12 Countries Converge @ GCA 2007
The Games Convention Asia (GCA) 2007 event will witness the signing of thefirst-ever Memorandum of Intent (MOI) between the national game associations of12 countries and regions in Asia Pacific. The GCA 2007 event is a massive tradeshow that covers interactive entertainment, Infotainment, edutainment, hardwareand technology.
There will be an expected 200 companies from around the globe converging todisplay the latest and greatest entertainment technologies.
The 12 countries and regions that are signing the MOI are:
1. Singapore
2. Malaysia
3. Thailand
4. Philippines
5. Vietnam
6. Australia
7. New Zealand
8. Japan
9. China
10. Korea
11. Taiwan
12. Indonesia
The presidents of the national game associations from these countries andregions will be in Singapore to attend the signing ceremony for the Memorandumof Intent. All the 12 countries and regions have thriving games industries atvarying states of development. The MOI will seek to promote greaterunderstanding between the various national game associations, and the gamesindustry in each country. It will also pave the way towards closer networkingand collaboration between the game associations and the member companies theyrepresent. On the cards are proposed trade missions and partnerships.
Financial Heavies
In a sure sign that the games industry is getting a boost of confidence frominvestors, venture capitalists and business angels will be prowling GCA 2007.The GCA Games Convention Asia 2007 has received strong support from VentureCapitalists & Private Equity Associations based in Singapore, as well as theBusiness Angels Network in South East Asia!
The associations has formally confirmed their support for GCA 2007, and willbe inviting their members who are keen in game investment to meet the attendinggames developers, who hail from all over Asia Pacific.
Regional strength
Game developers and their companies will be out in force at GCA 2007. Theregional neighbours of Singapore including Australia, Germany, Taiwan,Philippines and Thailand have all confirmed their participation in the GCA 2007Business Centre. Each country is setting up a pavilion that will feature between8 to 10 companies each. These companies will showcase their latest and hottestgames, and related products and services, at the pavilions. On the cards areMalaysia, Korea and China, which are now finalising their plans to participatein GCA 2007.
For reasons that I’ll expound upon before this paragraph ends, the six-issue?Ozymandias mini-series was the one?Before Watchmen title apart from Darwyn Cooke’s?Minutemen that people who were supportive of the whole enterprise would point to in order to say “hey, look, these books probably won’t be so bad.” I know Jae Lee is a fan-favorite artist, and writer Len Wein was the editor of the original?Watchmen series as well as the guy who brought Alan Moore’s writing to America in the first place when he commissioned the Bearded One to take over the scripting chores on?Swamp Thing, a character that Wein himself had co-created along with legendary horror artist Berni Wrightson. And then there’s the fact, of course, that Ozymandias himself is the most supposedly “cerebral” of the?Watchmen characters, so having the imprimatur of these two established and well-respected creators on this series is, indeed, somewhat more impressive than leaving it in the hands of J. Michael Straczynski and, I dunno, Rob Liefeld or something. Yeah, it’s?still not Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, but the thinking amongst the general comic-buying public apparently was something along the lines of “this is probably the best pairing they could come up with for this book?apart from the original creators themselves.”
And hey, there’s certainly some truth to that. As far as these first issues go, this one wasn’t half bad. Lee’s art is rich, expressive, and even haunting in spots, evoking a classsical fairy-tale feel that’s as at home portraying the majestic and wondrous as it is the harrowing and frightful. Each individual panel (and Lee’s panel grids are both innovative and intelligent) is suitable for framing, especially complemented as they are by June Chung’s lush, digitally-”painted” colors. But therein lies the problem : this stuff has no sequential?flow to it at all, and really would work better as a series of individual prints than displayed in a manner that’s supposed to blend seamlessly together — but doesn’t — on the ?page. Each image is gorgeous to look at in its own right, but they’re all so stiff and devoid of movement or dynamism that it all feels more like looking at (and reading) a series of word-captioned gallery hangings than, you know, an actual?comic book. Which is still what this is supposed to be, after all.
In addition, Lee doesn’t seem too concerned at all with backgrounds — most panels have more or less none at all — and his style doesn’t translate well into everyday situations. A scene where a young Adrian Veidt is being picked on by some bigger kids at school for his lunch money looks more like it’s taking place in the darkest recesses of an enchanted fucking forest than some suburban playground, and weird touches Lee throws in like having a map in Adrian’s classroom with China missing from it make no sense at all (I’ve seen some overly-obsessive fans speculating about whether or not this might mean that China has somehow been destroyed in the Watchmen “universe,” but I don’t buy it — Veidt is seen in Tibet just a few pages later, and that region/country isn’t on the map in question, either).
So yeah, it’s all damn near painfully?pretty to look at, but it doesn’t exactly work when presented in this context, that context being — a pretty straight re-telling of Ozy’s origins as already related in?Watchmen #11. Okay, a few new details are thrown in for good measure — like about Adrian having a boyfriend in Tibet and a girlfriend when he gets back to the US — but frankly his sexuality, like his hero Alexander the Great, was already pretty ambiguous to begin with, and all the other stuff presented here, such as his giving away of his inherited fortune, his travels around the world, etc. are all old hat. About the only thing revealed here that we?didn’t already know is exactly?why the so-called “Smartest Man In The World” decided to put on a mask and fight crime on his own when he could buy all the cops and private protection he wants and/or needs ten times over. The explanation Wein comes up with is, to his credit, pretty plausible, but it’s also kind of limp, all things considered. Just because something makes sense, in other words, doesn’t necessarily make it the?best possible explanation.
In all fairness, though, Wein’s scripting is at least?competent here, which means it’s got last week’s?Nite Owl beat by a damn sight, but it’s certainly far from anything like?inspired. It’s just a well-written re-hash of a comic that came out just over a quarter-century ago. Readable? Most definitely. But?necessary? Most definitely not. And frankly, like?Nite Owl, it’s pretty hard to see where this is all going apart from being an extended (in this case six-part) origin story. That might make for interesting?enough reading, but really, weren’t we all hoping for something a little bit more — from all of these titles?
Finally, since this marks the last of the “first issues” of this whole?Before Watchmen circus (at least until?Rorschach and?Dr. Manhattan make their way onto the scene in August), I thought I’d conclude this entry by finally talking, albeit briefly, about the?other feature contained within the multiple covers of these books (in this instance said covers, as shown, being provided by Jae Lee, Phil Jimenez, and Jim Lee, respectively), namely the so-called “pirate story back-up feature,”?Curse Of The Crimson Corsair, scripted by Wein and illustrated and colored by original?Watchmen colorist John Higgins. Simply put, this kicks ass. I wasn’t too sure about where it was headed at first, and in two-page snippets, as presented, it still feels like pretty insubstantial stuff — but when read it’s consecutively, it becomes pretty clear that we’re witnessing the makings of a pretty solid little old-school supernatural adventure story here. Hardly groundbreaking stuff, but very well-written, and Higgins’ art is downright exceptional and perfectly suited to the material, as is the muted color palette he’s employing. It’s no reach at all to say that as far as some of these books go, this strip is the best thing about them, and I sincerely hope they’re all collected into a single-issue special/annual of some sort when all is said and done here.
3DLabs Support For 64-bit Drivers
3Dlabs Inc., Ltd., a leading innovator in professional visual processing,today announced that its Wildcat® Realizm(TM) 800 graphics accelerator has beencertified by leading Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) in the Computer-aidedDesign (CAD) and Digital Content & Creation (DCC) markets including Alias, ANSYS,Autodesk, Bentley, One Space, PTC, SOFTIMAGE and SolidWorks®. 3Dlabs alsoannounced today the availability of new 64-bit drivers that support AMD andIntel processors that increase application performance and overall systemproductivity. These drivers, which support the Windows XP operating system andall three of the Wildcat Realizm graphics accelerators, can be downloaded atwww.3dlabs.com. 3Dlabs is a wholly owned subsidiary of Creative Technology Ltd.
"As a leading force in the workstation graphics industry, 3Dlabs certifiesthe top software applications, so our customers can create outstandinganimations and design CAD models with their favorite applications," said HockLeow, president of 3Dlabs. "Wildcat Realizm 800 delivers the raw power of twoVisual Processing Units for unprecedented speed and performance."
"3Dlabs has consistently supported the industry's most innovativeinitiatives, including AMD's leadership in pervasive 64-bit computing," said PatPatla, director, server/workstation marketing, Microprocessor Business Unit,Computation Products Group of AMD. "Our customers work with compute-intensiveapplications that greatly benefit from the incredibly powerful AMD Opteron(TM)processor with Direct Connect Architecture. We are working with 3Dlabs, alongwith the growing AMD64 software ecosystem, to make sure our customers can fullytap 64-bit computing."
Widespread ISV Support for Wildcat Realizm 800
"Not only did the 3Dlabs Wildcat Realizm 800 graphics accelerator breeze throughour certification tests, the performance was very impressive," said RonWerkmeister, manager of systems and acceptance testing at ANSYS, Inc. "Weachieved record-breaking speeds of over 57 million polygons a second. Needlessto say, we were extremely impressed."
"Equipped with dual VPUs, the Wildcat Realizm 800 flew through the MicroStationcertification process," said Tom Anderson, vice president of product managementat Bentley. "Wildcat Realizm products continue to deliver impressive graphicsperformance."
"The performance numbers that the dual VPU-based Wildcat Realizm 800 achievesare simply astounding," said Michael Campbell, vice president of productmanagement at PTC. "PTC's Pro/ENGINEER customers will see great performanceimprovements in interactive graphics mode."
"Wildcat Realizm 800 enables OneSpace Designer customers to create incrediblyrealistic CAD models while meeting tight production deadlines," said Claus Brod,designer and hardware platform manager at CoCreate. "OneSpace Designer customersneed the stamina and precision that Wildcat Realizm graphics acceleratorsprovide."
"With its powerful dual-VPU architecture and two, dual-link DVI-I connectors,Wildcat Realizm 800 provides SOFTIMAGE|XSI 4.0 artists the best way toexperience content creation on two high-resolution monitors," said GarethMorgan, senior product manager at Softimage Co., a subsidiary of AvidTechnology, Inc. "Wildcat Realizm 800's flexible features combined with itsimpressive power, deliver dramatically increased productivity for eachSOFTIMAGE|XSI-based project."
"The Wildcat Realizm 800's fully programmable technology and powerful dual-VPUarchitecture run SolidWorks 2005 extremely well," said Brian Houle, solutionpartner program manager at SolidWorks Corporation. "This is a great solution forhigh-end CAD projects that call for layers of OpenGL® 2.0 shaders and superbgraphics performance."
For a full list of software partners who have certified the Wildcat Realizm 800,go to: http://www.3dlabs.com/support/certs/wildcatrealizm.asp The Wildcat Realizm800 professional graphics accelerator is available at a MSRP of US$ 2799 through3Dlabs' OEMs, Wildcat System Integrators, Resellers and VARs. For moreinformation on 3Dlabs' high-performing Wildcat Realizm graphics accelerators,check out www.3dlabs.com
Okay, right off the bat, maybe it’s fair to say that your host can’t be neutral on this one. Not only was writer-director Patrick Coyle’s second feature (the first being 2003′s little-seen “Detective Fiction”) lensed entirely in my hometown of Minneapolis, much of it was shot not even a mile from my house. A good half the action or more takes place a the fictitious St. Mary Magdalene Catholic church, which is, in actuality, Incarnation Catholic church, which is just about ten blocks up 38th street from my house and right across the street from where I attended elementary school. And hey, even though this is an ultra-low-budget effort shot on hi-def video, it’s still pretty cool seeing one’s home environs up on the big screen.
Our story is pretty straightforward : hip, liberal young priest? Father John Buerlein (played by Jeremy Sisto, who turned in superb roles as Brenda’s crazy brother Billy on HBO’s “Six Feet Under,” as the inattentive-at-best husband in “Waitress,” and as the nominal love interest in Lucky McKee’s outstanding and powerful humanistic horror flick “May, among others—and I guess he’s now one of the leads on “Law And Order,” a show that, even though it’s been on literally forever, I admit I’ve never seen more than two- or three-minute snippets of when flipping through the channels) is hearing confessions in his working-class (and purportedly downtown, even though it’s on 38th) parish one day when a young woman? (who we later learn is named Linda, played by Kristin Chenoweth, who I understand starred on TV’s “The West Wing”) comes in and gives a doozy—she’s there to confess a sin she’s about to commit, namely taking her own life. She then proceeds to tell Father John about her tragic childhood (her stepfather repeatedly raped her beginning when she was twelve) and how this set in motion a chain of events that lead her to eventually become a high-end escort. She’s tired of being a prostitute, though, sees no hope for the future, and has decided to end it all. Why she came to Father John to make this heartfelt (and heart-rending) confession, though, is a mystery that will remain unknown to us until the film’s very last scene, and one that he himself will never uncover (along with her final fate—and we in the audience are in the same boat as him with that one, since the movie never explicitly states whether she goes through with her plan in the end or not, although she sure is ready to).
All Father John sees of her through the confessional is a somewhat large and impressive crucifix? dangling between her (also somewhat large and impressive) cleavage, and when she’s done telling her tale, he rushes out to try and stop her from leaving the church only to find she’s already gone.
The memory of her confession remains with him, though, and in the days that follow, in between attending to his other parish duties such as counseling his flock, administering mass, and what have you, he begins to try to formulate a plan to figure out who this woman was, where he can find her, and how he can save her. Soon he’s trolling the streets of Minneapolis’ (admittedly largely imaginary, but they do a good job of turning the last nominally sleazy block of Hennepin Avenue into it) “red light” district and trying to find any sign of this ethereal woman.
Fearful that he’s getting in over his head emotionally, he relies upon another priest at a decidedly more well-to-do parish for moral support (as well as a loan after he gets mugged), and recruits one of his parishoners, an ex-Gold Gloves boxer, to back him up as he combs our fair city’s “mean” streets in his quest.
His physical search is neatly paralleled with his concurrent emotional and spiritual one, and the juxtaposition of the two is obvious without being heavy-handed. It’s a fine line to walk and Coyle’s tight script and economical direction straddle it perfectly, and Sisto is absolutely dynamite in conveying his character’s quiet inner turmoil that threatens to become out-and-out anguish at any moment. Honestly, we don’t know if he’s more interested in her out of pure concern, sexual attraction, or a deep psychological need on his own part to be a savior. And neither does he. Maybe he’s drawn to her because of her plight, maybe it’s because he gets off on being a hero, maybe the similarities between her story and that of the saint for which his parish is named are too much to ignore and literally compel him to go forward,? or maybe it’s just because of her tits. In truth, of course, it’s all of the above, and only as he begins to resolve all of these conflicting reasons for wanting to find her does he draw closer to her in her final, fateful hours.
Again, the parallels between resolving his own inner conflict and resolving the mystery “on the ground” before it’s too late are in no way subtle, yet handled incredibly effectively. Paradoxically, the direction, scripting, and acting are more subtle and understated than the core of the plot itself.? This is key to the film’s success, because in lesser hands this whole thing could come off as incredibly heavy-handed.
I’ll refrain, like the professional critic I’m not, from giving away too much more (well, okay, I kind of blew a big chunk of the ending already) — suffice to say that Father John learns very little in terms of concrete information as the movie draws to a close, but learns the most important thing that he possibly could—that “closure, ” such as it is, comes from within, and that he can “know” this woman, and know a kind of peace, without ever knowing what really happens to her. The up-in-the-air nature of the ending demands that we as an audience take that lesson to heart, as well, and in that way, it works beautifully. The conclusion is only unsatisfying for us if we allow it to be, if we are more focused on what happens in the movie than we are on what it’s really about.
Understatedly dramatic, turbulent, and gripping, “Into Temptation” is a provocative, thought-provoking and ultimately extremely rewarding piece of work. It speaks softly, yes,? but it also speaks volumes, and it’s a movie that will stay with you for a long time. I’d say the same if it was shot in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago—or even St. Paul.
We’ve just got to face it, folks — Ryan Gosling is everywhere these days. Well, okay, maybe not everywhere, but he is in two of the most talked-about films currently playing in theaters, so let’s take a look at each, shall we?
Truth be told, bad-ass Dane Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive is a movie I meant to review a few weeks back when it first came out, but a vacation, and then lots of catch-up at the day job, prevented me from doing so. Honestly, though, it’s just as well because now I can comment not only on the film itself, but also on some of the absolutely ludicrous backlash it’s generated, most notably from a Michigan woman who is suing the filmmakers for not delivering the Fast And Furious-type garbage action flick she was expecting, and has thrown in some absolutely unfounded charges of anti-semitism (that we won’t even do the courtesy of examining) just for good measure. In short, while most critics, and most of the Hollywood self-appointed elite, are absolutely drooling over this flick, a small but for some reason extremely vocal minority of moviegoers hate this thing with a passion bordering on the pathological.
Why? Good fucking question, because for once, the critical establishment has it absolutely right — Drive is nothing less than a modern masterpiece. Heady praise, to be sure, but damn if this film hasn’t earned it. Refn is known for his grittiness, whether he’s looking at the life of one of Britain’s most notorious criminals in Bronson, or demystifying (and consequently re-mystifying — trust me, if you see it you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about) the traditional Viking warrior saga in Valhalla Rising, and Drive , while as stylistically different to those two films as they are to each other, is no exception — this is one movie that’s not afraid to get its hands dirty.
Despite a heroically liberal amount of — uhhhmmm — “borrowing” from early-80s action thrillers of the Michael Mann and William Friedkin variety (Manhunter and To Live And Die In L.A. being the two films this one is most often compared to, and not without good reason) and 70s exploitation fare (listen closely for the insertion of Riz Ortolani’s spellbinding theme from Goodbye, Uncle Tom about 2/3 of the way through the film), it’s Refn’s skill as an actor’s director, rather than his admittedly flashy visual and tonal homages, that carries the day here. His casting, though unorthodox, is spot-on, and, dare I say it, even visionary. Not many people would have the guts to cast Albert Brooks as a psycho mobster, and fewer directors still could actually make it work, but by kicking back and trusting his actors, Refn allows them to do what they do best and the result is more than one Oscar-worthy performance (even if Brooks is getting most of the accolades, the Academy shouldn’t look past Gosling and Bryan Cranston, either).
The story is deceptively simple — Gosling stars as a character known only as “Driver,” a part-time Hollywood stunt driver who moonlights at a garage and also as a wheelman for stick-up artists. His gigs in that less savory line of work are generally arranged for him by his boos, Shannon (Cranston), and while he tries his best to come off a working-class Steve McQueen, in truth Driver longs for some kind of stability and some people to care for. He thinks he may have found that type of set-up with his rather fetching new neighbor (played by Carey Mulligan) and her young son, but when neighbor-lady’s husband (portrayed by Oscar Isaac) is released from prison, any hopes of a romance on Driver’s part are dashed, but he still clings to the sense of normalcy and belonging this less-than-traditional family brings out in him, to the extent that he offers to (he thinks) help out when hubby gets in deep to some guys he knew from the inside who want him to pay off his “debt” by ripping off a pawn shop.
Needless to say, things don’t go well (and look for Christina Hendricks in a role about as far removed from the glitz and glamor of Mad Men as you’re going to find as a low-rent femme-less-than-fatale accomplice in this doomed caper), and soon Driver finds himself up shit creek with a couple of Shelly’s more unscrupulous friends, sleazebag mobster Bernie Rose (Brooks) and his underling Nino (Ron Perlman), who had some pretty direct ties to the whole affair and now want the money back to save their own asses. At this point the desperation amongst all the principal characters is so thick you can cut it with a knife, and Driver decides there’s only one way out — and not necessarily for himself. It’s the safety of his girl next door and her little boy that weighs first and foremost on his mind, and he’s willing to sacrifice everything and everyone including possibly even himself, to insure it.
A bloodbath of absolutely epic proportions ensues, that serves to change Driver’s lady-almost-love’s perceptions of him irrevocably for the worse even as he’s trying to save her, and before we can even blink we’ve gone headlong from gritty street drama into classical tragedy without even batting an eye. Not too many directors can pull this sleight-of-hand off so apparently effortlessly (Tarantino, for instance, to whom Refn is also being compared, certainly couldn’t, simply because subtlety just isn’t in his repertoire — and for all the blood and thunder that the last act of Drive has on offer, it’s still subtlety, especially in terms of the nuanced performances he coaxes out of his actors, that is the most deadly arrow in Refn’s quiver).
And it’s that last act that’s really at the heart of much of the backlash against this film. Yes, it’s deceptively marketed, but shit, this film is seriously hard to categorize. Part arthouse film, part exploitation flick (not that the line between the two need necessarily be a bright red demarcation — remember, a lot of “arsty” European flicks were marketed as grindhouse fare stateside in the 1970s), part character study, and part Greek tragedy, Drive, while not especially original per se in and of itself, nevertheless combines all of these disparate elements into a seamless whole that maybe by all rights shouldn’t work but does anyway and will not only stand the test of time but be more fully appreciated, this armchair critic strongly suspects, as the years go on (again, not unlike Manhunter and To Live And Die In L.A., which were hardly box office juggernauts in their day). It’s a heady and sometimes even disorientating mix to be sure, but for connoisseurs of cinema that’s equal parts heart, brains, and balls, it’s absolutely must-see viewing.
So, the “phenomenon” is back, as you knew it would be. After Paramount raked in a bundle thanks largely to a phony, studio-orchestrated “grassroots” campaign that “demanded” widespread release of writer-director Oren Peli’s original Paranormal Activity, a sequel was inevitable — and just about exactly one year later, Paranormal Activity 2 is here. Boasting a budget of nearly three million bucks as opposed to the original’s $15,000, there’s no way this is going to make as exponential a profit as the first one, but it’s still going to earn the studio a very tidy sum, even if audiences are only 50% of what they were the last time around, which, based on how many people were in the theater when I saw it this afternoon, seems pretty likely.
Paramount even rolled out another phony-ass “viral” marketing campaign for this sequel — they couldn’t do the old “we’ll release this movie in every market that we get 1,000 requests for it in” again, but it’s more or less the same thing — if they get “enough” requests in a particular market (the exact amount isn’t specified), then it will open in that market “before” it goes nationwide.
Needless to say, every single major market supplied the requisite number of requests and the flick rolled out “early” — as in one night early, in a series on midnight shows on October 21st.
So, anyway, it’s out there in every megaplex now, and it’s on the whole a little less claustrophobic-feeling than the first ,a little less tense, a little more polished, a little more by-the-book — and, surprisingly, a little bit better, as well, in this critic’s view.
I wasn’t nearly as enamored with Peli’s original as most of the horror “community” — it wasn’t bad, by any means, but I really didn’t find it at all scary, and I honestly failed to see what all the buzz was about. It was okay, sure, but that’s about it.
The sequel, on the other hand, is — a little better than okay. Not a masterpiece by any means, but not a bad way to spend 90 minutes of your time and seven or eight bucks of your cash.
Our setting is sunny San Diego once again, but this time, instead of an unlikable, self-absorbed yuppie couple moving into a townhouse, we’ve got a slightly-less-self-absorbed, slightly-more-likable yuppie family living in the house they’ve always lived in.? The mom, the dad, and the teenage daughter (all portrayed by no-named actors) have just welcomed a new addition to the fold, a baby boy named Hunter. Within a year of little Hunter’s birth, though, shit starts going a little crazy around the house, and after what they believe to be a? violent break-in, they go ahead and install a video surveillance system all over the house. Rather than being presented (supposedly) through the point of view of the same exact camera throughout the flick, then, what we’ve got here is a hodgepodge assemblage of “footage” from the various security cameras, as well as the family’s home camcorders.
And while only the absolute dimmest bulb in the world would still be wondering “Holy shit, is this for real?” at this point, I’ll give the suits at Paramount credit for opening the movie with a great exploitation-style tag line — “Paramount Pictures would like to thank the surviving relatives of the persons involved for their agreement to participate in this film,” or somesuch. The cow’s long since left the barn, but they’re still trying to mikl it, bless ‘em.
Notable by his absence here is the “creator” of Paranormal Activity himself, Oren Peli. He’s still listed as an air-quote co-producer, but the director’s chair this time around is seated under The Door in the Floor‘s Tod Williams, and the screenwriting duties are handled by veteran TV scribe Michael R. Perry. On the whole, injecting a bit of (admittedly uninspired) professionalism into this amateur-birthed franchise (as it now surely is) works, and there’s a definite sense that the adults have stepped in to take this thing in a more finished and sensible direction than the kids were capable of. This is most notable in how they’ve chosen to portray the lead characters — last time around you wanted both to be killed, this time you’d just as well see them survive. They’re not all that interesting or anything, to be sure, but they’re no less nauseous than the average family of corporate scumbags. Plus, there are little touches added in to give them a more “human” feel — this is the old man’s second marriage, his first wife died, the teenage daughter is his kid with said first wife, the new bundle of joy is his first with his much-younger second wife, things like that.
Plus, they’ve hit on a? concept that, while by no means original, certainly works — this time around, the ghost/spirit/demon/whatever-the-fuck is after the baby.
Now, what, you may ask, does any of this have to do with the previous film? Well, that’s where the next effective plot twist comes in, and I’m not gonna give it away. Suffice to say that the couple from the original Paranormal Activity is known to this bunch, it’s the same spook haunting them, and a seriously asshole move made by the dad in this flick is what sics the invisible monster onto the other folks from the other movie in the first place.
If you’re dying to find out what this rather simple, but ingenious, plot device is that ties the two pictures together, I’m sure there are plenty of “spoiler”-filled reviews out there on this great big internet of ours, but I’m not going to add this one to those ranks since seeing this particular plot twist unfold for yourself is one of the best things about this movie and, while there are fewer jump-in- (or out of) -your-seat moments in Paranormal Activity 2 than there were in the first, this major-league “damn, that’s a cool idea” moment more than makes up for it — and? the ending has the dad not only pay for what he’s done, but ties the two films together even more tightly and leaves open the possibility for yet another sequel.
All that being said, and even though I freely admit I liked this flick better than the first one,? I find myself hoping this is the end of the road for not only Paranormal Activity, but for the whole digital handheld/camcorder/POV/fake DIY? horror craze in general. Really, this idea’s been not just mined for all it’s worth thanks to movies like Cloverfield, Diary of the Dead, Rec (and it’s Americanized remake, Quarantine) , Rec 2, and of course the original Paranormal Activity itself, the fact is that it’s been flat-out strip-mined down to nothingness. It was a novel enough idea to start with, I suppose, and serves as a useful plot gimmick for getting around one of the great dilemmas every horror screenwriter faces, namely “how do I explain all this shit?” (since with this particular genre you never really have to), but it’s beyond played-out at this point — and while Paranormal Activity 2 might do a little better job of it than some of the other films mentioned here, it by no means adds anything new to the proceedings. Simply put, the whole idea is beyond it’s sell-by date and went from feeling fresh and interesting to old and stale in no time flat — which is really rather fitting, I suppose, given that the? modern, instantaneous “information age” culture that gave birth to this new spin on horror has an attention span of about fifteen seconds and demands something new all the time. In a way, then, the “camcorder horror” subgenre is a victim of its own success, and has been done in by the very same culture of instant “information” (and instant gratification) that gave rise to it.
Whether that’s poetic, prophetic, or just plain the way things are today, I leave up to you to decide. But if the whole craze has gotta end, this wouldn’t be a bad note to end it on.
