We saw Pan’s Labyrinth on January 1st, New Year’s Day. That was a mistake. I can’t help but think the rest of the year is all downhill from here.

Pan’s Labyrinth is two movies, really, and both are magic: One, a Brothers Grimm story starring a little girl named Ofelia who lives in hell and, to escape, dreams about becoming the princess of it. An ancient, gnarly faun gives her three tasks, you see—retrieve the lost key from the belly of a monstrous toad, for starters—to prove that she is the long-lost daughter of the King of the Underworld. The faun tells Ofelia of the seven wondrous circular gardens surrounding her stately palace, and her eyes light up at the thought of traipsing through what we generally think of as Dante’s Inferno. When he offers her a miracle cure for her ailing mother, Ofelia pays for the miracle in daily bloodlettings. Beneath Ofelia’s floor, through a magic chalk-drawn door, lives a pale gluttonous thing with eyes in his hands and painted murals depicting him gutting children for dinner. This is Spirited Away, its innocence stripped away.

The second movie is a brutal, painful, real little war story, pitting fascist Spanish Nationist captains against Communist guerrillas in the woods in 1944, but it’s no less a fairy tale than the first—there are great villains (the purely evil capitán, who doubles as Ofelia’s wicked stepfather), great heroes (a covert guerrilla in the captain’s midst), great sacrifices, great brutality (there’s some serious, shocking, unexpected cruelty here), great tricks—and great hope. Ofelia’s mother screams at her to pull her head out of the clouds. Fairy tales aren’t real, she cries—but all around her, proof otherwise plays out.

The genius lies in the way the two movies cross—or don’t cross, really. Writer/director Guillermo del Toro is careful to make sure Ofelia’s tale never gets too entangled with the world of adults, since that would ring false. She’s smart—she understands a traitor when she sees one—but she’s still child, and still oblivious to most of what makes the adult world go round. But the film’s final moment serves as a nexus point, and the two halves become whole. Childhood’s end, haunting and beautiful and painfully sad.

A warning: I’m going to talk about the season finale of Lost, which means if you don’t watch Lost, there is absolutely reason you should read this post. Every word beyond this sentence will be a spoiler; consider yourself warned.

Still here? OK. I loved the season finale. Things happened, enormous things that were exciting and crazy and weird. I loved finding out what happens when you don’t press the button (I’m a sucker for electromagnetic white-light explosions), I loved where Locke’s character finally found himself (and what it hopefully means for season three), and I loved Desmond’s flashback, which was everything a great Lost flashback should be — revealing, surprising, mysterious, and poignant. The finale created more loose ends than it tied up, but there were no cop-outs in what was revealed, and I appreciate that greatly.

I also hated the season finale, because I now know that Michael is an irreedeemable ass, because I have to wait until October to find out what the fuck that four-toed statue is, and because I’m now quite scared we won’t find out what that four-toed statue is before I die in 2047. Anyone remember the robotic-dinosaur black-smoke security monster? Uh-huh. Do you think you could gently remind the writers?

After having been burned by The X-Files (a show I wrongly assumed had some sort of destination in mind) and American Gothic (which promised me much and then disappointed me greatly by getting itself cancelled), I’m more than a bit gunshy around popular American network television. I’m fairly convinced that Lost ultimately knows where it’s headed, but I’m also fairly convinced that ABC’s analysts have predicted there’s eight seasons’ worth of money to be made, so I will not get my wish of three seasons and done with it. To fall in love with a television show is dangerous, but it happened, and I’m more than a bit nervous about where our relationship is headed.

A few characters have already fallen victim to the s-t-r-e-t-c-h — Charlie, for example, meandered from helpful father figure to evil heroin addict to helpful father figure to obsessive stalker to helpful father figure, and I’m not sure what purpose those pitstops in Evilville served. Same goes for Sawyer: He’s bad. He’s actually a sweetheart. No, he’s really bad. Frog-squishing bad. No, he’s truly a softie. I’m all for three-dimensional characters, but I don’t sense these folks learning or growing from their trials and tribulations; they’re just visiting Jail and wandering back to Go. Locke had a similar roller-coaster arc this season, but I think (hope?) he may have actually changed because of his ordeal, so all is forgiven.

But I think the worst misstep the show made this season is the treatment of Libby and Shannon, two characters that were unceremoniously offed just as they were starting to get interesting. I suppose their offings would have been more acceptable if they didn’t serve exactly the same purpose. See if you can spot the similarities: Shannon and Sayid start falling in love, some jerk shoots her totally by accident, and Sayid has reason to brood and be vengeful. Libby and Hurley start falling in love, some jerk shoots her totally by accident, and Hurley has reason to brood and be vengeful. Even worse: They didn’t even have the decency to resolve Sayid’s post-girlfriend-death issues before saddling Hurley with the same ones. Blah. At least Hurley has the potential to turn into more than just the lovable fat guy as a result of all this.

But aside from these complaints (I tend to call out faults more than point out strengths, which can speak for themselves), I still think this is fantastic television, addictive and enthralling enough to warrant me writing a blog post. It helps fill the void as I wait for October, and October, and October, and October.

After Sony undid a decade’s worth of work and good will with a single E3 press conference, we decided to follow’s Peter Moore’s advice that instead of getting a PlayStation 3, one would be better off getting an Xbox 360 and a Wii. A wise man, I suppose, despite the fact that he still has the release date of some damn video game tattooed on his arm.

After a frantic hunt through San Francisco’s hottest consumer electronics outlets, we picked up the premium pack and two games — Dead or Alive 4 and Perfect Dark Zero — both from the preowned games rack at the local Electronics Boutique or EBXtreme of XtremeStop or whatever the hell they’re calling it now. After a string of annoying preorder disasters, we had all but sworn off the GameStop/EB machine, deciding instead that All You Need Is Best Buy, but an EB policy I’d never really heard of till now may have change my mind: If you buy a used game, you have seven days to play around with it and decide whether or not you like it. If you don’t, just bring it back, and pick out another one of equal value. Huh. Weird. We’ll be bringing Perfect Dark Zero back tomorrow and picking up Tomb Raider: Legend or Kameo, because I like fairies. I figure we can work through the entire existing 360 library in about 30 days, and then I’ll just play Geometry Wars until the good stuff comes out.

About that good stuff: The real reasons we bought a 360 are mostly at least one entire calendar rollover away, and they’re all based on impressive E3 showings: Lost Planet, Dead Rising, Mass Effect, Gears of War, and, um … Viva Pinata. And Blue Dragon. I barely had a chance to glance at Lost Planet at E3, but when we got home and “jacked in” to Xbox Live, we found the entire two-level E3 demo waiting for download. Awesomest thing ever — and I’m not sure whether I’m talking about the demo or the fact that we could download it. Since then, we’ve been on a demo-nabbing spree, trying our hand at anything that offers the opportunity and watching stupid DOA4 videos inviting us to “guess which character Itagaki is controlling.” The answer? It just may surprise you.

So yeah, we own a 360, and the best thing about it is how expertly it teases you about things you cannot have. We’re the proud owners of eight pounds of potential.

In case I haven’t told you yet in person, I recently took a jobby job at Computer Gaming World magazine — and as part of that deal, I’ve got another blog to barely update! As of now, there’s but one post and nary a picture of our dog [update: two posts, and one dog picture] — but before long, it’ll probably be filled with things that would only be interesting to someone who would read Computer Gaming World magazine. Well, “filled” is perhaps a bit presumptuous. Anyway, here’s the URL: cgwsean.1up.com. Enjoy!

Just finished uploading a new gallery of pictures of our puppidog Popkin, going all the way back to when she was just a giant head and ears. Click here for a whole lotta photos of a Pembroke Welsh Corgi climbing on furniture, chewing on stuff, and looking off to the left very suspiciously.

By now, any gamer worth a salt has learned the shocking news: The official name of Nintendo’s next-generation console is Wii. Double-you eye eye. Pronounced “wee.” After living with a relatively sane name like “Revolution” for so long, the only natural reaction a gamer could have to the new nomenclature is instant confusion and revulsion — as if you’re hearing a word from an extradimensional alien tongue that only exists ten thousand years in the reverse future. Pee-pee jokes soon follow as a defense mechanism.

But the shock has passed, and in its place: understanding.

The official announcement explains the choice of the word in Final Fantasy speak — something about a magic wish of the heart uniting a dying planet — and I can only conclude that Nintendo’s U.S. marketing division had absolutely no idea this crazy-new-name thing was happening until their Japanese masters appeared from a cloud of dream mist and said, “Write thee a press release. It shall go out today, and it shall be named Wii.” And the poor marketers, who had filled their white boards with hopefuls like the Mountain Dew Mario Box and The Nintendo Awesome, had no choice but to obey. Then their heads exploded. Sure, Nintendo PR may say it was a group decision — but no. No, that cannot be.

Ever since the launch of the DS, Nintendo has been actively trying to distance itself from what is now, at least in the U.S., considered “mainstream gaming” — those semi-realistic, semi-streetwise, semi-same third-person action shooters that iterate endlessly on the shelves of Sony’s and Microsoft’s game libraries. Nintendo knows that there is no room for their company in this mainstream world, and has responded time and time again with what at first appears to be electronic-entertainment gibberish — first with the DS and its nutty stylus, then with a next-gen console with a crazy stick designed for controlling cooking games, and now with this single strange, sincere, almost beautifully naive syllable. By naming their console something as insane as Wii, Nintendo has created a wide chasm between themselves and what we’ve come to recognize as “regular” gaming. When I hear the word Wii, I hear Nintendo say, “Get a PS3 or Xbox 360 for your Grand Theft Auto clones and new Call of Duty games; come over to Nintendo for a whole lotta WHO THE FUCK KNOWS!!!!” As a jaded gamer who rolls his eyes every time he sees a Godfather game commercial and still can’t find a compelling reason to spring for a 360, I am so there. It’s about time for something completely different.

There are certain movies that, in the critical parlance, “sacrifice story in favor of visual excess,” though I don’t think sacrifice is quite the right word — I’m pretty sure that the two can peacefully coexist, and that graphic artists do not perform a blood ritual over their screenwriting colleagues in order to craft a memorable action set-piece. Anyway, we just witnessed two back-to-back instances of this cinematic hoodoo: Silent Hill and Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children.

Most of the Silent Hill reviews I’ve read go kinda like this: “The art direction was absolutely fantastic and there was some crazy, surreal horror stuff in there that I’d never seen on a movie screen, but the story had too much exposition and the dialogue was dumb, so it TOTALLY SUCKED. Negative zero stars or unpopped kernels or whatever clever movie-themed item I use as my ratings scale.”

I don’t get it. I find merit in films (or games or books) that do one thing extraordinarily well, even when they fumble in other departments. I am grateful (in a sick, perverted way) for having seen Pyramid Head tear off a woman’s skin and hurl it at a church door. I’d like to thank whomever choreographed that screaming-burning-child-demon scene for finding the resonant frequency of my spine. I still get chills when I think about the sound of an air-raid siren and the Darkness What Follows. I’m not sure where Christopher Gans picked up his intimate knowledge of the urgent, primal panic of the fucked-up unknown, but his movie channels it effortlessly to the viewing audience. The fact that the plot was overexplained and the dialogue was, erm, perceptibly unnatural does not negate the existence of this other awesomeness.

Final Fantasy VII is guilty of pretty much the exact same crime: The words that fall from the characters’ mouths are absurd, and the plot exists simply as an excuse to get all your favorite characters back for the video-game equivalent of the Partridge Family Reunion Special. (”Hey everybody, I’m Yuffie, and I still like to steal materia after all these years!” “Oh, Yuffie!”). But as pure fantasy action porn, it’s exhilerating stuff. What’s wrong with crafting a movie around a really cool idea for a sword?

Granted, I would love nothing more than to say Silent Hill got it completely right or that Final Fantasy was the final word in fantasy entertainment, but I can’t — and I’m still happy with what I got. My brain can apparently compartmentalize a movie into equal parts Story, Images, and Ideas and be 100% satisfied if only one or two of those chambers are filled to the brim. That makes them worth at least an unpopped kernel or three.

Roger Ebert’s review of Silent Hill is up, and he doesn’t really like it — no surprise, and that’s not what I want to talk about (at least until we see the movie this weekend). The part of the review I want you to read is the final paragraph, in which Ebert quotes a doctor who sat with him on a recent panel about whether video games could be considered art:

Dr. Shlain made the most interesting comment on the panel. He said they took some four and five year-olds and gave them video games and asked them to figure out how to play them without instructions. Then they watched their brain activity with real-time monitors. “At first, when they were figuring out the games,” he said, “the whole brain lit up. But by the time they knew how to play the games, the brain went dark, except for one little point.”

The whole can-video-games-be-art thing has been one of Ebert’s soapbox topics for at least a couple of months now. He likes to bring up brain studies like this one to back up his arguments — I remember him citing a similar brain theory to prove that digital projection was inferior to good ol’ fashioned celluloid because the flickering of film excites some cortex or another, while digital projection lulls that cortex into relaxation. Sure, why not. Anyway, this new brain study is, in a roundabout way, backing up his claim that “games ain’t art.” I say his definition of art is too narrow, and he’s talking about a realm he admits he doesn’t really deal in — but he does make some points that I agree with. And this is kinda one of them.

Recently, I’ve been playing a lot Oblivion on PC. At the beginning, I was hooked, as I figured out the nuances of how spells worked, how quests presented themselves, how to wrest precious Welkynd stones from their roosts, and what kind of bounds I could push in the course of my little ugly Dark Elf’s development. Now I’ve kind of settled into a groove, and there’s nothing left I don’t really understand about the game. I know that soon my fireball spells will do more damage, my equipped heavy armor will encumber me less and less, and I will be able to craft stronger and stronger potions as I explore more caves, close more Oblivion gates, and clear out more ruins. I’ve passed the discovery threshold and into the repetition phase — there’s still plenty left to do, but not nearly as much left to figure out. Should I venture forth into glowing blue Ayleid ruin number 874, I shall be there in body, but my brain will be dark, except for one little point.

I’ve also been playing and enjoying the hell out of Galactic Civilizations II, but I’m reaching the same threshold: I’ve traversed all of the tech trees, noodled out the nuances of cultural influence and starports and planetary defense, and everything finally “clicks.” Now I’m really ready to show the universe who’s boss — but I don’t feel the urge anymore. And at the risk of turning your brain dark, I recently had a brief but passionate fling with Sudoku puzzles; but once I figured out (or studied up on) all the rules and tricks, it became a matter of rote application, and I haven’t touched another one since.

When I try to think of recent games that have really captivated my attention — kept my brain lit up, in the Ebertian parlance — all the way through, here’s what comes straight to mind: World of Warcraft, because it’s a social experience, and that lights up a whole different section of the brain. Shadow of the Colossus, because it never really leaves its discovery phase; each Colossus encounter presents its own set of rules to figure out. And Silent Hill — part two, especially — because … uh … hmmm. Certainly not because of the control scheme. Or the lead-pipe fighting. Or the camera. Or the puzzles. Or the level design. It’s more the character studies disguised as boss encounters; my self-destructive obsession with Pyramid Head; the unraveling mystery of what poor protagonist James Sunderland did. The art of it, I guess you could say.

I lost track of my point two paragraphs ago, but I think it was gonna be something about how the challenge of game developers in the modern era is to make sure that every minute of their game feels like something new. Oh yeah, and I hope the Silent Hill movie is good.

I can’t stand April Fool’s day. What is it? Does it even qualify for one of those minor holidays like St. Patrick’s day? There just doesn’t seem to be much to it besides the lying.

I guess my main gripe is that once a year I have to question everything I read on the intarweb for about a week. Just today (this is still March mind you) I read that the new Alliance race for the WoW expansion is going to be wisps. HAW HAW ya got me!

There was also a story on Aint It Cool News about a Simpsons teaser trailer that may or may not be true. They say that it isn’t an April Fool’s trick but I become super suspicious this time of year. Are they allowed to turn around on April second and say they got me? That seems like cheating.

April Fool’s jokes have devolved into something like this:

Fooler: “Hey I just found out they’re making a new Star Wars cartoon series!”

Me: “Huh. That’s kinda cool I guess…”

Fooler: “April Fool’s you dumb fucker! I got you so good!”

Me: “…”

Anyway in the spirit of the holiday I will now be making much more frequent posts.

I was trying to avoid bloggin’ about the oogy, surreal sense of relief that seemed to settle over giant swaths of America after Brokeback Mountain lost the Best Picture Oscar to Crash. I was trying to keep myself from linking to the unsettling comments I’d come across online written by folk who seem to think that Brokeback’s Academic defeat was some sort of sign from heaven, and that God does indeed smile upon our amber waves of grain. But I guess this weird, totally out-of-place quote I read in an article about the premiere of Pixar’s Cars was the last straw:

“Another attendee, who asked not to be named, described the film’s race-car-themed story line and folksy soundtrack, featuring songs by Sheryl Crow and Brad Paisley, as ‘the perfect antidote to (gay cowboy movie) Brokeback Mountain‘ for more conservative red-state audiences.”

Now, I’m not sure what’s scarier: the fact that someone went to the premiere of Cars — a delightfull-of-fun-for-all-ages computer-animated kids’ movie — and somehow felt the need to twist its Pixar-branded innocent delights into some inexplicable jab against that infernal may-heaven-have-mercy-on-us gay-cowboy vial of pure poison, or the fact that someone in the media — from Reuters, no less — chose to publish that bizarre bit of crazy-person talk. Is this how the fate of America is to be decided? Will The Last Battle be fought with those who like Cars and Larry the Cable Guy on one side, and those who like Brokeback and Jon Stewart on the other?

Then I came across this Open Letter to Larry the Cable Guy on David Cross’s Web site, and yes — yes, that is how it will be decided. Good luck, everybody.