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8A - Monday, October 29, 2007
The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
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Poor taste?
Tis the season.
)URTESY OF LIONS GATE
She's freaking out because the movie is scary, not because it's bad. Her screams are a metahor for fear.
J Saw IV" is a good movie.
OK, stop laughing.
I know there are some
people who will never like this
series. They might call it a gross
bastardization of the horror
genre, an annual mindless gore-
fest that never
should have lit
up the screen of
any theater. Saw IV
The tempta-
tion to dismiss AtQuality16
the series is and Showcase
inevitable. After Lions Gate
an innovative
first movie, the
pieces of shit that crawled off
the assembly line the next two
years made everyone wonder if
the people who worked on the
original movie had lost their abil-
ity, or motivation, to form new
ideas. "II" and "III" consisted of
trap after trap with no discern-
able purpose other than to shock
the audience into submission as
ribcages and intestines exploded
across the screen,
"Saw IV" is different. It's
exceedingly rare that the fourth
film in a series would be its best,
but here we are. Tobin Bell is
one tough son of a bitch, last-
ing through three movies with
a brain tumor that appeared to
kill him on at least three separate
occasions. And this time he gets
more screen time than ever. He is
dead, as the absolutely disgusting
opening autopsy scene proves,
but he lives on through a series of
flashbacks that offer new mate-
rial on the mysteries surrounding
his life's work.
"Saw IV" is all about motive. A
police officer (Lyriq Bent, "Skin-
walkers"), whose previous part-
ners have been victims in the
earlier films, gets the chance to
view the world through the eyes
of Jigsaw, who, as it turns out,
wasn't always an evil machine-
building psycho. -
He once tried to help people
legitimately by operating a drug
rehab clinic. But when he tried
to help those who needed it, they
ultimately repaid his kindness
with cruelty, sending him toward
madness.
The cop is told not to free a
masked woman he finds strapped
into a machine that's slowly rip-
ping her braided hair off her
head. But when he does free her,
she immediately attacks him,
because it turns out he was about
to put her in jail on a prostitu-
tion charge. "See what I see" is
scrawled in blood on the walls of
the room, echoing Jigsaw's feel-
ing of betrayal when those he
helped viciously turned on him
years ago.
"Saw IV" doesn't waste time.
Each trap has a significant mean-
ing, adding to the overarching
plot of the series. The storyline
and characters can often becomes
confusing, and the entire movie
is needlessly convoluted at
times, but it's worth the effort
to keep track of things. Those
who critique "Saw" as mindless
will think twice after this one.
Though the film doesn't abandon
the brutality that made it famous,
now there's more to it.
The acting is still disastrous,
whichhas beentryin every "Saw"
movie since Cary Elwes gave a
comical performance while pre-
tending to die of massive blood
loss. It's as if they put an ad on
Craigslist that said "want 2 b in a
movie? come audition 4 saw" and
accepted whoever showed up. As
"V" and "VI" are filmed, it might
be nice to find other people who
know can plausibly read lines
so Bell doesn't have to carry the
entire movie on his back.
Each "Saw" film has tried its
'own twist ending, but this is the
best by far, and although the
temptation is great, you won't
find it spoiled here. You should
know that seeing the other three
films beforehand is a must, unlike
the nonexistent need to watch the
previous nine "Friday the 13th"
movies before watching "Jason
X."'
It's complicated, it's bloody
and it's fun. The best "Saw" to
date will appease fans and anger
critics everywhere, successfully
keeping its Halloween tradition
alive.
By KIMBERLY CHOU
AssociateArtsEditor
ctober 31 isn't until
Wednesday this year,
which, for the more cos-
tume-minded at least, makes for a
full week of going out dressed up
as a naughty nurse, Mitt Romney,
a Rorschach blot or what have
you. But sometimes the "best"
ideas for costumes are better kept
as ideas. Here are some, um, high-
lights from the weekend proper
(starting Thursday):
In the Poor Taste Olympics,
medals go to ...
. GOLD MEDAL, for "Too fucking
soon" (if ever at all allowed): A girl
wearing a Virginia Tech T-shirt
and a gunshot wound painted on
one side of her forehead.
*GOLD MEDAL, on the grounds
of "We hope you're kidding":
Someone else wearing a tinfoil
hat, an "I Love Bingo" sweatshirt
and (I think) carrying a stuffed
animal or other sort of toy. Said
the medalist: "I'm a child retard,
in case you were wondering."
Jesus.
* GOLD MEDAL, earned by com-
pletely ignoring any and all social,
political, cultural mores: Anyone
who was in blackface last night
- including, and especially, the
person who tried to pass it off
by saying he was supposed to be
Samuel L. Jackson in "Pulp Fic-
tion."
1 SILVER MEDAL, inciting rage
from PETA: Some combination of
aMichaelVickjerseywith stuffed
animals, chains and fake blood.
* BRONZE MEDAL, for slightly
overdone (but sometimes still
cute): Grapes made out of bal-
loons (and leotards, of course).
To skip to something more
light-hearted, but still debatable
in different ways, Halloween
among college folk is the best test
case for what's sexy and what's
slutty. It's everyone's chance to
hit the bar or the Greenwood/
Vaughn/Arch block party or the
epic Luther House rager in her
underwear, and to do it permis-
sibly. There's surprisingly more
class in going dressed as Tinker
Bell than as a librarian some-
Va. Tech girl:
You've made
your point.
You're an ass.
times. But no one can judge - it's
Halloween, right? Let's play a
game of versus. As always, e-mail
in your thoughts.
"SEXY or SLUTTY?"
1. Tin-man in sparkle tights
(we assume with little left to the
imagination under her winter
coat)
2. A robot "with his entire ass
hanging out!"
I
I
3. "Babebraham Lincoln"
' 4
4. A pack of guys dressed as
Leonidas and a few of his "300."
Tiny briefs!
5. Hypothetical - and there's
still a chance to do it, so please
prove to us that this canhappen -
but magical costume: Sexy/Slutty
Prof. Dumbledore.
This week in celebrities at
football games: Verne Troyer (the
"Austin Powers" films) attended
the wet and wild win over Min-
nesota Saturday. Was not pleased
whenfans addressed him as "Hey,
it's Mini Me!"
- E-mail highsociety@
umich.edu to tell us if you
saw a sexy Dumbledore.
MU .C E W
No drugs do not a good
Ween album make
'NHL 08': Best hockey game ever?
By DAVID WATNICK
For the Daily
Forgive the amateur transla-
tion, but the words of the old
Mexican folk song "La Cucara-
cha" go something like this: "The
cockroach, the cockroach / Can't
walk anymore /Because it doesn't
have / Marijuana to smoke."
Ween supposedly made an
album sober for the first time
ever, and it
can't function, .
either, robbed
of its once- Ween
great song-
writing ability. La Cucaracha
Ween , has Rounder
always found
success with
its uncanny ability to excel in a
parade of musical genres, reach-
ing from hallucinogenic pop to
satisfying nuggets of immature
potty rock. That means that
when it fails, Ween not only
delivers pedestrian songcraft
but amounts to a self-parody, an
embarrassing prospect for a band
lampooning everyone else.
"Object," "Spirit Walker" and
"Lullaby" are all half-hearted
attempts at pop balladry, com-
plete with flat-lining melodies
and anti-climatic choruses. The
slightly more upbeat "Blue Bal-
loon" seems poised to go some-
where, but after meandering
to its four-minute conclusion,
this glorified segue track might
as well serve as the score for an
unremarkable dream sequence.
Even Ween's trademark, goofy
and offensive songs, (die-hard
fans describe them as "brown")
exhibits all the same failures. The
gross-out, faux hard rock of "My
Own Bare Hands" is uninspired,
and "The Fruit Man" is basically
an atonal reggae version of "Blue
Balloon." Worse still is "Learnin'
to Love," an annoying, synthetic
country stomp that pretty much
insults the actual gems on 12
Golden Country Greats, sound-
ing more like an outtake from a
bad Paul McCartney album.
The nadir is the album's clos-'
ing track. Guilty of all the afore-
mentioned sins, "Your Party"
outdoes itself with a set of bad.
Whereas the stoned, think-with-
your-spine stupidity of old Ween
songs like "Pollo Asado" (the
lyrics were a drive-through taco
order) is actually funny, the con-
tent of "Your Party" (a firsthand
account of a middle-aged dinner
party) is just stale. Couple this
with plastic adult contemporary
jazz, and - you get the point.
Even the few successful songs
aren't without flaws. The instru-
mental mariachi rave-up "Fies-
ta" and the pop-punk parody
"Shamemaker" are both fun and
catchy, but unfortunately both
The jokes are
just getting
stale.
tracks are built around nearly
identical guitar patterns. The
best track is probably the dance-
pop "Friends," although the
antecedent version that lent its
name to July's The Friends EP
is superior to the watered-down
remix here.
Ween used to be able to mas-
querade as a pop, rock, R&B,
country, prog or psychedelic
band while actually compiling
a deep body of work that cata-
pulted it into an indefinable cat-
egory. Here, it's made music no
better than the music it parodies.
'While the group used to get sky-
high with every album, this time,
they've come down to everyone
else's level.
By MICHAEL PASSMAN
Daily TV/NewMedia Editor
It's tough being a hockey fan in
2007.
Ignorant pseudo-sports fans
berate you for sup-
porting a sport
without a ball, ticket NHL 08
prices are ridicu- Xbox 360
lous and the NHL's EAorts60
games are nationally EA Sports
televised on a station
whose previous notoriety involved
"Survivor" reruns and bicycle rid-
ing.
Yet all is not lost for fans of
Canada's greatest export. In fact,
the year's best sports video game
features Eric Staal of the Carolina
Hurricanes as its coverboy. Yes,
he's a hockey player, and yes, the
Hurricanes are in the NHL. Finally. Hockey has a
As EA Sports's second NHL title
on anext-generation system, "NHL new ambassador.
08" might be the greatest hockey
game ever made (and I'm looking at Channel your inns
you, "NHL '94"). ard: "NHL 08" isn
Building on "NHL 07's" intro- ture from this ye
duction of the innovative Skill has refined, deep
Stick, which gave gamers control it. For"08,"EAad(
of their player's stick via the right one deke system t
analog stick, "08" picks up where to make aggressi
"07" left off and delivers an obses- ice. With some#
sively detailed hockey video game. analog sticks and
Almost everything about the players can push
game is ideal. The game play is a backpedaling d
quick, but not so fast as to seem them to move ins
unrealistic or make setting up a not foolproof - a
power play impossible. The dynas- - butitprovides
ty mode is thorough, capturing arsenal when co
almost everything related to the already deep stick
game, and goals actually must be
earned - no longer can you simply Late Kubrick pro
manufacture theist through easy problems with
one-timers. that playing agai
But most impressive is the way is much easier a
"08" manages to make the most ral than playing
realistic hockey game to date acces- person. Whilei
sible to almost anyone. It's true to with its self-aw
its source material and simultane- "08" boasts an it
ously an absorbing, high-tempo A.I. that claimst
game that anyone with a competi- up tendencies. It
tive draw will cling to. mind - well, it pr
So step aside, Mr. Crosby - this your mind - but
game just might be the sport's best toward the midd
COURTESY OF EA SPORTS
home outside of Canada - your Xbox 360.
I
er "Rocket" Rich-
't a radical depar-
ar's outing, but it
ened and built on
ded anew one-on-
hat allows players
ve moves in open
finagling of both
d the left bumper,
the pick around
efender and burn
on net alone. It's
nd it shopldn't be
awicked offensive
mbined with the
k control.
ject: One of the
sports games is
nst the computer
nd far less natu-
against another
it can't compete
'are counterpart,
improved in-game
to learn and pick
t can't read your
robably can't read
if you try and cut
le every time you
enter the offensive zone, it will
start putting you on your ass by the
second period.
So you want to fail econ ...: The
online feature set in the game is
so deep that I almost don't want to
skills. Or you can simply practice
your power play, penalty kill or
breakouts whenever you desire.
Depth' is always appreciated in
a game, but something is wrong
when people are seriously practic-
ing video games.
I
Y
lc
Starring John Forsythe: "08's"
ou can be a dynasty mode has practically
everything anyone could want in
)ser and you an NHL dynasty mode. Not only
do players have full control over
an fal econ. player personnel, but they also
have control of their AHL affili-
ate, which is stocked with real
farm club players governedby one-
about it for your own sake. and two-way contracts. Standard
re ranked quick matches, dynasty fixtures like scouting and
atches where you can play manipulating ticket prices are also
e other teammates, shoot- here, and players from the Swedish
d online leagues. Yes, you and Finnish Elite Leagues can be
anize your own little vir- scouted and signed as well.
tell you
There a
team m:
with fiv
outs an:
can org
tual league and guarantee you'll
never be productive again.
Practice makes you a loser: New in
"08" is the ability to draw up your
own plays and execute them dur;
ing the game. You can then prac-
tice your pre-created plays in any
conceivable scenario to hone your
Better than "'94"?: It's hard to say.
The games represent completely
different eras in gaming - it's the
equivalent of comparing Wayne to
Gordie. On its own, though, "08"
stands as a near-perfect hockey
game and a solid foundation for
future NHL titles.
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