Final Fantasy VII Playthrough
Playtime: 01:46-02:50
Well, if nobody else, apparently my friend in L.A. and proprietor of Don't Cross the Streams is reading this. So that's cool.
For whatever reason, FF games always have at least one or two completely random, bizarre enemies. This section of FF7 has one of them, the "Hell House", literally a big house that inexplicably shoots rockets at you and occasionally sprouts arms and legs. As to how or why these are roaming around the streets of Midgar--apparently in big packs because I fought three in a row--I'm not sure. I ran into another one in the train graveyard a bit later on--Elegor, some sort of demon thing riding on what I think is supposed to be a chariot, but looks more like a wheelchair with a horse head sticking out of it. He shoots lasers at you. There's a couple of other bizarre ones later on, like the guy who swings from an axe and every once in a while falls off of it. Sometimes JRPGs are just odd beyond explanation.
I played through the whole Wall Market cross-dressing sequence. Sadly, Don Corino did not choose me. I don't remember at all the combination of stuff that you need, and frankly, it wasn't really worth the effort. It takes a solid half hour or so to get through the whole sequence if you do the optional stuff like staying at the inn to get something from the vending machine and venturing into the Honeybee Inn. Once you've done it a couple of times and you know the gag, its a little tedious to go through, although I have to admit that it still has a certain amusing quality to it, namely because of the sheer creepiness of everyone you meet. It's funny to watch the whole situation devolve and get progressively weirder, like when Aeris says you need a wig and so the person at the dress shop tells you to visit the gym because there's other people "like you" there. Then when you get there you're confronted by the very manly men who patronize it ask if you're the one who "wants to be cute," as if you're encroaching on their territory. The whole sequence has to be just about the most bizarre sequence in an FF game. Yes, more bizarre than the leg-sprouting rocket houses.
Up next I have to fight my way up the pillar, then its up the wire and into the Shinra building.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Don't Step on the Flowers
Final Fantasy VII Playthrough
Playtime: 00:56-01:46
"They say you can't grow grass and flowers in Midgar. But for some reason the flowers have no trouble blooming here."
"Oh! And don't step on the flowers!"
Got in a quick bit of playtime here on Sunday night. Wasn't much, but I managed to get through the whole sequence with the Sector 5 reactor where you eventually fight the "Airbuster" boss that blows up and sends Cloud plummeting until he falls through the roof of Aeris's church. Aeris (or Aerith, whichever works for you) is probably my favorite character. In the middle of the dankest, dirtiest, most violent, most morally empty slum imaginable, somehow she's a giddily happy, somewhat aloof girl content to grow flowers all day. Logic would seem to dictate that it would be impossible for her to exist. Either she'd get killed, or the cold reality of the world would leave her bitter and hardened inside. Somehow she does exist though, and she becomes an incredibly endearing character, even before her whole importance to the game's larger plot really comes into play much later in the game. The scene where Cloud and Aeris are hopping along the rooftops trying to evade Reno and the soldiers who are with him--where Aeris tells Cloud to slow down as she very cautiously and deliberately works out her jump between each one--is kind of adorable. With the very blocky character models, the very simple and often repeatedly used character animations, and the fixed camera which is often far away from the characters, sometimes it can be hard to figure out what the hell they were really going for. This scene actually works well though.
I have Cloud at level 11 right now. I plan on trying to keep myself at a fairly comfortable level as I play through the story, but I'm not going to power level to the point where battles become a complete joke. After a brief stopover at Aeris's house, I get to the Wall Market, and the infamous cross-dressing part. Hoo boy. To be continued...
Playtime: 00:56-01:46
"They say you can't grow grass and flowers in Midgar. But for some reason the flowers have no trouble blooming here."
"Oh! And don't step on the flowers!"
Got in a quick bit of playtime here on Sunday night. Wasn't much, but I managed to get through the whole sequence with the Sector 5 reactor where you eventually fight the "Airbuster" boss that blows up and sends Cloud plummeting until he falls through the roof of Aeris's church. Aeris (or Aerith, whichever works for you) is probably my favorite character. In the middle of the dankest, dirtiest, most violent, most morally empty slum imaginable, somehow she's a giddily happy, somewhat aloof girl content to grow flowers all day. Logic would seem to dictate that it would be impossible for her to exist. Either she'd get killed, or the cold reality of the world would leave her bitter and hardened inside. Somehow she does exist though, and she becomes an incredibly endearing character, even before her whole importance to the game's larger plot really comes into play much later in the game. The scene where Cloud and Aeris are hopping along the rooftops trying to evade Reno and the soldiers who are with him--where Aeris tells Cloud to slow down as she very cautiously and deliberately works out her jump between each one--is kind of adorable. With the very blocky character models, the very simple and often repeatedly used character animations, and the fixed camera which is often far away from the characters, sometimes it can be hard to figure out what the hell they were really going for. This scene actually works well though.
I have Cloud at level 11 right now. I plan on trying to keep myself at a fairly comfortable level as I play through the story, but I'm not going to power level to the point where battles become a complete joke. After a brief stopover at Aeris's house, I get to the Wall Market, and the infamous cross-dressing part. Hoo boy. To be continued...
Friday, August 21, 2009
This Isn't Just a Reactor
Final Fantasy VII Play-through
Playtime: 00:00-00:56
"This city don't have no day or night."
"The upper world... a city on a plate. Its 'cuz of that @#$& pizza that people underneath are sufferin!"
Once upon a time, FF7's opening CG movie looked amazing. Two generations of systems later, it of course looks incredibly primitive now, even compared to graphics now rendered in real time. Part of its probably the nostalgia I get from it, but even now as dated as it looks there's still a certain impact that it has. Were they ever to adapt FF7 into a movie, (I mean based on the original story, Advent Children doesn't count) I can't imagine how it would open any other way. We start out adrift in space, only to suddenly transition to an extreme close-up of Aries, who we don't formally meet for a while, but who is in some ways as much of a protagonist as is Cloud. Aries walks away and we pull back to see the totality of the giant sprawl of the city and the enormity of the Shinra tower in the center. The title appears, and then suddenly we get another quick cut as a train comes barreling into the station down below, the train that later Cloud is going to use as a metaphor for destiny. In just a couple of minutes and with no words, only Nobuo Uematsu's music the game's creators perfectly introduce the game's near-future, super-industrial, dystopian setting while leading right into the opening mission. Few other games contributed more to giving video games a cinematic element, and FF7's opening sequence is one of its best examples.
The bombing run mission which directly follows the opening is mostly about new players getting their bearings about them, and introducing Cloud and Barrett. Cloud is widely mocked, and admittedly deservedly so, as being the first example of the "angsty" phase of Sqaure protagonists, the precursor to Squall in FF8, who was MUCH worse. The first hour of gameplay gives us the first example of the infamous "....." text box, and Cloud literally says about a half a dozen times some variation of "I don't care about the planet, I just want to get my money and go home!!" As Cloud sets the bomb in the Mako reactor, (side note: given that the first hour of the game has you blowing up a reactor for a terrorist organization, do you think this game would've been released in America had it been made after 9/11) he has a minor freakout, and a voice seemingly in his head says "This isn't just a reactor," giving us the first hint of Cloud's insanity that eventually is going to lead to the whole Cloud/Zach dual-life plot. Once that really starts to unravel, Cloud becomes much more interesting than the walking pile of angst that he is here.
A lot of people seem to dislike Barrett as well, complaining that Square basically made him a walking caricature--a black guy, permanently armed, with a gun grafted to his arm who talks a bit like Mister T. I can't really deny that there's a certain inherent ridiculousness to his character, but I also can't deny that I like him as a character in spite of it all. His frantic, overbearing personality is a great equalizer for Cloud's sullen nihilism, and he has some of the most memorable lines early in the game, like the "fuckin' pizza" line at the beginning of this post. Later in the game, once Sephiroth comes into the fold and the story becomes a battle of mythical forces, Barrett gets lost in the shuffle a bit, but in the game's first act he has his own sort of complete story arc. Here, we see him leading a terrorist cell as they complete their most brazen attack. Later, he leads them on another, still bigger attack which fails, leading Shinra to retaliate by eviscerating his entire neighborhood and nearly killing his daughter, after which Barrett is distraught but decides to fight on. I believe its Barrett who comments that the wire you climb up to get from the Wall Market to the Upper Plate "looks like hope," but I'll have to confirm that when I get there.
I mentioned Nobuo Uematsu's music when talking about the opening CG, and it really can't be stressed enough how brilliant his music is throughout the game. I love the background music for the mako reactor, where he combines a melody in the form of an electronic buzzing sort of sound overlayed with big bellowing chime sounds. The music envokes the same sort of feeling that the opening CG does, that this is taking place in a city that often seems less like a real living city and more one giant, cold, sterile, and dark machine. Once you get back to the surface, you hear the track that I think is called "Heart's Anxiety" on the soundtrack, with its haunting string sounds that fade in and out ethereally. Uematsu's music on the NES and SNES was absolutely amazing, given the great limitations of the hardware he was working with, and here in FF7 on a system that can actually approximate the sounds of real-life instruments with some degree of success, Uematsu is absolutely on fire.
I'm currently saved outside of Tifa's bar the morning after the Sector 1 reactor bombing. The whole sequence in the bar is probably a little long. It gives Tifa a chance to be introduced, but the flashback to Tifa and Cloud as kids sitting up on the watertower, or whatever that is, isn't really all that dramatic for the time spent setting it up, and there's a lot more of Cloud's incessant "I don't like people, just give me my money!" attitude than is really necessary throughout the whole scene. Up next, I'm off to try and blow up the Sector 5 reactor. Spoilers: this one doesn't go as smoothly. I'll see if I get around to playing some sort tomorrow.
Playtime: 00:00-00:56
"This city don't have no day or night."
"The upper world... a city on a plate. Its 'cuz of that @#$& pizza that people underneath are sufferin!"
Once upon a time, FF7's opening CG movie looked amazing. Two generations of systems later, it of course looks incredibly primitive now, even compared to graphics now rendered in real time. Part of its probably the nostalgia I get from it, but even now as dated as it looks there's still a certain impact that it has. Were they ever to adapt FF7 into a movie, (I mean based on the original story, Advent Children doesn't count) I can't imagine how it would open any other way. We start out adrift in space, only to suddenly transition to an extreme close-up of Aries, who we don't formally meet for a while, but who is in some ways as much of a protagonist as is Cloud. Aries walks away and we pull back to see the totality of the giant sprawl of the city and the enormity of the Shinra tower in the center. The title appears, and then suddenly we get another quick cut as a train comes barreling into the station down below, the train that later Cloud is going to use as a metaphor for destiny. In just a couple of minutes and with no words, only Nobuo Uematsu's music the game's creators perfectly introduce the game's near-future, super-industrial, dystopian setting while leading right into the opening mission. Few other games contributed more to giving video games a cinematic element, and FF7's opening sequence is one of its best examples.
The bombing run mission which directly follows the opening is mostly about new players getting their bearings about them, and introducing Cloud and Barrett. Cloud is widely mocked, and admittedly deservedly so, as being the first example of the "angsty" phase of Sqaure protagonists, the precursor to Squall in FF8, who was MUCH worse. The first hour of gameplay gives us the first example of the infamous "....." text box, and Cloud literally says about a half a dozen times some variation of "I don't care about the planet, I just want to get my money and go home!!" As Cloud sets the bomb in the Mako reactor, (side note: given that the first hour of the game has you blowing up a reactor for a terrorist organization, do you think this game would've been released in America had it been made after 9/11) he has a minor freakout, and a voice seemingly in his head says "This isn't just a reactor," giving us the first hint of Cloud's insanity that eventually is going to lead to the whole Cloud/Zach dual-life plot. Once that really starts to unravel, Cloud becomes much more interesting than the walking pile of angst that he is here.
A lot of people seem to dislike Barrett as well, complaining that Square basically made him a walking caricature--a black guy, permanently armed, with a gun grafted to his arm who talks a bit like Mister T. I can't really deny that there's a certain inherent ridiculousness to his character, but I also can't deny that I like him as a character in spite of it all. His frantic, overbearing personality is a great equalizer for Cloud's sullen nihilism, and he has some of the most memorable lines early in the game, like the "fuckin' pizza" line at the beginning of this post. Later in the game, once Sephiroth comes into the fold and the story becomes a battle of mythical forces, Barrett gets lost in the shuffle a bit, but in the game's first act he has his own sort of complete story arc. Here, we see him leading a terrorist cell as they complete their most brazen attack. Later, he leads them on another, still bigger attack which fails, leading Shinra to retaliate by eviscerating his entire neighborhood and nearly killing his daughter, after which Barrett is distraught but decides to fight on. I believe its Barrett who comments that the wire you climb up to get from the Wall Market to the Upper Plate "looks like hope," but I'll have to confirm that when I get there.
I mentioned Nobuo Uematsu's music when talking about the opening CG, and it really can't be stressed enough how brilliant his music is throughout the game. I love the background music for the mako reactor, where he combines a melody in the form of an electronic buzzing sort of sound overlayed with big bellowing chime sounds. The music envokes the same sort of feeling that the opening CG does, that this is taking place in a city that often seems less like a real living city and more one giant, cold, sterile, and dark machine. Once you get back to the surface, you hear the track that I think is called "Heart's Anxiety" on the soundtrack, with its haunting string sounds that fade in and out ethereally. Uematsu's music on the NES and SNES was absolutely amazing, given the great limitations of the hardware he was working with, and here in FF7 on a system that can actually approximate the sounds of real-life instruments with some degree of success, Uematsu is absolutely on fire.
I'm currently saved outside of Tifa's bar the morning after the Sector 1 reactor bombing. The whole sequence in the bar is probably a little long. It gives Tifa a chance to be introduced, but the flashback to Tifa and Cloud as kids sitting up on the watertower, or whatever that is, isn't really all that dramatic for the time spent setting it up, and there's a lot more of Cloud's incessant "I don't like people, just give me my money!" attitude than is really necessary throughout the whole scene. Up next, I'm off to try and blow up the Sector 5 reactor. Spoilers: this one doesn't go as smoothly. I'll see if I get around to playing some sort tomorrow.
They Were Mako Eyes
This is another new experiment I'm going to try out for this blog. As per normal, I'm not quite sure how well its going to work, nor how much I'm going to stick with it, but you have to start somewhere. What I'm starting this time is basically progressively blogging my thoughts as I replay through Final Fantasy VII, and maybe some other RPGs after that if it goes well. I've played all the way through FF7 maybe four times. Recently I've had the hankering to replay it, and I figure this would be a way to keep it interesting and maybe, just maybe, write something people would want to read in the process. Right now my plan is to basically write a blog entry for every couple-of-hours-long block of playtime that I get in. Final Fantasy VII is the first games in the FF series I was ever really exposed to, although I went back and played through VI (or III as it says on the US SNES cartridge) before actually beating FF7. Its a game that's near and dear to my heart, and while over time its flaws have started to become more apparent to me, and the graphics certainly haven't held up with age, its still a game that I absolutely adore. The opening CG is playing as I write this, so here we go...
Ponyo
Ponyo (***1/2)
Hayao Miyazaki is the greatest film animator of all time, and one of the greatest living directors of any kind, which is why Ponyo, which is a step or two below his absolute masterworks like and Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke, is still pretty damn good. The story is very simplistic, essentially a more Japan-ified retelling of The Little Mermaid, and it doesn't really build up to anything particularly powerful, at least compared to the two aforementioned movies. The animation, as is always the case with Miyazaki, is nothing short of stunning, however, and would make the movie worth watching even if its plot was a complete waste of time, which its not. The experience of a Miyazaki movie isn't quite like the experience of any other movie, animated or otherwise. No other movies are quite as imaginative, quite as immersive, or quite as engaging.
At the film's outset, we meet Ponyo, who the humans in the movie apparently mistake for a goldfish, although its more like a little creature with a human face and a disorganized red blob of a body. She has a whole school full of siblings, who inexplicably are a lot smaller than her and can't talk. Her father is Fujimoto, sort of an underwater version of Howl from Howl's Moving Castle, with very bishounen looking red hair running in every which direction. From what we gather, he's sort of the guardian of the ocean and spends most of his time brewing tinctures and complaining about how much the humans pollute. Ponyo, curious of the surface world, uses the transparent dome on top of a jellyfish-type creature to float up to dry land. Not really thinking the whole plan through, Ponyo nearly dies, being unable to breathe the air, but is saved by Soskue, a human boy who lives by the water. Sosuke keeps her in a bucket, names her Ponyo (her given name is Brunhilda), and shows her off to the old folks at the retirement home where his mother works, all of which thinks she's beautiful (but somehow not particularly out of the ordinary), except for one woman who in an apparent bout of senility warns that Ponyo will bring "the tsunami."
Fujimoto eventually manages to recapture Ponyo and brings her back down underwater, but during her surface world excursion, she healed a cut on Sosuke's finger and by tasting human blood she gains the ability to become human. Its not something she can do all at once. Her transformation takes great effort and she often winds up in this weird in-between stage where she has three-pronged bird-like appendages for feet and hands and a froggish looking face. Fujimoto attempts to trap Ponyo/Brunhilda in a magical bubble to stop the transformation and to keep her from escaping again, but she does escape again, with the help of her tiny mini-Ponyo siblings. She inadvertently steals some of the power from her father's elixirs, and rides her way back to the surface with the help of magical waves that are , comprised of this weird fusion of water and giant fish. The waves get out of control, and lo and behold, the old woman was right, and there actually is a tsunami. In fact, the moon is actually getting pulled closer to the earth ala Majora's Mask, only without the big angry face.
The movie is a little vague as to whether anyone actually gets killed, or whether there's as much major damage as it seems there should be in the storm. We see a group of fishing boats, including the one that Sosuke's father works on, being saved by Ponyo's mother, which they refer to when they see as the "goddess of mercy." The fates of the people at the old folks home, which Sosuke's mother rushes to go check on in the midst of the storm, is revealed much later in the movie and doesn't even really happen on screen. In the meantime, we basically get a lot of sight gags with Sosuke and Ponyo as she tries to adjust herself to the surface world. Its not that these scenes aren't cute, because they are, and show the heart that Miyazaki pours into all of his movies, but it kind of drains the movie of its central conflict, which is that Ponyo's desire to live in the real world conflicts with the natural order of things. There's a "test" that Fujimoto puts Sosuke and Ponyo through at the film's climax, but it doesn't really build up to anything tremendously dramatic, and what exactly is resolved at the end is kind of murky.
Even with the weaknesses of the story, however, there's no question that the movie is still a tremendously worthwhile experience. There really isn't anything quite like the hand-drawn animation of a Miyazaki movie, and giving him the ocean as a backdrop is almost unfair. The actual, factual ocean is filled with all manner of weird creatures to begin with, and when you let Miyazaki work his imagination on creating more magical versions of them, the results are incredible. Joe Hihashi, who has worked with Miyazaki on a plethora of his movies as a composer, creates another beautiful score here. The English language cast (the movie is only dubbed in theaters) does a pretty good job, notably Liam Niessan, who lends his boisterous, commanding voice to the character of Fujimoto. I can't imagine many people who have seen a lot of Miyazaki's work declaring this their favorite, but I also can't imagine many people finding a way to genuinely dislike it. Hayao Miyazaki has a skill of bringing out the inner child in people that no other working director--regardless of what medium, be it animation or live-action--really has. Even in a movie where the plot is somewhat murky and disjointed, its a lot of fun to watch.
Hayao Miyazaki is the greatest film animator of all time, and one of the greatest living directors of any kind, which is why Ponyo, which is a step or two below his absolute masterworks like and Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke, is still pretty damn good. The story is very simplistic, essentially a more Japan-ified retelling of The Little Mermaid, and it doesn't really build up to anything particularly powerful, at least compared to the two aforementioned movies. The animation, as is always the case with Miyazaki, is nothing short of stunning, however, and would make the movie worth watching even if its plot was a complete waste of time, which its not. The experience of a Miyazaki movie isn't quite like the experience of any other movie, animated or otherwise. No other movies are quite as imaginative, quite as immersive, or quite as engaging.
At the film's outset, we meet Ponyo, who the humans in the movie apparently mistake for a goldfish, although its more like a little creature with a human face and a disorganized red blob of a body. She has a whole school full of siblings, who inexplicably are a lot smaller than her and can't talk. Her father is Fujimoto, sort of an underwater version of Howl from Howl's Moving Castle, with very bishounen looking red hair running in every which direction. From what we gather, he's sort of the guardian of the ocean and spends most of his time brewing tinctures and complaining about how much the humans pollute. Ponyo, curious of the surface world, uses the transparent dome on top of a jellyfish-type creature to float up to dry land. Not really thinking the whole plan through, Ponyo nearly dies, being unable to breathe the air, but is saved by Soskue, a human boy who lives by the water. Sosuke keeps her in a bucket, names her Ponyo (her given name is Brunhilda), and shows her off to the old folks at the retirement home where his mother works, all of which thinks she's beautiful (but somehow not particularly out of the ordinary), except for one woman who in an apparent bout of senility warns that Ponyo will bring "the tsunami."
Fujimoto eventually manages to recapture Ponyo and brings her back down underwater, but during her surface world excursion, she healed a cut on Sosuke's finger and by tasting human blood she gains the ability to become human. Its not something she can do all at once. Her transformation takes great effort and she often winds up in this weird in-between stage where she has three-pronged bird-like appendages for feet and hands and a froggish looking face. Fujimoto attempts to trap Ponyo/Brunhilda in a magical bubble to stop the transformation and to keep her from escaping again, but she does escape again, with the help of her tiny mini-Ponyo siblings. She inadvertently steals some of the power from her father's elixirs, and rides her way back to the surface with the help of magical waves that are , comprised of this weird fusion of water and giant fish. The waves get out of control, and lo and behold, the old woman was right, and there actually is a tsunami. In fact, the moon is actually getting pulled closer to the earth ala Majora's Mask, only without the big angry face.
The movie is a little vague as to whether anyone actually gets killed, or whether there's as much major damage as it seems there should be in the storm. We see a group of fishing boats, including the one that Sosuke's father works on, being saved by Ponyo's mother, which they refer to when they see as the "goddess of mercy." The fates of the people at the old folks home, which Sosuke's mother rushes to go check on in the midst of the storm, is revealed much later in the movie and doesn't even really happen on screen. In the meantime, we basically get a lot of sight gags with Sosuke and Ponyo as she tries to adjust herself to the surface world. Its not that these scenes aren't cute, because they are, and show the heart that Miyazaki pours into all of his movies, but it kind of drains the movie of its central conflict, which is that Ponyo's desire to live in the real world conflicts with the natural order of things. There's a "test" that Fujimoto puts Sosuke and Ponyo through at the film's climax, but it doesn't really build up to anything tremendously dramatic, and what exactly is resolved at the end is kind of murky.
Even with the weaknesses of the story, however, there's no question that the movie is still a tremendously worthwhile experience. There really isn't anything quite like the hand-drawn animation of a Miyazaki movie, and giving him the ocean as a backdrop is almost unfair. The actual, factual ocean is filled with all manner of weird creatures to begin with, and when you let Miyazaki work his imagination on creating more magical versions of them, the results are incredible. Joe Hihashi, who has worked with Miyazaki on a plethora of his movies as a composer, creates another beautiful score here. The English language cast (the movie is only dubbed in theaters) does a pretty good job, notably Liam Niessan, who lends his boisterous, commanding voice to the character of Fujimoto. I can't imagine many people who have seen a lot of Miyazaki's work declaring this their favorite, but I also can't imagine many people finding a way to genuinely dislike it. Hayao Miyazaki has a skill of bringing out the inner child in people that no other working director--regardless of what medium, be it animation or live-action--really has. Even in a movie where the plot is somewhat murky and disjointed, its a lot of fun to watch.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Dark Skies Over Wrigleyville
The Cubs are sitting at 60-57, now 6 full games behind the Cardinals in the NL Central. The biggest continued reason for optimism is that their remaining schedule pits them against a lot of bad teams and gives them a lot of home games. Problem is, the Cubs are currently in San Diego playing one of said bad teams and have lost the first two with the finale toady. The Cubs took a 1-0 lead into the bottom of the 9th on Friday, only to have Kevin Gregg first blow the save then give up a 3-run homer to take the loss. Afterward, Lou Pinella announced that Gregg would be replaced as closer by Carlos Marmol. I was advocating Marmol as closer on this blog at the beginning of the year, but that seems like a lonnnng time ago at this point? Would Marmol be any better than Kevin Gregg right now? Its hard to say. His ERA is almost a full run lower, but his WHIP is actually significantly higher. He still hasn't been able to find his control for any significant stretch of the season, with a cartoonish 52 walks in 56 1/3 innings (with 11 hit by pitches to go along with them!). Its possible that Angel Guzman would be a viable option, and he has the lowest ERA amongst Cubs bullpen pitchers who have been there for the whole season, though he gave up 2 runs himself in the 8th inning last night.
Really, though, this is a Cubs offense that's expected to put up more than 4 runs in 2 games-- even in a pitcher's park like Petco--which is what its done thus far in the current Padres series. Geovany Soto, Alfonso Soriano, and Ryan Theriot all have OPSes below the league average. Milton Bradley has actually managed to get his slightly above average, in large part by drawing a lot of walks, but still hasn't hit for much power, with 8 HRs and 30 RBI. Aramis Ramirez has continued to hit the ball well since returning from his shoulder injury, but recently had to get a cortisone injection for it and sit out for a few more games. The injury is still going to require off-season surgery, and it seems like any slight tweak at this point might lead to him being shut down for the year. Should that happen, its hard to imagine how the Cubs could recover from it. Jake Fox is the only player who has put up offensive numbers anywhere in the realm of Ramirez, and he's a liability defensively. Largely wasted has been a resurgent year for Derrek Lee. After a few years with a drop off in power numbers, Lee has already hit 24 this year, the most since his ridiculous year in 2005 in which he would've won MVP had the Cubs had a better record.
The most consistent aspect of the Cubs team this year, and the one thing that's prevented the season from going completely off the rails, has been their starting pitching. Recently though, injuries have put a strain on the starting pitching as well. Ted Lilly just came back from a knee injury on Monday and pitched well, though the effort was by the aforementioned 9th inning unpleasantness. Carlos Zambrano is on the DL for the second time this year with a back injury and, in the latest soap opera-like twist for a team that's already made itself really hard to like at times, evidently Zambrano hadn't been doing the abdominal exercises that were perscribed to him because of self-described laziness. This would seemingly be an addition to a pattern that was on display last year, when Zambrano had to come out of several games with cramps because, according to the training staff, he wasn't keeping himself hydrated enough. Zambrano was scratched from the last game he attempted to start before being placed on the DL about an hour before the game, forcing Sean Marshall to make an emergency start, in which he got rocked. Jeff Samardzjia made a spot start about a week or so ago, got similiarly rocked, and is now back in AAA. Tom Gorzellanny, acquired from the Pirates at the deadline, has made three starts since joining the team, and two of them have been good ones, but in the third he allowed 4 runs over 1 1/3 innings and was then taken out after getting hit in the foot with a line drive, although it seemed like the decision had as much to do with his ineffectiveness than his health. The bad starts have required more long relief appearances than the Cubs have needed at any other point in the season, and have subsequently led to a bunch of roster moves to keep fresh arms in the bullpen. Its more than a little frustrating to watch a team with a $100 million+ payroll having to dig deep for arms with such AAA imports as Esmailin Caridad and Justin Berg.
Multiple injuries to key players are going to be tough to bear for any team, but the Cubs' struggles throughout this season nevertheless remain an indictment of the offseason moves by Jim Hendry. The loss of Mark DeRosa continues to be a glaring one. I've written here before that the deal in some ways made sense in that DeRosa was coming off of a career year, and so theorectially trading him would lead to getting the absolute best value for him in return. An article at Fan Graphs recently made the case that it was, in fact, a good deal based on the performances of the three pitching prospects now in the Cubs system. Still, I think it can also be said that it was a bad deal because of the timing in which it occured, when the Cubs are clearly going "all in" in an attempt to win the championship in the next few years. Most of the Cubs' core is either on the decline or will soon be on the decline, and yet all of said players will likely still be in a Cub uniform for the duration of their contracts, which are long and backloaded and will be hard to get rid of. In the past few years, the Cubs' payroll has balooned, and Jim Hendry has signed a number of contracts which pretty clearly overpay players in future years when their production will be diminishing with the hopes of attracting enough top-level talent to assemble a team that can win in the here and now. The DeRosa move, while making some sense on its own merits, wouldn't seem to fit in with the overall direction of the team. In a veritable must-win year, the Cubs lost their best option to back up their best hitter, who has not had a track record of serious injuries such as the one earlier this year, but has been known to require a DL stint from time to time. Really more confounding than the DeRosa trade itself, is Hendry's follow-up move, the signing of Aaron Miles, a utility man who is in the same vein as DeRosa except for the fact that he can't hit. This year he's hitting a putrid .184, and while his career numbers aren't as bad as that, they're certainly nowhere near those of DeRosa, and they're certainly not worth the 2 year, 5 million dollar contract he recieved. If the Cubs don't make the playoffs this year (or if they do, but don't do anything once they're there, again) I'm not sure Hendry makes it out with his job, and I'm not sure that he deserves to.
Really, though, this is a Cubs offense that's expected to put up more than 4 runs in 2 games-- even in a pitcher's park like Petco--which is what its done thus far in the current Padres series. Geovany Soto, Alfonso Soriano, and Ryan Theriot all have OPSes below the league average. Milton Bradley has actually managed to get his slightly above average, in large part by drawing a lot of walks, but still hasn't hit for much power, with 8 HRs and 30 RBI. Aramis Ramirez has continued to hit the ball well since returning from his shoulder injury, but recently had to get a cortisone injection for it and sit out for a few more games. The injury is still going to require off-season surgery, and it seems like any slight tweak at this point might lead to him being shut down for the year. Should that happen, its hard to imagine how the Cubs could recover from it. Jake Fox is the only player who has put up offensive numbers anywhere in the realm of Ramirez, and he's a liability defensively. Largely wasted has been a resurgent year for Derrek Lee. After a few years with a drop off in power numbers, Lee has already hit 24 this year, the most since his ridiculous year in 2005 in which he would've won MVP had the Cubs had a better record.
The most consistent aspect of the Cubs team this year, and the one thing that's prevented the season from going completely off the rails, has been their starting pitching. Recently though, injuries have put a strain on the starting pitching as well. Ted Lilly just came back from a knee injury on Monday and pitched well, though the effort was by the aforementioned 9th inning unpleasantness. Carlos Zambrano is on the DL for the second time this year with a back injury and, in the latest soap opera-like twist for a team that's already made itself really hard to like at times, evidently Zambrano hadn't been doing the abdominal exercises that were perscribed to him because of self-described laziness. This would seemingly be an addition to a pattern that was on display last year, when Zambrano had to come out of several games with cramps because, according to the training staff, he wasn't keeping himself hydrated enough. Zambrano was scratched from the last game he attempted to start before being placed on the DL about an hour before the game, forcing Sean Marshall to make an emergency start, in which he got rocked. Jeff Samardzjia made a spot start about a week or so ago, got similiarly rocked, and is now back in AAA. Tom Gorzellanny, acquired from the Pirates at the deadline, has made three starts since joining the team, and two of them have been good ones, but in the third he allowed 4 runs over 1 1/3 innings and was then taken out after getting hit in the foot with a line drive, although it seemed like the decision had as much to do with his ineffectiveness than his health. The bad starts have required more long relief appearances than the Cubs have needed at any other point in the season, and have subsequently led to a bunch of roster moves to keep fresh arms in the bullpen. Its more than a little frustrating to watch a team with a $100 million+ payroll having to dig deep for arms with such AAA imports as Esmailin Caridad and Justin Berg.
Multiple injuries to key players are going to be tough to bear for any team, but the Cubs' struggles throughout this season nevertheless remain an indictment of the offseason moves by Jim Hendry. The loss of Mark DeRosa continues to be a glaring one. I've written here before that the deal in some ways made sense in that DeRosa was coming off of a career year, and so theorectially trading him would lead to getting the absolute best value for him in return. An article at Fan Graphs recently made the case that it was, in fact, a good deal based on the performances of the three pitching prospects now in the Cubs system. Still, I think it can also be said that it was a bad deal because of the timing in which it occured, when the Cubs are clearly going "all in" in an attempt to win the championship in the next few years. Most of the Cubs' core is either on the decline or will soon be on the decline, and yet all of said players will likely still be in a Cub uniform for the duration of their contracts, which are long and backloaded and will be hard to get rid of. In the past few years, the Cubs' payroll has balooned, and Jim Hendry has signed a number of contracts which pretty clearly overpay players in future years when their production will be diminishing with the hopes of attracting enough top-level talent to assemble a team that can win in the here and now. The DeRosa move, while making some sense on its own merits, wouldn't seem to fit in with the overall direction of the team. In a veritable must-win year, the Cubs lost their best option to back up their best hitter, who has not had a track record of serious injuries such as the one earlier this year, but has been known to require a DL stint from time to time. Really more confounding than the DeRosa trade itself, is Hendry's follow-up move, the signing of Aaron Miles, a utility man who is in the same vein as DeRosa except for the fact that he can't hit. This year he's hitting a putrid .184, and while his career numbers aren't as bad as that, they're certainly nowhere near those of DeRosa, and they're certainly not worth the 2 year, 5 million dollar contract he recieved. If the Cubs don't make the playoffs this year (or if they do, but don't do anything once they're there, again) I'm not sure Hendry makes it out with his job, and I'm not sure that he deserves to.
Saturday, August 01, 2009
Funny People
Funny People (***)
Judd Apatow's first two directorial efforts, and The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up are both amongst the most acclaimed comedies of the decade, and he's been involved with a whole potpourri of other popular comedies in recent years --Anchorman, Pineapple Express, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, etc., etc.--as a either writer or producer. As such, he's become something of a household name, or certainly more of one than most people who are involved in movies but are never actually in front of the camera. Evidently, with the success of Apatow's films, he's built up enough of a reputation to allow him to make a pretty unconventional comedy in Funny People. 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up are somewhat unconventional themselves, but not like Funny People is, a 2 hour and 20 minute comedy centered partly around death. A lot of people have complained about its length, and while I can say that my interest was maintained from start to finish, it certainly is true that the script is somewhat uneven, and at times it kind of feels like Apatow tried to take two or three different ideas for movies and throw them all together. I do appreciate that Apatow is trying to think outside of the box, even if it doesn't all work. I'd take a hundred movies like this over most of the paint-by-numbers mainstream comedies out there.
Adam Sandler plays George Simmons, a character who is fictional, but who obviously is intended to be not at all dissimilar to Sandler himself. He's a forty-something comedian, who got his start doing stand-up but who has since hit the big time in Hollywood, starring in a bunch of movies. All of them are knock offs of formulaic Hollywood comedies--like Re-do, where Sandler/Simmons asks a wizard to make him younger and he ends up turning into a baby, and and another where he's an entrant in the 4th of July hot dog eating contest with his son in the crowd yelling, "Dad! This won't bring mom back!" to which he replies, amid hot dog chews, "I have no other choice!!" Its pretty clear that some of them are polite jabs at some of Sandler's actual mediocre, fairly milquetoast movies, like Big Daddy. As we're first introduced to him, he's meeting with his doctor who's telling him that he has a rare form of leukemia, and that its at an advanced enough stage such that his only chance may be experimental medicine. Suddenly realizing there may be a clock running on his life, Simmons shows up to a comedy club that he hasn't performed at in years and gives a somewhat, shall we say, abstract performance which the audience isn't quite sure what to make of. He's followed by Ira Wright, a struggling young comedian played by Seth Rogan. Ira isn't yet at the point where he actually gets paid to tell jokes, and so he spends his days working at the deli in a grocery store. He's a nervous wreck to begin with, and having to follow a legend and one of his idols in the form of George Simmons only makes things worse. It looks like his set is going to tank until he's able to recover by ad libbing jokes about how bad and uncomfortable Simmons' set was.
After the show, Ira returns to his makeshift place of living, that being a cot in his friend's apartment (Jason Schwartzman), who has made it being starring as a high school teacher in a fairly terrible NBC sitcom called "Yo, Teach!" Also living with him is Leo, played by the always funny Jonah Hill, who is himself a struggling young comedian who tries to attract people to his comedy site by making You Tube videos of him dancing with cats. Unexpectedly, Ira gets a call from George asking if he and/or Leo would want to write jokes for him and be something of an assistant. Ira basically pretends as though the "or your friend Leo" part doesn't exist--something with briefly becomes an issue later--and accepts the job himself. In his first 24 hours with George, Ira sees how George takes full advantage of his celebrity. The two of them perform at a corporate gig for Myspace (with a funny cameo by James Taylor), and they end up bringing back two random girls to George's place, both of which end up having sex with George. The next day, though, George comes down with a big container full of pills and confides in Ira that he's sick. There are a few very well done dramatic scenes by Apatow here, as George's health begins to spiral downwards, like when George is on stage singing a very sarcastic song about how the audience won't know what to do when he's gone and how he never liked them anyway, intercut with scenes of him vomiting in his bathroom facing his very actual, factual death. I never saw Punch Drunk Love, which is usually considered far and away Adam Sandler's best dramatic performance, and so to see him here doing something more involved than just making funny voices and getting into a fight with Bob Barker (not that that can't be entertaining) was something I much appreciated.
The thing is though, George gets diagnosed, gets worse, comes to terms with his mortality and becomes a pretty person because of it, and gets better all within the first half of the movie. I don't really think I'm spoiling anything here because they actually show the scene where the doctor that George and Ira think sounds like Alan Rickman from Die Hard tells them that the medication seems to have worked and that George may have beaten the disease. The second half of the movie turns into a love triangle situation, as George tries to win back Laura (Leslie Mann), a woman who he once upon a time was going to marry, but ended up cheating on. She's now married to a guy named Clark (Eric Bana) and has two daughters. George thinks that getting back together with Laura is sort of his ticket to true happiness, while Ira basically thinks he's going to end up destroying someone else's family and still be miserable. The whole thing is sort of tangentially related to the plot of the first half of the movie in that almost dying gives George a sort of revelation about what sort of person he is and what he wants out of life, but at times it also feels like a totally different movie. Its also not quite as funny. As George and Laura try and keep secret the fact that they're still sort of in love with each other secret from her husband Clark, there are a couple of scenes that devolve into just sort of slapstick weirdness that would probably fit into something like Anchorman, but not so much this movie, which is supposed to be funny but also dealing with serious things.
A couple of other scenes elsewhere are genuinely funny, but again don't seem to fit with what the tone of the movie is going for. There's a very funny cameo by Ray Ramano, but the circumstances of it are so preposterous that it's not that easy to accept it as being part of the same movie in which the main character is battling cancer. Funny People seemingly represents Judd Apatow, with a couple of films under his belt, trying to stretch the boundaries of what a mainstream comedy can do. He throws a lot of stuff at the wall, and a lot of it sticks, but it sort of sticks together and congeals such that you end up with a big mass of you're not sure what. Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen are tremendously entertaining in the leads, and they play off of each other's strengths tremendously well, but the movie is too scatterbrained to really be considered great. As I said at the beginning of this though, I appreciate Apatow trying to do something not quite like any other comedy that's out there. I'd take 100 of these before one of The Goods, although I do laugh every time I see the commercial where the old guy punches the Asian guy because Jeremy Piven made some reference to Pearl Harbor. I'm not really sure why.
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