Come August 1, I will have lived in my current DC apartment for three years. I can’t really complain about the experience. The building supers have been great, the building manager is accomodating (like when I went out of town for three weeks he tossed my mail under the door), and the neighbors are friendly and quiet.

But having lived here three years, I still get the previous tenants mail. We’re not talking about junk mail, I’m talking about hand-addressed letters.

I’ve taken it upon myself to inform the senders of these personal letters that the intended recipient of their message no longer lives at this address.  I cross out the address, write RTS (mail slang for Return to Sender), followed by, “Nancy hasn’t lived at this address, for three years. If you do not know this by now, you aren’t friends.”

Marx and Engels start the Communist Manifesto with a warning: the people in power are scared of the coming changes. This warning can be adapted for our times:

A spectre is haunting the Internet – the spectre of file sharing networks. All the powers of old media have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: the RIAA, the MPAA, the corporate lawyers and government police-spies of the FCC.

After reading Lessig’s book Remix, I realized the war waged on file sharing could be made into a Marxist argument.

Current intellectual property laws give rights to the copyright holders. In most cases, this is not the artist. For musicians that sign a contract with a record label, the record label retains exclusive rights to the artists’ songs. Over time, the length of a copyright has been increased dramatically. Originally, the rights to an idea, song or movie were held for 20 years. But now it has been increased to the life of the artist plus 99 years. Since the artist doesn’t own the rights to the songs, the record label stands to gain much from this arrangement.

After years of abuse, the musicians are fed-up with the poor treatment received at the hands of their tormentors. Music sales have also declined. The price of media has continued to rise, but there has been little reason for the cost hike. Online distribution eliminates the need for manufacturing and physical distribution, so it should reduce the cost to consumers.

Marx argues that when the working class rises up to fight the unfair and oppressive ruling class, it will then redistribute the wealth so that everyone shares ownership of property. After this revolution, anything created by an individual   can be used by anyone without having to ask permission. Comparing this to communism, the file sharing networks take property in the form of mp3s from the RIAA or ripped movies from the MPAA (the bourgeoisie in this instance) and redistributes it to the masses (the proletariat).  Most people do not view intangible electronic files as something that one can possess due to the lack of a physical presence.

It seems the time for revolution is now.

Artists such as Nine Inch Nails and, to a lesser extent, Radiohead, are releasing their music for free.  File sharing networks are most of the traffic on the Internet. The MPAA and RIAA are trying to put the kibosh on any extra curricular activity.

The Internet is the great equalizer Marx envisioned. With the Internet, any one individual has as much power as the next.  If the entire Internet community united against the media companies, nothing could be done to stop it.

So, do I feel sympathy for the record companies? Not really. I do feel bad for struggling artists. If I enjoy their music, I should support them in some fashion. If I don’t buy their albums, then I should at least make an attempt to see them live or purchase a t-shirt from their website. As one of my friends told me, “albums are loss leaders for tours.” The music is the advertising used to pull in more revenue.

I’ve been ready Lessig’s Remix:Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. In his book, Lessig mentions several open-source projects and how they are made better by the community. For example, volunteers improve Wikipedia entries on their own time without compensation (other than the satisfaction knowing they are helping others). A similar attitude can be found in the open-source software community; people update and improve lines of  code, usually to meet a specific need, but provide these enhancements for free to the entire community.

This type of sharing can be found on the Internet as a whole, especially with file sharing. Metcalfe’s Law suggests that the more people in a social network, the more value it has. With Bit torrent, the more people sharing the better the network. But there is also an element of comraderie. People sharing files do so because they want to help other people. It isn’t a giant “Fuck you” to the RIAA and MPAA (although it turned into that). No one dislikes the artists of the music or movies they are “distributing.” They are fans who want other fans to have the material.

Al Gore talks a bit more about global warming. From February 2009.

J Dilla “Nothing Like This”

Empire of the Sun – “Walking on a Dream”

Films from 1999 you should watch if you haven’t already:

• Toy Story 2 – A Pixar film about your toys. Good for kids, good for you too.
• The Sixth Sense - I swear this is M. Night Shyamalan’s only good film. The guy is a hack! A hack, I say!
• American Beauty – Great drama that won the Oscar for best movie. I think this was the movie that introduced me to Kevin Spacey.
• The Green Mile – I like most Tom Hanks movies, and this is no exception. Just go into it knowing it’s a three hour investment of time.
• The Mummy – I’m serious; it’s good clean fun. The computer animated special effects don’t really hold up, but there is some corny humor that reminded me a bit of the Evil Dead series.

Underrated films of 1999:

• South Park – Bigger, Longer and Uncut – On the surface, South Park seems vulgar and crass. Underneath that veneer there is usually a smart message taking aim at some of society’s hypocrisy. And this one is delivered as a musical!
• Run Lola, Run – A German movie that plays out three scenarios of a girl’s day. Each one has one minor difference that throws her time line off, causing the day to play out in a different way.
• SLC Punk – Move about punks growing up in Salt Lake City in the 80s. The story shows how all punk rockers come to realize they need to grow up and get an education so they can affect the changes they claim to seek. To quote the main character’s father, “I didn’t sell out, I bought in.”
• Trekkies - A documentary about obsessed Star Trek fanboys. You get to watch a couple get married, in full Klingon regalia. It’s funny and engaging.

Overrated films of 1999:

• Disney’s Tarzan – I think this started Disney’s decline into animated movies with indistinguishable plots played by different stereotypes. Or maybe this was when I started to realize it.
• Austin Powers – Sure, it was funny at the time, but this is a movie franchise that won’t seem to die. Three Austin Powers movies later I think we can all agree that Mike Myers is a washed up, one-trick pony that was only kind of funny in the 90s. Why do all his characters have a bad Scottish accent? Think of Fat Bastard, Shrek, probably someone in Love Guru, The Axe Murder movie, probably some other movies I’m forgetting…see what I’m saying?
• American Pie - High school humor. A “controversial” pie fucking scene made this the talk of Tinseltown. Formulaic humor and otherwise lame plot and characters. If you’ve seen one comedy set in a high school, you’ve seen them all.
• Varsity Blues – Speaking of movies set in high schools, this one isn’t anything special but it I recall everyone in my class talking about this movie. Skip it.
• Dogma – Kevin Smith’s faux-intellectualism and potty humor is meant for teenagers. This movie is less a commentary on religion and the Catholic church, and more a movie about Kevin Smith’s desire to make jokes told by jaded Catholic school children. To think I used to be a fan of Jay and Silent Bob. I guess a more years and a solid education changed my opinion of “intelligent” humor.

So what do you all think? Agree? Disagree? Did I gloss over something?

Fight Club, based on Chuck Palahniuk’s novel of the same title, was considered a box office failure. It earned approximately $36 million during its box office run. If you watched the trailer above, you’ll notice that it doesn’t do the movie justice.

The plot, summarized as succinctly as possible, is about a corporate man’s (fans know this character as Jack) insomnia that ultimately puts him in touch with anarchistic character named Tyler Durden.  Tyler is everything his desk jockey counterpart is not; aggressive, impractical, daring, accepting of others but hating of conformity, and completely insane. Tyler could be considered a blue collar/middle class Robin Hood – he’s rebelling against an institution (credit, government, etc) that no longer looks out for the little guy while encouraging other people to break the norms in favor of doing what they want versus what society tells them to do.   Tyler starts a series of fight clubs across the country, starting a counter-culture movement and creating an army to destroy the empire built by credit card companies.

The movie’s twist makes it great, and I apologize if you haven’t seen it, but it turns out that Tyler Durden is a manifestation of Jack’s subconsicious and this second personality has been using Jack’s body when he’s asleep.

The impact of this movie is widespread. DVD sales almost doubled box office revenue. Worldwide, the movie did $100 million in its international release.  The movie did much better in theaters outside of the United States. My guess is that people in the U.S. caught the movie at the tail end of its run, told others to see it. In the early days of the Internet, this movie probably benefited from word-of-mouth reviews.

It also seems to have spawned lots of underground fight clubs.  I won’t go into too much detail here, but there is some documentation to this.  I know I’ve seen several investigative journalism pieces on this topic. I’m not really into pain, so I haven’t joined any fight clubs myself.

I watched this movie again a few weeks ago and think it’s definitely worth checking out. It’s got some lasting appeal, but maybe that’s generational. I feel the film is a commentary on the state of our society. Lots of people feel lost in the corporate shuffle.  We do what is expected of us, and not so much what we want to do.  It may not hold the same interest to people 20 years from now. Time will tell.

You’ll notice a trend forming. As with the Matrix, the story talks about how society shapes us and expects to act a certain way.  The Marquis de Sade actually wrote a good bit about this.  His philosophy was basically “does a person not do something because they think society will think poorly of their actions, or do they not do something because they don’t want to?” I think his writing came about as a way to justify his sexual deviance, but it can be applied to other topics as well.

Continuing with my theme of movie re-reviews, I’m going to rewatch movie from my teenage years to see how they were as good as I remembered.

First up: The Matrix.  Written and directed by the Wachowski brothers, this cautionary (?) tale of the future is one part Terminator, two parts Neuromancer/cyber punk with Kung Fu action for an added kick. Sound complicated? A pseudo- intellectual robot apocalypse made fans fall love with this movie, but are they still enamored with the idea?

For those of you still plugged into the matrix, the movie is set in the distant future. Robots have enslaved the entire human race, save for a small group of cantankerous rebels. The majority of the human population has been inserted into a machine that uses our bodies natural energy (heat, pulse, etc) to power our robot overlord’s infrastructure. The people in the machine are hooked up to a giant virtual world set in what seems to be 2002. Why 2002? I’m not sure, but the robots realized our bodies produced more energy if our minds were kept stimulated and somewhat happy. It seems like running a giant server and coming up with sustenance to feed this giant human power plant would defeat its purpose, but we’re suspending disbelief here.

Anyway, the resistance needs to free people from this virtual world so they can fight the robots in the real one. And they do this by plugging themselves back into the matrix and causing problems. Actually, that plot point is kind of lost on me. Other than freeing people, why would they need to go back into the matrix? They fight these computer programs known as agents, but the agents are only there to stop these rebels that are logging back in and try to keep other computer programs from going out of whack. In fact, why would the robots even allow access to the matrix over a wireless connection as they do in the film? Everyone else is hardwired into the system.  That seems like a convenient security vulnerability for the human resistance to exploit. Must have been a Microsoft robot that designed that system.

So the resistance is looking to free the right person because there has been some crazy prediction of a messiah. Enter Keanu Reeves. He learns kung fu, dons a black coat with matching sun glasses and proceeds to kick the crap out of every adversary in this virtual world. In the end, he saves the day. The end of movie implies he has started freeing more people and is in control of the matrix.

This decade old movie holds up surprisingly well! The special effects don’t detract from the movie, the action is still top notch, and the plot is engaging. Of course I’m speaking as a biased individual – I saw the movie when I was 16 or so, I’m male, like sci-fi and kung fu flicks, I log into virtual reality sessions pretty regularly (World of Warcraft) and think that explosions are cool.

I would say every sci-fi action movie from this point on tried to imitate the action sequences from this movie. From the frozen frame three-dimensional bullet time to the wire action stunts, this movie significantly raised the bar for American action movies. As for cultural impact, we still see references to taking the red or blue pill and people hypothesizing if they are plugged into the matrix or not.

The Matrix retains its “must see” status. The sequels, however, do not add much to the story’s continuity. While the special effects and action sequences are worth watching, the plot seems to move away from the existentialism of the first one in favor of a martyr’s tale of sacrafice. Yawn.

Ten years ago I was a finishing up my sophmore year of high school. It was also about the time I landed my first part-time job. I guess you could say that was the exact moment I gave up my blissful dependence on my parents for the pursuit of financial success.

My first job was at a movie theater. I worked behind the concessions stand in an ill-fitting polyester uniform. I started working at the time Star Wars: The Phantom Menace hit the box office. Movie theaters used to receive celluloid prints on several reels. Someone would need to splice the reels together, then the movie would be screened to make sure the splices wouldn’t break when ran through the projector. I was lucky enough to sit in a Star Wars screening two days before its release.

Hollywood thought this would be an instant classic, but it had relatively little cultural impact when compared to other movies released around the same time. Do you remember who won the Oscar in 1999, or can you quote a few lines from Fight Club, a box office failure? Over the next few days (or weeks more likely) I’ll recap some films that were released during my time at the movie theater to see if they hold up to the test of time.