I can sort of see the thought process that leads to this. “There aren’t many Japanese people in Australia and NZ, we need to target non-Asians in our advertising to increase soy sauce consumption!” -> “Japanese people use a lot of soy sauce, we should target them directly by placing an ad in a Japanese magazine” -> “Let’s translate one of our other ads into Japanese!”. Which leads to… *facepalm*

Nice soy sauce though. For my Japanese marketing/advertising and consumer information needs, I usually browse Japan Marketing News and JapanConsuming. On a more lighthearted note, Konbini Life is fun – microreviews of various sweets bought at convenience stores in Japan. Lisa at TokyoMango also has the occasional entry about (generally non-edible) interesting Japanese products.

And I’ll return to more regular blogging… some day. Maybe not right now, but I just had to share this.

The news is that the site for the movie “Simple Jack”, which stars Ben Stiller’s character Tugg Speedman in a parody of Hollywood stars taking roles as mentally handicapped people (Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump, Juliette Lewis in The Other Sister etc.) in hopes of getting an Oscar. A bit more info here. I keep forgetting the word “retard” is offensive in the world outside of teens, 20-somethings and the internet. But yeah, the whole issue appears to have been that the background context (that it’s a parody of something that should perhaps be considered more offensive, yet accepted as commonplace) was overlooked and/or not known.

Here’s the poster in question. Judge for yourself.

The controversy hasn’t pulled the plug on any of the other sites though – more have gone up. http://www.jeffportnoy.com/, the site for Jack Black’s character and http://www.fatties2.com/, the site for his grossout comedy that stars him as 4 different characters. As well as that, the site for http://www.alpa-chino.com/, Alpa Chino, one of the other characters and that of his product “Booty Sweat” are also up, as well as his Myspace. Also Make Pretty Skin Clinic, Cody Effects – Pyrotechnic for hire, Tropic Thunder: The Book. I think that’s most of them.

But they still haven’t responded to my panda email :(

• Ghost in the Shell remake rights picked up by Dreamworks – pushed ahead by Steven Spielberg and with no one but producer Steven Paul (of SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2, Bratz and Ghost Rider fame) attached to the project so far. And before you laugh at the hapless Shirow fans – he’s also attached to the Tekken and Castlevania remakes.
• Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse – Cowboy Bebop remake announced, with Keanu Reeves attached to play Spike Spiegel. It does say it’s just a rumour, but the previously announced info, with Keanu’s agent/manager Erwin Stoff as producer attached points in that direction. Really now. It’ll be horrible.
• Zack Snyder’s Watchmen adaptation has teaser footage released. I don’t care, to be honest. I saw the trailer ahead of The Dark Knight and it was a confusing mess. Calling Zack Snyder visionary is a joke. Dawn of the Dead came on the heels of 28 Days Later, 300 was after Sin City and Watchmen is coming after basically every single other goddamn comicbook movie. He’s a hack who makes technically sound but incredibly shallow and unsatisfying films – calling him Michael Bay for fanboys does Michael Bay a disservice. His films have the potential to be so much more, but I have this feeling that he’s sitting there in the background going “Oh shit, the audience is about to start thinking! Quick! Stop them! Spoonfeed them some more information!”.
• Just when you thought Singstar couldn’t get any gayer after Singstar Anthems (probably the best of the Singstar games out there along with Singstar 90s), Singstar: Hits from the Musicals is allegedly in development. I do like that they’re going an anti-Rock Band/Guitar Hero route with these games, and I admit, “Can You Feel The Love Tonight” is damn tempting.
• Mythological Veterinarian sounds like an incredibly cute concept, though the whole point of comedies is that they’re cheap to make and this sounds like it’ll need a lot of creature effects. Still, gonna keep my eye on it.
• Spiderman Musical wtf. Directed by Julie Taymor, so obviously they want to recapture the magic of The Lion King Musical (interesting trivia – Timon and Pumbaa’s dialogue is localised for the various regions, even within countries. In the Japanese run, the Nagoya, Tokyo and Fukuoka productions each had different regional accents for the characters). But yeah.
  

  Arache, a beautiful, boastful young woman turned into a spider for her hubris and lack of respect for the gods. She subsequently appears to Peter Parker and the audience as in turn a powerful spider-woman who comes from another time to inspire Peter; an otherworldly lover; a bride; a terrifying (and sexy) dark goddess of vengeance; a dance partner in a charged and violent spiders dance of death; and, finally, a lonely, fragile young woman.”

  This just doesn’t make sense.

As well as all that, the success of The Dark Knight – currently number 1 on IMDB, breaking records left and right. And of course, the viral marketing campaign was a huge success. Indeed, even just Gotham Cable News is a good watch to prepare for the film or to watch later as a supplement.

So naturally, everyone and their dog wants to start viral marketing or an ARG of some kind.

• What looks like it’s trying to be this year’s Halo 2 Ilovebees – Resistance 2 has a game going on at http://www.getawarjob.com/, where you can sign up to join their army (but I wouldn’t recommend it – they’ll test drugs on you).
• Need for Speed has a viral site up at http://www.whichroadtotake.com/, which is… kinda lame really. You click around and find video clips. The weird numbers spell out “Undercover” when inputted into a cellphone with predictive text.
• The game Too Human has a weird one up, apparently about the Goblin Man of Norway. Yeah I don’t know what the fuck.
• Apparently there’ll be some sort of Watchmen related viral material – naturally, they’re all about the bandwagon. The source for this is apparently somewhere within G4’s coverage of SDCC, but… ugh, don’t want to touch that shit.
• Lost is starting up again, apparently. They had a fairly successful campaign a few years back, and at this year’s Comic Con was recruiting for the Dharma initiative.
• Tropic Thunder, the comedy about a group of actors filming a war film (Kung Fu Panda and Iron Man go to the Jungle), has a few viral marketing sites up which are rather giggle-worthy. http://www.tuggspeedman.com/ and http://www.kirklazarus.com/ are both up, as are the various websites for the movies they’ve been in. I tried emailing the Panda Relocation Foundation regarding a panda, but they haven’t gotten back to me…
• Can probably expect something from the upcoming Star Trek film as well – the creator JJ Abrams is big on the viral thing, what with Lost and Cloverfield both having big online campaigns.

Whew, I think that’s it for now.

Anyway, I read this, and was rather irked by the whole thing. If you don’t care to follow a link, basically it’s full of stories about people playing co-op Pixeljunk Monsters with their girlfriends/wives/fiancées.

I guess it’s the condescending “Wow, my silly little girlfriend didn’t like videogames and now she sees the light!” tone that goes through every story. Every time they mention “cute” and even at one point “maternal instincts” it makes me a bit nauseous.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with not liking to play videogames – that’s most people for you. Likewise, I don’t think there’s anything terribly wrong with playing them – some people are into that kind of stuff. But when the two meet, and one assumes some sense of superiority over the other, that’s where the problems begin.

I really don’t think these people should be together, to be honest. You’d think a small matter of differing hobbies wouldn’t be a dealbreaker, but the more people I talk to the more I realise it might be. The problem is that it’s a bigger divide than most hobbies – it shows differing attitudes towards entertainment, technology, information, productive use of time and money and in general, having fun.

If your partner doesn’t like your games, they probably won’t like your comic collection, or the amount of money you spend on graphics cards, or they won’t understand why you want to go to a midnight screening of The Dark Knight, or they won’t stop feeling threatened by the amount of time you spend playing WoW (to be fair, the last one gets unhealthy fairly quickly). But the best you can hope for is that they simply won’t care, and that’s already a wedge between the two of you.

It gets worse though. What happens when they actively object? Often, it’s on the grounds of the whole “Grow up why don’t you?” argument – the idea that games are for teenagers. Maybe that’s true – maybe kids are in effect turning into teenagers more quickly, and that people are trying to stay teenagers longer, or whatever. Maybe we’re just more aware of the need to have some fun in our lives, and that the fast pace of modern life requires time to just sit down and relax. Whatever – I’m not too concerned with arguing for either side. My concern is that you like to play games.

But your partner objects. Which leads to situations like this:

Early this year, I purchased a PS3 under the pretense of playing games of all sorts with my girlfriend.

There’s a lot wrong with this. Why does he feel he can’t be honest about what he wants? Why does she control his purchases, in effect infantilising him? And why does that work as an agreement between them? I mean sure, part of him probably wants to be infantilised – the number of guys out there who want to be mothered is a bit scary really. And certainly a lot of girls see dating as a DIY improvement project (and of course, for both situations, it can work with the genders reversed).

So you wind up seeing situations where one party is forbidden to buy [x], or do [x] or whatever by their partner. This is quite common, and it leads to resentment on both sides. It effectively turns it into fishing/drinking/playing poker/buying shoes/going out with the “girls”/”boys” from our parents’ generation, when one of the purposes of hobbies was to get away from your partner. This is the 21st century, and I think nowadays the drive towards forming relationships is less and less for procreation and more for mutual company. And so, if you’re lucky, the relationship ends.

But why date these people in the first place? I mean, I’m not advocating finding someone with absolutely identical hobbies to you, but at the same time, I think hobbies and interests are something important that people neglect. There’s nothing like the experience of talking about something you enjoy to someone who understands it as well as you do (unless you’re one of those troglodytes who can’t enjoy something if their partner is better at it or knows more than them), and not being able to share that with a partner isn’t a good sign.

Unfortunately, people settle. And maybe this person seems okay apart from everything else. But while some differences can be worked out, I think this one goes fairly deep. Deep enough that you end up arguing, and unhappy, and both resentful of the other. And then you find me, but that’s another story altogether.

Maybe I’m talking out of my ass. Maybe I’m just overly disillusioned at the number of people I’ve seen unhappy because of these things (myself included). I’m certainly not discounting the idea that people can get along despite a lack of common interests. I just think internet/gaming/geek culture is a wider divide than most people give it credit for. Not only a cultural or interest divide, but a fundamental difference in mindset and priorities, and I don’t think enough people recognise it as such.

And so I don’t think those relationships are going to last. Maybe it’s a step in the right direction, but for the most part it looks like too little too late.

Edit: You’re so vain you think this post is about you.

That being said, you know, there was E3 and there was San Diego Comic Con, so all sorts of interesting shit out of there. So I guess I’ll write about those.

I’m kind of looking forward to playing Soul Calibur 4 at some point, for some reason I’m not entirely sure of. Maybe it’s the idea of laying the smackdown with Darth Vader, I don’t know. Still need to get my hands on Civilization: Revolution, and tentatively looking forward to Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. That and I need more money. Maybe I’ll buy up on games in September. I apparently have a Rock Band mic waiting for me in September too, which should be interesting. My Singstar skills are pretty poor as it is…

Ben X is about a boy called Ben with Asperger’s syndrome (a type of autism). Online, he’s a powerful warrior called Ben X, but in real life he’s a shy, misunderstood bullied teenager, and the film details his struggles.

Personally, while it was ambitious, I thought it failed on a number of levels. There were a few neat factors – most notably the incorporation of the MMORPG ArchLord and it was reasonably competent, but it just wasn’t mindblowing on any level. And I expect mindblowing from my festival films dammit!

So our poor Ben is played by an actor at least 10 years too old. He’s perhaps a bit too effective in his acting his part as a scary loser, because I thoroughly lost sympathy for him partway through and starting hoping the bullies would beat the crap out of him at one point. I guess it doesn’t help that I’m used to watching Asian films, which can be pretty extreme with the bullying scenes (even in comedies like Shaolin Soccer), and comparatively while Ben’s situation sucks, I find it hard to feel sorry for him (though part of that is because I’m just a bitch). Though it was well acted – I was especially taken by the fact that the same nervous tic is repeated by both the actor playing the young Ben and the older ben – and there are other instances of similar attention to detail.

Ben uses way too much internal monologue, because the director also wrote the novel upon which it was based. I had a writing teacher who said that we shouldn’t be afraid to slaughter our sacred cows (those being special, beautiful lines we love and don’t want to get rid of), and this guy really needed that advice. Internal monologues should be saved for bad TV.

The relationship between the guy and the girl kinda pissed me off. Anti-social internet guy winds up with a girlfriend who looks like this:

I really do hate watching movies where the guy gets a girl way too attractive for him. Their relationship overall was poorly depicted. Why would she know his cellphone number but not have his photo after a year? More importantly, why would a guy like that who doesn’t understand normal social interaction find anything attractive in a normal girl? Hell, is she a normal girl? Her personality is far too poorly defined. I feel the movie didn’t establish their relationship at all beyond a cursory conventional romantic thing, so there was a major lack of believability there.

For that matter, his online life wasn’t really defined beyond being “Level 80″ which was a shame, because it’s always quite interesting to see people’s online double lives, especially when contrasted against their real lives. Basically I think the writer was bluffing his way through the entire online aspect of the film (fucking noobs), which means that the main hook of the plot was… toothless (yay mixed metaphors!). The director also doesn’t know when to show and don’t tell, and I saw the ending coming a mile away.

The structure of the film is really disjointed as it’s intercut with “documentary” type interview footage with various characters – all of this is meant to convey some sense of dread, but instead cluttered up the film with largely empty dialogue (”It was only a matter of when.” “It’s sad when kids like this do things like this.” type stuff) and the desired effect could have been achieved more subtly (though it’s possible some parts to make it make more sense were cut during editing, or were from the original novel). But instead all it did was slow the film down at strange points, and could have been cut entirely, I think.

What I did like was the visual linking of the game world to the real world – the HUD would appear, the game mechanics would be mentioned as a metaphor for Ben’s life and so on, but these are applied pretty haphazardly. There’s also a weird Christian element that meshes poorly overall.

Don’t get me wrong though. It wasn’t a terrible film by any means – it was competently done. Just it fell short of the expectations I had of it given its presence in the Film Festival, plus my standards are absurdly high. The old man sitting a few seats down from me walked out, though I think there was an element of generation gap in that. I think to its target audience, it’ll hit its mark no matter what, but personally for me I feel it was lacking.

Kind of weird, but then it’s mostly because I got a massive urge to play Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic again. And while I’m at it, Knights of the Old Republic 2. And Jade Empire, also by Bioware and apparently very similar.

Mostly I just want to beat the shit out of stuff as a Sith lord (actually, probably lady – I’d rather be hitting on Carth than Bastila is all), which I suppose can wait till the release of Force Unleashed, but it’s just not the same.

I like the excessive amount of customisation – the lightsaber crystals, the armour options, the various force skills and all that. The characters aren’t ugly like in Oblivion and the combat is fun as hell. Plus you know, actual characterisation. Good stuff *thumbs up*

But yeah, I also want to know what happens next, hence the desire to play the sequel. I know it all goes to shit in the middle when they needed to complete the game to a deadline and so on, but I like the first game enough to warrant playing the second, I think. And Jade Empire is apparently similar, but outside the Star Wars universe. Which is cool – I’m not a huge Star Wars geek by any means.

And then I was thinking I might play around with XBMC too – I was thinking of just getting a Macbook and playing the PC versions of all those games, and then installing XBMC for Mac on it, but would my hypothetical laptop even be able to handle doing all of that?

But yeah, none of that happening as of yet. Just idle ideas still floating around, waiting to be realised. Meanwhile, I just sit here and feel like killing things with lightsabers, and am sad because I don’t have a proper media center.

There was a better article on this, but I can’t find it anymore so have this one – The Gamesman bought out by EB/Gamestop. I kept meaning to write about it back when it first broke, but… I’m lazy. It’s kind of a big deal because it means that the only game specialist stores in New Zealand with more than one branch will be EB stores, which are in a strange quantum state of being overpriced yet constantly on sale. I’m a bit surprised by this, because the management of GDE, which ran The Gamesman, seemed pretty anti-EB.

As in, it was not unheard of for staff in the course of a normal trip out to the mall to feel compelled to enter an EB store for the sole purpose of making disparaging comments about the decor, hygiene of the staff and general inferiority of the chain. Sure, the first few times it was amusing, but every single mall trip got to be a bit excessive, and wound up with this writer dragging said staff member out of the store forcibly and trying to avoid future mall visits. Talking to the girlfriend of another staff member dispelled the notion that this was an individual quirk. An entire company full of people who do this seems a bit weird, but I suppose their corporate culture was kinda weird anyway…

Plus there seemed to be a bit of bad blood due to EB’s decision to stock Madman DVDs from Madman Australia rather than the (now formerly) GDE-run Madman NZ, the reason for which was, from what I remember, that they suspected a conflict of interest due to their running of The Gamesman chain. While that’s ancient history due to EB no longer stocking DVDs and GDE no longer distributing Madman, I do wonder how much it cost to get Phil to swallow his pride and accept this offer. I’m also a bit wary that they seem to be setting the online business to compete directly with GP Store, but hey, I’m not telling anyone how to run their business.

The Vodafone iPhone pricing came out and wow, 1GB per month for $250 a month? Mmm, price gouging. There’s little else to say other than “Are you exploiting a monopoly here?” Gah this makes me remember why I hate marketing types.

So tl;dr – Australia fucking us over, America fucking us over, corporations fucking us over. Sucks living in a small country. The answer is always import.

Via Kotaku and video from Campbell Live

To be honest, this year I’m pretty underwhelmed by the range of films. I’m usually pretty big on seeing anime at the cinema, but there isn’t even very much of that. But this is a long entry nonetheless…

Anime is represented by Evangelion 1.0 and Vexille. I’d never heard of Vexille so I looked it up – it’s by the director of the live action Ping Pong. It’s also already been out in the States on DVD for the past month, ugh. So shit, basically – I’m pretty pissed that Madman NZ have screwed us out of any chance of seeing anything good. I’ll still wind up seeing Evangelion, but… eh. It’s at the Skycity cinemas, for one, which is highly unatmospheric (for any non-locals reading this, the main screenings are done in the theatre from the modern King Kong movie – you know, where they’re exhibiting Kong and he breaks free and escapes into New York).

There’s Sukiyaki Western Django, for the Takashi Miike fans here (the guy who did Audition). It sounds… kind of odd, but that’s Miike for you. I still have no idea what it’s about, so read the synopsis for yourself.

The new movie by Nobuhiro Yamashita (directed Linda Linda Linda, and The Matsugane Potshot Affair from last year’s film fest), which is apparently based on a shoujo manga series. It’s been given the horribly bland English title of A Gentle Breeze in the Village. A good watch if you like boring tedium/slice of life stories, I imagine – Linda Linda Linda was worth seeing for the opening tracking shot through the high school festival preparations alone. Also I Just Didn’t Do It, which won a boatload of things at the Japanese Academy Awards. Still looks… eh.

Lots of Chinese, Hong Kong and Taiwanese film for those of you who are into that sort of thing, including a retrospective on Edward Yang. Top of my list there is probably Stephen Chow’s CJ7 – it’ll be interesting to see him do something a bit different to his older work (Kung Fu Hustle, Shaolin Soccer). Also Wong Kar-wai’s Ashes of Time Redux, relegated to the ghetto of the Skycity theatre. I didn’t even know he did wuxia. Only two Korean films this year, and both look rapeful, so I think I’ll skip that.

Lots of American and French film, especially docos like King of Kong, Gonzo: The Life and Work of Doctor Hunter S. Thompson and Standard Operating Procedure. Personally I want to see Michel Gondry’s Be Kind, Rewind, partially because of this video (Probably best to watch the official trailer first though).

Zombies (though I haven’t been able to get into Romero), Nazis (Best Foreign Film at the Oscars last year), Das Experiment Lite, Turkmenistan, Ben X and Boy A both showing on the same day in Auckland (bound to cause confusion), the world’s most descriptive title, The Next Karate Kid, among others. Also lots of European torture porn in the Incredibly Strange Film Festival section, if you’re into that sort of thing.

There doesn’t seem to be anything too horribly pretentiously indie, which is a relief, but still seems like slim pickings this year. Especially The Incredible Film Festival section – I expected more than splatter movies, and it did not deliver.

So anyway, so a list of what I’m interested in.

A Gentle Breeze in the Village

Yeah, what the hell, might as well. If it isn’t boring as hell, it might not be so bad.

Be Kind, Rewind

Michel Gondry is an imperfect director, but I forgive him. Plus I like Jack Black and I think Mos Def is a highly underrated.

CJ7

Stephen Chow hasn’t steered me wrong so far.

Earth

Apparently the BBC’s Planet Earth is one of the best things on bluray right now, and this is derived from it. Sometimes you’re in the mood for a grandiose nature doco, though it remains to be seen whether I’ll feel this way in a few weeks’ time.

Evangelion 1.0

Because it’s a moneygrubbing attempt to leech money out of a classic series, and I’m stupid enough to fall for that shit.

Flight of the Red Balloon

The director Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s earlier film Cafe Lumiere holds a firm place in my heart – the main character in the film lives a few steps away from my grandparents’ house in Tokyo, and while the film’s slow pace is definitely not for everyone, for me it managed to perfectly capture a certain time and place that’s very special to me. If he can manage the same for the city of Paris, it’s definitely something I want to see.

In Bruges

Must see Irish humour, apparently.

In Search of a Midnight Kiss

This film apparently manages to make downtown Los Angeles look romantic. Kind of curious as to how that goes…

Obscene

One of my favourite poems is Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” (along with Oscar Wilde’s “Ballad of Reading Gaol”, if you must know) and this film covers, among other things, the legal battle to publish it in Britain. Plus censorship is something I’ve been fairly uneducated about and feel I should care more about.

The Orphanage

Apparently a great spooky Spanish horror film, strong on atmosphere. It’s a Spanish blockbuster too, which I like – I generally go to the festival to see popular foreign films, rather than stuff that’s niche even in its own country. Produced by Guillermo del Toro, and apparently it’s got that creepy Pan’s Labyrinth vibe. Plus, you know, orphanages are scary as shit.

Persepolis

It lost out on the Best Animated Feature Oscar to Ratatouille last year. Plus you know, Iranian Revolution black and white animated coming of age film in French… deep. It looks interesting, even though the last animation I saw in French was The Triplets of Belleville. I won’t hold that against it.

Standard Operating Procedure

I read this blog entry by the director Errol Morris regarding the Abu Ghraib photographs and immediately realised that I’d been doing the same kneejerk reaction. I don’t agree with everything he says, but from reading some of the other stuff he’s blogged, I admire his depth of analysis. Go read that article!

The Visitor

The director Tom McCarthy made The Station Agent, which was all sorts of things I should hate – Sundance acclaimed full of self-absorbed Americans wandering around doing nothing, yet McCarthy managed to make me thoroughly enjoy his film. While the synopsis worries me, I hope he can do the same this time around.

So like I said, slim pickings this year, heh.

Unfortunately, I don’t own any first party games that have trophy or soundtrack support currently. Which leaves my PSN account at Level 1 with no trophies, and still listening to the same old music. Just like everyone else on my PSN friends list (all two of them, one of which is my US account). But I can access the XMB in-game.

And at least I have the clock! Which is 5 minutes fast and thinks I’m on daylight saving time. *sigh* Hopefully Assassin’s Creed and Ratchet and Clank patch in trophies soon.