Marvel Mighty Heroes

When DeNA's Marvel Mighty Heroes (MMH) launched late last month (March 2015), I was immediately on board. After quitting Avengers Alliance after nearly two yearsof solid play and consistently winning at the top prize PvP tiers, I got tired of its time-consuming grind just to keep up. MMH promised quick matches with simple controls and cutesy graphics. It seemed like the perfect alternative.

Avengers Alliance is a time suck. Hours and hours of daily play with heroes I didn't like in costumes I hated were required just to keep up with new hero releases, collection quests, and a stingy RNG rates for critical equipment and premium currency. All this not to lose out on the opportunity (no guarantee) to acquire the next game-breaking setup. PvP was the worst example of play-to-win I've ever seen where obscene dumps of premium currency before each cycle bought huge numerical bonuses that practically guaranteed victory. And then there was the constant chase to play and defend against PvP metas that felt more like dirty cheats than strategy. I definitely don't recommend Avengers Alliance, especially for new players. After I quit, I looked for something fun but with less commitment than a second job.

I started with DeNA's Transformers Tactics (TFT). I liked the simple gameplay, SDF-Funko style graphics, and the hero collection aspects, along with the basic strategy elements. What I didn't like was the Transformers lore. I'd always been more of a comic book geek prone to the "make mine Marvel" slogan. I thought to myself "wouldn't this game be great but with Avengers and X-Men?" When I saw the announcement for Marvel Mighty Heroes from the same company behind TFT, I was over the moon.

Marvel Mighty Heroes is of a different stripe than Transformers Tactics. Whereas TFT runs a simplified JRPG style turn-based combat system, MMH is an action-packed top-down coop-competitive brawler. You pick a team of 3 heroes from your roster and join three other players in short (most last between 60 and 90 seconds), objective-based rounds. The coop part comes from the joint efforts needed to complete certain goals like defending 3 maguffins from waves of enemies for about a minute or trying to take down the issue boss. The competitive element comes from trying to deal the most damage in that round to earn a higher share of the Event Points (EPs) awarded at the end.

Gameplay is simple and intuitive. You move by tapping on a spot on the screen you want to go to. Tap an enemy and you'll start auto-attacking. Each hero can gain up to three special abilities by unlocking "suits" (alternate costumes based on Marvel events). Using them is as simple as tapping one of the three  icons on the right side of the screen. Some abilities then require you to aim by tapping a direction away from your hero on the screen. Swapping between heroes in your roster is as easy as tapping their picture icon on the left-hand side. Special abilities have different rates of cool downs but tagging in a new hero starts a global countdown for replacements.

However, the gameplay is quite buggy after four weeks. Your character doesn't always move in the direction you tap or move at all. Sometimes dodge rolls will take you right back into the danger you swiped away from. Auto-attacks don't always initiate when your hero moves into range. And special abilities won't always fire when you tap the icon and aim. These bugs can be frustrating and can often cost you first place at the end of the round.

Strategy is a mixture of teaming up your three highest rated (one to five stars) and highest level heroes who have the best abilities (AoE ranges and damages; multiple abilities) and finding the best spot on the map to achieve the objective. For Survival and Defend missions, this usually means camping the enemy spawn points and timing abilities to go off and hit the most foes. Boss battles sometimes require inflicting heavy damage quickly to the boss while dodging (swiping the screen in a direction) incoming damage. Sometimes it means destroying three maguffins before the timer runs out. The best strategy is usually to use a combination of your highest rank suits and that issue's Event Heroes.

The story is broken up into chapters and issues. Chapters are the overarching storyline. Chapter one involves the Kree, Thanos, Ronan the Accuser, and a galaxy-spanning terraforming cum genocide/ecocide plot. Earth's Mightiest Heroes, the Avengers, as well as 2014s beloved outlaw misfits the Guardians of the Galaxy have stepped in to save the day.

Issues are smaller plots within the larger storyline and correspond with the EPs and Event Heroes. Each issue lasts roughly a week. Players compete in tiered rounds each issue to accumulate EPs to reach milestone awards and jockey higher on the league leaderboards to receive better prizes at the end of the issue. After completing increasing numbers of each game type (Survival, Defend, and Boss Battle), players move into a higher tier that offers a bigger EP multiplier. Your whole team also received a damage multiplier for using the Event Heroes and suits for that issue (x2 for one hero, x3 for two, and x5 if you use all three).

Speaking of heroes and suits, the methods for acquiring new ones will aggravate free to play and paying ones alike. There are three main ways to collect new heroes and suits.

First, every 24 hours, you receive a free random hero roll from the store. This method mostly rewards the lowest rank, 1 star heroes, so you'll fill out that meager pool quickly. You will receive duplicates. The first four suit duplicates you get will upgrade the special ability associated with that suit (up to a max level of 5). After that, you receive a small amount of ISO-8 for duplicates. ISO-8 is used to level up special abilities but the ISO-8 costs for second and third tier abilities is so prohibitively high and the amount of ISO-8 you receive is such a pittance that you won't really be using this method much to improve your special abilities. You can receive heroes rated higher than 1 stars but it's rare. In the 30 days or so since I've started playing, I've only received three 2 star heroes from the daily draw.

Second, you receive new heroes for reaching certain EP milestones per issue and finishing in certain ranks in higher ranked leagues. This method will slowly fill the rosters of most free to play players. 

Lower EP milestones, around 10,000 EPs, have awarded 2 star heroes so far. Higher milestones, around 250,000 EPs, have gifted 3 star heroes. Sometimes this higher milestone hero and suit is also one of the Event Heroes for the current issue. Using that hero in that suit on your team nets you a 2x damage multiplier which helps you get into first or second place and collect more EPs.

Players who finish the issue in the top half of the top league, vibranium, will receive a 4 star hero. This hero in this suit will be the Event Hero for the next issue. They also receive a second hero, usually a 2 or 3 star hero.

Third, you can buy a random hero in suit using the premium in-game currency "cash". The basic buy is 500 cash, or US $5, per random draw. On the plus side, this random guarantees at least a 3 star hero. However, you're not guaranteed a new hero or suit per draw. I've heard you still only collect neglible ISO-8 from 5 star duplicates. Acquiring cash without spending real money means playing many, many rounds to hit high EP milestones (200,000 EPs or more) and unlocking certain achievements but there is about 400 cash up for grabs each issue for players with lots of time and/or high-damage teams.

Your best bet is to spend your cash at the beginning of each issue in the first couple of steps of the Premium ladder. Sometimes you'll get a steep discount on the first few steps (300 cash for one hero then 700 cash for three, meaning you get four 3 star or better draws for the price of two) and sometimes it's not cheaper but you get a little extra (500 cash buys you a draw plus XP canisters).

Overall, the game is fun and quick. There is still a lot of work to be done rebalancing the extremely low value of duplicates in terms of ISO-8 and the exorbitant ISO-8 costs to rank up higher-level special abilities. Buying and earning new 3 star and above heroes and suits for strictly free to play players can be painfully slow due to competitive play against players with heroes in higher-tier suits. The devs have promised new game modes in the future.

Right now, on the other hand, I would not recommend trying Marvel Mighty Heroes. A widespread bug has frozen many players out of earning EPs, competing in leagues, and picking up milestone awards. The issue has gone on for over four days now but DeNA is being tightlipped about a potential fix date or compensation for affected accounts. So far, they haven't officially acknowledged the bug on their forums and support has not responded to most tickets about the issue.

All new games have bugs, especially multiplayer games that support cross-platform real-time play. But DeNA's communications blackout to affected players shows a lack of respect to the people who make their jobs possible.

PROs:

• simple, intuitive gameplay
• quick rounds
• cute art

 CONs:

• poor communication about bugs and expected fixes
• buggy controls
• late round load-ins practically guarantee low scores
• high costs for new heroes and suits
• expensive IAP can result neglible in-game play value after too many duplicate draws

wolfs rain i

dir. Tensai Okamura

writer Keiko Nobumoto

music Yoko Kanno

Ep. 1 "City of Howls"

Ep. 2 "Toboe, Who Doesn't Howl"

Ep. 3 "Bad Fellow"

Characters

Kiba - the white wolf, alpha

Tsume - lone wolf, cross-shaped scar on his chest

Hige - endless appetite, powerful nose, dog collar becomes necklace in human form

Toboe - the naif, youngest, raised by a human woman, silver bangles on wrist

Quent & Blue - seeks to exterminate wolves because he considers them demon spawn

Detective Hubb - Cher's ex-husband, law enforcement in the domed city, Quent initiates him into the secret world of wolves. Not sure if he'll stick around now that the wolves have left the domed city.

Cher - Hubb's ex-wife, lead scientist studying the Flower Maiden Cheza. Not sure if she'll stick around now that the wolves have left the domed city.

Summary

Wolf's Rain has an odd premise. In a diesel-punk world, people assume wolves have been eliminated. Little do they know wolves still walk among them in human clothes. These aren't werewolves; they aren't wolves that can shapeshift into human shape. They "cast a spell" on humans to make them see the wolves in the guise of humans.

The show opens with Kiba, the white wolf, descending from the mountains to the domed city in search of Paradise. He smells Lunar Flowers. However, he is injured on this first leg of his journey. He encounters Tsume, a lone wolf personality, who has been leading a gang of humans in supply raids against the Nobles of the domed city. Tsume warns Kiba to hide his true form from the humans but Kiba refuses because of his wolf pride.

On Kiba's tail is Quent, a sheriff from a mountain town. Quent hates wolves and calls them demons. His companion is Blue, a black, blue-eyed dog. Quent has come to kill Kiba and any other wolves he might find. He scoffs at the old pagan belief that, when the end of the world comes, wolves will find the way to Paradise.

Most of the denizens of the domed city don't recognize Kiba as a wolf, thinking him just a big white dog. But Blue sees him as a wolf, a power possessed by all dogs (perhaps animals in general). Quent shoots Kiba but the police arrive, taking both Kiba and Quent into custody.

Detective Hubb interrogates Quent and gets the story on wolves. Hubb isn't willing to believe wolves survived the culling 200 years ago. Hige, another wolf, helps Kiba escape, convincing the white wolf to set aside his pride and cast the illusion of human form so that they can walk right out of the station.

Meanwhile, Tsume's next raid goes bad and a young boy member of his gang falls. Tsume tries to save him by grabbing his shoulder but because human form is merely a guise, he bites the boy's shoulder. The boy falls to his death.

Tsume's gang abandons him because he "isn't like them." They also blame him for the boy's death. Tsume wanders the domed city and eventually runs into Toboe, a young wolf he has become infatuated with a young girl Lira. Although he rescues Toboe, Tsume refuses to be friendly, adhering to his lone wolf mentality. Toboe accuses him of only befriending humans because they will never be as strong as him.

Kiba and Hige get captured on purpose to re-enter the police fortress to scent out the source of the Lunar Flowers. A Noble arrives, in black with wild black hair and a white mask, and seems to knock out all the humans he encounters rather than hurting him. He confronts Detective Hubb's ex-wife Cher, a scientist studying the Flower Maiden Cheza. The Noble removes his mask, revealing a strange, animalistic golden eye that renders Cher unconscious.

The Noble takes Cheza, who has been stirring ever since wolf blood spilled when Kiba and Tsume briefly scuffled. He is able to see Kiba and Hige for what they are. Cheza awakens and lets out a high-pitched scream that the wolves can all hear. Toboe describes it as "saddening." The Noble says he will meet the wolves in Paradise before leaving.

Kiba and Hige then plan to leave the domed city in search of Paradise now that the smell of Lunar Flowers is gone. Lunar Flowers seem to have some connection with the wolves being able to find Paradise. Toboe joins up with the two wolves with Kiba quickly assuming the alpha role.

Tsume's gang, who have been captured, turn on him and lead the police to him. Quent's dog Blue attacks Tsume but he gets away, dropping his human guise for his wolf form to escape police looking for the man leading the gang.

Kiba leads the wolves to Tsume and convinces him to join them in leaving the domed city. Tsume is reluctant but recognizes that, as a wanted man and without a gang, he cannot remain in the city. Toboe stumbles and falls but Tsume saves him by biting his shoulder. This scene imitates the earlier death of the young boy in his gang, indicating Tsume's appropriate place among the wolves as those who are strong enough to be handled (and helped) by other wolves. Hubb, still not quite willing to believe the evidence, seeks out Quent for more information and learns about the Book of the Moon, a pagan text that contains the mythology of wolves. Humans, for instance, were made from wolves and to be their messengers.

As the four wolves leap from a wall into the arctic harshness outside the domed city, Hubb and Quent arrive. Quent fires at Tsume but Hubb intercedes. He says he still only sees a human. After the wolves are gone, Quent takes the detective to where the wolves left and shows him the paw prints leading away. Hubb struggles to believe the incontrovertible evidence of his eyes.

Speculation

The Nobles are possibly fallen angels. Given their high social  place (Hubb notes "only the nobles are still allowed to fly") and their awareness of Paradise, this seems plausible. Plus, there is the repetition of the feather motif. The Noble who takes Cheza has hair that faintly resembles feathers. When he removes his mask to ensorcel Cher, there briefly appears what look to be black feathers. And as the wolves are leaving and the Nobles have Cheza in their flying ship, feathers continuously rain down on Hubb and the police.

the love affairs of nathaniel p.: a novel

There is something particularly flattering about an entire book dedicated to the kind of person you are, even if that portrait itself isn't very flattering. I felt reading Adelle Waldman's debut novel The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. that slight swelling of the chest, as Hitler's ghost must whilst browsing the WWII section of every decent American library, to see so many words about one such as me. All kidding aside, I've steamrolled over a number of objectively decent relationships in the past few years for the same reasons as the titular literary Brooklynite at the center of this novel: because despite initial interest, after awhile, I just didn't feel it. And following simple laws of physics, Nate (and myself) finds that feelings of the other sort rush in to fill the void in ways that are often insufferable.

The novel opens with Nate running late to a party and running into a former lover, Juliet, on the street. Her reaction to the random encounter is less than civil and Nate seems stunned by it. True, the last time he saw her he did accompany her to the abortion clinic and pay for the procedure because of his role in that state of affairs. And then he had remained the whole of the day to comfort her before summarily abandoning Juliet because he hadn't truly liked her that much in the first place. But we, Nate included, shouldn't take this to mean Nate is heartless or cruel or indifferent to the sensibilities of women. After all, he is the "product of a postfeminist 1980s childhood and politically correct, 1990s college education. He had learned all about male privilege. Moreover, he was in possession of a functional and frankly rather clamorous conscience." This self-reassurance, by the way, is a quote you will see snipped and inserted into almost every review. And for good reason. It neatly summarizes Nate's opinion of himself (it is, after all, relayed to us through our ongoing privileged access to Nate's headspace) while also revealing his blind spots.

But I get ahead of myself. Nate is on the way to his ex-girlfriend's house for a dinner party consisting mostly of his friends. With this Elissa, the ex, Nate has not extricated himself from a frequent ritual of conversations and recriminations punctuated periodically by backsliding. This inability to let go, Nate tells us, stems from both his guilt over ending the relationship and his sympathies for Elissa's career plight as he sees it. At this party, he meets Hannah, an acquaintance of Elissa's that he initially downplays.

A few flirtatious emails later, thanks to the highbrow, left-leaning social conscience that defines and operates Nate's inner circle of friends, Nate and Hannah go out, followed by sex and a relationship, and ultimately, another breakup. The novel narrates the rise and demise of the couple through a series of set piece conversations and Nate's internal monologues staged at coffee shops, diners, parties, and the couple's respective apartments.

Despite eavesdropping on Nate's internal monologues, we actually learn very about him and his motivations directly from him. Sure, he tells us his irritation at Hannah is irrational or his cruelty is often perverse. He repeatedly complains to himself about the stifling realities of a relationship (the other person there all the time! they ask you things! you have to care about their emotional well-being!). And yet his relationship with Elissa lasted several years, through both career and personal highs and lows. And transitioning out of his relationship with Hannah, he takes up with Greer, an autobiographer of her sexual and other flittering, a woman with much the same jejune personality as Elissa without the real-word albatross of a stalled career to weigh Nate down (Elissa's dinner guests at the novel's opening gossip negatively about Greer's very sizeable advance for her next book).

Hannah is the type of girl Nate feels he should be attracted to: smart, successful, witty. She is not, however, the girlish kind of pretty Nate typically pursues. Nor is she the histrionic sort. Despite what Nate might say and perhaps even believe for a time, the high maintenance and conventionally attractive is the kind of girl he is interested in. To put it bluntly, the novel winds up and then unwinds Nate's punishment of Hannah for falling in love with him when she is none of those things. He comes to loathe her "neediness," her simple desire to make things work with him and pain caused by his failings; his failure to try, his failure to recognize what he wants, and his biggest failure, the inability to be honest with either himself or her.

For all the robustness of Nate's inner life, his careful reflections of why he did and harsh assessments of what motivates others, he actually tells us precious little about his desires. His contradictory desires are expressed through his two friends Aurit and Jason. In various conversations throughout the book, Aurit and Jason's advice rather than Nate's own thoughts give voice and reflection to Nate's inner life.

Aurit: female, intelligent, articulate. A woman of which Nate uses the word "maternal" as an insult. She and Nate have never dated. Their relationship is purely Platonic. Aurit blames men for relationships breaking down and attributes these failures to men's personal, often psychological, disorders. Nate chafes at her insistence that the normal state of a man and a woman is in a relationship and men who are not in relationships are somehow pathological. Aurit likes Hannah and feels Nate should work on the relationship. Nate, not openly, feels Hannah is too much like Aurit.

Jason, on the other hand, is priggish and prickish. He is controversial for the sake of controversy, to perform so as to suck the spotlight squarely onto himself at all times. He unironically suggests that pretty but not too bright women should marry the rich and litterati so as to prevent these upper classes from being dominated by uggies. Jason suggests to Nate that he doesn't want a smart but only moderately attractive as a mate; that he doesn't seek a mate who can be an equal, who can challenge him. In fact, he secretly desires pretty, melodramatic women of whom he can complain about the "pains" they cause him on the surface. Nate initially prickles at such a suggestion. By the end of the book, as he settles into his life with Greer, their petty fights, her demands for indulgences, his sidelining her thoughts for the much more serious and sober verbal sparring when out with his friends, confirms Jason's diagnosis.

Aurit and Jason, with Nate in the middle, do not represent the Freudian triumvirate of superego, id, and ego. Rather, Aurit and Jason are external manifestations of Nate's internal wrestling with what he truly wants out of life. And this struggle plays out as Nate stands at the threshold of success, the publication of his first novel. The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. shows this seemingly bright, capable, and modern man to be rather boorish and superficial but with the good manners not to be blunt about it.

Slate's Katie Roiphe describes the novel as "deftly skewer[ing] the new literary man, the bookish, ambitious, N+1ish young man, with his stylish torment, his self-seriousness, his dangerous admixture of grandiosity and insecurity, and old fashioned condescension toward women gussied up as sensitivity, his maddening irony, his very specific way of treating people badly while worrying about liberal politics." Said targets would be the protagonists of Keith Gessen and Benjamin Kunkel's recent novels. Perhaps she's right, but only from the perspective of the jilted ex.

At her best, Waldman's novel feels less like grinding her own personal ressentiment axe against all the Nathaniel Piven's of the world. The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. is nominally about Nate, as it is through his eyes, ears, and voice that we experience the world. But where Keith Gessen's All the Sad Young Literary Men treats women merely as the overlapping props that connect the three male protagonists (Sam, Keith, and Mark) post-college, Waldman seems instead to give a voice to women who come into contact with the "sad young literary man" type; Hannah, confused and hurt by a Nate that runs erratically hot/cold; Elissa, whom he keeps on a leash through emotional affairs and backsliding; and even brief Juliet, whose reprimand "You could have at least—oh, never mind." truly baffles Nate.

Adelle Waldman's debut novel is indeed a reaction against the N+1 ilk, but not an agressive takedown. Instead, in clever, witty, and insightful prose, she not only examines a bright man, a type really, for whom Socrates' maxim to do so is merely an empty refrain, but also surveys the landscape for emotional craters left on a country's single female population as these self-assured, ambitious solipsists pass untouched and unaware over their lives.

I Can Chang-e, I Can Chang-e (but not necessarily for the better)

Chronicling my mostly disappointment with season 4 of Community...



Season 4 Episode 6
dir. Jay Chandrasekhar

Something's off with this season of Community. The gang is all back and each episode still features a gimmick to hold it together, so the show is still playing the same old tunes. But I don't seem to be getting as much pleasure as seasons 1-3.

The easy thing to blame is the departure of series creator and notable pain in the ass Dan Harmon. Without him at the helm, the show doesn't feel the same. But what is it? What's missing? In other words, what is Harmon's signature?

It's easy to pick out a Joss Whedon production. The dialogue is smart and snappy; the entire ensemble is full of strong and individual personalities (no 1D or 1 note characters); and there's always a strong female somewhere in the mix if she's not in fact the lead.[1] Whedon's first two attempts to translate this formula into silver screen gold were less than successful.[2] But he hit one of the world's biggest jackpots ever last summer with Marvel's The Avengers.[3]

After mulling Community's season 4 "lack" with a friend, he finally hit upon the right description: this season isn't as dense as seasons past.

Take last Thursday's episode, for example. The frame and gimmick of "Advanced Documentary Filmmaking" is that Abed is shooting a documentary about Changnesia as part of a Greendale grant proposal to the MacGuffin Neurological Institute to study "Kevin's'" condition.[4] Everybody is on board with this plan except Jeff, who suspects Chang is faking and won't let go of the fact that at the end of season 3, a power-crazed Chang had tried to kill them all. Even the always fabulous but getting weird/stalker-creepy this season Dean Pelton is behind the grant proposal and he has perhaps the biggest axe to grind with Chang. After all, Chang kidnapped him, imprisoned him in the basement, and hired a Dean Pelton doppelgänger (a dean-pelganger) for much of last season.[5] But money and prestige for Greendale are always good as far as the dean is concerned, and anyway, "Kevin" is acting like a better person.

Jeff's plan is to pretend to go along with the grant proposal while secretly plotting to expose Chang. The side- slash meta-plot with Abed filming himself as director listening to Jeff's plan doesn't feel, well, meta enough in its comments on the whole documentary within a documentary within a sitcom setup. Britta remarks at the end of the episode that "the documentary" was actually a documentary about Abed making a documentary about being honest but this hits more like desperate hand-waving for acknowledgment ("yes, 4th wall, you are indeed broken," the writers seem to be saying through Britta) than a meta-joke. However, the scene where Abed is editing is one of the episode's biggest successes. Abed says he won't show us how Jeff's plot to expose Chang backfires and it works, both because Danny Pudi shines with his reaction shots and because he comments on the structure of editing itself when he tells the camera that the unseen scene isn't actually so bad but not showing it helps move the dramatic tension of his documentary along.[6] It has the elements of a fourfold joke, the hallmark of Community under Harmon (see below).

Britta's faux psychology chops, temporarily buoyed by last week's success with Jeff and his runaway father, is a one note joke.

The episode called back to Annie's interest in forensics as she and Troy team up to investigate more about where Chang was before showing up at the psychologist's office. The writers try to wring some laughs out of Troy doing the "buddy copy" routine (always contradict your partner) as Detective Houlihan's (Annie Edison) partner Partner, but they don't work as well as past season's comment-on-the-spoofed-homage dynamic like Abed doing Dinner with Andre, playing at Batman, or evil alternate universe Abed complete with cardboard "evil duplicate" goatee.

Shirley's role this week isn't even worth commenting on. It's a shame, too, because she was coming into her own with the previous week's Thanksgiving special.

The biggest blown opportunity this week was Pierce. Jeff tasks him with doing entertainment at the grant proposal presentation for the MacGuffin group. I expected full-on inanity with (accidentally) all the wit and force of "the play is the thing" in Shakespeare's Hamlet. Instead, we got an unfunny, racist bit that only related tangentially to the plot with reversed race roles of the principal players, Chang and his unremembered secret wife.[7] But beyond race, the episode doesn't even try to pull the trigger on this perfect moment to be brilliant and comedic commentary despite Pierce's awfulness. It feels like a moment pitched while Harmon was still with the show but one that couldn't come to fruition without a strong, single vision and overarching voice. In other words, I think Harmon would have hit it out of the park in the same way as last season's "Digital Estate Planning" or "Remedial Chaos Theory."

Whatever happened to the "darkest timeline" anyway? Is Chang's Changnesia part of that storyline? Did it survive Harmon's purge?

In an unsurprising but mildly amusing twist, Jeff's unmasking backfires and he ends up a pariah at Greendale, "accidentally becoming more Chang than Chang at his Changiest." Naive "Kevin" forgives him and Jeff finally seems to have joined (the duped side with) the rest of the Greendale community in believing Chang's Changnesia is real.

The last scene features Chang talking to some unseen person on his cell phone. He confirms that he is indeed faking Changnesia and his plot to infiltrate Greendale is successful, even gaining the confidence of alpha and skeptic Jeff Winger. In an homage to the classic espionage trope, he then ditches his phone in the trash and walks away, laughing maniacally. Then he comes back to retrieve it, asking why he did that.

Despite "Digital Estate Planning," I don't know if Harmon ever played video games (or at least those past the 8bit era), but I can't help feeling that under his control, Chang's big "reveal" would have felt more like revealing the hero to actually be the galactic villain Darth Revan in Knights of the Old Republic. Here the reveal is merely the setup to a single, barely amusing gag about (master spies failing at) covering your tracks while going undercover.

That's the big problem with this season: layering. Or, more accurately, a lack thereof. Under Harmon, Community was more than shout outs, callbacks, foreshadowing, and pop culture references. It was a densely layered show in which a perfectly executed Harmon gag would simultaneously be (1) funny in its own right, (2) an allusion to something previous in the show or setup a later joke [internal reference], (3) some kind of reference to pop culture or for the show's faithful [external reference], AND (4) some kind of meta-commentary on those references or the conceit of a episodic-with-serial-bits sitcom itself. This fourfold structure of a joke is what made Community unique. Each and every joke per 23 minute episode felt worked on and rarefied through rewriting alchemy until, by Harmon's Midas touch, it became pure comedy gold. Over the course of 3 seasons.

Another failed moment: Chang being named after his "rescuer's" dog leading to Troy realizing he is also named after his family's pets. But Jeff's comment about finding evidence to support a human trafficking claim usually being a good thing did elicit a chuckle.

Now Community feels more like you're average sitcom. Sure, the one-off episode gimmicks and nod and wink towards pop culture references are still there. But they don't feel unified in the same way as before, each molecule reoriented towards something bigger, some meta-comment about the current state of sitcoms and pop culture. Community, like your run of the mill sitcom, now drops jokes then moves on without any lingering thought about how and why they function as they do (a) during prime time (b) on a major network (c) in 2013.

This episode overall is a mixed bag. Dan Harmon still had scribe duties (his last credited one) and Broken Lizard alum Jay Chandrasekhar (who had his turn in the chair while Harmon was still with the show) directed. But this episode is the first crediting Hunter Covington as co-writer. His previous work? 100 Deeds for Eddie McDowd; Still Standing; Yes, Dear; My Name is Earl; 100 Questions; Other People's Kids. His twitter account also says he writes for It's Always Sunday in Philadelphia but IMDB doesn't credit him. Did NBC bring him in to "polish" a script Harmon left behind to broaden the show's appeal? Looking ahead as of today, IMDB doesn't include Harmon in the writing credits for any future episodes.

The comparison to pre-Avengers Joss Whedon may be most apt here. Despite the seeming cornerstone place of Buffy (and to a lesser extent Angel) in the collective pop (mono)culture,[8] before The Avengers, Whedon's projects failed to garner much enthusiasm beyond a small, vocal, diehard cadre. Even Buffy at its height never rivaled Lost in terms of viewers. Firefly didn't make it through a full season while Dollhouse lurched on longer than its viewership in this competitive business market probably deserved. Community, too, was a show with seeming little appeal beyond a small niche market who nonetheless supported it devoutly. Despite rumors of cancellation and then a delayed start to an abbreviated season 4,[9] Community continues to live on, at least for another half season. But now it feels like its is being retooled and dumbed down to appeal to a broader demographic.[10]

Community used to be a show about an autopsy. Now it's starting to shuffle like just another prime time zombie.

---

[1] Two of Whedon's four big tv shows were led by female characters: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dollhouse. Of the other two, Angel was a spinoff of Buffy; only Firefly nominally cast a male in the lead, Capt. Malcolm Reynolds. But Mal was surrounded by strong women, including his second-in-command and all-around badass warrior Zoe, hyper-competent engineer Kaylee, and the companion Inara.
[2] I was a huge fan of the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie. I loved it so much, in fact, that when I went to see it in the theater for the first time with my friend and his mother, I somehow managed to convince them to stay and watch it a second time through. The movie was nowhere as big a smash as the story re-worked for television was. Whedon had the opposite problem with his next feature film. Firefly, beloved on tv by rabid fans, didn't do well when transported to the big screen as Serenity.
[3] As of 16 March 2013, The Avengers had made over US $1.5 billion in worldwide box office. Only Avatar, boosted by its 3D only ticket sales (US $2.78 billion) and Titanic (US $2.18 billion) are ahead of it. [source]
[4] Following the framing device of season 2 episode 16 "Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking" and season 3 episode 8 "Documentary Filmmaking: Redux." The faux documentary or mockumentary format is also spoofed in last season's 2 part Pillow War documentary (episodes 13 and 14). Also, haha, MacGuffin.
[5] When season 4's first episode featured Fred Willard as Pierce in Abed's (re)imagining of Community as a tv show, I actually thought that was a clever allusion to the obvious impostor replacement Dean Pelton running visual gag in season 3 as well as timely winks at Chevy Chase's known departure from the show in the middle of filming and Fred Willard's recent exposure problems.
[6] It's not quite the perfect Harmon joke. To reach 100% completion, some allusion to Nicholas Cage's infamous reaction shot acting would have needed to be made somewhere in the episode. This much maligned scene from Nicholas Cage's much maligned 8mm illustrates his reaction shot prowess at its best.
[7] Pierce plans to do a puppet show by painting and dressing his hands similar to the South Park episode in which Cartman's hand puppet Jennifer Lopez gets more famous than the real thing. Pierce has a Hispanic male puppet and a Chinese female puppet, the inverse of Chang's secret marriage.
[8] You can take college courses for credit on Buffy at, for example, DePaul University, Portland State University, and Brunel University in London. The latter offered its course in "Buffy studies" as part of the Masters curriculum.
[9] See the brilliant October 19th slash "Community Season 4 Premieres... Someday" video. Was Chang's attempted beard-as-disguise an allusion to season 4's Changnesia plot and evil Abed's role in the darkest timeline? And what about the timely reference to the salaciously titled news story about Crystal the Monkey, aka Annie's Boobs, being the 5th highest paid actor per episode of a sitcom [Annie's Boobs Make More Money Than You] that's also a not so subtle jab at NBC for greenlighting the abysmal new (now failed) sitcom Animal Practice, starring Crystal the Monkey, and slotting it to premiere in the fall in Community's place.
[10] Ever since its return to Fox, Family Guy has been trending this way, too. The family used to be a flimsy conceit holding together from week to week the pop culture schizophrenia of the cutaways. Now there are A and B plots about Griffins and other major Quahog folk, just like The Simpsons. This charge has been brilliantly leveled against series creator, song writer, and voice actor extraordinaire several times in the Comedy Central Celebrity Roasts he hosts. The problem for Family Guy "evolving" into a familiar sitcom structure in order to garner more viewers is that the characters, everybody down to a one of them, were created to be utterly and thoroughly unlikeable. It's hard to care what happens to them when you don't like them in the first place. When they were just paste to hold the cutaways together, that they were unpalatable wasn't a problem. And hey, if you liked them, congratulations, you were the paste-eating kid everybody made fun of in elementary school. Now that they're the white stuff holding the two cookies of the Oreo together, it doesn't work so much. Even Seth MacFarlane acknowledges this when he warns the viewers through Peter or Stewie that it's a "Meg episode" and everybody hates Meg so you might as well not watch. And oh, hey, yet another example of the creator of a fiercely loved niche product with a loyal fanbase who became uber-successful.

assault! jack the ripper

Director: Yasuharu Hasebe
Starring: Tamaki Katsura, Yutaka Hayashi

Assault! Jack the Ripper is a Japanese horror film from Nikkatsu studios in their Violent Pink line. Pink films (also called "eroduction" or "Roman porno") are a genre of Japanese films that has no exact analog in the West.[1] Per studio guidelines, pink films contain a certain quota of sex scenes spaced at required intervals, making them similar to the softcore porn of Cinemax and Showtime ilk. But the stories are generally more complex and subtly psychological and quite often feature nuanced female characters unlike softcore porn.

Violent Pink (also called Pinky Violence) is a subgenre of Pink that involves violence, very often graphic in nature.

Much ink has been spilt breaking down the Western horror genre, including exploration of the representation of gender in horror. I'm intentionally not going to approach Assault! Jack the Ripper from that angle because of differences not only between American and Japanese culture but also because of the differences in the history of cinema and visual language in the two countries. Although a discussion of the abject or the targeting by the killer of sexually active women in horror films could potentially be fruitful in this case, I leave them aside. I will instead just discuss two major themes in the movie.

Wikipedia summarizes the plot of Assault! Jack the Ripper as: "A young couple engage in a rampage of murder, rape and mayhem in order to stimulate their sexual appetites." Succinct, it fails to describe the two major themes of the story. First, the victims are increasingly targeted as women as such. Second, the sexual charge that initially propels the murder spree eventually transforms into the eroticization of violence itself for the Cake Man (the male lead).

The film begins with Afro Perm[2] (the female lead) goads the Cake Man into driving her home in a rainstorm from the restaurant where they both work. They stop to pick up a female Hitchhiker who seems to be garbed in hospital clothing. The Hitchhiker stabs herself in the arm with a cake knife, horrifying the Cake Man and Afro Perm, and then reveals a collection of razor blades she intends to use to continue her self-mutilation. She is likely an escaped mental patient.

The Cake Man ejects her from the car but she won't let go as he speeds away. Eventually, she falls and dies. Scared because of their role in her death, Cake Man and Afro Perm drag the Hitchhiker's body into an old scrap yard. Afro Perm strips the Hitchhiker's body for some reason and ditches her clothes. Cake Man then drags her body deeper into the junk yard. Unfortunately, her corpse snags at the crotch on a bit of metal and the Cake Man tears the Hitchhiker in half.

Back at Afro Perm's apartment, the pair deal with the unintentional killing with varying levels of ease. The Cake Man is shaken and disturbed while Afro Perm seems nonplussed. She strips out of her wet clothes, revealing a plump body that's quite a bit curvier in the bosom and bottom than most of the rest of the women in this movie. Eventually, Cake Man and Afro Perm cap off the night with some very intense and passionate sex.

The next day, Afro Perm approaches Cake Man at work but he ignores her. To make him pay attention, Afro Perm leaves with a male customer whose lecherous advances she had spurned yesterday. Cake Man follows the pair and watches as they perform oral sex on each other inside the car. Having made her point and firmly seizing Cake Man's attention, Afro Perm gets out of the car and walks over to Cake Man's car fully naked.

The duo try to have sex again back at her place but it's just missing a certain spark. That spark, they decide, is murder. And so begins a killing spree initially driven by the couple's libido.

The pair first stalk a high school girl who had previously come into the restaurant. They hit her with their car and then quickly snatch her up. Instead of an abandoned junk yard, this time they take their victim, still very much alive, to an abandoned bowling alley. Afro Perm is committed to the murder right off but Cake Man has reservations. All hesitation is shed, however, when the young girl slips her gag and begins to scream. Cake Man charges her with a knife, the same knife that the Hitchhiker had used to cut her arms. He stabs her but we cannot see where the knife pierces her body because of the framing of the shot. We only know that it hits somewhere below her chest.

The couple go at it hot and heavy on a nearby bench. Murder is just the aphrodisiac their sex life needs. But while Afro Perm rides him, Cake Man stares at the bleeding body of the young girl. Once they have finished up, the couple ditch the body in an elevator shaft.

Their next target is the girlfriend of the restaurant patron Afro Perm messed around with. They follow the pair to the airport, and after the man boards his flight to America, the couple abducts the woman and takes her to a graveyard. The woman pleads with Afro Perm as a woman to spare her life. Afro Perm orders her to perform oral sex on Cake Man, which she does. Then Afro Perm commands Cake Man to perform oral sex on the woman. He lies down on the ground and she lies on top of him. She continues to perform. He, on the other hand, brutally stabs her in the groin using the same knife as before. The couple then hides the woman's body beneath a grave stone before having sex in the car.

This scene is pivotal to the film in three ways. First, it's the first explicit scene of the Cake Man's m.o.; we have the reuse of the knife and also his preferred target: the groin. Remember, he accidentally tore the Hitchhiker apart at the groin in the junk yard. We can also speculate that he stabbed the high school girl in the groin, too, even though the camera wasn't positioned for us to see it. Second, it is the zenith of the conjunction between sexual intercourse and violence. Not only do the couple have sex after the killing, but the killing itself involves rape of the victim. As the killings continue, we see a growing divorce between explicit sexual satisfaction and the act of murder as the stabbings themselves look increasingly sexual. Third, post-coitus, Afro Perm says to Cake Man "We're just like a husband and wife. I'm going to look after you. Like a real wife." The couple take up residence at Afro Perm's apartment. She attempts to move their relationship into the domestic sphere, cooking and cleaning for Cake Man. She even refers to their relationship as a "marriage" of sorts. But as we will see, Cake Man's intentions become very different.

Cake Man's next kill comes without Afro Perm. It is also the first stranger; someone that the couple is not connected to. He leaves their apartment to go wandering around a downtown area at night. While walking, Cake Man finds an invitation to a prostitute's place of work. The prostitute appears to be an older woman, probably in her late 30s or early 40s, likely older than any of the victims so far and also Afro Perm. She strips and dangles her breasts in Cake Man's face but he lies perfectly still, seemingly uninterested. Suddenly, he flips her over, pins her to the bed, and may or may not have sex with her. We do not see him remove his underwear but she does moan.

Cake Man gets up, puts on his pants, and retrieves the knife he's used in the other killings. The prostitute thinks that he just wants to play a little rough and offers to let him tie her up for a little more money. Instead, Cake Man stabs her in the hand. He then drags her into the bathroom where he binds her hands with the shower line before stabbing her fatally in the groin. We also see him drive the knife upwards, attempting to cut her in half. This splitting action is much more explicit than the previous kill. The camera zooms in on the knife and follows it as he forces it from the groin to the stomach, lingering on the action. When he returns home, he sharpens the knife. He does not have sex with Afro Perm.

At this point, while the murders are still tied explicitly to sexual satisfaction for Cake Man, we see that his appetite for murder and sexual satisfaction have been segregated from Afro Perm. She initially urged him into the murder for turn-on game but now he doesn't need her to (1) pick the targets, (2) goad him to kill, (3) have sex with post-kill. However, with the nudity and touching of the prostitute, he still links the act of murder and sex.

The next kill, however, does not contain any explicit sexual overtones. Cake Man targets a young mother who he encountered earlier in the alley outside the restaurant with her child. She works at a wedding reception hall. He goes to her work and asks her to speak in the garden. There, he stabs her in her ceremonial clothing. He stabs her in the groin and then lifts, again attempting to cut his victim in half. He has to flee before he can finish the job but we are shown a still shot of her body lying on the ground, a bloody mess staining her white clothes over her groin area.

The film next cuts to Cake Man and Afro Perm entering her apartment. News of his attack plays on the television and she confronts him, accusing him of "cheating" on her by killing without her. She also mentions that it's been 10 days since they have last had sex, confirming that Cake Man didn't sleep with her after killing the prostitute. Afro Perm demands that he take her with him but he strikes her and then leaves the apartment.

Cake Man attacks a woman working alone at night across the street in a dress shop. Neither Cake Man nor Afro Perm have been shown to have any interaction with her; she is his second stranger kill. It also seems to be the first time he has set out with the purpose of killing a stranger. Initially, she is about to escape but Perm Girl enters to help him. Cake Man then starts slashing the dress maker with the knife, cutting her across the back and several times on her breasts. They struggle over the knife and the blade cuts into her hand as Cake Man forces it lower down her body. He spins her around and stabs the knife into her groin. Her head tosses back in imitation of the moment of penetration in sexual intercourse before he lets her fall to the ground. Cake Man then flees, leaving her body there. Afro Perm follows him.

These two kills sever completely the connection between explicit sexual intercourse and Cake Man's desire for murder. However, the murders themselves have taken on more overt sexual characteristics. The mother is shown with red blood staining the white clothes directly over her groin after he stabs her from his own groin area. The dressmaker's positioning with Cake Man and her body language both imitate sexual intercourse at the moment the knife pierces her groin. Rather than his penis entering Afro Perm's body to metonymically repeat the fatal stabbings that are his m.o., the murder and the sex have now collapsed into a single act.

At this point in the film, with barely 8 minutes left, the director introduces a new element: food. After murdering the dressmaker, the film cuts back to Afro Perm's apartment. Cake Man spoons overly generous amounts of jelly into his croissant, which has been split along the edge and spread open in such a way as to resemble a vulva.[3] While he eats, Afro Perm performs oral sex on him but Cake Man doesn't seem to be paying attention. Afro Perm suggests they go on a picnic on their next day off.

Cut to the graveyard (yes, the same graveyard where they earlier raped, murdered, and stashed the body of a victim). Afro Perm performs oral sex on Cake Man while he lies on his back eating. She then strips and mounts him while he continues to eat, seemingly unmoved by her actions. He continues to eat while she moans, proclaims how happy she is, and tells him never to leave her.

I'm not quite sure what this conjunction of food and sex with Cake Man being distant is supposed to mean. Does his eating of the food Afro Perm prepares and thoroughly un-passionate reaction to sex represent the domestic sphere and his resistance to settling down? Or does his gluttonous consumption reveal that now he is out of control (i.e. can't sate his appetite for food or murder)? Is the pairing of food and un-emotional sex supposed to contrast with the earlier pairing of murder and passionate sex? If so, to what end?

After the picnic, we cut back to the apartment where Afro Perm is doing laundry while Cake Man sits at the table drinking a coke. But then Cake Man slips out to stalk a nurse on her way home from work. He shoves her into a dorm room where three other women are getting ready for bed. He stabs the first in the chest and the next one in the groin before tying the third standing with her arms over her head to the bed. The camera pans to a shot of a woman on the ground with her legs open towards the camera, focused on her white underwear. He stabs this woman, the first roommate, in the groin and smears her blood on the nurse's face with the knife. Next, he cuts along the bound woman's chest beneath her breasts, slashes her throat, then cuts an X on her chest before stabbing her in the groin. When the nurse screams, he lashes out at her with the knife, cutting an X across her chest and then horizontally and vertically.

This final murder scene of four strangers includes several face close-ups of the women with expressions that hover somewhere between fear and ecstasy. Their gasps at times sound like sexual moans. This ambivalence reinforces the transition that has happened between the overt and subterranean sexual pleasures of killing for the Cake Man.

As he is leaving, Afro Perm shows up. She clutches him and calls him "husband" as he stabs her. She falls to the floor and the camera zooms on her face and rotates as blood pools beneath her head. Cake Man is then shown in silhouette walking against the morning sky along a spillover. He takes off his shirt, washes the knife in the water, and then examines it as he continues walking along.

The end.

Although Cake Man is at first a reluctant murderer, his constant m.o. of stabbing women in the groin, supplemented by slashing at their breasts, betrays an underlying sexual element of the crimes even without the post-killing intercourse with Afro Perm. Possession of sexual knowledge does not seem to motivate the murders as the high school girl is presumptively "innocent" and there is no indication that the nurses are impure either. Given the attack on the young mother who worked at the wedding hall, it doesn't necessarily seem to be "motivated" to restore a more traditional social order.

Over time, the sex that initially motivated the murders becomes folded into the act of murdering itself. Cake Man and Afro Perm began their murder spree in order to spark the flames of passionate sex. They would kill, they would have sex. Sexual play with the victims was also included. They had sex in the presence of the body of the teenage girl. The restaurant patron's girlfriend was made to perform oral sex on Cake Man. There is sexual touching with the third victim, the prostitute, even if there was no sexual intercourse. But as sexual activity during or after the murders ceases, the murders themselves come to look more and more like intercourse.

Taken together, what do these two themes mean? I'm still trying to work that out. Any guesses?

---

[1] You can read up on Pink films here.
[2] Really, you have to see it. According to Wikipedia, the director asked Tamaki Katsura to style her hair in this way for the film.
[3] The jelly he is spooning into the croissant may be red but I can't tell. I'm colorblind. If so, that image would repeat the imagery of the bloody woman's parts Cake Man has been carving.

joseph heller presents space wars

Spoiler alert! This post reveals plot points of the novel Catch-22 as well as the 1993-1999 tv series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Proceed at your own peril.

I didn't intentionally set out to consume two texts about war this semester. As far as Joseph Heller's novel was concerned, it was the only thing on my shelf I hadn't read that wasn't speculative fiction set on the Indian Subcontinent or a history of the penis. At least until Murakami's 1Q84 arrived. As for DS9, well, I wasn't much in the mood for resuming the sitcom watching I began with 3rd Rock from the Sun I began in the spring. Then netflix notified me it had all 7 seasons available for streaming. I loved DS9 when I was a teenager but a stochastic appearance on the tv schedule starting around season 5 meant I didn't get to see how it all turned out.

But reading Catch-22 and DS9 side-by-side has been an interesting if serendipitous coincident. Together, they describe the experience of a people, the modern American people, at war. While these texts differ not only in setting but also tone, they manage to span the seriousness and insanity of being a soldier as well as offer a glimpse at war for the civilians who share space and time with the conflict. Looking back, they also anticipate much about the War on Terror^TM and the Bush years.

TBC

the new worst movie i've ever seen

Please, please don't waste your time watching "Hooking Up", now available on Netflix streaming. It "stars" Balki, Dante from "Clerks" and the annoying Corey (Feldman) plus a lot of other unknown actors in the main roles. I wasn't expecting much. A lame "American Pie" on par with "18-Year-Old-Virgin". Instead I got 90 minutes of unfunny, misogynistic nonsense and sexual abuse by Feldman.

I get what the screenwriters were trying to do (or more likely I'm giving them too much credit). They're trying to capture the sexual sadism of adolescent boys and emotionally naïveté of teenage girls. But they fail and fail in a big way. This kind of day in the life of a high school student requires perspective, something the filmmakers sorely lack, dwelling instead in the same ignorance and inexperience of the movie's main characters.

There are elements that could work for somebody more mature than the teens whom they purport to capture (a la American Pie, Wet Hot American Summer, and others). The three guys sitting around the library table discussing and googling various deviant sex acts is a scene that many American men can relate to (me included). Whereas better movies use this kind of sexual exploration in the context of heterosexual male bonding, Hooking Up uses them to glorify as "funny" acts and ideas that can only be characterized as misogynistic.

Seagulling, as the resident perv of this trio explains, is like bukkake but the person(s) ejaculated on are unwilling participants. You lurk on an unsuspecting couple and then pop up, pop on them, flap your arms like a seagull and then run like hell.

I'll explain the relevance, eventually.

To be continued

dungeons & dragons: daggerdale

I know I said I would review Bastion for you, but something more pressing came up. Right now XBLA is advertising Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale by Atari for download at a discounted rate. Let me save you some microsoft points. Do not buy it. The game is broken. I did some research on the issue and it looks like Atari has no intentions of releasing a patch to fix a long list of known issues, or at least no intention of doing so anytime soon. Don't waste your time or money on major frustration.

D&D: Daggerdale is your basic action RPG based on the popular Wizards of the Coast license. I think it's based on 4e rules but I'm not completely sure. You have the choose of 4 class / race combinations: a human fighter, a dwarf cleric, an elven rogue, or a halfling wizard. As you gain levels, you can spend points to improve your base attributes, buy and rank up special attacks & spells (about 6 per character), and purchase abilities. Each character also has a special ability based on class triggered with RB (fighter-block, cleric-Healing Word, rogue-dodge, wizard-teleport). There's enough choices to make things interesting but not enough that you can really customize your character.

Play time clocks in at about 6 hours if you run most of the side questions in addition to the main story quests for the 4 chapters. I wasn't a big fan of the dialogue screens which felt clunky and slow. And there's very little voice acting so you have to read the dialogue if you want to follow the story.

This is an action RPG so you probably want to hear about the combat and loot. It's a basic 4 button map (melee, range, potions, and interact) with your special attacks accessibly by holding the LT and pressing one of the 4 main buttons. Apparently if you press and hold, you can also charge those special attacks. I only learned about this feature after reading about it on the internet. No tutorial that I saw in the opening level pointed this feature out to me.

Loot drops are fairly regular but like most games of this ilk, a lot of the items aren't usable by your class. There are merchants distributed fairly evenly across the 4 levels. BUT you don't have to visit the merchant to sell your loot. The game gives you the option from the inventory screen to convert unequipped stuff to gold from anywhere in the level. And I don't think there's a major penalty for doing so but I may be wrong.

Besides potions (health, temporary resistance or stat bonuses), the major loot builds upon a fairly simple formula: item type + descriptive adjectives for enchantments + any magical bonus to attack or defense. The adjectives let you know what kind of bonuses you will get. And higher level items tends to have several adjectives because of all the bonuses.

Example: you may get 2 longswords, one a venomous longsword +1 and the other a blazing longsword +1. Both have the same base stats (for longsword) and magical bonus (+1) but one does poison damage and the other fire damage.

There is also a loot rarity system based on color with purple (or possibly blue, I'm colorblind) representing the most rare. Unique named items are also available by drop or by purchase from the merchants.

So what's wrong with D&D: Daggerdale? Two major issues in order of importance.

First, it's broken. Majorly so. And they're bad enough to severely negative the fun. The one I ran into is the deletion of one of your special skills when moving from Chapter 2 to Chapter 3. I played the dwarf cleric on my first (and likely only play-through without a patch). Shield of the Gods is a key special attack and one of the first ones you can unlock. It's major effect is to push enemies away from you (knockback) in addition to doing damage. When you start Chapter 3, all of your equipment and special skills are stripped away for plot reasons. After solving those, I found all of my points (4 total, or 2 full character levels) in Shield of the Gods had disappeared. What's worse, the game recognized I had already purchased it and so wouldn't let me spend newly earned points to reactivate it.

This became a major hassle later in the level because of an undead mini-boss that likes to stick with you and pin you. Under normal circumstances, I would have expected Shield of the Gods would have let me push it away to heal and attack from range. Instead, I had to keep running around the level, accidentally pulling the re-spawning mobs, and desperately burning through health potions because they don't make you pause midstride like Healing Word. Not being able to push back mobs was also a major annoyance. Thankfully healing potion drops were plentiful. Even burning through them like crazy due to Shield of the Gods disapparating mid-way through the game, I had somewhere around 130 in stock after finishing the game. But with Healing World, my cleric had a non-resource taxing way to heal so YMMV.

Atari forums indicate this is a known issue effecting all classes. Too bad they haven't patched it yet. It makes the game seriously less fun.

Second, the game has some serious balance issues after the second, and longest, Chapter. By this time, I had accumulated a substantial war chest and mostly purple equipment. It didn't require any extra work to purchase the few upgraded items available in Chapter 3 (Chapter 4 is just thef final boss battle against Rezlus and his dragon ally). This meant getting through the rest of the game was mostly a slog through repetitive, non-challenging mobs and bosses instead of a ramping up of the difficulty level as you progress through the game. Even the remaining special attack unlocks didn't seem to change the strategy all that much or add any novel mechanics to break the monotony. Perhaps a different character class would offer sustained interest throughout but the cleric build was severely lacking.

The graphics aren't terrible for the price if a bit boring and subdued. You spend most of your time either in dwarven mines or a fortress so there's tons of greys and browns on the palette. The character designs are pretty basic and all the NPCs look the same. Enemies aren't awful to look at but there's a real lack of variety. The level bosses, on the other hand, are pretty interesting. I really liked the Skull Lord, a 3 headed undead wizard that blocks your entry into the Tower. Not AAA quality but what do you expect for a $15 download? In terms of visuals, D&D: Daggerdale definitely lacks any original style or personality.

There's coop available for both local play (split screen?) or online. I didn't try it and from what I've read, all kinds of new bugs creep into the multiplayer to make it un-fun and unplayable in its own way.

The story isn't much to write home about, either. It's a pretty generic fantasy story about stopping an evil cleric who wants to take over the kingdom. Most of the quests are of the fetch variety (go find this person / thing) but at least you're only made to collect X number of items dropped by enemies once. At the end, I felt like I was playing Dragon Age: Origins with all the plot choices and deep character-building mechanics stripped out. Especially when the various factions you've helped as you make your way through the plot show up to lend a hand in battling Rezlus, the final boss, on top of the tower. The arrival of Incendius, his dragon ally, further drove this feeling home.

Verdict:
If Atari patches it to fix the many known issues, D&D: Daggerdale would still be a generic action RPG with balance issues plaguing the last quarter of the game. With so many better games out there on XBLA (Bastion), I wouldn't make this one a priority to play. Still, I might have pushed through it another 3 times to experience the other classes and grab the achievements for multiplayer and getting all 4 classes up to level 10. But without a patch, it's a definite miss. Bland graphics, repetitive combat, and boring story are unforgivable when combined with gameplay breaking bugs.

americathon

Here's a movie in parts about (apparently) America going broke after the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of China. To make ends meet, America hosts a telethon. That's what we need, Obama. Jerry Lewis can get us out of this crisis. Declare America one of Jerry's Kids. Seriously, though, after I get time to watch the movie, I'll review it. But you can enjoy it now in segment form.

George Carlin narrates.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7

captain america - the first avenger

SPOILER ALERT!

Just saw Captain America: The First Avenger today. I opted not to see it in 3D because I haven't heard great things about the 3D effects. When I saw Thor earlier this year in IMAX 3D, I wasn't overly wow'd by the illusion of a 3rd dimension. You may have read my woes with 3D glasses before. Even without the 3D glasses, the war posters during the end credits did give a nice 3D effect. But enough about the format...

This is the big one, folks. The last Marvel superhero movie before the Avengers film.

Captain America is a cheesy character. You can't get around it; no if's, and's, or but's will change the fact that he's a good, decent guy even before getting super powers. In fact, it's that innate decency that causes Dr. Erskine to choose Steve Rogers for Project: Rebirth. And he loves America so much he's dressed up in the flag. Where Joe Johnston, the director of Captain America, gets it right is playing this straight. Captain America is a patriot without a touch of irony. And it works.

Long story short: Steve Rogers (Chris Evans, no stranger to playing Marvel superheroes after two turns as the Human Torch in the Fantastic Four films) really wants to enlist for WWII but he's just too scrawny and asthmatic. He's been rejected no fewer than 5 times. His buddy Bucky Barnes sets up a double date at the World Expo and while Barnes' date is clearly happy to be with a tall, muscular soldier in Army green, Steve's girl is much less enthused to be with him. Eavesdropping on a conversation between Steve and Barnes, Dr. Erskine intervenes to approve the scrappy Rogers when he tries his luck again at the recruitment booth at the Expo.[1]

Though weak in body, Steve demonstrates both cleverness (releasing pins to drop a flag pole instead of trying to climb it) and bravery (diving on a dummy grenade) to match his innate goodness. His weak body, instead of being a hindrance for the project, actually is a strength; a strong man takes his power for granted but a weak man knows the value of strength, or so Dr. Erskine tells him.

Erskine and Howard Stark succeed in transforming Steve into the American super soldier but a Hydra spy who has infiltrated the Brooklyn base of the Strategic Science Research arm of the US military shoots and kills Erskine, taking knowledge of the super soldier serum to the grave.

Running down Erskine's killer in the middle of NYC turns Steve into a media sensation and he's initially deployed as Captain America, spokesman for war bonds and USO entertainer, instead of a soldier on the battlefield. But that all changes when the 107th and Bucky is captured by Hydra in Italy. Going AWOL from his USO troupe, Steve, Agent Carter (played sexily by Hayley Atwell)[2], and pilot Howard Carter drop Steve on Hydra's doorstep to single-handedly liberate 400 Allied POWs.

This is Steve's first encounter with Johann Schmidt (aka Red Skull) and Arnim Zola. Schmidt is the leader of Hydra, the Nazi's experimental weapons research group, and Dr. Erskine's first super soldier serum subject. Schmidt and Zola get away but Steve also gets a peek at a map showing where Hydra's secret bases are located throughout Europe.

The remainder of the movie is Steve and his handpicked Howling Commandos, an international collection of soldiers he rescued from the Hydra including Steve's pal Barnes, infiltrating and destroying Hydra's bases. The hand to hand combat in these sequences involving judicious use of the trademark red, white, and blue circular shield as a melee weapon and missile are some of the best fight sequences I've seen in a superhero movie so far. It's visceral and brutal without being the extreme close-up, shaky cam mess of the recent Batman reboots.[3]

Schmidt has laid his hands upon the Tesseract[4], a mythical maguffin mentioned earlier this summer as being stolen from Odin's treasure vault in Valhalla in Thor and last seen in Nick Fury's possession after Thor's credits rolled, in Norway. With Zola's tech genius, Hydra has harnessed the Tesseract's energies to power their futuristic war machines. These include disintegration guns that come in sizes from Luger P08 designs to rifles to cannons mounted on tanks and an immense flying wing fortress. These gadgets give the movie a 1940s sci-fi pulp quality that's visually interesting. It also contrasts starkly with the Asgardian future tech seen in Thor and Tony Stark's bleeding edge gear in the two Iron Man films. The aesthetic of the Hydra troopers and Zola's inventions evokes Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Doc Savage and even 2004's Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

In a daring raid on a moving train via ziplines to capture Zola, Bucky dies. I guess there's a recent renaissance in the train robbery trope (see Sucker Punch, Spider-Man 3, Wanted) but I'm not complaining. Zola in custody sets up the final battle in the last secret Hydra base hidden in the Alps. A one-man frontal assault by Captain America on the mountain fortress leads the Howling Commandos to enter the windows through ziplines (yay! ziplines) and the SSR forces, led by Colonel Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones), to storm the base to destroy Hydra once and for all.

Schmidt escapes in the flying wing fortress but thanks to Colonel Phillips and Agent Carter in Schmidt's suped up Mercedes-Benz roadster, he doesn't leave Captain America behind. Hydra's most nefarious scheme is to deliver on Hitler's dream of flying bombers across the Atlantic and attacking American cities directly. There are even bombs neatly printed with the names of intended targets, including Boston and Steve's home of New York City.

Unsurprisingly, Captain America triumphs, damaging the device used to harness and contain the power of the Tesseract. Schmidt seizes the energy-spewing cube as it opens up what appears to be a gate to Asgard before he is consumed by its power. Mimicking Roger's heroics from the 1960s Avenger's re-boot, Captain America pilots the crippled flying wing into the icy Arctic rather than letting it rain destruction on American soil. He and Carter make a date to go dancing both know he'll never make right before the plane crashes, leaving only radio static. Cut to a scene of Howard Stark recovering the Tesseract at the bottom of the ocean in a small submarine on his quest to find Captain America.[5]

Right before the credits roll, Rogers awakes in a 1940s New York apartment to the sounds of a Brooklyn Dodgers v. Philadelphia baseball game playing on the radio. But he knows it's not right. He was at that game in 1941. He escapes into modern day New York City where Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), the single thread that's tied all these franchise films together so far for the upcoming Avengers team-up in 2012, arrives on the scene.

Roll credits.

It's surprising how many people in the theater got up and left at this point. It's like they haven't been clued in after 2 Iron Man movies, the Hulk reboot, and Thor that this is where Marvel sets up the next film in the line towards the Avengers movie. Except this is the last movie in that line. The brief clip after the credits is a trailer for the May 2012 Avengers film.

We see Steve punching a boxing bag furiously before Fury arrives. Steve asks if it's another mission to try to get him into the modern world. Fury replies that it's a mission to save the world. Through the jump cuts, we see Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Black Widow (Scarlett Johannson), the Hulk (Edward Norton), and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner, very briefly glanced earlier this summer in Thor when the thunder god attempts to reclaim Mjolnir from SHIELD agents in the desert) joining Captain America to form the Avengers. Loki (Tom Hiddleston) makes an appearance in the trailer as the major baddie the Earth's Mightiest Heroes have to team-up to stop. Presumably the Tesseract will play some role as Loki shows interest in it at the end of Thor.

Captain America: The First Avenger is a great summer popcorn adventure. The un-ironic tone of the film, accepting Steve Rogers / Captain America as the boy scout he is without giving him a modern edgy coat, works and works well. Along with the pulp, raygun serial visual aesthetic of the film created through Tesseract-fueled super tech and a general sepia colorization, Joe Johnston manages to transport the audience into the sprawling epic of Marvel's WWII of superheroes and super-villains more villainous than Hitler and the Nazis. For 124 minutes you manage to cast off modern cynicism and accept a world of genuinely good guys battling sinister masterminds plotting world domination.

And then there are the fights and action sequences. The fight choreography is amazing. It's like they invented a new martial art for fighting with a shield. And the action is high tension. Guns, broken glass, fire, explosions, fast cars, trains, airplanes, and high speed chases all combine to keep you on the edge of your seat once the plot gets roaring along. It's definitely high adventure of a much more adrenaline-rushing, white-knuckle type than Thor.

But the film's not perfect. The ending in particular felt overly contrived. If the flying wing was in good enough shape for Steve to pilot it down towards the ground, why couldn't he turn it left, right, or even straight up? And it's a freaking fortress! Surely there had to be an escape pod. Evil geniuses always include escape pods. Or at least a parachute. Why not one of those piloted bombs intended for American cities?

The reasons are clear from the perspective of theme and narrative. Thematically, Rogers mirrored the lesson that Barnes' death taught him (through Agent Carter): that choosing to sacrifice yourself for someone or something you believe in is good and noble. It's the double, the repeated lesson, the hero learning something from his sidekick. Captain America doesn't experience the traditional character arc of standard superhero movies. He isn't chosen and resists the call. He doesn't overcome any personal failings or character flaw to save the day. He's a good man when he's the scrawny kid from Brooklyn and he still possesses those some values and attributes when he's the super soldier with the shield. But in this way, Rogers does learn something. He wanted to join the Army and fight so badly when he was just a skinny guy from Brooklyn. Arriving on the front lines with the USO and seeing the remnants of the 107th return, he gets a taste of the reality of war. He was willing to dive on the grenade to save others in basic training. Now he knows what it means to sacrifice yourself for the sake of others. He leaves behind Carter for whom he has been carrying a torch all throughout the war.

Narratively, Cap has to sink into the ice so that he can be cryogenically preserved for 70 years. He can't escape because he will be found and revived in the 21st century to lead a team of superheroes against an unstoppable evil. But here, the comic makes more sense. Cap leaps onto a rocket aimed at America to disarm it. When that fails, he hangs on to divert it off course. There are no escape pods or parachutes installed on this instrument of destruction. A rocket is on a one-way trip. His sacrifice wouldn't have felt so contrived if he had to actively force the plane down by battling the flaps mechanism or blowing up some of the remaining bombs to cause the plane to rapidly plummet. Yes, this would no touching last conversation between Rogers and Carter. Oh, wait, super tech. Steve could have found a "futuristic" wireless headset device at the Red Skull's captain's chair.

Oh yeah, and the CGI that put Chris Evans' head on a skinny body to play pre-serum Steve Rogers was both effective and kind of creepy.

The one burning question I'm left with is: what will Steve Rogers be like in the Avengers? In the normal Marvel timeline, he plays out like a boy scout, still supporting American values if not always the government. But the important feature is that he manages to adjust to the present. In the alternate Ultimates universe, Steve Rogers is played much more as a fish out of water in modern America with its modern values. His way of speaking to women and superiors is frozen in the 1940s along with his body. His ideas about recreation and fun, his tastes, are of a 1940s man. This out-of-time element makes him both appealing in his chivalry and frustrating by his old-timiness.

Which Steve Rogers will we get in 2012? We see him viciously beating the punching bag in the trailer for the Avengers. Will we see a 3rd option, a bitter and angry Steve Rogers, a man who loves his country but can't accept his personal losses and what his country has become? We only have 276 more days until we find out.

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[1] I wasn't able to read the display, but in the glass case at the World Expo is none other than the original Human Torch. Not only is it a brilliant nod to the wider Marvel universe but also a wink and nod to the audience; Chris Evans played the second Human Torch, Johnny Storm, in Fantastic Four (2005) and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007).
[2] Here's a few pics of Hayley Atwell out of uniform. Don't say I never give you fan service. Here Here and Here. For those of you coming here for her cup size, she's listed as a 36C. And just to be fair, here's Chris Evans with his shirt off.
[3] Let me be clear: I love the Christopher Nolan Batman movies and eagerly look forward to Batman Rises. But the fighting sequences are confusing in the Batman films. Yes, it gives the audience a sense of the chaos and tunnel vision that being in a real fight brings. But that doesn't necessarily make it the best or the only satisfying way to film a fight.
[4] aka the Cosmic Cube
[5] Assembling a timeline for the Tesseract from its appearances in the Marvel films so far means that it must have been stolen from Odin's vault as mentioned in Thor long before the 1940s since it's stored in the temple in Norway at the beginning of Captain America. It's in Hydra's possession until the end of Captain America, when Howard Stark recovers it from the bottom of the ocean. At the end of Thor, Nick Fury has the Tesseract as revealed in the post-credits scene with Dr. Selvig (who is either possessed by Loki or Loki in disguise). Does it make any other appearances in the Marvel movies?

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spotify

Two things that made a big initial splash earlier this summer that haven't been able to sustain the hype: google+ and spotify. Spotify just recently arrived in America and, if my friends were to be believed, revolutionized listening to music online. I shrugged. The reviews made it sound a lot like rhapsody. I was an early rhapsody adopter, too. And now that I've tried spotify (thanks, London, for letting my circumvent the whole "by-invitation" hype crap), I can honestly say it's just a reboot of rhapsody. But first...

Pros: on-demand music license, large library, friends, playlist sharing, compatibility with mobile mp3 players
Cons: requires software download, weak suggestion feature, won't necessarily have the songs you're looking for

The one huge plus that spotify has over services like pandora and last.fm is the on-demand music license. That means you don't just enter a song or artist that you like and the program generates a playlist based on what it thinks (should be) your tastes or similar artists & songs. It actually plays the song you want, when you want it. But on-demand licenses for music are much more expensive than a broad license where a record label can influence the licensor to also play other artists and songs.[1]

Spotify offers 3 different tiers of service, with only the lowest being free. It gives you the ability to listen to 20 hours of on-demand music per week for free. The paid services grant you unlimited listening hours and the ability to move songs to your mobile devices for free among other premium features.[2]

Another service that I was initially intrigued with, blip.fm, offers pretty much the same on-demand listening ability except they're not licensing the songs. They rely on users linking to songs on the internet, including youtube. And unlike spotify, searching for a song by title or artist retrieves loads and loads of returns, with most of them being lame covers by youtubers. But at least you don't have a 20 hour time limit.

Playlist sharing is a really exciting feature on spotify. My friend shared a playlist that he had found of all the albums released in 2011 that rated 8 or higher on pitchfork. People can share mixes of their favorite love songs, work out jams, or chill tunes all without actually committing the songs to tape or CD.

And while the spotify library is huge, it's not comprehensive. I tried to put together a mix of all the longlisted 2011 Polaris nominated albums but too many weren't available. This isn't some kind of hipster "obscurer than thou" posturing; these are albums nominated for a pretty major national music prize in Canada.

Another (sorta) downside is the very poor suggestions feature of spotify. Some of you may remember my complaints about pandora's broken algorithm for suggesting songs. It simply wouldn't accept that I hate Coldplay based solely on the fact that I like Radiohead. And this wasn't just a case of the lazies on my part; I actively disliked every single Coldplay track that played. But the program just wasn't smart enough to figure out that just because I like one British alt-rock band that I couldn't also dislike everything Chris Martin touches. A similar thing happened with Pinback. Remember that thing I said about on-demand song licenses being expensive versus other ways to license music? That's (partially) to blame for this problem.

Part of what I really like about last.fm (and to a lesser extent pandora when I still suffer to use it) is the dynamic suggestion feature. It may not play the band or song I want immediately upon me inputting it, but if if wasn't for said feature, I wouldn't have discovered Craft Spells of brothertiger or a number of other really amazing bands. It's kind of like if pitchfork wasn't a pretentious douche but that cute girl at the record store who asks you what you've been listening to and then suggests a really awesome album by a band you've never heard of. Spotify let's you hear what you want when you want (if it's got it) but it doesn't help you hear the stuff you'd want to hear if you only knew about it.

The biggest flaw of spotify is the requirement that you download software to use the service. Last.fm, pandora, even blip.fm don't require you to do this. In the age of ever increasing hard drive sizes, this isn't really a storage complaint. It's simply a matter of inconvenience. When I'm (theoretically) trapped in my cubicle for 8 hours a day working on a company computer, administrative access isn't going to allow me to download and run a new piece of software. But you know what it will let me do? Point my browser over to last.fm and listen. It might seem like a minor complaint, but it definitely delayed me from trying the service.

One of the big features touted by spotify is compatibility with all mobile devices and the ability to download music and playlists to said devices without paying a per song fee like itunes. This spotify feature requires paying a subscription fee, something I'm loathe to do when I can access so much music for free through the other services I've named, youtube, record label and music review websites, and others. And if I really want to pay money to hear an album, I'll probably just go ahead and invest in buying that record or CD.

But what I will say is I've been burned on that promise before. Rhapsody made the same proclamation to me way back in the day before itunes ascended to its current marketplace dominance. And you know what? It didn't work. I couldn't move songs I bought on rhapsody over to my second generation ipod nano. I couldn't even play them in itunes without first burning them to a CD and then importing said CD into itunes. It was a waste of time and money (blank CDs weren't cheap back then) and ultimately the reason I cancelled my rhapsody subscription.

Can anybody with the premium spotify service verify if it really is compatible across mobile devices? I know the use of DRM is on the wane with music services, drives mostly by Amazon offering DRM-free songs.

Overall, I like spotify but I don't think it will replace last.fm as my online music provider. If I want to hear a new album or try to dig through a artist's back catalog or if I really, really need to hear a particular song, I'll use it. But I also really like the adventure and exploration of suggested music rather than on-demand licensing.

It will be interesting to see if my account with migrate with me back across the pond when I return to law school in the fall.

Verdict: Worth a try, especially if you're seeking out something in particular rather than just wanting to listen to some tunes.

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[1] I'll reserve comment on whether this practice is good or bad for the end-user, i.e. the listener.
[2] American users definitely have the advantage for the paid plans. 10 is the magic number for spotify and US$10 is a lot cheaper than £10.

harry potter & the deathly hallows part 2

It's been a little over 2 weeks since I scoped out Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 2 in London at the midnight debut. At the time I watched it, I had not read a single one of the books to avoid spoiling the movie experience. It's a simple but unescapable law that the book is always better than the movie -- assuming the book was written first and not as a novelization of the film.[1]

Since I saw the film, I have blown through the first 3 books and am currently about 1/3 of the way through The Goblet of Fire. I'd still like to provide some comments about the last Harry Potter movie from the perspective of someone who hasn't read the series. All of the questions I had when watching the Deathly Hallows haven't been addressed so far in the books. It should go without saying but just in case:

SPOILER ALERT!!!

I saw The Deathly Hallows part 2 at 12:01 am on Friday, 15 July, the first public showing. It was the second feature of a double-header that included The Deathly Hallows part 1 as the lead-in. I was quite thankful to re-watch the seventh film as many of the smaller details of the plot had been forgotten between the time I saw it in the winter and now. The two films, part 1 & 2, work well together as a long, single movie, not surprisingly since together they make up the plot of the final book. The only thing that would break-up the narrative flow is the fact that at the beginning of part 2 they show a brief recap of what happened at the end of part 1 -- namely Lord Voldemort robbing Dumbledore's grave to collect the Elder Wand and Harry mourning the death of Dobby. Part 2 resumes at the coast as Harry buries Dobby without the aid of magic and the group takes shelter in an old home by the sea to talk to the rescue Mr. Ollivander.

The 3D effects appeared to be solid in the film, at least at the beginning of the movie. I am both red-green colorblind and wear glasses so I have handicaps that usually interfere with the quality of 3D. Of course, being in 3D, the overall color of the film tended to darker. And towards the end of the film I stopped noticing 3D at all. Which I guess is a way of saying that it didn't feel gimmicky and didn't detract too much from the experience.

After breaking into Gringott's to destroy a horcrux stashed in Bellatrix Lestrange's and escaping on the back of a dragon, most of the last movie is devoted to the epic war between Lord Voldemort, his Death Eaters, and army versus the forces of good protecting Hogwarts. But the Gringott's scene did raise an issue. Harry disarms Bellatrix and takes her wand; Mr. Ollivander identifies it as such. Therefore Hermione disguised as Bellatrix has access to it when the goblins ask her to present the wand as identification to access the vault. Why they didn't use it rather than Harry casting the Imperius Curse. After discussing it with people who have read the books, it makes sense. However, rather than presenting details to create this gap in the plot, why not just not include the scene of Ollivander identifying the wand?

Just about every surviving wizard who's ever been featured in a Potter movie makes an appearence in the last battle. The special effects are stunning for all the different spells flying back and forth and the creatures summoned to do the bidding of the Dark Lord. The duel between Molly Weasley and Bellatrix, much hyped at the premiere of the movie, was neither as long nor as visually spectacularly as I had imagined. Nevertheless, it was satisfying to see insane Bellatrix finally be defeated.

Harry's confrontation with Voldemort in the clearing raised more questions. Major spoiler so if you haven't seen the movie or read the books, you should definitely skip the rest of this paragraph. Harry is a horcrux. I'm not exactly sure how it happened. I think when Lily sacrificed herself to protect the infant Harry, causing Voldemort's curse to rebound, somehow part of Voldemort got lodged in Harry and this somehow functions as a horcrux. I'm not sure. The books probably give more details.

Voldemort manages to kill Harry with the Elder Wand. In the death state, Harry meets Dumbledore in a pristine and white version of King's Cross station. He also sees a visual representation of the part of Voldemort in him that Voldemort has just killed. For some reason, Harry has the ability to chose whether or not to die here. I'm not exactly sure how he has this power; it's kind of left unexplained.

I thought it had something to do with the Deathly Hallows. Dumbledore has gifted Harry the Resurrection Stone which he used to recall his parents and godfather prior to confronting the Dark Lord. It's also revealed that Harry is the true master of the Elder Wand, not Voldemort, because Snape, whom Voldemort kills to take the Elder Wand from, was not truly its master. The Elder Wand belonged to Dumbledore and it was Draco Malfoy, not Snape, who defeated him because it was Draco who actually disarmed Dumbledore. Snape killed him after he had already lost the duel. (From what I understand, in the books it's explained that Snape could not take the wand from Dumbledore because they had colluded and thus Snape didn't really "kill" him.)

The big reveal, then, would be that the Invisibility Cloak that Harry has had since the first movie wasn't merely an Invisibility Cloak at all but rather The Cloak of Invisibility, the third Deathly Hallow. Having all 3 would make Harry the Master of Death, thus giving an explanation for how he has the power to choose not to die. But that's not the case. In the movie, we're just supposed to accept that he can choose even though Dumbledore has been keeping the secret that Voldemort must kill Harry in order to be able to die himself. If Harry could just choose to come back to life after Voldemort has killed him, why not disclose this information to Harry, or at least tell Snape so that he can pass it along with the last of his memories?

Back to the plot. After killing Potter, Narcissa Malfoy is told to verify that Harry is dead but she lies to the Dark Lord. Hagrid carries Harry's dead body back to Hogwarts, led by the Dark Lord who has come to gloat. He expects the wizards and witches to bow before him now that Harry, the only one who has ever and who could ever defeat him, is dead. Neville Longbottom, long the butt of jokes, gives a rousing speech defying the Dark Lord and then Harry springs to life. All hell breaks loose again as the Dark Lord chases Harry and the Death Eaters do battle.

Nagini, Voldemort's familiar, is the last surviving horcrux. Understanding that Harry is trying to kill Nagini, Voldemort keeps the boy at bay and sends Nagini to kill Ron and Hermione, who have finally kissed in the bowels of Hogwarts while retrieving a basilisk fang to destroy the last horcrux. Just before Nagini can strike, Neville swoops in to save the day, wielding Gryffindor's Sword and killing Nagini. Neville is finally a hero, too.

Without his immortality juju, Harry finally destroys Voldemort with the Elder Wand, which is rightfully his, after a flashy wand fight. The world is saved. And Harry decides to destroy the Elder Wand rather than letting it ever fall into anybody's hands again.

One other "spoiler" is that Severus Snape, rather than being a Death Eater, is revealed to actually have been working with Dumbledore in secret the whole time. Harry learns of these secret heroics from Snape's tears. Snape had loved Lily first and had been jealous when she chose James Potter instead of him. And even though Snape had been mean and nasty to Harry throughout Hogwarts, he had never wanted to kill the boy. Oh, and Snape and Lily have the same Patronus. I'm pretty sure it's Snape's Patronus that leads Harry to Gryffindor's Sword in the frozen pond.

The scene that has received the harshest criticism from people I know is the last one, where the heroes have all aged 19 years and are sending their kids of to Hogwarts. The aging makeup is regarded as being pretty poor even though it's supposed to be the same technology that made the Curious Case of Benjamin Button age in reverse so effectively. I was kind of upset to see Harry with Ginny. Come on, buddy, Cho Chang was so much cuter...

Overall, it's a really great ending to the series and a thrill-a-minute. It doesn't stand well on it's own because it's mostly just action with very little plot development. A fine capstone for the bildungsroman / hero's journey story of this generation.

I don't think I had quite the same experience seeing the last film and not just because I haven't read the books. For many people I've talked to, the remember starting to read the first Harry Potter when they were between 7-12 and they have grown up with the stories. The next book coming out was part of their youth and part of their experience. When the first book came out, I was almost 19 and just a month away from starting university. I was aware around the time the first movie came out and saw the first movie. It didn't motivate me to devour the books like some of my college peers. Not even a ringing endorsement from my professor Dr. Susan Napier in a class on anime roused my interest enough to read the books. I enjoyed the movies ok up until the Goblet of Fire, when I got bit by the Potter bug. But, citing the rule above (the books are always better than the movie), I held off on reading the books for SIX YEARS so that I could enjoy the films in their own right and on their own terms rather than comparing them unfavorably to the books.

Now, I'm zipping through the books and can't wait to get home and watch the movies all over again. They aren't the stories of my generation. I'm not sure there was this kind of global culturural phenomenon when I was 10. We watched GI Joe, Thundercats, and He-Man but nothing swept us up like Harry Potter has for this generation. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was huge but it didn't drive millions and millions of kids to read hefty tomes. We just spent too much on chunks of plastic and got 1 good film out of the deal.

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[1] Can anyone think of an example where this isn't true; e.g. the movie based on the book is actually better than the book? I've heard Jaws is that way but never read the book.