Travels
Friday we left our lovely cabin in the woods and drove the long way to spend shabbat with friends of friends in Sharon, MA. We found a little river (Miller's River) in some little town (Erving) next to which to eat our lunch. We detoured a bit to south Worcester to buy a few things, and as a result we passed through Rhode Island on our way.
As a side note, on our way to the theater on Thursday night, we briefly passed through New York (going from Vermont to Vermont). That means that, together with our Maine trip next week, we have hit six states.
Shabbat
Sharon is a quiet town. While not entirely free of scandals (I won't link to it), it is considered one of the best places to live in America, particularly considering wealth and diversity. There are seven synagogues and as many churches and a big mosque. Our hosts live right near a woods and a lake.
Our hosts Lisa and Marc, and their kids Ezra and Eitan, were great, and the experience was exactly what I wanted. They started as strangers and ended up as friends. It is comforting to be back in an Orthodox community for shabbat after traveling during the week.
The Young Israel is looking for a new Rabbi. The shul not only has a kiddush club, it has an entire refrigerator and shelf marked "reserved for the kiddush club", with padlocks. After synagogue, someone got up and said that sometimes you have to say things that should be blatantly obvious, so here goes: don't murder people you disagree with. (I leave Israel and everyone starts killing each other. Cut it out.)
We played some Taboo and took a brief walk near the lake. Shabbat went out late. After shabbat we headed out to other friends of my kids to sleep over.
Boston
Sunday morning we went with these friends to Rubin's for breakfast (overpriced and only so-so).
Then we went to Faneuil Hall and the other markets downtown, since we were told that they are within the nexus of "what to do" in Boston for a few hours on a Sunday. The good part of the area was the street performances. We saw a comic juggling/acrobat team The Red Trouser Show performing in front of Quincy Market. They were a little long-winded but funny and talented enough. We saw a mother and two daughters stringed instrument trio Tatu Mianzi (two violins and a cello) performing on the side of Quincy Market. They performed competently and energetically in the sunshine and they smiled a lot. I watched them while Tal was shopping. The bad part was that the entire place was endless retail, tourist shopping ... not all crap, but mostly. And statues of basketball players.
Historical Boston and its freedom trail starts not too far from there. See that if you're into historical things.
Concert
We picked up more kosher food and headed to Portland. Saarya went off to discover many interesting things (including a Jewish museum or something) while Tal and I attended the Girls Night Out tour with Rachel Platten, Colbie Caillat, and Christina Perri.
Tal was the one who decided to go, and I love Colbie, so I joined her. I had not heard of Rachel, and I had listened to some of Christina's songs and not been overly impressed.
Rachel was a good performer with some solid songs. We enjoyed her small set. It will take a bit more time before she looks completely natural on stage. She is on her way, if she can keep writing good songs.
Colbie was delightful. I thought she sounded and looked a little more smooth - less quirky - than her album voice/photos, but Tal disagreed with me. Anyway, she was a solid performer with a list of solid songs, including her new ones. I can't say much more about her ...
Because Christina blew me away. Christina is an incredible performer with the most amazing voice I have ever hear in person. Either she didn't sound anything like her recorded music or I just never listened properly. Wow. She looked a little odd. She is covered in tattoos and her songs are often painful (becoming less so over time), but on stage she is constantly smiling and dancing around like a sixteen year old. Between songs I heard her giggling. Nevertheless, of all the musicians I have seen on stage (including Alanis, who walks like a duck, and Rhianna, who performs like a stripper), Christina was the most natural and entertaining.
The concert was outdoors on a pier, with large boats coming into and out of the harbor with an occasional fog horn. When they did, the singers shouted out to the people on the boat, and in one case the boat honked back at them.
The weather has been beautiful; could hardly have asked for better. I understand that Israel has been boiling. So sorry to have missed it. :-)
We found our next AirBnB location on a little island on the coast of Maine, and, while I haven't seen it in daylight yet, so far it is gorgeous and perfect.
Uploading pictures to Facebook ...
Monday, August 03, 2015
Sunday, August 02, 2015
Vacation Day 4: Rainstorms in Life and Theater
Thurs morning we made pancakes with fresh Vermont blueberries, pure Vermont maple syrup, and Green Mountain caramel-vanilla coffee. We then drove to spend the day with my children's relatives.
Along the way we stopped at a particularly junky looking antiques store, around the back of which we found the Bridgewater Historical Society, which had, among its 1942 pictures of the people who worked at the wool mill (all of which are available at the above link), a telephone switching machine.
We had planned to do a hike in Green Mountain National Forest, but it began to rain. So we took a short trip to a nearby lake, ate some sandwiches in the rain, and headed back to drink hot cocoa. Dinner we BBQed hot dogs. We then went to see Outside Mulingar at the Dorset Festival Theater in Dorset.
The play was lovely. The acting was superb and the writing was fresh and quotable. I can't remember the dialog exactly, but I'm looking forward to reading a transcript of seeing it as a movie. It's kind of quirky and has many interweaving metaphors.
The basic plot is: There is a guy who lives on a farm with his father. They have a neighbor who live with their daughter. The play opens with the neighbor passing away, leaving the wife and daughter. The guy is thinking of leaving his farm to his nephew instead of his son in America, because he isn't sure that his son really loves the farm. But it will be hard to do that, because a) everyone thinks he shouldn't do that to his son, and b) the driveway to his farm was sold to the neighbors 30 years ago, and the neighbor adamantly refused to sell it back.
What happens next with these four characters is the play's subject, and it's funny and sweet.
Along the way we stopped at a particularly junky looking antiques store, around the back of which we found the Bridgewater Historical Society, which had, among its 1942 pictures of the people who worked at the wool mill (all of which are available at the above link), a telephone switching machine.
We had planned to do a hike in Green Mountain National Forest, but it began to rain. So we took a short trip to a nearby lake, ate some sandwiches in the rain, and headed back to drink hot cocoa. Dinner we BBQed hot dogs. We then went to see Outside Mulingar at the Dorset Festival Theater in Dorset.
The play was lovely. The acting was superb and the writing was fresh and quotable. I can't remember the dialog exactly, but I'm looking forward to reading a transcript of seeing it as a movie. It's kind of quirky and has many interweaving metaphors.
The basic plot is: There is a guy who lives on a farm with his father. They have a neighbor who live with their daughter. The play opens with the neighbor passing away, leaving the wife and daughter. The guy is thinking of leaving his farm to his nephew instead of his son in America, because he isn't sure that his son really loves the farm. But it will be hard to do that, because a) everyone thinks he shouldn't do that to his son, and b) the driveway to his farm was sold to the neighbors 30 years ago, and the neighbor adamantly refused to sell it back.
What happens next with these four characters is the play's subject, and it's funny and sweet.
Thursday, July 30, 2015
Vacation Day 3: Widow's Walk on the Appalachian Trail
Wed morning we made pancakes with fresh Vermont blueberries, pure Vermont maple syrup, and Green Mountain Eye-Opening blend coffee. We were then joined by my children's relatives: ex-brother-in-law Andrew and his wife Jamie and kids Ember, and Mesa, as well as my ex-mother-in-law. They are a very sweet family with two darling kids.
Andrew (carrying Ember), Saarya, and I hiked a part of the Appalachian Trail that runs right by where we are staying, up to the summit of a nearby mountain (hill, really), at the top of which is a small cabin for use by hikers. The cabin has a widow's walk on its roof, from which you can see valleys, rivers, and mountains all around.
Dinner was BBQ'd hamburgers and asparagus, and a fire that burned under the clear night sky. I'm reading a copy of The Girl Who Played with Fire that I found in the cabin.
Andrew (carrying Ember), Saarya, and I hiked a part of the Appalachian Trail that runs right by where we are staying, up to the summit of a nearby mountain (hill, really), at the top of which is a small cabin for use by hikers. The cabin has a widow's walk on its roof, from which you can see valleys, rivers, and mountains all around.
Dinner was BBQ'd hamburgers and asparagus, and a fire that burned under the clear night sky. I'm reading a copy of The Girl Who Played with Fire that I found in the cabin.
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Vacation Day 2: The Game Professor and the Cave
The Game Professor
In the morning I navigated the Boston MTA, made famous by The Kingston Trio in their 1950s song about poor old Charlie stuck on train due to a proposed fare increase to charge people an extra nickel for getting off the train. Today's MTA uses the "CharlieCard" on all of its services. They're free. With one, I took a bus to the subway and then the subway back to a bus for $2.55 (more than Charlie would have paid, but reasonable by today's standards); without one, the cost would have been significantly higher.
I met the brilliant and gracious Sebastian Deterding at the Pavement Coffeehouse on 44 Gainsborough St in Boston. Sebastian wrote several important sources about gameful design that I used for research on my book. I wrote to him as a stranger, asking if I would be able to catch him lecture or if he would be willing to meet a fan for coffee, and he agreed to coffee.
I wasn't sure what the conversation would be - maybe I would interview him for my blog - but it ended up being about the central tenets of my book. He is the first person in my field with whom I have discussed my ideas. He is not only more educated that I; as a professor he is able to discuss it with a depth that I struggled with, since I live outside of academia. It was awesome (for me, at least).
We talked for 90 minutes. He asked deep questions that presented deep challenges. My ideas held out pretty well, but I need to address these challenges - in the book, or at least for my own sake, in order to be sure that I know what I'm talking about. For example:
I propose a new definition of "game" that I feel captures the essential aspect of game more rigorously than any previous definition. For one thing, my definition describes what a game "is", not what it contains. Sebastian asked me if, in my definition, a game was a) a fundamental reality, in which case "game" pre-existed mankind and humans discovered it, or b) a
human construct, in which case game could be more or less different from culture to culture, or c) my own convenient grouping of ideas/activities, in order to provide new insights into the other topics I cover in my book.
Although I had already written a bit about why I was attempting to define "game" in the book, I had not thought about asking these questions, and thus I had been moving back and forth among these usages without thought. This is the kind of insightful analysis you get from years of experience in defending and presenting your thoughts in academia, and which Sebastian generously shared with a complete stranger in a coffeehouse. I am very grateful.
When I got home, Tal told me that my hair was sticking up and my shirt was on backwards and inside out.
New England
We bought a BBQ, and some kosher food at The Butcherie, and ate at the nearby Taam China kosher Chinese restaurant for lunch. We headed out for what was supposed to be a three hour drive but ended up being a five and a half hour drive through beautiful New England. Once we were far away from Boston, most of our drive was through small towns and one lane highways through the woods. Very beautiful. However, without GPS, we still either got lost or occasionally thought we were lost and had to stop to figure out where we were going.
In one of those stops we managed to connect to Wi-Fi for around 4 minutes, and during that time Saarya was able to download the destination, the navigation, and many of the maps on the route. The phone's GPS works even without Wi-Fi or cellular connection, so long as all of that is pre-loaded onto the phone and so long as you stay on route. It helped us get back onto my pre-printed route. If we were not scheduled to meet the person whose cabin we were renting at a particular time, I would have stopped several more times to wander around in antique stores, roadside vegetable stands, and several pretty lakes and streams. Once you get into Vermont, the vegetable stands become maple product stands. We met the guy and he was willing to wait while we picked up some more food items.
The Cabin
It's really a cabin in the wood that the guy had built himself. Stunning setting and a beautiful property, it lacks only Wi-Fi, telephone, and a bathroom. It uses an outhouse. There is only cold water piped in from the stream into tanks. He provides a bathtub to use - outdoors - with only cold running water. For hot water, you have to fill up some buckets, lower heating coils into them, and wait. This kind of setup might be a first for my kids, and it's been a long time for me, too. We were able to use the Wi-Fi from the house next door, which also belongs to him.
Dinner was BBQ'd chicken and farmer's market vegetables.
In the morning I navigated the Boston MTA, made famous by The Kingston Trio in their 1950s song about poor old Charlie stuck on train due to a proposed fare increase to charge people an extra nickel for getting off the train. Today's MTA uses the "CharlieCard" on all of its services. They're free. With one, I took a bus to the subway and then the subway back to a bus for $2.55 (more than Charlie would have paid, but reasonable by today's standards); without one, the cost would have been significantly higher.
I met the brilliant and gracious Sebastian Deterding at the Pavement Coffeehouse on 44 Gainsborough St in Boston. Sebastian wrote several important sources about gameful design that I used for research on my book. I wrote to him as a stranger, asking if I would be able to catch him lecture or if he would be willing to meet a fan for coffee, and he agreed to coffee.
I wasn't sure what the conversation would be - maybe I would interview him for my blog - but it ended up being about the central tenets of my book. He is the first person in my field with whom I have discussed my ideas. He is not only more educated that I; as a professor he is able to discuss it with a depth that I struggled with, since I live outside of academia. It was awesome (for me, at least).
We talked for 90 minutes. He asked deep questions that presented deep challenges. My ideas held out pretty well, but I need to address these challenges - in the book, or at least for my own sake, in order to be sure that I know what I'm talking about. For example:
I propose a new definition of "game" that I feel captures the essential aspect of game more rigorously than any previous definition. For one thing, my definition describes what a game "is", not what it contains. Sebastian asked me if, in my definition, a game was a) a fundamental reality, in which case "game" pre-existed mankind and humans discovered it, or b) a
human construct, in which case game could be more or less different from culture to culture, or c) my own convenient grouping of ideas/activities, in order to provide new insights into the other topics I cover in my book.
Although I had already written a bit about why I was attempting to define "game" in the book, I had not thought about asking these questions, and thus I had been moving back and forth among these usages without thought. This is the kind of insightful analysis you get from years of experience in defending and presenting your thoughts in academia, and which Sebastian generously shared with a complete stranger in a coffeehouse. I am very grateful.
When I got home, Tal told me that my hair was sticking up and my shirt was on backwards and inside out.
New England
We bought a BBQ, and some kosher food at The Butcherie, and ate at the nearby Taam China kosher Chinese restaurant for lunch. We headed out for what was supposed to be a three hour drive but ended up being a five and a half hour drive through beautiful New England. Once we were far away from Boston, most of our drive was through small towns and one lane highways through the woods. Very beautiful. However, without GPS, we still either got lost or occasionally thought we were lost and had to stop to figure out where we were going.
In one of those stops we managed to connect to Wi-Fi for around 4 minutes, and during that time Saarya was able to download the destination, the navigation, and many of the maps on the route. The phone's GPS works even without Wi-Fi or cellular connection, so long as all of that is pre-loaded onto the phone and so long as you stay on route. It helped us get back onto my pre-printed route. If we were not scheduled to meet the person whose cabin we were renting at a particular time, I would have stopped several more times to wander around in antique stores, roadside vegetable stands, and several pretty lakes and streams. Once you get into Vermont, the vegetable stands become maple product stands. We met the guy and he was willing to wait while we picked up some more food items.
The Cabin
It's really a cabin in the wood that the guy had built himself. Stunning setting and a beautiful property, it lacks only Wi-Fi, telephone, and a bathroom. It uses an outhouse. There is only cold water piped in from the stream into tanks. He provides a bathtub to use - outdoors - with only cold running water. For hot water, you have to fill up some buckets, lower heating coils into them, and wait. This kind of setup might be a first for my kids, and it's been a long time for me, too. We were able to use the Wi-Fi from the house next door, which also belongs to him.
Dinner was BBQ'd chicken and farmer's market vegetables.
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Vacation Day 1: A Laser Light Show in a Toxic Atmosphere
Tal, Saarya, and I were not overly impressed with Alitalia.
I have never flown and spent less time in the airport terminals. We were delayed by traffic on the way to the airport and had only five minutes spare before security and maybe ten minutes after security. I have free business credit card access to the Dan Trackline lounge, which I thought we could all use, but it turns out I would have had to spend 90 NIS each for the kids for those 10 minutes.
Our first flight to Rome was delayed getting out of the gate, though it was unclear why since everyone was onboard and seated. Because of that delay, we missed the take off window and had to wait for another. We lifted off an hour late. No screens on the small plane (Airbus 321), but we did get a meat meal for breakfast (both corned beef and lox, in separate containers), which surprised me; a positive mark for them, but meat? Many of our neighbors didn't eat their breakfasts (I don't know if it was not kosher enough, or just that it was meat for breakfast), so we ate some of theirs as well.
We had a connecting flight in Rome which I thought was scheduled to leave an hour earlier than it actually was. I thought it was supposed to leave at 2:30, but it was scheduled to leave at 3:20. It turned out I was incorrect and it had always been scheduled to leave at that time. Nevertheless, I messaged everyone from Rome that we were going to be an hour late. Which was wrong.
We had to go through security AGAIN in Rome, which made no sense, since we originated outside the country, continued outside the country, both flights were Alitalia, and there was no chance for anyone except for the airport security to hand me an Uzi between getting off the plane and stepping through security again. We had two whole minutes in the airport, and then our flight left ... wait for it ... an hour late (4:30), because a passenger checked in a bag and didn't board the plane, or so they said. So the message I sent ended up being accurate after all.
This flight had no personal screens, but it had about six of those old-fashioned CRT main cabin screens that flip down. Ours didn't until I went over to it and hit it. Then it violently shook until I hit it again (just call me Han Solo). The screen was nearly unwatchable, like watching 1970s VCR recordings on a malfunctioning TV (scrolling bottom to top with static bands across the middle). The screen four in front of us got their own laser light show. Every screen showed the same clips but in entirely different colors.
The safety instructions played: "Welcome aboard Alitalia airlines, where [freeze] ... [unfreeze] your comfort and [freeze] [wobble] safety are our top concerbabburble [freeze] [flash] [blank] Welcome aboard Alitalia, where ..."
The first movie was the new Cinderella (or maybe it was Patton; it was hard to tell). It wasn't bad but it was totally unnecessary for the world to have this movie as it adds nothing new. The second was The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel which I didn't watch.
The first meal was ok (but fish, so not for me), the second was basic. Drinks were available in the back the whole flight. So that was positive, too. The staff was friendly. The flight was otherwise uneventful. Except that Saarya's seat strongly reeked of urine the entire flight, which made breathing difficult. We only figured out it was the seat about mid-way through (since the entire area stank) and then covered it with a blanket and sat in the next seat which was empty. The seat baskets that held the magazines were ripped; just how old is an Airbus 330 anyway?
Boston airport customs was insane: half of us departed the plane, and the other half waited 15 minutes for some of the customs area to clear a bit before getting to depart. There were endless rope lines to passport and face scanning machines that worked for me and Tal but not for Saarya, so we had to wait in line again.
I got a car through RelayRides, and the guy was waiting for me. That seemed to go well: he seemed nice, the car seems nice, so as long as I don't scrape the car and try to blame him, and he doesn't try to blame me for the existing scrape, we should be good.
It is a nightmare to travel without a phone: no phone, no SMS, no GPS. I pre-printed all of the instructions from Google maps, and even so I kept thinking we were going the wrong way (though we weren't). We won't get SIM cards until Wed.
All in all, not too bad, so thank God.
Yehuda
I have never flown and spent less time in the airport terminals. We were delayed by traffic on the way to the airport and had only five minutes spare before security and maybe ten minutes after security. I have free business credit card access to the Dan Trackline lounge, which I thought we could all use, but it turns out I would have had to spend 90 NIS each for the kids for those 10 minutes.
Our first flight to Rome was delayed getting out of the gate, though it was unclear why since everyone was onboard and seated. Because of that delay, we missed the take off window and had to wait for another. We lifted off an hour late. No screens on the small plane (Airbus 321), but we did get a meat meal for breakfast (both corned beef and lox, in separate containers), which surprised me; a positive mark for them, but meat? Many of our neighbors didn't eat their breakfasts (I don't know if it was not kosher enough, or just that it was meat for breakfast), so we ate some of theirs as well.
We had a connecting flight in Rome which I thought was scheduled to leave an hour earlier than it actually was. I thought it was supposed to leave at 2:30, but it was scheduled to leave at 3:20. It turned out I was incorrect and it had always been scheduled to leave at that time. Nevertheless, I messaged everyone from Rome that we were going to be an hour late. Which was wrong.
We had to go through security AGAIN in Rome, which made no sense, since we originated outside the country, continued outside the country, both flights were Alitalia, and there was no chance for anyone except for the airport security to hand me an Uzi between getting off the plane and stepping through security again. We had two whole minutes in the airport, and then our flight left ... wait for it ... an hour late (4:30), because a passenger checked in a bag and didn't board the plane, or so they said. So the message I sent ended up being accurate after all.
This flight had no personal screens, but it had about six of those old-fashioned CRT main cabin screens that flip down. Ours didn't until I went over to it and hit it. Then it violently shook until I hit it again (just call me Han Solo). The screen was nearly unwatchable, like watching 1970s VCR recordings on a malfunctioning TV (scrolling bottom to top with static bands across the middle). The screen four in front of us got their own laser light show. Every screen showed the same clips but in entirely different colors.
The safety instructions played: "Welcome aboard Alitalia airlines, where [freeze]
The first movie was the new Cinderella (or maybe it was Patton; it was hard to tell). It wasn't bad but it was totally unnecessary for the world to have this movie as it adds nothing new. The second was The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel which I didn't watch.
The first meal was ok (but fish, so not for me), the second was basic. Drinks were available in the back the whole flight. So that was positive, too. The staff was friendly. The flight was otherwise uneventful. Except that Saarya's seat strongly reeked of urine the entire flight, which made breathing difficult. We only figured out it was the seat about mid-way through (since the entire area stank) and then covered it with a blanket and sat in the next seat which was empty. The seat baskets that held the magazines were ripped; just how old is an Airbus 330 anyway?
Boston airport customs was insane: half of us departed the plane, and the other half waited 15 minutes for some of the customs area to clear a bit before getting to depart. There were endless rope lines to passport and face scanning machines that worked for me and Tal but not for Saarya, so we had to wait in line again.
I got a car through RelayRides, and the guy was waiting for me. That seemed to go well: he seemed nice, the car seems nice, so as long as I don't scrape the car and try to blame him, and he doesn't try to blame me for the existing scrape, we should be good.
It is a nightmare to travel without a phone: no phone, no SMS, no GPS. I pre-printed all of the instructions from Google maps, and even so I kept thinking we were going the wrong way (though we weren't). We won't get SIM cards until Wed.
All in all, not too bad, so thank God.
Yehuda
Sunday, July 19, 2015
Status Update - Jerusalem, Book, Vacation
I am happy to be back in Jerusalem, hosting the Jerusalem Strategy Gaming Club, attending Jerusalem's uniquely Jewish and Israeli divrei torah and poetry slams, in my new apt, valued by my manager at my new job, back in my Carlebach shul, and close to my Jerusalem friends and family.
Despite intense planning for a major apt renovation and for my upcoming trip with the kids, I have, oddly enough, made some progress on my book. A little about the book:
I won't make any progress on the book over my vacation, but I hope to provide some new pictures and travel stories. Tal, Saarya, and I are going to Vermont and Maine for 11 days and then to Rome for 6 days. The trip starts on July 27. If you're in the area, contact me and let's see if we can get together.
Despite intense planning for a major apt renovation and for my upcoming trip with the kids, I have, oddly enough, made some progress on my book. A little about the book:
- It contains a new and original definition of "game", one that, unlike any definition until now, contains no edge-cases: what is a game is clearly a game, and what isn't, isn't.
- It presents an extensive new taxonomy of games, entirely unlike any game taxonomy that has ever been presented.
- It continues the subjects I've explored, on this blog and my other blogs: how games intersect life, including motivation, magic circles, gamification, arts, and ethics.
- It has a few other surprises, including some original games
I won't make any progress on the book over my vacation, but I hope to provide some new pictures and travel stories. Tal, Saarya, and I are going to Vermont and Maine for 11 days and then to Rome for 6 days. The trip starts on July 27. If you're in the area, contact me and let's see if we can get together.
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Movie Reviews: Ex Machina, The Age of Adelaine, Pitch Perfect 2, Inside Out, Jurrasic World, Song of the Sea
Ex Machina: Unfortunately, this is a very good movie. Unfortunately, because I'm not entirely happy with the answers to some of the questions raised in the movie, but I admit that they are asked and answered competently and consistently.
This movie is in the same cinema space as Moon and Gattaca; if you liked them, you will like this, possibly more. It has only four characters. One is a billionaire who has built high-functioning human-like robots, that may or may not be conscious. Two is a programmer in his company who the billionaire selects to "test" a robot to see if it can pass the Turing test. Three is the robot, a female (naturally, since the billionaire is a bit of a douchebag). And four is another woman (robot?) who serves and services the billionaire but speaks no English. Allegedly.
Of course, questions about how you can tell actual consciousness from programming are raised, as well as the morality of keeping potentially conscious beings in captivity, and who is or who isn't a robot. I can't give you much more without giving away the answers. I'll just say that it's acted and scripted well. There are a few script problems (why use non-biometric key cards for security when you have ubiquitous face scanning recognition cameras?), but again I can't raise most of them without giving away the answers (email me if you want to hear them). But nothing major. It's an engaging think-piece that I never want to see again.
The Age of Adelaine: There came a point about 1/3 of the way through this movie when I realized that this is a nearly perfect romantic movie. These come along every few years, like The Time Traveler's Wife. There are movie formulas at work, yes, but it's not the formulaic story arc that nearly mars the sweet flow of the movie; it's the formulaic camera work. Because of certain camera angles and framing, some of the "surprises" are telegraphed minutes before they should be. Otherwise ...
Adelaine stopped aging sometime in the early 20th century (through the nonsense of movie science). She keeps herself aloof from romance because she doesn't want to be captured as a scientific freak, but, of course, someone worms his way into her heart. Will she trust him with her secret? Will he freak out? What will happen to them in the long run?
Great acting, fine characters, sweet romance. My favorite movie this year, so far.
Pitch Perfect 2: A pretty forgettable sequel/remake that is still passably entertaining most of the time. The first one seemed fresh, even if it was basically Glee meets Bring It On. It had fresh comedy bits, the judges and Fat Amy were super funny, Anna Kendrick and her cups were ana-amazing, and aca-everything wormed its way into my brain like an aca-earworm.
There is nothing special about this one. Some of the jokes are funny, some of the singing is ok. The conflicts are highly contrived and unconvincingly scripted. The requisite aca-battle was poorly executed. Anna Kendrick was still cute - her running gag of not being able to diss her competition was cute but forced - but again nothing special. Forced seems to be the word I'm looking for. Ho hum.
Inside Out: Pixar has another hit. The film focuses tangentially on a girl traveling to another city because her family moves, but mostly on the five emotions that control her behavior: joy, sadness, disgust, fear, and anger. Joy is in nominally charge, with the others taking the helm when required, although joy doesn't understand why sadness should ever get a turn. She tries to sideline her. Disaster ensues after the move, where joy and sadness get lost in the recesses of the brain, leaving only fear, disgust, and anger in charge.
The absolutely funniest moment are when we get a peek into the control centers of the other people who surround the girl, but these are few. Joy's and sadness' journey is entertaining and they go much further into metaphor than I was expecting, and so create a rich story. Some of the metaphor doesn't quite work: are you telling me that sadness really hasn't demonstrated any use for the first 11 years of this girl's life? Really? Every day has been basically joyful? And how is it that joy experiences sadness, and vice versa?
It's not as good as Wall-E or Up: the characters are unrelatable, and the girl's story is not really the central story, so she doesn't have much of a character. But it's still a good story. I'm looking forward to the sequel after she hits puberty; that will be interesting.
Jurassic World: I watched the first and liked it, though the characters were limited to two-dimensional Spielbergian arcs: setup, spunky behavior, declaration of independence, conflict, odd moment of pathos, joint struggle to survive, denouement with caring looks. I admit that I didn't watch the next movies in the series.
This one is good, but the characters are even less fleshed out: one-dimensional. They exist as plot devices. The effects are great, of course, and the action ... actions. There is a one-dimensional bad guy who gets his one dimensional comeuppance. It's so shallow in the character department that it feels like ... a Marvel movie. Yep, as I type this, that's what it reminds me of: a Marvel movie, but without superpowers, just monsters.
The "taming" of the velociraptors was contrived and unbelievable, but it's hard to complain about unrealistic when you're watching a freakin' dinosaur park movie. The story works well enough to entertain, so there you go.
Song of the Sea:A breathtakingly gorgeous animation that reminds us that Disney and Pixar (and anime) aren't the only options when it comes to animation. This movie uses traditional Irish pictures to create 2-D animation that intentionally lacks perspective, but it's lack of realism doesn't remove you from the story. The music is lovely too, if a bit repetitive.
The story is based on a the myth of the selkie (woman who is a seal); a boy resents his baby sister (his mother was lost when his sister was born) and is taken by his grandmother to live away from his father and the sea. He undergoes a heroic quest to get home; his sister tags along, but it turns out that her need to return to the sea may be more important than his.
The story is nice enough for an adult - mythical and sweet - but it takes quite a while to get going and doesn't always present itself clearly. You are not always sure exactly who need to do what, or why, until the middle of the movie. That's kind of sin, and it distinguishes it from other mythical animation films like Miyazaki's. I think kids will be bored during the first half; I only wasn't bored because I was loving the pictures.
This movie is in the same cinema space as Moon and Gattaca; if you liked them, you will like this, possibly more. It has only four characters. One is a billionaire who has built high-functioning human-like robots, that may or may not be conscious. Two is a programmer in his company who the billionaire selects to "test" a robot to see if it can pass the Turing test. Three is the robot, a female (naturally, since the billionaire is a bit of a douchebag). And four is another woman (robot?) who serves and services the billionaire but speaks no English. Allegedly.
Of course, questions about how you can tell actual consciousness from programming are raised, as well as the morality of keeping potentially conscious beings in captivity, and who is or who isn't a robot. I can't give you much more without giving away the answers. I'll just say that it's acted and scripted well. There are a few script problems (why use non-biometric key cards for security when you have ubiquitous face scanning recognition cameras?), but again I can't raise most of them without giving away the answers (email me if you want to hear them). But nothing major. It's an engaging think-piece that I never want to see again.
The Age of Adelaine: There came a point about 1/3 of the way through this movie when I realized that this is a nearly perfect romantic movie. These come along every few years, like The Time Traveler's Wife. There are movie formulas at work, yes, but it's not the formulaic story arc that nearly mars the sweet flow of the movie; it's the formulaic camera work. Because of certain camera angles and framing, some of the "surprises" are telegraphed minutes before they should be. Otherwise ...
Adelaine stopped aging sometime in the early 20th century (through the nonsense of movie science). She keeps herself aloof from romance because she doesn't want to be captured as a scientific freak, but, of course, someone worms his way into her heart. Will she trust him with her secret? Will he freak out? What will happen to them in the long run?
Great acting, fine characters, sweet romance. My favorite movie this year, so far.
Pitch Perfect 2: A pretty forgettable sequel/remake that is still passably entertaining most of the time. The first one seemed fresh, even if it was basically Glee meets Bring It On. It had fresh comedy bits, the judges and Fat Amy were super funny, Anna Kendrick and her cups were ana-amazing, and aca-everything wormed its way into my brain like an aca-earworm.
There is nothing special about this one. Some of the jokes are funny, some of the singing is ok. The conflicts are highly contrived and unconvincingly scripted. The requisite aca-battle was poorly executed. Anna Kendrick was still cute - her running gag of not being able to diss her competition was cute but forced - but again nothing special. Forced seems to be the word I'm looking for. Ho hum.
Inside Out: Pixar has another hit. The film focuses tangentially on a girl traveling to another city because her family moves, but mostly on the five emotions that control her behavior: joy, sadness, disgust, fear, and anger. Joy is in nominally charge, with the others taking the helm when required, although joy doesn't understand why sadness should ever get a turn. She tries to sideline her. Disaster ensues after the move, where joy and sadness get lost in the recesses of the brain, leaving only fear, disgust, and anger in charge.
The absolutely funniest moment are when we get a peek into the control centers of the other people who surround the girl, but these are few. Joy's and sadness' journey is entertaining and they go much further into metaphor than I was expecting, and so create a rich story. Some of the metaphor doesn't quite work: are you telling me that sadness really hasn't demonstrated any use for the first 11 years of this girl's life? Really? Every day has been basically joyful? And how is it that joy experiences sadness, and vice versa?
It's not as good as Wall-E or Up: the characters are unrelatable, and the girl's story is not really the central story, so she doesn't have much of a character. But it's still a good story. I'm looking forward to the sequel after she hits puberty; that will be interesting.
Jurassic World: I watched the first and liked it, though the characters were limited to two-dimensional Spielbergian arcs: setup, spunky behavior, declaration of independence, conflict, odd moment of pathos, joint struggle to survive, denouement with caring looks. I admit that I didn't watch the next movies in the series.
This one is good, but the characters are even less fleshed out: one-dimensional. They exist as plot devices. The effects are great, of course, and the action ... actions. There is a one-dimensional bad guy who gets his one dimensional comeuppance. It's so shallow in the character department that it feels like ... a Marvel movie. Yep, as I type this, that's what it reminds me of: a Marvel movie, but without superpowers, just monsters.
The "taming" of the velociraptors was contrived and unbelievable, but it's hard to complain about unrealistic when you're watching a freakin' dinosaur park movie. The story works well enough to entertain, so there you go.
Song of the Sea:A breathtakingly gorgeous animation that reminds us that Disney and Pixar (and anime) aren't the only options when it comes to animation. This movie uses traditional Irish pictures to create 2-D animation that intentionally lacks perspective, but it's lack of realism doesn't remove you from the story. The music is lovely too, if a bit repetitive.
The story is based on a the myth of the selkie (woman who is a seal); a boy resents his baby sister (his mother was lost when his sister was born) and is taken by his grandmother to live away from his father and the sea. He undergoes a heroic quest to get home; his sister tags along, but it turns out that her need to return to the sea may be more important than his.
The story is nice enough for an adult - mythical and sweet - but it takes quite a while to get going and doesn't always present itself clearly. You are not always sure exactly who need to do what, or why, until the middle of the movie. That's kind of sin, and it distinguishes it from other mythical animation films like Miyazaki's. I think kids will be bored during the first half; I only wasn't bored because I was loving the pictures.
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