Category: Films and movies

Whether big-studio or independent, celluloid or digital, anything about movies

Conciousness raising through free DVDs

There is a website that will supposedly send you a free DVD copy of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. Some statistics are up, on how many tickets and discs they have given away. I have placed a request, and I will let you know if it actually works. They seem to be overwhelmed with thousands of requests at the moment, so that seems pretty unlikely.

If they do send me one, I will make sure to screen it publicly at least once. The case Gore makes is rigorous and compelling; this is also an interesting demonstration of how science, politics, and advocacy run together. I wrote about the film earlier.

Syriana

I saw Syriana with Claire this evening and, quite frankly, did not think much of it. The central messages – that the oil business, espionage, and Middle Eastern politics are murky – are exceptionally obvious. Furthermore, the story was told in such a way that no concern was ever really developed for any of the characters. The plot was complex, but lacking in suspense, and one torture scene was graphic and unpleasant enough to have us both looking away from the screen. While the point of the film may have been the sheer cynicism of these processes, and those engaged in them, it is not a message that seems original, or even well conveyed.

With neither subtlety, human appeal, or much of an ability to conjure a response, Syriana is a film better skipped.

The X-Files in retrospect

Unproductive pre-Christmas days are reminding me of evenings long forgotten. Specifically, those taken up in watching The X-Files and being terrified about all the pseudo-scientific content therein. These days, I am more appreciative about the opportunities the series provided to the emerging film and television industry in Vancouver, as several of my friends could describe on the basis of their personal experience.

I remember evenings after the point where my paternal grandfather replaced our television with one three times the size, in order to watch the World Cup – an event that had less than zero significance for me at the time and has not much more now – when I would watch new episodes of the X-Files and be unusually unable to sleep before the school days subsequent.

It is interesting how The X-Files was concerned to the point of paranoia about the dangers of government secrecy, whereas television today has largely embraced the mindset of the ‘War on Terror.’ 24 is an example that is shamefully compelling.

New blog for Mica in the works

As an evolving Christmas gift, I am working on a new website for my brother Mica. As of now, there are three big things I mean to do: find and customize a very nice WordPress template, categorize his old posts and make sure the image and video links in them work properly, and try to configure the Broadcast Machine so that people can view and download his videos through iTunes.

I expect that finishing all of that will take me a few days, but I made a good start tonight.

Amadeus

Curry in Oxford

I watched Amadeus with Claire tonight, and the film is really quite spectacular. It is impossible to walk home after seeing it and not get caught up in some of Mozart’s more dramatic musical moments. As with most very successful films, this one manages to offset drama and passion with comedy, in a way that heightens both.

I know almost nothing about Mozart’s life, so I can make no comment as to the accuracy of this portrayal. The film has made me determined that I should actually see an opera. Opera, botany, and classical history are three things that I have specifically decided to learn a great deal about in old age, when the acquisition of useful knowledge is no longer at such a premium.

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Turkish toys

One unexpected feature of Istanbul: nightmarish Christmas toys. Sorry for the poor video quality, but it was shot using my digital camera in less-than-ideal lighting conditions.

I am not sure which are the creepiest: the Satanic looking robotic musical Santas, the little boys with assault rifles and grenades, or the crawling shooting soldier. The last is almost certainly the least disturbing, because it is a consistent motif. The middle option is probably the most, because of how the cheerful expression on the faces of the dolls jars with their attire and accouterments.

Fresh ‘Papa Fly’ offering

My brother Mica has a new video online: Red Light. This one is heavier on the special effects than any of the previous ones, and I find it quite entertaining. Here’s a direct link to Google Video.

The twenty minute filming time would be the envy of major studios.

[Update: 19 December 2006] Mica has been interviewed about his films by one of the people affiliated with Bopsta (formerly Google Idol).

The Devil Wears Prada

It is necessary only for the good man to do nothing for evil to triumph.
-Edmund Burke

Through a combination of circumstances that was rather unusual, I ended up watching The Devil Wears Prada with my father at the Phoenix Cinema around midnight.

Prior to seeing the film, I never really understood the virulence with which some people and groups reject the superficiality and extravagance of capitalism. As a result of the film, I now feel more as though I understand the various revolutionaries of the twentieth century and before who sought to smash this wasteful and myopic parasite within society.

Thankfully, the film itself was probably a misrepresentation. In reality, those people with intelligence and resources must be concerned with the millions dying of AIDS, the dangers of nuclear war, increasing authoritarianism in Russia, climate change, and all the rest. Mustn’t they?

New interface for comedic news

Comedy Central has rolled out a new interface for showing Daily Show and Colbert Report clips. The player seems to be rather more stable than the previous version, with no errors discernible in Firefox 2.0 and Mac OS X. The videos themselves are a bit bigger and seem to load faster. Perhaps the biggest improvement is that clip videos now play in sequence, in the order in which the bits were included in the actual episode.

The two biggest new problems are that the window in which the videos now play is very large and cluttered, and that video advertisements are now shown before the first clip you watch and sometimes in between them. For me, this is an acceptable price to pay for an improved viewing experience. It was very annoying to have to go through them one by one before, especially given how about one in three would encounter an error that prevented it from loading.

It would be better to just have it all on YouTube, but I can understand that Comedy Central needs to extract advertising dollars from we web-viewers. Of course, I won’t be de-activating my AdBlock extension or the Filterset G updater for it anytime soon. After a few weeks of using it, the web seems truly garish when viewed in a normal web browser. You need never be troubled by annoying banners again. Flashblock is also a godsend, since almost all the flash on the web is either advertising or potentially malicious.