Civ 5- far too civilised

Game review for you this week: Civilisation V. Anyone with ears will know how much I liked Civilisation IV, and how little I think of its shiny new younger brother.

The Civ games allow you to create a civilization from scratch, building farms, mines and factories to generate gold. You interact with other civilisations, trading with them or crushing them in nuclear war. The whole thing is very pleasant and reassuring, and a terrific ego boost for anyone who isn’t an emperor.

Civilisation IV blew my mind. It allows you to do all kinds of things, and yes, the user interface looks a little as if, with a weekend and the right know-how you could do it yourself, but it made me feel, for the first time in my life, that I knew something about games.

Civ 4 gives the player an enormous amount of control about the type of empire they want to create. For example, picking Genghis Khan as the face of your empire will give you advantages in both war and philosophy. Researching different technologies give you different advantages, such as sailing or the ability to build the UN.

A typical game for me would include founding at least two major religions, allowing them to spread both within and outside my empire. Then, I would research weaponry that far outstripped that of my enemies. I’d take some cities, expand my civilisation to ridiculous proportions and claim a well-earned victory.

See, the only way I can illustrate that a Civ 5 is actually rather lacklustre is by telling you about all of the colour and depth it misses out on. Diplomacy, though better representing that in the real-world, has been oversimplified. There is less distinction between different leaders, and let’s not forget, an awful lot less leaders to choose from.

Religion is dead and war is costly, which makes my style of gameplay somewhat redundant. What’s more, the world is littered with city-states, who make unreasonable demands and take unfeasibly large amounts of gold to keep quiet.

Civ 4 had a variety of different ways to win, but in Civ 5, you are shackled by the fact that world wonders give the player a ridiculous advantage.

To be honest, the jury’s still out in some respects, but the fact that Civ 4 appears to have captured my heart the first time I played it bodes ill for the sequel. It’s probably too nostalgic of me, but... it’s just not the same. Provisionally, 3 stars.

LS Radio, or How to Launch Something Properly

Since the launch of Artstastic several weeks ago, very little has happened. What didn't help was starting my second year of university immediately after launching.

Also, I didn't have an amazing launch party at Baa Bar. LS Radio did though.

Emerging from the ashes of Icon Radio with style with free shots on the door and amateur DJ sets, it was, quite honestly, the best party I have been to all year. If the actual radio station can live up to the launch, then pure awesome is going to be broadcast.

But what made that party so great? I have some theories.

1- The venue - Baa Bar has brilliant decor and drinks in all the colours of the rainbow. It has a good atmosphere, particularly when it's not full of 16-year-olds who think they're badass. Drinks deals also look pretty cheap, and the prospect of a go on the Wheel of Misfortune is terribly exciting.

2- The food - On each table were little bowls of lollies and popcorn. Yes, we're not five. But things were easier when we were. Popcorn is also surprisingly difficult to throw at people, as we discovered.

3- The music - Amateur by name, but not by nature. The music was largely played by amateur DJs who just happened to be friends of the attendees. If a crowd can't be pleased by their friends, who can they be pleased by?

If you didn't go, feel jealous. And yes, I have just reviewed a party in an arts blog. Five stars.

Resistible Brecht

Anyone wandering past the Liverpool Everyman recently cannot have failed to notice the rather striking posters for a new translation of Bertold Brecht's The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. For anyone who's missed them, it runs until the 22nd October.

The performance was visually impressive, with ill-lit backgrounds and bright spotlighting. White makeup and lipstick caricatured the actors' faces, and turned Ui  into, at least to my eyes, the spit of Hitler. Therein lies the problem. It was far too easy.

I'm going to say things that will upset people now. Not because I have an unsettling opinion, but just because I have an opinion.

This play is testament to the cowardice of Brecht, both in his failure to deliver satire to the people who needed it most, and also in the way he pandered to the needs of the many by making the play an easy ride. After every scene, any hint of allegory is undone when a ticker rolls across the top of the arch telling the audience the parallels in German history.

A true satire should be challenging. It should be played within earshot of the character it satirises, no matter how dangerous a beast. It should be obvious enough for the audience to wonder, yet subtle enough for the playwright to escape unharmed.

The Resistible Rise is as subtle as having Hitler = Silly tattooed on your face.

It was all too obvious, from the demon ticker, which flickered into life just to clear up any misunderstanding you may have had about who represented who, (Roma = Rohm, Giri = Goering) to the caricatured Ui, to the persistent and unnecessary knob gags. Yes, those too.

People like this play. It is superficially intelligent. The audience is made to feel clever for noticing that the bloke with the side parting and the toothbrush moustache is acting an awful lot like Hitler. I must admit that the ending, representing the Nuremberg rally, was particularly poignant. Perhaps it was the fact that the ticker forgot to tell us what it was.

It would have been a brilliant way to end things, however, in what I expect was a little bit of self-indulgent self-expression from the translator, a four-line poem scrolled across our view, warning us that the same beast that brought us Hitler was coming back.

Sorry, where? Here? Surely they didn't just compare post-Woolworths Britain to the Weimar Republic? Oh, but they did.

If you can't tell, that ticker has annoyed me no end, particularly that bit of unwanted, and frankly unsympathetic, creativity at the end.

Hitler was portrayed as a clown. It reminded me of The Great Dictator, and personally I was looking for something more highbrow. Ui is violent, and achieves his rise through bloodshed alone. Hitler was more complex. He looked for scapegoats. He won favour by being charming, not threats.

The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui is not a warning about the re-emergence of fascism. It cannot serve as such. If there is another Hitler out there, we won't see him coming. We'll think he's a nobody until it's far too late, because he'll have us then.

So, Brecht has disappointed me. The cast did their best, and despite a few slips on the Chicago accent and minor irritations when it came to diction, all was well. It was enjoyable, too, I can't deny that. The way things moved was pleasing in a way I can't describe.

Despite not liking the play as a play, I would recommend it as a spectacle. The ticket prices are value for money. If you do go though- tell them who sent you. Three stars.

Argh!

Oh, it's that time of the week again, isn't it? I have to confess, I've not done anything at all in the last week. Nothing at all. I've not watched any films, read any books, listened to any music. Work has certainly drained my creative soul.

In arts news, one of the Bs* from ABBA is mighty relieved that he won't have to hear Dancing Queen, Waterloo or Fernando used in an advert for Twix, Pampers or the BNP. It's some copyright issue, whereby performers lose the rights to their work 50 years after its written, whereas songwriters who don't perform their work only lose the rights after they're dead and frankly don't care any more.

One of the main guys campaigning for more milk out of his cash cows is Sir Cliff Richard, who is now incredibly relieved that the ruling has been changed, and that his recordings will continue to be used only for Christian purposes for another 20 years. Cliff will presumably use that twenty years to challenge the present ruling.

The practical upshot for you and me is this: all that old music we were looking to start playing commercially without asking anyone? Can't do that any more. Not until 2044, when the floodgates will open to ABBA-obsessed advertising executives, and everything from abaci** to zebras will be marketed to us while Waterloo jangles on in the background.

See, this was one of the Bs issue with the rights expiring. He didn't want to hear it on an advert. I'm not sure that's what convinced the EU Council to change their mind, but if it did, I see their point.

I don't want to be grumpy, but I am, and I've got to live with it, and if you've read this far, so do you. My point is this: 70 years is a very long time. If you're not Cliff Richard, who is exempt from the ravages of time due to being on first-name terms with Jesus, it's pretty much a lifetime. Seventy years after I write and perform my number one hit "10 Minutes Longer Than It Needed To Be and Lacking Structure", nobody will remember or care.

This ruling effectively stops the music being used ever again, unless the artist condones the purpose and has been paid handsomely for his vocal/pianoic*** efforts. I don't really think that can be a good thing.

And now, what you've really been waiting for: the footnotes.

*I do know which one of the Bs it is. If your issue is with my punctuation, Bs is correct, as there are two Bs in ABBA but only one Bjorn and only one Benny. I do know which one it is, but I'm not telling you, for no other reason than I don't really feel like it today. Think of it as a treasure hunt, lacking any obvious material or even spiritual reward.
**I have no idea if this is the correct Latin plural of the word abacus. I never did Latin. If you did, and I've got the wrong declension, please email me and set me straight. I'm just trying to overuse Latin plurals really. I think it adds spice, even if it's not any more right. I had fun saying "spatulae" the other day. Again, don't know if it's right, but not excessively fussed.
***You try thinking of an adjective meaning "the manner in which things are done by a person who is playing the piano". If I use it often enough, it will become real.

A quick hello, then on with the show

Welcome to Artstastic, your home-made view on the arts. From news to reviews and beyond, Sachtastic will aim to bring you everything you wanted or needed to know about creative goings-on. The launch, I'm afraid was mildly delayed, but I hope to be posting every Tuesday.

A film review, then, for starters. Four Lions. It's a film I've been wanting to see for ages, since I looked up Benedict Cumberbatch after he stunned me so in BBC's Sherlock. Cumberbatch, incidentally, does not feature excessively in the film.

On paper, Four Lions was a recipe for a terrible film. It's about suicide bombers, yet it's a comedy. There are few less funny subjects than suicide bombing, but they still thought this was a viable topic. It could have gone so horribly wrong.

Then again, it really didn't. It worked perfectly. The motivations of the would-be Jihadists are well-presented; though the characters are daft, they're fully formed. Their stupidity seems to originate from stupidity rather than from poor scriptwriting. It's hard to explain without spoiling it really, but though the characters were often stupid, they were only as stupid as it is possible to be within the realms of human experience. Also, the fact that incompetence was rife on all sides -the Jihadists, the politicians, the police - made it somehow fair. As long as the police were too incompetent to notice the terrorists, it was perfectly acceptable that the terrorists were too incompetent to disguise the nature of their activities.

It didn't just work, either. It was bloody hilarious in a way that just makes me want to tell you to watch it. The beginning of the film is made up of "bloopers" of the group making Jihadi video wills, which sets the pace for the rest of the film. It's a clever film about idiots.

For me, a key thing which made this film not only funny, but good, is the fact that the central character, aside from wanting to be a suicide bomber, is a perfectly balanced, perfectly human person. The film also looks at his family life, along with the differences between his and his brother's interpretations of Islam.

This film was made to a budget, and occasionally that shows, but not often enough to detract from it in any way. It is absolutely a 5 star film, and the only truly original piece of cinema I have seen in a long time. I hope people realise how good it is. Watch or... well, the alternative is unthinkable.