Bourne to Party

You've seen him fight, kill, drive and bake quiche, now watch him plan a party.



Never let it be said that we are too proud to go back to the well.

Featuring the talents of John T. Woods, of guest-starring on last week's episode of The Forgotten fame, and Vlog Star's Chase McKenna.

What I've Learned About Making Web Series

A year or so ago I heard that USC is now offering a web video class, which I thought was ridiculous. Nobody knows how to guarantee success in web video; big media companies like HBO and Warner Brothers are throwing money at it and failing all the time. Why pay tuition to take a class in it? There are no rules. We are all inventing them right now.

Having made a total of three seasons of two different web series, I think I have learned a few things about the form. The first one is that nobody cares about web series. I'm not just saying that because nobody cares about my web series; I know that's just because they're not very entertaining. But I have a sneaking suspicion that nobody cares about any web series, really, except for people who are making their own web series, watching each other's shows to see what works and hoping against hope that there is a market for this format.

If you look at the views of even the more successful web shows, they pale in comparison to the views of random one-offs, quirky vloggers and internet curiosities. So, you could let an unselfconscious nineteen-year-old vamp on a webcam for five minutes of jump-cutting and get five million views, or you can spend ten thousand dollars on actors, locations, equipment and crew and get ten thousand views if you're lucky. Who wouldn't want to make a web show?

Has any web series ever even gone viral? When the pinnacle of the form is French Maid TV, it's time to question whether that form is worth making viable. Congratulations, you've leveraged T&A against product placement, now just make something that a person would want to watch a second time.

There are exceptions, of course--as I've mentioned, Jake & Amir is both popular and entertaining. But that show aside, I've never heard a real person in real life say how much they love a web series, or even that they have watched one. Does mainstream America even know they exist?

Speed: Needed

One of the reasons I picked up Need for Speed Carbon, despite the fact that I still feel guilty about not finishing Most Wanted on PS2, is that I was looking for something else to make use of the Nerf Wii Wheel peripheral that so far I've only been using with Speed Racer. Now, I've only played it for two days, but in that time I have learned two things. One is that the game is generally pretty fun and the other is that the default "steering wheel" style control scheme is an unmitigated disaster. It is possible to control the car only in the loosest sense of the word, in the same way that if you shake a box with a cat inside you could be said to be "controlling" the cat. Yes, your actions affect its movement, but not in any kind of predictable or repeatable way. It's not a matter of the tilt being too sensitive or not sensitive enough; somehow it is both. Your car won't turn enough, until after the turn is over, at which point it will curve straight into a wall even though you have straightened the wheel. I've seen it said that there is a learning curve here, and maybe if I could figure out exactly when in the turn I ought to stop turning my car even though the turn is not done yet, there would some way to do it. But I suspect that by the time I mastered such a thing, the experience would bear little resemblance to operating a steering wheel anyway. Furthermore, I believe a simple thing like maneuvering a virtual car around a corner while not even at top speed should not require a learning curve tantamount to landing the space shuttle. Call me crazy, but that is just how I was raised.

At first I feared the game, though graphically gorgeous (for the Wii anyway) would be completely unplayable. There is no excuse for control this hopeless (especially when the Wii's other racers prove it's possible), and I can only conclude that the guys at EA simply failed at it. Maybe there is some specific issue with their physics model, which was designed to be controlled by an analog stick, that cannot be ported over to a tilting controller without destroying the fabric of the game. I don't know.

Happily, there are 5 control schemes here to choose from. One of them involves tilting the nunchuck, which works marginally better than the Wiimote (imagine an angry cat on a leash instead of in a box), but twisting a nunchuck is nothing like using a steering wheel anyway, so why bother? The last two options involve steering with the analog stick, which is an absolute delight, especially after an hour of slamming your unruly car into walls with your Wii wheel. The analog stick steering is, in fact, especially good, and furthermore, the Wiimote throttle control, in which you tilt the controller like a gas pedal, works like a charm. Yes, it sounds counterintuitive and completely stupid, but in fact it triggered an epiphany -- the key to racing, especially in these games, is actually not steering at all. After all, any idiot can steer (once he is using a sensible control scheme and not one that is fundamentally broken); one usually blows a race by trying to take a turn too fast. This is because mastering finesse with the gas, brake and handbrake are the key to success. Once I tried control scheme 5 (4 is nice too, as it tethers the Wiimote to brake/reverse as well as gas, but unfortunately the handbrake is operated by jerking back on the nunchuck, which doesn't seem to do anything), I found myself commanding the throttle and handbrake with an assurance and precision I had never experienced playing NFS with a conventional controller. In fact, it works so well, I wondered if EA's programmers had consciously not bothered to perfect steering wheel controls, so certain were they that the weird nunchuck-analog/Wiimote gas pedal scheme was superior.

So yes, the game is playable and so far, a lot of fun on the Wii -- not just in spite of, but even due to, the Wii's unique controls. But not the ones you expect.

Phones Are Ruining My Life

All of you with iPhones and Blackberries and assorted cool phones with apps and web browsing and so forth ought to know, every time I see you staring down at your phones, activating the screen with that precious little swipe-to-unlock, it is like a knife in my heart. Every time your status updates appear on Facebook with the attribution "from Facebook for iPhone," I fight back tears as my soul overflows with agonizing envy.

You see, most people are either frivolous enough to go ahead and spend money on fancy phones full of exciting features no one needs, or sensible enough to not care about them. Unfortunately, I am neither. I have an overwhelming gadget lust that is matched only by my unbearable cheapness. So what happens is, I look at these phones longingly, then discover how much they actually cost to operate on a month-to-month basis, and conclude that voluntarily doubling one of my monthly bills would be an act of extraordinary idiocy for someone with a modest income who is already carrying around massive debt.

If I were a reasonable person in full control of my faculties, it might end there. Unfortunately, every time I see a banner ad for a smartphone, or an individual engaging in the aforementioned screen-swipe, all my Want rushes back to the surface. I am locked in a struggle with consumerism. Don't get me wrong, consumerism is delightful if you lean back and let it wash over you (at least until you lose your job or something and discover that you are broke and your money has been squandered on trifles that will provide neither food nor shelter), but it's a force to be reckoned with should you try to resist. Everywhere you go, people are entranced by their little phones, blissfully tapping away. Obviously there is something awesome happening on phones these days, and here I am missing out on the modern world!

Where was I? Oh yes, so then I get sucked back in to my Phone Want. And I start searching for halfassed alternatives. Maybe the aptly named EnV Touch would sate my appetite; there's html web browsing and a second-rate but good-looking touch screen; and a flip-out keyboard for texting might be kind of nice. And there's even the VPak: an unlimited data plan, plus VCast videos, for $15! But would this really satisfy me? Would the savings be worth the reduced functionality? Maybe not. I talked myself out of it.

This week, Verizon replaced the VPak option with a limited data plan with no VCast for $5 more, and I lamented my missed opportunity to be grandfathered in. On the other hand, now there is the Samsung Rogue, a much slicker option as far as halfassed smartphone alternatives go. I'm not opposed to limited data plans as a concept; my limited text plan suits me fine. But Verizon's data limits are absurdly stingy and a terrible value. The $20 option, for 75 mb a month, is only $10 less than a Blackberry unlimited data plan. And the only unlimited options put you in territory that is exactly the same as a Blackberry. So why would you ever get a phone with less? It's like if GM made the Chevy Aveo cost the same as a Cadillac CTS -- is the Aveo really there to be bought or is it just there to make the upsell look better?

It's Apple's fault, actually -- their iPhone price drop has fucked the industry by forcing every carrier to flatten their handset prices to around $100, regardless of whether it makes any sense, and then to make back the subsidy with unreasonable data plans, just like AT&T.

I just want to stop thinking about phones. I want to stop reading reviews, comparing prices, hoping in vain to beat the system and find the nonexistent rate combinations that would actually make sense. It is a real problem.

I tried to psychoanalyze myself out of it. You don't really want a phone, I told myself. You want what the phone symbolizes: the financial security to spend money wastefully, the additional discretionary income that comes with the career success that continues to elude you. A phone would not make you happy. Focus on self-improvement and hard work and the rest will follow. Your phone obsession, and the absurd amount of time and mental energy it consumes, is only an impediment to your success. This worked for a week or two, but then it came back.

I know I don't need all this bullshit. I have a laptop I carry almost everywhere anyway. I have a fucking map in my car, and even that I only use about once a year. I go through an average day never needing the capability a smartphone would give me, except that I am constantly thinking about smartphones and how I could possibly acquire one.

The Blackberry Storm 2 looks like it's going to be pretty good.

My Favorite Insomnia Cafe Bathroom Graffiti

From the bathroom of Insomnia Cafe, an insufferable yet invaluable screenwriter haunt:


8/19/07
Today is my last day with Jon DuBos and I just want the world to know he's my Best Friend and I love him more than you will ever know.
- Sam Sam



He knows
He loves Sam Sam too!
BFM FOREVER!
=) 8-19-07



8/19/08
Today I celebrate one year without Jon DuBos. Awesome! To think I ever thought he was my Best Friend(!) or even cool! Looking back, I now see what a douchebag he was. I loathe him more than you will ever know.
-Sam Sam

--

By the way, does anyone know what "BFM forever" is supposed to mean?

Dodger Dawgs

Went to a Dodgers game for the first time. Brought the Flip video camera. Get ready for five minutes of mild amusement!

Ghosts: Busted

Just finished Ghostbusters: The Video Game today on the Wii. How was it? Terrific.

Normally I like the stylized, cartoony designs that show up on underpowered Nintendo ports. I thought the goofy look of Windwaker suited the game nicely, much better than Twilight Princess' hideous attempt at fantasy realism.

In this case, though, I did eye the graphics of the PS3 and 360 Ghostbusters games with envy. Despite its precarious perch on the ledge of the uncanny valley, the attempt at photorealism does help the game to feel like it takes place in the universe of the movies.

That said, once you are playing the game, you never give it a thought. And I doubt the slicker versions can match the fun factor of the Wii's control scheme. The nunchuck/Wiimote combo is in top form, immersing you in the gameplay while never feeling gimmicky. Smashing the ghosts around by waving the Wiimote is perfect (although it might have been better with less delay between real-life and onscreen movement, but whatever).

The Wii version stands on its own and never feels like a hobbled version of a better game. If you go and actually compare it to the other versions, you'll find the levels can be very different, and some (like an extended outdoor Times Square battle) have been omitted. Some things, like exposition about a Super Slammer weapon, have no purpose in the Wii version, where you never use the Super Slammer (a mega-trap on the roof of Ecto-1). But basically, the story still works and is always fun.

The difficulty is exactly right. There is a nice hit system where your energy builds back up if you don't get hit for a while, and fellow busters can revive each other providing they're around and not dead too. All this means you don't die that often, and when you do, you're usually started at a reasonable point not too far from where it happened. There's still enough challenge to keep it interesting, without all the failure and repetition that makes me frustrated and bored and keeps me from finishing most games. Combined with the voice work and decent story, it easily makes for what's easly the best movie-to-game conversion ever (admittedly a low bar to clear, but still).

I guess more hardcore gamers complain when a game is too short and easy, but I like when I can play through a game and enjoy it without investing over forty hours of time. I feel like I got my money's worth, much more than when I have to give up on a game and never come back to it after finishing 5% of it.

Trade Secret

Oh, by the way, in case you don't know me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter -- in case you are still living in the era when things like blogs and phonographs and daguerrotypes are the cutting edge of communications technology -- there is this.

The article makes it sound like I'm riding high already; in fact, it is a bit premature. I can still barely pay my credit card balance, and not because I just bought a ranch and a pony with big fancy Hollywood fuck-you money. Things are still not quite so definite. But as much as I prefer to keep quiet about things until they are more certain, this is still my first mention in the trades, and it's no fun to let that go by without showing people, even if I have to qualify it heavily.

Kenny's Wine Video

I made a video application for the wine job too. I hope I don't steal too many votes from Dave with this awesome application.

Dave's Wine Video

The estimable David J. Duman, co-writer and director/producer of Vlog Star and Kenny Bloggerly's Internet Life, and your favorite Bourne spoof ever, is applying for "A Really Goode Job." This is the cheesy name for Murphy-Goode Winery's new Lifestyle Correspondent. This person will be housed in Sonoma wine country and paid handsomely for six months for doing nothing more than getting shitfaced all fancy-like and building buzz for the winery Web 2.0 style. All of this is way more setup than you need to enjoy Dave's application video:



If you think Dave deserves this job more than some boring loser (and while there are many highly qualified applicants, there are a lot of boring losers vying for this thing), go to the Murphy-Goode page and favorite him! This job is perfect for him; seriously, this asshole loves talking about wine.

Terminator Salvation: Unacceptable

Slant's Terminator Salvation review neatly and concisely articulates the central plot hole that devastates the entirety of Terminator Salvation, the same one I would have written about had I blogged about it in a more timely fashion.

How is it that Skynet is actively targeting Connor in Salvation, fully aware of both his future centrality to events and his childhood escape from their robot assassins? The established timeline does not support this. Armed with this knowledge, why would Skynet even commence with their eventual plans to attack the Connors in a different time, knowing as they must that such plans will fail? Another question: Why am I putting more thought into this than the screenwriters did?

To add on to that point -- since the machines shouldn't even know that Connor is important, it is even more outrageous that they know that Reese is important. If Skynet knows Reese, Skynet knows everything, and the entire franchise is stupid and pointless. To accept Terminator Salvation on any level is to create a black hole of stupidity that disintegrates and swallows up the franchise in toto, and that simply cannot be tolerated.

Just as the T-800 in T2 tells John, "I know now why you cry," I can say that I know now why Steve continually denies the existence of T3. Personally I thought T3 had enough good moments to outweigh the bad -- sure, there's some timeline discrepancies with John's age and some dopey failed jokes, and the general feeling of a franchise being stretched too thin... but there is also the pleasure of revisiting something familiar, a few memorable action scenes, an interesting arc for John, an effective, if depressing, ending, and some successful comic moments as well. Overall, there is enough to recommend it as a watchable, if inferior and not-wholly-canonical entry in the series.

Terminator Salvation, however, should not be allowed in the door at all. There's just nothing that good in there; the action is flashy but utterly unmemorable and uninvolving, Sam Worthington and Anton Yelchin do their best to connect, but at no point does the story reward them or us or give anyone a reason to invest in the characters, and the ending is just plain retarded, as was the equally retarded ending it replaced. Certainly nothing here good enough to justify overlooking the staggering crimes of logic and story.

Political Cartooning

Making fun of political cartoons is as old hat as political cartoons. But still funny after all these years. Hat tip to Jaime Weinman's Twitter (Man, I hate the term "hat tip").

Vlog Star Bonus Featurette

If you're not yet, come be a fan of Vlog Star on our Facebook page! We might even post more cool behind-the-scenes bonus videos of us talking about ourselves, like this one:



The reason we say Vlog Star "started" as a web show is that I edited footage from season 1 and season 2 together into what is hopefully a semblance of a half-hour (22 minute) pilot which a cohesive storyline. This was always something we'd had in mind, although originally I thought one season would offer us enough material for a pilot. As it turned out, having the second season to draw on was much better. The pilot version basically focuses on the material that advances the overall story. A lot of our favorite stuff that appeared in standalone episodes didn't make it because they would feel out of place in a half-hour show if they just brought the plot to a standstill.

Anyway, I did all this in order to submit the show as an independent pilot to the NYTVF, the New York Television Festival. I spent all weekend shaving bits off the show to edit it down to 22 minutes (even with only the story-arc-episodes, it still added up to almost 40 minutes initially), and then burning it to DVD. They wanted 5 copies, one of which would contain a bonus feature discussing the making of the show. So that's what this is.

I called up Chase and Dave and we sat down on Dave's couch, talked about the show for about 40 minutes, and then I went and cut that down to one. In retrospect, we probably should have just thought about what we wanted to say and spent 20 seconds each saying it. But it was a good time and we got to act like big shots praising each other effusively. I ended up not using the worst of that because it was kind of nauseating. Still, there's a lot of footage left over so if I have time this may become an occasional series to fill the time until season 3.

Over the weekend, I thought I would never get the submission done. Twice I thought I was finished and then realized there were more brand names and logos that I had to censor out due to rights issues, and each time I had to go back into Final Cut for a few hours and then spend a few hours more exporting and burning.

Bourne to Cook

Check out our new video, a stand-alone parody of the Bourne movies. Then send it to everyone you know!

Jason Bourne cooks a quiche from kennybloggerly on Vimeo.

YouTube, MySpace, DailyMotion, Veoh and Vimeo

Transporter 3

Transporter 3 is an essential entry in the franchise, assuming you have been waiting for the Transporter to fall in love with the least charismatic girl in the world. Actually, their chemistry is so bad that it's more like he falls in like, or falls in tolerate. By the end, he can sort of stand her, and she's goaded and pestered him into having grudging sex with her that he doesn't completely hate.

The problem is not that she's useless, annoying, dumb, shallow, and constantly distracted by booze and pills, it's that the actress playing her fails to make any of this fun. A charming girl could make us like this idiot, and that would have been kind of brilliant, the perfect love interest for a franchise so wonderfully, unapologetically brainless. Unfortunately, Natalya Rudakova is not that charming girl.

A fan's first thought might be, who cares? After all, we don't watch this for the story, and the slo-mo easy-listening-scored love scenes in the first Transporter movie were painful too. But those scenes felt more compartmentalized. You could grit your teeth and get through them, and they never felt like they dominated the movie. Unfortunately, in Transporter 3, we are stuck in a car with the girl for most of the movie, and worse yet, there is nothing to occupy our attention but their dull banter about food and the green-screen backgrounds quietly sailing past the windows.

One of Luc Besson's strengths is setting up simple but high stakes dramatic situations with crisp, economical pacing that quickly pulls you in. This strength is not in evidence here, where we jump around to various situations we don't care about before finally meeting the Transporter fishing. The first big fight scene is thrown away in a flashback, which is a clever and subtle way to sap out what little tension there is -- in these movies, we know the Transporter will always win a fight, but watching it when it's already over just makes the danger even less significant. (In an odd touch, several henchman bones are obviously snapped in this sequence, but conspicuously lacking the crunching sound effects that would make them satisfying -- a PG-13 concession perhaps?)

The pacing is leaden, the action scenes are too few and too brief, and at least two-thirds of the movie (though it feels like more) is the Transporter driving his car while talking to boring people. The fight scenes are well-choreographed, but they are too short, and they're shot and cut in showy, annoying ways that make them less exciting instead of more.

For a franchise that revolves around a man driving a car, the car chases have never been the series' strongest suit. The first movie's first scene was its only decent car chase, and the second movie had several hilarious car gags, but no extended car action that was actually impressive. In this installment, new director Olivier Megaton seems to have pioneered new ways to make speeding cars look dull. Either that, or he shot a bunch of terrible footage and tried to save it in the cutting room with lame and desperate editing tricks. Here are some tips for him in case next time he wants to make his car chases good:

1) The best way to add excitement is not to get as far away from the cars as you can -- don't shoot the whole thing from a helicopter.

2) When you're choosing a bad guy car to chase the hero's black luxury sedan, maybe don't select a nearly identical black luxury sedan, especially if you're going to shoot the whole thing from a helicopter. I shouldn't have to constantly check the Audi and Mercedes logos to tell whose car I'm looking at.

3) I can tell when you speed up the footage. Are you trying to disguise the fact that you shot the whole thing at 10 miles per hour, or are you just fast-forwarding it for me because you know how boring it is? If it's the latter, then thanks, I guess, but maybe next time have the cars do more cool shit than swerve at each other on an empty road.

4) Two-wheeling between the trucks was a nice, appropriately stupid-in-a-good-way kind of idea. Now just don't surround it with worthless filler and then we'll have something.

On the plus side, my fondness for the first two Transporter movies has increased as I'm reminded how difficult it is to do fun, low-budget action. This car-bound, claustrophobic exercise made me wonder if they ran out of money.

There are a few decent set pieces here, including a well-conceived but half-assedly executed bike/car chase, a nonsensical but sorta clever underwater predicament, and a climax on a train that is hilariously awesome and far superior to the lousy airplane fight at the end of Transporter 2. Unfortunately, they're buried by the movie's many flaws.