Bert Vandecasteele

Month: September 2010

  • Season 1

    Who would have thought? Well, actually, with the succes of movies like High School Musical, pretty much everyone. But still! For those not in the know (shame on you!): Glee is Fox’ hit comedy. It’s a musical series set in high school. We follow Spanish teacher Will in his quest for the reboot of the Glee Club – a club specialized in singing and dancing. But he runs into some problems along the way – the obvious overpresence of nerds and misfits in his club will soon turn out to be the least of his worries…

    All that jazz

    So it’s a musical series. If you don’t like musicals, stay far away, because this thing goes very deep. Sure, I guess you could watch it for the engaging characters or the hilarious comedy. The problem is: the characters aren’t all that engaging and the comedy isn’t that hilarious. Without the music, this series would have been just another mediocre teen series.

    But the music – oh the music! Some songs are just executed so brilliantly that I can’t help singing or dancing along with them. A few high points of the first season to help you get started: Madonna’s “like a virgin”, Van Halen’s “Jump”, Wicked’s “Defying Gravity” and an awesome cover of Lady Gaga’s “Pokerface”. If that doesn’t have you going, then I don’t know what will.

    Go Sue!

    What makes this series so watchable – aside from the music – are the characters. One thing I’ve noticed concerning this, is that Glee is at its best when it’s not entirely taking their characters seriously, but write them as if they were.

    Confused? One thing to criticize throughout Glee is that there’s an ever growing focus on drama. For every one of the funny moments, there’s a tear jerker. They try to do things fifty-fifty, but towards the end of the season, they were clearly struggling.

    So the series is at its best when it gently mocks the characters. If you’ve watched the finale, there’s a brilliant montage about halfway through that will show exactly what I mean. These are the moments where the series really shines. Unfortunately, as the first season goes along, it tends to get more serious and less funny. Fortunately for me, the music did get better as it went along, too, so at least I got distracted.

    In All…

    I’m very curious to see where the second season will go. I’d think a lot of restrictions they had on the first season (budget-wise, for example) have been lifted, seeing how they snatched some Emmies. It’s a dangerous position for a series like Glee to be in. The first season already had some moments where they brought in expensive Guest Stars (Olivia Newton-John for example) and I just cringed all the way through. I hope they focus on their own characters, on that snarky humour thing they’ve got and on the fabulous execution of their musical numbers.

    Glee is awesome. Every episode fills me with joy, just like a musical is supposed to do. Sure, it’s corny and the plot can get deeply stupid, but then the brilliantly executed music starts and I forget all about it. Oh, and Sue Sylvester. Never forget about Sue Sylvester.

  • 101 – Pilot

    There is a lot of things you might have against “The Event”, NBC’s replacement for Heroes (and the self-proclaimed spiritual successor to LOST). It’s very complicated, it follows a set of rules unknown to the viewer and it scrambles the plot around just for the sake of it. Every character seems to know more than you. Sounds like a recipe for disaster. But for some reason, after about twenty minutes, I got sucked into it and was on the edge of my seat.

    An Event

    Nobody knows what “The Event” is. After having watched the Pilot, you can guess that it might involve aliens or at least some paranormal activities. But what this Event is, or when it is… nobody knows. Is the “present time” described in the Pilot (e.g. everything happening in the airplane – because every good pilot starts with an airplane) the Event? We don’t know – and frankly, it didn’t really concern me.

    It’s hard to divulge anything about the story – mainly because the story didn’t really open up to us. It seems to revolve around a man named Sean, who finds himself enjoying a holiday with his girlfriend at one point and is hijacking a plane a week later. Sean’s story (and those of the other characters) seems to be put in a bag and shaken up: everything is told in achronological order.

    Nightmares

    I love this – even if the show seems to be throwing a tantrum for the sake of throwing one. There’s no real reason (yet) as to why the story is told this way. It might present itself at a later time, though. What it effectively does is create a horror scenario, a nightmare. Because you are missing pieces of the puzzle, certain scenes have an almost dreamlike quality. Who hasn’t dreamt of returning to their room, only to find out their room has gone? It’s these kind of tricks this pilot lives on – tricks that might get old over time, as we find out more and more of the story behind the Event. But hey, that’s the future, babe.

    In all…

    It’s hard to say anything about this Pilot. Is it a character story? Maybe. Is it a conspiracy story? Probably. So many questions and no answers. But I see that as a good thing. This Pilot felt so refreshing and new that it instantly had me hooked.

    But in the long term? It remains to be seen. There was no exceptional cinematography going on. It was mostly tricks, like a fun house. How many tricks do they have up their sleeves? Can they really expect me to watch an entire season – let alone a series – of people knowing more than I do? Or will the multiple perspectives of the same events get me more knowledge over time?

    It’s hard to say. But I’m sticking with this one for the time being.

  • FlashForward – Series

    You might argue that FlashForward was ill-fated to begin with. Surely, it had a stellar cast, some fine people in the writer’s room and a pitch to end all pitches: the entire world blacks out at the same time and gets a glimpse of their future.

    So how was this ill-fated? The thing was marketed as “the next LOST”, which is sure to make you catch a shit storm: LOST fans are the most annoying fans of a TV show ever. After that, it all just went downhill.

    October sixth

    I remember watching the pilot and being pretty much blown to pieces by the initial 20 minutes. There was so much going on: a car chase, an operation, a guy wanting to kill himself… And then they all went limp. When they came to, I found the episode to be focusing on too many people. As if they were biting off more than I can chew.

    Twenty episodes later, I can only confirm my initial fear: there was too much packed into this thing. Too many characters. Too many flashforwards. Too much info addition in the flashforwards over time: “Hey, I remember this formula on the mirror that I didn’t before.”

    What?

    But that’s not where the problems end. Throughout the entire “series” (which it is now, technically, as the sheep’s been shot), you’re left wondering who those people are. Who are you watching? Olivia (played by Sonya Walger – she is just drowning in her role here) is on the road with an FBI agent for two entire episodes, and we do not find out anything about their personal relationship towards each other. Who are they and why are they working together? The only redeeming quality was the side-plot concerning Bryce, the guy who was going to kill himself. And even that story had a very incredulous ending characterwise.

    In All…

    The list goes on like that and you’re left wondering but one thing: who are these people and why should I care about them? And that’s what ultimately killed Flashforward. It’s not the sometimes harebrained plot or the continuous retconning. If you want to make a crazy science fiction series, be my guest. I’ll gladly watch it. But be sure to think of the one good reason some science fiction series work and some don’t: the characters.

    This one didn’t work. What a shame. What a waste of a good pitch.

  • Alan Wake

    As far as telling stories goes, there’s certain things video games can do that movies can’t. Because video games are a relatively new medium, however, we rarely see these things. Video games tend to copy movies in their way of telling stories: a straightforward plot that shows us everything – little to no room for internal dialogue, for example. Only recently, with the release of BioShock (which bases its succes on Half-Life, Deus ex and the likes – shooters kind of got the point sooner), the way storydriven video games told their stories changed. Alan Wake gets this point. It gets it in an entirely different way the shoot-em-ups seemed to have gotten it lately. But it gets it brilliantly.

    Alan, Wake Up

    BioShock enabled us to collect Audio Diaries, which were basically side stories that played while you were out there, killing baddies. But it didn’t stop there: these Diaries also commented on the events in the game, or society as a whole. Now, I must admit, that even I find the idea slightly silly: it’s only a video game, it’s only entertainment after all. But what if it wasn’t?

    Alan Wake builds upon the concept of these audio diaries. Only they’re not a side track in your story anymore. They are the story. Alan Wake, a successful writer with writer’s block, goes on a holiday in Bright Falls, a quiet mountain town. That’s where shit starts hitting the fan, as his wife disappears and he starts finding pages of a horror story he has written – but can’t remember doing so.

    These pages are where the above point sets in: they describe the action in the game. You read about Alan getting attacked by a chainsaw-wielding monster? You bet you’ll get one on your tail a minute later. But they’re not just used as premonition tools. They’re also there to help you understand the sub text and motivations of side characters – which is a pretty nifty feat, seeing how you play ninety percent of the game only accompanied by your trusty flash light. On your first play-through, you might wonder if all these people are insane. But once you spend your time collecting the manuscript pages (80 percent of which are findable as you go along – but it’s the 20 percent of hidden ones that make it interesting), you might find out that the world created in this game is not as harebrained and flat as you first thought it was.

    Episodic Flashlight Action!

    If you would ask me – from a gameplay perspective – to compare this game to another one, it would have to be the latest iteration of the Alone in the Dark series. The game was a mixed bag, with truly great ideas but terrible execution. In Alan Wake, the former is true. The latter isn’t. The game is polished beyond belief, with only a few gripes to make.

    Like Alone in the Dark, Alan Wake adopts an episodic storytelling mechanism. There’s six episodes which last about an hour to ninety minutes each. Each episode starts with a “previously on…” summary, so you can play at leasure and not get lost in the tangled web that is the plot (okay, you will get lost, but you’re supposed to). Every episode has a theme and a location in which the action takes place – or, usually a place for you to get to. There isn’t a single episode that doesn’t advance the plot, but you can feel the seams of the genre ripping at times: due to gameplay mechanics, the bogies only come out at night, so you know the story will set you up to be alone in the dark. The fun part is: our protagonist pokes fun of it himself, so it’s fair game. The developers know – just like people writing a horror movie know there’s certain conventions to adhere.

    The plot is strikingly similar to Alone in the Dark: it involves light, darkness, love and monsters. As opposed to Alone in the Dark, this game actually has a clear idea how to handle the themes and turn them into a gripping experience. The story takes more twists and turns than a Stephen King novel (there’s a reason they quote him several times throughout the game) but still manages to remain interesting. It causes an irritation which left me wanting to know more. The story leaves the door open – it deliberately doesn’t tell you everything. As with any story doing this, though, it requires a bit of good-will from those experiencing it.

    Gathering this good will is easy, though, because the gameplay is simply amazing. The premise is this: you can’t hurt the baddies without burning away their darkness with the flashlight. Once their darkness is gone, they become vulnerable. It’s a simple trick, but once again thought over nicely: you can use the flashlight, but there’s also flares and light grenades to be had. It’s a tough concept to pull off, but Alan Wake keeps things interesting for the duration of the game. And beyond.

    In All…

    It does sound like I have nothing but praise for this game. That’s almost true – but there are some gripes. Unfortunately, the cut scenes look like zombies looking for brains. The characters never seem to look at each other directly, and their mouth movement… not so great. But the voice acting is great (expect to hear at least two familiar voices from Max Payne), so it makes up for it. It’s just a shame for a storydriven game that’s had so much time for polish.

    But other than that, I’d have a hard time coming up with anything bad to say. Some would say it’s boring, probably. It’s true: no one gets chopped to bits. But those are the people who prefer Saw over Shining: people who want to see a lot of blood and gore are not in the right place to be playing Alan Wake. What Alan Wake does convey, is the nagging, irrational sense of nightmare that a lot of Hollywood horror stories seem to forget about. Horror is not about blood or gore. It’s about foreshadowing, and that feeling you just can’t grasp your surroundings or understand what’s going on.

    Alan Wake might not be a game for everyone, but it is a game made especially for me.