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Game Theory: Petscop - The Scariest Game You'll NEVER Play! (2017)
MatPat craps the bed again
I first came across Petscop on ScareTheater's YouTube channel (ScareTheater is a fellow who looks at supernatural/real-life mysteries/creepypasta related stuff, armed with a skeptic's eye and clip art.) When I first watched it, I was immediately in love. It was a horror webseries of the slow-burn, surreal, cryptic type- and the incredible part is that it didn't exactly succumb to all the cliches an ARG of its type might fall to, namely because it is so cryptic, ambiguous, and unique that tracking a direct narrative line through all the videos is hard. It's brilliant, and it really needs an IMDb page of its own.
But I am stuck with MatPat instead. MatPat, to be fair, in his saner moments he can be perfectly watchable, like when he talks about fan theories that are actually generally accepted by the community. This is not the case with this video, where he retreads the idea that the game is directly about the death of Candace Newmaker. There are obviously parallels drawn in the videos, but the general community of Petscop fans has mostly thrown out this theory upon further analysis of the narrative. In other words, MatPat is recreating his Sans/Ness incident again (q.v. every Game Theory parody for the past couple of years), except with a different community being the angered party. That's a sad thing, too- his partial explanation of the End Poem in Minecraft isn't half bad.
A Wrinkle in Time (2018)
A diabolical puzzle on celluloid
Before I begin this review, I would just like to say that I don't know how I feel about this film, and I'm not sure I ever will, hence the 5/10 rating. Having read the original source material for A Wrinkle in Time, this is a strange goddamn adaptation, to say the very least. In my eyes, there are a few reasons for this. Firstly, some of the changes it has made to the original source material are baffling, while others actually make sense. For instance, "Red" (read: the Man with the Red Eyes, the physical mouthpiece of It (or, according to this film, the It. Why add the "the"?) in the original novel) looks like a poor man's Willy Wonka, but quantum entanglement being the mumbo-jumbo Meg's dad uses for tessering instead of a pure wormhole is indeed a well thought-out change. The flowers are a stupid addition (although not altogether pointless to the plot), but the change regarding what Mrs. Whatsit transforms into is rather good. All of what they did to Camazotz did my head in as to whether I liked it or not, including the stairwell sequence, which to me might have well been conceived of on
Secondly, it is obvious that the message of this film was tweaked a bit to have a bit of commentary regarding womens' body images and how it affects them, as well as empowerment of women, and I am certain there are cries of "SJW-ism" and what not in this review section. A film like this attracts those sort of unpleasant reviews like honey does flies. I personally don't know how I feel about it. Ask me Tuesday whether it was garbage and you won't get the same answer Wednesday. I don't even know if I care.
Thirdly, while the performances of the three immortal girls aren't too shabby, the rest of the cast is hit or miss. Storm Reid is alright, but she doesn't get as many lines to work with as I was expecting, oddly enough, being the protagonist and all. Calvin's actor's performance is as interesting as watching a sundial's shadow move. Charles Wallace's actor, Boognish bless him, is trying incredibly hard to nail his character, but falls way short, sadly. Shame, too, as he probably would have been better with better direction.
To summarize, I do not know if I recommend this film. Ask Schrodinger's cat instead.
Björk: Hyperballad (1996)
Through a mind, on a mountain
Michel Gondry, before he got into feature film making, was a director of short films and music videos. As my first review, I'll write the first review of this music video. The video seems to be using projection, computer graphics (both 2d and 3d) and some sort of lighting array, all edited in a way where they overlap. This overlapping is where the surreal and transcendental feeling of this video shines. That, and the visuals themselves. Although the visuals have an outdated quality to them that makes the viewer notice this was made in 1996 (which is noticeable and very, very slightly detracts from the experience), this same outdated feeling gives the video a rather hazy atmosphere, which works in its favor, given the song.
In short: it's like a PlayStation 1 game dropped acid.