6# - Critiquing a Media Critic

Ever since his show the The Jimquistion went completely and totally independent in 2016, Jim Sterling has become one of the most infamous critics of the video game industry. An image that from the show's inception when it was located on Destructoid Jim has courted with his semi-serious catchphrase "thank god for me", his authoritarian style propaganda posters, and his outfit that makes him look like some turn of the century industrialist who just has a factory filled with child-labor. Jim wants people wants the infamy he wants a portion of the audience to like what he does, but he also understands the value of hatred. He understands that if you are not pissing someone off then you need to change up what you were doing. 

Jim Sterling

Jim will tell you anything and everything on any issue that fancies him at that current time which could be anything from Brexit to the legal status of lootboxes in games. He puts forward what he thinks and if you accept that or at least see where he is coming from then everything is fine. If you do disagree with him and try to contact him about it and tensions rise as they often tend, do not expect him to try and make concessions just so you will feel better about yourself. Jim says things that he has actually thought about and believes in and will not be so easily swayed from his opinion. People tend to think of that as being stubborn and it might be but who listens to someone who flips on every position that they have ever held just because the last person that they talked to disagreed with them. 

Jim knows that being this opinionated will bring you positives like people have a basic level of respect for you and it will cause people to have seething hatred for you. People actually have long rants and discussions on several websites claiming that Jim Sterling has single handily caused for something that they like to be review negatively. Jim will sometimes just all of a sudden come up in some of these conversations where people are bashing people who cover the games industry, that shows you the power of the mans persona. It was so powerful that it even had an effect on a video game developer, Digital Homicide who after Jim made a video about the scam they were essentially running they tried to sue him for $10 million. Digital Homicide hoped that they would if not win then humiliate him in court but, their own incompetence stopped that and the case was thrown out. This only caused Jim's star to rise making a martyr for the importance of press freedom in the games industry. Sterling has always attracted controversy but he would never entirely say that is what he wanted, but his entire persona is meant to court it and I think that Jim Sterling actually loves it. 

5# - Movie Review

The term character study is often applied to films that focus on the inner workings of the central character and have a plot that is more or less the vehicle to explore them. The term is so often used when describing films like this that many people have come to think that character study is a genre onto itself, however this is not the case. Genres are used to put films into simple and understandable categories like comedy or thriller, they tell you the general feeling that is intended. Character studies on the other hand could be a drama like Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver or they could be a comedy like Scorsese's The King of Comedy. Those films are both character studies of two men Travis Bickle and Rupert Pupkin, both are played by Robert De Niro, neither are funny, although both are still great. The character study goes beyond the boundaries of genre because they are attempting to deal with the motivations, thoughts, and feelings of their protagonists.

Dealing with the inner workings of the lead character is exactly what the film Destroyer directed by Karyn Kusama is successful in doing. The film follows the life of LAPD detective Erin Bell played by Nicole Kidman, a woman scarred by years of hate and regret over the events that happened fifteen years ago. When she as a young officer and a FBI agent played by Sebastian Stan went undercover to infiltrate and arrest a gang of bank robbers led by the manipulative Silas. Erin's time undercover did not go according to plan and the events of that time led to her estranged relationship from her family and her disregard for everything especially herself. Nicole Kidman's performance was one of the film's biggest marketing strategies saying that you could see Kidman as you have never seen her before. I was initially drawn in by that myself out of curiosity just to see if she could become this character and she does it so well that it makes me hate the fact that the marketing team is selling the movie on her appearance and not on her performance. That being said it did make me make want to come see Kusama's film, so Kidman being there probably helped the movie get made. 

As a director Kusama intentionally for this film tried to show parts of Los Angeles that are not often shown in films like a church in a Hispanic area that has legal services for illegal immigrants in the back or the outskirts of the city where there is one building with nothing else around it. Kusama lingers on the violence, sickness, and misery that world has brought to these characters. This backs up how existential the film is, no higher power watches over the world the film presents. Silas the head of the gang even says that you can be whatever you want cause there is no one watching and Erin herself knows this and says that people are not held accountable. The only person that can hold anyone to account for the things that have done is themselves and the rest of society. The existential feeling that inhabits the world creates a blurred morality and that is helped by the flashbacks from the past to the present. A haze covers the film it dosent want you to know what actually happened and the characters do not want to find out for fear of themselves.