I hope that everyone had an excellent holiday and continues to have them. To summarize things quickly I left for Chicago last week, spent Christmas with my parents and parents-in-law, and then drove back yesterday. I got and gave some really excellent gifts and good times were had overall.

Then, shortly after the holidays I did something I haven’t done since… well, since the N64: I bought a sports game. Granted, it was for the Wii and it is a fantasy themed Golf game (not a very serious and “real” sports game), but it is still the first time I have done this since someone duped me into buying Mario Golf for the N64. Super Swing Golf is the single player console version of PangYa! Golf: a Korean MMOGolfPG. Online multiplayer has been replaced with a sappy crappy story mode for single player, but all the obsessive compulsive aspects of an MMO should translate well over to a single player golf game, and considering the controller, you can’t really go wrong with the developer’s first attempt on a console.

I only got to play with the game for about an hour last night, but my impressions aren’t that high. Long load times combined with what appears to be crappy widescreen makes the poor implementation of the story very irritating and nearly painful to watch. But, seriously, it’s Golf. Do we care about the story at all? I don’t.

Anyways, the game is a mixed bag. The controls don’t feel very natural because I don’t seem to get any feedback on what I’m doing wrong. The only indicator for if you’re hooking or slicing is the bar at the bottom of the swing screen, but you can’t really see it if you’re swinging the club right because it’s gone by the time you look at the screen. The camera movement feels pretty wedged into the game: it makes due with the controls but it’s highly imprecise. Reading the green is also very difficult because the game divides the green into blocks which show the slope of the ground, but the way they display it is just a dot on the grid showing the slant. The main problem with this is that if there is shade over the green then you can hardly see these indicators because they’re about the same color. Combine that with imprecise camera and you have mild frustration and irritation.

Swinging is great though. It feels much more like golf than on Wii sports. I would relate it to more how bowling feels like in Wii Sports: i.e. it judges things that you can’t really put your finger on which accurately reflects how you are playing. It’s also got nearly 1:1 movement for the swing arc. The only difference is that there’s a slight delay which I assume is the game judging/processing your swing.

As far as difficulty goes, well I either suck at golf or the game is a fair bit more difficult than I would expect for a fantasy themed golf game. Both of these are likely possible. I got my butt kicked on the first round of the “story mode” and two times in a row on the second match. I only got about an hour in with the game, but it feels like it may demand more knowledge of golf than a non-golfer may have.

All the other things are here: purchasing clubs, balls, clothes, caddies, and apparel. They do it through Pang points which you earn for many different things all related to playing golf. You get the most by completing challenges in the story mode, so spending time there will net you much more Pang more quickly. While the game started as an MMO golf game in Korea, this sort of customization and obsessive compulsive attitude works really well with a single player story based game as well. Though… I do kind of wish there wasn’t a story and you could play online.

The big problem: there is only one save game at a time. So you can’t have two players playing the game on different save customizing their characters using their money. It would have to be a pot of money which you would have to share with other housemates which will/could/probably will result in stealing and aggravation. The addition of more than one save per console would have been a huge benefit for this style of game with such a level of personalization.

Ok, that went on way too long, sorry. I also got the 360 Sonic the Hedgehog game which… almost scares the hell out of me. But I really think that I will like it even though it’s terrible. I mean, I like Sonic Heroes, and have yet to meet anyone else who does.

Oh! And I got my wife Viva Piñata for Xmas. She loves the hell out of Harvest Moon and it seemed like it was in a similar enough vein that she may like it. She got me the first volume of the Absolute Sandman… which I can’t thank her enough for. It’s gorgeous and I can’t wait to read it.

Madadayo was Akira Kurosawa’s final film. It is a story of an old man who enjoys the good things in life and is constantly celebrated by his peers, pupils, and countrymen. I can’t think of a more suiting film for such a master to end on. Ikaru would be a close second, but it wouldn’t be as fair of a message to leave with.

While watching Madadayo I am reminded of the first Kurosawa film I ever saw: Ran. I was soon to enter high school and I was just beginning to move my taste of film from something that is just pure entertainment to something more meaningful. I saw the cover of Ran with the Japanese warrior on the front and the lush green background behind him and rented it. It was the first Japanese film I had ever seen (barring a terrible live action version of some anime I can’t seem to remember).

The use of color was not something I was use to. At first the film seemed to be some bizarre crap that was just too “artsy” for me, but as it continued I was captivated by the use of color on film as I had never seen done before. By the ending I was hooked by the entire package even though I felt that it was a bit “over-acted” at points. At this point I had no idea who Akira Kurosawa was really; I just knew he directed that film.

Later I was working at Suncoast Motion Picture Co. (a video sales store in the mall) right after DVDs started to be released (there was a store right next door attempting to sell divx discs if that helps set the time frame). My manager was pretty much what you would expect for that kind of store: a large film fan of every kind. When we got a new shipment one day it contained something that introduced me to two great things about film: the Seven Samurai. At first I was curious as to why the hell this disc cost way more than even the high priced DVDs at the time, and then my manager explained to me what Criterion was. He also reminded me that this was from the same director as Ran.

Needless to say, my next paycheck involved purchasing Seven Samurai. I was still young and stupid and didn’t pay too much attention to it, but I enjoyed the film immensely. I watched it once, then forced a friend to watch it who though I was crazy for enjoying it so much. Knowing that I was going to be graduating high school very shortly I wasn’t so concerned with things like “film,” but it was always in the back of my head.

It wasn’t until the next year while watching the Academy Awards that I learned of his death, and also how much he meant to the film industry. I have spent the following years slowly collecting his films as they have been released on DVD and as I have had the money to do so.

I have owned Madadayo for a little over a year now yet always been hesitant to watch it figuring it would be a let down of a final film. With the death of Robert Altman and in the context of discussion between a Prairie Home Companion (Altman’s final film) and Madadayo (Kurosawa’s final film) the argument was made that PHC was the better final film. I couldn’t argue with it, but that was my fault for not yet having watched Kurosawa’s. I have now rectified that and can only say that Madadayo is by and far the stronger film and the more important one. This is by no means meant to insult Robert Altman or PHC: an excellent director and a good film. This is more to say that even by the end Kurosawa was a painter of film that can not be matched.

In his career most of his films were black and white, and he was exceptionally involved in his work and all the processes from the screenplay, to directing, filming, editing, and even lighting. When times changed and he moved over to color film something struck me about his work that I could never put my finger on. His films didn’t seem as good or as tight. At times they almost seemed hokey or ham-fisted. It never made sense to me until two things happen.

Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams was the first. In that film Kurosawa makes strong statements about his affinity towards painting and art. The film itself could be taken as part poetry and part living painting. This was the first color film of his that I saw where I knew he was still a master, but something about my memory of Ran was still not sitting quite right in the overall picture of Kurosawa: the Director.

The second item was the release of Ran: the Criterion Collection. When I first saw the packaging most everything fell into place. It is a combination of paint and text which makes color and art the prominent point. Watching the DVD bonus short 35 minute reconstruction of Ran though Kurosawa’s paintings and sketches–which he used as storyboards–shows exactly what he wanted to do with color film: use it as a canvas for his paintings.

Madadayo does all this and more with his capturing of the celebration of life and the essence of color and scene. Of all the great directors last films which I have seen (and it is not all of them mind you) I can say without a doubt in my head that this is the ultimate end film of a director’s career.

So, I’m home from work because the building I work in shut down. Good thing too because I wouldn’t be able to make my way out of the damn driveway anyways. I got off at about noon yesterday and when I got into my driveway there was only about a 1/8″ layer of hail on it. Things weren’t dangerous yet. About two hours later I went out to smoke and there was so much little hail balls on every thing that it looked as though it had snowed already. By about 8pm there was a good one to three inches of hail/ice covering everything. This morning when I woke up it was about 5am and I couldn’t figure out why I had woken up. Well my neighbor across the street was trying really hard to get his car going forwards as the plows had basically build walls around it. Tires spinning, engines revving, and occasional cursing had me up in time to call works weather phone number and find out that the building was closed.

Unfortunately the guy kept me from getting any kind of solid sleep until about seven thirty when he finally gave up. The car is still there. Anyways, I got up around eleven a.m. and talked with my wife for a bit then decided to take some pictures and shovel snow. The pictures are below, but the snow shoveling was ultimately worthless even after spending about an hour with it. I kept trying to do it even though there was about an inch and a half of ice under the snow because it has been about… 5 years since I have shoveled snow and I sort of enjoyed it. The ice cracked my shovel though, it was only cheap plastic.

Protip: Don’t drop your cellphone into your milk.