Scanlines

D: Orson Welles (1942)

with Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead

Few people have visited as much turbulence on cinema as Orson Welles. By age 27, Welles had already made the greatest American film ever, Citizen Kane, and had characteristically served as the undoing of another would-be masterpiece, The Magnificent Ambersons. Based on the Pulitzer-winning 1918 novel by Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons is a faithful rendition of the fall of a well-to-do Midwestern family at the dawn of the automobile. The story centers on George Amberson Minafer (Tim Holt), a spoiled grandson whose comeuppance is not only inevitable, it's wished upon him by his own townspeople. Welles' mastery of radio-theatre sound and direction, so evident in Kane, elevates Ambersons as well. Previously, he had produced this story as a radio play, and his filmmaking trademarks -- extensive use of shadows and deep focus -- return in this, his second picture. But the story behind the story is how RKO studios ultimately took this film away from Welles. The original cut of The Magnificent Ambersons ran 132 minutes. By the time RKO was through editing it, Ambersons ran just 88 minutes.

Like Charles Foster Kane and the youngest Amberson, Orson Welles was often his own worst enemy. Because Citizen Kane had caused terrific controversy and failed to recoup its blown budget quickly enough, Welles found himself working without a sympathetic ear inside his own studio. He had enjoyed absolute control over the making of Kane, an arrangement that had shocked Hollywood. Further, the ravenous Welles ego routinely earned him the wrath of moguls, allies, starlets, cast, and crew alike. Alarmed by advance reports that Ambersons was too bleak for an audience that would be seeking escape from wartime stress, RKO test-screened the full version. Predictably, the film tested too "down beat," allowing the studio to order self-justified cuts and re-shoots. Welles, making a documentary in Latin America at the time, was aware of the mess. Despite having ample opportunity to defend an ending he had added to the novel (which had Joseph Cotten visiting the superb Agnes Moorehead in a nursing home), Welles entrusted the editing and re-shoots to his editor Robert "Sound of Music" Wise. RKO had Wise shoot an entirely different ending.

The whereabouts of the excised 44 minutes are unknown. Though the script survives, gone for good is a decidely more powerful final sequence that included extensive tracking shots showing the now-empty, dead Amberson mansion. Surviving in truncated form, The Magnificent Ambersons retains a haunted, elegant feel that takes the viewer inside an era Hollywood has largely sidestepped. This is Orson Welles' lost movie, one he might have been able to rescue, had he been less brash -- and a film he and others believed to be superior to Citizen Kane.-- Stuart Wade

Mace: The Dark Age

Nintendo 64

I received the game Mace with the usual enthusiasm that accompanies things that you receive for free: There was no way I wouldn't get my money's worth. Having seen the game played and knowing it was rated "M -- ages 17+", I thought that I would be in for a cool experience. Some facets of this game are quite nice -- it's very, very violent, which is always a plus. There are decapitations, dismemberments, and nice little arcs of blood throughout. The Big, Scary Weapons quotient is also quite high (as is the Scantily Clad Women quotient). There are characters with glaves, swords of fire, katanas, double axes, double scimitars, and double wakazashis. And Mordos Kull (one of the wimpiest of the competitors) wields an enormous morning star. My first impression is a good one.

I jumped into Mace as Ragnar the Large Viking, wielding two battle axes with the same dexterity as that of two sausages-on-a-stick. Not to toot my own horn, but I did quite well. The controls seemed to be laid out very well for this game, and even though I didn't yet know any moves, I mowed my way through the first three contenders on my first try before I was killed. As the days went by, I began learning moves in the "Practice" mode of the game, and this is really where Mace starts to suck: You do better if you don't know any moves. You think I'm lying? You attempt to land Lord Deimos' Hell-icopter on an enemy and see what happens. Here's what will happen: Your enemy will dodge. Or he will counter. Or he will simply up and beat the stuffing out of you. Eight times out of 10, your moves will not connect. Their moves always will; yours will not. Neither will your combos. Even on "Super-Easy mode," the game discourages the player from becoming adept at it. Strategy must be abandoned to play this game: To succeed, you have to dodge and slice. Dodge and slice. Dodge and slice. Oh sure, there are ways that the instructions coerce you into thinking you can master and enjoy this game. The "Evade" button, for example, does make you evade -- you sidestep. However, even if your opponent is in mid-swing, the shot will still hit you, as if you had never "evaded" at all. Worst of all, there doesn't seem to be any reliable form of blocking. Remember how I mentioned decapitations and dismemberments? Well, you won't get to see any of those unless you are able to learn how to twist the insanely sensitive joystick in all sorts of directions in under three seconds. Even if you have the "Fatalities" mode turned on, the computer probably won't perform one on you, so you still won't get to see it. Needless to say, as the week moved on, Mace really started pissing me off. "What kind of game is it where you can get farther hitting one button than using well-executed moves that the computer blocks or interrupts?!" I thought.

If you like games that feature lots of Indiscriminate Slicing and Button-Pressing, this game is for you. If you like games that frustrate you to the point where you hurl your controller at your Nintendo 64 even if you win, this game is for you. If you like games where you have approximately three seconds to execute a complicated fatality, this game is for you. If you like games that make you jump when you meant to go forward, this game is for you. And if you like games that aren't any fun until you've played it for a year and a half, this game is for you. Myself, I gave up and went back to playing Goldeneye. -- John Gray

Disc Tracy

WatchSoft

If you are a paranoid parent intent on playing Big Mother, then you will probably find Disc Tracy a useful tool in monitoring your kiddies' behavior. That's essentially what Disc Tracy does: It works to keep a record of sites that people (most likely children) visit on the Internet. It will not prevent your children from looking at porn (or drugs, or Satan worship, or whatever evil du jour CNN has you worked up about), but it will tell you, the parent, if they have been looking at porn, etc. and it does so more effectively than you could possibly want. Two positives about Disc Tracy: One, it actually forces you to parent. Again, it doesn't block access to any site, so should you find your son hitting jizzfest.com and you want him to know you disapprove, you are going to have to tell him. The second positive, in a completely distorted way, is one of the unintended consequences of Disc Tracy. Your children are probably much more adept at navigating the Internet than you; and seeing how this keeps a record of sites visited, you could theoretically use this to let your kids find the porn (or the drugs, etc.) for you. Disc Tracy works, it's just a question of how you want it to work for you.-- Michael Bertin