I’ve decided to take one step forward.  I hope I can stick with it.

This is just beautiful.  From a 4E playtest by designer Sean Reynolds:

“Don’t get me wrong, there are some things in these rules that I think are really neat and I can see adding them to a 3.5 game. Then I look at Monte [Cook]’s Book of Experimental Might and these neat rules are already there, and compatible with the 3e rules, and don’t require a complete overhaul to the mechanics and feel of the system, and without months of people telling me that the game I know and like so well is actually an inferior piece of shlock compared to what they’re going to show me. So … why should I play this 4e game?”

I’ve been saying for a long time now that one of two things is happening: 1) Either 4th edition is going to suck and the designers are just putting their (sucky) best foot forward with these demos, or 2) WotC fired everyone in their marketing department and replaced them with blind monkeys who are just flinging poo (in this case, random bits of rules) out into the public for demonstration.  Either way, it has completely failed at getting me excited about 4th edition, especially when the aforementioned Book of Experimental Might is worth (at most) a fourth of the 4E cover price.

You can read the whole post that generated the above comment here by the way.

Wow.  If you have never done so before, check out Jonathan Coulton’s cover of Sir Mix a Lot’s Baby Got Back.  It is the most awesome thing I have ever heard.

Movie: Gone Baby Gone
Starring: Casey Affleck, Morgan Freeman
Genre: Detective movie
Final Summation: Silver recommendation

It’s strange nowadays to see a movie in black and white.  I don’t mean the colors – I mean a movie whose internal politics are so absolutely clear that the bad guys might as well be wearing black hats and the good guys might as well be wearing white ones.  This is especially true in detective movies, in which movies fall either with Dick Tracy in terms of complexity and depth of character and film noir.  There really hasn’t been all that much in between.

Gone Baby Gone walks that line very finely, and does so in the most brilliant manner possible.   But I can’t say how, because that would spoil the movie.  Suffice to say that the first hour (which goes by surprisingly fast) is a typical detective movie, then it takes a nice twist, and then a rather uncomfortable twist, which is rectified almost immediately with another rather good turn, and the world makes sense again.

The basic premise of the movie surrounds Patrick and his girl friend, a pair of rookie Boston private destectives who specialize in finding missing persons.  When a five year old Dorchester girl goes missing, they are hired by the girl’s aunt, who has created a media frenzy surrounding her nieces’ kidnapping.   Patrick uses his street smarts and contacts to assist Boston detective Remy Bressant and his partner Nick to track down the kidnapper, leading into a chase across Boston’s drug circles.   From there, the movie takes some brilliant turns, and some not-so-brilliant ones.

What I loved about this movie that otherwise set it away from the standard crime movie is that this doesn’t try to walk with the film noirs.  This isn’t a “one good man” film.  In fact, there is a dearth of good men trying to find this little girl.  I would label this a film blanche, though that shouldn’t lead anyone to think that it’s a simple mystery.  It certainly is not.  The movie raises some interesting questions about the meaning of right and wrong, questions that are made all the more difficult because the characters asking those questions are, undeniably, good.

Of course, that means our hero Patrick has to be more than just good.  And I have to say, it’s pretty refreshing to see a character that’s about as close to a Paladin as we’ve seen in cinema in a good long while.  He continues onward, linking together the clues of the mystery with an unwavering certainty, stopping only at the very end when the ultimate question of the movie is put to him.  And it’s a toughie.

What this movie isn’t is a big triumph over evil.  There’s no moment where the hero finally outwits all of the bad guys and just barely survives, rescuing the damsel in distress at the nick of time.  And this, I think, kind of works against the movie.  I walked away needing… a little more closure.  The victories felt Pyrrhic, even though they arguably weren’t.  And while I think that was the point, it doesn’t quite, to me, complete the picture.

Story aside, the movie is solid.  Good acting all around (Ed Harris is amazing as Detective Remy Bressant).  Good writing (which proves Ben Affleck should stick to behind the camera.  Also, how the hell can Casey Affleck act so much better than his brother anyhow.)  I think perhaps Morgan Freeman was a tad miscast, but that’s minutiae.  The movie doesn’t take itself too seriously, which is great as it’s loaded with some heavy questions.  Overall, I felt it was a very positive experience for me, and I would highly recommend it to everyone.

So I just got back from my first arraignment. Given that I’m at work, I won’t pontificate on the matter. Suffice to say that the facts of the surrounding circumstances, it was the equivalent of my walking into Normandy Beach on D-Day with a blindfold, dressed in a shiny new American flag, with a slingshot as my main only weapon.

But I’m still standing, and despite it all I enjoyed my performance.