Review: The Taint

Dirty Phil

I watched The Taint last night. As soon as it was over, I wanted to write about it. The Taint is a low budget, independent "action/comedy/horror", per IMDb, film written and directed by Drew Bolduc. The plot centers around the water supply being "tainted" by a miraculous drug cooked up by two nerdy scientist-types who want to make their penises larger. What the drug actually does is to turn men into maniacal "misogynists" who run amok with their enhanced penises (literally dangling out of their pants) killing any woman they can find with large rocks or anything else that's lying around. One of the last non-enhanced men around is Phil O'Ginny (played by Drew Bolduc) who teams up with a recently widowed femme fatale Misandra (get it?) in a quest for untainted water. Along the way, more blood, semen, and viscera fly than I thought was available for purchase in the great state of Virginia (where the movie was filmed).

Not your thing? I certainly wouldn't recommend it to just anyone. That said, I'd like to pose a question: what would you rather watch? Transformers: Dark of the Moon or this? One is a labor of love created by people who seem to have a genuine interest and love of film. The other is a boring, pandering, vacuous, Hollywood money-pit whose only redeeming quality is... well, I can't think of any. I know my answer.

Something you'll immediately notice when watching The Taint is that, despite having a low budget and no studio backing, it's not filmed by amateurs. Drew Bolduc and Dan Nelson (credited for cinematography) make the film's shots interesting and exciting, full utilizing the cinematographer's toolbox. It's avant-garde, art-house and anything else you'd hear patrons of artsy indie theaters pontificate on outside after a viewing. The music (once again, I give you Mr. Drew Bolduc) is a well-made, interesting cross of house, chiptune-esque, and rock which I'm still listening to. The film's special effects and makeup are some of the best practical works I've ever seen.

DVD cover

The film itself jumps around and changes perspectives often and lampoons many topics. Cody Crenshaw plays an overenthusiastic high school physical education teacher with a penchant for "shirts and skins" activities (he's often yelling off-screen to a kid named "Anderson" whose probably overweight and picked on). His character is excellent parody of the kind of alpha-male douchebags we all know. We're treated to a sequence of his character working out while fitting 80s hair metal music plays and several shots of him displaying, what I call his "workout boner", bulge through tight and super-short shorts. The fact that the entire world ends in pursuit of a drug that makes your penis bigger just cracks me up to no end. Are men so insecure about the size of their dick that they'd collapse society to rectify this situation?

My only real gripe with the film is the way it constantly jumps in perspective and flashes back and forth from past to present. Perhaps it could have been more focused in this regard, but I'm not convinced it's really a problem. This film has already vigorous defied convention and what is considered "good taste" in many other respects, so why should I expect it to unfold in a conventional manner? Would it really benefit from that? 

But let me get back to my question. What would you rather watch? A movie like Dark of the Moon insults my intelligence and laughs at me as I exit the theater devoid of another $10. A movie like The Taint is silly and "distasteful", but has fun and is, ultimately, *gasp* more intellectually stimulating (in odd ways) than transforming robots and Shia La... whatever his last name is. Lest we forget Peter Jackson made Bad Taste and Braindead before he won 11 Oscars.

Petitioning Nintendo for a Redress of Grievances: Operation Rainfall

I often sit in doorways when I'm feeling blue.

On June 23, 2011 the story broke: Xenoblade Chronicles Not Coming to North America. The news came in a particularly damning fashion. Mathieu Minel, marketing directer for Nintendo France, was the messenger:

He told the station that Nintendo of Europe wanted to show Xenoblade Chronicles at E3 2011, but Nintendo of America wouldn't let them because they didn't want to show products they aren't planning to sell. -Nintendo World Report

 I remember reading that article back then and feeling my heart sink. I had just recently heard about Xenoblade and was psyched for news of a North American release. I'm a pretty big fan of Xenogears and Xenosaga (which I haven't finished yet... I have all three games but my PS2 gave up the ghost in the middle of Episode 1: Der Wille zur Macht) and I had only heard stellar things about the game. But it was not to be... This was just another movement in the death rattle of the Japanese RPG.

Fast forward to June 24, 2011: the very next day. Kotaku runs a story called "How Badly Do You Want The Last Story, Pandora's Tower and Xenoblade For Wii?":

If you think that The Last Story, Pandora's Tower and Xenoblade deserve release outside of Japan and Europe, eager IGN forum goers have already prepared templates for you as part of a three-pronged campaign approach to clearly, but politely request Nintendo localize those games. -Kotaku

The Last Story was directed by Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi and scored by the series' long-time composer Nobuo Uematsu. I had to slap myself in the forehead for not knowing about this. Pandora's Tower, according to the European website, is a "dark, original RPG adventure" that, while seemingly the black sheep of the trio, sounds fairly interesting. I had not even heard of the either of them, but that's beside the point. It really only took one day and one sentence to energize the gaming community enough to start a movement to bring these games to North America.

Snazzy!

The movement is called "Operation Rainfall". They whipped themselves up a neat logo and began petitioning Nintendo of America to localize those three titles. Operation Rainfall helped drive Monado: Beginning of the World (Xenoblade's development name) up to the #1 best-selling video game on Amazon.com... in a few hours.

It's one thing to petition a gigantic corporation with some letters and phone calls. It's an entirely different thing when you put your money where your mouth is. And it seemed to worked since now Xenoblade Chronicles and The Last Story are coming to America.

This is an interesting model, isn't it? Imagine what would happen if Half-Life 2: Episode 3 were to suddenly appear on Amazon.com as an in-development title and fans blew up the pre-order button in much the same way fans of Xenoblade did. Do you think that this is a good way to gauge interest in a game? Especially one that has been forthcoming for awhile?  Comment away.

So who actually owns that stuff on your hard drive?

Heh. What did you just say?

Over the Christmas holiday, I received a $20 PlayStation Network card from my brother (which has now been established as somewhat of a tradition between us). I leaped into the PlayStation Store headfirst and eventually settled on Assassin's Creed II for around $18 which included all the additional DLC.

Fast forward a few weeks. I'm sitting in my room establishing a new IGN profile (which you can find here) and adding games I own to it. IGN gives you an "estimated value" of your game collection to, I'm guessing, facilitate a nerdy game of "who has the biggest wang in the room". That's when an issue I've pondered since I began purchasing digital goods started to weigh heavy enough on my mind to stop reading Crime and Punishment and hammer out a blog entry on it. Essentially, the issue is this: do I actually own Assassin's Creed II?

No. I do not. Per the PlayStation.com's Terms of Service:

Regardless of the permissions we give you to use the Content, we remain the sole owner of all the Content, and you do not acquire any ownership rights in the Content by assembling, creating files, downloading or saving any of it. If we have included an author attribution, a trademark or copyright notice or other legal notices on the Content, you should not remove or alter any of these. -PlayStation.com: Terms of Service, Section 4.

 This may come as a surprise to you, but it certainly didn't surprise me. I have long thought-on and explored the issue of digital content and ownership rights which began upon a rather sour experience with iTunes (we won't get into that). Digital music shoppers undoubtedly already know what I'm talking about. The content is being licensed to me. I am able to access it and download it to my harddrive, but it's not mine. However, if I had chosen to buy a physical copy of Assassin's Creed II, (or a CD from a physical retailer) I would have a completely different set of rights, i.e. I would own it.

Ezio is upset with me because I chose convenience over actual ownership. Blame my brother actually.

If you have ever participated in, or gleefully observed, the so-called "GameStop Debate," it's likely that you are familiar with the first-sale doctrine. GameStop owes its existence to the first-sale doctrine since it:

...allows the purchaser to transfer (i.e., sell, lend or give away) a particular lawfully made copy of the copyrighted work without permission once it has been obtained. This means that the copyright holder's rights to control the change of ownership of a particular copy ends once ownership of that copy has passed to someone else, as long as the copy itself is not an infringing copy -Wikipedia

 First-sale doesn't apply to most digital content since you, usually, do not own it, and it's precisely why I scoffed at IGN's "estimated value" of my video game collection. I don't think their purpose was to show you the monetary assets your sitting on, but to show you how much you've invested into gaming in dollars and cents. Or, by proxy, to show you how much of a lame-ass nerd you are... but I digress.
I can't resell my digitally licensed copy of Assassin's Creed II to GameStop, but I can access it and redownload it as much as I want, granted I download it to no more than five authorized PS3 consoles. What digital content lacks in actual ownership, it makes up for it (to some small extent) by virtue of convenience of supply.

Internet, meet Convenience Bear

The convenience of digital content really needs no exposition by me. You already probably know the pros and cons just by living in the world and having the Internet. Sure, I don't physically own ACII, but all I had to do to get it was sit on my ass and press a few buttons. And I could have done this at any time, even 4AM on a Sunday.

My friend got this game. Our parents
thought we were Satanists.

Another interesting facet of digital content ownership (or lack thereof) is how the prospect of infinite supply affects pricing. I haven't conducted enough issue of the subject, so don't take anything I have to say as authoritative or sourced in any way (maybe later, but I don't have enough time now). If you don't know how it works, the pricing saga of Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne in America perfectly illustrates how supply and demand affects pricing as far as physical ownership is concerned. Nocturne was released in America to critical acclaim and "good" sales (as stated by the Megami Tensei Wiki, I couldn't find US sales data), but in the years after its release, the price of a new or used copy of the game shot up to around $60 at points. A reprint of the game in 2008 stabilized those prices and you can currently pick up a new copy of the game for $30 or less.
How can digital content possibly be affected by this since the supply is literally limitless? I guess it can't. Does the advent of digital content, assuming that whatever you're looking for is available digitally, completely eliminate supply considerations? It seems obvious, but I'm no economist. I do know that prices of new things tend to go down as new-er things come along and that will (probably) never change...
So what thoughts do you have? Comment away.

On the Fox News Fact-Checking Department...

Everyone's favorite propaganda machine is back! And this time they've failed harder than Herman Cain's presidential bid. It's incredible how often people with proverbial graveyards in their closets run for the Presidency in this country (just wait until the American public remembers all the extra-marital action Newt Gingrich got). That aside, take a look at this graphic used by Fox News recently in their "coverage" of the Elena Kagan controversy.

Looks official!

Do you spot the error? For starters, the Constitution doesn't have 28 articles, nor does it have anything close to a section 144. Secondly, this language isn't part of the Constitution! At all! Did Fox "News" fabricate this factoid? According to this article, that language does exist in Title 28 of the US Code, Section 455, but that obviously isn't "The Constitution". Simple error? Probably, but consider this: Fox "News" has recently "won" consecutive "Lie of the Year" awards from PolitiFact. In response to this and other failures of the Fox "News" fact checking department, I decided to give them a call and ask a few questions:

Well, that's odd. Their phone doesn't seem to be connected. Y'know, I'm not too sure the lights are even on in that building anymore.

The Sheer Brilliance of PETA

Oh Internet, I have officially seen it all. The two subjects I write most about--video games and politics--have come together once again! Let's not get into what kind of a sick human being is hugely interested in both video games and politics and instead talk about skinning raccoon dogs! We all know and love (hate) PETA: which of course doesn't stand for People Eating Tasty Animals as peta.org once linked to, but for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (and is also far more convoluted).

It seems they have gotten their oft uncomfortably bunched panties into a bunch again over the upcoming Nintendo 3DS game Super Mario 3D Land releasing this statement along with a flash game where the aforementioned raccoon dog errrr... gets his skin back: 

When on a mission to rescue the princess, Mario has been known to use any means necessary to defeat his enemy—even wearing the skin of a raccoon dog to give him special powers.
Tanooki may be just a "suit" in Mario games, but in real life, tanuki are raccoon dogs who are skinned alive for their fur. By wearing Tanooki, Mario is sending the message that it's OK to wear fur. Play Super Tanooki Skin 2D and help Tanooki reclaim his fur!

 Mario does indeed wear the aforementioned raccoon dog suit to give himself special powers. I have a question though. What kind of a suit does PETA members wear to make themselves super douchebags?

What a deplorable animal abuser... either that or he's a fictional character with fictional powers in a fictional world where animals are not skinned for their fur because the characters in the world have been created by the developers to provide an entertaining platforming experience that takes no philosophical positions outside the context of the game. But which is the better sounding sound byte? 

So in an effort to appeal to kids, who don't vote or influence public policy in any direct way, PETA unnecessarily tries turning a gaming icon into some sort of merciless animal slayer? The website also comes complete with all the G-rated, family friendly violence you've come to expect from the kind of reputable organization that supports domestic terrorism.
You know, I've played Mario games for years and I can't recall ever skinning an animal and parading around in its literal skin. Mario has more to say about blue balls than the issue of fur trading. PETA's pathetic attempt to shoehorn their agenda into the release of Super Mario 3D Land is simply laughable. I think I speak for most gamers when I say: fuck off. Stop exploiting the medium to make cheap political statements to a demographic, children, that couldn't give two shits about the issue you're trying to raise.