Weekend

[prog]

Had a great weekend. Saturday classicaljunkie and I drove to the south shore to meet my mom for her birthday. We drove around the area together and looked at the houses I grew up in, which still look quite the same, though Cliff Top is smaller than I remember! It still has a nice "Cliff Top" sign; I'm glad that its name has survived whatever sequence of owners it

Comments

[modpixie]

what didn't you like about the illusionist?

i was really disappointed in the adaptation. neil burger and i got something different out of the story, that's for sure. it was disappointing to see this story that reads like a victorian horror on the page turned into the usual suspects with magic tricks for the screen.

[prog]

I hadn't read the short story, and in fact hadn't even heard of it before CJ picked it off the shelf and said that the film was contemporary with The Prestige - which I did enjoy - and got eclipsed by it despite good reviews.

I was put off from the get-go by the dopey, over-the-top magic effects, with fully three-dimensional ghosts walking around and so on. I wondered if maybe this was what the illusions looked like when filtered through the credulous perceptions of Eisenheim's audience, but the film never gave me any credit for running my suspension of disbelief so actively.

I felt the twist ending didn't need to be there at all. To me, the movie made less sense with it than without. My reaction towards the end was like "Well, this movie wasn't all that bad, I guess, and at least WHAT OH COME ON."

[prog]

And I'm well aware that NYEERRRR STAGE MAGIC DOESN'T LOOK LIKE THAT is about as valid a reason to dislike a film as UNNNNH SPIDERMAN WOULDN'T TAKE OFF HIS MASK SO MUCH but whatevs.

[dougo]

We were discussing this on Friday: isn't Hull/Nantasket really considered "the cape" rather than "south shore"? Or does "south shore" really mean "everything between the Charles and Rhode Island"?

I still don't know what to make of Dreamz. He claims he never really intended to keep his promise, but he sure seemed to agonize over the decision to break it. Was that all an act? He doesn't seem to be that good an actor. I am totally for the it's-just-a-game ultra-deceptive style of playing Survivor/Big Brother (a la Richard Hatch or Johnny Fairplay), but something about his betrayals seemed too... clumsy to be rewarded, even if it did get him to the final three. (And how was anyone surprised that it would be a final three instead of final two? Did nobody watch the previous season? Was it not a huge hint that Rocky made it onto the jury?) And how could Dreamz have ever believed he could win against Earl in the final vote? I guess that was groupthink-everyone was talking about "sympathy votes", which has never happened in

[prog]

This was actually the first time I'd ever watched Survivor, joining a little after they merged into the purple team, and long after all the openly jerky players got the boot. So seeing the jerk parade at the end was kind of shocking to me.

My best guess about Dreamz' thinking is that he ultimately went into a black-and-white analysis mode, figuring that it is always better to get closer to the end, with all other concerns (such as how a last-minute betrayal of the season's most charismatic contestant would play with the jury) falling by the wayside.

[prog]

Also I didn't know about the final jury mechanic at all, where all the season's losers vote for which of the finalists gets to win. That's actually quite clever!

[dougo]

I have deeply mixed feelings about it. It's basically a huge kingmaker situation, where players who no longer have any stake in the game decide the outcome. But what it really means is that the entire game is about figuring out the psychology of how to get these kingmakers to make you king. It's weird that such non-game reasoning becomes a game skill, and it's certainly not a game I'd ever want to play myself, but it's fascinating to watch.

If you like that, you should also check out Big Brother, which I think starts in June. It has the same jury mechanism, but a lot more interesting game structure leading up to it. Unfortunately the players tend to be more annoying than in Survivor, since the struggle to survive is replaced by the struggle to remain sane in a locked house, but it's still pretty entertaining as a game.