two timid souls
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roosevelt’s passage heralds anyone who “fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. ”
an overly timid lawyer messes up in court and earns the enmity of a wife beating thug. years later the thug is out and the, still timid, lawyer and he are competing for a girl .
two timid souls is one of rené clair' s lesser known works, his last silent feature, but it' s not one that deserves to go unnoticed! some of the middle part was stretching the shy - guy things a little too much, making one almost scream
just say it... !
as this…
if only we had been fearless grasped the clouds in our caress chased the moon and kissed the sun rocked the ocean, became as one seized the moment without regret dared to play russian roulette but when the flashing lightning rolled we heard the warning bells that tolled two timid souls drew apart mouth from mouth and heart from heart to fly like moths to safer shore and with deep regret we are no more .
' the danish girl' is inspired by the real - life love story of transgender pioneer lili elbe and her wife gerda wegener. a tale of identity and love, the film is also a poignant look at a marriage between two likeminded souls who had to let each other go .
the plot: fremissin (pierre batcheff), a v - e - r - y timid attorney, has trouble confessing his love for a woman (vera flory), and that could lead to trouble ahead as her equally timid father (maurice de fraudy) promises her hand in marriage to a pushy suitor (jim gerald) that fremissin once defended for spousal abuse .
much has been said about the hollywood infusion in beyond: two souls and, sure, it could be argued that regular voice actors could have done the jobs of page and willem dafoe (nathan dawkins) just as easily, but the pin - point delivery of all the primaries makes it hard to imagine anyone else in those roles. the dawkins character is a timid soul and his lines need to be said with such care and precision, and dafoe brings that in spades. in fact, there are very few weak players in what needs to be a strong and diverse cast .
, albatros renewed clair’s two - picture - a - year contract, but proceeded to turn down several of clair’s proposals. strictly for himself, clair shot the short film
garadoux has beaten his wife. his lawyer fremissin is young and very shy, and therefore, not very efficient… two years after, garadoux is trying to seduce cecile, but she prefers fremissin…
beyond: two souls is not a very good video game. but that’s not quite the criticism it might sound as given its bold storytelling ambitions the question of interaction and skill - based gameplay are very far down its list of priorities. many games have called themselves interactive movies over the years and beyond definitely qualifies as that, but rather than a coming of age for the genre it calls into question the validity of the whole concept .
i say “viewer” rather than “player”, simply because there are definitely points in beyond: two souls where you’re a passive participant, which, of course, is a common thread in the studio’s titles. however, when beyond allows you to engage with its world and its characters, just like heavy rain before it, it becomes one of the most engrossing gaming experiences, and may even change opinions on what cage is attempting to achieve .
verdict: it’s quickly becoming the passé thing to say, but as we prepare to retire our current - gen systems to make way for the new crop in a month’s time, developers keep on delivering stellar games that verge on some of the best we’ve seen in years. 2013 has undoubtedly been one of video gaming’s greatest years, and beyond: two souls can stand proudly beside the plethora of exceptional titles released over the last twelve months .
taking place over approximately twenty years, beyond: two souls tells the story of a young girl named jodie holmes who is born with a spirit tethered to her. called aiden and independent of thought, his inexplicable appearance at birth sees jodie going into the care of the department of paranormal activity (dpa), who are researching the apparition’s behaviour. both professor nathan dawkins and cole freeman attempt to figure out the potential of the phantom, whilst acting as surrogate fathers to jodie .
garadoux has beaten his wife. his lawyer fremissin is young and very shy, and therefore, not very efficient... two years after, garadoux is trying to seduce cecile, but she prefers fremissin ...
a romantic drama partially set in amsterdam, the story starts out in a mining area in holland where conditions are about as rough as they get. two of the miners, italians federico (lino... see full summary »
garadoux has beaten his wife. his lawyer fremissin is young and very shy, and therefore, not very efficient... two years after, garadoux is trying to seduce cecile, but she prefers... see full summary »
garadoux has beaten his wife. his lawyer fremissin is young and very shy, and therefore, not very efficient... two years after, garadoux is trying to seduce cecile, but she prefers fremissin... (filmaffinity )
what’s particularly patronising is that it often doesn’t matter what you do during an extended interactive sequence. as an experiment we just put the controller down and didn’t do anything through two of the major fight scenes and we won anyway, just in less glorious fashion .
one of those reluctant pioneers was lili elbe, a painter living in copenhagen in the 1920s who underwent what was then a radical procedure to have her penis removed and a vagina constructed for her. but as the danish girl suggests, lili’s desire had nothing to do with being at the forefront of a movement but, rather, a profound need to finally be herself and nullify the original body given to her. this sensitive, sometimes superb drama suffers from a bit of oscar - bait solemnity, but on the whole it’s a touching tale of identity and love. in the process, the danish girl is also a poignant look at a marriage between two likeminded souls who had to let each other go .
for interweaving fantasy and reality. this criticism drove clair to “prove (he) could make a commercial film as bad as everyone else. ” he was nearing the end of a two - picture - a - year deal with the albatros production company and he needed to make another film, when fellow director marcel l’herbier approached him with eugène labiche’s 1851 vaudeville farce
the hokey plot feels like it was ripped from the script of a saturday morning cartoon, and not one of the good ones. at best it might have made an okay - ish episode of the x - files but page’s performance and the incredible visuals hide one - dimensional characters and a plot too timid to properly explore its themes. the attempts at exploring the unanswerable questions of life beyond death come across like an eight–year - old’s first fumbling thoughts in that direction, while at the same time completely ignoring any religious implications .
it’s a joy to see the relationship between the two lead characters unfurl, though. whilst aiden can’t speak, jodie and the attached spirit have an unbreakable bond with one another. aiden does a lot for jodie, but there are occasions where he takes matters into his own hands and disregards her orders. one of the reasons why this is such a powerful twosome, though, is because of the performance of actress ellen page as jodie holmes .
marías & apos; s challenging and seductive technique reaches its pinnacle in & apos; & apos; a heart so white, & apos; & apos; but it is at its most accessible in & apos; & apos; all souls, & apos; & apos; so that & apos; s probably the best place to start in on his work. that novel is also good background reading for & apos; & apos; dark back of time, & apos; & apos; whose narrator is called javier marías and whose subject matter is, among other things, the publication of & apos; & apos; all souls. & apos; & apos; it helps, when reading & apos; & apos; dark back of time, & apos; & apos; to have some curiosity about the man behind the novels, and in the course of reading marías & apos; s other work you will have accumulated numerous questions that this book purports to answer. does marías actually have a wife named luisa? how did he acquire his joint obsessions with the not - yet - born and the too - early - dead? what accounts for both his sense of dread and his sense of humor? what is his father & apos; s real occupation, and what is the family history in relation to the spanish civil war? which characters in his novels are real or based on real people ?
cinema’s influence on video games has grown exponentially over the course of the past ten years. french developers quantic dream have embraced this ever since their 2005 release fahrenheit, and then went further with the divisive heavy rain. the next logicial step for the developer was to cast two big hollywood stars in the primary roles of its playstation 3 swansong and see out the generation with some science - fiction bombast. but as one of the main proponents for more emotional narrative in video games, writer david cage isn’t just going to serve up explosions and fight scenes, and over - saturate the viewer with violence .
redmayne won his best actor oscar for last year’s the theory of everything, and the two movies share several similarities, not the least of which is that both are based on true stories. more crucially, however, both films are love stories in which the happy couples don’t end up together, the narratives detailing how the lovers come to understand that an individual’s desires must ultimately trump the relationship. in the danish girl, this conceit becomes a useful way to dramatize lili’s growing anguish over wanting to claim her femininity. as the film explains it, this wasn’t just a journey that she went on—her wife shared it .
these are the story lines (though that may be precisely the wrong word, for they come to us in circular, disconnected form) of & apos; & apos; all souls, & apos; & apos; & apos; & apos; tomorrow in the battle think on me, & apos; & apos; & apos; & apos; a heart so white & apos; & apos; and & apos; & apos; dark back of time, & apos; & apos; the four novels by the spanish writer javier marías that are now available in english. if you judged by the summaries alone, you might guess that marías & apos; s fiction is ludicrously melodramatic or cruelly comic or tediously postmodern. it is none of these. on the contrary, all four novels possess an odd combination of true sadness and deeply satisfying wit that i have yet to find in any of marías & apos; s english or american contemporaries .
not surprisingly, this is delicate subject matter, and hooper (working with cinematographer danny cohen, composer alexandre desplat and production designer eve stewart) drapes the film in a respectful tastefulness, personalizing lili’s quest in order to emphasize its universal themes. not unlike other period films about fights for equality, the danish girl plays on a viewer’s sense of justice and compassion, painting lili as a sympathetic, quietly heroic figure trying to find contentment. and in redmayne, hooper (who previously directed him in 2012’s les misérables) has found an actor who’s fragile and beautiful, einar’s gorgeous looks commented on by the film’s other characters. there’s an undeniably feminine quality to redmayne’s eyes and lips, but he doesn’t overdo lili’s mannerisms to sell us on her need to transition, nor does the actor attempt to radically transform himself in the role as he needed to do when portraying stephen hawking in the theory of everything. quite the contrary, during lili’s first scenes in public dressed as a woman, redmayne is a bit timid, showing her vulnerably putting out a tentative first step into a new life .
for the most part, in fact, the narrator of a marías novel is the story. in & apos; & apos; a heart so white, & apos; & apos; he is an intelligently curious but somewhat timid figure, overshadowed - - in his own mind and, he fears, everyone else & apos; s - - by his powerful, seductive father, a man named ranz who deals in valuable artworks and has a forger for a best friend. our narrator learns that ranz, before being married to his mother, was briefly married to her older sister, a young woman who killed herself soon after the wedding. it is this death, in other words, that gave rise to the narrator & apos; s own life. (this is exactly the kind of thought a marías narrator is always having; you can see how easily the ghosts slip in .) to solve the mystery behind this suicide, he must use his wife as bait - - or, rather, he must depend on his wife & apos; s increasing closeness to her father - in - law to elicit the desired yet finally unwelcome information .
ere plot summary would give you a mistaken impression. a nameless spaniard spends two years teaching at oxford, has an affair with a married woman and buys a lot of rather obscure old english books. a man in madrid is about to have an affair with a married woman when she drops dead in his arms; he flees the scene and spends the next few months surreptitiously getting to know the surviving members of her family. a simultaneous translator, recently married to another simultaneous translator, uses the growing friendship between his wife and his father to unravel the mystery behind a suicide that took place before he was born. an author reflects on the strange events - - many of them involving eccentric englishmen, others having to do with his own private and public life - - that are connected to the publication of one of his earlier novels .
although this review will concentrate on the two novels that are most recently available, it is difficult, with marías, to segregate any single work from the others. the experience of reading him is cumulative. when you take up a marías novel or even a marías short story, you are at once enclosed in a strange world that becomes increasingly and addictively familiar. names and characters recur: the wives are often called luisa, a slightly suspect friend will be either custardoy or ruibérriz de torres, and there are frequent references to an englishman named john gawsworth and his position as king of redonda. public figures, too, put in an appearance, though franco is not always called franco, and margaret thatcher may simply be identified as a female british leader. the events take place mainly in madrid, but london, oxford, havana, venice and new york are also knowledgeably invoked. time is an active presence, a nearly tangible entity. ghosts flit through; sometimes (as in the title story in the collection & apos; & apos; when i was mortal & apos; & apos ;) they even act as narrators .
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an absolute dada movie. somebody gets killed, his coffin gets out of control and after a chase it stops. the person gets out of it and let everybody who followed the coffin dissapear .
by 1915, a contractor traveling to posadas looking for new staff. among the music and drinks in a bar and shipped to the mill. he is accompanied by a drunken doctor and his daughter. in the mill, injustices and cruelties are accentuated .
charlie is a boot camp private who has a dream of being a hero who goes on a daring mission behind enemy lines .
during a ww2 patrol in the north - african desert, a canadian corporal reminisces about his sweetheart and must lead his platoon when the sergeant gets wounded .
restored in january 2016 through a partnership between the cinematheque francaise and the san francisco silent film festival. the new 4k restoration is based on the rene clair' s original camera negative which is preserved at the cinematheque francaise .
explore popular sci - fi movies and tv shows available to stream with prime video .
a talented batch of new directors redefined the french film scene in the 1920s. artists like jean gremillon, jean renoir and luis bunuel combined avant - garde and commercial film techniques during the post - war years. in 1924, a young rené clair stepped behind the camera to become one of the most prolific creators of screen comedy .
. he found his passion in writing poems and stories, but in the early ‘20s a group of friends convinced him to act in movies. although the cinema did not initially appeal to clair, charlie chaplin’s films inspired him to write his own scenarios. in 1920, he first appeared with loie fuller in
, all of which used double exposures, slow motion, fast motion, unusual camera angles and inventive montage .
in clair’s early critical essays he described a “pure cinema & helip; free of the restrictions and restraints imposed by narrative fiction. ” according to clair, “the only poetry that exists in the cinema is that created by the image itself…a singularly new poetry whose rules are not determined. motion is the primary basis of cinematic lyricism. ”
in the mid ‘20s, several french directors made both avant - garde and commercial films. a number of critics denounced clair’s 1925
). clair was intrigued by the challenge of translating labiche’s “verbal wit into visual humor. ”
( 1928) demonstrates his ability to accept and transform a strong narrative. rather than a static drawing room comedy centered on the play’s dialogue, the film is a marvel of inventive sight gags as it sends its characters on a wild goose chase across paris in search of the hat that will preserve a married woman’s honor and rescue the bridegroom from certain death. clair credited labiche with creating a new genre of comedy that he called “vaudeville - nightmare, ” in which the protagonist encounters threats and fears that we associate with our most “terrifying dreams. ”
in eight days, and the entire production, from script to premiere, took less than five months. when it came to shooting, clair said, “it wasn’t much of a secret. i shot exactly what i knew i would need; whereas some directors were shooting everything they could conceivably turn their lens on. if you control the cutting of the film, god knows you control the film. ”
, which would be a documentary - style version of a hollywood police procedural. albatros could not secure the government’s official patronage for the film, so they pulled the plug on it. clair immediately returned to
. able to produce only one feature film that year for albatros, clair then severed his relations with the company .
received harsh criticism, and clair himself dismissed the film, his last of the silent era, by saying, “it was just a game. ” enthusiasts of clair’s work thought the film was delightful, but even they judged it a minor effort. on the other hand, clair’s biographer celia mcgerr has said
directors were not the only ones to experiment with both avant - garde and commercial cinema. pierre batcheff, the shy trial lawyer frémissin in
. sadly, batcheff’s career came to an abrupt end with his drug - related suicide in 1932 .
clair considered giving up filmmaking and returning to a career as a writer when sound came in. to him, the silent screen spoke to the imagination through rhythm and movement. with sound, “they will talk nonsense in our ears and we will be unable to shut it out. ” in 1929, however, while directing in london, clair watched a few hollywood “talkies” and he became excited by the artistic possibilities for placing sound in opposition to the image, or even using sound to replace image. he achieved worldwide stardom through his sound films
. according to georges charensol, clair had hoped to set up a center for french film production in america, but nothing ever came of it. between the years 1941 and 1946, clair wrote a second novel and directed five hollywood films, including
clair moved back to paris in 1946, and he continued to direct films for twenty years before he returned to his first love, writing. in 1960, rené clair became the first director of motion picture comedies to be elected into the academie française. he followed in the footsteps of eugène labiche, who, despite angry protests, had been the first vaudeville playwright to be elected into the academie française in 1880 .
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the film describes a love triangle between a novice lawyer, his brutal client, and the lovely cécile .
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the nyu chamber orchestra, conducted by gillian b. anderson, performing the world premiere of a new score composed by jaebon hwang, jin kyung lee, jihwan kim, and seon kyong kim. ron sadoff, producer and director, film scoring program at nyu steinhardt .
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this months sight and sound had a column on this, calling it clair' s silent masterpiece and holding it up as a real lost gem. it' s fun, you could well imagine it with harold lloyd or buster keaton in the lead and had some really interesting technical choices but i' m not sure it quite lives up to sight and sound' s claims .
rené clair directs a harold lloyd comedy! okay, this doesn' t feature harold lloyd himself, but a french version taking a lot of inspiration from lloyd' s shy - guy persona. even looked like him from a distance, except pierre batcheff only wore glasses half the time. batcheff is probable most famous today for his role as the man in luis buñuel' s un chien andalou (1929), who in 1932 killed himself, reaching only the age of 24 .
this list collects every film from the starting list that became they shoot pictures don' t they' s 1000 greatest films. this…
films mentioned in andré bazin' s published writings [ incomplete list ]. source: urltoken
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for those who enjoy a good silent film, you’ll seldom find a more a captivating outlet than the stylish san francisco silent film festival (held this year between june 2 - 5). it’s an overwhelming aesthetic treat: the fine period wardrobe of the attendees; the savvy, academic discussions; a very wide range of film literature; and the vintage beauty of the near century old castro theater, resplendent with art deco chandeliers, scrafitto wall designs and a mighty wurlitzer organ .
oh, and let’s not forget the films, for cinema buffs are here for the programming and the best of the lot were to be treasured. much as we’d love to go over the entire four - day run of the festival, we simply don’t have that much space on this site for that. like the years before, we prefer to concentrate on the highlights. what were our criteria? we looked for certain uniqueness in style, a professional sheen in all departments and simply what tickled us. the list below is not an oracle, but a good, surefooted list to stir your interest. take it from there .
varieté (1925) directed by e. a. dupont; starring: emil jannings, lya de putti, warwick ward; musical accompaniment: berklee silent film orchestra
the plot: boss huller (emil jannings), a retired trapeze artist working as a manager for a peepshow of dancing girls, is asked by a friend to become a ward for a young lady, bertha - marie (lya de putti). he puts her to work in his dancing troupe, and as her star grows, so does his obsession with her. after he abandons his family for her, they leave for berlin where she can train as a trapeze artist. discovered by a famed aerialist, artinelli (warwick ward) they head to london where the trio perform to packed houses. but when artinelli develops an attraction to bertha, boss’ jealousy becomes too consuming .
in essence: betrayal, revenge, murder… ripe melodrama for sure, but such pulp storylines packed houses in 1925, and this one was a huge worldwide hit. if your instinct is to feel the tale might be too bombastic for modern empathy, you might be right, but you’d be missing out on some artfully measured delivery here. in dupont’s care, he gives the material a haunting pace and wisely chose master cinematographer karl freund to deliver some fluid, unfettered camera work – especially when he’s employing the subjective view of the acrobats with dizzying lights and spinning long takes. the actors are fine, with the ever robust jannings delivering another performance of fallen dignity and wounded compassion with grace and intensity. a very pleasing piece of germanic fatalism .
the plot: olsen (sivert braekemo), a young sailor, meets ingeborg (gun holmquist), an attractive farm girl, on the road and agrees to help out as a stable hand. conflicts arise when her father (hjalmar peters) a skipper and his assistant, ole (anders henrikson), return home. ole has long had an attraction for ingeborg, and as he and olsen join her father’s sealer in the arctic, they must compete as rivals to decide who is the “stronger, ” and thus, win the heart of their sweetheart .
in essence: given that this festival had played more than their fair share of swedish miserablism over the years, i was more than happy to view this one. the structure is simple enough, with the strength of the male leads (braekemo and henrikson) being tested against the allegorical backdrop of the arctic as they compete for their girl’s affection, but the performances by them are exceptionally good, building the tense, watchful air the men have with each to a stern climax. also the amazing arctic vistas (complete with breaking ice flows and stirring chase scenes in the snow) lift the proceedings with a brooding isolation and naturalism that underscores the excitement. the sparse, somber score performed by the hot club, was cunningly appropriate and unobstrusive .
in essence: i’ve written about this film before and clair is one of my favourite directors. top quality is just that, and master farceur clair delivered one of his most memorable silent films with this one. his gliding, insouciant style makes the material move effortlessly and convey light hearted romanticism that is never ankled by treacle or silliness. his barrage of visual tricks (split screens, flashbacks, montages and breaking the wall with the audience) is a blast to behold and in the end, the spirited performances – with the charming batcheff as the befuddled hero and a top comic foil in gerald – make this one an engaging charmer .
the plot: five years since the murder of one actor during a performance, arthur mchugh (montague love) is the producer who decides to solve the mystery by again staging the play with the remaining cast. during the repeat performance another murder occurs! who could be guilty? the leading players (laura laplante, roy d’arcy)? the stage manager (bert roach)? the short - tempered director (john boles) ?
in essence: the lone american silent to make this list, this one harks back to universal’s earliest forays into the chiller genre that they would develop for years to come. directed by one of the great could - have - beens of cinema lore, paul leni, a german immigrant whose limited but stunning output (waxworks, the cat and the canary, the man who laughs) displayed a seductive visual style and a knack for making the creakiest of material connect with wry touches of humour and heart. sadly, the last warning would be his last film as he died that year, at the age of 44, from blood poisoning from an infected tooth. still, this effort was an imaginative one, with double exposures, frantic cross cutting, terse close - ups and the proper feel and timing for well staged spooking. the pacing never flags and leni lets a game cast have some funny, eye - rolling turns and pratfalls. donald sosin’s charming, jaunty piano score gave the movie an off - handed playfulness that dovetailed the presentation perfectly .
michael t. o’toole is a film journalist, screenwriter and filmmaker. he spent ten years writing for the turner classic movies before taking his talents to film international. his short films can be viewed here .
the basic premise of the story involves a troubled young woman named jodie. she has a mysterious poltergeist - like companion who’s been with her since birth and is both fiercely and jealously protective of her. jodie doesn’t know who or what ‘aiden’ is and, it’s implied, neither does aiden. you play both roles though, controlling aiden from a first person view where he can effortlessly float through walls and interact with highlighted objects – but only within a short distance of jodie .
the game’s story is told in flashback, but not in chronological order as jodie tries to piece back her memories after the main events of the game. there are four main time periods: jodie as an eight - year - old girl being looked after by foster parents and a government scientist played by willem dafoe, jodie’s teenage years at the same facility, her inexplicably bizarre recruitment by the cia to work as an astral - projecting assassin, and her time on the run from her former employees .
we shouldn’t spoil the final act but it gets progressively sillier until what at first had seemed like an interactive take on coming - of - age thrillers such as carrie turns into an awkward mix of james bond and ghostbusters. it’s just as absurd as that sounds and yet somehow manages to take itself deadly seriously, despite out - of - the - blue plot elements and changes in character motivation that follow no internal logic .
french developer quantic dream is best known for 2005’s fahrenheit and 2010’s heavy rain, and although there’s no plot connection beyond shares the same style of storytelling and gameplay. however, beyond does reign in many of heavy rain’s cheaper narrative tricks and the dialogue is noticeably better. the script still isn’t great, but writer and producer david cage seems more aware of his limitations this time and there are only a few lines that are actively cringe - worthy .
actually, there may be far more than that but you’ll probably never notice thanks to the impressively committed performance from ellen ‘juno’ page as jodie. it really is an astonishing example of performance capture and elevates the material well beyond its worth. page is helped by the equally phenomenal graphics, which are amongst the best ever seen on a home console – both in terms of the facial animation and the varied backdrops .
as far as the gameplay and controls go very little has changed. your characters are a little less clumsy when moving around but other than that all your interactions with the game world are through pre - determined quick time event sequences. pushing the right analogue stick in a particular direction is the most common activity, with the combat now introducing a slow motion element where you have to move the stick in the direction of an attack to land a blow .
but unless something in the game world is highlighted with a little white dot (blue for aiden) it might as well not exist. there are no puzzles as such and for a game that’s meant to be all about the characters very little interactive dialogue. instead you’re dragged through each scene by the nose, forced to pantomime onscreen actions as if you’re controlling a virtual marionette .
there is a simplistic stealth element in some of the levels but you never aim your gun, just press a shoulder button to instantly kill someone when the game tells you you’re in range. if you just sit and watch a boxed set of 24 while randomly wobbling a controller in your lap you’d get much the same experience .
the game makes a big show of saying you can play through the whole thing while using a tablet as a controller, or with another player joining in at the same time, and these are great ideas. we really don’t want to imply we’re being snobbish about the game just because it isn’t a straight action title. that’s fine with us, we applaud it. but if it’s not an action game, if its plot and dialogue are the driving force, then they’ve got to be good enough to justify the experience. and they don’t come anywhere close .
beyond’s problems are essentially the opposite of heavy rain: instead of a good idea bogged down by a weak script and mediocre voice - acting beyond is a thoroughly silly and poorly reasoned concept supported by actors and technology it does not at all deserve .
but that’s not to say that the game cannot be affecting. the most emotionally resonate moment is a sequence where jodie is living rough on the streets, which creates a real empathy not just for the character but the plight of the homeless in general. gaming’s ability to let you walk in someone else’s shoes is rarely applied to this sort of social realism and as brief as the sequence is, and as unfeasibly saintly as jodie’s down - and - out friends are, it’s probably the game’s most laudable achievement .
the wider problem with quantic dream’s whole approach is that none of the stories they’re telling justify the interactive element. there is nothing about beyond that is improved by the fact that it is (barely) interactive and apart from the multiple choice ending you have very little direct influence on how things turn out .
as the game went on we began to realise that, particularly with the episodic nature of the storytelling, what it reminded us of was not a movie but a pop - up book. you can play with the small number of interactive elements all you like but the meat of the story is still predetermined and relatively inconsequential compared to the visual novelty of the experience .
in terms of graphics and actors’ performances there’s almost nothing to touch beyond, but in terms of an enjoyable game, or even just an interactive story, it barely even approaches b - movie level .
in short: the visuals are incredible, but for a game obsessed with storytelling at all costs the dopey plot and underwritten characters in no way make up for the lack of gameplay .
pros: incredible graphics, both in terms of the facial animation and backdrops. a superb central performance from ellen page .
cons: silly, tonally inconsistent story and shallow characterisation. very little real gameplay and far more linear than it likes to pretend .
formats: playstation 3 price: £49. 99 publisher: sony computer entertainment developer: quantic dream release date: 11th october 2013 age rating: 16
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i did not want to know but i have since come to know that one of the girls, when she wasn & apos; t a girl anymore and hadn & apos; t long been back from her honeymoon, went into the bathroom, stood in front of the mirror, unbuttoned her blouse, took off her bra and aimed her own father & apos; s gun at her heart, her father at the time was in the dining room with other members of the family and three guests. when they heard the shot, some five minutes after the gift had left the table, her father didn & apos; t get up at once, but stayed there for a few seconds, paralysed, his mouth still full of food, not daring to chew or swallow, far less to spit the food out on to his plate; and when he finally did get up and run to the bathroom, those who followed him noticed that when he discovered the blood - spattered body of his daughter and clutched his head in his hands, he kept passing the mouthful of meat from one cheek to the other, still not knowing what to do with it .
the narrator of & apos; & apos; a heart so white & apos; & apos; is capable of strong passion - - particularly in regard to his wife - - but we hear from him mainly about the passions of others. he is the kind of man who watches life through a window, either from a room looking down onto the street (as he does on his honeymoon in havana) or from street level, generally at night, looking up at a lighted window (as he does during a trip to new york, when he is waiting to go back to the apartment of his friend berta, who is having a tryst with a man she met through a video introduction service). and in this he is typical of all javier marías narrators: they inevitably adopt this peering pose at some point or another. it is a pose that is also a philosophical position - - a reflection on how much or how little people can really know about one another; a commentary on suspicion and guesswork and, finally, helplessness in the face of events .
but again, i have created the wrong impression if i have made the marías narrator sound like a voyeur. he is intimately involved in the events he describes, and he is also intimately involved with us, his readers. like henry james & apos; s or marcel proust & apos; s, his sinuous, flattering, seemingly endless sentences presume - - even insist - - that we are as subtle and intelligent as the author. and their subject matter is proustian or jamesian as well - - marías is interested not so much in the violent death or the adulterous love affair itself as in how we think and feel about such events when we contemplate them beforehand or consider them afterward. (that this jamesian quality has been preserved in english is a great tribute to marías & apos; s translators, esther allen and especially margaret jull costa. but it may also be attributable to the fact that marías & apos; s fiction in some way comes from english: he has done spanish translations of sterne, hardy, stevenson and faulkner, among others. )
you will come away from & apos; & apos; dark back of time & apos; & apos; with some answers (there is no wife named luisa, indeed no wife at all; marías had a 3 - year - old brother who died before he himself was born; his father, also a writer, was once imprisoned and nearly executed by franco; john gawsworth is real, but the oxford booksellers called the alabasters derive more from dickens than from their real - life counterparts, the stones), but whether these answers are true is one of the questions that are left unanswered. to give but a single small example: & apos; & apos; dark back of time & apos; & apos; mentions that marías, like john gawsworth before him, has become king of redonda. if you go to the web site of the redonda foundation, at urltoken, you will see that there is actually a dispute involving javier marías & apos; s sovereignty over this tiny caribbean island. the english - speaking disputant employs the word & apos; & apos; impostor, & apos; & apos; which happens to be a favorite marías word. has marías himself set up the whole dispute - - perhaps the whole redonda site - - as yet another literary game? probably not: marías claims in & apos; & apos; dark back of time & apos; & apos; to be completely computerless, and for some reason i believe him. but the uncertainty is nonetheless tantalizing. it is impossible to know, with anything marías has touched, who is whose fictional creation .
like the work of jorge luis borges, of which it may superficially remind you, & apos; & apos; dark back of time & apos; & apos; deals repeatedly and amusingly with the relationship between reality and the written word. but where borges is cold, marías is warm: his breath is in our ear, his urban reality is essentially our urban reality, and - - despite his interest in ghosts - - he is very much alive right now. he has seen the same movies we have, danced to the same music, read the same books, gone to the same kinds of restaurants and racetracks and academic meetings. he is even capable, at times, of anticipating our thoughts and memories, as if he were performing a version of a simultaneous translation on us, rendering our hidden suspicions into mutually acknowledged words .
it is a rare gift, to be offered a writer who lives in our own time but speaks with the intensity of the past, who comes with the extra richness lent by a foreign history and nonetheless knows our own culture inside out. yet, strangely, javier marías - - who is famous in spain and garlanded with prizes from the rest of europe - - remains almost unknown in america. what are we waiting for? all the gifts we are offered in life (as marías himself is fond of pointing out) are fleeting ones, easily lost or ignored or undervalued and only regretted when they are no longer available to us. it & apos; s high time we accepted this one.
two timid souls ( french : les deux timides ) is a 1928 french silent film comedy directed by rené clair , and based on the 1860 play les deux timides by eugène labiche . it was made by the films albatros production company . the sets were designed by the art director lazare meerson . 
two timid souls (french: les deux timides) is a 1928 french silent film comedy directed by rené clair, and based on the 1860 play les deux timides by eugène labiche. it was made by the films albatros production company. the sets were designed by the art director lazare meerson.
two timid souls (french: les deux timides) is a 1928 french silent film comedy directed by rené clair, and based on the 1860 play les deux timides by eugène labiche. it was made by the films albatros production company. the sets were designed by the art director lazare meerson.