I proposed that the gaming equivalent would have to have core mechanics that are inputted over an extended period of time before repeating the action or processing and reacting to the results/output. Some of the Wii Fit exercises and games instantly came to mind. But it wasn't until recently that I came up with the perfect example.

Back when I was in high school, I had created 3 short films to be shown during one of my orchestra concerts. One of the songs for that concert was Adagio for Strings by Barber. While rehearsing this song I, along with many others in my class, grew very impatient. After all, it took us about 14 minutes to get from the start to the finish at practice speeds. Just before the concert, I developed a great appreciation for this song that seemed to take all the time it needed with good reason. But I was worried that the audience might become impatient, or worse; bored.

So, to match Adagio's long, culminating impact, I crafted a short film around one continuous camera shot of a person who stands up in his room and starts walking out his house and across the city with an art pad in hand. As this character walked, he drew a picture on the art pad, which I sped up in editing. In tiny little sketch marks, the character slowly etched out the image. At first it was impossible to tell what it was. Then a few distinct features became recognizable. A shoulder. An ear. A nose. Soon, everyone realized that the picture was of a praying girl with angel wings. And before anyone realized it, 14 minutes had passed, and the character in the film placed the picture at a grave having walked from his house all the way to a cemetery.

If you've ever watched anyone draw, paint, or create anything slowly right before your eyes, you know what a time lapsing and mesmerizing effect they can have. Thinking back on how the elapsed time drawing in the film matched so well with Adagio, it hit me all of a sudden. Slowly etching out an image in Picross is the video game equivalent of a slowly building work like Adagio for Strings. In the free modes of Picross in particular, there is no instant positive or negative feedback for making a move. Instead, players are free to mark up the squares however they want. Only when every space is marked or unmarked correctly does the puzzle end and the image is revealed. In this way, solving a puzzle in Picross is like one drawn out, continuous action that has a response at the end that's the culmination of all the steps you took to correctly uncover the picture.

So if you're curious, try listening to Adagio here while watching any or all of the videos below. Be sure to turn off the sound on the videos below.

I finished watching the 13 episodes of Kinou's Journey about 2 months ago, and since then I've been sitting on mixed feelings about the show. The dialog is too polite, too stiff, and there's too much of it. Books and films are most effective at showing not telling. Instead of centering around charactes and meaningful actions, Kinou's Journey tells all through dialog. You can really tell that the series was created from novels. The art and animation quality are on the low end of the scale; just enough to be pleasant to the eyes at times, holding you over until something cool happens possibly soon. But it never did.

Each episode is short and disconnected because Kinou, the main character, journeys around from place to place rarely staying in one location for longer than an episode. Kinou is a somewhat stoic character that lives by a set of rules with one of them being that she never stays in a place longer than 3 days. This rule puts a considerable restriction on the show's ability to craft larger story arcs and ideas. The result is a journey that's filled with trivial encounters; encounters that communicate ideas that are cold and aloof as if bemused or presented instead of lived. No matter what happens in the story, like Kinou, we're forced to leave it all behind, forgetting it and moving on to something potentially worth the small bit of time we have to give.

Kinou is a main character who is stuck between unsolidified and uncertain ideas. She's a girl with an ambiguous appearance, and she has the fighting prowess of a more combat oriented anime characters. On the other hand, she's a polite little girl with an odd attitude doing little more at times than asking people a lot of questions.

Despite all of these issues I have with Kinou's Journey, I found the series to be far more substantive, concise, and to the point with its ideas than many movies and tv shows, which is simply pathetic for those other shows. Believe it or not, there's an art and craft to storytelling in any medium. If you choose to ignore developing characters, respecting the setting, and binding the actions and events to space and time, then the best you can hope for is some interesting content.

Kinou's Journey is more of a show about pondering ideas than anything else. It doesn't have much of a story or a singular focus/point. For if episode to episode, your character can be anywhere, talk to anyone, and leave without strings attached or changing in some way, then your character is someone that I simplly cannot relate to. We, humans, are bound by space and time and because of that and the slow way we move through each, we are irrevocably attached to any and everything in our proximity. This is the basic substance that makes up what we think of as our lives. Understanding this is what creates the foundation of stories. It's something deeper, richer, and more complicated than arranging ideas side by side.

A list of my favorite episodes of the bunch.

• 02 "A Tale of Feeding Off Others -I Want to Live-"
  "Hito o Kutta Hanashi" (人を喰った話)
• 03 "Land of Prophecies -We No The Future-"
  "Yogen no Kuni" (予言の国09)
• 05 "Three Men Along the Rails -On the Rails-"
  "Rēru no Ue no Sannin no Otoko" (レールの上の三人の男)
  
• 09 "Land of Books -Nothing Is Written!-"
  "Hon no Kuni" (本の国)
  
  

For the final part of this Weird Skittles series, I wanted to first say a few things about the Skittles commercials that I don't like so much.

The kind of "weird" in these commercials isn't a very meaningful, poignant, or relatable kind of weird. Therefore, I'm not a big fan of it. Essentially, this kind of weird is about surprising the audience by showing the unexpected. Unfortunately, like so many jokes, the value/effect of the commercial wears off over time and after repeated viewings.

• In the sheep boys commercial, the two sheep boys discuss the unconventionality of the blended flavors in the Smoothie Skittles while unadmittedly represent two uniquely blended creatures. The farmer at the end tells she sheep boys to "stop that jibberjabberin;" a line that entertains but offers little to no real substance.

• Mr. Extreme in the commercial above is all about shock value. He looks crazy, wears an albino boa constrictor, rides a tiger elephant, and wields a flame staff. Somehow this man enters the scenario, and he leaves abruptly on a helicopter. I can't think of any common life experiences that I can relate to the events in this commercial. I think the only take away is that the Skittles are extreme and so was the weird style.

• The elements in this tropical Skittles commercial never came together for me. A random rainbow in the hallway becomes a portal to a tropical island where a strange and friendly man shares some of his candy. After the boy gets the Skittles with the "three new flavors" he leaves the rainbow portal only to find a girl waiting for him back in the hallway. How is any of this relevant or similar to common life experiences? What's the message of the commercial? I don't know.

Now I'll close out this series with 2 good commercials. The difference should be clear.

• The message in this one is simple. Don't judge people by their looks. When the office worker hit the piñata man with a bat, he was simply acting under the principles of "form fits function." While this principle is essential in video games, it doesn't directly apply to life. Discrimination is an ugly thing.

• This commercial plays off of the mysteriousness of dreams. To get away from his current classroom situation, the boy drops a handful of Skittles into his mouth. The candy wisks the boy off into a day dream like place. In the dream, the boy impresses the angel with his ripping muscles (literally). Unfortunately, the Skittles effect wears off and the boy snaps out of his day dream. Eager to continue where he left off, the boy quickly gobbles down another handful of Skittles. This time things are different. The angel flexes her incredible muscles right back and they form a majestic rainbow power fist together. Like with real dreams, it's hard to resume a dream after being woken up. Such is life, like Skittles; different every time we try. 

And that does it for Skittles & The Weird. I hope you got something colorful out of these mini analyses.

If you have any commercials you would like my feedback on, feel free to send them my way.

Don't bother with this movie unless you watch it in a 3D theater. Though I'm sure you might enjoy it the normal way, the 3D in this film is done so well that I was continually blown away. As a recently converted 3D film fan, I can now appreciate the power of the added depth and perception of a 3D film. Forget all the gimmicks from TV shows that ran back in the 90's where one would have to pick up 3D glasses from the local convenient store to participate. These shows were all about shoving large sandwiches, tools, and 2x4s toward the camera for cheap thrills (Thanks Home Improvement).

The way space is implemented into the 3D visuals of Coraline is nothing short but exemplary. While watching, I wanted to call out to the boy down in front who's head was blocking the screen until I realized that the boy was a character in the film. He wasn't blocking my view of the movie; he was the view of the movie. The 3D perception creates a more immersive experience by entering a space that was previously reserved for the audience and objects that actually exist. Not only do the images dance and move about in the space around the theater room, but they lurch into your personal space, and stretch far deep "into the screen" as well.  All of the wonderful film techniques of using different lenses to invoke feelings like aloofness/distacne are now more literal than ever. In one scene Coraline can be scene at a window. With the camera outside and pulled back, the 3D effect pushs Coraline far away from the audience view. In other words, Coraline wasn't set apart from the audience's perspective because she looked that way on a flat screen. She was set apart because she appeared to be at a distance beyond your outstretched hand and then some.

The stop motion of the film is beyond fantastic. Total, Coraline runs about 1 hour and 50 minutes. Toward the end, the film begins to drag story wise. This surprised me. Usually, the expensive and painstaking craft of stop motion results in shorter film productions. The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride are only 76 minutes. And James and the Giant Peach is 79 minutes. It really felt like the animators of Coraline didn't mind doing all the extra work. Fortunately, all of it is the most fantastic stop motion I have ever seen. A true joy to behold.

My only and biggest problem with Coraline is the story/adaptation to the screenplay. Frankly, it's sloppy and careless. Perhaps carefree is a more apt description. In any case, whether creating a film or a video game, the product is best when all of the elements work together to form a cohesive whole. Coraline contains many story elements (characters, scenes, objects, lines, and actions)  that do very little or nothing at all for the main story. Throughout the film I kept saying things like "what was that for?" "that was random" and "well, that didn't come together at all." Because everything felt so poorly put together, a lot of the creepy, creative, and mysterious elements of the film come across as just being plot holes or odd distractions. With all of these issues, I still highly recommend watching Coraline in 3D. In a storytelling medium, one must understand the craft and mechanics of a story. It's a shame that so much top quality art, visual, and animation work was put into a lackluster narrative experience.

***Spoiler Alert***

The final thing I want to say about Coraline is that the story seemed to be an adaptation to a video game that doesn't exist. What I mean by this is that many of the elements and mechanics of Coraline parallel the challenges, characters, visuals, and actions of video games.

• Light World vs. Dark World: Zelda: A Link To The Past. The Other Mother and all of the doppelganger characters in the magical other world in Coraline make up the "dark world."
• The Talking Dead: Phantom Hourglass/Majors Mask. Though it is took late to save the little kids that were eaten by the witch, Coraline quests to recover their real eyes and set them free.
• 3 Items to Collect before the real challenge begins: In the film, the real eyes of the kids are represented by 3 small round objects that Coraline must collect. Zelda games often challenge players to collect 3 items to progress, yet doing so is never the ultimate challenge. OOT = 3 gems. ALTTP = 3 pendants.
• The Moon Timer: Majora's Mask. As Coraline attempts to recover the 3 eyes in time, the moon in the sky indicates how much time is left before the "dark" world comes to an end. 
• The Lens of Truth: Zelda: Ocarina of Time/Majora' Mask. Coraline receives a triangular jade gem that allows her to see any real/true object in the witch's world. She uses it to locate the 3 eyes. 
• The crumbling sky image: Twilight Princess. The way the dark, crack flecks of the sky appear when the witch's world was falling apart looks very similar to the Twilight Princess sky portals. 
• The NPCs: From Miss Spink, Miss Forcible, to Mr. Bobinsky, many of the side characters in this film play minor roles to the central story line of Coraline. While this is nothing out of the ordinary, in this case these character's lines and action seem to intentionally guide Coraline through the conflicts and challenges of the film. Like the hints that many Zelda characters gives to point the player in the right direction, some of the help from these Coraline characters seemed out of the blue and almost forced. A good example is the green gem that Spink and Forcible give to Coraline.  
• Finding the Key: The small door that opens the path into the other world is hidden and locked away at the beginning of the film. Toward the middle, Coraline must find the key somewhere in the house in order to journey back into the other world. The lock and key is a classic video game structure especially for the Zelda series.

• This commercial is a wonderful piece of visual storytelling and film making. The presentation of the key elements and subject matter are very clean.
• The commercial opens with an establishment shot of two young men making an informal trade in a back yard. From the start we can hear poor opera singing, but we don't know exactly where it's coming from until the next few shots. Singing. The bunny is singing. Both boys seem to be quite satisfied with the trade.
• Some time later, indicated by the change in weather and daylight conditions, the situation looks grim for the now bunny owner. Since the beginning of the commercial, the bunny hasn't stopping poorly singing. And now, it my be getting on our nerves, but the bunny's charm has definitely worn off on the new owner.
• Remember that terrible feeling you get for trying to force a "trade-backsies" on your friends back in the day? That terrible situation and feeling is reflected by the pouring rain that soaks the bunny owner as he scampers back looking to return things to the way they were. That's when he sees the Skittles boy through the window eating the Skittles. Dim lights. No TV on. Just eating Skittles as if they were the only source of enjoyment in the world (besides a singing bunny of course).
• As Mr. Skittles bites into the candies, in the next scene the bunny decides to bite into his new owner. If you thought the situation couldn't get any worse, now the boy is bit, the bunny is gone, and the story ends in the rain. "Treasure the Rainbow." The lesson of the story is we must must hold onto the things we value in life. The best part of it all is, the singing bunny could have been anything and the message would have still been pretty clear. That's one of my favorite kinds of weird; where despite an element being "extraordinary" the story and the way people relate to it is quite ordinary.

• A Skittles leak. It doesn't matter where the Skittles come from. And it doesn't matter that the ceiling is leaking Skittles. The point is, the apartment man doesn't want Skittles all over his floor.
• The repair man "fixes" the problem by fastening handle bars into the ceiling and hoisting up a tiny man who's job is to hang there and eat the Skittles as they fall. Now there are two weird/out of the ordinary elements in the commercial. The apartment man questions the repair man's methods. The repair man reaffirm his methods and laughs along with his tiny coworker. 
• The apartment man is not happy about the whole situation. With his arms crossed (closed off, defensive, and skeptical body language) we can infer that the apartment man is wary of being ripped off by repair men. After this repair man "fixes" the problem in a few seconds with a questionable method and then laughs about it, we're left feeling a little cheated. One might think "the apartment man could have just eaten/caught the Skittles himself." Perhaps he should have. Depending on how you look at it, the apartment man didn't have a problem in the first play.

• This is one of my favorite Skittles commercials. 
• Though the commercial doesn't have any visual metaphors or film storytelling techniques worth talking about, I wanted to point out that it does raise the question of "what is awesome." The girl brings her friend, Joel, to the back of the store to show him Tim's special ability. After witnessing the stapler turn into Skittles Joel says, "that's awesome."
• Tim questions how awesome his ability is: "Is it awesome." Tim continues by explaining how different his life is because of his ability. He can't hold his baby. He can't dress himself. And he's a danger to those around him; "He'll never see his family again." All the while, Joel and his friend eat the "stapler Skittles" only slowing down once they realized how some blessings can actually be curses.
• Empathizing and relating to other's plights can be tricky. To Joel and his friend, having more Skittles is a good thing. This is the attitude that most have initially to the chocolate touch as well.  But the tone becomes quite dark when the "crippled/handicap" Tim expresses his rage and destroys his work desk. Yet the whole thing is rainbow sugar coated at the same time. I don't know whether to feel for Tim, or to go out and buy more Skittles. And that's the weirdest part of it all.

• Skittles commercials often play upon the common expectations that are created when a boy and girl are put together on screen. It seems like TV writers think that we want every boy and girl to fall into a relationship with each other. In this commercial, a boy is approached by a girl inquiring about Skittles Bubble Gum. It is not uncommon to read into the request for gum as an invitation for the boy to show the girl some kindness, get to know her better, and perhaps enter a relationship.
• Just as nonchalantly as the boy informs the girl that his candy is indeed Skittles bubble gum, "Yup," he refuses her invitation; "Nope." The boy seems to be unaffected by the the girl's charms or the social pressure of sharing with others when they ask for something politely. And as a visual metaphor for the boy's aloof powers, he blows a bubble and floats away clearly weighed down by nothing.

• This one is simple. We've all found ourselves in a situation where we desire an item that's only available for some extreme price. Movie theaters, sport stadiums/arenas, the air port are notorious for "ripping people off" in this way. There's nothing wrong with raising one's prices. Our competitive market does a good job of keeping some things like candy reasonably cheap. But we love to pay for convenience. We love vending machines not just because they offer us a drink. We love them because they offer us a cold drink in an area where cold drinks aren't so easy to come by.
• So setting up shop on a cloud may seem like a ridiculous idea, but for the purposes of this Skittles commercial, it's an apt visual metaphor that reminds us of what it feels like to put a value/price on convenience. 

• This commercial features a visual metaphor for arrogance. From the details in the commercial, we can't be sure what the job this man is applying for entails. We don't know who the Skittles belong to or if they were offered during the interview. All we know is that this man is good for the job, but not good enough. Throughout the interview the man seems more occupied with eating Skittles using his beard that what's being said; "That's nice."
• When the woman tells the man that he needs more experience, he interrupts her by first feeding her a Skittle and then gently caressing her face all using his beard. This move isn't quite sexual harassment. It's just rude, in a weird way that only a Skittles commercial can pull off. The the man then proceeds to throw a Skittle in his mouth, which is a act of even more confidence/arrogance. This many thinks his beard skill is enough to get jobs and win over people, and he's not shy about it.

 More Skittles commercials coming soon.

Today I wanted to elaborate on the quality of being weird and its capacity to encompass all of the types of feelings and responses. Weird is the word that we ascribe to feelings that we don't quite understand and that we can't quite put into a neat category like the ones I listed in the introduction. Weird has a way of taking us by surprise, making us laugh, revealing an inspiring side of things, being cool (because it's different), catching on, and/or just being bad.

In some ways being weird (ie. mixed and muddled, crossing across categories/boundaries) is more reflective of real life than being anything else. Humans are complex beings. When we're happy, we're not just happy. We're a lot of things. A lot of emotions and thoughts exist in the background of all of our emotions. The deeper you look, the more you'll come to see that every moment in life is a little weird, and every emotion is more compounded than a 3 letter word.

To highlight some of the very best weirdness I've come across, I've selected the Skittles commercials. Commercials make perfect examples because of their brevity. Like (relatively short) poems, commercials can studied and examined repeatedly without consuming much time at all. For each Skittle commercial, I will supply commentary that will bring the full weirdness to light.

• Everyone is equal, right? Black, Hispanic, Filipino, Thai, and White. In this commercial, we see a white man getting fitted for a suit. In each of the 3 mirrors, the suited man is reflected as a difference race. Everything is going fine, until he realizes that he doesn't have any Skittles like the Filipino man in the mirror. Apparently, the suited man and his reflections aren't all equal.
• When the issue is brought to the storeman's attention, he proceeds to argue with the Filipino reflection. Their words aren't subtitled, so we're awkwardly pushed to the outside of the dispute. The conflict escalates until the Filipino reflection kicks the mirror and takes himself out the picture.
• After this shocking and sudden debacle, the stunned suitman looks to the storeman. The storeman smilies in such a way that seems to say "nevermind what just happened. please buy the suit." After all, the store isn't a fancy, high end looking place. Instead the store is small and homey. I can imagine that the storeman could use the business. But what are we (from the perspective of the suitman) supposed to believe in after our views on equality have been shattered?
• The reason why the awkward ending is so impactful is because all of the characters (reflections included) in the commercial treat the supernatural conceit of the commercial (magic mirrors) as a common thing. The suitman isn't taken aback because one the mirrors shows a him that isn't "him." Rather, the suitman is shocked simply because he inadvetenly started a conflict that ended up with a broken mirror. In other words, when the characters in a fictional conceit treat the fictional elements as common, everyday occurances the attitude is translated to the audience. In this way, this commercial doesn't create a sense of weirdness because of the mirrors. The weirdness comes from the racial tension. The mirrors are simply a very effective visual metaphor.

• Some people think it's foolish to believe in things that you can't see or touch. But we can all agree that it's foolish to question the existence of a rainbow that you're sitting on high in the sky. I wonder what kind of person would question the existance of the very support that's keeping him/her safe. Perhaps the commercial implies that no matter where you are or what kind of situation you're in, there will always be the non believer. In a world where rainbows are physical, literal metaphors, it's "believe the rainbow" or else.
• How these kids got up onto the rainbow in the first place, I can't say. Perhaps we've all been resting on a "rainbow" in our own lives. Enjoy it while you can like the other two youngsters do in the commercial. For to believe is a sweet deal; like a mouth full of Skittles no doubt.
• "That fool got what he deserved," or so we're left to think by the end of the commercial. "I'll never be that stupid" we might think as we go about our lives waiting for our chance to sit upon a rainbow and not make the same mistake.

• The commercial opens with a strange man poorly impersonating a fledgling bird: "Quack. Quack." An eagle flies by and deftly opens a bag of skittles. After dropping a few into the man's mouth, the eagle flies away. 
• The commercial up to this point is weird enough because both the man and the eagle are acting out of character in two very different ways. After the eagle flies away, the man breaks the charade and thanks the eagle for the Skittles with a common phrased typically used between humans: "Thank you. Thank you very much."
• By the end of the commercial all of the established ideas are nullified. The bird-man returns to being a man-man. The seemingly normal eagle dexterously opens a bag of skittles and feeds a man. All the ideas contridict each other execpt for the nourishing Skittles and the thank you. If everything around you makes no sense, at least there's nourishment (Skittles). And that's something to be thankful for. The look on the man's face says it all.

Stay tuned for more weird Skittles commercials.

Being a cop or an FBI agent is an active role. It's not only dangerous and often times tricky to apprehend suspects, but it makes for interesting scenes/conflict within a story. Mr. Lightman, the main character in LTM, doesn't have an active role in his own story. Mr. Lightman's character is brought into various cases and situations to do what he does best; look at people. Waltzing in after the suspects have been detained is a pretty passive role to focus and entire series on. But looking at people isn't exactly thrilling either. Fortunately, studying people's faces and their expressions works well in a visual based story telling medium.

Lie To Me is carried by Lightman, who has a strange and slightly abrasive way of interacting with people. He leans back in chairs and keep his head tilted dramatically to the side. His demeanor and gait are reminiscent of Dr. House from the TV show House. Unlike my favorite limping drug addict doctor, Lightman is hard to relate to. Like a machine that never tires, Lightman propels the plot of the first episode from the beginning to the end. He doesn't slow down and he is never too puzzled by any problem or situation. He's never shown eating anything, and he refused to take a break from his work. On top of all of this, he surrounds himself with co-workers that are only shown working. Ultimately, I found the central characters in LTM without flaws and banality, ie without that human touch.

Playing close attention to all forms of non verbal communication is a powerful a gimmick. From what I've seen so far, Lie To Me doesn't take its gimmick seriously enough. Instead of making lying/uncovering the truth the action that connects, defines, and changes the characters in the story, lie detecting seems to be the theme stretched thinly over the top of ordinary plots. Perhaps Samuel Baum, the writer, should study how the Japanese treat the gimmicks of some of their movies and tv shows. Or perhaps he should look into storytelling through action.

As engaging as being able to read a character's face for the truth is, Lie To Me isn't about figuring out the cases. In other words, the show doesn't give enough  clues and information so that the viewer can piece together the solution before the reveal at the end. In fact, Lightman does a lot of explaining after every eye twitch, brow furrow, and nose touch. All the explanation drags down the show by separating the few interesting actions and scenes with dialog, the stuff the premise of the show is trying to get us to look past.

It would be a far more original and flexible angle if Lightman wasn't a wannabe detective. Instead, he should explore how people perceive truth as being  multifaceted and ultimately relative from the perspective of a man who's job isn't to throw people behind bars. Instead of the show explaining everything step by step, it would be more impactful to view situations from many perspectives with Lightman as the anchor and entry point. Lying to cover up one's wrong doings can only go so far. Asking the tough questions and examining the many ways people lie to themselves on a regular basis is where the human touch is. For such a story, you wouldn't need bombs that are about to go off and people running from the law. Capitalizing on how we all lie to ourselves to get by is more real and more thrilling than any imaginary time bomb on TV.

In Lie To Me, characters move about each scene. People are interrogated. Eyes dart, and sweat drops. Sure the cases are wrapped up, but at least in the first episode, there weren't any clear messages or character changes. This isn't my idea of a story. With a worn formula for a foundation, an underdeveloped and passive gimmick, and tools for characters contrived to move a plot that's not very believable as a detective or crime show, I won't be tuning in for another episode.

Time is special like this. The purpose of this article is to highlight a few musical examples of works that take their time building up to their single, significant, and at times epic climax/conclusion.

If you're the kind of person that's in a rush, I suggest finding the time not to be. I also suggest listening to each of these songs. Play them in the background of your routine computer tasks if you must. 

I am very fortunate to have played the Firebird Suite with a full orchestra and Adagio for Strings with a full string orchestra. I must say that I didn't enjoy rehearsing these songs at first. Adagio is written in a key with 5 flats, which is very uncommon for string music. This made the song difficult enough, but it was even more grueling to rehearse the song under tempo. Some days, we'd only get through a few lines before our time was up.

Then one day it hit me. Adagio wasn't boring. It was building. Slowly, one small step at at time, it was still going somewhere. And it was going to a place I had never experienced before along a path that I thought was insufficient. I found that even though the song moved slowly, it developed much in the same ways as a faster paced song. Also, because the tempo was so slow, every change and inflection on every note was more pronounced. In this way, Adagio and slow songs like it create a richer listening experience per note simply because there's actually time to linger and express each note completely over seconds instead of split seconds.

These songs don't disappoint.

Firebird Suite by Stravinsky

Adagio for Strings, op.11 by Samuel Barber

Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap

• lyrics here.

Another good example of a song that fits the group is "Wait" by The Afters. Because I couldn't find an adequate online recording, I did not include it with the other examples.

Though the songs build slowly, time seems to melt away. At least, this is how it is for me. And it's not just time. My thoughts and physical state seem to match the song as well.

Forest Gump and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button are two films that have a similar slowly building progression. In both of these films, the life of the main character is shown including their travels, battles, hardships, and growing pains. In Gump's case, the metaphor between life and a box of chocolates was made more impactful because the film shows us the life of this character. After having experienced the life of Forest Gump filled with mishaps and unforeseeable happenings, we can easily relate to the idea of never knowing what we're gonna get out of life.

I wonder if there's a video game with a slow building structure. Sure, many games slowly progress their stories and increase their difficulty through a series of challenges and scenes over many hours of play. However, I think the analogy between the songs/movies above and video games falls under game mechanics.

The nature of a game mechanic, in general, is an action and quick response. Hit the punch button and the character on the screen quickly punches. Tap the jump button, and the character on the screen most likely makes a short jump. To make a game with a slow build, one would have to develop mechanics based on actions that are slow and/or create responses that aren't immediate.

The closest examples I can think off are some of the exercises and games in Wii Fit. Holding a stretch is a single action that is drawn out for a small period of time. When doing the Tree pose or the Sun Salutation pose, the prolonged action and delayed response (scoring) of the game create a very slow, unique pace. Likewise, Lotus Focus is a game that tests the player's ability to sit very still for 3 minutes. SIT, in the case, is just one long action. When the player fails to SIT still, the consequences are quickly brought to the players attention. "CUT"

• The world of Speed Racer is a bright and multi-colored one. Everything in the film from the scifi race cars, the purple flying machines, to the cabinet of candy pops with a radiance that seems to scream "the future. " The coloration also easily distinguishes the look of Speed Racer from most other films. The colors paint the whole film in a light hearted tone that matches the content. There's hardly a moment of banality in the whole film. After all, this is the future where cars can dance across suspended tracks and where racing rules all. So why bother showing Speed brushing his teeth or washing his face?

The future is a melting pot.

• It pleases me to see that the Wachowski's version of the future is made up of people of all different races and cultures. The announcers and racer especially are a particularly diverse assortment in the film. Take a look.

A wink. A nod. And a bow.

• In order to adapt the anime series into a film, the Wachowski brothers had to make some changes. Still, despite the time being set in the highly "futuristic" future where cars race on tracks that resemble roller coasters, Speed Racer the film still has many throwbacks to the original material. Though I haven't seen the anime series since I was a kid, I'm pretty sure the milk, ninjas, and the pose that Speed makes after winning in the Casa Cristo race is classic material. More interesting is the tone the Wachowski brothers have toward some of the classic material when it clashes with the realism of the live action film. For example, instead of removing the ninja from the scene in th middle of the Casa Cristo race, the ninja were kept ineffectual and goofy. When Trixie asked if those were ninja, Pops responds: "More like a nonja. Terrible what passes for a ninja these days." After all, if those ninja were "real ninja" there's no way the Speed family would have been unharmed.

Rough Play... play being the operative term.

• It's difficult to write an interesting story if the main character never faces any challenges or setbacks. As the saying goes "you can't win them all." Functionally (storytelling wise) the Wachowski brothers had to find a way to rough up Speed without being too violent. The solution ended up being an automatic safety system that encases the driver in bubbles before their car is completely destroyed (see above). This mechanic allowed for the characters to take out opponents without killing them, thus playing and keeping the races in the realm of a sporting event. This mechanic also allowed for Speed to be taken out at the Fuji race. The Wachowski brothers probably realized that showing someone lose a race by crossing the finish line in any place but first wouldn't be as devastating or impactful as having a car get wrecked and watching the driver fly off the track. Over all, the auto-bubbling mechanic made for a better film.

Monkey see, Monkey over do? Nope.

• I appreciate how the real life monkey was implemented into the film. Instead of using a computer generated model, the actors worked with a live Chimp. The monkey was mostly kept to the background of the film. When a scene did focus on it, its actions were simple and quick. Chimp Chimp couldn't steal or distract from the show with such a small role.

Very clean. Mostly air tight.

• After watching Speed Racer again carefully, I've determined that the film is very clean. By clean I mean that Speed Racer tells its main story without adding unnecessary scenes, dragging any scene out too long, or deviating from communicating anything that doesn't directly involve Speed and this plight. The movie didn't waste any time. From the opening scene, the story races along until the blazing finish. Aside from the "we don't have a car" issue before the final race, I haven't found any plot holes. I'm not sure why Speed couldn't use the car he drove at Casa Cristo or in the previous scene. Maybe Pops meant that they don't have a Grand Prix ready car.