The Collective Shelf

Mashed Potatoes

noreply@blogger.com (Linton Davies) — Mon, 04 May 2009 18:27:00 +0000

Hi Guys, I thought I'd get you up to speed on my latest project. I'm doing a video show three days a week called 'Mashed Potatoes', available at www.lintondavies.com and soon as a podcast.

Here is a sample episode, if this is the sort of thing you're interested in please come on over and check out our selection of baked goods / episodes.

The Shelf is dead, long live the Potato.

www.lintondavies.com

Time For a break.

noreply@blogger.com (Linton Davies) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 06:21:00 +0000

Ok peoples listen up, it's time to take a break from the shelf. Oh no, they cry, but don't worry friends, and don't delete that RSS feed just yet, because i will return at some point in the future (I love that line, FYI I probably mean properly mid-2009).

Why? you ask. Well blame Merlin Mann. Reading his excellent website, particularly this and this article brought to the fore questions of focus, productivity and maximum output (i.e. how we make stuff, because that's what it's all about right?).

Right now, the blog isn't my main focus, and thus it's a disservice to what I'm trying to do here to continue with it, half-cooked. So for the next few months I'm going to concentrate on making funky videos and doing actually ''real work'' (like this, but with more artificial rewards). Sometimes we all need one clear line if we're going to be the best we can be.

If you don't hate me by now, do follow me up at www.twitter.com/lintondavies where you can look out for all the mildly interesting stuff I'm doing and insights I'm pontificating (big word!) on. Oh, and there's still way too many italics.

Or email me and we can talk shelf-age into the night, or add me on IM, or poke me on facebook, or come over to my house and steal my chicken. You know, all that good stuff.

See you on the flip-side (look at me, all 2002).

Hollywood Saloon RIP

noreply@blogger.com (Linton Davies) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 00:20:00 +0000

Most people probably don't listen to podcasts, and of those who do I'm sure very few will know of The Hollywood Saloon, in fact I'd be lucky if one person who reads this has heard of the great show.

To bring you up to speed, a podcast is like a radio show, only over the internet and anyone can have one. It's today's answer to public access tv, but a lot better. The Hollywood Saloon was easily the best film related podcast there was, spending hours and hours (and hours) discussing one topic in professional detail, yet retaining a great atmosphere.

Today they called it quits after four years. Mainly I believe due to one of the hosts getting fed up with his overbearing need for every show to be ''perfect'' meaning they would take massive amounts of time to edit.

Oh well, today is your lucky day as I point you towards their very impressive archives which will give any self respecting film fan hours of entertainment and insight.

RIP

Editing on film is no fun. No fun at all.

noreply@blogger.com (Linton Davies) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 21:36:00 +0000

I’m talking about real Film editing, i.e. as opposed to wizzy digital final cut/avid editing. I’ve had to do it recently and boy is it horrible. Hours and hours of painstaking precise work, and that’s just finding the footage you’re looking for. Then there’s the immense fear, one mistake, you don’t cut perfectly on the line or you smudge the film with your hand and that shot is unusable. There is no Command-Z key on a Steinbeck.

It does make you think about how film is a real physical thing, light blasted onto celluloid, which is nicer as as a concept that a whole load of 1’s and 0’s, but in practice far more tricky to deal with.

So this post is really a thank you.

THANK YOU to the previous generation of editors for suffering through it for your art.

THANK YOU to whoever invented those loathsome machines as without you there would be no Final Cut Pro (it’s interesting to see just how closely FCP mirrors physical editing, just minus the horror parts)

and most of all THANK YOU to the people who came up with digital editing, because you made me who i am today and without you i would not only not have a future, I probably would be in film and thus wouldn’t have this blog, and then where would we be? Here is where!

I found the answer.

noreply@blogger.com (Linton Davies) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 03:45:00 +0000

So there weren't many posts about Film as Art. Mainly because I quickly got bored of it and looking at the stats, so did you. Not to worry, big questions are for losers with hair nets anyway.

Anyway a quick conclusion just the same: Most people don't think about film as art because they go to watch stupid movies and eat popcorn. Some people properly like film and they see the films they like as art but the film's they don't like (that the first group does) as not-art because they're snobs. But actually everyone is a snob at heart so don't blame them unless they shout really loudly about it or something. Then there are the people who say film isn't art because it's ''impure'' and ooo there's too much collaboration and it's tainted by money etc. etc. Agree with these people until they go away in glory, we don't want them crowding up our cinemas with their loud mouth-breathing ways. Nerds.

Some people like Citizen Kane and think it's amazing - they're probably lying or just really boring.

Other people like Transformers and thing it's amazing - they're rubbish as well.

So basically, when we start talking about film as art, everyone's a loser.

Why we don't see mainstream film as art.

noreply@blogger.com (Linton Davies) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 16:51:00 +0000

The unabashedly commercial and corporate nature of the film industry creates three central issues when we try to define films that come from this system as art.

1. These films tend to be reluctant to challenge and surprise the audience. A studio release is ready to reuse and recycle any kind of idea or technique that they think is ''in vogue'' or will add to their bottom line. Look at all the Reservoir Dogs rip off that were doing the rounds in the 19990 or the likes of The Deep Blue Sea, The Last Shark and Piranha, all of which clearly stole more than a little from Spielberg's Jaws. This kind of predictability makes the films seem dull and uninspired, certainly not encourage us to think about what we're looking at, a staple of how we tend to view art.

2. The system creates serious problems around the question of intention and sincerity. Studio movies often seem less about working towards the artist's vision that about creating a sellable product, often so much so as that the director's name isn't even seen as important. What's the big film that everyone's taking about right now? Quantum of Solace right? Well ask yourself who directed it. I have no idea either.

3. Our traditional perception of art is based around the idea that the work is 'the end in itself', not the means to something else. This is obviously very rarely the case in cinema, any film that gets distributed will inevitably have someone up to the chain who is looking to make a profit, or create a franchise, or sell hamburgers or wtv.

Tomorrow I'll tell you why is completely untrue. Or i'll make a joke about poop, I have a good one lined up.

Why do I always have to ruin the serious posts with the jokes about feces?

Film as Art: An Introduction

noreply@blogger.com (Linton Davies) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 23:26:00 +0000

Just to let you know (/warn you), this month the blog will be full to the rafters with posts about film and its place within the 'art' concept. Film as an art form, as high art, mass art, low art, good art, not-art etc.

Do we see film as art in general? It's difficult to say for obvious what-is-art-anyway reasons.

We definitely see film as an art-form. It becomes one when we accept it has the capacity to create a work of art, and no-one argues about Citizen Kane (to chose the least controversial example) being one such thing. Indeed it's often seen in the canon of the top 5 greatest human works ever created.

So if it's an art form, shouldn't everything within the form be art, as they are part of the category?

One of the (many, many, many) difficulties is that we seem to instinctively value the term ''art'' as a quality rather than a noun. We say ''There Will Be Blood is a piece of art'' meaning it's good, implying that ''Sex In The City'' for example is not only bad, but not art at all. Doesn't this imply that ''bad art'' can't exist?

Has art come to mean something other than ''made for aesthetic purposes and artistic intent''? Is that to satisfy our film buff needs for superiority ''I like cinema as an art form mwahmwah' What makes the films that we consider to be art just that, and what is it about others that stops us from doing so? Why do scholars so often dismiss film as an ''inferior art form?''.

As you see I've asked a lot of questions and given very few answers. That's because art is a tricky subject and I don't really know. But i'll be discussing all these problems and assertions over the coming weeks. Why? because I can, and i want us to take this exploratory journey together. Or something like that.

Cake?

The Bad Side of Television.

noreply@blogger.com (Linton Davies) — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 18:31:00 +0000

I've talked a lot about the best of television, how it's a more dynamic and interesting medium than film, how The Wire is the greatest piece of dramatic art produced in the last fifty years etc. etc. etc.

So why do so few others see it that way? The sad reality is that so much of TV is so downright despicable that it gives the rest of it a bad name. I'm not going to go on and on about this as everyone can think up their own examples, but i'll simply add a question and a quote:

Can you name a single black character in any of the 10 seasons of Friends? Neither can I.

David Simon famously said ''TV is made to comfort the comfortable and mock the afflicted''.

It's when television creators move past this idea that we start to see amazing work being made, until then I'm not going to bother paying my TV license.

Overthinking Hollywood Villains

noreply@blogger.com (Linton Davies) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 18:18:00 +0000

Note: This post contains unabashed generalisations and simplifications. In the words of a great website, it subjects popular culture to a level of scrutiny it probably doesn't deserve.

Upon reviewing this summer's blockbuster season, which is now finally drawing to a close as the ramp up to the ''christmas event pictures'' begins, I noticed what could be seen as a tonal shift in the generic plot outline of these films.

Obviously the Hollywood system is geared unashamedly towards profit and nothing makes money more than placing an audience in their comfort zone. Any run of the mill 3/10 sequel that still manages to gross over 300M$ shows that. Audiences like genres, structure and well used semiotics. One of the staples of any such film then is a villain. The villain's story is never very well explored, although he will often be superficially humanised in one way or another. It is enough to know that for some reason he wants to do something bad and evil, and the hero's job is to stop him.

That's all well and good, but unfortunately Hollywood have been a bit stuck for villains lately. For awhile it was always the Germans, then those damn Russian communists. More recently it would be an Englishman, look at Alan ''where are my detonators'' Rickman (edit) in Die Hard or Sean Bean in National Treasure.

It seems the brits stopped being interesting and exotic enough to be worthy foe after awhile though, and so attention turned to asians and arabs. One screenwriter spoke recently in an interview about how Gary Oldman's character in Air Force One was conveniently and unconvincingly a caucasian asian terrorist, making him more acceptable to the western viewer. Meanwhile the producers of The World Is Not Enough got in trouble for casting a north korean, with lawsuits against the studio being filled over their negative portrayal of koreans.

Hollywood's desperation to be as politically correct and respectful as possible in the day of worldwide releases and global profit margins means that they can't insult generic racial stereotypes anymore, and that's what they do best. So recently they've turned to the only group that can safely be scorned without fear of reproach: The corporate, slick black hair guys who have high positions in multinational companies, i.e. themselves.

The pinnacle of this perhaps came in Iron Man where a westernised person was put in charge of the evil terrorist corporation. This goes even further when we learn that ''The Dude'' Jeff Bridges is actually the villain.

Thematically this splits the film's message in one of two directions: The piece is either subtly commenting that the seeds of the modern terrorist problem lies in America's own capitalist system, or it's proclaiming that the arabs can't even run their own terrorist organisation so they need to outsource the job to one of America's biggest cultural icons. Hollywood has unintentionally placed the key philosophical question of the post 9/11 world within the subtext of its summer billboard movie.

These movies are made by giant multinational conglomerate cooperations, the irony of this is so strong it's delicious. Hollywood executive types place themselves as the villain because no one else will let them and it will make them tons of money. Money is also the motive for the terrible actions the movie villain will undertake over the course of the film.

Consider film is the most canonical and influential modern form of art, it's message inevitably permeates into society. The Godfather made the mafia cool, Blood Diamond changed the way a whole lot of people thought about diamonds, and would climate change be such a big issue if it weren't for An Inconvenient Truth?

Hollywood studios are thus openly and unashamedly placing themselves and companies like them as the evil of our society, and are more than happy to do so if it will increase their bottom line. Is there anything more damning about the state of the system and of our willingness to embrace said system? Or is it simply the case that the machinery of capitalism remains oiled with the blood of the workers.

Beware, For I Have Returned! or Why I Hate Reviews

noreply@blogger.com (Linton Davies) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 00:08:00 +0000

Reviews, reviews reviews. In many ways they’re seen as the life blood of the film industry. At least they were until marketing came along. But what purpose do they actually serve?

In theory a film review will:

1. Declare whether the reviewer, a supposedly ‘’profession opinion’’, enjoyed the film. We assume that he has some sort of authority that will affect whether we decide to brave the local multiplex. I personally don’t have a problem with that, but that’s because i follow film, and consequently film reviews and reviewers closely. I know certain critics that my tastes align with pretty reliably, so there word is very useful to me. However, for the most part how is this helping normal people (i.e.. not complete losers like myself). Taste is a very difficult and complicated thing. Some people go and watch movies for the car crashes and explosions (i had to sit through Wanted recently so have this on my mind) others like ‘’challenging and interesting cinema’’ as we so love to arrogantly call it. Empire, a dedicated film review magazine, gave Guy Richie’s Rock n’ Rolla 4/5 stars. We can’t trust these people!

2. It should then give a very general, spoiler free, plot outline. All the reader needs to know is what kind of film this is because hey, some people really don’t like spanish feminist cinema, and people like me will definitely go to anything where the review mentions the three magic words: court room drama. In many way’s genres are a bad thing, they’ve restricted the film industry (‘’churn us out a couple more of those teen comedies, they HUGE right now’’) but they a way of narrowing down what will appeal to you, so let them serve their purpose.

3. There is no number three (I went there)

This is the important part. A review should have ABSOLUTELY NO ANALYSIS. This is the trap that i see almost every review i read fall into. Unfortunately there isn’t that much call for ‘film criticism’ in mainstream journalism, so it all gets pushed in together with the review so that the movie critic may show off his PhD in contemporary horror fiction.

If the review is spoiler free, then the analysis is hardly going to be in depth and informative. Anyone who has seen the film won’t be satisfied by it. People read reviews before they go to see a film, not after. If you haven’t seen the film yet, why in the world are you reading the analysis. You don’t want to deconstruct a work before you’ve even got to experience the thing. You want to be blown away in the cinema, not thinking about how this is probably the part the critic was talking about. For me there is nothing worse than having a film’s flaws pointed out to me before i’ve seen something, because now i won’t help but notice them.

A review is for the reader to weigh up what he sees to be the movie’s positive and negative points before making an informed decision. It shouldn’t try and delve into the inner workings of the tortured protagonist or tell you the film’s best joke, and it certainly shouldn’t start deconstructing the thing; at least let us see it first!

P.S one more thing i can’t stand is the way these pieces love to hit you right at the end with the classic ‘’I won’t divulge the final twist in the tale, but boy is it a shocker!’’ line. Err, thanks for the heads up you cruel mother chucker.

Females In Cinema: Video Edition

noreply@blogger.com (Linton Davies) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 18:19:00 +0000

Once in the while I think I might turn a post into a Video for both illustrative and commercial purposes.

So yeah, here's what I wrote last time but more *Flash-Bang-Wooy*:

Why Are We Having Such Problems With Female Roles?

noreply@blogger.com (Linton Davies) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 15:18:00 +0000

For a long time we’ve suffered with this problem of men dominating our movies (as i've discussed before), leaving women much maligned on the sidelines, occupying only the role of damsel in distress or dutiful wife. Well obviously this couldn’t stand in the enlightened 21st century, women have to be put back into cinemas, and so a change has taken place over the last ten years. Unfortunately though this is most definitely the wrong kind of change.

Now we have what are called the ‘’strong female characters’’. They are still young and sexy (of course, studios still want to make money), but they also have at least one masculine characteristic in order to keep the feminists at bay. These women can fire a gun or perhaps can drink a lot (a la Marion from Raiders), they might enjoy a particularly aggressive game of tennis.

The problem is though, the issues is not whether they are physically strong or weak, they are no less artificial and no more interesting either way. Her ability to fix cars or hack a computer doesn’t make her a better character, it just means she has another location to do her (obligatory) swooning.

Case in point: Helen Mirren’s Queen is certainly not the typical buxom blonde, but she is easily a much ‘’stronger character’’ than anyone Catherine Zeta Jones has ever portrayed.

It seems that Hollywood just can’t write women characters. Or should i say they can’t write real characters that happen to be women. Ones with flaws, interests, personalities. Yno, like a proper person has.

That’s not to say the bad male characters should get away scott free either. Don’t get me wrong, there are a whole lot of crappy masculine characters out there. If we only bash writers for writing bad women, they’re just going to avoid writing women altogether and of course we don’t want that. The thing is that with men they sometimes get it right, while with female roles they clearly don’t have a clue.

Even though most Hollywood writers are men (a whole other problem) writer’s should be able to write beyond their personal experiences if they are any good at all. So the question is how much of the fault should lie at their door, and how much belongs to the studios for pushing this crap on them in the first place. In my opinion a whole lot of guilt also needs to fall on us, the audience, for putting up with this rubbish.

special thanks to www.overthinkingit.com for artwork and examples.

People like Football. People like Movies. Together? Not So Much.

noreply@blogger.com (Linton Davies) — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 10:36:00 +0000

Woo! Today marks the start of the new premiership season. For you American readers that means - just kidding, no way am I going to pander to your

''we stole the name of your sport and connected it to a stupider version of rugby so now we don't know if you're talking about football football or soccer football''

It's always soccer football, no one cares about the other kind. Anyway to mark this momentous occasion I thought I'd talk about the great football related movies...

That's right, there aren't any. The fashionable answer maybe Escape to Victory but honestly it's a bit rubbish, just better than Goal II: Living the dream.

The problem with football movies is, unless you make the footbally bits look realistic, and I mean properly realistic not just cuts between a pre-recorded game and your actor shooting a ball across an empty field, you've lost all credibility.

Not to mention the fact that all the stuff around the football that makes up the 'story' is usually the boring 'one boy lives the dream' idea that we've all heard before. Add in an obligatory appearance from David Beckham or Zidane who inevitably can't act and you're already shooting 3/10.

So today I champion not the football movies themselves, but those about the life around the sport, those about its hooligans and its fans. Before you put in She's The Man (football as a theme does go so well with gender swapping films) try Football Factory or even Newcastle Boys. It's always going to be easier for the brits to make a movie about the sport, seeing as we actually understand it.

I leave you with Will Farrell in Kicking and Screaming, because I'm a horrible, horrible person.

Hollywood ''journalism'' strikes again

noreply@blogger.com (Linton Davies) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 10:09:00 +0000

I have great respect for what the guys over at the Hollywood Saloon Podcast are doing. They produce the highest quality film related podcast around, independently, and most importantly they don't try and pander to their audience. When you listen to these guys, you might actually learn something.

Ready their discussion forum I came across one particular post by host John Jansen which i think successful summed up all that I've been feeling about the problems of ''film journalism''. These kind of writers have become nothing more than another piece in the vicious circle of test screenings and rumor monkering which ultimately creates mediocre material. I reproduce his post below, you can find it in the original form here. Enjoy:

Today, Patrick Goldstein of the L.A. Times published this...this...well it sure the hell is not news...it's a HIT PIECE on Spike Jonze's current project Where The Wild Things Are.

Read it all here:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-bigpicture12-2008jul12,0,5498306.story

Quote:
'Where the Wild Things Are' poses 'a challenge' for Warners
By PATRICK GOLDSTEIN, THE BIG PICTURE
July 12, 2008

First of all Patrick -- all film pose a challenge for every studio that releases them. Production and Marketing costs have skyrocketed while attendance is down. Why do you think there is so much branding in the marketplace today? It's not just this film - it's all films. So give me a break on your big "breakthough story idea of the day". This "news" which by the way, isn't news at all, it was so a few months ago when the test footage leaked and the release date was pushed.

This is exactly the kind of rubbish that creates Heaven's Gate's and Ishtar's in the industry. Hit pieces in the media. No matter what the disguise of intention -- it clearly is a hit because of the lack of scope in investigation and opinions factored into the lead and body of the story being investigated. I really hate to use "investigated" -- because it implies that some actual real journalistic researrch went into this piece. This is Grade-Z garbage and is exactly what is wrong with Hollywood reporting.

Guess what -- it's not helping anyone. Not the studio, not the filmmakers, not the fans of the book or the unknown audience who might discover it.

Quote:
SOMETHING HAS gone very wrong with "Where the Wild Things Are," the much-anticipated Spike Jonze adaptation of Maurice Sendak's classic children's book. The $80-million film, with a script by literary cool guy Dave Eggers, was filmed largely in the second half of 2006 in Australia. It was originally slated for release this October but got pushed back to the fall of 2009. Last week it disappeared entirely from the Warner Bros. release schedule, a sign of continuing troubles.

A sign of continuing troubles -- because you say so Patrick? Gee, who anointed you the voice of decision? And if there really are troubles -- how are you helping with your thoughts and reporting? What is the purpose of your piece? What is the point? To inform future audiences that a new superbomb is heading their way -- cause you say so?

Quote:
The script got good early reviews. But for months the Web has been pulsing with rumors and in-depth accounts that when Jonze had a research screening last December, kids in the audience were crying and fleeing the theater -- not exactly the reaction the studio had hoped for.

Ahhh -- here we go. rumours on the web. That's it. Case closed.

Quote:
"Where the Wild Things Are" is about a mischievous boy who, after being sent to his room without his supper, creates a forest-like world full of exotic beasties. The movie's big problem? The boy, played by newcomer Max Records, is almost entirely unlikable, coming off as more mean-spirited and bratty than mischievous. Jonze has also had tons of issues with the wild things. Originally shot as actors in furry creature suits with animated faces, as well as animatronic puppets, they were a big disappointment. Instead of being scary or funny, they almost seemed blank, with little warmth or emotion. Jonze is now retooling the film, using CGI to create more lifelike monsters.

This entire summation of the performance of Max Records is summed up by the opinion of who? A test screening audience? A six year-old kid? A plant from a rival studio? A pissed off filmmaker? An outraged Sendak fan? A Dr. Sues fan with an agenda?

This is the heart of the problem with this piece -- it takes the "opinion" of an unknown and makes it the defacto truth and authority on the matter. No breathing room here. Nobody else is asked about this. Nobody. Just because someone on the web says so -- somebody that we cannot even confirm saw the film. This is not journalism.

"They were a big disappointment" -- Boy is that easy to type -- but consider the damage it does. Who said so? Is there anybody who disagreed? Is there a contest being held? Can I vote? There is no wiggle room here -- if Patrick says so -- that's it. Is Patrick just using the test footage to base his opinion on? The test footage that Spike Jonze has already come out and said that a) Was not the real actor, b) was not the real voice actor and c) was not the final costume or test effect. It was a rough edit of test footage. Gee Patrick, remind me to let the studios know to not let anyone outside the creative process to see test footage -- they might get the wrong idea and find themselves writing crap disguised as informed opinion.

And let me be clear -- the last thing I want from this film is for it to be dictated by a bunch of five and six year old kids. I don't care about their opinion -- and neither should the studio. They are too young and know enough about movies or films to be getting any kind of voice in this very unique adaptation of material. This is one of those rare cases where you make the film -- and let the audience discover it. You cannot make it to cater to a vanilla audience taste -- it will rot the soul form the story.

Test screening kids? Arguhhhhh!!!!

This is mainstream Hollywood reporting? The media tries to separate itself from the fanboy prose on the web -- and now it's using them as sources just so they can fill space on their own web pages?

Quote:
But can the movie be saved? And when will it ever see the light of day? I just spoke to Warners chief Alan Horn, who offered, for the first time, his studio's side of the story.

Ohh -- the mystery part of the piece. Can it be saved? Saved? As if it's on life support in a hospital? Hate to break it to ya Patrick, but making movies ain't like surgery -- there is no exact textbook to follow. Now you add in the live-action -- not cgi animated -- adaptation of one of children's literature classic works -- and you think thee is an A,B,C solution to it all. Man, do we need to keep people like you away from the moviemaking process. No wonder things in the media are so in the toilet.

Quote:
Horn denied rumors that the studio has taken Jonze off the movie, saying he remains fully supportive of the filmmaker. "We've given him more money and, even more importantly, more time for him to work on the film," Horn said. "We'd like to find a common ground that represents Spike's vision but still offers a film that really delivers for a broad-based audience. We obviously still have a challenge on our hands. But I wouldn't call it a problem, simply a challenge. No one wants to turn this into a bland, sanitized studio movie. This is a very special piece of material and we're just trying to get it right."

Standard studio line. I would expect nothing less from Mr. Horn. But nicely worded with "challenge".

Quote:
Warners can afford to take its time. It has an influx of 12 to 14 movies from the newly absorbed New Line studio that Warners is still trying to fit into its release schedule. Fascinating about "Wild Things" is that it shows the pitfalls of Warners' strategy of marrying gifted directors to mainstream studio material. The strategy has produced a number of triumphs, most notably Chris Nolan's "Batman Begins" and the upcoming "The Dark Knight," Alfonso Cuaron's "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" and Steven Soderbergh's "Ocean's Eleven." But it also has resulted in disasters in which filmmakers have been totally miscast with material, whether it be the Wachowski brothers' "Speed Racer" or acclaimed German "Downfall" director Oliver Hirschbiegel's "The Invasion," which underwent all sorts of rewrites and reshoots but still turned out to be a flop.

Ok...here we go. Let's once again make a final assumption on Speed Racer and the quality of marriage of material between filmmaker and concept once again -- based on money. It's af if Patrick just looked up Warner. Bros. films that had poor box office -- and just plugged in the directors he saw fit his hit. And really, based on the above examples, with the exception of The Invasion (was that really a good idea anyway?) -- I think Warner Bros. is still batting pretty well.

I congratulate Warners for being willing to let daring artists tackle its more conventional material. No one wants to see "Where the Wild Things Are" in the hands of a paint-by-numbers filmmaker like Chris Columbus. But if Jonze has his mind set on making a dark, occasionally disturbing film, how much rope should the studio give him before it tries to rein him in? It's not an easy call. I'll give Alan Horn the last word, since he was enough of a stand-up guy to debate the issue with me

Isn't Patrick a stand up guy. He champions Spike Jonze over the Chris Columbus approach. Well, let's give the man a beer! Hey Warner Bros., did you hear that Patrick Goldstein "congradulates" you? Woo-Hoo, right?

Then why the hell is he writing A HIT PIECE on the film that will now taint the perception of the film as in trouble -- never a good move for PR.

Quote:
"We try to take a few shots," he said. "Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don't. The jury is still out on this one. But we remain confident that Spike is going to figure things out and at the end of the day we'll have an artistically compelling movie."

God I hope so -- cause with people with Patrick Goldstein covering the beat -- your job just got that much more difficult.

This is the L.A. Times.

This is Hollywood reporting.

Equality in film? The Bechdel Test.

noreply@blogger.com (Linton Davies) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 09:28:00 +0000

The Bechdel test is an interesting and worrying theory I first came across being discussed on The Hathor Legacy and The Amptoons Blog, apparently taken from a comic strip on Dykes To Watch Out For.

The rule is that only movies which satisfy these three rules pass:

1) there are at least two named female characters

2) who talk to each other

3) about something other than a man

If you think about it, it’s quite appalling to think about how few movies pass this test, especially if you add ‘cooking’ and ‘children’ to the third point. Off the top of my head the only one I can think of is Kill Bill (and Sex & The City but that does absolutely nothing for the female cause!).

This shows just how conservative Hollywood is. It’s interesting that TV, which in theory is a close mirror to real life, does far better in the test. Men and women parts begin to approach equality in shows with big ensemble casts but in film, the shorter and still more important form, forget about it.

Our culture bleeds into and influences our lives; important works become so entrenched and popularised in society that eventually their core ideas become part of who we are, whether we like it or not. Think about the way James Bond films and Star Wars have affected our culture, these myths become history.

In my opinion cinema is the most popular and influencial medium in todays culture, whether that is a good or a bad thing is another matter. How then are we to truly achieve equality between the sexes if the differences are so reinforced by the movies we watch every week?

It’s also a viciously reinforcing circle. The inequality is reinforced into our culture and then people turn away from films that brake that mould because they’re too ‘’different’’ and ‘’challenging’’ to be mainstream.

Studios are capitalism whores; ‘’if we come, they will make it’’. With that said, what does the fact that a film where women aren’t completely sidelined can’t be anything more than “arthouse entertainment” say about the world we live in, and how far we still have to progress?

I get the feeling Hollywood will be the last to move on from our shameful past

The problem of buzz and the dangers of over-hyping.

noreply@blogger.com (Linton Davies) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 07:22:00 +0000

The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight. This is all I've heard about for the last three weeks. People talking about it, twittering about it, reviewing it, analysing it. Harnessing the powers of Google i can tell you that after just three weeks of release The Dark Knight, yields 36.5M results. Compare this to 7.4M for The Godfather, 16M for David Beckham, and 5.3M for Nelson Mandela.

If you’re a blogger, news source or just someone with a voice, you’ve felt a certain amount of pressure to talk about The Dark Knight over recent weeks, and it seems most of us have yielded to that pressure (including me). Whether it’s the quest for page rank, to keep up with the zeitgeist, or just because you actually loved the movie (it was great wasn’t it?) but don’t you think everything we needed to say about this movie was said a long time ago?

Everyone is talking about how TDK ''broke IMDB'' and how it’s ridiculous to call it the greatest film ever made, but these are the same people who are making it out to be that important. The ever increasing place of the internet in our lives means that after three weeks in the Googleverse the film is more popular than The Godfather, at least according to the masses.

It’s almost a shame, because I'm really starting to get sick of this thing, and it’s not the fault of the film. Everyone under the sun has reviewed it, all of them glowingly singing its praises, and yet it’s still making the news. All this crap has led to people who didn’t get to see it right away often coming out of the cinema actually feeling disappointed. I even heard someone call it the ‘’most disappointing movie ever made’’.

It has reached the point now that for these big releases you have to go out and see it right away if you want any chance of avoiding the hype and maintaining any kind of surprise for what should be the best moments of the film (pencil-trick anyone?). We are so caught up in trailers, spoilers, crappy gossip sites, reviews, analysis and opinion that it's almost impossible to go in fresh and 'untarnished' to a film. This is our loss, because going in cold is really the best way to enjoy a film, and the only way for it to truly blow you away. Things have gone so far, I'm guessing you've heard about how Quentin Tarantino's script for his next project has leaked and is already being discussed and reviewed; before anyone has even been cast!

The TDK release has brought the hype-machine to new levels. The internet, ‘going viral’ and not wanting to get left behind means that we as a culture have picked this thing up and made it out to be more than it is, something that it will never be able to live up to.

Apocalypse Now: a Question of Influence

noreply@blogger.com (Linton Davies) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 01:13:00 +0000

The incredible interest surrounding the creation of Apocalypse Now is certainly testament to the brilliance of the film itself. The film appears so unlike anything we have seen before or since that the question ‘’how in the world did someone make such a thing’’ seems perfectly natural.

Although the film’s narrative has been imprecisely described by critics (and in Eleanor Coppola’s documentary) as ‘’loosely based’’ on Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness i contend that the film has just as much if not more in common with Werner Herzog’s maniacal Aguirre: Wrath of God released in 1972 as it does with Conrad’s Book.

Only a few scenes from Heart of Darkness survive in Coppola’s adaptation, and the characters themselves bare little resemblance to their literary counterparts. Captain Willard is a crude assassin with no moral compass, he shares little with his mirror character Marlow of the novel. It is Kurtz which most deeply and explicitly ties the two works, but Marlon Brando’s portrayal of the now mythological character is easily the weakest point of the film. His inane whispers and giant physique mean that he is twinned to the novel’s character in little more than name.

Thematically i find the german expressionism masterpiece Aguirre: The Wrath of God

to be much more identifiable with Apocalypse Now. This is something Coppola himself validates ‘’Aguirre, with its incredible imagery, was a very strong influence. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention it." Something that modern critics often ignore given their natural tendency towards Anglo-Saxon material.

Aguirre provides the atmosphere of wilderness, fear and isolation that will be a key part of Coppola’s work, both films describing a ship floating down an unknown river in the jungle. The scenes in Apocalypse Now where the ship’s crew allow their intense fear of the unknown to escalate and wildly attack the surrounding environment and its inhabitants with maniacal gun fire were certainly lifted directly from Herzog’s piece, which of course contains the poignant piece of dialogue:

“shoot shoot you fool’’

‘’how can i shoot, when i don’t know what or where I'm aiming at’’

Heart of Darkness gives the search for Kurtz central narrative and thematic importance; the journey towards him is Marlow’s journey towards a dark shadow of himself and of humanity. In the film on the other hand this mission is little more than a subplot for the social commentary directed towards the Vietnam War as well as for the film’s thematic overtones.

Apocalypse Now is about man against nature; how despite all our high powered machinery we aren’t as strong as we think we are. It’s also about the perverted idea of ‘’bringing civilization’’ to the uncivilized world, the methods we use to accomplish this force into question the values our ‘civilized world’ has to offer. This is all equally powerfully explored in Aguirre: Wrath of God, my favourite scene of which is where, having captured two natives and started to explain to them about religion and the bible, the priest suddenly forgets his task upon laying his eyes on a gold chain around the native’s neck. He then begins frantically questioning him on the whereabouts of El Dorado, the real reason for the mission.

In conclusion, what I'm saying is that although Apocalypse Now, easily one of the greatest works of the first century of cinema, owes a great debt and one that should be recognized to Heart of Darkness, we also need to remember that a lot of its power comes from a lesser known German film. One made with a stolen camera and no budget, but remains a work which deserves not to be lost in time just as much as Apocalypse Now does.

If Hollywood wants to stop piracy, they need to make the alternatives less damn annoying!

noreply@blogger.com (Linton Davies) — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 00:58:00 +0000

To me, the film industry seems stuck in an old world model despite the fact that we entered into a new age some time ago. They still feel confident exploiting their audience any way they can, purely with the goal of increasing their profits. This was all well and good in years gone by, due to the effectively inelastic demand for what they were selling. However, because of the P2P explosion this is no longer the case, and because distributers haven’t realised this more and more people have taken to illegally downloading their material.

Hollywood needs to understand, most people don’t really want to steal their entertainment, no matter what a bunch of swedish outlaws might have you believe. It’s a convenience issue predominantly. It’s ironic that the free illegal version is a better product than what we’re paying for; what does that tell you about what consumers want (see my article on why i believe Blu-Ray isn’t the way forward) and how they want to get it?

The people who really want to steal their content (yes i know it’s corny but piracy is stealing) are going to do so anyway. Now that the jellyfish is out of the fish tank it’s never going back in, no matter how you squeeze its flabby appendages with cease and desist letters. These people are lost to Hollywood, they will never make money from them again so forget it and focus on the rest of us.

It seems to me that Hollywood has fought back against the piracy problem by protecting its bottom line, not its audience. This is not only unsustainable but misguided. Cinemas have become more expensive, adverts have got longer, DRM is more annoying than ever on the next gen formats. Your audience is deserting you so you make your product a worse deal, how is that one working out for you? Normally if a competitor encroaches on your product you make you item better value, not worse.

It appears to me that the entertainment industry knows it can’t get at the real criminals so is going after their customers instead, just to make a point. We are treated like criminals because we buy their product. Every DVD i buy nowadays seems to come with the unskippable ‘’piracy is a crime, you wouldn’t steal a car’’ rubbish. Err no shit Sherlock but talk about preaching to the converted? you should probably concentrate more on making the thieves, rather than your costumers, feel guilty.

If you buy a DVD today you have to sit through around 2-10 minutes of warning, copyright notices and trailers, not to mention the bloody menu introductions, before you can do what you wanted to do in the first place; press play. You open up a download and it begins, no waiting around reading how we can’t steal the soundtrack in ten different languages. The icing on the cake of course is region coding. I bought a film, but now i can’t play it if i move house? I thought Europe and America where anti-protectionism, i guess they’re just anti-consumer.

The cinema experience is going the same way. The other day i got my bag checked before going in, not for bombs but for drinks. What the hell is going on here? The ticket price costs twice as much as buying the dvd at home does, and infinitesimally more than bittorenting the movie. Considering that the home experience is encroaching more and more on the cinema going market, what with personal projectors, sound systems, HiDef quality, and the dvd window getting shorter and shorter you’d think you might reward me for venturing out to your multiplex by letter me bring in a can of Fanta. I won’t even start on the fifteen minutes of adverts that we have to sit through before the film even begins.

A lot of people don’t see the alternatives yet, downloading movies is still quite a geeky thing to do, and certainly won’t become a habit for the over 30s anytime soon. But the new generations, the consumers of tomorrow, are starting to pick up on the ideas, especially considering that these are the people with the least disposable income. If the film industry doesn’t act now to bring their product up to the level of what the illegal sources are giving us (I just find that concept incredible) then they are going to regret it forever. At the moment you can pay for something or get what many consider to be a superior product for free. You do the math on how long it will take for the second option to catch on in the main stream. In the end we’re all going to suffer for this mistake because budgets, not executive’s salaries are going to be the first thing to fall as profits wain. Considering that The Mummy 3 had a budget of 145$ Million though, that might not be so a bad thing.

The Humping Dog: A Guaranteed Bad Movie Indicator

noreply@blogger.com (Linton Davies) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:21:00 +0000

Dear Hollywood directors, producers and actors, a word of advice: the next time you read a script which in any way includes a joke about an embarrassingly sexually promiscuous dog, step away. fast.

It is my opinion that the humping dog, seen far too often in mainstream ‘’comedies’’ tells you an awful lot about the talents of the work’s writers as well as the kind and quality of the humour the audience is going to have to endure. As such, it serves as a very reliable ‘’bad movie indicator’’.

The main problem with it is that it is such a cheap piece of physical humour. Ask someone who really loves Star Wars what was worst about the prequels, and they’ll probably tell you about the horrible physical gags added in that undermine the sincerity of the story and tank with the audience. Jar Jar symbolised a shift away from serious storytelling into children’s cinema. The kid laughs when the creature farts, the adult does not.

That’s fine, there should be a difference between children’s and adult entertainment. However, my problem is that the humping dog is in essence a conglomeration of adult and childish humour, considering its sexual undertones.

Whats more it’s not seen in children’s films, but in more adult comedies. Films such as Click, America’s Sweethearts and Because I Said So are all mature comedies that deal with relationships and mature themes, but yet they feel the need to cut away to the dog with the teddy bear. I can understand the rational behind adding more adult content to kids movies to entertain the parents, but a responsible parent won’t take their kids to see Because I said So (not least because even a child won’t stand for that garbage). There’s no reason to add childish content to adult movies. It’s simply lazy storytelling, the predictable joke you make when you’ve run out of ideas, and as soon as we see it, the audience knows that the film has lost its way, and they’ve made a (grave) mistake with their choice of film.

P.S Garden State wasn't bad though

David Fincher Facts

noreply@blogger.com (Linton Davies) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 16:21:00 +0000

If film geeks are to have a hero, it seems fitting that it should be a dorky looking 46 year old who grew up making Nike ads. David Fincher, maker of Fight Club, Seven and Zodiac is definitely our man; the Chuck Norris for people who prefer Criterion Editions to roundhouse kicks. [see my article: why Fight Club is better than Citizen Kane] In this vein, I thought i’d teach you some things about our friend Mr. Fincher:

Erectile Disfunction can be cured by watching the opening credits of Seven.

Doctors have told Michael J. Fox that if he appears in a David Fincher film, his symptoms would decrease by fifty percent.

After seeing the perfection of Fight Club, God developed an inferiority complex.

David Fincher called an actor to tell him he'd been cut out of a movie. The actor dropped the phone and jumped in front of a train.

The First rule of David Fincher: You do not blame David Fincher for Alien 3

You can build a better mousetrap, but you can't shoot better inserts than David Fincher.

The Second rule of David Fincher: You do not blame David Fincher for Alien 3

During halftime of Game 4 of the NBA Finals, Doc Rivers showed his team a rough cut of Benjamin Button. The rest is history.

The sonogram of David Fincher in his mother's womb was nominated for Best Short Film.

David Fincher is a replicant.

David Fincher does not direct "dark films"; the sun is terrified of him.

The Securities and Exchange Commission filed an injunction against his TV advertising clients, citing "unfairly excellent cinematic handywork whose effectiveness would lead to monopolization."

David Fincher's wedding video has 4 commentary tracks (the one recorded for the laserdisc edition was not ported to the DVD).

David Fincher is Tyler Durden, but only in his spare time.

David Fincher's obese cousin's thighs have an excess of celluloid.

It is rumored that David Fincher was in a freak helimotocopter accident in 1996 and directed The Game while in a coma, legally dead.

The actual director's cut of Alien 3 will remain unreleased until Ridley Scott and James Cameron pass away, as they are unwilling to allow its awesomeness to overshadow their comparatively feeble attempts at cinema

Author Chuck Palahniuk has taken to visiting bookstores and libraries, slicing out the ending to Fight Club, and replacing it with a note suggesting the reader watch the movie instead.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button trailer makes Citizen Kane look like Ernest Goes To Camp

David Fincher is developing his own handheld 8K HD digital video camera, comprised of chewing gum, twine, a webcam, and a flashdrive.

David Fincher doesn’t need Helicopters to capture his aerial shots. God films them for him as a personal favour for making Se7en.

Before Fincher, people would say “There are a million ways to shoot a scene”, now there are only two. The way Fincher does it, and the wrong way.

Censorship: Seeing The funny side

noreply@blogger.com (Linton Davies) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 01:57:00 +0000

Censorship is a very hot button issue in cinema, whether it be the kind forced upon studios by profit margins or by the MPAA. This is a multifaceted and complicated topic, one which I will enjoy going into in more serious detail in the coming months. However, oddly enough such a serious topic can also be a very amusing one. Particularly when the censoring isn’t done by anyone who had anything to do with the film’s production.

Throughout the 90s in particular, television networks took it upon themselves to remove ‘’offensive’’ language from the films they broadcast so as to ‘’protect young ears’’ and pass the content out before the watershed. Without access to actors or additional footage and with the help of a-not-so-subtle over dub, the results were inevitably catastrophic and hilarious.

The Breakfast Club had the line Eat my shit! replaced with the much more palatable Eat my socks! while You and your whole fucking family in Godfather II was replaced with You and your whole phony family. The fact that his family were a lot of things, but hardly phony, didn’t seem to matter.

The Die Hard Franchise was a great one for such goofs. The famous Yippi-Ki-Yay Mutherfucker! line was replaced with Yippi-Ki-Ay melon farmer! in the UK and Yippi-Ki-Yay Mr. Falcon! in the American network version. The worst part was that the dub wasn’t even anything like Bruce Willis’s voice, sounding more Russian than anything. Not to mention the fact that 'Mr. Falcon' is not the villain’s name, and is by no means an insult. The Australian version meanwhile was something like Yippie-Ki-Yat Kemosabe.

In another Die Hard related incident, in Die Hard: With a Vengeance, the TV version switched the sandwich board sign Bruce Willis was forced to wear in a black ghetto from I hate Niggers to I hate everyone... obviously young black guys have a thing against manic depressives, the emo generation better watch out.

Robocop also has a great TV edit, at one point one of the scientist even proclaims that Robocop will be a bad mother crusher!!. What is a mother crusher? Where can i find one of these machines? Why would anyone want one?

This is of course the same edit where Dick Jones explains (regarding his boss) Once I even called him an airhead (asshole)

Oh well, in the age where any underage kid can get his hands on all kinds of wonderful sleaze and gore we can look back and laugh at those days...

Here’s a nice collection of wonderful obvious ‘changes’ in Die Hard 2 (as if that film could get any worse). I particularly like the huge difference between Bruce Willis and the dubbing guy’s voices

source: some of the above examples were found on this excellent podcast forum

Home Media Part 3: Why Are Digital Movie Downloads So Important?

noreply@blogger.com (Linton Davies) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 12:56:00 +0000

*** Parts 1 and 2 can be found here and here***

When it comes down to it, what are we hoping for in terms of movies?. That’s simple, we all want better content, films that we enjoy more. The problem is that unless you’re an adventurous type, the typical anglosaxon is pretty much limited to whatever the big studios give us. These are the cinematic behemoths, they deliver giant, worldwide releases on huge budgets.

The problem is that these kind of things cost a lot of money, so to get something meaningful out of their investment producers have to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Everything is dictated by markets; kids films have to appeal to adults, action movies have to have a love interest for the girls etc, etc. There is little room for the niche markets that make the music industry for example so great and diverse. Not everyone likes the same thing, but if you’re only into free improvisation electronic art music there is a corner of the market ready to satisfy your needs. The same cannot be said for film in most cases.

The technology is there, the investment required to get the necessary equipment is comparitively small. More and more movies are being edited on Final Cut Pro, which i have right here on my laptop, and professional film cameras aren’t that much of a step up from the Canon HV20 i have on my desk. The problem is distribution, hello internet.

If you’re a new band, you make a few songs and put them on myspace. If they’re good a fanbase starts forming, you pick up steam and eventually a big company might take notice and give you a contact, if they don’t you’ve still got a whole load of listeners. But what do you do if you’ve made a movie? Our whole way of thinking needs to change in terms of cinema; from one where filmmaking is very much an industrial exercise, justifying the loss of the ‘art’ index, to where anyone with talent can do it. This is what Francis Ford Coppola was talking about long ago:

"To me the great hope is that now these little 8mm video recorders and stuff have come out, some... just people who normally wouldn't make movies are going to be making them, and - you know - suddenly, one day, some little fat girl in Ohio is going to be the new Mozart - you know - and? make a beautiful film with her little father's camcorder - and for once the so-called professionalism about movies will be destroyed. Forever. And it will really become an art form."

Now we have the cameras and technology, we just have to take the leap into a fair distribution method. Of course what a few people can produce on their own isn’t going to match up to Hollywood. No, my hope is that this will inspire the creation of many more smaller studios, that don’t have to compete with the biggies to get their movies shown. We’re judging on content, not on claught. Just think what this changes. Suddenly you’re multiplying the amount of films produced ten fold. Then we’ve got real choice.

Inevitably it won’t be easy to get your name attached to the rising stars of digital distribution. I’m sure Apple would be reluctant to put your little movie in their store. What i’m talking about is a change in the way we think about getting films where alternate, independant sites start offering downloads and for better value. When people get used to getting their movies from the internet, it won’t be long before they venture further afield than iTunes or Netflix streaming. However far you decide to go is a victory for choice, content and quality, and will finally turn cinema into something more than the stagnant beast it is today. Viva La Revolution.

Home Media Part 2: Collectionism and the Digital Revolution

noreply@blogger.com (Linton Davies) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:09:00 +0000

Given that my last article has received a fair amount of attention, I think i should first clarify my position regarding Blu-Ray. There is no doubt Blu-Ray is the ‘best’ format out there in terms of picture quality, that is obvious. However my point is that picture quality beyond DVD does’t really matter. Yes, we can all see the difference and say ‘’that looks better’’, but the added viewing value of Blu-Ray is small, while the cost is extremely high, at least for the foreseeable future. Why is the Wii outselling the PS3 two to one? Because in the gaming market as with movies, picture quality is way down on the list of priorities.

That’s why digital downloads/streaming are the future. They are cheaper, you don’t have to leave your house to get them, they don’t take up any room (except for a backup drive or two) and they’ll never get scratched. Just like MP3s.

This isn’t going to happen overnight; we’ve been trained to have consumerist, collectionist tendancies which won’t fade away until a whole new generation grows up without knowing DVDs (ask a kid today when was the last time he used a cd). A few people commented under my last piece about how they don’t want to switch away from DVD because they are too attached to their collection. For a long time I felt the same way, my 300 DVDs took pride of place on my shelves. But what use are they, really? The shiny boxes and colourful sleeves give us a sense of pride and contentedness, but they’re just pieces of paper. All we’re really looking at are discs, discs that play movies. All the rest doesn’t make sense, but I agree it’s hard to let go, i’m not immune to these irrational feelings. However I recently handbraked my entire collection and started selling off my dvds. It is so much more convienant, and if you make the files big enough (I go for about 2.5GBs per film) the quality loss is virtually unnoticeable. Suddenly, just like with my old CDs, my DVDs are just sitting on the shelf gathering dust, soon enough I won’t miss them at all.

Clearly DVD ripping isn’t for everyone though, it’s time consuming and complicated. Digital movies will only gather pace when it truly enters the average household. This is what companies should be focusing on if they want to be what iTunes is for music, but ten fold. Don’t bring the computer into the living room as the iTunes store has done, this will only get you so far. The Xbox team understands this, so do the Playstation people. Both are trying to bring movies straight to your TV just as with the Apple TV and Netflix’s Roku. Whoever wins this battle will become the next media heavyweight. At the moment these services are under marketed and too expensive.

The company who is prepared to gamble on the temporary monetary hit caused by heavily subsidizing their player will reap the rewards down the line. Forget download speeds and DRM, the future is a single box under your TV that streams or downloads your content. No more looking around for websites and URLs. The Apple TV does this but it remains a niche product. It's much too expensive and no-one out of the tech world knows what it does. It's seen as a relay from your computer to your TV, not as a standalone machine that lets you download and play content out of the box. Companies need to get behind these products in a big way, and DVD will soon become a thing of the past.

Regarding illegal downloads, forget about them. The cat is out of the bag and unless something changes radically in the way the entire internet is organised, this is not going to change. The people who want to download illegally will and you can't stop them. But most people don't want to use bittorent right now. The music industry didn't react quick enough to a changing market and lost an entire generation of consumers. The film business must embrace companies like Apple and Netflix Streaming, not shy away from them. Unfortunately Hollywood is probably the most conservative market place of them all, and will keep pushing for their out of date business model long into the future, while the rest of the world moves on.

Home Media Part 1: Why we don’t care about Blu Ray

noreply@blogger.com (Linton Davies) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 02:02:00 +0000

The home media market is in a strange place right now. For awhile it seemed like the HD DVD vs Blu Ray battle would decide the future of personal entertainment but Blu Ray’s continuing slow sales figures now give a clearer indication of what consumers want and where the market is heading.

People aren’t switching from DVD to Blu Ray because they think dvd is good enough, the only added value HD DVD really offers is higher picture quality, and not many people seem to care. The precedent was set by the music industry; people are perfectly happy with 128kbps songs from itunes (a CD is 1,411kbps (*fixed*)). Beyond a certain point higher image/sound quality are given diminishing ratios of importance by consumers. Sure we’d be happy to buy into better looking dvds for about £200, but the biggest problem with Blu Ray is that it doesn’t fit its only market.

If we want to ‘’go high-def’’ you’re going to need a Blu-Ray player (about £300) an ‘’HD Ready’’ (what a confusing, un-consumer friendly term) TV costing around £600, a high definition cable subscription plan, because you want your tv to be HD too (Sky HD costs £210 for set up and the box then +£10/month) and that's without considering the added cost of the more expensive discs. In total then over two years going HD will cost you around £1400 or $2800 more than sticking with SD, all that just to have better picture quality.

Unless you’re an audio/visual- ophile nut, or you’re mad rich, you’d actually have to be pretty crazy to spend that kind of money for a few more pixels. As with the CGI backlash, we’re seeing that really how something looks (in terms of pixels not visuals) isn’t that important. Cinema is a means to tell stories; it is primarily a narrative (like literature) and not a visual form of art (like paintings). As mentioned in Style of Gimmicks Part 2, the vast array of visual cues and camera techniques only work when used as the most effective way to convey the intended emotion/message otherwise they’re just showing off.

Blu Ray, at its current price point, is just another expensive gimmick. People want their media delivered easier and cheaper (why is bittorent so popular?) and don’t mind about the slight qualitative hit this entails. This is why digital downloads are the future, and this will form the topic of discussion in part 2 (available here)

The Dark Knight blasts into the IMDB number 1 position

noreply@blogger.com (Linton Davies) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 16:21:00 +0000

The IMDB Top 250 is an interesting beast to say the least. It tracks the preferences of film goers who are interested enough in the medium to be seeking out directors/actors etc. and be voting regularly, but also has a large enough audience to not become a snobbish AFI-esque list. Citizen Kane's position at 28 reaffirms the idea that the voters are clued in to film art and history, but are also ''normal''; they like an entertaining flick as much as anyone else. There's noway to agree with the list completely, and i don't think anyone serious about film would say Pulp Fiction was the 6th greatest film ever made, but the mix between art/entertainment makes the list a powerful and interesting read.

For the last two years the top four has been entirely consistent:

1. Godfather

2. Shawshank Redemption

3. Godfather II

4. The Good The Bad and The Ugly.

However The Dark Knight, Chris Nolan's new Batman movie has slammed it's way to the number one position, only 3 days after its release. To place a film on the level of The Godfather in the eyes of the general public shows that perhaps we have something special on our hands. It's been 14 years since a director has even come close to breaking up the big 4, and in my opinion Christopher Nolan is a worthy contender, one of the most exciting young directors around today.

Memento is an instant classic; in fact much like with Brian Singer and Superman, I was annoyed when Nolan took the Batman job as it's confines were sure to stifle his more unique and interesting qualities. With Memento, Insomnia and The Prestige, Nolan made 3 excellent films which all pushed the boundaries of film. Making an awesome comic book movie is cool, but i would say it smacks a bit of wasted talent.

What I'm really getting at I think is 1. Go see The Dark Knight asap, then probably go see it again as it has all the makings of something special, something we haven't had for some time (There Will Be Blood came close though).

More interestingly, and perhaps more worryingly I'm starting to wonder what having a comic book adaptation franchise (Dark Knight), a short story adaptation (Shawshank) and a sequel (Godfather II) in the so called ''top 4 movies'' says about cinema.