As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I got a Nintendo Wii. If I haven't been posting lately, it's because I've been playing it so much. Besides the included game, Wii Sports, I also purchased Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. And yesterday, I got Super Mario Bros for the Wii's Virtual Console.
The good is that the system is fairly brilliant. Using the "wiimote" to control things is very intuitive. I love how the wiimote twitches as you pass over the border to a button, as it you are really feeling a raised button. I like how it feels natural for so many games, whether swinging it in tennis, or using it to bowl. It has just the right heft and feel. The concept of Miis, generating little characters that look however you want them to is fairly brilliant. I'm unsure how they can be worked into that many games, but it is fun and social, especially when you can send your Miis to your friends.
The bad is that the UI can be inconsistent. How do you return to the Wii's main menu? The button, if it exists, seems to be in a different place at each time. Another problem is that sharing your Miis requires at least four or five steps. You have to send a 12 digit number to your friend, they have to send a 12 digit number back, you have to enable sharing of your miis, and then enable wii sharing again in another menu. Oh, and you have to enable WiiConnect24. The sharing of numbers is OK, obviously a guard against friend spam and undesirable intrusions. But once you have established the two way friendship, your Miis should be able to wander back and forth between consoles. I imagine it like the paintings in Harry Potter. I just feel it would be so cool is some of my Miis would just wander off the screen and really be somewhere else for a while, then wander back, etc. All this is possible. The Wii is updatable, so anything can change.
The Legend of Zelda: Twlilight Princes is a very good game. The graphics are excellent, the play is innovative, but what is really great is the graphic design. The new monsters look like they are out of Tron, it is a wonderful new look. What I'd like to have seen is more variety in gameplay, though. Playing the game is a sequence of going to a dungeon, finding the boss key, fighting and beating the boss, then going to some new area and then that dungeon, etc. One notable exception is the Snowpeak area, which is different and memorable. The dungeon doesn't seem like a dungeon, it seems like a castle, which is what it is. And it doesn't seem like some strange quest to merely get keys and get to some boss, it has more of a story in it. And to get to the castle you have to snowboard on your shield, which is very fun. If the whole game was like this, I think it would be consirably better. Not that there aren't many cool little parts to the game. There are. In fact, probably the best part for me was the spaghetti-western inspired assault on a little town with just a bow and arrow. Even the music is very Morricone-inspired at that part. Very cool.
I've been excited to see Mel Gibson's new movie Apocalypto ever since I heard about the project. I'm not a Mel Gibson fan by any means, and the guy of course has some serious problems. But I've always felt that there are a great number of historical cultures that have been completely neglected by the movies, so when I heard about Mel's movie about the Mayans I was very appreciative of the concept. The movie turned out not to disappoint.
Although almost all reviews I read said that this takes place in the pre-Columbian times, this is not the case. It is really post-Columbian, but pre-first contact with the Mayan, probably in the year 1517. The existence of smallpox on the movie is sort of a giveaway.
The movie itself is good, and does a very good job humanizing those who we would ordinarily think of as primitive forest dwellers. The movie does a good job of showing many aspects of both the Mayan and the forest culture, providing lots of information without taking away from the plot and action of the movie. I'm sure there are historical flaws. One I noticed was the fact that the Mayans were surprised by an eclipse. Actually, they were fairly sophisticated with their astronomical knowledge, and would surely have known about it beforehand.
So, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I don't think it's a great movie, but it is a good and original one, which is fairly rare nowadays. Go forth and see it. And, someone out there, make more movies like it. There are a million fascinating places and times out there, and we've only seen stories of a small fraction of it.
I live in Forest Hills Gardens. It is a beautiful place, and I enjoy living there. However, the neighborhood of Forest Hills is a bit lacking in terms of food. Well, almost. It has Nick's, a pizza place that regularly ranks among the best pies in New York. It has 5 Burros, a very tasty East-Coast style Mexican place (meaning they have lobster tacos). We have a few decent Thai restaurants and a pretty good Greek place, a good Cantonese style restaurant, and a great bagel shop. But even with all this, the restaurant scene feels bad. The main street, 71st Ave, is filled with fast food restaurants. There are no good slices (Nick's serves whole pies only). No good cafes either, in fact no cafes I can remember except for Starbucks. Lots of mediocre restaurants. Very few restaurants opening.
One new restaurant has just opened, though. "db" on Metropolitan. It features Spanish and Italian fare with a clean, modern style. The menu is small. The wine list is interesting, and overall it's about ten times classier than any other joint on Metropolitan. My friend Adam and I ate there a few weekends ago. We had Serrano ham croquettes with garlic aoili, a hanger steak, mushroom risotto, and a crisp for dessert. The food was well prepared with exception of some greens that came with the steaks, that were not properly washed and therefore gritty. The mushroom risotto was a trifle under-salted. But the flavor of the risotto had a great punch, and the consistency was perfect, which is unusual even for good restaurants.
db may not be much, but it is what could be a very solid restaurant. Maybe not so awesome that someone may come from Manhattan to eat there, but good enough so that you don't have to go to Manhattan to get food of this quality.