Only the dead stay seventeen forever.

Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

Suspense in movies

After watching A Tale of Two Sisters I couldn’t help but think of this video. I liked the film; it had good acting, was shot nicely, and had a decent story. But the horror elements slightly annoyed me.

It’s not what he meant when describing the difference between shocks and surprise and just tension, but Hitchcock’s explanation kind of echos how I feel about films with horror elements. I love it when films build tension: having that overwhelming feeling of dread and despair, wanting to shout at the TV, the characters, and tell them “Don’t look under the fridge! Leave the house! Run away!”. But as soon as the shock comes, as soon as the hand appears from under the fridge and grabs the character’s leg, or as Hitch puts it “the bomb goes off”, I feel cheated.

I tried discussing it with one of my housemates, a guy who likes horror and monster films. He thinks I’m wrong, he thinks I’m wrong. He thinks that if the bomb never goes off then there can never be tension.

I don’t know. I just really hate it when the bomb goes off.

Double Fine Adventure (part II)

After a long wait, Episode 8 of the Double Fine Adventure documentary is out.

Highlights this episode: polishing animations and environment effects on the first section of the game, Tim dieting, shaving his beard and getting his car fixed, and Double Fine doing some internal testing (called the “Hour of Fun”) and revealing some nasty bugs (“I had Tony play through Visual Studio in debug, and he couldn’t reproduce it either. So it’s release only, XP only…” “That sounds like a fun bug to fix.“), and possible flaws in the art style.

Seeing the reaction of the senior artist, Nathan “Bagel” Stapley, when someone told him that the consistency of the art style is charming but makes it hard for the player to decide what (s)he can and cannot interact with was heartwrenching.

I was pretty cautious in backing the DFA when it was on Kickstarter, but it’s been worth $15 already. And the game is still a long way off.

Jiro Dreams of Sushi