Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

From the second the Universal Studios theme rolls on screen, you know that Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is not going to be your normal, everyday movie viewing experience. With the video game generation (we'll say the 35 & under crowd) firmly in his sights, director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead) has created an audio/visual masterpiece detailing a 20-something's struggle toward adulthood. Based on the Scott Pilgrim series of graphic novels by Bryan Lee O'Malley, I recommend this film to anyone with a sense of humor.


Scott (Michael Cera - "Arrested Development", Juno, Superbad) is your typical driftless 22-year old: unemployed, living off of his well-to-do roommate, hanging out with his high school-age "girlfriend", Knives. Don't worry, he's not really a cradle robber, they mostly just play video games (particularly a great looking mashup of DDR & Street Fighter) and talk about music. Like every good slacker, Scott also plays bass in a band. His band, Sex Bob-omb, sucks but has aspirations of hitting the big time. One night, Scott dreams of a mysterious pink-haired girl on roller blades. When he sees her in real life the next day in the library it starts him down a painful journey of self-discovery that might just end in true love.

The movie is absolutely steeped in pop culture references: all of the bands are named after NES games (Clash at Demonhead, Crash 'n the Boys), many scenes visually reference specific video games, there's even a scene that borrows the music and laugh track from Seinfeld. Yes, it probably helped my enjoyment that I got a lot (but by no means all) of these references, but it's certainly not necessary to understand them to like the movie. I would go into more detail about some of this stuff, but I think this is definitely one of those movies that the less you know going into it the better it's going to be. On top of this, it's full of funny performances and intricately choreographed action sequences that don't require any specialized hipster knowledge. Don't take my word for it though. Check it out for yourself and let me know what you think.

Checking in from Vienna

Just popping in from the lobby of our hotel in Vienna for a quick hello. We've only been here six hours and already have had so much to do.

- Went to a great little pasta/wine bar that's so good at what it does that they audaciously only serve two dishes each day: one vegetarian, one not. All their pasta is made on-site.

- There is music everywhere here. When we arrived, a string quartet was busking in the main square. I could hear "My Heart Will Go On" as we made our way to the hotel. After dinner, we enjoyed an Italian street band that sounded a bit like Devotchka. They employed everything: multiple accordions, a violin, mandolin, ukelele, banjo, even a saw.

- We're right down near the center of the ring, so everything is a whirl of activity around us. Open-air restaurant seating is everywhere and the many horse-drawn carriages go right past our front door.

Looking forward to our 4-day stay here.

P.S. This German keyboard is going to be the death of my typing skills. I'll have to take a picture.

It's Flying Day!

Last Saturday, some of our good friends from HarrisWorld came up to the Twin Cities to partake in what was truly a unique experience. I've been to some interesting events in my life, chief among them our trip to see Punxsutawney Phil a few years back, but the Red Bull Flugtag ("Flying Day" in German) may take the cake for strangeness. I only learned of its existence a mere two days before going, but I'm glad I did.

Apparently, Red Bull (the energy drink people) select a handful of cities every year to host the event and we here in Minnesota were lucky enough to be graced with its presence this year. What is it, you ask? Essentially, teams of five spend weeks and months putting together a "flying" machine of their own design and then proceed to run it off a ramp and into a river after performing a skit that usually involves bad dancing. Yes, it is as silly as it sounds.

The beauty of it is the elaborate themes that the various teams use for their "aircraft". At our version of the event, there were "planes" modeled after nearly everything. Among them were Prince's Little Red Corvette, a Zamboni machine, a hockey penalty box, a coffin, a giant roller skate, and even a bathroom (literally a complete bathroom on wheels). I keep putting the words "aircraft" and "planes" in quotation marks because although the stated point is to see who can fly the farthest and with the most style, in truth most of these contraptions plummeted straight off the edge of the ramp to the bottom of the Mississippi. The bathroom even managed to flip completely over and land upside-down -- truly hilarious.


There was one actual aircraft that managed to fly, setting a Flugtag world record in the process. Mere inches before crashing into the river, the pilot pulled a lever deploying some wing flaps (real aeronautics at work!) that leveled the plane and allowed it to glide over 200 feet before coming to rest gently in the middle of the river. The applause from the amazed crowd gathered on both sides of the river was deafening. Which reminds me, the turn-out for the show was truly astounding, but that's probably because the best part of it? It was free. I never thought I'd say this in my life, but... thanks, Red Bull.

You can check out the highlights yourself on their website. The videos should start automatically.

Brief Hiatus

I had hoped to have a handful of posts queued up for while I'm on vacation, but wrapping up work and prepping for the trip have gotten in the way of producing anything of quality. There will be a post tomorrow, but after that you can consider this space to be on a brief two-week hiatus.

If Internet cafes still exist in Europe, I'll see what I can do about throwing a couple of live updates together while I'm over there. Otherwise, until I return...

Searching For the Beast Within

Our summer vacation officially kicks off today. We had been planning a much advertised 2010 trip to Greece, but for some reason we decided that we'd do something else this year. Instead, we've been busy putting together a whirlwind tour of three central European cities: Prague, Vienna, and Munich. Prague is Meaghan's pick. She taught English (the language, not the high school subject) there for a few months ten years ago and has been wanting to go back and show me the sights ever since I met her. Vienna is our collective pick. Filled with museums, parks, and music galore, it looks to be our kind of place. It also happens to be geographically convenient to the other two cities, which brings us to Munich.


This choice is unabashedly mine, and like most things it seems is inspired by a video game. In this case, the classic adventure game from 1995, Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within. Based in Munich, the game details our hero's investigation into a series of grisly werewolf murders. No, I'm not expecting to find any shape-shifters myself, but like all of the Gabriel Knight games GK2 is set in a real-world location that is portrayed with painstaking detail. As a result, ever since I first played this game back in high school, places like the Marienplatz and Neuschwanstein have been rattling around in my brain waiting for the right time to get out.


On the games front, whilst digging up info for this post I discovered that Jane Jensen (the creator of the Gabriel Knight trilogy) is finally coming out with a new adventure game, "Gray Matter", for Xbox 360 and PC later this year. It might just have to be the first new computer game that I buy in a long time. For those not familiar with the GK games, I highly recommed you give them a try. They rank amongst my favorites of all time and can be downloaded for the low, low price of $6 each from Good Old Games.

Theft is Annoying

Having your wallet stolen is no fun. It's even less fun when you're planning on leaving the country for vacation in a week. There are credit cards, driver's licenses, and insurance cards to replace. In this high-tech digital world, there are automatic payments to head off and change the source of. Heck, there are even automatically reloading coffee shop gift cards that need to be halted and replaced.


Whoever decided to break into my locker (and at least two other members') at the gym Friday night while I was swimming laps in the pool, I hope you enjoyed the $8 or so that was burning a hole in my wallet as well as the pile of cancelled credit cards you inherited. As for me, I guess I learned the life lesson (which was reinforced by the responding officer's 'blame the victim' spiel) that you're apparently not supposed to take anything at all into one of those places as nothing is sacred or safe. According to posted signs, you're also not supposed to leave anything in your car either so I'm not entirely sure where that leaves me.

I've also learned that the club "is not liable or responsible for any lost, stolen, or damaged personal property, whether from lockers, vehicles or other locations on the premises." That doesn't really surprise me, but it does make me question what exactly the point of the lockers is. Since I'm not really a complainer (other than this missive to the void), we'll see if they decide they want to do anything for me. It's been three days now and I'm still waiting for that call from the general manager they said I'd be getting. If there's another chapter to this saga, good or bad, I'll let you know.

Inception

Dom Cobb (Leonardo Dicaprio) is the leader of a crack team of thieves. Using the latest military-grade technology they can extract your deepest, darkest secrets directly from your mind. How? Abduction, sedation, and infiltration of your dreams. When a job goes awry, to save their bacon Cobb's team is forced to accept the impossible job. Instead of extracting secrets from someone's subconscious, they have to perform inception, the act of implanting an idea in someone's mind. The difficulty being that the target has to believe that it was their own idea.

That's a general summary of the plot of "Inception", but to say that's all the movie is about would be a gross understatement. Equal parts heist movie, Bond homage, and philosophical dissertation, it is the latest masterwork from the mind of Christopher Nolan ("Memento", "The Prestige", "The Dark Knight"). One of the more interesting aspects of the film is the well-thought out set of rules that explains how dreams are structured and function. I'm not going to list them all here, but in short, there can be multiple nested layers of dreams and it's easy for the dreamer to lose sight of where or what reality is. In order to leave the dream, one must either receive a "kick", the sensation of falling that I'm sure everyone of you has felt that snaps you out of your sleep, or be killed. Your dream can be populated by anyone you want, but unless it's someone that has joined you in a shared dream, they're really just aspects of your own subconscious.

Cobb's dreams are constantly troubled by the presence of his wife (Marion Cotillard - "La vie en rose", "Nine"). It's not really her, as something has happened in reality that keeps her from being part of Cobb's life, but rather an aspect that Cobb inadvertantly brings with him into the dreams. Never nice, she does everything she can to foil the task at hand. What has really happened between her and Cobb is one of the questions left for the viewer to decipher the answer to.

At its core, "Inception" explores some of the most basic philosophical questions about the nature of perception and reality. At times it's difficult to tell if what we're watching is "reality" or one of Cobb's (or his team's) dreams. In the end, it doesn't really matter as we're left to think about our own lives and how the baggage we carry around colors our own experience.

You can even extend the model the movie presents to questions beyond its immediate scope. If you're killed in a dream, you escape back to reality. What happens when we die in reality? Is there some higher order of reality that we escape to? Is this what we perceive as the afterlife? Any movie that can continue to percolate in the viewer's mind weeks after they've seen it is good in my book. I highly recommend that you check it out.

Note: If you see this, please do so with curbed expectations and you'll probably enjoy it more. There's a lot of hype surrounding this movie, so much so that it's currently ranked #3 all time on IMDB. It's definitely good, but it's certainly not that good.