I’ve always loved Calvin and Hobbes and could give you a long list of my favorite comics from that series. My very favorite, just maybe, is the Sunday comic where Calvin’s father explains to him why old photographs are in black and white. In fact, says Dad, the photographs are actually in color; it is the world that was black and white. The world didn’t turn color until sometime in the 1930s.
With a viewing enlightened by Dad’s explanation, the 2011 film The Artist imagines the world of the 20s without* sound. The titular “artist,” who has mastered the medium of communicating through facial expression and body language, finds himself lost in a world where speaking is the dominant mode.
The story is not a new one. Very roughly, it is another remake along the lines of the A Star is Born formula. What is new is the use of silent era techniques to comment on that moment in the film industry. The Artist was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and won in five categories, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor. It obviously struck a chord.
The story is presumed to be based, loosely, on the late career of Douglas Fairbanks, the swashbuckling silent film star. It also captures other true-life issues of the transition, such as popular film actors whose voices (due to accent or just unexpected timbre) did not match their screen personae. More than that, though, it is a exploration of the artistry of silent film making and the techniques that went into making for good acting or good filmmaking. What better way to show that then to make just such a film.
The Fairbanks connections is one that moves me personally. As a teen, I learned under a fencing coach who had worked with Douglas Fairbanks decades before. He spoke highly of the actor who was actually competent enough at swordplay to be a competitive fencer. Despite that connection, I’m not sure that I ever watched one of his films.
Because, after all, once “talkies” came in to being, why would anyone want to waste their time with a silent movie?
*The pre-talkie films of the 20s were scored and accompanied by (live) orchestra scores. Likewise in the film, where off-screen life is also silent, it is punctuated by the occasional dialog card and a dramatic instrumentation.
So then having watched The Gentlemen, I guessed I had better watch Snatch before its removal from Netflix streaming at the end of April.
Snatch is 22 years old now and, unlike myself, most readers who were inclined to watch it probably have done so well before now. There is little-to-nothing could say by way of review that hasn’t been said over the years. I can, however, point out a few things that I especially liked.
One particularly interesting portrayal of guns-on-film is when one of the gang leaders (and we’ll come back to Boris the Blade later) decides to shoot a fellow crook and then prepares to do so by putting in earplugs. Not just any earplugs, mind you, but the bright orange ones available as safety gear. I really appreciate this. Were I to turn villain and start shooting people in cold blood, I’d probably want some hearing protection as I did so.
You see, guns are really loud. Even a single exposure can cause permanent hearing loss. Regular exposure (as featured in most Hollywood-style shoot-em-ups) would certainly damage one’s hearing. A smart crimelord would put in the small effort to preserve his own health.
For my next fun point, I noticed a lot of references to other cultural touchstones from other films. As I’ve said, if I’m picking up these things there must be plenty more that I’m missing. I’m just not that pop-culture savvy anymore. Not at my age.
Benicio del Toro obviously is channeling his character from The Usual Suspects, at least to some extent. I think the jokes about accents from that prior film are meant to echo throughout Snatch. Even more so, it seems obvious to me that Ritchie has played up the hubbub around Brad Pitt’s suspect Irish accent from The Devil’s Own to comedic effect. Pitt’s Snatch accent is fully intended to be utter gibberish*, as some accused him of unintentionally doing in The Devil’s Own. Toss in some reflections of Tyler Durden from the year before and you’ve got Snatch‘s Mickey O’Neil.
Not to mention a whole lot of Ocean’s Eleven (the remake, that is).
There were other items I focused on only to realize that I may be trying to read too much into it all. I found Rade Šerbedžija’s (Harry Potter‘s Gregorovitch) portrayal of Boris the Blade remarkably similar to Michael Nyqvist’s (original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo lead) Viggo Tarasov; something that could not have been borrowed as John Wick followed Snatch by 14 years.
As to the “blue,” I always come away from the Guy Ritchie experience having expanded my vocabulary with respect to English vulgarisms. My favorite, this time around, was the use of the term “proper” as a modification of the F-bomb. In this context (and, I would assume, more generally) the modifier means “literally,” assuming one knows how to properly use the term literally.
It’s buried in with an explanation of the term “coursing.” While this term is not vulgar (outside of the PETA set), it also required some explanation. In the course (heh heh) of that explanation it is explained that a fleeing hare, should it be caught by the lurchers**, is “f***ed.” “Proper f***ed?” the narrator is absurdly asked.
Now that IS comedy.
You’re going to do what to me, mate? Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
*Well, sort of. It is supposed to be a language called Shelta, a mix of Irish and English that deviates well enough from both. I can’t imagine Pitt did any better with his Shelta than he did with his Northern Ireland but, of course, I wouldn’t know.
**This term, lurchers, was used throughout The Once and Future King, which I’ve also been recently rereading. T.H. White offered it without much in the way of explanation. Snatch helpfully clarifies that a lurcher is a dog, something I was also able to glean from reading White. Just now, I took a look at a pet website. I, therefore, now know that a lurcher is a cross between a greyhound and a sighthound, a mixed-breed without distinctive characteristics beyond that pedigree. Having once considered getting a sighthound as a pet, I know that these are dogs (or “dags” as Pitt might have it) that do not mix well with small, furry animals. Like rabbits (one of which I had when we first starting looking for dogs).
Late at night, on the 16th of April, I had a friend’s Facebook post float through my feed. He was commemorating the anniversary of the Battle of Culloden by posting a video with Scotland the Brave performed on bagpipes. I’ll do the same (see below), but my preference for commemorating a battle is to find a good scenario based upon it and to play it.
I am partial to this lyrical take, myself
The battle took place on April 16th, in 1746. It was the last hurrah of the relatively short-lived Forty-five Rebellion, or Jacobite rising of 1745. The defeat of the Scot Jacobites on the field put an end to Bonnie Prince Charlie’s claim to the English throne. While Charles Stuart was able to escape back to France, and while there remained a hope for some who wished to see a restoration of the Catholic dynasty of James Stuart, practically speaking this put an end to any threat, either politically or militarily, from the Jacobite cause.
Given its date, the first obvious place to look for a battle scenario was Pike and Shot and I was immediately rewarded. There is a user-made trio of scenarios; a multiplayer plus a single-player from each side, for the battle. Eager to don the tartan, I downloaded the single-player Jacobite version and set to playing.
My battle lines await their orders
The short version is I got my arse kicked. I lost and I lost bigger, even, than I usually do. I tried a strategy of holding my forces back and taking advantage of rough terrain and it obviously just didn’t work. I’m not entirely sure what I did wrong am I’m not sure I am motivated to find out.
The scenario is nicely put together in that it describes each of the units in full detail. While my knowledge of this battle and this conflict is limited, it does give me a sense that is has been properly researched and presented. The real battle, also, was a one-sided route with the loyalist forces winning an overwhelming and lopsided victory. I can’t say that the tactics fully reflect the period (particularly in this corner of Europe) but the end result seems right.
Engaging the right flank. First to fight will be the first to collapse
To test my hypothesis, I downloaded the companion single-player scenario and tried again, this time commanding the King’s army. The result was, this time, a solid victory for me. It wasn’t nearly as lopsided as my loss, but I’d rather not speculate on why all that might be. Clearly this, as a historical battle, is modeled to be deliberately lopsided; because that’s how it was.
The scenario is intended to demonstrate competing tactics; the Jacobites employed a “highland charge” against formed infantry. The tactic could be effective – if charging infantry could withstand the losses of a first volley at close range, they might then overwhelm the enemy in hand-to-hand combat. Unfortunately for Bonnie Prince Charlie, this maneuver was not effective at Culloden – possibly because the British infantry were learning how to use the bayonet to counter the Scotsmen’s attack. It may also be that the Jacobite command thought it better, as my own gut suggested to me, to take a defensive stance, thus neutering their own offensive tactic.
Once aspect of this scenario design that I do not understand was the decision to line the battle up along the diagonal.
Pike and Shot, if you hadn’t noticed, is played on a square grid. To counter the distortion of that map design, diagonal movement is penalized with a higher movement cost relative to moving forward across a square’s edge. In the typical renaissance scenario, this limitation works with the capabilities and limitations of the armies being modeled. Marching forward to attack in “battle” formation works fairly well. Attempts to pivot, realign, or otherwise deviate with the plan tend to suffer from the detriments associated with movement along the diagonal.
This works when the scenario has the armies lined up against each other just before the point of engagement.
Culloden, by contrast, starts with the “game board” arrayed as a diamond shape, with each army anchored in its own corner. Advancing directly forward forces one to go against the grain. Furthermore, the initial distance between armies (and the lack of the yet-to-be-developed group move) makes for a painful set of opening turns. There is also a “gamey” aspect to this that I haven’t really explored. To advance directly forward along a diagonal, infantry is typically limited to one square per turn. If instead you are willing to veer to the left or right, you can get one extra square, although you’re left slightly off kilter. In terms of maximum movement in a turn, this exceeds (by a fraction of a unit) even the straight-line move across square sides. I suspect that there is a min-maxer advantage when playing on a diagonal board, but I’d rather not spend the brainpower to try to figure it out. It seems, as I said, too gamey.
Was the diagonal layout chosen to make a point about maneuver and the highland charge? Maybe it was just seen as a more efficient use of space? The point on the battlefield where the engagement takes place is now, also, the widest spot on the board.
I don’t know but I think I would have preferred a more traditional setup. Other than that, I thank the healthy community of modders that seem to make Pike and Shot scenarios available to me whenever a whim seizes me.
Long time readers will know that I have a burr in my hide about Netflix’s business practices. So you might think that I greeted last weeks’ stock tumble with a joyful expression of schadenfreude. You’d be right. As you also know, though, I remain wedded to Netflix via my monthly subscriptions. I can’t quit them. So as happy as I am to be proven right, I also don’t really want them falling on their faces. Not really. I’d rather they improve their business model to better feed my proclivities.
Over the weekend, I picked up the Wall Street Journal where they devoted several pages to the Netflix stock disaster. I read through it and, as I did, I got frustrated not just with Netflix but also with WSJ. And not just them – it seems like everything I’ve read about Netflix’s troubles is missing a key point; a point so obvious that I don’t see how it CAN be missed.
As the anti-woke pundits dance in the streets they sing that Netflix’s collapse is just another sign that pushing the likes ofCuties, Bridgerton, and Dear White People onto an unreceptive audience has provoked a backlash. I don’t think this is it. Or rather, I think this is only a part of it and not the most important part.
What’s missing is all included in that Wall St. Journal article but also entirely ignored.
WSJ writes for investors. Therefore it should not be surprising that the thrust of their business stories are devoted to profit and loss; balancing expenses with revenue. Understandably, perhaps, the article focuses on the expense of the Netflix’s “original content” and the need for expanding revenues to cover it. The problem, from the analysts’ con-call angle, is that revenues began to contract at the same time that costs are growing. So far, so conventional. Towards the end of the article, there is bar graph which illustrates* it. It shows regular and, often, substantial subscriber growth up until the end of 2021. Then Q1 of 2022 is marked by a slight downturn. For Q2, that turns into a route; Netflix projects a loss of 2 million subscribers once the quarter is booked (contrasted with a historic average gain north of 5 million).
What happened in January, 2022? Did Netflix cross some kind of threshold in shitty original programming, or is there a simpler explanation? Such simplicity might be found, buried right in the middle of the lengthy article.
The Journal explains that it is not all bad news. Despite the loss in subscriptions, and in addition to its current cost cutting measures, the company has a strategy to help boost revenue. “As it looks to reign in costs, Netflix is also exploring new ways to boost revenue. In January, the company said it was raising prices in the U.S. and Canada.”
You don’t say.
I recall said announcement from the company a few months back, probably quickly on the heels of the announcement for the business press. Netflix helpfully explained that it was seeking to provide ever better content for me but that it found that it needed to charge me more in order to do so. The problem for me is that I’ve grown less-and-less enamored with that original content even as the company has aggressively expanded said same offering. I’d much prefer that they keep my subscription price down and simply ease-off on the more expensive exclusive shows a bit (the likes ofThe Queen’s Gambit and Stranger Things Season 1 notwithstanding).
Isn’t it possible that people began to drift away from Netflix when told the price was going up? Does it make sense that when that price jump actually hit, the drift turned into a rush? Might it not be harder to recruit new subscribers when they see that the price they are going to be charged is higher than the price folks have paid for years?
Gosh, you’d think so, wouldn’t you? Yet, I’ve not seen anywhere the price hike and the subscriber loss linked together. Consider this blog an exclusive, folks!
The Journal article has been helpful to me in other ways. They talk quite a bit about the Netflix business model and shed some light on practices that have left me scratching my head over the years. It also provides details on the love-hate relationship between Netflix, the big production companies, and the up-and-comer streaming services that would like to steal Netflix’s lunch.
I was surprised at the alacrity with which the Netflix executives will cut off a poorly-performing property. In terms of killing funding to a floundering project, this makes sense – you don’t throw good money after bad. In terms of de-platforming a series or a film that is already bought and paid for, that makes less sense. This attitude is particularly disruptive for the Netflix culture which had, originally, promised a hands-off approach when dealing with creative decision making. They are now very much hands-on and their fists fly very quickly when something underperforms.
The Journal also explains that much of Netflix’s algorithmic effort focuses on the less-frequent users of the service. These customers, a company executive explains, are “the most in danger of cancelling their subscription.” This explains some of the oddities I’ve seen, such as being asked to finish a movie that I’ve started or having certain kinds of content pushed upon me. Yes, the customer who pays for the service without actually watching anything is the cheapest of customers but the customer who doesn’t watch anything is apt to quit paying, sooner or later.
Lastly, I see some dark portents when it comes to the future. Netflix will be de-emphasizing musicals and talk shows (good riddence, says I) and will be more cautious with their funding of new content. The golden ring remains that self-produced show that goes on to become a phenomenon (see The Queen’s Gambit or Stranger Things Season 1) and so they’re not going to give up trying to shoot the moon. What they will do is try to direct their funding more efficiently.
The company will be investing more in documentaries and “unscripted fare” (i.e. reality shows), a trend that I’ve already picked up on while scrolling through the interface. They are also toying with a delayed release model for series shows (one episode per week or maybe short bursts), an approach already employed by Amazon Prime. In other words, they are trying to look less like the “watch anything you want whenever you want” service that made them the world-leader and more like a second-rate cable channel from a few years back when many of us decided to cut the cord.
Will I keep paying for that? As we used to say back in the day, stay tuned.
*I’d love to link to the graphic but the combination of WSJ paywall, WordPress link displays, and cruel-and-unusual copyright law restrictions suggest I’d be better off leaving this as an exercise for the reader.
In the early chapters of A Distant Mirror, Tuchman provides an illustration of the life of the nobility in the Middle Ages. She explains that nobles were expected NOT to work. In fact, engaging in common occupations might well lose one’s status as nobility. Instead, noble lords existed to provide the martial arm of feudal society. Their sole purpose was to fight and win wars.
But what to do during the down time?
[A Noble’s] leisure time was spent chiefly in hunting, otherwise in games of chess, backgammon, and dice, in songs, dances, pageants, and other entertainments. Long winter evenings were occupied listening to the recital of interminable verse epics… If no real conflict was at hand, he sought tournaments, the most exciting, expensive, ruinous, and delightful activity of the noble class.
One wonders if this isn’t the illustration of what young men would define as the ultimate lifestyle. Is this what we would all become were there no outside pressures upon us to do anything except what we find most appealing; fighting, expensive hobbies, and a multi-media game room? I’m picture a hunting/gaming man cave, but with 14th century decor.
Later in the chapter she said that adultery was valued as a pursuit necessary to make sure our hunter/gamer/warriors would also occasionally bathe and trim their beards. Because we’ve seen what happens when everyone goes all hermit for a couple of years on end.
This is the eighty-sixth in a series of posts on the Vietnam War. See here for the previous post in the series and here to go back to the master post.
When I first saw that a game called Campaign Series: Vietnam was coming out, I was skeptical. I’ve told you about it before but (at the risk of being repetitive) the reason was that I questioned the match between the scale of, essentially, the Panzer Blitz games being applied to jungle warfare. I now admit that I was wrong.
The realization came upon me as I tried, in my new game, another familiar operation. I have, in the past, looked across multiple games to help me experience the Siege of Plei Mei and the reactionary campaign designed to first relieve the base and then to destroy the attacking communist elements. Beyond that initial assault, that PAVN initiative, the campaign consisted of three operations. Operation Dân Thắng was the effort to lift the siege and provide a relief force to the camp. Operation Long Reach was the counter-attack, if you will, consisting of component operations All the Way and Silver Bayonet. The final mop-up operation was the combination of Than Phong 7 (for the ARVN) and Silver Bayonet II (2nd Air Cavalry Brigade). This last phase turned out to be a bit anticlimatic and is not represented in Campaign Series: Vietnam. All in all, the campaign south and west of Pleiku stretched from the October 19th attack on the camp to the wrap-up of the final operations on November 26th.
– Waiting for the dawn and hoping for some air support
In Campaign Series: Vietnam the solution is to provide multiple scenarios covering the different phases of this campaign, many over the same map. It is, of course, not a linked campaign of any kind – success or failure in one scenario cannot be fed into the next scenario in the line. However, absent an overwhelming departure from the historical, there wouldn’t necessarily be a need to feed results from one situation to the next.
It starts out with a defensive scenario where the player must fight off the initial assault on the base (see above screenshot). The player then is asked to manage the relief column sent from Pleiku to Plei Me (illustrated below). Likely the main goal of the Plei Me siege centered around the fact that the PAVN knew that their assault would draw in reinforcements from Pleiku. Those reinforcements would inevitably travel a predictable route and, therefore, be subject to ambush. Defending against that ambush makes up scenario #2.
– Land support is better than air support, assuming you don’t get ambushed on the way there
Continuing on finds you playing a third scenario where you are to manage a search-and-destroy effort aimed at identifying the position of the erstwhile-assaulting PAVN units. American command saw an opportunity to engage and defeat the communist attackers in a more traditional, stand-up fight. Assuming, that is, they could find and pin them before they melted away across the border. Inexplicably (to me, at least, and perhaps to Hal Moore as well) the initial effort was concentrated east of Plei Me where the PAVN units were not. The third scenario has the player take command at the point where the search was shifted west, where the enemy actually was.
In scenario #3 (see screenshot below), I see shades of Vietnam ’65, where the operations of this period were abstracted. To the extent that Vietnam ’65 can be tied to a historical battle it would have a lot in common with The Hunt – Operation All the Way – Ia Drang in Campaign Series: Vietnam. For the history buff, a well-designed scenario based on actual events should be far more engaging. Unfortunately, it will not offer the what-ifs, the hypotheticals, or the simple replayability found in Vietnam ’65‘s random map. I’ll repeat, though, what I’ve said before. Campaign Series: Vietnam‘s focus on asymmetric warfare, when managed properly, allows engaging and challenging scenarios to be played along realistic lines without being crippled by the lack of computer-opponent AI capability. My experience with The Hunt suggests that the PAVN are moving along scripted paths. You are challenged, as the player, to get your airmobile infantry into the right place at the right time; not to outwit a computer opponent.
I actually got creamed, points wise, on this one. Of the series, this was my worst performance. I’ll not speculate further on what that means, though.
– I searched, but could not destroy
Rounding out the suite are three more scenarios. Day 1 and Day 2 at LZ X-Ray are modeled separately. There is a third scenario for the battle for LZ Albany. All three taken together, this presents a picture of all the significant fighting in the Ia Drang operation more-or-less to scale with respect to both time and distance.
The scenario map for X-Ray, shown below, matches that for Air Assault Task Force. Like I did when I played that scenario, I began with a preparatory artillery bombardment followed by close air support followed by a helicopter insertion. It worked the way AATF was supposed to work but didn’t. In Campaign Series: Vietnam, it takes 2-3 turns to move units from Plei Me to X-Ray, leaving the initial forces isolated for the 5-6 turn round trip. This accurately reproduces the feel, as described in the book and the movie, of the tenuous situation along the X-Ray perimeter, isolated as it was from supply and reinforcements.
I’ll add an aside that I’m getting better at managing my helicopters. Despite the occasional misclick, I managed to avoid running any of my transport or support helicopters out of fuel.
– That is a big map, stretching from the Plei Me CIDG base to the Chu Pong massif and the border
Once on the ground (see below), I had a flashback to the Steel Panthers take on this battle. Like in that scenario, there is a tantalizing victory location forward of the landing zone. It sets up the incentive to send off the soon-to-be-Lost Platoon, racing out into the jungle only to be cut off (and then, hopefully, rescued). Sorry Campaign Series, I’m not falling into that trap yet again.
As I said at the outset, this scale is turning out to be just right for the battle, even though that is much to my surprise. The platoon makes a lot of sense as the basic unit. Fiddling around with the placement of fire teams is too much micromanagement for this battle and you certainly wouldn’t want to get into that with the platoon counters either. So once you’ve set the granularity on unit sizes, the hexes and time-steps have to be big enough to abstract away all that fiddling. This they are.
– A familiar field
You might also recall that back a few months, I worried about the balance in this and other children-of-Tiller games. This experience in the Campaign Series has relieved me of that worry. The results feel just about right with regard to lethality of weaponry and the ability of units to take damage. For example, in the first day at LZ X-Ray, my units took losses but not a single one was overrun and none were destroyed. Contrast that with my enemy, whom I repeatedly watched dissolve under both small arms fire and close air and artillery support. It accurately reproduced my expectations of human-wave assaults against prepared positions supported by air and artillery. This experience translates to the big picture as well. At the conclusion of each of the scenarios, I faced an after-action summary that was always plausibly in line with the historical outcome. Yes, I could have (in most cases) done better, and I could have done worse, but each ending struck me as realistic.
I also sometimes talk about interesting sight lines and how that can mean the difference between a fun and engaging scenario and a slow slog across a too-constraining map. Typically I’m talking about the far-finer scale of Squad Battles. Campaign Series: Vietnam seems to have figured this aspect of gaming out and got it just about right. Adjacent hexes are always in line of sight, but the larger scale means this is less limiting than an equivalent imposition on a Squad Battles jungle map. Beyond that single hex visibility, a map such as the area around LZ X-Ray also shows a number of more distant lines of sight. Much of the Chu Pong massif is visible from the landing zone as are other nearby hilltops. What makes this really work, though, is a different set of spotting rules. Even an adjacent hex, with jungle terrain, could easily contain a stack of units that remain unspotted. Thus, while you can see the mountain-top forests a half-mile or so distant, you have no way to tell whether there are targetable units in those hexes. The key is, once again, that it feels right. Frequently, enemies approach through the jungle, sometimes right to the edge of your defensive perimeter, without being spotted and yet other times they are sitting ducks for all manner of weaponry as they advance across the no man’s land.
My bottom line is this; Campaign Series: Vietnam turned out to be much better than even what I might have hoped for, a few months back. I’m still only a handful of scenarios in, so I reserve the right to complain down the road but, at this stage, I mark it tied with TOAW’s Vietnam Combat Operations for the best historical treatment of this conflict in wargaming.
It’s not all rainbows and unicorns, of course. The interface is still a polished-up version of Tiller’s East Front. It falls a bit short when compared with the best strategy-game UI features of 2022.
Perhaps my top wish item, if I were able to suggest improvements, is this: historically meaningful causality statistics. The victory computation, in Campaign Series: Vietnam, is based on a point system. Those points are earned through control of victory locations, exits from the map, or elimination of enemy units. In yet another major improvement, “event points” are awarded through scripted triggers to augment the formulae. So, for example, the shooting-down of an American gunship or the destruction of a VC supply cache might award a chunk of points that far outweighs that event’s worth by the traditional calculations. This is critical to produce a challenging (for the single player) and balanced (for multiplayer) set of scenarios – and it works well in that regard. What is missing is the metrics that we see in the history books – body counts, casualties, and equipment losses. For me, this is an important part of my after-action evaluation. Experience says the point-based victory conditions well reflect the priorities of the day, but it would be nice to be able to compare apples to apples.
For some time now, Facebook has been showing clips of TV shows and movies, begging you to click on them and take in a few minutes of entertainment. They started getting me to click through with the Seinfeld bits. That initial capture then queues up a number of other clips. For me, most of them are also either from Seinfeld or funny cat videos, but many are not. Facebook’s algorithms really got my number on this one.
The ownership of the Seinfeld segments seems legit. Or sometimes legit, at least. I assume they are duly authorized when the segment is followed by a reminder that the Seinfeld episodes are available on some streaming service or another (they are on Netflix right now, but that’s not who is advertising). Incongruous is the suggestion that THIS VERY EPISODE is available right now! While true, isn’t the whole structure of streaming shows set up so that I can watch whichever one I want whenever I want? No matter… I have no intention of following through on the advertising pitch (although I may try another run through the Seinfeld episodes on Netflix, in order, if I’m feeling ambitious).
What is new to me, though, is a presentation of short sequences taken from films. It’s usually some sort of action sequence, enjoyable by itself and without context. This is important because that context seems to be lacking! The title of the movie is not given and, instead, some descriptive text about what is shown is given (e.g. “watch angry father defend his daughter!”). The first time I watched one, I thought I might be watching some sort of obscure BBC TV show (BBC Scotland had my number on Facebook as well). What was really strange, though, is that the voices were all funny. It’s like it was some low-budget vox special effects to make the characters sound like elves or dwarves. Given the costumes and situations, I thought maybe it was part of the show.
Then I realized that one of the actors looked an awful lot like Colin Farrel, which allowed me to determine what I was actually watching. A few quick searches and I realized I was being treated to a short scene from the 2020 film The Gentlemen. It is not a movie about elves and dwarves.
The Gentleman is a new* dark comedy by director Guy Ritchie that deals with the drug trade and the London underworld. It is another slice of Ritchie’s bread and butter; a clever and funny take on English organized crime hampered (for us Americans) by some suitably lower-class London accents. In this one, he helps out his U.S. audience by including an international array of gangster kingpins; Matthew McConaughey (also, with co-producer credit) as an Appalachian son made good (?) via a scholarship to Oxford, Big Short -veteran Jeremy Strong as his rival Matthew Berger, and the titular Snake Eyes, Henry Golding, as a Chinese up-and-comer named Dry Eye. Between these thrown-bones and the sense I should endeavor to understand my fellow native English speakers, I defeated the urge to watch with subtitles turned on.
This is the kind of comedy that tickles me even while I’m loath to admit how much I like it. It is vulgar and violent and dark. There is lots of physical humor and a lot of dead bodies** to show for it. I take some comfort in the fact that I’m far from alone. It seems The Gentleman made a pretty penny and, as I said*, Ritchie continues to make more projects as we speak. The film also presents some interesting commentary on marijuana legalization as well as satire on the English class system applied in these current times. Good show, say I.
There are a wide variety of different approaches to social media and media sales. It was only a few years ago that most hit songs were only available on YouTube in pirated form – with some labels pursuing a massive effort to take down every wayward post. Some bands – The Beatles and Bob Dylan spring immediately to mind – were impossible to find, as the copyright owners heavily restricted any availability of digital media. Today, nearly every band has a label-owned or band-owned channel that makes available videos of their popular songs. Some (see Rolling Stones) have multiple videos for their biggest hits – a lyrics version, a “remaster,” a video from release, plus a live version.
Similar shifts have happened in films and TV. I remember, for example, the kerfuffle over Downfall. The massive popularity of “Hitler reacts…” videos caused much consternation for the owners of the original film. They tried to enforce copyright against the world of internet jokesters, with very limited success. Finally they realized that they were getting far more attention, and far more paid-viewers, through the “free advertising” supplied by the meme lords than anything they could have ever done on their own. Hitler Reacts remains a staple of YouTube to this day.
Rather than try to hunt down and prosecute posters of a sped-up movie footage from The Gentlemen, wouldn’t it be more effective to just allow posting? A clip labeled “funny scene from Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen” and shown in high quality would also have enticed me to watch the film, and faster. It also would put an end to the helium-voiced knockoffs because, why watch something unpleasant when you can enjoy the real thing?
I’ll be clear. I do want Guy Ritchie and all the others who put together The Gentlemen to make money. I also realize that if people can watch The Gentlemen for nothing on Tik Tok (or whatever), they’re not going to pay good money to buy it. Nonetheless, I firmly believe that the current state of copyright law is broken and is a net negative for society. Absent a (technically optimal but politically impossible) fix, we’d be better off without it.
One last word. The title of my post, “Toff Guys,” was one of the working titles of the film. I like it better than the bland-sounding Gentlemen. I suppose, though, the pun may have been a bit too much for an international audience.
*Again, I’ll remark on the time compression wrought by the ‘rona, the lock-downs, and the damage done. The film was released before fear of the virus was even a thing but the events of the intervening two years make it seem like yesterday. In point of fact, Ritchie has released one film, has another in post production, and a third currently filming – all subsequent to the theatrical release of The Gentlemen. Go figure.
**Just a for-instance, because I feel like I’m being obscure again. One scene has a captured villain (OK, they are all villains – but you get my point; a baddie) take advantage of chaos and distraction to escape. He hops over a railing to get away from his captors. When the protagonists catch up with him, they see he’s hopped onto train tracks right in front of a speeding freight train. Is that funny? I laughed. Should that be funny? Probably not.
When I pressed “play” to resume the Medici TV series where I had left off, Netflix threw me for a loop. They tried to start me off in Season 3. The description of the show didn’t make sense to me, but then again I really didn’t remember much from my earlier viewing. Wherever Netflix thought I should be, I retained a strong impression that I had only watched the first Season.
I decided to go with my gut and started off with Season 2, Episode 1. The result was complete disorientation. I had no idea who were these characters on the screen (although I did recognize the patriarch of The North, Sean Bean) nor what was going on. I was about to give up in frustration when I was treated to a sudden cut followed by a title saying they’d take me back 20 years earlier to explain it all.
Season 2, you must understand, does not pick up where Season 1 left off.
Season 1 followed the life of Cosimo de Medici and his inheritance of the Medici banking business from his father, Giovanni. As I described at the time, it moves back and forth between post-death of Giovanni and twenty years earlier. The intent is to portray the rise of the family and Cosimo’s role in making that happen.
Season 2 starts off with Cosimo in the grave, Cosimo’s son Piero (portrayed by Julian Sans) already in his old-age, and the grandson Lorenzo (to become The Magnificent) as the main character. Once again, the show spices up the narrative by having Piero murdered (albeit not immediately) by an assault orchestrated by his rivals. Per Wikipedia, he died of the gout, earning him the appellation “The Gouty.” How unfortunate.
The new season continues much apace as the old; some things better some things worse. I think they’ve done better with the lead actors, this time the far less well-known pair of Daniel Sharman as Lorenzo and Bradley James as Giuliano – the two sons of Piero. I struggled with the fact that Bradley James seemed so familiar to me but in the end I let it go. I’m pretty sure I’ve not seen him in anything else. Instead, I think he looks much like an actor from one of the German or Scandinavian TV series that I’ve watched. To pull in some Game of Thrones star power, this season stars Sean Bean as Jacopo, the patriarch of the rival Pazzi family. All casting choices turn out much better than the wooden Richard Madden, who started in the first season.
Less important to the show, but interesting to me personally, I do appreciate the selection of one of the minor characters. Italian-born model and actress Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz plays Simonetta Vespucci. Before this series, Lutz had starred in the The Ring sequel Rings but otherwise would be little known to American audiences. Her character here, Simonetta, was the wife of Marco Vespucci (himself a relative of explorer Amerigo Vespucci) and an associate of the Medici family (her wedding reception was hosted by Lorenzo Medici). Simonetta died at age 22 (seven years younger than actress Lutz was at the time of filming) but some believe her beauty lives on eternal. Artist Sandro Botticelli painted portraits of a number of Florentine noblewomen and some portraits are suspected to be portraying Simonetta. Similarities between those paintings (for which, by the way, the subject cannot be proven) and his (perhaps) most famous work The Birth of Venus have led to the speculation that she was his model for the Greek goddess. The show portrays this (and her rumored, but even-more-unlikely, affair with Giuliano Medici) as fact, bolstering it with a remarkable resemblance between Lutz and the Venus on the half-shell.
On the down side, Medici‘s creators seem to have simplified the “morality play;” more than before and, I’d say, a bit too much. Particularly in the opening episodes I hear, over and over, how Lorenzo dreams of building a utopia – a glorious combination of great art, popular democracy, and a wealth that benefits all. Every action is set against this desire to “do good” and is repeatedly discussed in those terms. OK. I got it the first time. I’ll grant that as the “action” ramps up, towards the second half of the season, it becomes a little less obtrusive. In the end, we see why the theme was important. That still doesn’t justify the form of its exposition.
One final note, because it is something that that I noticed, but didn’t notice, while I was watching.
Many of the actors are Italian. The show was filmed in Italy with an international cast. While the lead roles are voiced in the King’s English, other characters, with substantial dialog, deliver their parts accompanied by a noticeable Italian accent. I admit that I puzzled over this, wondering if something was trying to be indicated vis-à-vis regional dialects; although I admit I didn’t puzzle too hard.
Only when looking at the credits did I realize that several of the top billed actors (e.g. Matteo Martari as Francesco de Pazzi and Aurora Ruffino as Bianca de’ Medici) had their lines dubbed in by native English speakers. A little reading turned up that while show was filmed in Italy, and for Italian TV, it was created all in English. However, some of these non-native accents were deemed a little too inscrutable for the American and UK viewers which resulted in that dialog being re-recorded by voice actors. I’ll even go further in its defense. I would admit it would have been strange to have these Pazzi and Medici siblings sporting very-different dialects than the rest of their families.
Dialog deprived of dubbing (SPOILER ALERT – Season 2 closing episode)
I probably didn’t need to know that. Now I’m going to be looking for it.
Back when I was engaged in the playing of Atlantic Fleet, I added* to my Steam library a demo of a game called Victory At Sea Ironclad. This was a still-in-development title of (if not obvious) American Civil War sea combat which had been out for the better part of the year. Although I wasn’t particularly interested in shifting my game playing to that particular era, Victory At Sea, nonetheless, seemed to fit well within what I was doing. As it turns out, that fit had more to do with my own confusion than anything else – but so does so much else that goes on in my life.
If you read about my experience with Atlantic Fleet, you noticed that I began with a discovery. Steam had been pushing the game War on the Sea, newishly-released in February of 2021. I wasn’t too keen on buying into the brand-new, full-priced release but I did notice that there were two prior titles; Atlantic Fleet and the cold-war themed Cold Waters. Thinking that I just might pick them up at a promotional discount, I realized I already owned them both. Point of confusion #1.
War on the Sea is a title that, like Atlantic Fleet, is set in World War II but moves the action to the Pacific. Again, not a particular era in which I’m interested in at the moment. Somewhere in all of this, though, I got confused with another title. Victory At Sea Pacific has been out since September of 2018 (for reference, not quite as long as Cold Waters) and, perhaps obviously, covers the same ground as War on the Sea. Simply comparing screenshots, the two games look pretty similar. So similar that I got confused (point #2) between the two titles.
As it turns out, the developers of Victory At Sea Pacific are also working on a new title, also released in February of 2021 (can I be forgiven for at least some of my confusion?). In this case, they are moving their focus in both time and place. From the Pacific you go to the Atlantic and also back in time to the American Civil War. Victory At Sea Ironclad, the Steam store entry explains, was intended to improve on the development and release process that may have hurt Victory At Sea Pacific. With the new title, it further explains, the development team is deliberately releasing a beta product so as to shape the development process.
Now, imagine yourself as confused as I was at this point. I’m reading the two Pacific War titles (War on the Sea and Victory At Sea Pacific) as interchangeable; as the same product. I found it a little odd that the demo/Early Access of a new game would come out simultaneously with the full release of the latest completed game, but I didn’t question it. Grabbing the demo of Victory At Sea Ironclad seemed like an easy way to check out what’s new with War on the Sea without the commitment of buying into the new product. Of course, this makes no sense… but I am, as I explained, confused.
Even still, and as I also said, I wasn’t in the mood for Civil War simulation. The game, downloaded, remained unplayed.
As the months ticked by, I figured I probably ought to just give the demo a try, while the whole “beta” thing was still relevant. Said demo consists (unless I am missing something) of a number of tutorial scenarios to give a sense of game play without giving away too much of the game. Should Ironclad strike your fancy, the full game (such as it is) is also out in Early Access for a full purchase price.
Having now gone through the full demo bit, I thought I’d quickly jot down my impressions. I am not going to be buying the Early Access because, still, I’m not that interested in getting into the period and because I’ve finally realized how confused I’ve been all along.
Victory At Sea Ironclad is nothing like Atlantic Fleet. That should have been obvious all along but, for me, it just wasn’t. Now it is. And yet, I remained mired in that misplaced impression as I went on to judge what I was looking at.
Victory At Sea Ironclad is billed as a real-time strategy (RTS) game and it shows. If that’s what you’re after, these features are going to be a positive. If not, then not. It left the confused-me disappointed because Ironclad lacked the casual feeling of the turn-based Atlantic Fleet. But so what? The question isn’t really whether I’d like a turn based Ironclads game better (I bet I would!) but, how fares this version?
Hunting blockade runners on the strategic map
Remembering, of course, that I’m reviewing a demo version (even while the alpha/Early Access version is out there), I’ll relate to you what I saw so far. While the tutorial starts you at the tactical level, the game is better appreciated when zooming in from the big picture.
That big picture (pictured above) consists of a strategic level map of the coastal United States. Included on that map (displayed as miniature tokens, flags, and ship models) are the elements of the naval aspect of the American Civil War. The ships represent squadrons or fleets, whereas the flagged donuts represent ports and fortresses. The latter play into the game either as locations for rebuilding and refitting or as targets; one of the tutorial bits has you supporting a seaborne assault upon two Confederate coastal fortresses.
Included in this strategic layer (as very briefly touched-upon in the tutorial) is a theater-wide economic model. Regions under your control can be developed for production of resources and then those resources can be either used or shipped off to Europe (et al) to be traded for higher priority resources. In many ways, this is just a typical element of the RTS genre. At first glance, though, it is a better-than-average implementation of such, taking into consideration the period and the theme.
Frenzied action results in a quick victory
For the guts of the game, though, you zoom on in to where the salt water meets the hull and direct your ships which you’ve just engaged on the strategic map. Once again, considering that you’re playing a naval RTS, I’d say this is a better-than-most implementation of such. For example, defining squadrons (i.e. grouping units) has a better interface than the typical RTS. Once organized, the squadrons offer formation settings, aligning your orders with certain realities of naval combat. Commands use a “wheel” system, allowing the orders to be more nuanced than simple point-and-click. Down to the individual ship level, the right things seem to be modeled and presented to the user. Ship cannon use the arcs-of-fire and reload times, much as one would expect from a naval combat game. Damage is allocated to subsystems (see above) rather than as simple hit points assigned to each unit. Let’s call IroncladmoreUltimate Admiral than Total War.
I did take away some negatives from my early play (again, demo version!). I found that wheel-of-commands overly confusing. It is easy enough in a tutorial where you’re instructed to select a particular action (and then shown where it is on the interface); I only lost track of what they wanted me to do once or twice. On my own, I was more likely to get confused – for example, commanding my men to hold fire on my main guns when I just wanted to set a target. I was also bothered, at times, by the rapid speed of the game’s execution.
The game is what we pedants would call Pausible Continuous Time, irritated as we are by the “real time” in the RTS designation. The game is played when the clock is ticking and only then. That clock can be sped up to 400X normal (appropriate for waiting out a transit on the strategic map) or slowed down to 0.5X to help observe a more frantic engagement. It can also be paused to peruse the tactical situation at your leisure. That said, the battles feel frantic. To me, an ocean battle should be a slow-moving dance for position punctuated by moments of extreme violence. A truly “real time” sea battle would probably draw out a bit too much**, so I don’t mind a not-really-so-real time clock. In Ironclad, that time compression can feel a bit too compressed.
For example, when I took the tactical screenshot above, I had been trying to figure out the orders screen so as to bring my battle column about and present the enemy with my combined broadside. As I tried, and failed, the enemy ships managed to pull alongside my battle line and, before I could get any of it figured out, the combined weight of my guns had finished them off. Part of it may just be the confusion wrought by an unfamiliar interface upon a newbie player, but I managed to win this battle before I had time to realize it had started.
This also makes me question the AI.
Again, this is a demo consisting of a tutorial (if you hadn’t caught that already), so it is possible that the suicidal AI behavior was scripted in for demonstration purposes. One would hope that an unfettered AI, facing an obviously superior enemy, would try to run rather than stand and fight. Furthermore, once it is a given that the fight is inevitable, one would think an attempt to “cross the T” of an approaching enemy column would be preferred to simply running the gauntlet of the enemy’s guns. Is my success in the tutorial indicative of a bad AI? An unfinished AI? Or just some clever setup for a more cinematic tutorial?
At the end of this whole process, I still have no intention of buying the full priced Victory At Sea Ironclad in the immediate future nor am I motivated to seek out Victory At Sea Pacific. As I said at the outset, the primary driver is that I’m not currently into either of these eras. If I were headed back to the Pacific War, there are plenty of games that I’d want to play before one like this. War in the Pacific would require some dusting off for its grand strategic view as well as Rule the Wavesat the tactical level. Were I looking for a “lite” game, I’d be far more likely to plunk down on a turn-based game like War on the Sea before I’d pick up an RTS. If it were Civil War battles I was after, the calculus might be a little different. I have a few “Ironclad” -themed games in my library that I’d try first but the thinner offerings for the American Civil War on the sea might cause me to think seriously about this game.
I will likely check back to see how well it comes through Early Access.
*This is a process that, for demos, seems to involve downloading them.
**With plenty of exceptions to define the boundaries of the discussion. Sub sims, for one example, are good examples of a game where 1:1 real time is the default setting. Even a grand-tactical game like CMANO defaults to real time. Neither of these fit the industry definition of RTS, though. For that tag, rapid movement, engagement, and decision is valued far more than accurate combat simulation.
The other night, I was rummaging through the bookshelf, trying to figure out what I wanted to read next. I was actually eyeballing The Guns of August and considering a re-read. I had been recently inspired by a fellow-blogger’s post about how he has revisited Tuchman’s work a half-a-dozen of times over the years, a post in which he then referred his readership to a documentary made available on YouTube. I watched the opening minutes of the video to get a sense of the interpretation. I do plan to watch the whole thing at some point. I’ve also only read Tuchman’s book once and probably should read it again. It is worth it.
But before I got underway, though, I realized that some years back I bought a later Barbara Tuchman effort, A Distant Mirror. I never did get around to reading it. That would actually be a better choice in that a) it is new material for me and b) it is almost related to my other interests of the moment.
So far I’ve read only the introduction. Like the introduction to The Guns of August, it is a great read all by itself. Allow me to enlarge.
Tuchman wrote A Distant Mirror in 1978. When she first embarked on the project, she was focused on the impact of the Black Death of 1348-1350 and its effect, via its high mortality (some estimates put the population reduction at 50%), on society going forward. She explains that her interest in this topic should be “obvious,” “[g]iven the possibilities of our own time.” That time, one might conjecture, is anything from the late 1960s through the mid 1970s and her thoughts were probably focused on the Cold War and the threat of mass nuclear destruction.
What she found instead is that the troubles of the 14th century were not specific to the plague nor were they easily organized into simple cause and effect. This larger tragic arc now pulled in her attention. As she explains, she found that “[i]f our last decade or two of collapsing assumptions has been a period of unusual discomfort, it is reassuring to know that the human species has lived through worse before.”
What she could say about the 21st century. What would she say about 2022?
Tuchman goes on to reference a similar comparison made by James Westfall Thompson in writing, contemporaneously, about the after-effects of the First World War relative to the 14th Century. Given Tuchman’s main claim to fame, it is another apt reference. Thompson cited “economic chaos, social unrest, high prices, profiteering, depraved morals, lack of production, industrial indolence, frenetic gaiety, wild expenditure, luxury, debauchery, social and religious hysteria, greed, avarice, maladministration, [and] decay of manners.”
If I wasn’t looking at the original essay, I’d say he was trying to describe 2022.
It is instructive that what he describes is the 14th Century, but intending for those facing* the Great Depression and other interwar crises to see the obvious parallels. Tuchman quotes him to demonstrate how well he also describes the societal upheaval in the mid-1970s. How many generations in the 500 years before Tuchman might have seen such a summary reflected in their own times?
From Tuchman’s perspective, it is “reassuring.” We of Generation X grew up during her period of “unusual discomfort.” We feared for our impending annihilation through nuclear armageddon only to witness the taming of inflation, the end of the Cold War, and then “the end of history.” As bad as things looked in that moment to Tuchman, she anticipated that this, too, would pass.
On the other hand, Thompson’s hand-wringing** was well-timed. It is no comfort whatsoever to think that we are in a period of history aptly comparable to 1928 or to the onset of the Hundred Years’ War. Furthermore, aren’t whatever lessons-to-be-learned lost on those who most need to hear them? It’s those that are running headlong towards the cliff that need to be redirected, not those who bear witness to the madness.
Casting current events in proper historical light can help us to determine what is important and what should be ignored. Even still, we spend our time watching Hollywood celebrities land punches while we should be focusing on…
*The essay from which Tuchman quotes was written in March of 1921. In a sense, that makes the quote far more prescient than it might otherwise seem. He’s describing the Roaring Twenties, to be sure, as they are barely getting started. The quote, now, might be seen as predictive of the backlash of the 1930s as well. Notable, this is coincident with the similar observations from Rudyard Kipling.
**OK. I’m projecting for effect. It is not entirely clear to me whether Thompson meant his analogy to be hopeful (the World has survived WWI and will soon move on) or admonitory. Unlike Thompson, I know what comes next.