Media Glutton - Untraceable, Consider Phlebas, The World Ends With You

I watched the Diane LaneDiane Lane thriller Untraceable over the weekend on DVD. I was wary of the film, as any movie centering around hacking and the internet is bound to get some really basic things wrong that will piss me off. But I was desperate for something mentally light yet thrilling, and this seemed to fit the bill. Lane plays an FBI Cyber Crimes agent working the night shift who comes up against a serial killer who's setting up elaborate tortures and broadcasting them online - the twist being that the feeds are live and the more people few the site the faster the vitim dies. OK, fine, kind of an interesting set up, even if the metaphor is something substantially less than subtle. And in the beginning the techno babble seems to make some sense, or at least mostly uses the right words to mean the right things. The ultimate justification for why they can't shut the site down doesn't, as far as I can tell, really make any sense. The excuse is that the site is hosted in Russia, but from my understanding of how Domain Name Servers and Ineternet Service Providers works, I'm pretty sure they could have blocked anyone from seeing the site. The movie comes up with an excuse as for why this doesn't work, and it was enough for me to role with it and kee watching.

The unravelling of the actual mystery is fun enough, and I enjoyed it. Lane is good, as are the other actors, even if the writing is pretty pedestrian (and occasionally silly). I think the film makers knew it too, as listening to the first half hour of the director's commentary he never once said anything about the story or what drew him to it. This is a purely by-the-numbers thriller. Worst of all, once the mystery is reseolved, there's still almost half an hour left, which ends up laying out pretty much exactly like you would think it would with no surprises at all. Sigh. Wait for cable.

Inspired by my enjoyment of Iain M. Banks' Player of Games, I picked up the first novel in his Culture series of sci-fi books, Consider Phlebas. It was written before Player of Games, and you can sort of tell. It's still a really well written book, and the setting is all there in all its coolness, but there's a lot of excess verbiage in there too and the lot is not nearly as tight as Player of Games. It's definitely a different kind of book though, more of a romping adventure tale that flings itself from exotic, dangerous location to exotic even more dangerous location without much but the charcters and their perdicaments linking them together. But still it's an enjoyable, fun book that's worth picking up if you enjoy the other ones. The nice thing about the Culture novels is that they're not a series per se - each book is totally individual and they can be read in any order, so I'd suggest Player of Games before reading Consider Phlebas.

I'm also traveling this week - out in Los Angeles for Book Expo America related activities - which meant a lot of time attached to my mp3 player and Nintendo DS for the duration of the two flights. I bought a new game for the occasion - The World Ends With You. It's a very well-reviewed action/rpg thing set in modern day Tokyo. It sounded cool, it sounded different, and it is. And I kind of hate it. Because here's the thing, it turns out that I just realy don't like many Japanese RPG's. They're verbose, overwrought, and paced like a snail. I like the game's aesthetic, but it just grates on my nerves with every passing screen of eposition I have to click my way through. I could go on, but the truth is, this week's Zero Punctuation summed it up better than I can, so you should just go watch that.

So I went back to my three standby, ever reliable DS games - Tetris, Geometry Wars, and Advanced Wars: Dual Strike. All great games. And while I play I listen to a fist full of podcasts to help further distract me from the stultifying confinement of whatever jet powered aluminum tube I happen to be crammed into at the moment. One of my favorites, which I've been stockpiling for these longer flights, is the interview series from Creative Screenwriting magazine. They do screenings of films and then have hour or so long Q and A sessions with screenwriters. Even when I haven't seen the movie, indeed even when I never plan on seeing the movie, I find these interviews almost always fascinating listening. It's always nice to hear how other writers think and work, and screen writers in particular are interesting because of they usually have to have a laser-like focus on story and plot that I really appreciate.