Ok since my original post about Librarian: Quest For The Spear I have had a chance to watch the other two movies in the series, Librarian: Return to King Solomon’s Mine and Librarian: A Verb I Forget Whose Direct Object Is The Judas Chalice.

The first thing I learned in writing my post about the love-hate relationship anthropologists have with popcorn films that misrepresent them is that there are far, far more out there than I knew about — indeed, most of the comments on my post were links or mentions of other movies we definitely won’t like. At some point we will have to get together a proper Visual Anthropology conference — not all that informative, artsy stuff Kerim does — and make up a list of the best of the worst (and vice versa).

Second, although the Librarian franchise looses some star power in its future iterations (no more Kyle Maclachlan) the other two are worth seeing — particularly the third one in the series, Librarian: Something Something Judas Chalice. The second one in the series, ‘King Solomon’s Mines’ definitely is better made than the first one, which means that it realizes its vision more completely. The problem, of course, is that vision. This is the movie where The Librarian Goes To Africa and, let’s face it, it’s practically impossible to write make an adventure movie in Africa that will make an anthropologist happy. The second Librarian film is no exception — the tribal mating dances, black people eating insects for gross-out humor effects, they pretty much manage to fit it all in. Additionally, I sort of don’t feel that Gabrielle Anwar works particularly well as the romantic interest. The tension between her and Noah Wyle (they are both bookworms and so compete to see who is the real archaeologist) is certainly there, but in the inevitable scene where he walks in on her, drunk, half clothed in supposedly ‘traditional’ Masai clothing, and they get it on you don’t really understand why she’s fallen for him if she finds him so annoying (other than the fact that its in the script). Also, to be honest, although I think Anwar is going for ‘lithe’ she just looks emaciated to me, and my first impulse is not to see her as a sex object, but to get some calories into her before she passes out. But maybe that’s just the Jewish mother in me.

The third film in the franchise is remarkably similar to Dracula 2000. I know because I saw it. Why did I see Dracula 2000? Was it because I knew about Gerard Butler before he was big? A pre-Firefly crush or Nathan Fillion or a post-Star Trek crush on Jeri Ryan? No. It was because someone told me Christopher Plummer played Van Helsing, and I got him confused with Crispin Glover, and I thought “damn Crispin Glover is completely nuts and rarely does film any more — I’d love to watch him play Van Helsing.” Anyway both films are set in New Orleans — although the Librarian’s ridiculous use of the city as a massive product placement did more to offset production costs than add ambience to the film. Both play with the idea that Vampires are related to Judas Iscariot (is this a common idea?). But there the similarities end.

The female lead, Stana Katic, is much more appealing than Anwar, and we get to see Bruce Davidson produce another one of his “So wholesome… no wait so CREEPY… no wait so wholesome… no wait so – ” performances. Wyle’s character has really come into its own, and is sort of charming — nonviolent (unlike Indiana Jones), constantly coming up with cerebral and often insanely dangerous ways to get out of trouble. The performance is much more assured and the character more likeable than earlier installations in the series. Even the Russian bad guys are great in that sinister eastern-bloc baddie kind of way that I am almost nostalgic for in this age of Those Who Hate Our Freedoms. Yes that’s right: Russians and Vampries in New Orleans.

So there you have it — two more Popcorn Anthropology films. If anyone out there gets around to seeing them, let me know what you think.

So I just watched Second Skin, a documentary — as far as I know, the only documentary — which focuses squarely on the lives of on-line game players. As someone who is writing now on World Of Warcraft I’m always interested to find videos and films about MMOGs which I can teach and which convey to students, who often have not played these games, what life as a gamer is like both in- and out- of game (you can only show Make Love Not Warcraft so many times). Second Skin succeeds admirably, is put out by an Extremely Indy Company (the envelope containing my copy had my address hand-written on it. There is some guy hand mailing these. That is indy), inexpensive (US$18), and true-to-life — I’d really recommend it to anyone who wants to get a picture of these worlds.

At root, the movie follows the stories of three groups of gamers: a group of friends in Fort Wayne who try to manage the transition from slackerdom to being married parents with real lives while also managing the transition from World of Warcraft 1.0 to Burning Crusade; a man who became addicted to the Internet and his relationship with the woman who runs the Internet Addiction Recovery Group he joined and later left (and that woman’s own troubled relationship to her son — transference much?); and a couple who met online, fell in love, and spend the movie trying to keep their real-life relationship going.

Most of the gamers involved play World of Warcraft of Everquest II, and their stories ring very true to anyone who has extensive experience playing these kinds of game. The film makers do an excellent job of demonstrating how meaningful life on line is for people, especially people with sucky real life jobs. At the same time, they show how unfulfilling life on-line can be compared to the actual world. Walking this fine line without demonizing or glorifying the lives of hard-core game players is probably the finest achievement of the film. The portrayal is so true: the rooms strewn with empty soda bottles, people explaining how the ennui of their jobs makes raiding seem better than real life, and of course the numerous protestations that people would stop playing the game is their girlfriend/spouse/job asked them to. Finally, someone who understands the interesting story about MMOGs is not RMT and gold farming, but overweight Americans eating cheese spray and falling asleep at their keyboards trying to level to 70.

The movie has its flaws as well — in an attempt to be scarily complete, it has segments on disabled people who play video games, Chinese gold farmers, game conventions and cosplay, and real life guild meetings. I appreciate just how much was fit into the film, but at times I felt that we lost focus of the main thread of the exposition. This is a particularly big deal for me, because I need a 50 minute cut of this movie to show in class (or even 60 minutes). Remix, anyone?

The film also spends a lot of time flipping back and forth between people and their avatars — which is fun at first, even if it is a pretty established thing to do (‘get it? he’s a Night Elf!’). However after a while one tires of shots of two people walking hand and hand down a beach, and then their two avatars walking hand and hand down an avatar beach. Also, although many of the visuals in the film really help convey the complexities of game mechanics, at times they look strangely fakey to people who really do play a lot of WoW. In the battle of the Machinima, I think the South Park guys win over the Second Skin guys.

These quibbles aside, however, there is no doubt that Second Skin is well worth your time. I’m not a visual anthropology person or a film scholar, but as far as I can tell the movie is not just ethnographically true, but pretty well made — in particular, the Internet Addict and the woman who seek to save him are given plenty of screen time, and as we learn more about each of them we are able to understand the complexity of their relationship, and the ambiguities of ‘Internet Addiction’ (is the Internet addictive or is the guy an addict?) and all with a relatively light authorial hand. In particular at the end the guy looks like Brando in profile. Like the young Brando.

So if it is out in Netflix, or if you have a couple of bucks to spare, or if you have ILL powers, I’d highly recommend this film — if you are looking to learn more about MMOGs, this is the way to do it. If you are an educator looking for something to show students, its also great. Hats off to the guys at Pure West — here’s hoping they’re getting ready to do a sequel on Cataclysm!