Watch out for his right

Disused boxing mannequin, 280 Queen Street, Auckland, taken 6 April 2012. Not sure why he has a bin-liner for a skirt, but when your arm's fallen off you've probably got more important things to worry about than sartorial elegance.  

It's only forever, not long at all

One of the all-too-many ways to bite the dust in Brogue. Bloody flaming Ogres.

Don't get me wrong, I love to play proper full-price studio games. I've been playing Skyrim since Christmas and have spent many months delving into the lavish possibilities of the many iterations of Civilisation. But I also love a good indie freeware game too. Last month I spent enjoyable hours exploring the randomly-generated platformer Spelunky, relishing its replayability and not a little frustrated by my lack of prowess in dodging leaping bomb frogs and evading angry shopkeepers who happen to object to me nicking their wares.

I found that game thanks to a tip-off in PC Gamer, and now another article has convinced me to try the daftly-named but engrossing Brogue. Like Spelunky, Brogue is a randomised adventure, but whereas Spelunky is a retro 8-bit platformer, Brogue harks back to the ultra-low-tech text-based adventures of the 1980s. Don't expect fancy graphics, because Brogue relies solely on ASCII characters. But it's surprisingly effective despite that limitation, and the seemingly laughable notion in this day and age that your character is simply represented by an '@' and monsters are represented by a single letter - 'm' for monkeys, 'k' for kobolds. This lack of graphics is no particular limitation because the gameplay is so enjoyable.

A typical randomly-generated dungeon entrance

Every level is randomly generated, with monsters becoming increasingly deadly as you descend towards the fabled 25th level, where the object of your quest - an amulet, from memory - resides. Oh, and there's no sound either, not that you need any. As PC Gamer explained, the simple charm of Brogue is its creativeness and the way its designer messes around with the game mechanics to create a fresh adventure each time you play:

Complexity: It has the ASCII ungraphics, the thrill of pockets filled by unknown potions and scrolls, the permadeath difficulty. Simplicty: It’s fully mouse-controlled, readable at a glance, and has an elegant skill system. It also has monkeys that will steal your shit and break your heart.

Ah yes, those monkeys can be a nuisance, but also a boon companion when you rescue them from captivity. The items you collect on your dungeon crawl are also pleasingly unpredictable, particularly the potions and scrolls, which you have to try sight unseen - it could be a potion of healing or strength, or equally it could also be a potion of bursting-into-flames (which is generally quite inconvenient, to say the least) or the ever-amusing Scroll of Aggravate Monsters.

That big pond will come in handy when you inevitably set yourself on fire.

Yes, Brogue does have a silly name; it's a play on the classic game Rogue, which has given its name to a whole genre of Roguelike games. Allusions to sensible footwear aside, Brogue is a great example of how indie games developers can compete with the big game studios by focusing on great gameplay and clever ideas. Download a free copy and let me know when you surpass my feeble top score of dungeon level 10 14 with 1428 5405 gold! 

Still looking for that bloody exit...

The plural of doofus

(c) Sony Pictures Classic

On Friday I caught Whit Stillman's 2011 feature Damsels In Distress with Jennifer at the Rialto in Newmarket, which featured as part of the World Cinema Showcase that's running for the next couple of weeks. It's the story of four young women at the fictitious Seven Oaks University, and their quest to humanise the patently inferior males of their college. Violet, the lead do-gooder, is played by hipster icon Greta Gerwig, who improved Ben Stiller's flawed black comedy Greenberg, and leads the way in fostering the betterment of the infantile and immature males on campus, including her clueless boyfriend Frank.

This is a low-budget comedy that deserves a broader audience and could well develop a cult following in years to come. Stillman's script is pleasingly wordy, and although Gerwig's performance is curiously stilted and she is a little too close to 30 to play a young college student, the quality of the dialogue is still obvious. My favourite line was the matter-of-fact digression of two of the girls into the correct plural form of the oft-needed and entirely apt word 'doofus', which, it turns out can be both 'doofi' in the more correct, Latin-originated form, or 'doofuses' in the more commonly-used but slightly less polished colloquial sense. Either is fine.

The story has fun with a subplot revolving around the clever outsider Lily (Analeigh Tipton) and her suave European boyfriend Xavier, whose penchant for Cathar philosophy brings some surprising and unexpected complications to their love-life. It's all played wonderfully deadpan by the supporting cast, much like clueless frat-boy Thor's heart-felt plea to refrain from judging him simply because he's reached college age without having learned to distinguish the colours of the visible spectrum. Carrie MacLemore also impresses as the prim and perky Heather, with her comic timing and delivery of lines replete with airy nonsense.

Many films in recent years have latched onto the notion of ending on a high by deploying a song and dance finale - Napoleon Dynamite, Little Miss Sunshine and Slumdog Millionaire to name but three - and Damsels In Distress manages to top that with not one but two: a doubtless out-of-copyright Fred Astaire number illustrated with a tongue-in-cheek soft-focus campus promenade, and a daffy take on Violet's big ambition - starting a world-spanning dance craze.  Everybody do the Sambolo now!

China's 'son preference'

The sex ratio in many parts of Asia in particular has risen way past biologically possible levels. In China and India, census data indicate that the level is nationally around 120 to 100. By 2020, China will have between thirty and forty million more men than women under the age of 19. To put that figure in perspective, forty million is the total number of American men in that demographic bracket. So, within eight years, China faces the prospect of having the equivalent of the whole young male population of America permanently single. One of the dark things about this is that ‘son preference’, as it’s dryly called in the literature, rises with income and with modernisation – which means it’s been rising sharply. That amounts to many tens of millions of missing girls.


- John Lanchester, 'Marx at 193', London Review of Books, 5 April 2012, p.7-10.

RNZAF 75th anniversary airshow

Photos from yesterday's airshow at RNZAF Ohakea, which entertained thousands from all over the North Island. Certainly there were delays getting into the base, with long traffic tailbacks on roads across the region - there were even reports of traffic backed up at least 30km later in the day. I left Wellington with my friends at 7am and didn't strike delays until a kilometre or two south of Sanson at around 9am, at which point movement virtually halted. But today's Sunday Star Times headline invoking 'traffic chaos' was typically histrionic, for this was an impeccably well-behaved queue with little frustration evident. Only the usual motorcyclists veered onto the wrong side of the road to overtake the stalled line of cars, but aside from that people either enjoyed the start of the show from the roadside or parked up and started walking. We decided to do the same once we'd reached Sanson itself after about a half-hour delay; it was a three kilometre walk there and back, but it was a pleasant day and we were able to get good views of the early fly-pasts, including a breathtaking surprise low level run by four RAAF F/A-18 Hornets, which tore past just above the treetops making a phenomenal amount of noise.

Once inside the airbase the static and aerial displays were all excellent. It was great to see the bulky USAF and RAAF C-17s close up, and to witness the nimble handling of the Hornets later on as they pirouetted in the sky and dashed down the runway at nearly the speed of sound. Sure, it was a bit of a hike back to Sanson afterwards in the hot sunshine. But there were few hold-ups on the drive back south because the RNZAF had extended the airshow opening hours, so everyone didn't try to leave at the same time. Hopefully the air force made a bit of money from the event, because no-one checked our tickets when we entered the base - other less honest folk might have wandered in without paying.  

RAAF F/A-18 Hornets

RNZAF B757

RNZAF P-3 Orion

RAAF Wedgetail

De Havilland Vampire

Grumman Avenger

USAF C-17

RNZAF parachute display team

Roaring Forties Harvards

BAC Strikemaster

RNZAF NH-90

RNZAF A109

RAAF Hornet

USAF C-17

Never hold an unassailable opinion

Irving Thalberg (1899-1936) was a successful film executive at an early age, rising to take charge of Universal Studios' Los Angeles facility at the age of 20 and being made head of production at MGM in 1924 at the age of 24. In his next management role at MGM he produced nearly 400 films, and helped to lay the groundwork for much of the modern cinematic industry. When he died at a young age, President Roosevelt wrote, "The world of art is poorer with the passing of Irving Thalberg. His high ideals, insight and imagination went into the production of his masterpieces."

Interviewed by Malcolm Stuart Boylan of the Los Angeles Times in 1922 in an article rather wordily entitled 'Great Executive Job Held By a Boy of 22 - How Irving Thalberg Became the "Big Boss" of One of the Biggest Institutions in the World', Thalberg listed his five rules for success:

• Never hold an unassailable opinion
• The clearness with which I see my goal determines my speed in reaching it
• Expect help from no one
• Pride goeth before a fall. The height of the pride determines the severity of the bump
• Never take any man's opinion as final.

- Los Angeles Times, 15 October 1922, quoted in Debra Ann Pawlak, Bringing Up Oscar, New York, 2011, p120.