Like a Cancer

Grove St. now controls all gang activity in Los Santos. I've spread out from the Grove and eradicated both the Ballaz crew AND the Vagos from the city, and now only have to deal with their tattered remains as they attempt to deal and scrape their way back to some semblance of notoriety. I am King Los Santos. You can call me such.

Here's the thing: I've been playing for twelve hours straight now, and that's not counting all the times I've loaded a saved game to erase some horrendous mistake on my part, and rather than my respect slowly being raised over the course of the game as I expected, it's already at full blast. I can control a gang of God-knows-how-many now (I think six. Maybe seven), and I have tons of weapons to defend them with. I've been buying tons of clothes, a couple of houses (though that nice property in Mullholland is still a bit pricey for me. Someday), and I killed Will Smith. I think I'm doing a ton.

In the menu, you can check on your game progress. I've completed 15% of the game.

My God Jesus, man. How long is this game going to eat my life? I'll never see the light of day again. Thank god for employment and Churchill's.

I need to talk about Amor es Perros. My ridiculously Mexican girlfriend informs me that the title, translated in subtitles as Love's a Bitch, can also be read as "Amores Perros," which means dog loves, or the loves people have for dogs. Who knows outside of approximations. I'm tired of that crazy code language. Anyway, the title pretty much sums up the whole damn movie, which thankfully excuses me from having to talk about the thing.

Ha.

I'm not for or against foreign films of any sort to start off with (though I am a little wary of the Swedes after the shitfest that was Ingmar Bergman) and this was no exception. If anything, a movie that's run the gamut of surviving in a non-Hollywood economy and then finding its way all the way over to America has already proven its mettle to some degree. The only problem is that this degree is one that appeals to so many people, its hard to say that so many are going to have anything intelligent in common to enjoy. For the most part, I think the great unifying factors between the poor and the rich, the intelligent and the idiotic, the republican and the democrat are eating and fucking. You make a movie about sticking one's dick into a chocolate eclair, well, my friend, you've made a blockbuster.

Save for the diabetics. Who will form a coalition and get your movie banned. Fuck everyone.

Bitterness aside, Amor es Perros fits snugly, I think, into the Coen Brothers, Guy Ritchie infested genre of kooky, kooky-stuff-films. Basically a bunch of extremely interesting characters, a single unifying moment, a spiderweb of stories all converging at one point, for good or bad. One of my favorite genres to watch, and this one is no disappointment.

The star of this film is apparently some tremendous heartthrob in Mexico, also starring in Motorcycle Diaries, and being lauded just as loudly for his looks in that little endeavor, and I can see why. The kid looks great, I'll give him that, and he's a good actor, which goes a lot farther in my book. Nobody phones in their roles, good story, good writing, etc. etc. etc. I liked this movie a lot. Go see it. Now, to the task at hand.

There are those film-going elite who believe that dubbing over foreign films is akin to sleeping with barnyard animals, and that doing so is the worst thing you can do. Doing so is destroying art, and you know who else destroyed art? The NAZIS. Think about that.

Film is an auditory medium as well as a visual medium, and in order to appreciate it, you have to be able to understand it. Now, this is somewhat case-by-case, as a film with no dialogue would neither need translation or subtitles, but for the most part these foreign language films brought ot another country, be they exported from or imported to the USA, ought to be dubbed over in the language of the country they're being shown in.

People can scream into the night as much as they'd like about the performance of the actors, but an actor's performance comes through without the intonation of the voice, as any acting coach can tell you. Voice is the second most important thing as opposed to appearance, and appearance is 70% of believability. If you're pulling your weight at all as a performer, we'll be able to see your acting through the voice-overs.

More importantly, when we're reading subtitles, we're looking away from the picture and what's actually happening in the film. We miss out on more subtleties that way than by missing out on the original actor's exact intonations. We're looking away from the cinematography, which is one of the most important things to a film's artistic expression.

As we were watching the film, the Mrs. and I, she would point out little irregularities between the dialogue in the film (she's fluent) and the subtitles provided. Language differences aside, it's amazing how much is lost between the words spoken and the words written. Another favorite target of the film-going literati, the discrepancy between the two is a hotbed of contempt from the bastards. Nobody bats an eye when we translate Doll's House or War and Peace, but try to put subtitles on Run, Lola, Run so that a differently-languaged country can enjoy it, and a bunch of bitches in berets show up complaining about authenticity. Many of which spent most of their college days talking about how important Ibsen and Tolstoy were. Bastards.

Anyway, point 38 in my 500 point plan to rid the film medium of idiocy and indifference is to do away with subtitles. Wastes of life.

Back to GTA. I only hope I remember to get some sleep. This is quickly becoming unhealthy. Happy New Year, again, and I'll see everyone next year, same place, this side of the sun.

Bastards.