I Finally Read Gone Girl

Recently, I watched the very exciting and quite nasty movie Gone Girl for the second time in my life. On my first viewing, I hadn't liked it. I had taken some offence to what I saw at the time as a clownish portrayal of a super evil psycho bitch, and a comparatively sympathetic husband despite his philandering and constant use of terms like the aforementioned "psycho bitch". 

I have to, in retrospect, blame Ben Affleck for this, because he is simply a perfect hateable husband. You can feel his smug masculine air oozing right through the screen. He is Gigli in every movie, and you can't tell me otherwise.

Since then, though, I've softened somewhat on this. Yes, David Fincher is licking up that relatable masculine perspective and there is a weird discomfort in the level on which a viewer can reasonably relate to stinky husband Nick Dunne. Yes, Emily Ratajkowski is boobies-out in a pivotal scene, rendering the greasy reality of Nick's infidelity with a much younger student of his a little titillating moment for the boys in the audience. But nevertheless, the story is a complex one that necessarily uses the shifting relatability and believability of its characters to paint quite a thorny picture of this insane, fucked up marriage. And also, it's really, insanely fun.

The Cool Girl monologue tears the movie in half beautifully, and so instantly resonates with women that it plucks Amy out of her position as a somewhat pathetic freak and plants her firmly on the ground as a righteous icon - and it's this that the story plays with. Amy is a mastermind, sure. She's a deep hater of her mentally squalid husband, and it's easy to cheer as she plunges him deeper into the trenches of public opinion, but then what she seeks is so utterly devoid of actual liberation. It's all about image and the great cage of her desire for a very particular life. Her initial plan is to kill herself, to completely leave her life just to have an impact on her husband - but she abandons this. It's not very satisfying to die, she thinks. And so the story creates this beautiful probing relationship between the great slay of destructive, insane revenge, and the actually quite pathetic tragedy of planning out a supreme schedule of self-harm to teach a man a lesson.

In the book, some things are more extreme. Because we are inside the heads of these characters, we can feel their intense hatred of each other on a more visceral level. For Nick, this extends past Amy, spooling out to intrusive nasty thoughts concerning other women in his life, a parade of disgusting bitches. These thoughts elicit some shame in him, but they are true to a view of women in general that he just can't shut out.

 "She went away. I thought the unkind thought, one of those that burbled up beyond my control. I thought: Women are fucking crazy. No qualifier: Not some women, not many women. Women are crazy." 

Things like this, I really like. Gillian Flynn lingers on the ins and outs of grievance, on the fetid ugliness of these characters and their beliefs. It makes it all the richer. There are so many little details used to emphasise the unthinking, breezy life Nick leads at the beginning of the story ("I was a man of jagged rising: 8:43, 11:51, 9:25. My life was alarmless."), contrasted with the meticulous, obsessive way Amy considers every element of her life. By the end, yes, Amy has done unthinkable, insane psychological warfare, but the result is that she is no longer the only one living her life in complete and total service of crafting a false persona - now Nick must live the life of a perpetual actor fulfilling a perfect role.

 "I was probably happier for those few years - pretending to be someone else - than I ever have been before or after. I can't decide what that means." 

It's a brilliant exploration of image and expectation and double standards and public ideals. No one here can ever be happy, and yet - they must be. They are condemned to playing their roles as suburban husband and wife, and there is something compelling about the slivers of satisfaction they get from having achieved such a feat of complete self-neutering.

The book is split into chapters of alternating perspective. We read a chapter from Nick's, and then a chapter from Amy's. This allows for the fun structure of revelations that the book is so well known for, but perhaps more interestingly - at least in comparison to the film - it allows Amy to end the book with this telling final entry:

"I don't have anything else to add. I just wanted to make sure I had the last word. I think I've earned that." 

Throughout the story, we see the couple's writerly sensibilities come through. Amy takes great pleasure in the project of plotting out her actions and writing her diary. Nick employs a certain professional understanding of her as a writer, on top of his image of her as a wife. The movie cuts out a piece of the book's ending - both are scrambling to write memoirs detailing their version of events after reuniting. Nick finishes his, but Amy' pregnancy news becomes her extortion chip, forcing him to delete the book and accept his now sealed fate as husband and father. And so Amy wins. Not the prize of a good husband, which may not even exist, but the prize of controlling the narrative. The prize of being the creator.

That, I think, is much more delicious than the movie's ending. Here, more plainly, she has something that might be worth dying for. She has the story.

What a book. 

Four Neil Patrick Harrises out of five.

 ★★★★☆

One Interesting Prop

This Happy Breed (1944) is one of director David Lean's lesser-known films. I watched it a few months ago as part of my ongoing quest to see all of his films (I've now seen four of seventeen - quite a way still to go), and I was mesmerised. Crucially, it's adapted from a Noël Coward play (just like my favourite film, Brief Encounter), and so it has that brilliant complexity and sense of place I've come to expect from Coward.

In it, we follow a London family between the first and second world wars, and the changing family dynamics and dramas set alongside the shifting world and its politics create a really vivid picture of their lives. This is enhanced by the film's use of Technicolor, which is really striking in a film from the mid-1940s, but maybe made even moreso in the staging of a very normal, very brown London flat.

Celia Johnson in her brown outfit, in her brown flat.

The title itself is a reference to a monologue from Shakespeare's Richard II, which refers to England as "This happy breed of men, this little world", which speaks to the sort of grand, misty melancholy of this story and its laser focus on great change and loss.

It's the props, too, that make the movie feel alive. As we pass through the decades, we see tons of interesting historical objects - sometimes window displays, but often newspapers. One such newspaper is prominently featured in a shot that lingers pointedly on its front page headline: GERMAN FASCISTS' GREAT ELECTION SUCCESS.

I was curious, given that the date is clearly visible here, whether this was a replica of the real Daily Mirror front page from the 16th of September, 1930. So I found the real cover, and here it is:

As you can see, the story about the German election is there, and looks very similar, but the major headline concerns the murder of an English woman in France. I find it really amazing to look at the prop version of the paper, obviously changed for visual clarity since the narrative is interested in the rise of the Nazis and wants to show us this event through ephemera. 

I was struck by the paper's language, too. The Mirror refers to the 'National Socialist Party' much more prominently as the 'German Fascist Party'. It's really interesting to see the particular language that was used at the time. 'German Fascist Party' seems so intense and direct, and that's bolstered by the description of them - they 'favour a dictatorship'. So true.

While the newspaper had to be altered for the sake of the shot's communication of the pertinent historical record, I love how much they maintained the look of the original cover. Every detail is meticulously correct where possible. It's quite haunting.

*** 

Here are some other shots from the movie that I like: 

An Exciting Tour of My Game Screenshots

An exemplary Nintendogs dog.

It's time, reader, for me to reveal to you some beautiful game screenshots that I have been keeping in a very special folder on my computer. I'm in the habit of taking a lot of screenshots when I play video games, but sometimes these poor screenshots have nowhere to go. And so, they languish inside my screenshots folder, lonely and neglected. Well, no more. I present to you: some images.

The first screenshots are from Jack Bros. - a beautiful, spooky spin-off of the Megami Tensei series, and one of the greatest games available on the Virtual Boy. The game has so much charm. I love the three playable characters, and the variety of enemies, and the wry, silly dialogue.

Skelipede is just like me.

The game is pretty tough, but it's really fun descending through levels and seeing how far you can get, hopping around crazy style. I need to play this again, right now. 

I also have this, a screenshot from a second Virtual Boy game, Space Squash. This game has a similar sense of humour, and I love its roster of little characters. Cute robots who get sad when they lose their squash matches. Aww.

But now, we must leave the realm of the Virtual Boy behind, and enter the world of the 3DS, where my Tomodachi Life iterations of Charli XCX and Joe Biden live together happily:

When they developed a relationship, I couldn't bring myself to discourage them. It seems they love each other very much. But this might be a problem for poor Hank Hill...

Oh dear. 

Moving on, I've been playing a lot of Yokai Watch lately, and I love the varieties of insects you can catch. They feel so vibrant and cute. I'm thrilled when I get them.

Besides that, I love the characters and dialogue in this game. I've made friends with a beautiful slime creature named Dismerelda, and she simply doesn't care at all. I love her.

It's also worth noting that misogyny is not tolerated among the children of the town. The beefy little boy named Bear assures me of this. Thank you to this little man. 

Finally, I must show you the beautiful artwork I created in Crazy Frog Collectables: Art School. In this game, you can colour in gorgeous illustrations of Crazy Frog, and so I carried out this task expertly, and created a lovely blonde Crazy Frog.

I also unlocked cheese ball.

And that's what gaming is all about. 

The Other Bennet Sister is Ass

I knew I wasn't really the target audience for new cheesy BBC drama The Other Bennet Sister on account of my eternal hatred of the sillification of period dramas, but nevertheless I gave it a shot just to check it out, and to see Richard E. Grant doing his thing as Mr Bennet. The thing is, I've never been a fan of period dramas that veer towards the anachronistic. What I look for in them is a thorough and obvious interest in the details of the time period, and especially so for an extended Jane Austen adaptation, because the crux of her commentary rests in the details and particularities of the landed gentry of that time.

Don't cry girl, just start punching.

I would love, for example, to see some sort of supplemantary series like this that explores the thorny but very small mention of the Atlantic slave trade in Northanger Abbey. But to do that, of course, you couldn't make a super fluffy show like this one.

Pissed off.

I'm not necessarily a stickler for accuracy - I think there are some fun ways to explore period settings from a modern lens that might necessitate anachronistic romp - but I do find that in almost all cases, it tends to feel absent and empty, as if the modernising of a period piece is happening just for the sake of it - just to bring the characters closer to us and plop them unthinkingly and uninterestingly in our lap. Sure, let's strip out all the context that makes their story remotely interesting and let them say that they're on fleek or something. Whatever.

The Other Bennet Sister falls into just about all the traps of thoughtless modernisation. We focus in on Mary Bennet, the ugly nasty freak of the group (or so the show positions her), and immediately the level of cringe on display begins to seep uncomfortably into my pores. Where in the source material, the iconic and layered Pride and Prejudice, Mary is a complex and slightly shadowy figure - not just considered a less pretty sister, but haughty and stand-offish and out of touch with some of the things going in the household. She has been said to be somewhat representative of Jane Austen herself, but what makes her interesting is that she's not simply a maligned or nasty character, but a character who has her reasons for having developed a severe and judgmental personality. She fits into the dynamic of the Bennet sisters, between screaming, excitable Kitty and Lydia, and the more wry Jane and Elizabeth. Mary is caught between them, and so her sense of being above the other girls is borne of her particular sense of isolation in the family as a quieter and more prim personality.

A look of motherly repulsion.

In the show, this is flanderised beyond belief into a cartoon portrayal of Mary which makes her dazzlingly innocent and sweet, while her whole family stomp her into the ground. This is partly a decision made in pursuit of light comedy - this show is written very much as a cute, comedic extension to the Pride and Prejudice lore - but in doing so, it flattens out every character completely. Mary's sisters are snide and nasty about every little thing she does, and her mother constantly makes disgusted faces at her and throws a fit about the very concept of Mary wearing glasses (because "men wouldn't like it"). It's unbearable, it makes the whole endeavour super dull, and it renders all of the show's dramatic tension way too obvious and flimsy.

The first couple of episodes introduce us to, and skip past, the events of Pride and Prejudice, and from then on we follow Mary as she fucks off to become a governess. This is portrayed as a sort of girl power alternate path for her to follow after being straight up humiliated by having a crush on a guy, but we continue to focus on her meeting interchangable men who couldn't possibly be attracted to her because she's not very gorgeous. It is incredible how little I care at all about this plot. It's like if Ugly Betty had zero fun to it. There is way too much of Mary feeling sorry for herself and saying she's too uggo to get a husband.

Okay, if we're going to explore ugliness and the great social toll it takes on women in a society where they rely so totally on their marriage prospects, could we perhaps say something about that? Anything?

There was one thing I liked in the show, and it was seeing that Mary has armpit hair. It's tragic that armpit hair still feels kind of daring, but since it does still have that aura of stigma about it, it was nice to just see her raise her arms and show off the armpit bush. Hell yeah. But aside from that single moment, the show feels like it has no idea what it wants to say in regards to the weight of beauty. It would be so much more satisfying to see the subtleties of Mary's experience of being a less desirable woman, rather than a parade of over-the-top scenes of either people being super mean to her, or people being charmed and delighted by her because she likes books and can win trivia quizzes. 

Because as we all know, Jane Austen was trying to communicate that books trump looks, not that people have weird conflicts within themselves that butt up against others constantly in a society that demands rigidl, proper behaviour. Right?

I dunno. I just think this is a bit stinky. 

Stinky Games

Some games in the Atari 2600 library, many of them infact, are stinky. Here are three choice stinky selections that I will most likely never be playing again.

 

1. The Challenge of Nexar 

This one is promising, initially. We are greeted by a colourful screen with horizontal lines in different shades, signifying a 3D plane ahead from which enemies will emerge. Our task, predictably, is to shoot those things, but the gimmick here is that you can move all the way around the screen and your aim will stay locked on to the centre.

The enemy ships look pretty cool when they approach the edge of the screen and get bigger and chunkier, but the movement here is just a bit too awkward for the gameplay to be very satisfying. So, while Nexar looks cool and novel at first, it quickly becomes disappointing. 

 

2. Blueprint

This game is another that looks quite beautiful. You are a little stick figure guy, and you have some sort of robot contraption to assemble. To do this, you must enter houses to find pieces. The scene looks inviting. A gorgeous surburban street, and a chubby red enemy parading around with your beautiful blonde girlfriend at the top of the screen. Wow!

Tragically, the fun conceit of the game is somewhat ruined by the vaguely unpleasant feeling of playing it. It's easy to get killed, and it's unpleasant trying to figure out by what means you must build your machine. On top of that, there are bombs to dispose of. Sometimes you just walk into a house and now you're carrying a bomb you have to deal with, lest it blow you up. It's a little bit crazy. And less fun than it sounds.

 

3. BMX Air Master

This one just feels horrible. It gives you a little bike and shows you a beautiful sunset, yes, but it feels hideous. I don't need to say anything else, it just doesn't feel right at all. Eww. I'm not riding a bike. You can't make me.

The Beauty of Berserk

Berserk is a beautifully designed game. You are a gorgeous, perfectly rendered human, your legs scrambling for purchase - Looney Tunes style - as you walk away from droids with rotating heads. The game is about shooting these guys, and not getting shot by them. And it's ideal.

As I'm always saying about Atari 2600 games, the best ones perfect the simplest concepts. Here, we are confronted with a room full of enemies, and we simply need to get them before they get us, and then move on to the next room. It's easy to understand, and it offers a structure and a level of animation that feels polished and thoughtful. Those walls are electrified, so if you or an enemy walk into them, you witness the horrible buzz and flicker of a body surging with deadly electricity. It looks convincing. I am assured that this death is far from painless.

It's also really cute and good that your enemies, after dying and flickering away, display a split-second smiley face. In that tiny moment, the game introduces a little bit of humour to the gruesome task of killing. Perhaps they are released into their deaths joyfully, or perhaps it means nothing because they are robots, perhaps they are whisked away into the mainframe to be reborn on the next screen.

It's amazing what little design elements can do for enriching an almost featureless world. This smiley face, as it turns out, is a hint at something sinister lurking within. For now, I must simply keep shooting.

***

P. S. I have been added to a catalogue for gaming blogs called Warp Point. Check it out if you're looking for more blog posts about games! 

Iron Lung (2026) is Bad

Hello beautiful readers. I've been thinking about Markiplier's Iron Lung, released earlier this year. It occupies a fascinating spot in the YouTuber movie canon by virture of being, in some ways, the most true YouTuber movie. You see, Markiplier is a capital Y YouTuber, and so this thing is so distinct from Obsession (a movie by, really, a filmmaker with a YouTube channel), and Backrooms (I still haven't seen this), and certainly The Amazing Digital Circus Movie (again, this is just a show that happened to be posted on YouTube, a thing made by a person posting that very specific sort of thing to their YouTube channel).

Iron Lung is closer to Logan Paul's The Thinning, which I have seen and I won't talk about at length. That movie is a sloppy interpretation of the sort of YA Dystopia that was highly popular at the time of its release, and this movie is a sloppy interpretation of a horror game coming out at a time when horror movies are seeing a bit of a boom. Although, it's also worth stating that horror movies are enduring and eternal. They occupy that exciting position of amateur-friendliness that makes them so appealing to new directors.

And it's a funny movie, in some sense - Markiplier is both directing and starring in it, which is a horrible decision, but I salute him. Do it all, I say. Be the guy. Sure. It's just not a good sign, and the movie is quite stinky. Markiplier is not an actor, but he does do a lot of dramatic crying and swearing. He spits out every single one of his "fuck"s like its the pit of an olive. And that, I have to admit, did make me chuckle.

But he's always coming back to attempt a #serious emotional moment. He's crying because he's a prisoner or whatever, sure, I get it. That seems sad. I'd probably cry too. I have to admit the truth, I probably would cry if I was imprisoned in a little submarine and sent to the bottom of an ocean of blood to do tasks. I'm just being real with you. Fortunately, this is not happening to me, but it's also very much not happening to Markimoo. He doesn't make it believable at all. 

I was ready to like him in this movie. I'd heard good things, inexplicably. I very much liked the game this movie was adapting. But man, they really took a subtle, slow, expertly built up narrative that teased out its environment carefully and beautifully, and they slam dunked 79,000 gallons of fake blood on that thing. Let's get Markiplier's hair all wet with blood, they said. And great, sure, I love that. Get your blood! By all means. But why replace such charming alien fish fantasy and the semi-obscured cosmic horror elements that encroach just the right amount on an interesting political post-apocalypse disgusting moon narrative with Markiplier doing army crawls towards a black box to do a heroic info transfer that we don't even get to see the fruits of? While he gets big time exploded by the gush of a WORLD RECORD BREAKING amount of movie blood?

It's very stupid. I wish Pewdiepie was in it.

One blood explosion out of five.

★☆☆☆☆