Category: Mini-Reviews

BioShock and Its Ayn Rand-Inspired Themes

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Kotaku Managing Editor Brian Crecente has written a lengthy and interesting article — “No Gods or Kings: Objectivism in BioShock” — on the intersections between the new BioShock game and its Ayn Rand-inspired themes.
Ayn Rand Institute President Yaron Brook is quoted several times in the article.
The article begins:

The sunken city of Rapture, a world of art deco aesthetics, neon sales pitches and looming architecture, is home to more than just murderous splicers and lumbering Big Daddys, it’s also a surprising breeding ground for introspection.
BioShock may have been conceived as a study in nuance, a place for gamers to discover and explore at their own pace, but its dip into the ethical morass of Ayn Rand’s objectivist philosophies has brought her beliefs back into the mainstream spotlight and even piqued the interest of the Ayn Rand Institute’s president, Yaron Brook.
Brook, a former member of the Israeli Army military intelligence and award-winning finance professor at Santa Clara University, first took notice of the game when he discovered his 18-year-old son playing it. It’s a fact that didn’t bother Brook despite his son’s objectivist beliefs and the game’s not so positive take on the philosophy.
“My son has to find his own way in life,” he said. “There are certain games I wouldn’t want him to play, like Grand Theft Auto, games that celebrate criminality. But a game that might lead him to think and have him challenge his ideas, I’m fine with.
“Luckily for me he doesn’t agree with the game, he still seems to believe in objectivism”
Objectivism as a central theme in BioShock was actually the result of a confluence of ideas and happenstance. The heart of the game started, as do most of Ken Levine’s games, as the answer to a problem.
“How do we make an environment that feels really complete?” Levine said. “That’s where we came up with a space ship for System Shock. In BioShock we said what can we do similarly and simulate fully as we could a space ship.”
The answer was an underwater city, but that simply formed the game’s outline, the walls that kept a player from remembering they were in a confined space.
Levine wondered what sorts of people might live in an underwater city, what would drive someone from the rest of the world.
“I started thinking about utopian civilizations,” he said. “You have these traditional utopian notions. I’ve always been a fan of utopian and dystopian literature.
“The more I started thinking about making a compelling place and compelling villain, someone who had a real concrete set of beliefs made sense.”
Enter Objectivism. Levine said he had been reading Ayn Rand’s books over the past few years and was fascinated with her “intensity and purity of belief.”
“The surety she has in her beliefs was fascinating,” he said. “She almost spoke like a super villain, like Dr Doom.”
And her characters, Levine believed, projected that same intensity.
“I started to wonder, what happens when you stop questioning yourself? It becomes a set of accepted truths, instead of something you’re constantly using in the lab of reality.”

Keep reading for much more, including Yaron Brook’s explanation of why the game’s characters are unnecessarily flawed.

Walter Donway: "The Struggle for Poetry's Soul"

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Walter Donway just sent the following announcement, which explains the significance of his essay as well as anything I might hope to write:

My brief essay “The Struggle for Poetry’s Soul” just went up on the popular Atlasphere web site. In the essay, I try to suggest why it is important to restore the traditional craft and enduring values of poetry, being lost today in the blizzard of “free verse,” deliberate difficulty, and rejection of popular values such as rhyme and storytelling in so much of contemporary poetry.
With whatever talent I may have, I am trying to explore the diversity, power, and beauty of the traditional discipline and forms of poetry in Touched By Its Rays.
As I suggest in my initial poem in that book, “A Prelude,” perhaps some young person of real talent, and with a whole life ahead of him or her, will read my poems and envision what a great poet might accomplish in days ahead. That is one meaning of Touched By Its Rays.
Of course, a great many contemporary poets, and nearly all critics and teachers of poetry, would be deeply offended by my remarks.

New Bob Burg Book a Top Seller at Amazon

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Atlasphere columnist Bob Burg has co-authored a new book titled The Go-Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea.
The book topped out at #7 overall at Amazon and is currently #1 in the “Success,” “Motivational,” and “Business Management” categories.
The book is a parable about business success. I’ve not read it yet, but its theme is that changing your focus from getting to giving — putting others’ interests first and continually adding value to their lives — ultimately leads to unexpected returns.
It’s an unconventional take on selfishness, which may be controversial among admirers of Rand’s work.
If that sounds like it’s up your alley, definitely check it out.
For samples of Burg’s articles at the Atlasphere, check out “Default Settings to Big Government” and “Bringing Your Business to the Next Level.”
UPDATE: The book also hit #6 on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list.

Quotes from Clarence Thomas's Biography

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

From Atlasphere member Greg Feirman:

I’ve been reading Clarence Thomas’s autobiograpy and he seems to be a big Rand fan.
I read Sowell’s Atlasphere review of the book.
But Thomas also explicitly references Rand in his book:
“It was around this time that I read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. Rand preached a philosophy of radical individualism that she called Objectivism. While I didn’t fully accept its tenets, her vision of the world made more sense to me than that of my left wing friends.”
– pg. 62, when Thomas was approximately the summer before his senior year of college at Holy Cross
“… I also reread The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, whose scathing criticisms of the dangers of centralized government impressed me even more after working in Washington.”
– pg. 187, late 1985 (37 years old), when Thomas was heading up the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
Unbelievable story. Great book.

UPDATE: More from Greg:

Also, if you haven’t seen the 60 Minutes episode with Thomas, I recommend watching it.
Clarence Thomas has such a great presence. You can feel it in his writing too. One book about him it titled Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul Of Clarence Thomas.
But the impression given from reading his book and seeing him is the complete opposite: a man of such pure integrity and clear conscience that you can almost feel that his words are perfect expressions of his inner principles and conviction.
In the interview, one of the quotes that really stood out for me was:
“It is always worth it to stand on principle no matter what the ultimate goal is. Wrong is wrong, even if it’s over a penny.”
It reminds me of the great scene in The Fountainhead:
“Everybody would say you’re a fool….. Everybody would say I’m getting everything….”
“You’ll get everything society can give a man. You’ll keep all the money. You’ll take any fame or honor anyone might want to grant. You’ll accept such gratitude as the tenants might feel. And I – I’ll take what nobody can give a man, except himself. I will have built Cortlandt.”
Clarence Thomas is a modern day Roark in public life.
He is truly a great American.

I would have to agree.

Vadim Perelman's "House of Sand and Fog"

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Last week I watched the DVD of Atlas Shrugged movie director Vadim Perelman’s House of Sand and Fog.
Since he’s going to be the proverbial “god” of the new Atlas Shrugged movie, I figured it would be worth witnessing his previous cinematic work first-hand.
This is a dark movie, no question about it. I can easily imagine some Ayn Rand fans liking the movie, and others actively disliking it.
The writing, acting, and directing are excellent — but it would be hard, and an act of questionable integrity, to squeeze a feel-good movie out of such a tragic novel.
So instead you’re left with a gorgeously filmed and produced adaptation of a sad and disturbing story.
Personally I would recommend the movie highly — but only to someone with a fair tolerance for psychologically dark films.
If you do rent the DVD, I highly recommend watching it again, a second time, with the “commentary” feature turned on.
I’m not normally a big fan of watching the commentary for a movie — but, in this case, it was very well done and I found my appreciation for the movie deepening even more.
The commentary is by Perelman, Kingsley, and the author of the original book — who was positively beaming about Perelman’s adaptation, for whatever that’s worth.
…And it’s probably worth a lot, because it speaks to Perelman’s ability to remain true to a novelist’s vision, while still making a credible and compelling screen adaptation of his work.
I hope to write a fuller review of this movie for the Atlasphere one week soon.

Yuma and Brave One: Good Bets in the Theater?

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Here are two new movies in the theaters that seem potentially very interesting to fans of Ayn Rand’s uncompromising novels: The Brave One (starring Jodie Foster) and 3:10 to Yuma (starring Russell Crowe and Christian Bale).
Tomorrow we’ll be posting an excellent review of Yuma by Atlasphere columnist Allison Taylor. Judging from her review, it’s an absolute must-see.

Ayn Rand and Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" Thesis

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

From a new article at Desicritics.org titled Book Review: Malcolm Gladwell and Ayn Rand:

[I]f you simply dig a little under the words Gladwell uses, such as “instincts,” “snap judgments,” and “thinking without thinking,” what you will realize is that Gladwellâ??s thesis is not novel in any significant sense, at least not to someone who is well-versed with Ayn Randâ??s philosophy of Objectivism.
Ayn Rand had decades ago stated that one must “trust your subconscious” while engaged in the task of writing. However, like much else of what Rand said, this little instruction to trust oneâ??s own subconscious mind can be extended beyond the context of writing and applied to practically every realm and action in life.

See the full article for more on the parallels between Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism and Malcolm Gladwell’s thesis in Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.

Andy Garcia's "The Lost City" Is Excellent

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Earlier this week my wife and I watched The Lost City (June 2006), starring Andy Garcia, who also produced and directed the movie.
It’s was best movie I’ve seen in months.
The film is Garcia’s own personal love letter to Cuba — the Cuba that existed before Fidel Castro’s “revolution.” It is a pulsating world of lively music, palpable sensuality, and tight-knit families.
The writing and acting are excellent throughout, and the cinematography is spectacularly beautiful. The movie is highly stylized — the opposite of naturalism, you could say.
Fidel Castro really takes it in the chin in this film. Predictably, mainstream movie reviewers panned the movie for its failure to conform to Hollywood’s preferred version of Cuban history, i.e., that Castro was leading a “people’s revolution,” etc.
Humberto Fontova — who was born in Cuba, like Garcia — wrote an article for NewsMax characterizing the left’s reaction to the movie:

Earlier, many film festivals refused to screen it. Now many Latin American countries refuse to show it. The film’s offenses are many and varied. Most unforgivable of all, Che Guevara is shown killing people in cold blood. Who ever heard of such nonsense? And just where does this uppity Andy Garcia get the effrontery to portray such things? The man obviously doesn’t know his place.

And:

Andy Garcia and screenwriter Guillermo Cabrera Infante knew full well that “the working poor” had no role in the stage of the Cuban revolution shown in the movie. The anti-Batista rebellion was led and staffed overwhelmingly by Cuba’s middle and, especially, upper class. To wit: In August of 1957 Castro’s rebel movement called for a “national strike” against the Batista dictatorship — and threatened to shoot workers who reported to work. The “national strike” was completely ignored.
Another was called for April 9, 1958. And again Cuban workers blew a loud and collective raspberry at their “liberators,” reporting to work en masse.
“Garcia’s tale bemoans the loss of easy wealth for a precious few,” harrumphs Michael Atkinson in The Village Voice. “Poor people are absolutely absent; Garcia and Infante seem to have thought that peasant revolutions happen for no particular reason — or at least no reason the moneyed 1 percent should have to worry about.”
What’s “absolutely absent” is Mr. Atkinson’s knowledge about the Cuba Garcia depicts in his movie. His crack about that “moneyed 1 percent” and especially his “peasant revolution” epitomize the cliched idiocies still parroted by the chattering classes about Cuba.

While political upheaval drives the movie’s plot, the movie itself is valuable and enjoyable on multiple levels — many of which have nothing to do with politics and everything to do with “life as it might be and ought to be.”
I recommend it highly.
The movie is available for purchase from Amazon.com. You can watch the trailer — which doesn’t really do the movie justice — at Apple. And you may also enjoy NPR’s interview with Garcia about the movie.

Facing New York – Rock & Roll Individualism

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

From the article “Striving for Individualism” in today’s San Francisco Examiner:

Facing New York has had plenty of opportunities to make more money. While music-industry people have offered lucrative deals in exchange for control over their work, the band members passed, wanting to remain true to themselves.
Howard Roark, a character in Ayn Randâ??s â??The Fountainheadâ? (an inspiration for the groupâ??s name) dealt with a similar struggle. Members of the group shared and admired Roarkâ??s control of creative decisions even at the expense of money, says guitarist, keyboardist and lead singer Eric Frederic.

From the band’s MySpace page:

Facing New York is a psychadelic rhythm & blues band from the year 2020. 2 guitars + 2 basses + 2 drum sets + 2 Fender Rhodes + 2 Roland Junos + 4 close friends = a band obsessed with â??nextâ? and hopelessly devoted to the black music and prog rock from the early 1970s.

Check out their site or their MySpace page for more info. Their song “Full Turn” opens with a cool guitar riff.

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