Entry 136: "Four Faultless Felons"

Dear Internet,

                Gilbert Keith Chesterton was a writer of paradoxes.  The various novellas, novels, and short stories he penned are filled with them.  Just about anything that you pick up by the man has a paradox at its core.  Not to be confused with the oxymoron which is more a contradiction in the purest form, Chesterton's paradoxes require the two things that they present to be both true yet seem like they contradict one another.  For example, the courage of a soldier when caught behind enemy lines can only save his life by throwing away his concern for his life and risking death.  If he stays still, he will surely die, but if he risks his life, he may save it.  Another example would be Chesterton's arguments for the smallness of man against God yet hugeness to that of the rest of the universe.  But I will not go on and on since you are most likely wondering what any of this has to do with "Four Faultless Felons."  The title of the book probably holds a clue.

                "Four Faultless Felons" is a collection of four novellas or shorter tales telling of four individuals who are more than mere criminals.    Each of the four men tells his tale to reporter Asa Lee Pinion, an American reporter gone to England to find a story on Count Raoul de Marillac.  Pinion goes to London hoping to learn about the extravagant lifestyle of the count.  In one way, he is not dissapointed.  The count frequently eats expensive dishes and goes out to see the newest bawdiest plays that are being produced.  It is only when the reporter is left alone with the four men that he learns the truth.  The count is in fact living a rather penitent lifestyle.  All the dishes he eats are counter to his tastes, and he goes to the plays because they are boring and uninteresting.  The men that tell Pinion this truth about the count have each committed a crime of sorts, but there is obviously more to each tale.  The crimes committed are murder, fraud, theft, and treason.  Like the count, each man is counter to what he originally appears.  Together, the men form the "Club of Men Misunderstood."

                The stories are told in a classic detective manner with the catch that there is usually no crime being committed.  The reader is privy to this understanding just from reading the title of the book.  It is understood right from the beginning that there is going to be mysteries that go beyond the immediate ones being told, but that does not mean that those mysteries are going to be easy to solve.  I do not wish to even go into the details of each story since doing so will end up giving away a clue or two.  So, you will just have to take my word that the tales are each riveting and play out well.

                The book is less like a detective novel than I might be leading on.  A normal detective story flows in a rather strict formula.  The various characters are presented, giving each just enough of a presentation that the audience can understand them in an instant.  The setting is likewise given such treatment.  Afterwards, the crime is committed.  The clues are presented either at this point or in the following moments.  Depending on the length of the story, a number of false accusations and incorrect attempts to the solution are presented.  Eventually, the mystery is solved with the truth being presented to the audience at least and the various characters at most.  In "Four Faultless Felons," just one of these elements is skewed.  The crime itself is given scrutiny.  The crime itself is called into question.  The crime itself is brought forward to testify in the witness chair.  If anything, the book is more of a vanishing act.  The crimes, not the criminals, pull escape acts.

                I have already done a review of Chesterton's more famous mystery stories, the Father Brown books.  It would be probably best to compare this book with those stories since the Father Brown stories are more widely recognized.  In the same way that the Father Brown stories center around the criminal rather than the crime, "Four Faultless Felons" center on why the individuals act in the manner that they do rather than merely figuring out how they pulled off their actions.  It is not enough to know how the action is committed but to figure out why it is committed in the first place.  The motive is what lays down the groundwork for each tale.  Without motive or intent, a crime is usually just an accident.

                Unlike the Father Brown stories, which are usually less than twenty pages, the stories here average near the forty five page mark.  Also, the four stories are broken into subsequent chapters.  This means that each of the stories is given a wide birth to be built, examined, and solved.  This of course leads to a number of notable characteristics.  With the lengthening of the story, there is much wider chance for the audience to solve the mystery before the solution is revealed.  Yet at the same time, the story can become much more intertwined and complicated.  Chesterton walks right down the middle without leaving the reader ensnared in the thicket of connecting lines.  The added lengths do not make the stories convoluted.  They allow the stories greater depth and life, but they also allow Chesterton a greater ability to explore a specific theme.  In the Father Brown stories, most of the themes would end up being a short speech delivered out by the amateur sleuth at the end each story.  They were very much "and the moral of the story is" type of deliveries.  This was due to the brevity of the various stories.  Here, Chesterton is able to dig into the themes well before the solution is presented.  He is able to have the characters expand their positions well before the curtain is going to set.  The antagonistic characters are even able to express themselves without being curtly cut off or summarized.  

                "Four Faultless Felons" is a great small collection of mystery stories.  The only thing that I wonder is why it went out of printing for so long.  The most immediate answer in my mind is that it is so similar to another book by Chesterton.  "Manalive" is right next to this book in how it handles crime mysteries.  Unlike this book, "Manalive" attributes all the crimes to a single individual instead of four.  "Four Faultless Felons" can be considered a continuation of the same themes, but the breaking up of the crimes allows a small variety of settings and characters to be created.

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop

P.S. Next week is "The Worm Ouroboros."

Entry 121: "Valkyria Chronicles" Pt. 8 End

Dear Internet

                I finally finished "Valkyria Chronicles" today.  Just an hour ago by the time I type this sentence.  I am sure you can guess my impression of the game having read the previous entries.  Then again, you may just be impatient and have already scrolled to the end to see my general score instead of reading the review first.  I cannot stop you, but I am still going to write the review.

                "Valkyria Chronicles" is a rare gem among games.  It has everything going for it.  It has a pleasing art style, a simple yet complex battle system, a fantastic musical backing, and a moving story.  The most important aspect would be the gameplay.  I say this because the game does not hold the player's hand nor push them off a cliff.  I lost a lot in this game.  I cannot even remember how many times that I had to restart a battle because I failed or realized I was heading into a dead end.  Every time that I restarted, I never once felt like the game was acting unfairly or in a way against the rules of engagement.  I never felt cheated because the game decided to change the rules mid-battle without fair reason.  I failed because I acted foolishly, forgot the game's rules, or attempted a risk with only a low chance of success.  The game is one where the player actually has to get better at the gameplay instead of just grinding away, hoping to win by brute force.  Tactics are required to advance properly.  And sometimes those tactics is how to properly use brute force.

                "Valkyria Chronicles" might have problems with its story, but that only stems from the slightly awkward English voice acting.  Often I found the speech sound bits being stretched out.  This might have been a technical solution where they stretch the sound clips out to fit the amount of time that the original lip movement was done for the Japanese audio.  The result either way is less than pristine line delivery from most of the cast.  While the acting never got horrible enough to make me want to rip my ears off, the occasional bad line made me at least want to clean out my ears lest some earwax was preventing the emotion from the line being stopped.  Sadly, my ears were clean and the emotion was never there.  It is not something that I want to strike against the game considering that words themselves usually convey enough of the character's thoughts and intentions.  Take for example Maximilian's repeated use of the royal plural pronoun usage when referring to himself.  It conveys his arrogance and royal up-brining much better than the actor's ability to portray the character.  While the character is supposed to be aloof and have a stonewall personality, when it comes to his presence in the story, Maximilian's actions and manner of speaking does a better job of conveying the character.  Most of the characters are like this, and the game places the importance on those aspects rather than the voice acting, which is a good thing.

                The story overall does its job well.  The WWII/fantasy aesthetics do a good job of creating a unique setting.  Instead of trying to focus on the entirety of the EWII, the game smartly focuses on a single squad with only half a dozen characters being showcased.  The love story between Welkin and Alicia was handled with a maturity that I do not see often in other games.  Instead of ending on a cliffhanger as to whether or not the two get together, there is a very real ending to their relationship, and there is even a climactic event that defines their relationship.  The various other spotlight characters from Squad 7 are well enough developed to make them less like cardboard soldiers and more fleshed out characters.  Even the antagonists have some depth to them instead of becoming Saturday morning cartoon villains.  The story got me to empathize with them.  At the same time, it remembered not to overshadow the reasons that the heroes were fighting for by stressing the antagonist's reasons too much.  The story was never about EWII.  It was only a backdrop to the tiny narrative the game gives.  The game was not shy from this fact and had stated this much within the opening segments, so it should not have been a surprise.

                I should mention the music for a bit.  The game makes full use of an orchestrated soundtrack.  The opening sequence that plays before the title screen appears has a beautifully arranged song.  What struck me about that sequence is that it plays independently of the visual hodgepodge that is stitched together.  Most opening sequences would play some sort of music that is synchronized with the events being displayed.  Instead, the game plays a soft melody while past paced action occurs.  The effect highlights the music even more because of the juxtaposition.  Elsewhere in the game, the music is much more in context, playing melodies that align with the scene's or event's theme.

                Overall, I enjoyed the game immensely.  "Valkyria Chronicles" will be a highlight of my collection that I would recommend to others.  I will have to try and watch the animated adaptation that was created or read the comic that stemmed from it.  I wish I could have played the game outside of the Backlog and have devoted more time to it, but I am ready to go onto the next card.  

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop

P.S Next is the film "The Monster X Strikes Back/Attack the G8 Summit".

Entry 106: "The Ball and the Cross"

Dear Internet,

                Well, I am back.  Did you miss me?  No?  Yeah, I did not think so.  Looking at the difference of page views shows that straight enough.  But hey, what should I expect.  I said I was going to be gone for two weeks.  Why would anyone look for new content when there plainly was going to be none?  I do not know.  Maybe I am getting traffic considering that I have over 100 of these entries now?  Well, more or less with the see-saw leaning on the "less" side considerably.  But that is neither here nor there.  Right now, I want to talk about "The Ball and the Cross."  

                The last time I was away from the Backlog I grabbed all of G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown stories, short one or two mind you.  This time, I only grabbed a single novel.  This is mostly due to the fact that this time I knew I would have less available time reading than I did last time.  That is not to say that I did nothing in particular or accomplished little.  I accomplished a lot, but none of it weighing heavily upon the Backlog, so I will not talk about it here.  "The Ball and the Cross" is one of Chesterton's less known novels.  I base this on one single fact.  The All Knowing Wiki does not even dedicate an article for the book but instead just has a digital version of the whole book on the commons site.  So, there goes my "go to" crutch, but that is for the best.

                "The Ball and the Cross" follows the adventure of two individuals who are trying to kill one another but are prevented from doing so by a plethora of outside influences among other reasons.  There is the Catholic, Evan MacIan, and the atheist, James Turnbull.  While walking down the street, MacIan reads an article written by Turnbull hanging in the window.  The article is a denouncement of the Virgin Mary, saying that she is either fictitious or an elaborate lie.  MacIan thrashes at Turnbull's window into a dozen or more broken pieces in response.  The two men brawl and are brought before a court.  MacIan pays the fine and covers the cost of the broken window.  However, the two men's quarrel is far from over.  They insist on a duel.  The one fights for the honor of Mary while the other fights against the cross.  As they attempt their duel, they are prevented by the police and chased through the streets of London.  The book continues as the pair try time and time again to go through their duel of ideas and ideals.

                Now, of course, seeing as this is a book by Chesterton, do not expect it to be a straight forward adventure story.  One might think this considering that the novel opens up with a short scene concerning a fling ship sailing over St. Paul's Cathedral, but I will ignore that aspect for an analysis entry some other time.  Chesterton's works are filled with the battling of ideals and ideals.  As the two men run over the breath of England, they find themselves and the duel between them to be examined from a number of different angles and philosophies.  A Tolstoian tells them that they should not fight because fighting does not solve a thing and will soon go out of fashion.  This only spurs the two men to fight with renewed vigor.  An English practitioner of some Pacific tribal religion tells them to kill one another for his own amusement and that of his pagan god.  This makes the two men in turn want to throw down their swords.  So on and so on, the two men and their fight are examined and reexamined while they avoid the police.  What they inevitably are caught by turns out to be much more sinister.

                The book is a good read to say the least, even if the wording is a bit heavy at times.  You can easily take the book for the plot that it presents to the reader, but that would discount it a considerable amount.  The plot is filled with suspense in regards to the matter of the duel and the escape from the police, but there is more.  For every character that the two come across on or are interrupted by, the plot reacts accordingly while maintaining the suspense of the duel.  The matter of which of the two men will win the fight constantly keeps the reader on the edge of their seat.  MacIan and Turnbull are not only being chased by the police but also chasing the truth of their conflict.  There are times that Chesterton delves deeply into the book's philosophical and theological nature, which slows down the flow of the book, but it is an important slowdown.

                The book's philosophy is one that examines less the philosophies of the two men and more the ones held by the populace.  "The Ball and the Cross" is a social commentary book that still rings true 103 years after it was published.  The reactions of the secondary individuals are the same that would spout forth today.  Take the nature of how the general view upon religion is that it should be kept within the confines of a place of worship instead of being within the hearts and minds of people as they interact with one another.  This view is the same that is addressed in "The Ball and the Cross" concerning English attitudes of the time.  It is a silly notion that holds no weight and only goes to show the hypocritical notion of the society that holds such a notion to be true.  If the English society of the time and that of the modern one truly held this notion to be true, they would not allow the atheist to display his thoughts and beliefs in a shop window.  Instead, they only care when a Christian belief is brought into the public realm.  Then all hell breaks loose.  The book goes one by one through various attacks upon the two men from outside themselves.  It is astounding how many of these attacks are still occurring today.

                "The Ball and the Cross" does a lot of things right.  It presents a story first and a philosophy second.  It is entertaining and thought provoking, and it provokes in the right direction.  The book pushes the reader to the end to find the conclusion instead of going in circles for hours on end with no direction, spouting blatant lies and muddled insults while masquerading as intellectual prophetism.  If you are familiar with my postings, you can figure out who and what I am talking about.  Instead, Chesterton does what a normal person would do.  He examines the arguments and plays them out to the logical conclusions.  It is sad that the illogical is often considered legitimate sometimes.  

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop

P.S. Next is "Sonic and the Secret Rings."  The stream will most likely not happen due to a technological difficulty that I am not going to correct any time soon.

Entry 104: "Ghost in the Shell" (1995)

Not to be confused with "A Bird in the
the Hand" of similar triangles.

Dear Internet,

                The "Ghost in the Shell" franchise is perhaps one of the keystones of modern anime.  Whether or not you like it, you have to admit that its impact upon an international scene is one of the biggest of its kind.  From the original three volumes of manga, there are two movies with a third on its way, two television series with a made for TV movie, and three video games.  On top of that are a number of OVAs and subsequent mangas that I will not even try to count up.  The vast bulk of this material has been translated into English and been distributed throughout the world.  This long reaching effect of "Ghost" marks it as one of the biggest works that also helped cause the late 90's anime boom that continued to the mid 00's.

                The film, "Ghost in the Shell," follows around Major Motoko Kusanagi and the rest of Section 9, a special enforcement agency that is a part of the government to combat the new type of terrorism that has sprung up.  In the not too distant future, human beings are able to transplant their minds into cybernetic bodies.  With only a little brain tissue being all that stops them from being pure machine.  These individuals are able to enter into the vast informational networks that link the world together.  Along with this ability, the robotic bodies are vastly more physically powerful than their biological counterparts.  Enter in the Puppet Master, an international digital terrorist that uses others to commit his crimes for him.  He does so by implanting false memories into his pawns to make them do his work for him.  A garbage man who believes he is spying on his wife is actually a single man who is being manipulated into trying to hack into the police network.  "Ghost" follows a single case of Section 9 and attempts to examine the various problems of a cyborg future.

                This is not the first time that I have come across this film.  This is about the third time that I have sat down to watch it.  Now before you start throwing biomechanical organs at me, Internet, let me explain.  I have sat down to watch this film in both dub and subtitle formats.  Both times I fell asleep.  Now this does not mean that the show was boring.  It was just that unless you sit down and watch it uncut, you will most likely get bored and chance the channel, which is partially what made me fall asleep both times.  This film is one that requires your full attention without distractions.  Early on, it sets out to create its cyberpunk world.  Immediately afterwards, it delves into the political problems that occur within that world.  For one thing, an escaping programmer fleeing a country through the use of diplomatic immunity is the same as smuggling arms out of the country.  The importance of what a single programmer can accomplish must be astounding given this level of importance to them.  Considering that even today, programmers with inside workings of how you work, Internet, and who you report to are running from one country to another, there is some truth to the film.

                Visually, the film is fantastic.  I do not mean merely the quality of the animation, but I will address that first anyway.  The animation is split from 2D rendering and 3D rendering.  There are plenty of CG graphics that dot the picture.  It almost requires it for certain sequences.  For a film that touches heavily upon a world that is neck deep in technology, using computer graphics to make a visual point about that technology is a no-brainer.  The characters move smoothly, without choppy motions.  The backgrounds are detailed plenty to show the Hong Kong of the future, filled with a flooded city at its bottom with a sprawling metropolis at the top.  However, what really takes the cake is the films visual language.

Late in the film, there is a visual display of technology destroying the past.

                The opening title credit sequence is intermixed between the title cards and the process of creating a cybernetic shell.  Specifically, it is the shell that the Major uses in the film.  The viewer is able to see how a person goes from only a few bits of brain tissue to a machine of the future.  In those few minutes, the film sets the stage for the viewer.  It is a quick rundown of all the inner workings of a cyborg, from the brain to the skin.  What makes it more interesting is that the Major seems to wake up from dreaming this sequence.  The viewer is then able to not only associate the robot-man making process with that specific character but also gain an awareness that the process is something that weighs heavily upon that specific character.  I will get to that in a minute.  At the same time, the film's soundtrack is able to take center stage.

                The film's music is haunting.  It does not rely on a futuristic soundtrack filed with synthetic beeps and electronic sounds, or at least from what I remember it did not.  No, the main showcase in the music department is the eerie vocals that echo throughout.  The lyrics are apparently formed from Yamato kotoba, or old Japanese vocabulary.  This use of an older language to make the language used in the music creates a hard contrast to the futuristic setting the story takes place in.  However, it brings up another point on the film.  Similar songs, if not the same one, play in at least two other sequences in the film.  Both of these sequences are montages of the setting.  No plot takes place or is minimal at most.  These sequences show off the setting with the backdrop of the music.  While at first I started to think that these were slowing down the pace of the film too much, I started to find them enchanting because they were taking time to present the world to the viewer.  It is not a pretty one, not in the least, but if the film sped by them for the sake of the plot, it would have discounted itself.  If the film only presented the high technology side of the city, it would be ignoring the have-nots of the future.  If the film only showed the city's gutters, it would cause the viewer to miss out the technological wonders that are central to the film.  These slower sequences are also there usually when a character is traveling, so it makes sense for the audience to get a glimpse of the world the characters exist in, especially considering that the action oriented scenes are very fast paced.

                Finally, there are the show's philosophical aspects.  The All Knowing Wiki even has a dedicated article for the franchise's philosophy.  So, it would be make this entry lacking if I did not even touch upon it.  As I said, the Major is weighted heavily with her own nature as a cybernetic being.  She wonders if she was ever human.  Considering that even in the film, memories can be created and implanted with ease enough by the antagonist, there is a possibility that she is a product of the police department to create a soldier.  At the same time, she wonders if she is even alive anymore after having her consciousness implanted into a mechanical body.  Indirectly, the question of whether or not the soul is tied to the body or the mind is brought up in the film.  This in turn brings up more questions.  If a person's consciousness can be completely digitized, does that mean it can be copied?  If it can be copied, does that mean the new entity is a human?  If that new entity is a human, does it then have a soul?  The film does not go too deep down the rabbit hole, thankfully.  If it did, we might be here for three or more days.  Maybe that is something that the TV show does, but that will be another day.  Right now is the film.  And the film tackles these philosophical questions with caution and fear, as is customary to the human condition.  By the end, it does not answer many of them.  This seems to be somewhat of a cop-out considering if it only asks questions of the viewer it can come across less like a professor at college testing his students and more an annoying 5 year old constantly asking "Why?"  However, the film is not a shallow mocking of the viewer, but a rightful challenge to figure out an answer before such questions arise as technology progresses.  

                "Ghost in the Shell" is one of those films that does just about everything right.  It world builds, it creates a suspenseful narrative, it has energetic action scenes, and it leaves the viewer with something to ponder about.  It is the kind of film that makes me want to hear more about the story's world and the characters in it.  As a work based off a manga, it succeeded in generating interest in the source material that helped it spawn off more works.  The film is worth its time and warrants more.

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop

P.S. Next is "The Lower Depths" (1957).