Fincher: This Ain't No Game

I like puzzles. I also like games. With the advent of massively multi-player online role-playing games, some people have immersed their entire lives into video games. Putting aside their physical ability to even walk up a flight of stairs after staring at a computer screen full of Warlocks, Wizards, and Goblins, I somehow think that these people would likely not find being part of a real-world version of “The Game” very fun. But I'd certainly enjoy watching it.

The Game is a suspense thriller directed by David Fincher. I figure that it was only suitable to revisit this film since Fincher's most recent film, The Social Network, has just been nominated for a whole slew of awards this season. The movie stars Michael Douglas who plays Nicholas Van Orton, an extremely rich but lonely San Francisco banker. His life takes a wild turn when his brother, Conrad (Sean Penn) gives him a gift - from a company called Consumer Recreation Services (CRS). This gift turns out to be more than Nicholas bargained for.

Up until that point his routine is mundane at best. He works all day amassing huge amounts of wealth and then returns home to his large and quiet mansion, eats dinner, watches the evening news, and goes to sleep only to repeat the same routine all over again the following day. His life is so empty that Nicolas spends his birthday alone in his house, his only real present is a cupcake left by his housekeeper along with dinner. All of that has changed for Nicolas. Consumer Recreation Services seems more intent on killing him than showing him a good time.  What comes next is a game of cat and mouse. Nicholas not only has to fear for his life, but his sanity as well.

The Game is an atmospheric and masterfully shot film. On top of all that, the film has a long history. The films inception began in 1991. The film's original director was Jonathan Mostow (U-571 and Terminator 3) who actually spent years developing the project. He left the project to direct another film, and those duties eventually fell to David Fincher. Kyle MacLachlan was originally attached to play the Nicholas Van Orton role. Then, Fincher planned to film this movie and then film Seven, but when Brad Pitt was available to do Seven, The Game was put on hold.

One thing I found interesting while taking a look at the behind the scenes of this film was that Fincher said that the film is about "loss of control. The purpose of The Game is to take your greatest fear, put it this close to your face and say 'There, you're still alive. It's all right.'" I suppose the Saw franchise took that to the next logical conclusion, though they corrupted the meaning in convoluted reasoning and eventually took the concept so far off the map it was rendered nothing but "torture porn."

The Game is enjoyable, the premise is pretty frightening, and believable so long as you don't look too closely at some of the extraordinary steps that CRS and others are able to take in such a short window of time. The situations that Nicholas gets put in seem too perfect in retrospect, and the kinds of contingency plans that would need to be thought up of would be shocking.  There are moments where the company's ability to whitewash all clues from a crime scene seem fantastical. Then again, this film came out in 1997. In today's world, a few simple internet searches would likely uncover the truth unless CRS would be able to hire the same people who can cover the online tracks of those bogus magazine circulation companies that still do all those phony door-to-door sales.

With all that said, I don't think that the film insults the audiences' intelligence as many films that pull a major twist at the end do these days. It really keeps the audience engaged, thinking, and guessing as to what will happen next. All in all it's a fun ride, one I like to revisit often, a testament to how well crafted this game really was.

The 83rd Academy Award Nominees Are In!

Well folks, the nominations for Academy Awards are out and the nominees for Best Picture are:

• Black Swan
• The Fighter
• Inception
• The Kids Are All Right
• The King's Speech
• 127 Hours
• The Social Network
• Toy Story 3
• True Grit
• Winter's Bone

For a full listing of all the awards, visit the 83rd Annual Academy Awards website.

I've tried to make it a goal of at least seeing at 20% of the nominated films each year. I call it a personal success if I saw one of the nominated films before they were announced. In the past that would mean seeing at least one of the 5 films, but with the recent move of having 10 films compete for Best Picture, I've been forced to step up my game and strive to see at least two of 'em. So far with the expanded 10 film category, I've managed to go two for two in seeing 2 of the nominated films before they were announced. However, I must confess in bitter defeat that the 81st Academy Awards (in which Slumdog Millionaire won) is the only year since 1985 that I still haven't seen a single one of the nominated films, even to this day. Some day, just not this day.

Of the films this year, I've only seen The King's Speech and Inception. Both were fantastic films. While I will probably see all the films on that list one day, likely fulfilling some kind of bar bet, the only one that I'm really disappointed I've yet to see is True Grit. Since I can't attest to the rest of the lot, I can only go on my gut and ignorance and take a bet that The King's Speech will take the award.

The award show will air Sunday, February 27, 2011.

Thoughts On The Walking Dead

I love The Walking Dead graphic novel.  I got to meet Robert Kirkman, get his autograph, and sit-in on the Walking Dead panel at New York Comic Con.  So, as you can see, The Walking Dead means a great deal to me.  It is a fantastic work of fiction and is an ideal candidate for a television series.  I was thrilled to hear that AMC would be picking up the show, seeing as they have an amazing track record (Breaking Bad and Mad Men anyone?) , and that Frank Darabont would be involved in the project.

Now that the first season has come and gone, I feel that as a fan, I should share the things that make me feel cautiously optimistic about the show.  The premier was some of the best television I’ve seen in some time.  It used a lot of the early memorable scenes from the comic, the acting was spot on, the writing was sharp,  it was beautifully shot, and Bear McCreary’s score was 30 shades of awesome.  The premier managed to cater to The Walking Dead fanatic as well as the newcomer.  This is the challenge that the show faces: Making the show accessible to a new audience while keeping the rabid fan base happy in the process.

Six episodes hardly constitutes a full season, at least here in the states.  That’s more along the lines of a miniseries.  I was okay with the short but sweet season, it gave us enough to salivate over for the next year, and it wasn’t too longwinded.  The primary complaint I keep hearing is that the show is deviating too much from the comic.  As a reader of the comic, that may be true, but they didn’t go crazy.  They introduced a few new characters, they explain the origins of the walkers, and they are creating a few sub-plots that aren’t in the comic.  So what?  This is an entirely different medium, we can’t expect everything to match the comic panel for panel.

There are some themes, scenes, and other notable things in the comic that I’m sure we won’t ever be seeing.  This is due largely to the fact that there is just some absurdly violent scenes that I feel just wouldn’t translate to television.  Kirkman has no qualms killing off key characters if it means moving the story forward in the comic.  It should be interesting to see how they tackle this with new and old characters in the show.  I should also note that the show manages to fill in some gaps from the comics early days, which is something I found very interesting. 

I was very impressed with how Darabont was able to retain not only the look and feel of the comic, but was also conscious of the fact that the comic is all about the characters.  Thanks to sharp writing and strong performances, we are able to see the characters deal with loss, desperation, sorrow, and madness.  How far are they willing to go to survive? How do they cope?  It’s these sort of questions that present themselves in the comic and the show did a great job addressing some of the same questions.  I suppose that’s what makes the show exciting, the fact that not everything is the same as the comic, and fans shouldn’t expect it to be. 

There were a couple of episodes that were a bit drab and left some questions unanswered.  We still have no idea what happened to Michael Rooker’s character (Merle Dixon) in the show.  Rick and a few others go searching for him, but we just assume he’s run off somewhere.  The audience is given a few bits of evidence that he may be alive, but they could also interpret this as him being dead.  There is also speculation that Rooker will play the Governor character from the comic book.  For those who follow the comic, Rooker would be amazing at that role. 

The show’s strongest episodes were the premier and the finale, the two most important episodes.  The episodes between do a good job of introducing some new characters, building relationships, and creating some interesting sub-plots.  AMC continues their trend of phenomenal programming with The Walking Dead.  Now that the series has been renewed for a second season and Darabont starting fresh with a freelance writing staff, I can only imagine what’s on the horizon.  Hopefully we’ll see more Rooker.