Tag: action

Selected Scenes: Shaft

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private investigator john shaft is one bad mother, and everybody wants a piece of him: the white police of the nypd keep pressing him for leads; a prominent black gangster wants him to find his kidnapped daughter; and all the while every piece of tail on two legs wants a night with the man whos a sex machine to all the chicks. cop vic androzzi thinks hes got shafts number though: heres a guy who knows everyone on the street and how to get to them, with a reputation of getting the job done. even if his racist partner doesnt agree, androzzi thinks shaft and him can form a partnership. what he doesnt know is shaft is playing him right back, hustling him for information while giving up nothing in return. because shaft doesnt owe anything to the cops, and especially not to the white man trying to get him down! androzzi holds up a black pen to shafts face and tells him hes not so black after all. shaft holds a white coffee cup up to androzzi and tells him hes not so white, either. sometimes you cant win.

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Jay’s Take on: Devil’s Third

2015

i live in a part of the world that nintendo doesn’t know what to do with: canada. north american e-shop release dates don’t coincide with ours. is there even a nintendo of canada? where are they branched? what is their job? is the earth really round? recently there was a quiet markdown on the digital copy of devil’s third from 79.99 (!) to 44.99. CAD. first, i think they’re selfish for selling their games digitally for 79.99, not only devil’s third but all their first-party titles too! at that price you better give me a box and a disc (full discretion, i did buy a new physical copy for that price). second, nintendo should cut their losses. i doubt they are making any money off the game and its multiplayer microtransactions except in japan, if i am to believe wikipedia.

release it for ten bucks. i’m not even kidding. people who were afraid to jump the gun would go for it and the multiplayer would start to pick up again. who cares if it sucks (which it doesn’t). it’s an entirely serviceable (word of the day) shooter on a console utterly devoid of mindless shooters (except for the ones i can count on one hand), and the fact that it’s deeply-flawed but still immensely-playable makes it a bargain. for ten bucks.

if there was xp for most deaths in an online match i would probably win it every game. the multiplayer now nine months on is a wasteland of users who played fervently from the beginning and have maxed-out all their xp and are nearly impossible to kill. a far cry from the big bold promises of siege mode when the game was first announced. a year on i am still learning the layouts of enormous maps with all sorts of environmental play meant for 24-players on a game that only allows 16 of which you need 3 to even start a match from the two old-timers sitting in the lobby waiting patiently for their next victim. and those load times. don’t even get me started. but i beat the single player mode and spent more time playing multiplayer here then on ghosts and that ought to count for something.

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Jay’s Take on: Suicide Squad

i’m a firm believer of the ninety-minute movie. growing up, all my favorites seemed to be over and done before i knew. i watched and re-watched, and my parents bought me merch, and everyone was happy. but then, something happened. the age when Wild Bunch was cut to fit more screenings in per-day were over. people wanted more. but they didn’t want as much as Kevin Costner thought they wanted. enough bang for their ever-increasing buck. so, the meandering one-hundred-and-twenty to thirty minute movie was born. where twenty-to-thirty minutes could be easily cut as deleted scenes, or used as trailer-fodder. oomph-factor.

as i watched Suicide Squad, i was re-directing the movie in my head. i had read the tabloids and interviews. that it was retooled in post-production is evident from the first minute and i couldn`t help wondering whether a scene would feel better here, or there, or nowhere at all. excellent example is Jared Leto`s Joker. for months he was hyped with production stills and internet forums. we expected everything. when people got less than they thought, they were disappointed he was just a bit-player. i think they could have cut even more out. he should be there to support Margot Robbie`s Harley Quinn. instead the shadow of what his character should have been looms large over what he is, and could have been, performance not-withstanding. cut everything but the flashbacks with Harley in the asylum and axis chemicals, and have a legacy stand to bear fruit in future movies. have him as an end credit easter egg. or don`t have him at all this time around. but it`s everything-or-nothing.

other then that, it was a perfectly-serviceable suspense-comedy superhero origin story with the best unnecessary soundtrack i`ve heard in a while. we`ll see where Warner goes from here.

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