'Looper' gets a little stuck

The future is given a more realistic feel, despite the invention of time travel, in the latest science fiction thriller, “Looper.” A young man gets into the “looping” business, literally meets his match, and is then thrust into an internal struggle of moral values but the boiling excitement stirred up in the first half of the movie reduces to a simmer near the end.

Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) fights to survive against his
zealous future self (Bruce Willis) in the sci-fi thriller "Looper."

“Looper” stars indie actor turned Hollywood heartthrob, Joseph Gordon-Levitt (“Inception”) playing a younger version of Bruce Willis’ (“Die Hard”) character, Joe. Joe’s current occupation is to kill people sent back in time from the year 2072. He is a looper. Disposing of a body in the future is a hard thing to do so the mob sends their trash to the past, and the loopers take care of the dirty work. After the looper makes the kill, they collect their sum in silver, which is attached to the victim’s back. When a looper closes their loop and throws in the towel, their self from the future is sent back in time, killed, and then they have 30 years to do whatever they want. Well, Joe never threw in the towel, but ends up with a problem when his older self is in front of him. Before he can even try to calculate the problem, he is quickly ambushed by future Joe and the chase is on. He must kill his future self before his employer kills him for not closing his loop.

The violence in “Looper” is similar to the violence in the recent sleeper-hit “Drive.” It takes the audience by surprise and adds to the film instead of muddling it up. People are cut up, shot up and blown apart throughout this movie, and all the death affects the lives of both Joes. Besides the violence, there is not much else that is shocking. The story is not terribly complex because it is stated immediately that the movie is not going in that direction. When both Joes finally run into each other, present Joe starts to question how future Joe will be affected by present Joe’s actions and he quickly interrupts him and yells, “That’s not important!” Which is true, in a way.

The story’s simplicity is the source of both strength and weakness. Present Joe narrates the story explaining that in the present day, telekinesis is a power in some people but it never really goes past levitating small objects. The drastic gap between the wealthy and the poor is there, but the most futuristic they have gotten is floating motorcycles. People look the same for the most part, and are not running around in weird cylinder-shaped clothing and neon colored dresses as most futuristic movies tend to do, pulling the reality straight out of the film. It helps the audience feel grounded. The subtle attention to production design is nice, but may have left the film lacking in the story department. There is really no emotional connection to present Joe compared to future Joe. Present Joe just comes across as a punk until the last two minutes of the film. This is a shame because his character had almost an hour to grow, but maybe that just was not enough time. This, though, is definitely is not Gordon-Levitt’s fault. He gives an amazing performance in the first half of this movie since he looks and talks like Willis. In the opening monologue it actually sounded like Willis was doing the voiceover. Joe barely speaks in the film and, when he does, Gordon-Levitt does every little tick and word pronunciation that Willis would do. It seemed as if he followed Willis around with a video camera and recorded every single movement he made when talking and contemplating and mimicked it perfectly. But that is just it, he mimicked it, it did not feel like he put himself in it that much. Thus, in the last half of the film, he fell flat and slipped right back into his usual Gordon-Levitt delivery. Since he is a Hollywood hotshot now, his performances are more recognizable, and in this a film like this, where he had a chance to truly disappear into a role, he fell just a little bit short.

Along with Gordon-Levitt’s almost perfect performance, “Looper” has its story problems. Lacking character development and even character connection are two aspects of any type of storytelling that cannot be looked over. Besides connection issues, it dealt with the time-traveling well enough. It is no “Terminator,” but it is a sure step above “The Butterfly Effect.” “Looper” receives 3 out of 5 stars.

Watkins entrances PUC

Magic has always been a form of entertainment that can sink or swim when it comes to audience reactions. Either the magician gets a cooperative audience and successfully takes them on a journey through a world of illusions and mind-defying tricks, or the act simply falls flat and leaves the audience bored. Actor and professional award-winning magician Dennis Watkins proved that he is not just a magician but an entertainer that will keep the audience on their toes on Sept. 28 in Alumni Hall.

Tianna Harrison, daughter of PUC Writing Center Coordinator Janine Harrison, happily performs a ring trick with Dennis Watkins.

 Lots of PUC students, children and members of the community packed into Alumni Hall to witness a true magician at work. Watkins immediately immerses his audience in the show by picking a few lucky people from the crowd to participate in a current trick and one that would be performed later. By automatically attaching the crowd to his tricks, he quickly builds a rapport with the audience. His comedic bits and friendly demeanor add to the warm stage presence he gives off. Since there were so many children in the crowd, he often played off of their antics, whether it was them trying to ruin his tricks or if they were being too disruptive. He did it in a manner that was funny, but did not belittle or scold them. Eventually, Watkins moved to his more radical tricks, which kept the crowd exclaiming and giving applause all night. When Tory Shrum, a freshmen nursing major, was asked what her favorite trick was she replied, “I can’t pick just one, but I liked the one with the girl’s head!” This trick involved participation from the audience to work successfully.

Watkins called an audience member to the stage, and it just happened to be a 7 year-old girl. As she approached the stage he told her to sit in a chair facing the audience and not to move an inch. He pulled out a hypnotizing wheel and started to spin it. “Stare directly into the middle of the middle,” he proclaimed to the crowd, “do not avert your eyes. Keep focused in the middle even if it feels like you are being pulled into a tunnel.” He counted down from five and told the audience to then look at the girl’s head. The outcome caused most audience members to gasp and immediately break out into applause. “I have never seen anything like this before,” Patrice McBee, sophomore accounting major, said. McBee’s favorite trick performed was the mind-reading, or blindfold trick that Watkins performed. Again, Watkins pulled from the audience for this mind-blowing illusion. He called a man and woman to the stage and proceeded to have them help him set up the act. He placed two half-dollar coins on pieces of duct tape and placed them over both eyes. He then applied more duct tape around his eyes, a blindfold and another piece of duct tape on top of the blindfold. Still blindfolded he told the male helper to grab three personal items from people in the crowd. After receiving the items, he told the man to hand them to the woman, behind his back, and then told the woman to hold the object in front of his hand, not allowing him to ever touch the item. The three items were a cell phone, a compact and a wristband. Not only did he guess every single one, he described them as if he did not even have the blindfold on.

 Simply amazing would be an understatement of Watkins’s performance. Interactive showcasing would be a closer statement but still not right enough. As soon as he began to talk, Watkins threw his personality and skill out to the audience. He was able to energize the kids and have the adults believing in magic again.
 On October 12th at 8 p.m., mentalist Christopher Carter will be attempting to read minds in Alumni Hall.

'Tekken' delivers a low blow

With 41 playable characters to choose from, it is hard to see how a game could get old so easily. Somehow “Tekken Tag Tournament 2” manages to do this. It took about 12 years for it to come out, and it is a non-canon storyline so the writers probably would not have to do as much work when it comes to the story. But Tekken leaves gamers high, dry and empty inside because, like many recent fighting games, more emphasis is put on online gameplay rather than single player.. “Tekken Tag 2” is slightly based on “Tekken 6” but does not follow the storyline of the normal Tekken franchise, which allows characters that have died or are no longer featured in the series to appear in this game. The general concept involves fighters from all over the world coming together to fight to become the King of Iron Fist. The player gets to use all types of people and even creatures to fight against opponents, either one on one or in a team up with another character of their choice.

“Tekken Tag 2” was announced in 2010 by the director Katsuhiro Harada via Twitter, saying he had an announcement at Tokyo Game Show. Many fans thought it had to do with another “Tekken” game or more news on the “Tekken x Street Fighter” franchise, but it was quite the contrary. The anticipation rose as memorable and fan favorite characters were announced to be on the roster, even including characters that have not been seen in the franchise for 12 years. Despite its upgrade to beautiful graphics and an amazing soundtrack, this game falls flat on its face. In addition to standard fighting modes, “Tekken” games usually benefit from added side modes that players can unlock and enjoy. For example, in “Tekken Tag Tournament,” after beating the game a certain amount of times players would receive “Tekken Bowl,” a bonus bowling game that featured characters from the Tekken universe.

 Ever since “Tekken 3” there was a beat-em-up mini game attached to the main game, but that is not found in this installment. “Tekken Tag Tournament” had such a huge cult following and legacy behind it that the seemingly small amount of effort to make this one memorable is somewhat baffling. Regardless of this issue, the game does provide some momentary entertainment. Besides team battles, time attack and survival which come with almost every “Tekken” game, there is a new mode called “Fight Lab.” In this mode players are able to build a robot named Combot. The player can adjust Combot’s fighting style to match any character in the game. Combot can have one character’s kick and another character’s punch, for example. This is a very interesting feature that could allow a player to create their own copycat character. This is unlike previous games which feature a wooden training dummy character called Mokujin who changes to the character it wants to portray in between rounds. One improved feature this time around was the ability to perform attacks with characters in tag mode. Players can either hit the opponent and switch out with the other character, or they can have the other partner assist them. While in the assist mode, heavy damage and a string of attacks can be delivered to an opponent, which gives off more of an arcade vibe. There are different ways a player can perform an attack while swapping out their character. They can either throw their opponent or have the entering fighter attack, or simply hit the opponent and have the character coming in attack them once more, creating a chain of attacks.

The game is far from catastrophic, but its weak points are very visible. It seems as though instead of introducing new techniques, trying to add features or doing something new, they just slapped every character from the previous games into a “new” game and expected that to be enough. The focus on online content these days is understandable. More people want to test their skills without leaving their rooms, gain achievements or even build a team and conquer the boards. But it should not draw away from the time that can be put into actually battling and practicing offline. Not every single gamer in the world likes playing online with other people. A lot of people still play games with local friends, not some random person who has logged up 85 hours of game play and will mutilate their competition in the blink of an eye. “Tekken Tag Tournament 2” receives 3 out of 5 stars.