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One Fist Too Many

It feels like the “Harmonica” character was inserted into Once Upon a Time in the West after-the-fact. He’s sure unnecessary. He makes the movie longer than it need be, attracts time away from the main plot for no good or interesting reason, and generally clutters the situation. I think he wasn’t supposed to be there; that Cheyenne was the only male protagonist, and that half of Cheyenne was split away to form “Harmonica” (who, note, is an Indian — yet the other guy is named Cheyenne).

Assuming this is the case — well, why? I’ve an idea it has to do with Ennio Morricone. You see, by this point he was no longer writing the music at the last moment. I understand that, after the success of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, where he wrote a number of themes beforehand, he began to work more closely with Leone, working out the music before the movie was set, such that Leone would have something to guide him, conceptually.

From how he’s used, it feels like “Harmonica” was an experiment in tying the music more closely to the material. In other words, he’s an artistic gimmick. He plays harmonica (poorly), which gives an excuse for a harmonica theme to dominate the soundtrack, blurring lines that really don’t need to be blurred.

I feel that’s enough Leone for me, for now.

(November 23rd, 2004 @ 1:39am)



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Under the Skin

I think everything I’ve really liked has creeped me out just a little.

(November 22nd, 2004 @ 3:12am)



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Western Deconstruction

Structure of the first half of Leone’s The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly:

  1. Title sequence
  2. Showdown #1; The Ugly identified
  3. Showdown #2 (and aftermath); The Bad identified
  4. Showdown #3 (and aftermath); The Good (such as he is) identified
  5. Back to The Bad; he beats a woman, showing how bad he is
  6. Back to The Ugly; the strange gunshop scene, where he displays his strange character traits
  7. (in the restored version) Added scene setting up the logic for the following scene; helps to space things out and show a little more of Tuco’s character
  8. Back to the Good, via Tuco; Blondie shows how sensitive he is, with the gun-cleaning scene; the outside world interferes for the first time, saving Blondie and setting the rest of the movie in motion
  9. (in the restored version) Back to The Bad; Angel Eyes’ eye-opening scene, where he is exposed to the effect of the war; some logic, to help explain why Angel Eyes returns when he does
  10. Back to the Ugly, then the Good; the squabble resolves. Blondie is again saved when the outside world (the stagecoach) again interferes, thus giving a greater goal for the movie and setting the third leg in motion.
  11. (in the restored version) Added scene setting up the logic for the following scene; helps to space things out and show a little more of Tuco’s character
  12. Tuco and Blondie at the mission; Tuco’s eye-opening scene, where he is exposed to the effect of the war; Tuco’s character is fully established, making Blondie more sympathetic to him
  13. Tuco and Blondie get caught up in the prison camp, to finally intersect with Angel Eyes
  14. etc.

I’ll fill the rest in later. It’s all downhill from here. Very… clean.

The removed scenes mostly help with the plot. Only one (aside from the boot thing, which is lovely) strikes me as important to the tone of the movie; that’s the early scene with Angel Eyes. The others are all nice to have, and make the movie feel fuller. More complete. I can see why they were cut, though, if cuts had to be made.

(November 15th, 2004 @ 7:08pm)



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I can feel the walls closing in on me

So everyone around me kept saying how great the new Zelda was

I don’t know. It struck me as another Zelda game, from what I saw of
it. And. I understand that some of Nintendo’s trends have been worsening. Even though Capcom’s making all of their games, these days.

Zelda used to be a thing of wonder. Now it is a template. Metroid is starting to go the same route, too. The series has been stagnating since the third game. Both series have been. It just gets more obvious, the more often it’s iterated. And the more out-of-touch and patronizing each iteration becomes.

Metroid Prime is a nice exception.

Wind Waker brings a lot of nice things to the series, just as Metroid Fusion does. The problems with them are the same, though. They don’t really succeed because in the end, the template rules. They have to answer to it, so they don’t get away with as much as they might. It’s mechanics, not experience, that Nintendo chooses to deliver these days.

I don’t give a damn about the rules. I want to feel something.

Here’s the part where I’m a wiseguy and ask which series has undergone more substantial changes over the years, Zelda or King of Fighters? I suspect most fans of either would pick the other, which is only natural. Fans of something pay attention to the small but sometimes crucial changes between iterations, while non-fans shrug their shoulders and say that they all sort of look the same.

I adore Zelda and Metroid — or at least, what they once stood for. The series have certainly changed; they’ve regressed. It’s pretty sad when the first two games are the most sophisticated, and everything else has just been about weeding away what made the games stand out from the crowd. A process of prolonged blanding. That’s what distresses me. I have come to be dismissive through one mediocre decision after another.

As far as fighting games go, KOF has evolved more in concept, and covered more ground, than any other series I can think of. If you can even compare it to other games; the series operates on its own terms. It’s more a serial novel than anything. Yet it’s a serial that only becomes richer and more rewarding as it unfurls.

Meanwhile, all of Nintendo’s series become more generalized and mathematical, drawing from the same proven design documents.

Metroid isn’t as far along the decay as Zelda, of course. Nintendo avoided the series for nearly a decade after Yokoi died. And Intelligent Systems isn’t EAD. Now Retro is doing some insightful stuff with the concept, fleshing it out in a way Nintendo never did. Zero Mission gets a lot right, especially where it borrows from Retro rather than from Miyamoto. I like the way it prepares the player for how to deal with Metroids, for instance. It is, however, still mired in the same hyper-safe, inbred theory that Nintendo’s been using since 1991. And with every generation, that theory generates more genetic defects…

If every chapter of KOF were 2002 or NeoWave, I would feel the same as
I do about Zelda. (Conversely, this would probably please a lot of people.) If a game like Wind Waker or Fusion were allowed to follow through on its own ideas, rather than bow to the Miyamoto machine, I would be inclined to care more.

I’ve not really played Majora’s Mask. It’s the only Zelda game aside from Wind Waker to look interesting to me since the NES. I played for about half an hour, and in that time noticed that all of the models were recycled from OoT. That wasn’t too encouraging, though I suppose it doesn’t mean anything on its own.

(November 14th, 2004 @ 4:12am)



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240 Denarii

I went through the day in a bizarre, stomach-curdled funk. I had a vague headache, my eyes were blurry, my temper did not exist, and I couldn’t really sleep. I blamed everything and everyone. Sometimes I had to fight back tears. I had intended another odyssey in search of a certain coffee shop. That didn’t happen. Instead, I… sat. I tried to sleep. I read. I gritted my teeth. I forgot to eat. Eventually, set out by a book on Krakatoa that I have been reading, spot in spot, in the bathroom, I began researching things on The Internet.

In that book, I had come to a passage mentioning a claim a few years ago, in a British documentary, that an early explosion of Krakatoa, in 517 or thereabouts (early sixth centry, anyway) was in part responsible for everything from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Dark Ages to the Plague of Justinian.

This got me to wondering about the “Dark Ages”. The implication that the period could have been brought about by environmental factors, such as those that come after such an eruption… well, it perplexed me. So I pulled up Wikipedia and typed in “Dark Ages” — to find nothing terribly illuminating. Since I was up for a refresher on Charlemagne, however, I followed that thread. This brought me to the revelation that Charlemagne’s father, Pepin, was responsible for the revival of a system of coinage in the land formerly covered by the Western Empire. That system, inspired by the original Roman model, was as follows:

1 libra = 20 solidi = 240 denarii

How… oddly familiar. The math was just bizarre enough to force me a double-check on the pre-decimal system for Pounds Sterling. And what do we have here.

The “L” for pound comes from Libra; the “S” for shilling comes from Solidi, and the “D” for Penny comes from Denarii.

It’s the same thing. In at least some form, the original Roman system persisted until 1971, before progress made its blow.

This revelation led me to other topics. Those, to others. Hours later, I feel… fed.

Now, I may sleep.

(November 11th, 2004 @ 5:32am)



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