This is a bit of place holder for a pub conversation or something, in the emantime I really need to to re-read Umberto Eco’s essay about cult films focussing on Cassablanca*, then I need to re. watch the 3 Evil Dead films (specifically noting the differences between 1 and 2 and why 1 is better in spite of being in many ways worse) and then I need to coagulate it all into a coherent response to this excellent article about role playing…

“it may transpire that it is precisely the disjunctive nature of rpg narrative, its nature as a series of awkwardly-connected cool scenes that enter into a dialogue with an entire history of previous cool scenes, that makes roleplaying worthy of critical attention.”

Then it switches to talking about films and how narative in cinema is, since the 60s french new wave, increasingly about mashing genre flick tropes with eliptical art house framing techniques (as in narative not scene) cf. Michael Man (sort of), and how this is kind of like the cool scene parade of the typical RPG session (or indeed (i’m adding this bit, it’s not alluded to in the article), in a much more limited way, i.e. only cool action scenes, some video games e.g. God Of War). I think Eco would like me to mention the way Cassablanca is essentially a series of loosely bound pivotal moments, people are able to pull their favourite bits out and that’s what makes a ‘cult’ film (”Oh man I love this bit where the eyeball flys into her mouth!” Evil Dead 2, not Cassablanca, not the cut I saw anyway). The zenith of this cool bits style of cinema is, as the article points out, silver age HK cinema. (as far as i know this is a completely personal catagorisation system I think of golden age as mid to late 70’s Shaw Bros. etc)

“This path finds its ultimate outlet in a cinema dear to my heart, the genre-splicing, style-crazy movies of Hong Kong’s classic period from the late eighties to mid-nineties. Their veerings from low comedy to high melodrama to violence and back to sentimentality are initially off-putting to many Western gamers.”

I think he meant audiences there, cos I recon teh set of HK movie fans and the set of gamers have a pretty large intersection.

Also, loads of stuff about genre.

Also, what about Dogs in The Vineyard and other nu-RPGs? which seem to do a better job of putting proper old school narative and characters into the stories…

So anyway, place holder.

A dissenting note comes from Umberto Eco, who wrote that “by any strict critical standards… Casablanca is a very mediocre film”. He sees the changes the characters undergo as inconsistency rather than complexity: “It is a comic strip, a hotch-potch, low on psychological credibility, and with little continuity in its dramatic effects”. However, he argues that it is this inconsistency which accounts for the film’s popularity by allowing it to include a whole series of archetypes: unhappy love, flight, passage, waiting, desire, the triumph of purity, the faithful servant, the love triangle, beauty and the beast, the enigmatic woman, the ambiguous adventurer and the redeemed drunkard. Central is the idea of sacrifice: “the myth of sacrifice runs through the whole film”

[wikipedia]