in hand, and tells Dante he’s going to Hell.  Dante’s pissed because apparently the Cardinal (or King Richard, I don’t know) lied to him about the army about their sins being absolved.  Dante, heretofore shown as some random Crusading knight, then decides to murder Death and take his bone scythe. 

It was at this point I thought, “Virgil’s never showing up*, is he?”

Why is the smoke monster from Lost after a pair of sweet-ass tits?  So Dante kills Death and rides home, presumably to bone his broad.  Much to his chagrin, he arrives to find her dead, sword in her gullet, one breast needlessly exposed.  Her topless spirit starts floating to Heaven, but she doesn’t make it because Lucifer, taking the guise of the smoke monster from Lost, snatches her away.  Again, I had to consult the Wiki on this one.  The new rule in Hell is that if Lucifer can capture a soul destined for Heaven, he can break out of his icy prison.  If that’s the case, why hadn’t he done this already?  I mean, come on!  Babies died all the time in medieval times.  And if he’d just waited until a baptized baby croaked, he’d have been home free.  Why he had to mess with Dante and his well-endowed honey is beyond me.

Why did they try to make the God of War experience clunkier?  As I said before, God of War lacks the complicated combo strings of the Japanese-developed Devil May Cry series and its cousin Bayonetta.  Like God of War, Dante’s Inferno wants the player feeling very powerful all the time, so combos are quick and easy and yield results with flashy visuals.  Thus it’s a mystery to me why Visceral included the momentum-stopping Punish/Absolve mechanic.  Every time you grab a foe, combat effectively grinds to a halt while you choose whether to Punish or Absolve the poor soul (you’re granted bonuses on some kind of Light Side/Dark Side scale accordingly).  Not only is it jarring, it makes no sense.  Why can Dante, some random Crusader, do this? 

Also, remember the annoying God of War treasure chests that required you mash on a button to pop them open?  Dante’s Inferno has those, except the chests are fountains.  I don’t understand why I have to mash on the B button to drink from a magical fountain.  Just put your mouth under it and drink, Dante.

Who let them call this Dante’s Inferno?  If Mr. Alighieri had an estate, he’d have shut this shit down tout-suite.  Why does Dante have a magical cross that can shoot glowing white crosses?  Why is there a Rancor in Hell?  How long will it take me to unlock that baby-killer achievement?  The only thing less similar to the Divine Comedy source material is Coney Island’s Dante’s Inferno ride. 

For all it’s bombast, God of War succeeds because Kratos feels like he could have existed in Greek mythology.  Andrew looked at this in detail a while ago.  In a mythos of horny gods and dickish heroes, Kratos fits right in. 

There’s no such analogue for the bizarre world Dante’s Inferno inhabits.  Dante is simply a dude with a magical tapestry sewn to his pecs out to save his girlfriend from the Devil.  I’m not sure that I’ll be able to appreciate it’s competent gameplay come launch time because I’ll be too distracted by all the stupidity encasing it.  I’m more excited to laugh at extensive plot summaries of this game than I’ll ever be to play it.

* – Virgil does show up, actually.  Instead of guiding Dante (It’s A Wonderful Life- or A Christmas Carol-style) through Hell, he grants him the ability to cast a magical ice spell that comes in handy later when Dante’s fighting fire demons.  I wish I were kidding.

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Writer’s Jukebox – Everyone Else is on Vacation Edition

If we had an office, it’d be empty right now.  There’d be the scattered remains of a huge holiday party: crushed solo cups, near-empty bottles of rum and whisky, glasses stained with days-old egg nog residue.  Boivin would be sleeping under his desk because no one wanted to take him home (kid turns into the Tazmanian Devil when under the influence, let’s be honest). 

Rob, Andrew, and I – assuming we weren’t taking the whole Xmas-through-New-Year’s week off entirely – would trundle in Monday morning, temples pounding with epic hangovers.  We’d push some party detritus off our keyboards, sit down, and get to work.

Or look at Facebook.

But we don’t have an office.  So we don’t have to worry about that.  We do, however, still have a jukebox of sorts.  Hit the jump for more.

Andrew – What have you done for me lately, Jonathan Coulton?

My musical phases are often cyclical - I'll go through days or weeks or months-long stints where all I'll want to do is listen to one artist's body of work before moving on to the next thing, occasionally stopping to revisit that artist for a shorter period of time later on. About a year ago I was hip-deep in Jonathan Coulton's music, and for the last week or two I've come back for more. Putting his entire song library on Shuffle was one of the better decisions I've made lately.

Last time, I was mostly enamored of his better-known songs - "Re: Your Brains," the "Baby Got Back" cover, "Code Monkey," an so on - but this time I've discovered some gems of which I was previously unaware (or, maybe, less aware). One is the bouncy, vaguely twangy "Madelaine," another is the ode-to-prescriptions "I Feel Fantastic," two others are "Better" and "De-Evolving," which deal with the twin Coulton staples of robots and monkeys, respectively. As with last time, I've found myself appreciating Coulton's songcraft, the variety of sounds and genres that his songs touch on, as well as his harmonies and his wordiness. There's a lot to like here, especially if you're a nerd who enjoys video games and music and technology, and blogging about those things on the Internet.

All of this is well and good, and I hate to be one of those what-have-you-done-for-me-lately types, but this most recent stint of JoCo listening has made me wonder when he's going to end his most recent "dry spell" (talked about here) and release more stuff. I put "dry spell" in quotes because there are plenty of active bands that go for three or four years between albums, and because he just put a concert CD/DVD out this year, and because he tours with regularity, and because he has in fact released the odd song since his "Thing a Week" project ended in late 2006. Thing is, releasing a song a week for an entire year creates an image of prolific-ness that he hasn't quite lived up to in the last year or two. I'm waiting eagerly (and impatiently) for new material! And while I wait, I'd like to encourage anyone who has enjoyed his music to donate him some money as, I dunno, inspiration, or something.

Rob – Coming in No. 2 isn’t always a bad thing

It may be the first (and only) occasion for Time Magazine and Pitchfork.com to agree on the no. 2 best album of the year – Bitte Orca by Dirty Projectors.

German for “Please, Whale,” Bitte Orca falls squarely in the experimental-indie camp, and would be insufferably pretentious were it not so goddamned good. Take “Temecula Sunrise,” a bold little tune that staggers and swerves through crescendos and time signatures without care – except there is care. A keen musical mind arranged these ditties, and the complex song structures found throughout Bitte Orca never feel slapdash.

The album’s first single, “Stillness is the Move” shows just how sweet a blend of indie edge and pop sensibilities can be. Just listen to Angel Deradoorian’s voice, how it climbs and falls – it’s practically R&B. It’s been stuck in my head for weeks now. It refuses to leave. And I don’t want it to.

Grizzly Bear frontman Ed Droste said he can’t stop listening to Bitte Orca because it defies categorization. He can’t describe it schematically. Coming from Droste, I’d call that one hell of a hats-off.

Craig – Love and Joy in the Capital Wasteland

Having spent upwards of thirty hours playing through Fallout 3’s Capital Wasteland, the meager selection of tunes on its in-game radio has since become one with whatever part of my brain is responsible for music.  For those unfamiliar with the series, Fallout gets its vision of a post-apocalyptic future from 1950s sci-fi.  A general Educational Video tone is used in the game’s tutorials, and most of the game’s humor comes from exploiting a quaint notion of our eventual destruction.  The game being draped in ‘50s schlock, it’s no surprise that the soundtrack evokes a similar nostalgia.

By far my favorite are the tracks by Roy Brown.  “Butcher Pete” tells the story of a butcher who likes to chop up women…I think.  The chorus, in which backup singers repeat “He’s hackin and whackin and smackin,” is incredibly infectious.  The joy with which Brown sings about such terror matches Fallout’s irreverent violence note-by-note.  The other Brown song included is “Mighty Mighty Man,” a similar catchy early rhythm and blues track that showcases Brown’s vocals.  He deftly alternates from fast-talking rhymes to high-pitched bellowing.  Dude’s got pipes.

Also ringing in my airs is Tex Beneke’s arrangement of “(I’m In Love With) A Wonderful Guy” from South Pacific.  Margaret Whiting’s doing the singing, and she’s full of a warmth and glee that is otherwise lacking in the Wasteland of Fallout.  If you want to show someone a distilled Fallout 3 experience, make sure this song’s playing while you blow the limbs of mutants with Lincoln’s Repeater.  I can’t think of a better way to sum up what it’s like to explore Bethesda’s demented, bombed-out District of Columbia.

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A Decade of Dreck #19: The Master of Disguise

Charge Shot!!! is celebrating the end of the decade in the most masochistic way we know how - by watching and writing about the 100 worst movies of the last ten years as defined by film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Click here to see RT's complete list, click here for more about the Decade of Dreck project, and click here to see all of the movies we've done so far

I have a friend who owns a copy of The Master of Disguise on DVD. I've long used this fact to refute any point he makes, not just as to his taste in movies, but as to any subject. Political preference? Favorite food? "You own Master of Disguise on DVD!" is a damning enough statement to dismiss any of his opinions as automatically irrelevant.

So imagine my shame when I called him up and asked if I could borrow the disk. I had never actually seen the film, but I had long been aware of its less than stellar reputation - it was so bad that it effectively killed Dana Carvey's career, forcing him to use the old "spend time with the kids" excuse and retire from showbiz.

"But Dana Carvey is funny!" is my friend's defense of his possession. Carvey can do a decent impression; I'll give him that. Garth from Wayne's World is one of his more memorable creations, and his impersonations of both Bush presidents are very funny. But the most bizarre thing about The Master of Disguise is how little time Carvey actually spends doing impressions at all. Instead, he spends the majority of the film acting like that hyperactive kid you sat next to in the fifth grade who was really good at making goofy voices. Carvey's movie is the paragon of such prepubescent humor, except that fifth graders are better at making fart jokes than this film can ever dream of.

Carvey stars as Pistachio Disguisey, the scion of a long line of Masters of Disguise, who have used their powers throughout history to fight crime, or something like that. When Pistachio's father is kidnapped by a pudgy, flatulent, bearded Brent Spiner (of Star Trek fame!), it's up to Pistachio to tap into his latent powers of disguise (called "energico") and mount a rescue.

Yes, the setup is idiotic. But that's not damning in and of itself; a lot of comedies have ridiculous premises. Carvey is trying to go for something like Jim Carrey did in The Mask. But where Carrey can (occasionally) pull off some really funny scenes with nothing but his radiant energy and a few silly faces, Carvey has no such talent. He spends his time nattering away nonstop, as if the strategy is that perhaps a few funny lines will slip into the plethora of nonsensical babble. It doesn't.

Also, it seems that Pistachio is mildly retarded. That's really the only excuse for his actions. I guess all those Italian-American Heritage groups are too busy bitching about The Sopranos or Jersey Shore, because they really should be all up in arms about this one. The Disguiseys are the worst Italian stereotypes this side of the Super Mario Brothers. Pistachio speaks in broken English despite having lived in America all his life. He loves Olive Garden, and he runs a pasta restaurant with his parents. Basically, in The Master of Disguise, being Italian amounts to being mentally challenged, and you're also required to make some sort of goofy face every thirty seconds.

And even though the movie exists solely as a vehicle to show off Carvey's talent at impersonation, it fails in that regard too. Half the disguises require none of Carvey's skill at all - one scene has him dress up like a cherry pie, another as a field of grass. A few other disguises, such as a Swami snake charmer, and a Bavarian tax collector, are so lazy with their racial stereotypes as to make them just dull. Carvey fails to lend any sort of character to his alter egos, instead counting on mere silly voices to carry the humor.

The movie clocks in at a whopping 77 minutes, and that includes 3 minutes of opening credits and 8 minutes of closing credits. By my calculations, this puts The Master of Disguise at about the length of your average TV show. But it's one of those movies that feels like an eternity - the 66 minutes of plot includes multiple scenes of Carvey staring at big butts (the Diguiseys have a preference for large posteriors), a slapfight between two grown men shouting "Who's your daddy?", throwaway gags about The Exorcist and Jaws that aren't really jokes so much as mere references, and Brent Spiner farting at least five times.

The apex of absurdity comes when Pistachio must dress up as a turtle to enter a exclusive club (don't ask). One of the club members picks a fight with Turtle-Pistachio, and Turtle-Pistachio bites off his nose.

Yes, Dana Carvey, dressed as a turtle, bites off his goddamn nose. Let that sink in. The characters on the screen (and myself) sit there in dumbfounded silence as Carvey makes an obnoxious giggle and then (I'm having trouble typing this, but I swear it's true) spits the nose back on the man's face. Turtle-Pistachio then collapses onto the floor giggling and starts writhing around in some sort of spinning dance move as the scene fades out.

This might be the most appalling scene I have ever experienced. I've seen many bad movies that are at least enjoyable in a masochistic sense, but this Turtle-Pistachio scene goes beyond any of them. As you watch, it veers from unfunny to nonsensical to pathetic, finally lapping itself to become twice as unfunny as it was before. Just thinking about it makes me cringe.

I'm not sure how this will affect my friendship with my pal who let me borrow the film. At first, I considered simply throwing away the DVD for his own good, thus also saving others from a similar fate. The old Chris might have done that, but the new, post-Master of Disguise Chris doesn't think his friend deserves that sort of mercy. Possession of this movie must be met with fire and brimstone. In a world that not only lets this film exist, but allows cameo appearances by Jesse Ventura and Jessica Simpson, how can there be any place left for pity?

The Master of Disguise is ranked #18 on the Rotten Tomatoes Worst 100 list with 2% freshness. Its RT page can be found here.

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Happy Whatever-You-Celebrate from Charge Shot!!!

We at Charge Shot!!! would like to wish you a Happy Holiday Of Your Choice – be it Christmas, a belated Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or Wookiee Life Day. 

We hope you enjoyed our Charge Aught!!! discussions of the decade (if you haven’t caught up, what are you waiting for?).

Our staff exhausted after weeks of decade-judging deliberation, we figured it’d be a good idea to give everyone a break until the new year.  However, you can still expect some scattered content starting this Monday.  Perhaps Cranston has something to say about the holidays.  Or maybe I’ll drum up some Flash games for you to play while waiting in airports.  Be on the lookout for more Decade of Dreck posts, as well.  They’re taxing but well worth the effort.

Regularly scheduled programming will resume at the start of 2010.  Until then, Safe Travels and Happy Holidays from Charge Shot!!!

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Charge Aught!!!: The Decade in Movies, Part Three

Part One – Part Two

Andrew Pankin, Alex Boivin and Jordan Pedersen have spent most of the last decade in darkened rooms – some of those rooms were movie theaters. Read on for their thoughts about the most important developments in the cinema of the aughts.

AB: What were movies like before special effects? Nowadays, people are all concerned about what film has the best CGI, at least as far as big summer sci-fi/action films go. Before movies like Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park came along, did anyone care? Sure you'd get something like Star Wars every once and a while but those predate the era when mind-blowingly awesome special effects ruled the cineplex.

The old adage that movies these days sacrifice story for explosions is well worn territory, but I can't help but feel it rings true. Take a look at Matrix Reloaded. Granted, Matrix 1 was a goddamn special effects spectacular for the ages, but Reloaded got too high on itself and gave us a CGI fight between Neo and a couple hundred Smiths that looked dated before I ever started college. Then on the other hand you have the Lord of the Rings, another series of films that by their very genre have to be loaded with things that aren't real. But unlike say something like the Star Wars Prequels, LOTR does its best to use as many real things, extras, monsters, what have you in the film. And for that reason it still holds up. No matter how good CGI gets, its gonna look crappy in a decade or so and you can't sacrifice more traditional facets of filmmaking like story, feelings, what have you to get them.

That's what worries me about Avatar. Yes, it's the best looking movie I've seen in a while but by the time we're writing the 2010's decade in review, we're gonna be talking about how dated it looks and how it's just Dances With the Last Ferngully Mononoke ThunderDelgo. I feel similar about 3-D. Yeah it's fun for a while but it can't last. In a short while we'll be writing about how it the trend was just a cheap trick to dupe the average moviegoer out of an extra four bucks. You'll cry just as hard at the first ten minutes of Up no matter how many dimensions it has.

JP: I'm more interested in the special effects that you're not supposed to be able to spot from a mile away.

Granted, all special effects are intended to allow filmmakers to do stuff they couldn't do without some visual trickery.  But I think some filmmakers (Michael Bay) begin the process thinking, "I'm going to cram as much obviously-CGI stuff into this movie as I possibly can so people won't notice the copious amounts of racism and misogyny."  And I guess that's not an awful policy?  I certainly know a lot of average filmgoers/high school kids who talk about "amazing graphics" (a misnomer which, by the way, makes me want to tear my eyeballs out) before they mention anything else.  For films like Transformers, then, filmmakers want audiences to point out the visual effects when they recommend the movie to their friends.

But there's another type of filmmaker who'd rather that you not notice the stuff that isn't real in his movie.  Boivin mentioned the LOTR trilogy, and I think Peter Jackson's a pretty good example (not so much outside of the LOTR trilogy, though).  Sure, those movies had their share of ghost and evil elephant armies, but those were far from the most impressive sequences in the trilogy (actually, those were probably the two crappiest-looking things in LOTR).  The things that stick out in my mind are the gorgeous CGI-assisted sets and the seemingly-infinite number of dudes at the Battle of Helm's Deep.  Rivendell, for example, could have been built on a studio backlot, but Jackson wanted it to look as if it actually existed.  So he shot some exterior shots at a national park in New Zealand and then added CGI to make it look "hyper-real" (if I may descend into buzzwordery for a minute).  And he could have hired a bajillion extras for the Battle of Helm's Deep (Joseph L. Mankiewicz did it), but even he didn't have an infinite source of money.  So he used CGI to add an extra layer of grandiosity to an already gigantic battle.  But the thousands of tiny orcs in that scene are a far cry from the clanging robot balls in Transformers.

AP: The digital revolution has made it easier for for filmmakers to put increasingly impressive visual effects in their films, and to do it cheaply. George Lucas has stated that he will never again shoot on actual film because of the lower cost and the ease of post-production manipulation. The cheapness of digital film stock has benefited more than just the washed up, CGI-obsessed sellouts - many amateur filmmakers or smaller studios have been able to drastically cut overhead by shooting on digital cameras and editing on the equivalent of a home computer.

Along with film stock (which shouldn't actually count as a "special effect," but more of technological advancement), the aughts have seen the increased ability for filmmakers to supplement their with computers. Directors who rely heavily on computer generated imaging seem to fall into two camps: those who make it the focal point of their films and those who use it as a tool to enhance the overall quality of their films. My colleagues have mentioned Avatar (which was 60 percent motion capture) as an example of the former and the Lord of the Rings Trilogy as an example of the latter (how else, except for CGI, could you convincingly portray a character such as Gollum?). The advent of superbly advanced CGI hasn't necessarily made it easier to separate the wheat from the chaff - it's just made it so we see more impressive chaff.

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Charge Aught!!!: The Decade in TV, Part Three

Part One – Part Two

Between the four of them, Chris Holden, Stephanie Hemmingson, Jordan Pedersen and Andrew Cunningham have watched quite a bit of television this decade. Over the next three days, they’ll be discussing and debating the merits and shortcomings of TV in the aughts.

The filmification of television

JP:  Realism's sort of a tough concept to pin down, though.  To me, shows that don't feature a laugh track aren't actually any more realistic.  30 Rock, after all, doesn't feature a laugh track, and nobody could convincingly argue that it's realistic.  The absence of laugh tracks in newer comedies is, I think, just another stylistic evolution.  It's also indicative of TV's continued movement away from "filmed theater" and towards something more akin to film.

The death of the multiple-camera setup seems to indicate as much.  Even though most television comedies weren't actually broadcast live, the vast majority of them were filmed "in front of a live studio audience" prior to the year 2000.  A multiple-camera setup was the only viable option for shooting in front of a studio audience; it allowed the director to shoot an entire conversation in one take (as long as the actors didn't screw up).

This was beneficial for editing purposes, but the format also attempted to replicate the experience of watching a live show.  A live show, after all, features a stage with only three walls (so the audience can actually see what's going on) and pauses for laughter (actors in sitcoms don't talk over the laugh track).

Divorced from the "live studio audience" concept, a television show would probably just seem awkward with a laugh track.  A set with four walls doesn't exactly leave room for an audience (who would ostensibly be doing the laughing).  But are shows without a laugh track any more realistic?  It frees the writers from having to write scripts with "punchline jokes" every other line, but it's hard to argue that this results in more realistic situations.  Comedies are predicated on the idea that people say funny shit every thirty seconds or so, which isn't particularly true-to-life.

Shows like Modern Family and The Office also use the "mockumentary" style to appear more realistic, but the laughs on these shows are still the product of writers sitting in a room and coming up with jokes.  And the jokes on these shows wouldn't be half as funny if the actors hadn't been chosen deliberately.  The situations, consequently, are no less contrived than they are on conventional laugh-track sitcoms.

“The dichotomy of truth and wacky”

SH: Sometimes I have a hard time trusting analyses like these that discuss a trend as if it were both revolutionary and independent of outside factors. I agree that recreating reality has been a theme of television this decade -- though I don't believe it's unique to the 2000s -- but I think its advancement has been deeply influenced by rapid improvements in technology. It easy to want to imitate real life when you can do so with stunning accuracy and high pixel counts on the cheap.

While these last ten years have been littered with gritty depictions of relatable characters and believable situations, it has also been countered by the extreme over-the-top and often bizarre satire of shows like 30 Rock and South Park (and if I MUST mention it, Family Guy, if only for it's raging pop-culture popularity). I would argue that two shows mentioned previously, Arrested Development and The Office take their "realism" and raise you a ridiculous.

This dichotomy of truth and wacky can be found in almost any form media if you look closely enough, and I believe that has existed in almost every arbitrary time period that we might define. However, I will not deny that this dualism has grown stronger as the visual arts become more scientifically sophisticated, and with it, the people watching. The happy medium of "sort-of-real-and-kind-of-funny" isn't cutting it. I think that's why a show like Scrubs was so popular. The characters were not particularly believable, each respresenting a select set of traits with some humanity thrown in rather than emulating a complex human being, but the humor came from hilarious extremes tinged with just enough humble truisms. The missing laugh-track and the somber moments of thought encouraged the audience to think for themselves on a set of lessons that were easy to relate to, all the while getting to laugh at some absurdity.

Maybe its the absurdity in trashy reality TV that makes it popular as well. As far as that subject goes, while I recognize everyone's valid points thus far, my irrational and undefined hatred will live on. 

Self-aware comedy

CH: Now Steph has got me thinking about the comedy of the past ten years. The more absurd kinds of TV she mentions were often tongue in cheek comedies, and I believe that's one of the defining trademarks of the humor of the decade - humor that doesn't take itself too seriously. The bizarre, over-the-top scenarios of Arrested Development or Curb Your Enthusiasm, for example, were pretty much delivered with the equivalent of a sly, knowing wink, as if acknowledging how utterly implausible they are. The Office goes even further, where a straight-man character like Jim is basically a stand-in for the audience, the lone bastion of sanity who is the only character to realize how nuts everyone around him is. It's comedy that is self-aware, creating massive spectacles and hyper-exaggerated scenarios that are not so much funny on their own, but that are funny because the show itself is acknowledging how absurd the entire premise is. 

And, because Steph mentioned Family Guy, I need to bring up its unique form of meta-meta-humor (inherited from The Simpsons' meta-humor of the nineties). There are many critics of show, who (correctly) point out its lack of plot and character development, and its over-reliance on throwaway gags. But Family Guy delivers something that I think has become the norm this decade - humor that counts on the audience to be hip enough to understand the icon that is being satirized, or the expectations that are being overthrown. Nearly every joke counts on the viewer to be privy to a pop culture reference, or some standard narrative trope that is being mocked. You're never quite sure what to anticipate, and while one can criticize the humor for being too invested in shock value and the element of surprise, at least it's not the set-up/punchline formula we've come to expect.

And now I'm going to change the subject as I finish up my portion of the discussion. As I've been thinking and writing about TV for the past few days, I've come to realize that the biggest shifts in the genre may have not occurred within the programs themselves. Rather, as Jordan alluded to earlier, the very methods of our own television viewing have changed radically. I remember when the first season of 24 debuted in 2001, and I religiously set my VCR and triple-checked the timer to make sure everything would record without incident. Failing to record even the last five minutes of an episode meant missing a cliffhanger that was impossible to watch ever again (at least until reruns that summer).

Nowadays, the very concept of making a physical recording seems quaint. If I miss a show, I just check Hulu the next day. And the advent of DVDs have made it much easier to procure entire seasons of television shows. In the age of videocassette, the concept of owning an entire multi-season show on tape was ridiculous; now, we can get every season of MacGyver at Walmart for twenty bucks. When I decided to watch Mad Men, for example, I didn't just have to jump into the second season cold; I could rent the first season through Netflix and catch myself up. 

So TV shows no longer have to count on their audiences to be sitting at their television sets during primetime hours every weekday night. The concept is incredibly liberating (shows like Lost, for example, thrive on repeat viewings, johnny-come-lately viewers, and the ability to catch up on a missed episode). At the same time, as ratings decline, one begins to wonder how the television moguls are going to be taking these new viewing methods into account. Internet TV has yet to translate into large amounts of ad dollars. I'm guessing the major development of the next ten years will involve TV networks finding some way to make this profitable; I'll be back in 2019 to see how true this prediction is.

Wrapping it up

AC: It's true that television studios are stumbling a bit as they find their way in the digital era, but the decade is full of shows that have been renewed or straight-up uncanceled throughout the decade - Joss Whedon's Dollhouse is one of the former, the aforementioned Family Guy and Futurama being in the latter group. Some of this is because of more conventional reasons (reruns, syndication) but a lot of it is because Hulu and DVRs make Nielsen ratings increasingly irrelevant and because DVDs and services like Netflix make attracting a new audience to your serial drama/dramedy/comedy a whole hell of a lot easier.

To bring this discussion to a conclusion: I think one major change in the TV of the decade has been stylistic, with reality TV cutting costs and lowering the bar for low-brow, and quality, artful scripted TV that blurs the line between television and cinema at the high end. We have seen, easily, higher highs and lower lows this decade than we've ever seen before.

The other change is in the way we, the viewer, watch TV. Whereas it was once nigh impossible to catch up on a TV series unless you tuned in every week, DVDs, Hulu, BitTorrent and TV on-demand have obliterated that hurdle - the sophisticated viewer can basically watch what he or she wants, whenever he or she wants to. This affords writers and producers more wiggle room when it comes to self-referencing jokes and long-running narratives.

Like Chris said at the beginning of this discussion, these circumstances have ushered in, nigh-simultaneously, a Golden Age and a Dark Age of television. The important thing is there's something for everyone here, whether you enjoy watching washed-up second bananas making asses of themselves or high-minded dramas with cussing cowboys.

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Charge Aught!!!: The Decade in Games, Part Three

Part One – Part Two

Rob Kunzig, Craig Getting and Andrew Cunningham have spent most of the decade with their eyes glued to their monitors and television sets, and over the next three days each will pick his three favorite games from the decade and offer them up for group discussion. The fruits of their labor await after the jump.

Rob – Bioshock, a lesson in replay value

RK: While I'm here, I might as well throw out my third game of the decade. It is, in my opinion, the best title on the 360: Bioshock.

Rapture, the underwater utopia built by Randian separatists, is the most engrossing atmosphere this side of City 17. It's an art deco wonderland gone to hell, splattered with blood, springing leaks everywhere you go. Anyone familiar with Irrational Games' System Shock 2 will be familiar with the audio logs sprinkled throughout the ruined city, shading in the beautiful architecture with the voices of its dead inhabitants, hopped-up on gene therapy and their own arrogance. 

It was also the first game to explicitly reference the quandary of choice in video games. While Bioshock sold itself on the ability to choose a path of good or evil, it seemed to be aware of the fact that there was, really, little choice. The levels were linear, despite appearing open-ended, and the game's principal moral choice ends up having little consequence. But, as it turns out - spoiler alert - you're a test-tube assassin, gentically programmed for the sole purpose of assassinating Rapture's founder, Andrew Ryan. You discover your origin during a showdown with Ryan, in which he orders you to kneel, stand, and run with the beguiling command "would you kindly?" Your condition becomes a metaphor for the impossibility of true choice in games.

I'm still in awe of Bioshock. Andrew - I remember you saying the game actually improved with its second playthrough. 

AC: It's definitely a game that benefits from a second playthrough. Aside from playing through twice to make the other choices (which in Bioshock, sadly, effect gameplay in very minor ways), the vast variety of armaments with which you're presented is guaranteed to make no two playthroughs the same.

Aside from the guns (mostly conventional, though their design is interesting) and your trusty melee weapon, the wrench, you're also given "plasmids," gene-modifying superpowers which let you encase things in ice, set them on fire, or electrify them - one even lets you send an angry swarm of bees after your opponents. Other modifications let you walk more quietly or explode things more easily or turn you invisible when you stand still.

In one playthrough, I'm a sneaky wrench assassin, with my swinging speed and melee attack jacked all the way up - foes can't hear my footsteps, and when they try to pursue I disappear into thin air. In the next, I'm an incendiary powerhouse, setting enemies on fire and sending grenades raining down on their heads. It's the rare game that not only encourages multiple playthroughs, but really needs them, to bring out all the nuances of the gameplay.

CG: I find it remarkable (in a good way), Andrew, that armament choices enhanced your enjoyment of a game all about the illusion of choice.  That's good design.  Plain and simple.

Chiming in third, I'll be the one to point out the game's flawed ending, with the caveat that I couldn't stop gushing about it until said final moments.  Why would a game that handled encounters and environments so well end with a minion-throwing superman of a boss?  Fontaine as a plasmid-soaked junkie is not an inappropriate image, but the encounter with Andrew Ryan is just so much better.  It builds up for hours and then completely deprives you of the battle entirely.  All your plasmids, all your weapons, rendered irrelevant.  Here's a golf club.  Would you kindly take care of business?

I do worry about the sequel.  I feel like a lot of BioShock's better devices - its use of audio logs, varied weaponry, and excellent environments - will feel a lot less fresh the second time around.  And they're starting to wear out their welcome in other titles.  I know I'm pretty tired of talking heads in the top corner of the screen, ordering me left and right (Borderlands much?).  This felt organic to the world of Rapture with its careful critique of the gaming artifice.  Games with lesser ambitions?  Not so much.

Andrew – Super Mario Galaxy, a fresh-faced throwback

AC: I've been agonizing over my third choice for a couple of days now - every time I think I've found one, something in me says "no, there has to be something more monumental." What I came up with after days of internal debate was Super Mario Galaxy.

The Nintendo of the new millennium has been on a rollercoaster of falling and rising fortunes, of fresh new ideas mixed with tired old ones, and throughout it all the company's attitude toward the "core" gamer, the crowd that still has a soft spot for them but has largely moved on to the Xbox and Playstation, has been ambivalent at best. Still, every now and again they pitch something to the old guard that really knocks it out of the park - Galaxy is just such a game.

It can't beat Super Mario Bros. 3 or Super Mario 64 in terms of impact, but it brings back the varied environments and challenges of those games while wringing a few last drops of innovation out of the dry ol' dusty ol' boring ol' platforming genre. Playing it (or watching it played) can be breathtaking thanks to its planet-hopping concept, cinematic score, and gravity-bending physics, and the whole experience is driven home by one of the smoothest control schemes and the sharpest graphics the Wii can offer.

Hey, third-party studios, wonder why your stuff doesn't sell on the Wii? It might be marketing. But it might also be that you haven't put out a game that looks, feels and plays as gracefully as this one does.

CG: I, too, had a hard time picking my third choice - mostly because there were a bunch of good games whose overall effect on the industry isn't as cut-and-dry as say, a Bioshock or Civ IV.  There's also the looming shadow of something like World of Warcraft, whose popularity is almost frightening yet remains unplayed by any of us three. 

To get a little graphic, I shamelessly poopsocked [ed: WHAT.] Super Mario Galaxy - and I didn't even own it.  It remains the only Mario game in which I collected every last star (though I put it to bed rather than truck through the entirety of Super Luigi Galaxy).  You're right, though, Andrew.  It couldn't even begin to measure up to SMB 3 or Mario 64 in terms of impact.  What could possibly be left for a 3D platformer to revolutionize that 64 hadn't already attempted?  But it does, to me anyway, represent near-perfection of a genre that has long fallen by the wayside.  Sure, 2D platformers are on the rise (I'll casually name drop 'Splosion Man once more), but the third-dimension seems to have moved on open-worlds and first-person perspectives.  Galaxy succeeds because, like most of Miyamoto's creations, its core mechanics - mostly just making a plumber jump - are sound enough and fun enough to entertain the player.  I'll split hairs by saying I was saddened to see flight confined to the hub world, but...yadda yadda yadda Stones lyrics.

By freeing Mario from the confines of a solely-terrestial environment, Galaxy allowed for greater creativity in level design.   Not only did the crazy gravity mechanic create new ways to play, it also ingeniously updated some classics.  Ghost levels could be a series of floating space platforms.  Races could take place on rivers in the sky.  Smart camera restrictions turned some levels into variations on the 2D formula.

I barreled through Galaxy, unable to stop myself because it just so damn fun.  From a more critical perspective, however, I wonder where you go next.  Okay, you release a retro-flavored multiplayer 2D Mario.  And you can polish up a bunch of ideas that didn't make it into the first game.  But then what?  Isn't space the final frontier?

RK: Is it possible for a self-professed gamer to have never played through a Mario title?

If I am that rare species, forgive me, and shelter me. I've dicked around with the Kart games, and I've watched enough playthroughs to give me an idea of what it's all about. Except Galaxy. I've never so much as seen a gameplay video.

What I do know is this - in 2007, the year of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Bioshock and Mass Effect, Galaxy stole many a Game Of The Year award. A Wii title, in the 360's proudest year.

There's a parable, here, I'm certain.

Craig – Portal, and the advent of the first-person puzzler

CG: The end of the decade saw more genre mash-ups than we ever could have hoped for (or wished to avoid).  Puzzle Quest taught us that you could use Bejeweled to play an RPG.  Countless scores of shooters, action-adventure games, and hero-based RTS titles milked the RPG for all it was worth, mining it for character customization options and persistent experience systems.  But one particular mash-up stands above them all: the first-person puzzler aka Portal.

It's not surprising that Portal's ancestry includes Narbacular Drop, an offbeat little title from a student team at the DigiPen Institute.  It's also not surprising that Valve saw their cool idea and immediately said, "Gimme!"  Then they slapped some vague Half-Life fiction on it, ran it through the Source Engine, and pumped some devious humor into it.  Oh yeah, and then Valve had the keen sense to pack it in with The Orange Box, thereby giving gamers hungry for more Half-Life a game they didn't even know they were ravenous for.

Portal's insidious level design, clever use of atmosphere, and endearing antagonist made for such a memorable experience, you'd think the game lasted 20 hours they way it ingrains itself into your memory.  It actually only takes five or so the first time through (at least for me, anyway).  But the pacing is just spot on.  The gradual ramping up of difficulty.  The introduction and - spoiler - destruction of the Companion Cube.   The You-Thought-It-Was-Over-Already Final Chapter that takes you behind-the-scenes at Aperture Science only to bring you face-to-...weird robot eyes with GLaDOS.  And your reward at the end: the witty pen of digital troubadour Jonathan Coulton.  Played all in one go, Portal makes for one hell of an afternoon.

AC: I can't say as I, ahem, poopsocked this one, but in retrospect I feel like I did - I had seen one trailer for Portal a few months before and that was all the hype it needed, an ad campaign that (like the game) did more with less. It's a short journey, but it's so sharp and inventive that every obstacle, nearly every line of dialogue is meaningful and memorable. No game-padding fetch quests, no cutscenes, no backtracking purposelessly trying to find the one NPC you have to talk to in order to move the story forward. It's a novel game and it's a tight game, with scarcely a second wasted. More like this please.

The problem with a game like Portal in an industry like this is that it'll be damn hard to craft the inevitable follow-up. Valve has done little more than confirm a sequel's development, but it has confirmed it. It'd be great if the second Portal was like the first one - sharp and short and full of impact, a digital punch to the cyber-gut. What's more likely is that the Portal sequel (and any further exploration of the universe) will be more like the Katamari Damacy sequels, each expanding on the core concept in ways that are pleasant and interesting but rarely as meaningful as the first entry. It's like eating cookies - eventually, no matter how good the cookie, you just have to say "I think I may throw up if I eat any more cookies, thank you."

RK: Gabe Newell, are you reading this? You must be a very happy man.

Andrew, I also dread the follow-up to Portal. But I'm surprised there haven't been more mini-expansions - Portal's witticism and modular design could easily accommodate scores of map packs.

This is where I think Portal dropped the ball: the game needed a map editor. Sure, a functional editor for the Xbox 360 might have been out of the question, but there's no reason the PC-gaming public couldn't be let loose upon the program. Who knows - Valve might scoop up a few extra designers, as they swapped Portal's devs from grad school.

Were the internet flooded by ham-fisted puzzles and graceless attempts to recreate the genius of the original, perhaps I would regret my proletariat urges. But couldn't Valve at least give us the chance to defile their masterpiece?

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Charge Aught!!!: The Stuff You’ll Tell Your Grandchildren About

Yesterday, we talked about the stuff that didn’t define the decade. Now, in the last of our three collaborative pieces, listen to us talk about what will.

Rob: In the event that some imprudent female agrees to bear my spawn (and she, in turn, finds someplace damp and secluded to lay her eggs), I'll tell them about the year their great-grandparents disconnected the cable. Up until that day in November 2009, their grandpappy hadn't lived a day without a connection to cable television. When the screen went blue, he thought: Now, everything will change.

Except it didn't. Instead of camping on the couch, they gathered computer chairs to stream Survivor on their desktop computer. House used to come courtesy of Fox 5 - now, it came courtesy of Hulu.com, with a brief plug for Fox in the beginning.

Netflix DVDs fluttered in and out of their mailbox. And in between red envelopes, they booted up their son's Xbox 360 and streamed movies directly to their television.

They unplugged cable, and not a damn thing changed. As a matter of fact, I can hear them watching Survivior right now.

Craig: I wonder if we'll have figured out the Economy of Free by the time I have grandkids.  We're mired in the transition right now, though some people think there's a way to work it all out. Will we all be paying premium subscriptions for our true interests while consuming everything else like so many supermarket free samples?  Or will the availability of media lead to a depreciation of value until everything is ultimately worth nothing?  "Mooooommm, Grampa's moaning about the death of culture again," I can hear them say.

I'm sure I'll have to explain why Napster was a big deal.  And why a band staked their reputation on bringing it down.  Peer-to-peer file sharing spurred an economic revolution that's been slowly slipping arsenic into the music industry's (among others) drinking water for years now. But my grandkids might not even know what a record company or its assassin - the p2p client - looks like. "Where's Pirate Bay?  What is a 'lime' wire?" they'll ask.   By the time my offspring procreate, "peer-to-peer" will probably be the name of a bizarre bedroom maneuver.

Andrew: For any gamer, the Playstation 2 and the 2000s go hand in hand. It had, literally, something for everybody - the "casual" gamer, the "hardcore" gamer, people stuck in the 90s with their platformers or people who couldn't get enough of the then-new console first-person shooter. It had puzzle games, it had beat-em-ups, it had sandbox games, it had racing games (both infuriatingly and boringly realistic and arcade), it had high-octane action games, it had retro ports, it had rhythm games, it had epic works of art, it had some of the weirdest, most unclassifiable shit anyone had ever played, and it had RPGs in spades - any gamer who can't find something to play on the PS2 just wasn't trying hard enough.

Even the Xbox 360 and the Nintendo DS, its heirs apparent in terms of gameplay variety (to say nothing of its actual heir), can't approach it in terms of the sheer volume of experiences present. It was the right system for the right time like no system had been before or has been since, and when my grandkids start talking to me about the virtues of the Xbox 3.14159, I'm going to give them a good slap in the mouth and tell them that in my day we played games in standard definition with wired controllers, and we liked it.

Chris: My grandchildren are going to be born with a 10G network already streaming into their skulls, and I'm guessing they're not going to understand how much of a hassle the Internet was back at the beginning of the millennium. My family didn't get broadband until 2005, which meant that for the first half of the decade I was forced to squeeze my Web browsing through the constrictive conduit of a 56k modem.

In particular, I intend to bore my grandchildren with tales of the obnoxious ritual of "signing on" to the Internet. The sounds of a dial-up modem might be some of the most wretchedly ear-piercing noises on the planet. (And God help you if you accidentally picked up the phone while someone else was logged in!) In the Dark Ages of Dial-up, this cacophony was a sacrifice you had to be willing to make; without it, it's almost too easy to take the Internet for granted.

Pankin: I'll regale my grandchildren with the tale of my entry into high school when my folks presented me with my first cellular telephone. I'll try to describe its lumpy, gray shape, its little rubbery buttons, its extendable antenna that I always suspected didn't improve call quality at all. It was supposed to be for emergencies only, but as I lived a rather unexciting life back then, it spent most of its time sitting powered off in my backpack. But I couldn't have had much fun with that thing if I wanted to: it didn't even send text messages, let alone take pictures, browse the internet, or make my coffee in the morning.

My grandkids will probably struggle to envision any device that isn't voice-activated or that lacks a smart-board-esque touch screen. With the rise of bluetooth, they likely won't have ever experienced talking on the phone with something that's not attached to their ears (or surgically implanted into their ears at that point). Still less will they be able to appreciate the portability revolution that my new cell phone represented. But I think it will be important to educate them of the history of the gadgets upon which their lives will be based, in order for them to fully appreciate the subtleties of their generation.

Steph: The first thing I'm going to do when I have grandchildren is read The Lord of the Rings to them, even if they're too young to understand it. After thus forcing them to re-live my own literary childhood, I'll withhold the blockbuster films from them until they're old enough to fully appreciate the sacrifice.

It's taken me this whole decade to come to grips with the movies released between 2001 and 2003. At first irrationally furious, I stampeded around for almost two years complaining about their imperfections. Someone had finally put together the technology necessary to tackle a serious fantasy novel, and yet I bitterly hated every shortcoming. These movies polarized viewers, some defending the purity of the original books while others gushed over the special effects and attractive male leads. I hated the latter group most of all.

Over time, I've realized that my frustration was primarily based not on the fact that there were errors, but that these movies came so close to perfection and only missed because of poor decisions. They really were impressive, and they left quite a cultural ripple. But I'll make sure my offspring understand how much we book-purists had to suffer before accepting them.

Gene:  I have a bad feeling that I'll be recalling to my grandkids about how condos in Newark cost about a nickel in my day and that I could've been a very rich man after it became the gentrification capital of the metropolitan area.  By then, I'll just have a shabby brownstone in Williamsburg.  More likely, I'll be recounting the moment in time when consumers wanted their music to be simultaneously less and more difficult to listen to.

Jordan:  I'll tell my kids about how truly daring journalism emerged in the unlikeliest of places:  Comedy Central.  How unexpected that the people speaking truth to power (or at least saying the stuff we were all thinking but were too afraid to say) turn out to be comedians who ended up on late night TV because their acting careers didn't work out.

But like 'em or not, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert play a huge role in our public discourse.  Politicians and pundits now have to watch their mouths for fear that The Daily Show or The Colbert Report will catch them with their pants down.  Dudes are thorough, too.  When they called out Glenn Beck for exhorting his viewers to invest in gold while being a paid spokesperson for a company that sells gold coins, I was truly impressed.  The dang New York Times picked up the story.

Objectivity has become something of a sacred cow in television journalism.  Broadcasters almost never call out the hypocrisy or sheer stupidity of politicians or fellow broadcasters for fear of appearing biased (or petty, in the latter case).  Colbert and The Daily Show concern themselves primarily with entertaining their viewers, and the best material turns out to be the stupidity of those in the public eye.  And while verbal gaffes make for great "Moments of Zen," the shows thankfully focus on more substantive issues.  It's no wonder so many young people look to Colbert and Stewart more than any other TV journalist.  They're never afraid to speak the truth, as long as it's funny.

Maybe, though, I won't have to tell my kids about these shows.  Hopefully they'll still be on.

Boivin: I plan on constantly regaling my children with my account of where I was and what I was doing when I found out the United States had invaded Iraq. Me and three of my friends were in my basement and we were watching Van Wilder of all things. I don't say this because the Iraq War had this immense impact on me or anything, but rather I just want future generations of Americans to associate one of the most misguided military adventures in modern history with Tara Reid. Remember her? My grandchildren will...as a warmonger.

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Charge Aught!!!: The Decade in Movies

 Part One – Part Three

Andrew Pankin, Alex Boivin and Jordan Pedersen have spent most of the last decade in darkened rooms – some of those rooms were movie theaters. Read on for their thoughts about the most important developments in the cinema of the aughts.

JP: Is it just me, or are the Oscars way more quirky and foreign than they used to be?

What qualifies as Oscar bait these days seems far off from the yearly crop of presumptive nominees just ten years ago.  I can't imagine that films like Little Miss Sunshine and Juno would have been as fawned-over by the Academy if they had been released in the nineties.  Although films by director like Ron Howard and Steven Spielberg still receive nominations, they have generated considerably less buzz in the aughts.

"Yeah, Frost/Nixon was okay, but did you see Slumdog Millionaire?!  It had a freakin' dance sequence at the end!"

Academy voters seem much more eager to vote for (or at least nominate) contenders that might have seemed left-field a decade ago.  That Up and An Education sit alongside more conventional choices like Invictus and Up in the Air among this year's list of presumptive Best Picture nominees seems to evince the view that the concept of a "prestige picture" is morphing.  And films that would have been sure-fire nominees in the nineties often fail to even be nominated in the aughts (see American Gangster or Cinderella Man).

It almost seems as if the film industry is undergoing a transformation akin to the ascendancy of alternative rock in the nineties (and parallel to that of indie rock in the aughts):  the alternative has become the mainstream.  A Best Picture win for a film like Slumdog Millionaire has made at least a nomination for a film like Precious almost a certainty.  Crash's dark-horse victory in 2005 (*cough* bullshit *cough*) made it commonplace for other film festival pick-ups to receive nominations or even statues.

So whaddya think?  Have the Oscars always been this quirky?

AP: I think the Academy is always secretly happy to see new types of films get nominated, even while it outwardly (in practice, if not openly) discourages the practice. "Sure, The Dark Knight was the best picture of the year," I seem to recall many experts saying last year, "but it will never win Best Picture. It's just not an Oscar Film."

Some claim that the gimmick of expanding the list of Best Pic nominated films from five to ten this year was somewhat driven by the hope of including other genres than the prestige film in the festivities. Maybe with ten nominees, for every five Preciouses, we'll get one The Hangover or District 9. Others argue that Academy voters are happily set in their ways and we'll just see more of the same. This is all conjecture, since no one seems to know why or even how the change to this well-established format came about.

While we have seen some increasingly quirky indie (or at least indie-looking) Best Pic nods, they've always been one among many; the majority of nominees have remained traditional, predictable fare. I do agree that we've seen a shift that's corresponded with changes in the film industry over the last decade - more audience favorites as opposed to experts' selections. And with an expanded field of nominees, I'm hopeful that said shift may also expand.

AB: I've begun to realize in the past few years, perhaps just because I'm becoming older and therefore automatically wiser, that the Oscars are less a means of rewarding greatness in film than about celebrating the Academy and the movie industry itself. I don't see this as necessarily a bad thing, Oscar Night is one of my favorite nights of the year, but I've learned not to pick Oscar winners based on merit but rather on how they fit the Oscar formula:

1) Big issues (race, homosexuality, mental retardation etc.)?
2) Director/actors who have gotten enough buzz/have it coming?
3) Biopic?
etc.

I've become less passionate about hoping my favorite film wins and more about the politicking of the Oscar process. Take for example Crash's big upset in 2006. Part of me couldn't be more mad that this pandering exercise in white guilt took the top prize over what is honestly one of the best love stories of our lifetime, Brokeback Mountain. And yet I can't help but be intrigued by all the obvious decision making on the Academy's part, clearly they're a bunch of old fogies who are more comfortable awarding an inferior movie that confirms and absolves them of their own prejudices/what have you than they are giving Best Picture to a much better movie about the Gays.

If you ask me to pick my own personal Best Picture of 2009, I'd go with Inglourious Basterds: I saw it five times in theaters and now own it on DVD. But will it win Best Picture at the Academy Awards? Probably not (though with this newfangled 10 movies thing it has a much better chance). But asking the Academy to pick Basterds for best picture would be like asking me personally to pick Precious- not their/my taste, ain't gonna happen.

Tune in tomorrow for the conclusion of the story, same bat time, same bat channel!

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Charge Aught!!!: The Decade in TV, Part Two

Part One – Part Three

Between the four of them, Chris Holden, Stephanie Hemmingson, Jordan Pedersen and Andrew Cunningham have watched quite a bit of television this decade. Over the next three days, they’ll be discussing and debating the merits and shortcomings of TV in the aughts.

It’s all dumb

AC: Hey you guys, let's not draw the smart/dumb line at reality television, even if the Lord Jesus hisself descended from Heaven to executive produce The Wire. As long as Two and a Half Men is still on the air, it's fair to say that stupid scripted TV is going strong. And what about all those dramatic duds, the high-concept network shows like Kings and Flash Forward that fizzle three or four episodes in? And the shows like Lost and Heroes and Battlestar Galactica that do nothing but ask questions without ever bothering to answer any of them?

Also, Jordan, Futurama is coming back to Comedy Central with new episodes in June.

In defense of reality TV

CH: Is it up to me to defend reality TV then?

I mean, there's a lot of trash out there. But there are certain reality TV shows that I quite enjoy watching - the game shows, in particular. Both Survivor and The Amazing Race have managed to make their mark as well-edited, exciting, high-concept competitions. Similarly enjoyable are the "slice of life" shows in which cameras follow around photogenic people performing interesting jobs. Steph mentioned Deadliest Catch (my family's favorite), but I can also bring up Ice Road Truckers, Whale Wars, and Parking Wars as three other examples. These are reality shows that are all perfectly digestible fare that I don't feel guilty about in the slightest - shows that avoid the manufactured melodrama and public embarrassment of a lot of inferior reality schlock. And, first and foremost, these programs tell good stories, which is all I ask for out of my television. Such reality shows might not be able to match the "great" TV mentioned earlier, but they're a hell of a lot more interesting than the flat characters and stock plotlines on your run-of-the-mill forensic crime show (how many CSIs are there, again?).

Jordan blamed our laziness for the rise of reality TV and the number of great serial dramas languishing in obscurity. I love The Wire as much as the next critic. But sometimes, I'm not looking for what amounts to a 13-hour movie when I watch TV. Rather than devoting hours of my life to television with grandiose cinematic ambitions, sometimes all I need is a 60-minute distraction while I do some homework. It's not only allowable to pepper your gourmet fare with some fast food - occasionally, it's a nice change of pace.

Okay, maybe it’s not all dumb

JP:  My definition of reality TV is probably self-servingly arbitrary:  when you mentioned Deadliest Catch, I thought, "Well, that doesn't count because that show isn't retarded."

I don't have a problem with the Discovery or Science Channel (boo-ya Punkin Chunkin) reality shows because they don't subscribe to the "put a bunch of assholes in a house and you'll have world-class entertainment" theory.  The aim of these shows is to explore the ostensibly interesting careers of their subjects, not to watch a bunch of douchebags tear each other apart because somebody drank all the Diet Dr. Pepper.  I reserve my purest vitriol for shows like The Surreal Life, Tool Academy, and I'm Rod Blagojevich's Wife; Help Me Pay my Husband's Legal Fees, and I'm truly confounded when smart people waste their time with them.

It's hard to argue against the "TV as a distraction" motivation mostly because I don't use TV for that purpose.  And if it's proper to "rank" motivations for watching TV, I'd probably put "background noise" somewhere on the lower tier.  Also, is any TV show so uninvolving that you can actually get homework done while you watch it?  And does that argument really work in its favor?  You could make the same argument for smooth jazz or muzak.

Reality or realism?

AC: I'm with Chris about variety being a good thing. A "smart" person is not necessarily "wast[ing] their time" if they watch a show that doesn't meet some arbitrarily-defined standard of intellectualism. And, as with so many things, this all comes down to taste - if I think Freaks and Geeks is an overrated, boring teen drama and I find It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia to be so devoid of relatable characters that it's a show to be endured rather than enjoyed (it's like watching Seinfeld except all the characters are George Costanza), that's my call. Likewise, if I think Kid Nation is an adorable show, I can sit down with some chips and some friends and laugh without feeling bad.

Changing topics, though, I think that "reality" in television is something that really defines this decade. Besides actual reality shows, which purport to show the audience a (highly filtered) slice of the lives of some "real people," the scripted dramas and comedies of the new millennium also strive for realism in many ways. Consider the rise of the "mockumentary" in sitcoms, ushered in by the British and US versions of The Office and shows like Arrested Development - through their use of cameramen and talking-head segments, the shows are at least pretending to be dealing with real people and real situations. The single-camera setup of such shows also makes for more realism in setting, allowing for fleshed-out, three-dimensional spaces, much more so than the three-fourths of a coffee shop that most of Friends happened in.

With dramas like Deadwood and The Wire, the show's creators painstakingly recreate locations and places in time to serve as backdrops for their shows, which often try to deal with the challenges of actually living in those places in times. Consider the dead-accurate early 1960s of Mad Men and compare it to the kitschy, inconsistent representation of the 1950s that Happy Days served up week after week - many scripted TV shows this decade are more real than shows have ever been, and that's part of what makes these shows powerful, artful enterprises.

CH: One good facet of this new "realism" Andrew mentioned is the decline of the laugh track in comedies. In previous decades, us poor audiences were forced to rely on canned laughter to tell us what was and was not funny. Even Seinfeld (my vote for best sitcom of all time) still relied on short gags and one-liners to get a laugh. Shows such as The Office, Arrested Development, Scrubs and the ever-improving Parks and Recreation have rid themselves of the laugh track altogether. By relying on funny situations, and not just single jokes, the shows are able to development more of an identity for themselves. The writers must create actually amusing characters and plotlines, and not just rely on the interchangeable quips of the sitcoms of yore.

I agree that this realism also comes through in the complexity of the sets of shows this decade. Gilligan's Island was filmed on a Hollywood backlot with a bag of sand and a few fake trees; for Lost, they actually built a town in the middle of the Hawaiian jungle. I have many issues with Lost, but it's one of the few prime time network shows that is worth watching in high definition - it looks absolutely beautiful.

Tune in tomorrow for the conclusion of the story, same bat time, same bat channel!

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