Draco2-0

For better or worse Naughty Dog has departed from the Uncharted Series leaving in its place a decidedly more mature game.In The Last of Us you play as Joel, a rough and aged man with a slight southern drawl tasked with escorting Ellie, a 14 year old girl, across country in a post apocalyptic United States. Along the way you will have to survive against other humans and the infected, a mix between the Zombies from 28 Days Later and The Flood from the Halo series. None of that really matters though as the main focus of the game, from a story standpoint, comes in the development of Joel and Ellie, both as individual characters and in their relationship to one another. Even games like The Walking Dead, which have similar character dynamics, fail to really get close to what the Last of Us achieves in terms of how it handles these characters. Like any great story, by the end you can relate to Joel and Ellie on a gut level. When things go bad for them you really feel it. In that aspect The Last of Us offers something that no other game offers. And the comment that it represents the best the medium has to offer seems well deserved in this regard. In terms of game-play, The Last of Us plays well; the combat mechanics feel brutal and exciting, although you will end up seeing a couple animation just a bit too often.

The game does a pretty good job of keeping things scaled down, but from time to time it slips in to that all too familiar gauntlet of enemies game-play formula where you can't help but feel a sense of disbelief as you down dozens and dozens of enemies. And, for the most part, only the humans really come in droves. You never get that overwhelming crowd of zombie sensation you see in movies or that you'd experience in something like the Dead Rising series. The game has the right idea most of the time, fewer enemies but more meaningful encounters, only it still can't get away from its third person shooter trappings. Luckily you can avoid many of the encounters, something I felt thankful for. The Last of Us feels like highly cerebral material stuck with a conventional third person shooter game, albeit with a heavy stealth aspect. And maybe this complaint just serves as a credit to the other aspects of the game in that when it slips into a mindless shooting gallery it stands out that much more than it would normally. While out of combat and story segments you will spend the rest of the game scavenging the environment and solving mind numbingly easy environmental puzzles. The scavenging works well enough, you will feel the need to really explore every nook and cranny to find that little bit of ammo or that extra pair of blades or just a few more pieces of cloth to make a med kit. Unfortunately this kind of puts you as the player into a hyper scavenger mode as you twitch the camera around making sure not to miss any items while missing out on what should represent the actual heart of the game, Ellie. I've read left and right about little emotional interactions that other players experienced that flat out failed to trigger in my play through most likely because I had my attention elsewhere. So a bit of advice, pay attention to Ellie. Think about what might interest her in the environment, you might feel surprised at all the interactions you can have. The biggest complaint I had with the game came in the form of the puzzles, if you could even call them that. Essentially the last of us has 3 or 4 puzzle types that it repeats ad nauseum. You will have to move a ladder or plank, swim across water with Ellie on a platform, and push a container of some sort over and over again. The game repeats the same puzzles about 5 or so times throughout the game to the point where the characters even make wry comments about. Now, a little repetition in this area wouldn't have bugged me but the game really needed at least one or two more environmental puzzle types. Also, the boost animation repeats quite a lot. Sometimes it varies but more often than not you will see the same damn "boost me up" animation over and over. Little things like that really hamper the experience. And again, in a normal game this might not seem like a big deal but The Last of Us sets the bar so high in other areas that when things stand out they really stand out. Lastly the sound design of The Last of Us really holds a quality of excellence not heard in most games. From the amazingly realistic performances to the subtle soundtrack to the rain hitting the roof or even just the sound of clashing teeth as an infected tries to take a bite out of you, everything sounds amazing. The Last of Us really feels like a special experience that will stick with you for a long time. It has some questionable design choices and could have used a few more animations here or there but all in all it exemplifies the best of the current gen, in all its strengths and shortcomings. It feels like a precursor to a new era of triple A game making, an era of mature well thought out stories with highly in depth characterization. If the Last of Us serves as any indication, in the near future video games might just become the leading medium for telling gripping stories.

8/10

James McAvoy plays a security member of an auction house that gets robbed by a team of criminals headed by Vincent Cassel. A painting goes missing and only McAvoy knows the location. Unfortunately he has amnesia. Enter Rosario Dawson in one of her better roles as a hypnotherapist charged with getting into McAvoy's head.

The film starts out with that high ding ding ding Danny Boyle flair with slick editing and slicker dialog reminiscent of the sort of films he made back in the 90's. Where it really kicks into gear though, the inception reality bending sequences inside McAvoys head. A sequence in particular really stood out. It begins with a hypnosis session in the French country side and quickly escalates into something almost like the climax of a Philip K. Dick novel. Indeed one could most definitely draw comparisons between Trance and films like Inception or Vanilla Sky, although Trance's reality bending remains purely on the perception altering level.

With so much going for it Trance does seem to lose a little steam with its climax though. It plays a lot of twists and by the end even the average film goer will probably find at least a few, if not plot holes, stretches of logic. And from a basic reading of the script the final plot twist doesn't really come off as all that exciting. Really, the way they have structured the film feels more interesting that the plot. And this style lends itself to something more than a basic crime thriller. Although it doesn't get hinted at in terms of dialog one could interpret the film on a deeper level. Maybe the film actually cons you if you walk away from the picture thinking you've a clear cut idea of what happened.

For me the real test for Trance will come into play in how well it holds up under repeated viewings.

Video of this review: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O75A4qMqZss

The Tragedy of Man 2011 I've heard Marcell Jankovics called the Hungarian Walt Disney and after seeing his 1981 film Feherlofia I didn't find myself in a position to disagree. Although one could make the argument that Jankovics' vision surpasses Disney's. So with that in mind I eagerly started watching Tragedy of man, a near three hour long adaptation of the well known, in Hungary anyway, play by Imre Madach. The first half hour did not disappoint. Jankovics psychedelic animation and a bombastic audio track provide one of the most compelling visual representations of the biblical creation and the fall I have ever seen. The brilliance of the animation really shines here, Jankovics presents the Adam and Eve story in such a way that Christians will not find offensive but atheists will appreciate for the possibility of a purely psychological interpretation. Unfortunately, the rest of the film's animation quality does not keep in pace with this early segment, indeed most of the film has a sort of 1 frame per second look to it. You know when you watch the making-ofs for animated features and they have scenes that haven't gotten sent off to the in-betweeners for that fluid motion—well, much of Tragedy has that feel. Now, this doesn't really detract as it gives the film a sort of dream like quality and some of the sequences surpass any other animation I've seen in terms pure visual impact. But in the, for example, future segment something about the animation just felt unfinished. This does not surprise me as the film took 20 years to make of which much of the time reportedly Jankovic spent raising funding for the project. The film also has more or less a constant fast paced dialog throughout the 160 minute run time. So if you don't like reading subtitles I would suggest waiting for a dubbed track, if one ever comes along, which doesn't feel all that likely. Those aspects aside the film has a scope and vision beyond just about anything else that I can think of that currently exists in the medium. It goes right to the heart of the human condition with an unflinching critical eye. I would not feel surprised if you came away from this picture with a new perspective on your life and humanity as a whole. If you enjoy things like 2001 A Space Odyssey and can meet it half way Tragedy of Man might just provide one of the most rewarding film experiences available, animated or otherwise.