So I spent all of this weekend playing the single-player campaigns of Portal and Portal 2. They are fantastic games that I’ve become quite taken by recently.

I can probably disclose without spoiling much that at the end of each game, you are treated to a little musical number by GLaDOS, the computer mainframe who serves as the antagonist for the game.

After tearing her to pieces and burning them in an incinerator at the end of the first game, the final cinematic plays, and over the credits ‘Still Alive‘ plays.

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‘Still Alive’
[ mp3 ♫ ]

The song is sung by the voice actress portraying GLaDOS, but the actual music is written by Jonathan Coulton, who I thought I’d never heard of before, until a little reading revealed he’s also the artist behind the really catchy song ‘Shop Vac’, which I found via Wondermark‘s post on fantastic video:

But I’m digressing.

These songs are catchy, and even in spite of the gimmick of GLaDOS singing, hold up pretty well. I need to find a name for the genre of music that isn’t outright comedy, a-la Weird Al, but still has the humor as a defining component. Iit’s a little telling that we (see:I) seem to think funny songs aren’t “real” music.

My recent discovery of the Wombats, along with these Coultan tracks, seems to be further evidence that the line is a lot blurrier than I’d previously thought.

The closing theme from Portal 2 is titled ‘Want You Gone‘.

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‘Want You Gone’
[ mp3 ♫ ]

It’s worth noting, while we’re talking about these songs, that the National, one of my favorites as of recent, also recorded a track for Portal 2. Beyond that even, the soundtrack is being released for free, so if you like moody, industrial techno, give it a shot.

And if you haven’t played the game, for heaven’s sake, get to it!

I’ll be attending this year’s WordCamp Boston! I’m really excited to go and see what a WordCamp convention is like. I’ve never been before, and it will be fun to see what other people are doing with the platform.

Anything interesting will undoubtedly be reported back here, so stay tuned!

A handful sample tracks finally dropped a few weeks in advance, but until I had the whole hour’s worth of music in my hands, I wasn’t satisfied. Even then, on the train ride home, I was worried that there was no way the actual product could live up to expectations.

As it turns out, my concerns were unfounded: Daft Punk delivered in full on this score. Before we get there though, I wanted to take a quick moment to talk about the film to which this music forms the soundtrack. And to do that, we really need to talk about the original for a second.

The original TRON film is pretty stupid. And that’s not to say I don’t love it, I do, and maybe ‘stupid’ is a little harsh… but it’s silly by today’s standards. The irony being, it’s only looks stupid today because it kick-started the age of CGI effects itself. Its cult-status stems from the cutting edge visuals, and a story just engaging enough to justify them.

The music for the original TRON, composed by “electro-acoustic pioneer” Wendy Carlos, is similarly interesting for how progressive it was at the time, both in composition and instrumentation. Below is a decent sample of what it had to offer, encapsulated in the film’s credits sequence:

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‘End Titles’
[ mp3 ♫ ]

So it’s with that tidbit of history that we talk about the new film, TRON: Legacy. Almost universally praised for its visuals, the film is truly a spectacle. Though the story is not as clear or complex as some may have liked, it is a truly logical successor from its counterpart, which is a feat given the time between the production of the two films.

But we’re here to talk about the music: I had never heard a Daft Punk album before hearing this score, so I felt pretty lucky to go into it with no prejudices or expectations. The work as a whole is fantastically tight and cohesive. I like some tracks better than others, but none are weak, and every single one is evocative of the other-worldly visuals which they accompany.

The easiest influence to spot is Hans Zimmer’s Inception score’s signature brass (as well as the shout-out in the liner notes!). It pops up at climactic points, mixed at an unignorable volume, and accomplishes a similar end.

A more subtle connection I drew is to Phillip Glass’s Koyaanisqatsi score, with TRON: Legacy’s ‘The Game Has Changed‘ containing a fairly strong allusion to Glass’s ‘Pruit Igoe‘, a fantastic and interesting track in its own right.

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‘Pruit Igoe’
[ mp3 ♫ ]

Koyaanisqatsi was a film about the consequences of living in our increasingly industrialized world, and even featured a track called ‘The Grid,’ so I’ve got to give style-points to the Daft Punk folks if that was in fact the work they were referencing!

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‘The Game Has Changed’
[ mp3 ♫ ]

There’s a great many more stand-out tracks as well. ‘The Grid’ on Legacy is notable for having Bridges’ narration over it, and serves as a pretty cool little expositional point at the start of the album. I like ‘Outlands’ because it has some of the most triumphant overtures in the entire work (most tracks are dark or aggressive).

‘Adagio for Tron’ (where ad agio is an Italian term meaning ‘at ease’, indicating the song is to be played slowly) and ‘Nocturne’ comprise the soundtrack for the flashback wherein Flynn relates how his perfect system became corrupted. If you’re familiar with the characters from the original, this is a reasonably emotional point in the film, and the music is fitting.

This segues into the best scene in the film. The events at the End of Line club are the most polished of anything else in the movie. Michael Sheen’s performance of Castor was a delightful surprise, and maybe the only fun character in the film. Couple this with the solid action sequence interrupted by the deity-like arrival of Flynn, and this ended up being my favorite part.

[see post for embedded player]
‘End of Line’
[ mp3 ♫ ]

The tracks ‘End of Line‘, the infectious ‘Derezzed’, and ‘Fall’ offer a great triffecta to accompany the above. ‘Disk Wars’ has another glipse of Zimmer-esque build (think The Dark Knight score), while ‘C.L.U.’ covers the last battle.

‘Arrival’, ‘Finale’ and ‘Flynn Lives’ set the tone for the conclusion, offering maybe the greatest nod that the original score was going to see in the new soundtrack, and ‘Tron Legacy (End Titles)’ is a electronic version of the same idea to go over the credits.

It’s a monumental piece of work. Without context of their earlier work, I can’t recommend that Daft Punk quit their day jobs, but if there was ever someone who could do so with impunity, it would be these guys. Pairing the duo to TRON: Legacy was a clever risk that paid off big. The outstanding question then becomes: does Daft Punk still have more to offer the world in terms of film scores?

TRON – Wendy Carlos
TRON: Legacy – Daft Punk
Koyaanisqatsi – Phillip Glass

Additionally, a hilarious bonus (featured in the new film):

I’m not 100% positive, and the song isn’t on the soundtrack, but I’m fairly certain I recognize the song. Kick-Ass is in theaters April 16th, and the comic book was fantastic, so expect good things!

Which about sums up this film.

If my brief comments about the film ring of defense, it’s because they were cast after reading Robert Butler’s (of the KC Star) review, in which his only main complaint about the film was that the characters were ‘whiny’. While I can see how someone might take that away from this film, I really have to disagree with that being the overall final judgment of the work.

My main thesis, and what I tell everyone about ‘Where the Wild Things Are’, is that the film is about children, but not necessarily for them. That is to say, while the subject matter is kids, it’s not a kids movie. I think maybe people don’t like the film as much because the narrative is too wandering, or perhaps even absent at some parts. There is no clear purpose to a good deal of what happens on the island where Max finds the Wild Things. While this is somewhat true, I think it’s also the point of the work.

In the almost gut-wrenching opening of the movie, we see Max and his interactions with his mother and sister, as well as other children. He’s not a bad kid, just one that gets into a fair bit of trouble. Through a few select events, we learn a good deal about how alone Max feels, with his angst-ridden sister and her typically jerky friends, as well as with his mother who’s juggling work, her family, and trying to date Mark Ruffalo. With his orbit about these people being only every so loosely bound, it takes only a small push to send Max running from them as fast as he can, literally.

The remainder of the film takes place on the island of the creatures, and here is where it seems to ‘wander’. It feels this way because it seems to be the product of a type of thought experiment: What happens when Max is faced with beings as childish as himself? They act just like he does, responding to disagreement with tears, jealousy, and even rage. For the Wild Things though, all of these emotions are magnified, not just by the huge expressions on their enormous faces, but also by their outbursts which are so violent at times as to be almost terrifying.

On the island, Max is crowned king of the Wild Things after he bluffs them into believing he possesses terrible powers which they should fear. His reign consists of a small list of games and projects, none of which are seen through to fruition, and few of which do not end in an argument, tears, or a fist fight between the huge creatures. There seems to be mutiny stirring beneath the surface of Max’s happy-go-lucky little kingdom, and the more he tries to pull these creatures together, the harder they seem to push each other away.

In the end, after the goat outs Max for not being king, and instead “just a normal little guy,” Max comes to terms with the fact that these animals are really best left to their own devices, and the time’s come for him to go back to where he belongs. He speeds home on his boat, leaving Carol on the shore in tears, but understanding. I felt like that, more or less, at the end. The movie is really very sad: little is immediately resolved or fixed in the course of the film, leaving you feeling a little anxious and depressed about the whole thing, but you understand, and that helps. Everyone has felt like that at one point or another, and we all make it through.

With that in mind, I earnestly encourage anyone who doesn’t mind having their emotions knocked around a little bit in order to catch a glimpse of the human experience in the eyes of a Wild Thing to check this film out. It’s worth the time.

Additionally: ‘All Is Love is the song that’s played over the credits, and it’s really growing on me.
[see post for embedded player]
[ mp3 ♫ ]

Where The Wild Things Are – Karen O and the Kids

What I didn’t realize is there is a delicate balance between being good at the campaign mode (Ethan and I are currently somewhere in the Legendary campaign) and online play. In even the worst campaign battles, through clever use of teamwork, you can beat the system, and your enemies. I was thinking online play would be kinda fun; I remember when Hank had the old XBox Live, for the old XBox and the old Halo, and how we’d get on and I’d work the controls, just running around like a lunatic, and Hank would talk smack to evoke entertaining responses from all the 14-year-olds that inhabited the online-Halo-scape.

It’s a whole different ballgame now, folks.
These people are crazy.

Now, I know I accuse insanity in a lot of different subsets of human culture… and I suppose this really isn’t any different… I was just amazed/appalled how intense online Halo is. Maybe I feel like I need to make excuses (EG: these guys are too intense and have no life!) to compensate for my own gross shortcomings in online Halo play (EG: getting routinely wiped across the floor by people with ‘leet’ screen names). In fact, I know that’s what it is. Nonetheless, the intensity of those players surprised me. I think I might have to drop some coinage on a few months of Xbox Live just to hone my skills; I don’t like sucking that bad. A man would like to be able to hold his head up high when he gallivants around a digital landscape, assuming the guise of a fictitious super-soldier.

I’m bemoaning my lack of XBox during the summer months in which I have large amounts of unassigned time, but the XBox would certainly spell doom for my reading list, so in the end it’s probably a good thing.