Apollo 13 is often called a "successful failure" because of the way NASA managed to turn the situation around and successfully bring the astronauts home. But just how did the failure happen in the first place? Through a perfect storm of incredibly unlikely, but aligned, events.
Short films remain, compared to their lengthier siblings, under-appreciated and unknown today. But, as anyone who’s ever seen an art film (or an exploitation film) knows, a lack of commercial appeal can bode extremely well for artistic potential.
A seeming irony, there’s nothing shocking about this contrast at all: not having to find commercial success and not needing to appeal to a conventional audience grants a filmmaker far more artistic freedom to experiment and move away from the norm. True in live-action cinema, but perhaps even more-so in the world of animation, where “convention” and the need for popular success are married to immaturity and idiocy.
Low and behold, at the same time, there is an ever flourishing surfeit of untapped animated short films that entertain and enlighten in equal measure, pushing forth the genre and using their relative shortness of breath to pack every second with innovation and exploration of animation as an art form.
Animated shorts are as diverse and exotic and filled with discovery as their more popular full-length brethren, not to mention their live-action counterparts, but, perhaps due to the stigma of animation and perhaps due to their own complex, challenging nature, few of these films have entered the popular consciousness.
To help correct this, here is a list of 25 of the greatest animated short films ever released, limited to only one short per director for variety’s sake, and presented in order of release year.
1. Out of the Inkwell Series (1918-1929, Max Fleischer)
Perhaps the only entry on this list heavily weighted for its own influence, Max Fleischer’s “Out of the Inkwell” series is simply unavoidable in the field of animation, taking the Polish style and adapting it for American audiences and pushing the world of animation forth through techniques such as Rotoscoping, or tracing over live action images in a literal feat of “animation” by giving everyday reality a life its own.
No one individual short stands out today, but the corpus of early works not only refined the art of animation, but played around with the idea that it was animation. This was the wild years, folks, the 1920s and 1930s when film was still discovering itself, and the same was true of animation.
It approaches us like an alien artifact from a time when the art form was an active, endless pool of discovery, and Fleischer’s habit of emphasizing the artificiality of the animation, and his own involvement in creating it, allowed for a playfulness of theme and style that thrived on its own joy of the future. His art is never anything less than positively enraptured to be trying new things.
2. Papageno (1935, Lotte Reiniger)
Far more (justifiably) famous for her surviving full length feature The Adventures of Prince Achmed from 1926, “Papageno” shows that a decade of time did nothing to dull Reiniger’s ever adventurous, mythical cinematic spirit.
Here is someone who managed to capture everything lovely and transformative about silent German cinema and transfer it to the world of animation in a way that not only retained its spirit but afforded it a new sensibility of whimsy altogether. Her signature style of silhouette animation, adapted from Wayang puppet theater, took cardboard cutouts painted black and placed them in front of tinted backgrounds.
In doing so, she elegantly conveyed an arch simplicity without sacrificing (and in many ways actually enhancing) the fluidity and nuance of emotion experienced in the animation world at the time. Few animation styles convey texture and narrative through simple character movements quite like Reiniger’s; each subtle motion, both jerked and graceful, hints at much more than it explicitly reveals.
With so much going on in the foreground through the frame by frame animation, it’s easy to forget the breathy textures of the background, layered to convey mystery and levels of distance before the invention of the multiplane camera to properly frame z-axis depth in animation.
Whichever short you choose in the catalogue, Reiniger is technological innovation and prime storytelling all in one, and she is one of the most important animated forces ever to grace the cinema.
3. The Old Mill (1937, Wilfred Jackson)
Sometimes written off as a mere test run for what Disney would achieve later the same year with their first full length animated release, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, “The Old Mill” is instead a perfect encapsulation of all of the advancements made by Disney over the prior ten years during one of the most consistently innovative times for animation in history.
Famously, “The Old Mill” pioneered the use of the multiplane camera, thus allowing for separate cells to be run through a camera at different distances simultaneously so as to convey three dimensional screen depth. The effect is to construct a fully realized, cohesive world as animation had never before achieved, without losing any of the essential mystery and poetic discovery of the world itself.
This story of a thunderstorm tormenting the local animal communities of an old abandoned mill perfects the clashing of impressionist, expressionist, and naturalist styles melded into a unique, storybook whole, the style that would serve Disney well for most of its best releases.
One can see, on the merits of “The Old Mill”, why Wilfred Jackson was asked to spear-head the finest moments of Fantasia, the fatalistic hell of “Night on Bald Mountain” and the ensuing impressionist resurgence and calm, quiet lifeblood of “Ava Maria”.
Handling two polar opposites, pure contorted, alarming, and confrontational destruction matched to the endlessly restful emptiness of rebirth, is no easy feat, but the endless complications of “The Old Mill” silence any claims that Jackson wasn’t up to the challenge.
4. The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (1946, Robert Clampett)
When one looks down the barrel of a great Looney Tunes short, it is more than likely that Chuck Jones will holding the trigger at the other end. “Duck Amuck” is his masterpiece, but “What’s Opera Doc?”, “One Froggy Evening”, the “Rabbit of Seville” and many others owing to his pen are among the great animated shorts. But Jones was not the only master holding it down at Warner Bros animation.
There was the countrified elemental quality of Tex Avery, the ambidextrous postmodernism of Friz Freling, and there was the all-over-the-place tomfoolery of Bob Clampett, one of the few animators who actively understood the main players of Warner Bros like Bugs and Daffy but consciously chose to work with the more obscure entities.
Still, Clampett’s best short, and maybe the best non-Jones from the company entity altogether, is perhaps the most perfect parody of the artificial hard-edge of film noir and detective fiction ever: “The Great Piggy Bank Robbery”, and in the role of the intrepid detective, it could only ever feature Daffy Duck. Subtle visual touches, like when a shadow of Daffy morphs into a chiseled-jaw human for a few frames, announce it as more than a mere noir parody.
The typical Looney Tunes commentary on the nature of art and audience is at its fullest as well, especially when Daffy does something superhuman and he gleefully turns to the camera breaking the fourth wall, to defend himself and implicitly the seeming superhuman ability given to so many detectives who ought to have died somewhere between villain 13 and 37.
When Daffy falls into a noirish nightmare, Clampett lets loose with the key understanding that governed all noir: it was essentially German Expressionism only slightly diluted for American audiences.
His imagery, all doctored up with abstract color backgrounds, heightened detail differences, and absurdist literal realizations of the over-the-top names of typical crime fiction villains, at once captures and mocks the spirit of the form, sending it off in fine style post-WWII (when it was on its way out anyway) with a poison pen love letter in typical Looney Tunes fashion.
5. Begone Dull Care (1949, Norman McLaren)
A Scottish animator working for the National Film Board of Canada, Norman McLaren proved time and time again that to test the boundaries of a single art form one had to match it to other forms normally assumed unrelated.
Sure, Walt Disney made Fantasia one of his great personal projects, and surely it matches music to animation in exceedingly satisfying and abstract ways. But it does not, as it is often reported to do, capture the “essence” of what the mind’s eye knows music to be; the shorts, as lovely as they are, tend to conform to narrative logic in a way that music never does.
“Begone Dull Care”, its title in tow as a proud command to any dull, normative forms of animation to remove themselves from the room, accomplishes this. It takes a sprightly low-key jazz number and matches it with the off-kilter, only vaguely representational animation the mind is capable of concocting when the eyes are busy elsewhere.
The key is that it does not try to imagine a story to the music; it simply rests, and lets the music imagine the colors and shapes for it, reminding not of the way a person might try to invent an arc for music but the way their restful mind might unconsciously envision shapes and colors onto closed eyelids even when the consciousness itself is passive.
6. Gerald McBoing Boing (1950, Robert Cannon)
UPA, long forgotten in the animation world as of the 2010s, was a mid-century chopping block for American avant garde animation experts who felt that the other more popular monolithic companies were mired too heavily in convention and the norms of naturalism.
Cannon and his friends had a few words for this arch focus on detail and human-like features, concocting “Gerald McBoing-Boing” to bullet animation into the future by tearing it down to its bare essentials. Without ever losing the whimsy of a Disney or the iconic zaniness and tossed-off absurdity of a Warner Bros, Cannon radicalizes his elemental story of a boy who speaks in sound effects.
Firstly, he implements a bare minimalist aesthetic of sketchy, high-impact lines that draw the attention for their relative dearth yet still convey a certain impression of longing and emptiness.
The glorious abstract color backgrounds, meanwhile, complement them with splotches of color that suggest but do not demand real world locations and utilize the least possible amount of specificity in endlessly fascinating ways. They at once hint at the consumerist modernity of early 1950s America and strive for something more abstract and non-representational to fall back on.
It’s the sort of story so elemental and so prescient that it can be as revolutionary and visually exciting today as it was in 1950 (and with this sort of minimalism, every single thing that does appear on screen bears more weight and is thus far more exciting than anything that went for a denser approach). It’s a delight, sure, but it’s also a revolution lurking in children’s clothing.
7. Duck Amuck (1953, Chuck Jones)
Maybe the most subversive short in the entirety of American fiction, Duck Amuck is both Warner Bros’ greatest short and one of the pinnacles of American animation (short or otherwise), representing not only one of the earliest works of American anti-narrative but one of the first popular releases in any medium to truly ask the question “what is an author?”
From there it proceeds to tackle the truth of the relationship between artist and art and to openly critique the entire idea of truth or objectivity in fiction, pitting Daffy Duck in open contest with the animator, and implicitly, the audience.
As if that wasn’t enough, the animation finds Warner Bros at their most non-representational and playful, trading on color and and shape as mediums of candy-coated post-structuralism, and it captures more perfectly than any Warner Bros animation the true essence of the insufferable, miserable id that was Daffy Duck and the low-key, insidious form of power-hunger and smug ego that defined Bugs Bunny.
That it is also brilliant comedy is almost assumed, but that it is so low on the totem pole of this short’s achievements says enough about its merit.
8. The Tell Tale Heart (1953, Ted Parmelee)
One of the few post 1940 horror films to understand the essential connection between art cinema and horror cinema, and to know their linkage in the foul, festering inner regions of the human mind, Parmalee’s “The Tell Tale Heart” almost matches one of the great short films – the 1928 American adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher – for primal potency.
This Poe adaptation however is almost as radical and experimental, but arguably even more wrenching at a gut level. It animates, with a lusty, animalistic quality, the inner mind of a person driven to murder by a pulsing, omnivorous heart refusing to end its own torment.
The heart, of course, is his own, although he doesn’t know it, and this film explores the central ambiguity of human fear with pulsing, visceral shadow and morphing camera angles straight out of expressionist painting.
It’s positively haunting, and its opening gambit, of a dreary castle revealed upon zooming out to be positioned within a camera frame, reveals with a quiet gesture all we could ever need to know about the connection between art and everything that is scary about the world.
Google's lightweight, versatile Calendar app runs across the web and multiple mobile platforms to keep our lives organized—but just how deep have you delved into the more advanced features that it offers? Read on to go beyond the basics of appointment scheduling and calendar colors to get more out of this powerful agenda-setting tool.
First a little backstory.
As I'm sure many of you already know, the song is the title track to the 1983 film, Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. This remake was recorded with the lyrics sung by Professor Stephen Hawking as part of the 2014's Monty Python live reunion shows.
The guy who gets mowed down in the video is renowned physicist Brian Cox, who was in the middle of explaining how the song isn't exactly scientifically sound when Hawking takes him out.
If the song is your sort of thing (and it should be), you should try playing Monty Python Asteroids while listening to it right here. You can also check out the history of the remake and see Hawking's fantastic reaction to hearing the remake for the first time, right here.
When the movie The Room was released in 2003, it was almost universally panned by critics, and Entertainment Weekly called it one of the "worst movies ever made." But that didn't stop The Room from garnering a huge cult fan base that has kept it screening around the world for nearly a dozen years — and it certainly didn't slow down the film's writer, director, and star, Tommy Wiseau.
Since the film's release, Wiseau has devoted much of his career to promoting The Room around the world at midnight showings and Q&As, but he's also directed a documentary. His next project is The Neighbors, a television show for Hulu that keeps much of what made The Room such a cult sensation fully intact.
I chatted with Wiseau about his new show, why he feels people don't take him seriously, and how he's grown as an artist and a filmmaker since The Room. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Kelsey McKinney: Why did you decide to become a filmmaker?
Tommy Wiseau: I always thought it would be a cool thing to do. By the same token, though, I wrote this script, and long story short, it was supposed to be a book. And I think I have something to offer as a filmmaker for the new generation to come. So that's basically when I decided to become a filmmaker and an actor, as well.
It's very stressful sometimes, but it's very rewarding about the concept and how you want to work with people to create something.
KM: Can you talk to me about the major themes you try to embody in your work?
TW: What do you mean by that?
KM: What themes underlie your films? Who are your film inspirations, and what are you trying to get across to viewers?
TW: You have to ask me specific questions, because you know the way you ask questions is pretty vague. So who inspired me or what?
KM: Sure.
TW: I inspire myself. But I've also been inspired by James Dean, Marlon Brando, and others. For example, Casablanca and others. You know, Citizen Kane. I always had an interest in film. And you know in the film industry you have to actually do something, it's not just talking.
To present something to people, sometimes they won't accept something the way you're thinking they will. For example, The Room. Did you watch The Room?
KM: Yes. I did.
TW: As you know, people will say, "This is a bad thing," or, "This and that happened by accident." I have news for all those douchebags. Nothing happened by accident. I studied film for the past 12, 15, actually close to 20 years. The Room has been screening worldwide for close to 12 years.
A screenshot from Tommy Wiseau's The Room. (screencap)
KM: You said people think a lot of things in The Room happened by accident. Can you give me a specific example of something you did intentionally that they aren't catching?
TW: Let me give you an example. For the past 12 years a lot of people speculate that my script of The Room does not exist, and that's really disrespectful toward me as a filmmaker and as a creator. I don't know if you've seen it, but you can go to Tommywiseau.com to see the trailer.
You can go behind the scenes to see the production. We had a regular production; a static production. Yes, it's true I did let some crew go because there was a conflict of my vision. But long story short, you can see behind the scenes what I did with a regular crew and a regular cast, et cetera.
Again, this is very disrespectful, including some people in media. I'm very happy with what's happened the past few years. The last two or three years, mainstream media has actually supported my project. As you know we are creating The Neighbors with Hulu. Hulu is owned by the ABC [ed. note: Hulu is jointly owned by NBC, ABC, and Fox], so I'm very happy to work with these people. I never criticize these people, the big studios, because you see work is work. It is like entertainment is entertainment.
With The Room, I never had opportunity to work with a big studio. To summary, it was supposed to be a play, and then I did some research, and I said, "Not enough people go to the plays," and that includes me. I go, what, every six months or something?
But a lot of people go to the cinema, so I said to myself, "You know, I have to make this a script." So I condensed my 800-page book and the play to a script format. Originally, the play is 150 pages. I can condense, but are we talking about two people watching or 400 people.
The other thing — let me give you a little style. We submit to the Academy Awards. People don't realize until today. Some people are just flying in the sky, but it's so awkward because we submitted to the Academy Awards, and you know they have all of these rules, like you have to run two weeks in the theater. So I took the movie out of the theater, because that's what the contract said. I wanted to leave it in the theater, but I couldn't. [Ed. note: Academy rules stipulate that a film must run a minimum of one week in a theater in Los Angeles County.]
I did two weeks screening in Los Angeles, so we could submit to the Academy Awards, etc., etc., but you know, I'm a very respectful guy. If there are rules, I follow them. I'm happy happy. To submit my movie to the Academy Awards, I was very happy to conquer all the rules and regulations, but I respect them.
But long story short, after the two weeks screening, I received several emails and later hundreds that said, "Can we see your movie?" So it's screening at the Wilshire Screening Room [in Beverly Hills]. It's very famous actually. And it's screening two blocks away from Academy Awards.
We got into trouble because a lot of people show up. So many people show up that I had a Q&A, and I couldn't actually go through because people were sitting on the floor. It was really crazy. And the owner of the theater said, "Tommy, you cannot do this because of the fire marshal. We'll get into trouble and get a ticket." Then I decided to call another theater and see if they would show it, and they did.
I think it's important to say again, this is a true story. These are the fact, you know. It's not like other stories about how I used two cameras, for example.
Long story short, the reason I use the two cameras is because at the time 12 years ago, Hollywood was against the HD camera and the HD format. All of the film industry was 35 millimeter [film]. At the time, I tried to do research. Even today, you don't find the difference between HD and 35, so right now, I am writing a book about it.
But the funny story, The Room is the only feature movie shot in the two formats at the same time. We were shooting the entire movie in the two formats. Eventually, I will write a book about it.
Move on now. Next question.
KM: You're making a TV show currently. How do you approach that format coming from a movie background?
TW: I think the difference is in preparation. For The Neighbors, it's also challenging because I'm presenting something that I was always dreaming about. I think we got great reactions. We're screening The Neighbors with The Room in the UK, and we got great reactions.
I think The Neighbors is a good sitcom for TV, too. To respond to your question, it's a different approach. You shoot differently. The set is different. You think differently, too. Directing is different, too.
KM: But has anything been harder for you about making a TV show than it was making a movie?
TW: When we shot The Room, I would say, "I was confused with format," and I wasn't afraid to say that. You know why? Because I'm proud of my project. I'm not scared to say to you. Definitely.
Every time you use a camera — and I believe Clint Eastwood would say the same thing I'm telling you — it's a challenge. When you're dealing with human behavior on the set, I would say to actors, "Hey, the line is secondary," because I wanted to see their movement. Holding the line is important, but I wanted to see them as a whole. We have a script. We have a story to tell.
All these aspects are very important. It's important to make mistakes. As a director, do I let it go when an actor makes a mistake? You need the skills to adjust instantly what you want from actors. Again, it's also teamwork sometimes. I say sometimes because you have a quirky situation when the cameraman doesn't do what you want her to do.
To summarize, I would say any director who is a good director faces a reality check. You have to have a vision. If you don't have vision, forget about your project. That's where I come from.
KM: What kind of tips do you give your actors to help them get through scenes when they aren't quite nailing your vision?
TW: With actors, you know, we have many rehearsals, and the actors, they kind of forget the world for a moment. I can sense, we all have families and friends. I can feel it when one of them is off. I say, "You guys give me a good environment, and I'll give you a good performance."
And I think this is easy to forget and say, "Let's just do the shoot very quickly on the green screen." I'm very against that. I like it when the two actors do the scene together. For example, you have a scene on the green screen and an actor talking to a wall. I'm against that. I prefer the actors talking to one another instead of to the wall, and that's what I believe.
In Hollywood, you talk to walls because someone told you to. This is not art. This takes away not just the happiness of the person who is the actor, but also the realness of real life. This is controversial, what I say, because people want to save money.
As a director, I try to create a good ambience for the actors, but it's very difficult to do that. It's very important to make sure the actors have what they need.
This is another scene from The Room. (Screencap)
KM: When you're on the set, how do you choose your shots?
TW: We do rehearsal before we're shooting, and after that, I say, "Action. Go." Sometimes we read through the script, and sometimes we stop the scene. Sometimes I stop the actor if I don't feel it. I say, "Cut." It doesn't go anywhere. We do rehearsal, so we can shoot instantly.
KM: Are there specific emotions or experiences you're drawing on in your work?
TW: For The Neighbors, that has been in my mind since doing The Room. Definitely I have a vision, because it's the main character talking to all of the apartment tenants who have dilemmas with this and that. For example, we have two girls kissing. Why are they kissing? Is it true? Is it not? What happened here?
The chicken is not just an accident. Some people you know they have a chicken as a pet, and they don't eat chicken. I'm vegan, but I did try it.
This is the dilemma. I like to work on this kind of situation.
KM: What was it that inspired you to make The Neighbors?
TW: Hollywood did not want to give me jobs when I wanted to make the sit-com called The Neighbors. Long story short, I was trying to do The Neighbors, and I got some small jobs and some commercials I got. Little later I said, "You know what? Let's go back to The Neighbors." I was very happy that we got someone to say yes to us. I didn't want to put this on YouTube, because I wanted it to be seen.
You know I have a certain kind of style that gets a good reaction. It's my understanding that people enjoy it.
KM: How would you describe your style?
TW: Some people say, "What is the idea of success?" And I would say, "Two words: hard work. Hard. Work." Without hard work, nothing would happen, and nothing happens by accident.
To answer your question, it's pretty hard for me to describe who I am or why I am. I'm trying not to be self-centered.
KM: How do you feel like your work has evolved over time?
TW: In the past two years, I've been happy that mainstream media embraces what I created. I encourage emotion. You can laugh. You can cry. It is what it is. I created The Room not by accident. I was a very stubborn guy who wanted to do something different. That's what I did, and I think a lot of people embrace.
I didn't anticipate its fame. I anticipated that I would make a movie and move on to the next one, typical Hollywood story. In a sense, I'm really proud that we are talking today; at the same time, in another part of the world they are screening The Room. I'm very proud of my project, even though, you know, some people disappoint me. Because I noticed that some people, it's true that it's hard to do what you want to do.
KM: How do you take an idea all the way to the screen?
TW: I am very serious. Let's assume people give me a script, I'm very serious about converting it. I believe in preparation number one. And I like emotion.
To respond to your question, whether it's my work or someone else's, I'm very serious. I'm more critical of my work because I have to prepare myself physically and mentally. You know what I mean, right?
KM: Not really, no.
TW: Physically and mentally, because I know let's be nice. My mom always says to me, "Be nice," but sometimes people, they don't understand. And I like when people express themselves.
I don't know if you're familiar with schools, but we've screened The Room from Oxford to Harvard and other places. Long story short, I had a Q&A and one guy asked me a stupid question, and it was kind of a put down. And I said, "Hey man, there's nothing wrong with that." And later on, he was sorry — sort of. He was apologizing, and I said, "First of all. You don't have to like The Room. If you dislike The Room, it's okay with me." But these people that hate it with no reason, that's wrong.
Something quirky can still need some love. To respond to your question again, I'm very serious, but at the same time, I want to have fun, too.
The first four episodes of The Neighbors are currently available for streaming on Hulu. The Room can be purchased on Amazon.
The guy in the picture is Aydian Dowling and he is trans. He’s in a competition to be on the cover of Men’s Health, and it would just be amazing if he won. Not only does he deserve it, but it would be HUGE for a transgender man to be on the cover of a widely popular magazine. He is currently in 9th place!! Please vote for him, so that us trans people can gain more visibility.
You can vote here: http://ultimateguy.menshealth.com/entry/347/
Yorgo Alexopoulos’ CLOUDS: Three seven-foot-tall hybrid sculptures that resemble modern industrial data servers but are in fact constructed from a combination of both archaic and cutting edge technologies.
The post Art for Tech Millionaires appeared first on The World's Best Ever: Design, Fashion, Art, Music, Photography, Lifestyle, Entertainment.
Confession: if I had spent anything like as much time playing actual guitar as I did playing pretend guitar as a teenager, I might have had a very different career path. In the late days of the 2006-9 rhythm-action boom, some hardcore pretend musicians split out into Guitar Hero fans and Rock Band fans, but I always loved both. And DJ Hero, and jubeat, and Pop’n Music, and Amplitude, and any other rhythm-matching game I could get my dextrous hands on. I was both surprised and rather impressed to learn that the Guitar Hero reboot, which is going to be with us by the end of the year, isn’t a straight resurrection of the old game, but instead a brand new one from UK developer Freestyle Games. It’s called Guitar Hero Live.
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Paintings by Tasmanian artist Laura E. Kennedy where the frame normally becomes part of the painting.
Continue below to see more work from Laura:
Laura E. Kennedy: Website
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TL;DR: Dash meters, stance switching, interactive environments, multiple character variations, a persistent online faction system: Just several of the new features brought to the table in Mortal Kombat X. As much as I’d like to proclaim that “NetherRealm Studios has done it again,” the truth of the matter is, they’re doing a lot of things for the first time, taking a ton of risk with the refined fighting system they established with their previous games. The pay off is huge, as Mortal Kombat X is mechanically superior to all of its predecessors and is a huge leap forward for the Mortal Kombat franchise. I highly suggest fighting game fans run to the store, and pick this game up on day one.
At what point does being at the top get old? This is a question I ponder when I think about Mortal Kombat, a series that is as engrained in video game culture as any other IP on the market. Ed Boon and company have been able to keep the franchise relevant and on the cutting edge of the fighting game genre for over twenty years, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Mortal Kombat X does it’s part continuing the legacy. But MKX is a bit of a deviation from previous entries. Many questioned if it was a good idea to include so many new characters, or if fusing elements from Injustice into the game would turn out to be a misstep. These things should be the least of your worries, however, because though Mortal Kombat X does a lot of things differently and a lot of things very much the same, it does nearly everything just right.
Mortal Kombat X’s story mode picks up not too long after the events of Mortal Kombat 9, and in the exact same fashion- by putting you in the shoes of Johnny Cage. He, Sonya, Kenshi, Raiden, and Fujin are defending Earth Realm against the invading forces of Shinnok, a defunct Elder God intent on mercilessly ruling the entire universe. Cage’s chapter serves as the game’s prologue and does a fantastic job setting the tone for the story. It’s also a stern reminder that most of Earth Realm’s warriors were dispatched in the previous MK installment.
Then we flash forward twenty years (twenty-five after the events of MK9), where everything in the Mortal Kombat universe has changed immensely. There’s a civil war in Outworld brewing between Mileena and series newcomer Kotal Kahn, Sonya Blade bumped uglies with Johnny Cage and had a super badass child named Cassie, and Raiden is doing as he always does– showing up when the fate of the world hangs in balance. In story mode, each of the 12 characters you play as will have their own chapter, and just like before, each chapter includes four fights that happen in sequence with the plots unraveling. Six of the twelve chapters in the story are dedicated to new characters in the series, so there’ll absolutely be some learning involved as you progress to the credits screen.
While the story does a swell job introducing the series’ newest characters, the actual narrative in Mortal Kombat X was lacking, and unable to deliver the same magic–from start to closing–as Mortal Kombat 9. Don’t get me wrong– the game’s opening chapters are magnificent, and the game doesn’t miss a stride in its high production value. But the story peaks far too close to its beginning, and the concluding chapters seem rushed and uninspired in comparison with the earlier sections. Call me spoiled for how much I enjoyed the story modes in Mortal Kombat 9 and Injustice, but I came into MKX expecting much more plot wise, and was left with the stinging sensation of unfulfillment after my four hour playthrough. I remember reminiscing about the Shao Kahn bout at the end of the previous game, and how well NetherRealm Studios built up to that moment. I’m not sure if it was the fact that the studio was trying to accomplish a lot within the game’s lore in a small amount of time, or if it was their adamance to prove the new characters as worthy contenders in the Mortal Kombat universe, but the situations that transpired in the story’s closing moments were underwhelming, and left me scratching my head in confusion and slight disappointment.
But bear in mind: Despite my small concerns with the stories conclusion, Mortal Kombat X is still at its core a fighting game. When it comes to that, NetherRealm Studios delivers a ground-breaking experience once again, giving us everything we loved about Mortal Kombat up to now, tossing in some of the things we loved about Injustice–like interactables and mobile game synchronization– and introducing some very cool new gameplay elements into the mix. The gruesome fatalities are back. Brutalities have been re-added into the mix. There are even a few familiar faces that make appearances throughout the game’s many different modes.
The Mortal Kombat X‘s engine has been refined to provide one of the best fighting game experiences you’ll get your hands on. Most of the combo juggling and block button shenanigans from the previous title have been touched up and work very seamlessly. I have absolutely no problem executing difficult combo strings without any drops, and this is largely in part to the improvements NetherRealm made to their engine. If you’re extremely sensitive about command input, you’ll be happy to know that the option to turn off negative edge is available as well.
This is without of doubt the fastest Mortal Kombat game in quite some time– so much so, that NetherRealm implemented a much needed stamina meter. It rest right under your life bar and makes meticulous dash management very imperative. It evens out rush down situations for the player on the defensive, and forces led foots to be sparing about how rapidly they move about the stage. The ability to run depletes your meter the fastest, but it also allows you to close the distance, and even move your opponent closer to that dreaded corner that you want to stay out of in 2D fighters.
A first for the series this time around is “variations,” which are different arc-types given to each character that slightly alter their abilities on the battlefield. Each fighter has three different variations to choose from, complementing a wide variety of play styles. For instance: Kano’s “Cybernetic” variation grants him grenade attacks and enables his eye lasers– two attacks that allow him to zone his opponents from a safe distance during matches. His “Commando” variation, however, is focused more on grapple attacks, and requires him to be up close and personal. Variations work wonders for the Mortal Kombat metagame. It’s unlikely that a character can be flat-out counter-picked, as there’s more than likely a variation for each character that will make them formidable against their opponent.
Faction Wars add an extra layer of persistence and competitiveness to encourage players to keep revisiting the game. After joining the Lin Kuei, Special Forces, White Lotus, Black Dragon, or the Brotherhood of Shadow, players are tasked with daily activities to earn their faction points. The faction with the most points at the end of week will receive various in-game incentives, along with the most important thing of them all: Bragging rights. While this idea may seem intimidating to casual players, it should be noted that folks are not required to win online matches against opponents to prove useful to their faction. You won’t have to worry about skill gaps affecting your ability to help push your conglomerate to the top. Ultimately, the faction with the most dedicated and active players will always emerge victorious.
Mortal Kombat X doubles down on the amount of extra content available to players outside of the primary fighting game. You damn near could purchase Mortal Kombat X, not play a single 1 on 1 match, and have enough content to keep you satisfied for a lengthy amount of time. You’ll find yourself very busy with “Living Towers” and “Tower Challenges,” which are the successors to MK9’s challenge towers. Test Your Might is also back, allowing two players to square off in the old-school mini-game, with the player scoring the most successful item chopping sequences being crowned victorious. Needless to say, when sifting through the Mortal Kombat X interface, you’re likely to find something for everyone.
Fighting games don’t usually take as many risk as NetherRealm Studios did with Mortal Kombat X– mainly because there never seems to be a purpose for them with the way the video game business works. There wasn’t much that was needed outside of new characters, stages, fatalities, and modes to make Mortal Kombat X appealing to long time fans and die hards like myself. But Ed Boon and company desire more than just a game that can sell a bunch of copies to its cult fan-base, and they’ve once again raised the bar for the type of fighting game fans should expect when they go out and spend their hard-earned $60. Mortal Kombat X is simply the working embodiment of why NetherRealm Studios will remain on the frontiers of innovation in the fighting game genre, and it shows from the minute your pick up the controller an press start.
- Mechanically brilliant. From a gameplay standpoint, this is the most refined and smooth functioning installment in there series to date.
– The variations open up MKX is a way that only fight game fans can dream of.
– So much content! NetherRealm Studios continues to set a high bar in the amount of content they provide in their titles.
- The story mode’s plot is a bit messy and the closing chapters fizzle out in anti-climatic fashion, which is more or less disappointing given the cohesiveness and excitement of the plot in the previous title.
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This review was completed using a PlayStation 4 copy of Mortal Kombat X, provided by Warner Bros. Interactive. The game hits stores Tuesday, April 14 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.
Bridgetbragging is bragging. i know someone who constantly refers to their descriptions of their life as humblebragging and it's like, no. own the fact you're proud and bragging and move on
Welcome to Reading List, a weekly collection of great tech reads from around the web. This week explores how the internet has spawned a new class of phrasal constructions a la “rage quitting,” whether Bitcoin could work in prison, how department stores have shaped our culture, and more. Enjoy!
Week one of the 2015 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival is over, but the memories will remain forever. Here is a small collection of some of those memories.
The latest episode of Super-Fan Builds just popped up online, and if you were one of the millions of fans who excitedly watched the first episode of Game of Thrones season five last night, prepare to be insanely jealous.
ROA’s “Metazoa” at Jonathan LeVine Gallery.
Exceptional Belgian artist ROA currently has a show on display at Jonathan LeVine Gallery in New York City entitled “Metazoa” which showcases ROA’s ongoing series of animal portraits, specifically those forced out of their natural habitats by the cities in which he is showing. For every animal portrayed by the artist - usually in black in white, sometimes with added red - ROA does a wealth of research studying them. When he was in Hawaii for POW! WOW! this past February we talked several times and I was awestruck every conversation by his creativity and knowledge.
Continue below to see pretty much every amazing piece from “Metazoa.”:
ROA: Website
Music has always been a major part of George R.R. Martin’s fantasy series, A Song Of Ice And Fire and its TV show equivalent, Game Of Thrones. In the land of Westeros songs and bards are the world’s main source of stories and entertainment. From the silly story of “The Bear and the Maiden Fair” to the chilling warning carried by “The Rains of Castamere,” music has played a very important part in both the novels and the television show based on them. It’s interesting to see a world so driven by music be brought to life by a cast of actors with their own personal connections to music.
The first and most widely known actor on the show with a musical background is Hodor himself, Kristian Nairn. The 6’10” gentle giant of Game Of Thrones, Nairn has also made a name for himself in the club scene over the past few years as a DJ. He recently wrapped a tour through the United States he called “Rave Of Thrones” that ran from October into December of last year.
Nairn has shared the screen with the next actor on our list throughout their time on the show, Natalia Tena. Tena plays the wildling turned ally Osha who has aided Bran and Rickon Stark in avoiding capture after losing Winterfell. When she isn’t threatening men with a pointy stick, Tena plays the accordion and sings in her band Moltov Jukebox. The band, founded by Tena and her boyfriend, has released several albums and will be on tour around the UK this summer.
One of the most feared cut-throats in all of the land, Bronn spent several seasons as a personal bodyguard to Tyrion Lannister and leaving bodies in his wake. Before being one of the biggest badasses in Westros, Jerome Flynn had a successful recording career as one half of the crooner duo Robson & Jerome. The blond hair and ’90s clothes are a real shock to the system for Game Of Thrones fans.
To round out our cast is one that has only recently seen recognition for his musical work, Jacob Anderson, better known as Grey Worm. During the off-season, this deadly leader of Daenerys’ Unsullied takes to the stage under the name Raleigh Ritchie to deliver a pop/hip-hop sound fused with an Imagine Dragons style of rock that creates something just a little outside definition.
Not only do cast members have seperate lives that they have dedicated to their musical craft, but the show has also seen several popular musicians and bands make cameos through out the four seasons it has run so far. In the third season Gary Lightbody, the lead singer of Snow Patrol made an appearance as one of the soldiers who captured Jamie and Brienne. Later in the season, Coldplay drummer Will Champion appeared as one of the members of the deadly band at the Red Wedding.
[Images: Buzz Feed]
Finally, at the beginning of the fourth season, another wedding was graced with real life musicians as the members of the Iclandic band Sigur-Ros played as the band at the wedding of Joffery and Margaery. Leave it to the boys who sing in their own language to play some of the most ridiculous looking instruments on the show.
[Image: Wall Street Journal]
Can you think of anyone we missed? Let us know in the comments below, and join us as we get psyched for the season five premiere of Game Of Thrones tonight at 9pm!
Bridgetnope
Game of Thrones is about manipulation and power. The plot of the series focuses on a battle between the most powerful families of Westeros for who gets to sit on the massive Iron Throne. It's a story that rewards characters who find ways around the system, who either work in the shadows or are clever enough to avoid disaster.
Except for one. Jon Snow (Kit Harington) is meant to be one of the most dashing heroes in HBO's adaptation of George R. R. Martin's popular book series, but his character is one of the least interesting on television. The character is so weakly constructed that his most interesting story involves a secret he can't possibly know the answer to.
And none of this is Harington's fault, because no actor could over come the central problem here: Jon Snow is a plot device, not a character.
So beautiful, but so so boring (HBO)
Though Jon possesses slightly more nuance in Martin's books, he still suffers from being the only character in the series who fits squarely into a traditional fantasy novel archetype — the boy of ignoble origins who has nobility thrust upon him. The bastard son of Eddard "Ned" Stark of Winterfell, Jon has risen in rank amid the Night's Watch, a brotherhood of men who defend the realm from invasion, and (without spoiling major plot twists) it seems likely he has an outside shot at sitting on the Iron Throne when all is said and done.
It's the TV series that causes problems. Where the books offer frequent glimpses into Jon's inner monologue, the construction of his character on TV is mostly limited to his interactions with other people.
From the first, viewers are led to feel bad for him. In one of the opening scenes, a perished direwolf (think a wolf, only larger) is found by the side of the road with abandoned pups. It's Jon who notes that there are five pups — one for each of the legitimate Stark children — but seemingly not one for poor, isolated Jon.
In the early episodes, Jon's character is primarily defined by this kind of wallowing. This makes some degree of sense. As a bastard child, Jon was brought up in the Stark household but ostracized. As the daughter of another woman, he was intentionally kept out of the inner circle of love and general badassery that the Starks inhabit. In some characters, that would have led to bitterness. With Jon, it led to glumness.
The seeds of Jon Snow's character contain promise. But instead of allowing those painful experiences to mold him into a man who feels deeply hurt and deeply misunderstood, he mostly seems to be someone who can't take a single action.
Again, that largely works in the books because readers can get into Jon's head. On TV, however, it mostly results in a character who has things happen to him, rather than causing things to happen.
Jon Snow shows emotions, but I don't feel any! (HBO)
Even more frustrating is how much potential Jon's story has to be interesting. The Night's Watch, in theory, could be a great premise for a TV series in and of themselves. They stand atop a giant wall of ice at the northernmost point of the Seven Kingdoms, guarding it from men and monsters on the other side. The Night's Watch, as you'd expect, are a group of misfits — sons who embarrass their fathers, convicts, and people with nowhere else to go.
But even while on the wall, Jon mostly spends his time glowering about not being treated well enough, as if he knows he's a heroic character from a popular fantasy series and wishes everybody else would get with the program.
Jon's "trials" on the wall include being a better fighter than everyone else, and getting upset to be given a job as a steward instead of as a ranger. In the first couple of seasons, Jon mopes, is forced into several situations against his will, and generally feels sorry for himself.
In the third and fourth seasons, Jon is at least thrust into a love story. He goes undercover among the Wildlings who live beyond the wall and forms a crush on a girl named Ygritte. Even here, Jon is dragged along. Ygritte makes most of the decisions in their relationship, leaving Jon as the man to whom things happen.
This might be palatable with even an ounce of emotion, but Jon doesn't offer us that, either. Even in season four's biggest battle — between the Night's Watch and the Wildlings — Jon remains stoically unfazed as chaos erupts around him.
And it's as if the show knows the character's shortcomings. Where season two's battle episode focused intently on a handful of characters at the center of that battle, the season-four episode keeps leaving Jon behind to focus on the epic sweep of the conflict. Jon doesn't even seem all that ruffled when Ygritte dies in battle.
As she dies, Ygritte mutters, "You know nothing, Jon Snow," a constant refrain from their relationship. But it's more than that. It's also a reminder that at Jon's center is a secret more interesting than anything he says or does. For that secret's safe delivery, Jon Snow has become nothing more than a plot device.
Jon Snow's most interesting aspect he doesn't even know about (HBO)
What's amazing is just how much time the show spends on this story considering how lacking it is. This attention seems completely unnecessary until you remember the secret at the center of Jon Snow — his parentage.
David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, who shepherded the books to the small screen, have said they convinced Martin they should be the ones to adapt the books for TV because they correctly guessed who Jon's mother was — a question that has been the source of endless fan speculation. The most prominent fan theory suggests that Jon isn't the son of Ned Stark at all. Instead, he's the son of Ned's sister, Lyanna, and the former prince of the Seven Kingdoms, Rhaegar Targaryen.
That would give Jon and his fluffy hair an excellent claim to the Iron Throne — and almost the same one as the only other living Targaryen child, Daenerys Targaryen, who is currently exiled on another continent but slowly mustering support for an invasion of the Seven Kingdoms.
Though Daenerys is stranded in a far-off corner of the show's universe, her story has momentum, driven as it is by her desire to build a force capable of winning her the Iron Throne, as well as her finely tuned moral sense. (Daenerys, for instance, is against slavery, which is commonplace in the series' world.) Also she raises dragons and eats hearts. She's just cool.
And yes, there's some potential for when Daenerys and Jon finally meet — especially if the fan theory about Jon's parentage is correct. But that still means the focus for the character isn't on his present; it's on a mystery that will develop sometime in the future of the show. And that's the problem. What makes an interesting character isn't endlessly spinning intrigue — it's depth. And that's exactly what Jon Snow lacks.
Bridgeti'm so curious as to what is going on there. fleshing??
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Chicago-based artist Jessica Joslin (previously featured here) just completed this awesome winged monkey sculpture. His name is Auguste and he’s made of antique bone, brass, silver, velvet, glove leather and glass eyes. And we love him. Less talk, more winged skellington monkeys.
Visit Jessica Joslin’s website to check out more of her marvelous creatures.
[via the Jessica Joslin newsletter]
In a recent episode of Divorce Court, a man named Nathan accused his girlfriend Lia of banging the entire Wu-Tang Clan when she hung out with the group after a concert. Lia denies the accusation saying that although she “had an amazing time” hanging out with the rappers until dawn, it was an innocent gathering that included political chat with no boners in sight.
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