Category: Films and movies

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

Movie physics

Apparently, the physics in The Da Vinci Code are no better than the history or theology. (Though this review is more about general plausibility than physics, per se.) Let it be known that Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics is among the greatest of all websites.

The review of The Core is funny enough to be worth reading, even if you haven’t seen that awful, awful film. People making films should probably take a careful look through their generic list of bad physics. Of course, scientific accuracy may not be terribly likely to put people in cinema seats, or sell DVDs.

Heading South

In a number of ways, Heading South is a film that reverses expectations and thereby leads you to question the ways in which an issue is understood. The film is essentially about sex tourism, though the clients are aging women rather than the middle-aged men who would probably be demonized in the standard documentary treatment of the subject. While such condemnation may well be deserved, it doesn’t attach itself so easily in this case. The tensions between the women, and the insecurities within them, provide the dramatic energy that drives this frequently provocative film. The most interesting scenes are a series of confessional sketches, in which different characters direct monologues at the camera. The decision to employ such a technique highlights the quasi-documentary quality of the film.

Primarily in French, with subtitles, the film may appeal to those who know some French and are concerned about having it slip away from them (this is the case for almost everyone I know who was in French immersion.) The portrayal of Haiti under the Duvalier regime of the 1970s is powerful but indirect, consisting largely of a few vignettes showing the lives of people subjected to arbitrary power.

Morally complex and artfully produced, Heading South is a film to see when you want something to think about.

Another Papa Fly Production

Fans of Mica’s videos may want to know that a new one is online. This one is filmed in the gym where I used to have judo practice: at the church approximately equidistant between my parents’ house and Nick’s. It stars the younger siblings of at least two of my friends: including my friend Jonathan’s younger brother Justin and Peter, the younger brother of my friend Ryan (who was also my former boss in the sound and lighting crew at my old high school).

The song is quite catchy. I wish I knew what the band was called.

Here is a direct link to Google Video, for those who don’t want to go via his blog.

Thank You for Smoking

Gas mask paintingHappy Birthday Antonia M

At Jericho’s Phoenix Cinema, I saw the dark comedy Thank You for Smoking with Antonia tonight. While it’s not without flaws, it can be quite clever – and even very funny – at times. It documents the life and work of a ranking tobacco lobbyist in a way that pokes fun at the connections between business and politics, especially within industries termed ‘merchants of death’ like tobacco and the gun industry.

My favourite single moment of the film is when the protagonist is sitting in the lobby of an aggressively image-focused Hollywood agency and a plasma television is showing an orca with a seal in its mouth, dashing it against the rocks. The juxtaposition between the spin of the advertising industry – which has been applied to whales as much as anything else – and the sheer, direct, and unapologetic happenings of nature was poignant but not overstated.

Not to ruin the film for anyone, but it seems unlikely to me that a successful lobbyist would so thoroughly fail to be circumspect in his dealings with the media, but it’s not a plot failure that compromises the film too badly, overall. Some interesting questions do get raised about the character of personal responsibility within democratic societies. While the lobbyist does have an agenda, it’s not one he advances through outright deceit. It’s more like the self-interested peddling of a libertarian ethic.

Thank You for Smoking is a film that gains little from being seen in theatres, so I would advise people to wait until they can see it on DVD.

On television licensing

Apparently, the BBC has claimed that anyone who watches video clips from their website online must have a television license, or be liable to prosecution and fine. As a North American, I find the very idea of a television license offensive. Our flat has received a notice that an inspector will be coming at some future point to look for televisions. The letter reads, in part:

Your address is now on our priority list and an Enforcement Officer is planning to visit you shortly. [Emphasis theirs]

My personal inclination would be to refuse to consent to having our premisses searched – despite the fact that we have no televisions – because there is no probable cause under which to search us, and no warrant to do so issued. In the United States, I would expect such a search to be a violation of the Fourth Amendment. In Canada, I would expect it to be a violation of Section 8 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Of course, that intuition is not grounded in any familiarity in British law. I assume that these inspectors do have the legal right to search a flat without consent or a warrant. It couldn’t hurt to issue a verbal refusal, at least.

The idea that the state has the right to search your home on suspicion of owning a television, then fine you if you don’t already have a license seems preposterous. The courts in Canada and the United States have generally considered the searching of a home to be a serious legal action that generally requires a warrant. To do so in order to uphold the fiscal solvency of a public broadcaster seems like a serious confusion of priorities. I understand the need to fund the BBC, but this seems like an unjustifiable imposition.

That is especially true once extended to computers which may or may not be used to watch television programs. In 2004, the Secretary of State ruled in the Television Licensing Regulations that:

“‘Television receiver’ means any apparatus installed or used for the purpose of receiving (whether by means of wireless telegraphy or otherwise) any television programme service, whether or not it is installed or used for any other purpose.”

Using my iBook to watch “The Daily Show” would appear to make it a ‘television receiver’ under this definition. When the BBC chose to put video online, it couldn’t legitimately claim to have thereby unilaterally extended the requirement for television license to all people in the UK with computers capable of viewing the information. If they made headlines available by text message, could they begin taxing anyone with a cellular phone? Can they tax people whose cellular phones can access the internet now?

I do see value in public broadcasting, insofar as it can serve some purposes that the mainstream media does not. That value does not, in my mind, justify the kind of threats that are being made.

Google Idol victoriously concluded

Our estimation of when the day ticked over on the Google Idol server was wrong. Rather than doing so at 3:00pm GMT, as expected, it did so at some time before 10:30am.

That said, it doesn’t really matter: “Voting is closed! Mica Prazak has won! New competition beginning shortly.” Anyone wishing to comment on this can do so on Mica’s blog.

Many thanks to all those who helped. It’s a relief to have the contest over. Now, I can put something else up at the top of my blog.

Contest final round

Vote Mica

The time has come: Mica’s “Walk Idiot Walk” video is in the final round for the Google Idol video competition and he really needs support if he is going to win. Those who can are encouraged to vote every day. Likewise, please pass along the message to similarly interested others.

I didn’t even know there was prize money, however:

If I were to win this competition, I have decided to donate the prize charity money to the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation. A close family friend of ours was recently diagnosed with breast cancer, and I think it would be fitting to help her cause, and the many more that suffer from it.

His post about this is here.

This round ends on June 24th. As always, his videos can be discussed on his blog.

[Update: 18 June 2006] With six days left in the contest, Mica is winning by 36 votes: 53% to 47%.

[Update: 19 June 2006] Mica is down by 15 votes: losing 49% to 51%. Please keep voting and publicizing his video.

[Update: 20 June 2006] Mica is up by 53 votes: 52% to 48%. The lead has switched back and forth a number of times in the past 24 hours.

[Update: 22 June 2006] Mica’s up by just 5 votes, with more than 3000 cast. I have created a chart that shows the amount by which Mica has been winning or losing at various times when I have checked on it. As you can see, he has been winning in the majority of instances, though by decreasing margins as time goes by. If I had to bet on a winner at this point, based on the data I have collected, I would choose Mica. That doesn’t mean you can stop voting!

[Update: 23 June 2006] With less than 24 hours left, Mica is down by 50 votes: 1,874 to 1,924. This is the most I’ve seen him down by since the contest began, so please make an extra effort to vote today, before the contest ends. It finished on the 24th: at 7:00am Vancouver time, noon in Toronto or New York, 3:00pm in London, and at appropriately matching other times around the world. Thanks again for your support.

Note: I am going to keep this entry at the top of the blog until the contest ends in three days’ time. The race is extremely close, so a big final push would be much appreciated.

Strategy time – time strategies

I have been trying to learn what I can learn during these last few days of the Google Idol contest, in hopes of being able to maximize Mica’s chances. The first potentially relevant fact is that the website hosting the contest is registered in Brisbane, Australia. I had often found it difficult to guess what time the server would be ticking over into the next voting day, allowing all the IP addresses that had already voted to do so again.

This round ends on June 24th, but nowhere does the website specify at what time. As such, the earliest it could possibly end (00:01 Brisbane time) would be 2:01pm Oxford time on the 23rd. The latest it could possibly end (23:59 Brisbane time) would be 1:59pm on the 24th. If someone has figured out at what time of day their server ticks over, it would be very useful information.

Why?

Because the lead has been cyclical:

Chart of voting patterns

Chart based on data between 22:00GMT on the 18th and 22:00GMT on the 20th.

As you can see, the distance between the number of the votes for each video rises and falls according to an orderly pattern. I would guess that with ‘Twan, Sjoerd, Manuel en Iwin’ living in Western Europe and Mica coming from the West Coast of North America, there is about an eight hour lag between time equivalencies in the areas where most of their respective voters will be living. Those of Mica’s competitors rise eight hours earlier, vote, and go to sleep eight hours earlier.

The fact that the slope of Mica’s line is more constant may be the product of how I have been cajoling people on the east coast of Canada and the United States – as well as in the UK and elsewhere – to vote for him as much as possible. Alternatively, I may have nothing to do with it and people voting for him just vote at times more distributed across the day for some other reason or collection of reasons.

As such, it would be helpful to work out what time it will be in each place when the contest ends. Ideally, we would probably want it to end around midnight Vancouver time, when it will be about 8:00am in Europe. I think that would be about 6:00pm in Brisbane.

[Update: 22 June 2006] I have created a chart that shows the amount by which Mica has been winning or losing at various times when I have checked on it.

Mica’s Michelle video

Mica has a new video online, made for his girlfriend Michelle. I think it’s really sweet, somewhat explicit, and almost perfectly reflective of his overall character.

I hope she is the kind of woman who will appreciate it. The very last segment, shot at Cleveland Park in North Vancouver, definitely makes the greatest impression, for me.

PS. Remember to keep voting for his contest video.