indefinite articles

47 Words sings along to the musical mayhem of Jim Henson’s Muppets

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This week: A few hours further through Snake Eater, Jake speaks his mind on the gameplay of the first three installments of the series.

For a game that so regularly wrests control from the player, the Solid series’ big appeal is, oddly enough, a sense of freedom. Certainly, the plot is going to play out the same way every time, and the game is ultimately one long funneled experience, but each step along the way is a sandbox within which the player is invited to experiment. Solid Snake enters an area, is given a specific goal, and must overcome a sequence of obstacles. And when that goal is accomplished, the game successfully makes you feel like you noodled a solution out all on your own.

Despite all the constant interruptions of gameplay, the leaden dialogue and thecutscene tsunamis, the game’s most invasive flaw is one which utterly undermines this sense of accomplishment. Coming to a solution is always satisfying, but the execution is anything but. As the controls and options have slowly ballooned over the course of the three games, the gameplay, once tactile and snappy, has grown so heavy that the whole structure collapses under the weight.

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Dear George Takei,

In the eyes of America, you will never be the face of Star Trek. Nor will you, even with your unmatched gift of a booming cadence, ever be the voice of Star Trek. While Patrick Stewart’s shining crown, Leonard Nimoy’s parted fingers and William Shatner’s staggering delivery have been forever lodged in the databanks of popular culture, your name will manage to escape all but the most informed Trek conversations and parodies.

Let it be known: Your shoulders are meant for a greater mantle.

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You will now listen to my voice. Every time you hear my voice, with every word and every number, you will enter into a still deeper layer, open, relaxed and receptive. I shall now count from one to ten. On the count of ten, you will be in Europa. I say: one.

So begins Lars Von Trier’s Europa, released as Zentropa in the United States. Shortly after the narrator finishes his hypnotic spiel, Von Trier plunges the viewer into a gorgeous, cinemascope, black and white vision of a world drenched in horror and confusion — Germany in 1945, immediately after the war. The Kafkaesque scenario that follows is beautiful, horrible, dryly funny, wrenching, exciting and enervating. Unlike the failed experiments of many other movies profiled here, Europa is a genuine masterpiece.

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This Friday: the 1960s mother of the digital age; the casual genocide of the human race; good advice from Brooklyn rockers; what happens to pork scraps when they dodge the hot dog; a battle between gods-among-men; and a cross between a sheep and a boar.

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This years best-named movie may also be the most difficult to see. In a move that verges on criminal, Midnight Meat Train is only penetrating 100 theaters in its limited release, and may be forced to prematurely pull out after only a week. In light of the obvious greatness of the film, self-evident from the title alone, Indefinite Articles is throwing its support behind the film. We urge you to follow Clive Barker’s advice and write Joe Drake (COO and President of Lionsgate) to save the Meat Train from impotence. The future is indefinite - help us rewrite it.

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This week: Season 1 - What kind of man is Duncan MacLeod?

Imagine living with the constant stress in the back of your mind that you could be beheaded and die. The flipside… you get to remain young for all your days, and nothing else can kill you. Such is the bittersweet paradox of existence that Duncan MacLeod, the Highlander, must live with. In a world full of Immortals, in the end, there can be only One.

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It’s been six years since The X-Files, the proto-Lost that never managed to figure itself out, went off the air. And as far as I can tell, it’s been ten years since anyone actually watched it, or could bring themselves to care. And yet, on Friday, the second film spawned by the show, is coming out in theaters.

The subtitle, I Want to Believe, reads to me as a reluctant admission to the questionable timeliness of it’s release. At this point, the show seems like a relic, its deadpan seriousness from an era when TV was seemingly divorced entirely from style. Clearly, there is something deeper going on here, some invisible hand with a hidden agenda silently pulling the strings in the shadows. But who? And why?

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47 Words raises a glass to these crazy straw wonders.

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Episodes viewed: “A Taste of Armageddon,” “This Side of Paradise,” “The Devil in the Dark,” “Errand of Mercy,” “The Alternative Factor,” “The City on the Edge of Forever,” “Operation: Annihilate!”

It’s easy to forget that the USS Enterprise’s five-year mission is a tour of duty. The vessel is officially on a scientific mission of peace, exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilizations, and boldly going where no man has gone before — but in the unfortunate event of attack, it packs firepower that outclasses any WMD you can think of. And the battlefield is leagues in scope beyond our military’s.

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