Category Archives: Reviews

Movie- and Book Reviews

Pitch Black

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Pitch Black is a science-fiction thriller featuring Vin Diesel as the psychopath/criminal Riddick who would later feature in a sequel, The Chronicles of Riddick.

The movie follows in the grand tradition of the many creature-feature movies that transplanted the slasher genre into space. Of course the science fiction stuff is just fluff, used for background and story rationale. As always, there many “coincidences” that make the story possible.

The basic story is simple: A lone spaceship crashes on a remote planet, in a star system with three suns. Due to the particular configuration of the solar system, the planet is always bathed in sunlight. Except once every 22 years, when the planet our motley crew crashed on is in between two gas giants – and total darkness descends upon the world.

The surviving crew members soon discover that they face a species of aliens that has a particular taste for human blood. It’s vicious and extremely shy of light. And as mentioned one of the coincidences is that the crew crashes just a day before the pitch black night, and just within range of a camp of (devoured) scientists which features not only clues but also a handy escape shuttle.

Of course the movie is completely predictable from beginning to end. Most of the castaways get eaten, a small band of them escape, and Riddick turns out to be a rough hero and not a psychopath killer. There, I spoiled it for you – but did you really expect anything else from the movie? And yet, it’s an enjoyable film – It doesn’t require you to think, it doesn’t really manage to scare you, but it does have an original backdrop and some nice atmosphere. Don’t buy the DVD; borrow or rent it instead and do not expect too much or you should get ready to be underwhelmed.

So-So.

The Terminal

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The Terminal is a Spielberg movie featuring Tom Hanks as Viktor Navorski, a traveler from Eastern Europe who barely speaks English and gets stranded in JFK’s international transfer terminal when his country falls into civil war, making his visa and passport invalid over night.

Throughout the movie, Viktor tries to survive in the strange world of the airport, tries to get his visa, makes friends, meets women, and hooks up two airport employees as a messenger of love.

The movie is wonderfully made, never boring, with a lot of interesting characters, great twists and turns, beautiful ideas and more than a few “laugh-out-loud” moments. Tom Hanks is brilliant as ever, flight attendants – as represented by Catherine Zeta-Jones’ character Amelia – are portrayed cynically-realistically, and if you still haven’t found a reason to go watch this movie, you may be interested that it also has Zoe Saldana. So what are you waiting for?

I can fully recommend this movie, you will not regret it. Two thumbs up.

Lost in Translation

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Finally watched the 2003 hit movie Lost in Translation with Bill Murray last weekend. I always get a kick out of watching movies set in locations I have been to, and I fondly remember Tokyo as this giant, crazy metropolis full of strange people. The Japanese, bless them, are probably one of the weirdest people I have gotten to know them. Which I do not say to insult them or anything – after all I like strangeness because I fit right in.

Lost in Translation takes us through a two week visit of Bob Harris (Bill Murray), an aging American movie star who is in Tokyo for an advertisement contract – and grows from feeling trapped in a culture he understands nothing about to enjoying the ride. There isn’t any real story as you would expect from a Hollywood movie. There’s a bit of a romance between Murray’s character and the female lead, Charlotte, charmingly played by Scarlett Johansen, but it never works out as both have previous commitments – she is freshly married, he has been so for 25 years and has several children. A romantic tragedy, maybe?

The true “star” of the movie, in my biased eyes, is Tokyo itself, a constant, crazy whirlpool of sounds and sights; you could take the movie and transport it anyplace else – there are enough “weird cultures” after all – but it wouldn’t work nearly as well without the Japanese and their capital city.

However, I must say that Lost in Translation does not deserve the hit status it enjoyed for some months. It’s a quiet and enjoyable movie, sure enough. But in a few short years, nobody will remember it. It’s no grand artistic achievement, it’s not a really memorable ride, it’s simply an enjoyable movie you watch when you are bored on a Saturday night.

Ender's Game

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I had big trouble sleeping the last week, and thus completed another (unabridged) audiobook. The beauty of audiobooks, as compared to the normal paper ones, is that I can listen to them while I do other things. Sometimes, this is too distracting. But when you are in bed, waiting for sleep to come, it’s at least a very comfortable way to “read” a book: You can pull the cover up to your ears and above all you don’t have to turn on the light.

_Ender’s Game_ was written by Orson Scott Card. It was originally a short story, until Card wanted to write _Speaker for the Dead_. As he put it, he was having problems with that novel until he decided that Ender Wiggin, the protagonist of _Ender’s Game_, should be the main character of _Speaker for the Dead_. He rewrote _Ender’s Game_ into a full novel, which then became a big hit and a cult classic in some circles of the geek crowd.

In the future, on an overcrowded Earth, mankind is looking at its children to find a brilliant leader, a strategist and tactician who would save it from the feared “Third Invasion” by a vicious alien species called the “Buggers”. These children, monitored from early childhood, are recruited into the space-based “Battle School” at the age of six. Here they learn all about military tactic through a series of games. The adult teachers control all facets of their environment, as Ender soon learns, but otherwise have a very “hands off” approach to teaching. And as they believe Ender is their “best hope”, they put an extra effort into pushing him to the limit.

I am not really sure what to make of the book. It’s pretty useless as a war story; we don’t see much of it, nor of the military, their tactics, and so on. It’s equally useless as a science fiction story; the Buggers and the interstellar war are just trappings and the future history and society of mankind are never explored in any real detail. It’s almost as useless as a “coming of age” story. It’s not so useless as a character story, one that describes Ender Wiggin (and to a lesser extent his siblings). They are good, believable characters; unfortunately they’re not really _fun_. Especially Valentine and Peter; Peter manages to be a good character in the early part of the book, a nice threat and motivation to Ender, but he becomes boring quickly. Valentine, well, she’s just redundant. But I guess every book must have a love interest for the hero; and if it’s not a girlfriend to love, you gotta have a sister he can love.

The other characters are just one dimensional, boring, names without substance. This holds true for good guys, bad guys, and neutrals. Everybody pales in comparison to Hero Ender, and thus are given only the most basic of motivations or personalities.

Still, the book makes you continue on. Card’s style is pretty good, and he makes up for what he lacks in creating an interesting setting that way. You’ll also want to see what Colonel Graff, Endre’s hidden “mentor” (and tormentor) will come up with and how Ender will cope. Finally, at least for me, I also wanted to see if the book got any better.

Only it didn’t; it remained insubstantial and predictable to the very end.

If you want to read good Sci Fi, read any number of other books. If you want to read a good war story, read any number of other books. For the military SF subgenre, I heartily recommend Starship Troopers instead (the book, not the “terrible movie”:/Review/195/starship-troopers-dvd!), especially since it includes a lot of moral/philosophical/political debate. Or read “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”:/Review/586/the-moon-is-a-harsh-mistress by Heinlein. I cannot even recommend Ender’s Game as the “leadership textbook” I have heard it being described as. I have serious doubts the little bits and peaces Ender learns about leading other soldiers would help anybody but maybe the absolute neophytes.

So, hummm, this comes across as a pretty negative opionion of _Ender’s Game_. Is it a horrible book? No, not really, as in “I have read worse”. But in my humble opinion it is not in any way remarkable. It doesn’t excite, it doesn’t educate, it doesn’t thrill, it doesn’t surprise, but neither does it really bore (except maybe the Peter-and-Valentine bits). If you are stuck on a rainy afternoon, this book is better than nothing. But on your list of books-to-read, it should appear very low in the ranking. _Ender’s Game_ was an afterthought, a novel thrown in when the author was stuck for ideas, and it shows.

Ringworld's Children (Audiobook)

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I recently completed “Ringworld’s Children” by Larry Niven. I listened to it in the Blackstone Audiobook version.

Let us look a little at the series first, as I seemingly have yet to publish a review of any of the Ringworld novels.

The book is the fourth novel in Larry Niven’s “Ringworld” series, itself set in the “Known World” universe. Basically, a motley crew of aliens – Two humans, a Kzin, and a Pupeteer – arrive at the Ringworld in the novel of the same name. In Ringworld Engineers, they return, albeit with a different pupeteer, and get stranded. Where book two seemed a pale imitation of the original success, Ringworld Throne, the third novel in the series, was just utterly horrible to read. Niven seemed to fixate on Rishatra, the practice of sex outside one’s species, but with another intelligent being. And so, while Ringworld itself already featured a little much sex for a sci fi novel, Ringworld’s Throne had finally degenerated into a rather mindless porn novel. Consequently, it speaks volumes for the coolness of the concept of the Ringworld itself that I forced myself to read the entire book, eager to learn more about it and its inhabitants. One may say I got to know them intimately, and that was more than I bargained for.

No matter. Ringworld’s Children is the result of feedback from fans. The author acknowledges at least one Internet mailing list that was discussing various ideas about Niven’s universe. I am also very certain he noted the negative feedback. To Niven’s honor, his basic style has much improved over Ringworld 3: There is still sex in the book, but it is limited in scope and in a way even necessary for the story.

The book takes off where Ringworld Throne ended and continues from there. The Fringe War – the presence of various species in the Ringworld system, each eager to grab the Ringworld’s secrets for themselves – has turned hot, and threatens the Ringworld and all life on it. Things happen very quickly, and it is difficult to give a synopsis of the action without spoiling the story. Basically, it is the story of the rescue of the stranded mission, and about the end of the Fringe War. He explains the origins of the Ringworld and what happened to it, how it came into its current conditions. Yeah, you got that right: In one novel, Niven resolves all the problems and mysteries he has introduced so far. He even explains away Teela Brown.

It is quite obvious that Niven is tired of the Ringworld series, for one reason or another. I think with the catastrophic quality of the third novel, and the less than perfect performance in books 2 and 4, the series would not attract enough readers to be kept alive. And yet he probably had enough fans that he needed to tie up the loose ends once and for all. To this end, Niven even scoops down to cheating. The whole solution reeks of Deux Ex Machina, and is a violation of established “laws” of Known Space. I may have missed the explanation for it, but I am not going to go through the book a second time.

Overall, I found Children to be a disappointment, but I wasn’t expecting too much anyway. Still, it would have been nice if Larry Niven had come up with something, well, a little more _cool_ than what he did end up writing. At least he did set up one new story arc (the trademarked logo on the autodoc – you will know it when you get to the part) that may result in a good novel if Niven does it right.

So is the book worth reading? Yes…… but only if you read the rest of the series. Because if you did, you will be happy that the whole story has been ended, even if it is executed cheaply. If you have not read all three Ringworld novels, then don’t bother with Children. You’d have to read the rest too, and that’s simply too unpleasant. And if you’ve never read any Ringworld, and aren’t interested in reading all Known Space novels, you should probably just end after reading the first book.

I, Robot

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Saw the movie last weekend – the German dubbing, unfortunately. I haven’t read the book yet (shame on me), so I will have to judge the movie standalone.

I, Robot tells the story of a police detective, Spooner, played by Will Smith, who is technophobic and hates robots in a world where robots are omnipresent. Spooner gets called to the scene of the apparant suicide of one of the founders of US Robotics (hahaha nice one, really). He quickly comes to suspect that an unusual robot of the company’s new series is responsible for the death of the old man.

During Spooners investigation, he becomes the target of numerous assassination attempts, until finally the plot unfolds itself – the robots stage a revolution.

The movie was neither really good, nor really bad (ignoring the lousy German dubbing). The animations of the NS-5 (the new robot series) is pretty nice, but in this day and age the CGI is not exceptional in any way. Sometimes – especially the chase scene in the tunnel – the CGI of these robots looks downright fake. The most beautiful scenes, in my eyes, are those of Chicago of 2035, especially the USR tower. Really nice.

Otherwise, the movie is really standard fare. There are no plot twists, there’s nothing too exciting. At the same time it isn’t too boring either. If you will see one movie this month, don’t see “I, Robot”. But if you happen to end up in a screening, you won’t have to fear death by boredom either.

Munchkin

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I am in Hamburg this weekend, and on Saturday I met my old gaming buddies. Since two of them did not have time, we didn’t play D&D this time, but opted to try out two “new” games.

First, we picked Munchkin. A card game satire of fantasy role playing games. The players explore dungeons, whack monsters, and loot treasures; goal is to reach 10th character level. Various zany items help the characters in combat; there’s some possible diplomacy as players can opt to help each other with cards and everybody may hire one other player to help in a battle; or players may actually try to hinder others by playing cards in favor of the monsters.

The random elements are low, if you except the drawing of cards. You only use a die to see if you can flee from an encounter, but not in combat.

The rules can be a little confusing if you first get them explained to you, but you will be able to pick them up quickly. Even if you do not know the cards, you can keep up with more experienced players quite well.

We played with – I think – both available expansion sets. The game was quite cool, if a little lengthy. Companies should hire my buddies and me for play-testing such games. It seems that we will always manage to drag out games. It easily took us six hours to end the game. We seem to be very cautious players – taking little risks and trying to cut anybody down who becomes a threat.

Despite the long game, it was quite fun. There’s a science fiction variant which I’d love to try, but we did not have the time for that. Star Munchkin and regular Munchkin can be combined to one big wacky game. I think Munchkin has quite a replay value either way.

After we were finally done, we moved on to Frag.

Frag

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After we completed the game of Munchkin, it was about 1am; too early to call it a night, too late to start anything lengthy. We decided to give Frag a try.

Frag is a paper board game version of popular first person shooters such as Doom and Quake. A strange idea, maybe, but it’s a little more social than a real first person shooter – not to mention the other fundamental differences. I think it could be best described as a fast-paced Robo Rally clone.

Like Munchkin, several people had already played it. The rules were short and quick to explain; the board easy to set up. Each player distributed 7 points among three characteristics – Accuracy, Speed, Health – so each player has different strengths and weaknesses. Power ups and Weapons are represented as cards, and there’s a third type of card that represents “meta game extras”. For example, I started out with a Lag card that could be used to make a player miss one turn.

Unlike Munchkin, an experienced player has a bit of an advantage at Frag, simply because he knows the dynamics of the game better. There are more variables to consider. Still, the game is so fast-paced and has a quite large random part that even a complete newbie isn’t all lost. The game is also a LOT faster than Munchkin, for the same reason: You can only “drag out” the game so much. Sooner or later, someone is just going to get lucky with the dice.

The major problem with Munchkin is the amount of bookkeeping involved. Bookkeeping isn’t the exactly right word. Let me explain: In a first-person shooter like Quake, a deceased player drops his weapons. The same happens in Frag. Weapons are represented as cards, which you can not put on the game board. So you end up playing a counter with a number to mark the spot, and another counter with the same number on the cards sitting at that spot. Add to this that several weapons have ammunition – which is persistent – and you soon have a huge mess of counters and little stacks of cards.

Frag is fun, no question about it, but it’s more a quick game where Munchkin is a slow game for a long evening. It took us about 90 minutes to complete the game, including setup and explaining the rules to the new players. Add some variety for slow or careful players and I still doubt you’ll end up with more than two hours per game. I am also not very sure how long Frag can keep up the fun factor. Like RoboRally, Frag probably will have fan-made boards soon, though, and a variety of boards will probably increase the game’s fun value.

If you like a fun, quick action game, have a largish table and do not mind the book-keeping / counter hell, then Frag is worth a try.

Ah! My Goddess

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Ah My Goddess is a Japanese animated short series. The plot is very simple; when dialing a wrong number the protagonist basically gets a goddess delivered to his doorstep who offers him to fulfill a wish. Thinking it’s a joke played on him, he replies that he’d like to stay with a girl just like her forever.

The wish is granted and the goddess moves in with him. Subsequently, two of the goddesses’ sisters follow, and five episodes revolve around the question of whether or not the guy and his goddess can stay together when faced with complications like that.

The shows premise isn’t all that bad and there are some funny moments; but the series feels hurried and many of the jokes just aren’t very funny. The drawings aren’t special either (nice design on the goddess and the youngest of her sisters though).

Ah! My Goddess is watchable on a really boring rainy Saturday afternoon but you can safely ignore it without missing out on much.

MIB II – Men in Black 2

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Watched Men In Black Part 2 last night. What can I say, it’s really more of the same. If you liked the first one, you’ll like this one too. Interestingly, it carries even less of a plot than the first one, but at the same time it isn’t *worse*. Not much, anyway. This is a peculiar combination in my eyes and says as much about the original as it does about the sequel.

The DVD is outfitted with a lot of extra material – in fact, the package includes two of them, and I haven’t gone through all of it. However, it’s nice to see that some people realize that bonus material is a huge incentive to buying a DVD.

Of particular note is the “hidden” MIB “Training Video”. Most of this has been replaced by a clip in German. Since style and language totally do not fit into the rest of the DVD, I assume that this was put in by the German distributor. And it’s horrible. Absolutely bad. It’s obvious, it’s primitive, it’s badly presented, and it’s plainly just not one bit funny. To make it short the clip is the perfect example why Germany is not present one bit in the international entertainment market. Showing anybody this clip could be considered a violation of basic human rights of the viewers.