Given we are now entering a completely unprecedented time in the world, I thought I would start using this blog again, to capture a record of developments, thoughts and ideas about what is happening as the coronavirus pandemic happens, to track how it is affecing our everyday lives. I figure it may be interesting to look back at some day.

The coronavirus COVID-19 was first detected in Wuhan, China in December 2019, and has spread rapidly through the world, being declared a pandemic by the WHO on March 11th 2020.

On the 6th March, I was due to help run a research workshop in London and had to consider very seriously whether or not to go — London being the most densely populated place in the country, and therefore, you could argue, on the numbers, a greater risk. At the time there were only around 10 cases in the UK, and while the danger of the virus to the elderly and those with pre-existing health conditions (particularly immuno- or respiratory) was known, I ultimately judged that the risk of contraction was neglible and decided I would go.

Around about the time I took that trip, attitudes started to change, and the cases rose to around 36 on that day alone – if it had been even 2 days later I definitely wouldn’t have made the same decision to go. On the trip down the London and while I was there, I was super-paranoid, following the government/NHS advice to wash your hands regularly (“for as long as it takes to sing Happy Birthday twice”) and I made every effort not to touch doorhandles, surfaces etc (or to only do so through the outside of my coat sleeve etc). I completely avoided using the London Underground and avoided any crowded places. In fact, in a weird way, the trip was useful because I found that being away from home made me *more* conscious of the need to wash hands and be aware of what you touch.

When I returned I did take measures to reduce contact with anyone at risk, for example not visiting my auntie who was recently moved into a care home nearby and I haven’t yet met my brother-in-law’s newborn baby (at the time, it was thought that the risk to young children was high – though now it seems this virus does not affect young children, rather the very old or the infirm). I’ve also kept some physical distance within the home from my family just in case. After nearly 14 days I think it’s safe to say I didn’t bring anything back with me.

Since then, and particularly in the last 48-72 hours, a lot has changed. The government has begun giving daily briefings, and having announced a coronavirus-centric Budget only a week ago, including things like enhancements to the availability of statutory sick pay and tax relief for small businesses, they have yesterday already announced £350 billion of new measures to try and keep businesses afloat during this period. Which is a good start but perhaps doesn’t go far enough as it seems to be mainly based around loans, which means businesses accumulating more debt. There is a lot more that can be done especially to help individuals.

Around the world, things are being cancelled. The Euro 2020 football tournament has been postponed to 2021. The Eurovision Song Contest has today been cancelled. Glastonbury 2020 has been cancelled (its 50th anniversary). A few days ago the Premier League and all professional football here and overseas has been suspended. (in fact even down to grassroots level – my son’s under 8’s football matches and training have all been cancelled now). Filming on popular TV shows such as EastEnders and Line of Duty has stopped. The Archbishop of Canterbury announced the suspension of all public worship (though funerals and weddings can still go ahead – though in practice people may not wish to attend them). Airlines are closing down routes. The EU is closing its borders, as many countries already have. People have been advised to avoid pubs, cafes, restaurants, theatres etc. As a result, national cinema chains ODEON, Cineworld and Picturehouse have closed their doors.

At work, CHI (the conference for my discipline) was cancelled – the major event in the annual publication calendar around which a lot of our work is planned. The University cancelled all face-to-face teaching and has begun to put in place measures for video-based learning. For now there is some access to computer labs, with physical distancing being put in place by using every alternate desk. Yesterday I went into University and it was quite empty, only a handful of people were there. Strangely the roads were pretty busy on the way in and out.. perhaps lots of people doing some stocking up at supermarkets. Panic buying isn’t happening en masse – but there has been a ridiculous run on toilet roll and hand gel. The shelves are bare of these items – and once that happens, everyone else has to buy more because it becomes a precious commodity.

Something like this turns everything on its head. Normally it’s better to use public transport to help the environment – but now it’s better to drive on your own, in your own car, so that you don’t interact with anyone else. It’s a completely different mentality. The over 70s have been advised to self isolate, and I know from talking to my parents that this has caused a lot of worry – though it’s reassuring now that it has been admitted that people can still go out for exercise and fresh air. In fact today the National Trust announced it is opening all their gardens and public spaces for free to the public so that all can enjoy them – so important for mental health in these times.

For now, the schools remain open. People find this strange. It is thought this was initially because of a theory that herd immunity would help society cope with the spread of the virus – but that now seems to have been misjudged. (Great video here). We’re expecting the schools to close, and lots of people have already taken their kids out of school as a precaution. In our family for now, my wife (who’s a teacher) and the kids are going to school as normal, but we are not sure how long this will continue. There are a great many questions about what will happen when schools close – how will public services cope? What will happen for those like my daughter who have exams such as A-Levels coming up?

The advice now is that everyone who can work from home should work from home – so yesterday I brought home everything I needed and now I am working from home for the foreseeable future. Today I went out for a haircut (my hair was getting unruly and I figured if services close down I may not be able to do anything about this soon) and the high street was very strange. It was like the calm before a storm. Everyone was keeping a respectable distance from each other. It was very quiet even though plenty of people about. A sense of anxiety in the air. It felt like a strange calmness and anticipation. None of the usual energy you would expect to see. It felt very unreal.

For now, all we can do is watch and wait and take each day as it comes.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ is a great site for the pure numbers, and other than that we’re just watching the news and the official NHS/government advice as it comes out. Strange times.

[This is “Idea dump” post #1]

One area where I’ve had a few ideas, is thinking about how useful animated maps can be for understanding change of populations, empires or societies over a period of time. Here is just one of the many examples of YouTube videos and interactive visualisations online that do this:

The specific idea that occurred to me today, was that this technique could be applied to visualise the movement of people between towns and cities within a country, for example within the UK.

One way I could see this working would be that, based on compiling per-town annual population statistics into a large database, you could then render a dot or circle for each town with a size proportional to its population, forming a single map for each year (which would stay on screen for a few seconds). You would then compare each town’s population to the stat for that town in the previous year and identify whether it was a gain or a loss. Of course, you would need a geolocated lat/long coordinate for each town to serve as the centre of the dot.

I think a colour scale for each town’s dot something like this would be useful: dark red -> red -> grey -> green -> bright green. Grey would indicate “no change”, dark red would be “major loss of population since last year” and bright green would be “major gain of population since last year”.

You could then stitch these frames together into an animation to give a really clear visualisation as to how a country’s population is moving. Is there predominantly a move into cities, or to the country? Are influxes of population matched by losses elsewhere? (A more advanced version of this visualisation would distinguish between population growth due to immigration and internal population movements).

In terms of how it would look, I imagine a single frame might look a little like the header image of this post, which is featured in a different visualisation here (though in my visualisation there would be more green and less red).

Google Earth does allow timeline-based maps which change over time – perhaps the result could be created as a layer for Google Earth. Tools like this may help. Some related data for the UK can be found here. A similar project was carried out for US cities, though this focusses more on the geographic spread of the cities, whereas the idea I present is about population.

My blogging over the last couple of years has pretty much stalled completely, save for the odd film review or political post. This is partly due to spending more time on social media (especially Facebook) and using that as a conduit for my random thoughts, shares and ideas – but also due to the sense, like much of society, that we are becoming increasingly busy. I just don’t seem to make time for writing thoughtful posts or articles any more.

This post is a statement of intent, that I want to get back into blogging more often. I think that it’s a really useful thing for keeping my creative muscles flexed and for encouraging me to write more. So I had an idea to start the ball rolling again: Why not publish various ideas and tidbits I’ve jotted down in notes and text files over the last few years, regardless of how finished/polished they are, just as a way to get them out there?

I’ve had various ideas for apps that could be built, visualisations to create, interesting topics to research, stories to write, that have done nothing but languish on my hard drive. I figure if they are going to come to rest anywhere, it should at least be in the public domain, where there is the slightest chance that one of them gets discovered and leads somebody else (maybe even a future me) to do something cool.

Am I worried about other people stealing my ideas? Not any more. I’ve finally shaken off the old “hold onto your ideas tightly” mindset that years at IBM instilled in me. As the old adage goes, “execution is everything”, and that’s what it boils down to – if one of my ideas inspires someone else, and they can execute it, then great, my idea will have lead to something real. It’s not like I was doing anything with them. If something gets built that is related to one of my ideas, but not as I imagined, well then that’s something different anyway, so nothing lost.

The other nice thing about publishing ideas is that it serves as prior art to prevent anyone else from copyrighting or patenting the idea for themselves. In this way, if there is anything of value amongst my meandering ideas, then it is freely available for the public, and cannot be held onto and claimed as original by some greedy corporation, in the interests of profit.

So all of this to say, watch out for new posts in the “Ideas & Innovation” section of the blog over coming months. I am sure the quality will be mixed, but hopefully you might find something of interest in there. I hope to go for little and often rather than infrequent, highly polished finished products – so forgive me if some of the following posts are a little rough around the edges… Happy reading!

Tonight I watched a really beautiful film, Jean-Marc Vallée and Nick Hornby’s adaptation of Cheryl Strayed’s auto-biographical memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail.

Wild is remarkable; Not only does the film feature some beautiful landscapes from across California and Oregon, but it manages to create a compelling and engaging drama from a fairly simple narrative: the story of one woman’s journey on foot across America as she walks the Pacific Crest Trail.

I think the reason the film works so well is because it manages to reflect human nature both at large (through the weird and wonderful people she meets along the way and the experiences she has) as well as on the inside (by treating us to numerous flashbacks into Cheryl’s past, allowing us to see the tragedies and joys of her unprivileged life that have brought her to this point).

Reese Witherspoon does an excellent job of conveying a damaged but strong and hopeful woman, and certainly deserves the Oscar nomination – but the writer and the director deserve the lion’s share of the credit for bringing this meandering journey to the screen in a way that makes sense. Nick Hornby’s touch is evident, he always seems to brings characters to life in a way that makes you appreciate the totality of their lives, not just the moments that we see. The internal thought vocalisations and well-timed flashbacks really help us understand Cheryl and where she has come from. And if this is typical of Vallée’s work, it makes me want to watch Dallas Buyers’ Club all the more.

Wild is a film that can’t fail to move you. As Cheryl remembers the defining moments of her life it seems almost every aspect of human nature is given space for us to feel and ponder it – love, loss, missed opportunity, random chance, depression, hope, determination and family. The film made me think a lot about my own life, it made me sad for the bad things that have happened, and joyful for the good things in my life. As someone who has travelled a lot, I know that travelling is as much about the journey you make through your thoughts and memories as it is about the experiences you have on the outside, and the film manages to do justice to both aspects equally.

But I think what is most impressive about this film is this: That it can bring the viewer a degree of the self-reflection Cheryl Strayed experienced on her journey, that for a couple of hours it takes you on your own little journey through the wilderness.

Thoroughly recommended, the best film of the year so far, and very deserving of Oscar nominations and more.

My rating: 8/10
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn2-GSqPyl0
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2305051/

I can understand why a lot of you who live in Scotland are cynical. You’ve been talking about independence since the ’70s, and about the referendum for more than 2 years. And suddenly, a couple of weeks before the referendum, in an apparent panic, people all over England start pleading you not to leave, sending politicians from Westminster on desperate missions of persuasion offering all kinds of promises. Where were they, you wonder?

The truth is, we’ve been blind to something you realized a long time ago – that the “country of countries” model [excellent primer for international readers here] that the United Kingdom operates on, no longer works. That it is impossible to simultaneously live within a country called Scotland and a country called the UK without having democratic imbalance and conflict between the two. And that for a quite a few years now, the balance has been very off, with Scotland having little say in which government rules the land or what policies affect your daily lives.

I hope in this post to help explain why we English have reacted the way we have, and I hope to convince you that now that we have entered into this public debate, and Westminster are finally listening, that you do not need to leave the UK to get the democratic representation you desperately need and deserve. I hope to convince you that it is the current structure and distribution of power within the UK that needs to change – not the make-up of the UK itself. I hope also to persuade other English readers why we should not resent Yes-inclined Scots for feeling the way they do, and that they are not against us, they just see a Yes as the only way to achieve democratic change.

I know I only realized just how broken the UK is, democratically speaking, in the last few days – after lengthy discussions with other Brits (both English and Scottish) on the reasons for independence and the impacts of a Yes vote both north and south of the border.

The beginning of the end for the “country of countries” model

The way I see it now, the “country of countries” model only worked as long as the member nations were primarily British, and as long as we were all equal. But as soon as some powers began to be devolved to Scotland, an inevitable shifting of consciousness was set in motion for Scotland. As soon as Scotland was recognized as an independent entity that deserved its own Parliament, I suspect that the identities of those living there began to shift – being British began to mean less to your daily lives than being Scottish did. Slowly but surely, the public consciousness began to drift, talking more and more about Scottish matters, and what matters for Scotland, and less and less about Britain and your place in it. Am I right?

I suspect a similar shifting also began when Wales and Northern Ireland became partially devolved nations too – but crucially this shift of consciousness has never happened in England, and this is why we have a mismatch of identity and awareness between England and Scotland today (more on that later).

I think it is an inevitability of partial devolution that the partially devolved nation will gain a stronger and stronger identity, and seek more and more autonomy to manage its own affairs. I absolutely understand why Scotland wants to control its own destiny, and the mismatch between Scottish voting patterns and the governments that have been elected at Westminster over the last 20-30 years can only have amplified this feeling of frustration at not having control (Since the 1980s Scotland’s votes have been consistently liberal, yet the Conservative governments of 1979-1997 and 2011-present have ruled anyway).

This week’s BBC Panorama, entitled “Scotland’s Decision” (iPlayer | YouTube), provides even more context as to why fewer and fewer Scots find themselves identifying as British:

It reminds us that the first time Scotland had a referendum on independence in 1979, many Scots still worked for British industries such as British Steel, the National Coal Board or British Shipbuilders. They were part of trade unions that gave them solidarity with other workers across the UK and quite literally, worked for Britain – and Britain worked for them. So we have Thatcher’s dismantling of the unions and the demise of Britain as as a international player in industry to partly thank for a change in Scotland’s identity too. It’s easy to see that Scots who grew up after that period must feel less allegiance to the outer identity of “British” than their parents did, and more allegiance to the identity of Scottish than their parents did.

And so it is that I have come to understand why some Scots find it so much easier to entertain the idea of casting off the rest of the United Kingdom: Britain simply doesn’t matter to many Scottish citizens today. And worse than that, by repeatedly providing a government they didn’t vote for, it has acted against their interests time and time again.

In this context, it’s easy to see why many Scots are sick of the UK establishment. It is seen as a barrier to progress, a foreign influence controlling from afar the affairs of a land it doesn’t understand. (This is the paradoxical thing about Scotland-in-Britain, Westminster is simultaneously located in the same country (Britain) and yet at the same in a foreign country (England)).

So now we understand the Scottish point of view a little better, let’s take a look at the the perspective of the rest of us, those living south of the border (a perspective I can speak for with much more confidence as I have grown up and am now back living in Hexham, Northumberland, less than 30 miles south of the Scottish border).

England does not exist

This may seem a controversial statement, but my thinking in the last week or so has lead me to realize this – that England as a nation does not exist in the public consciousness of those who live here. I think I speak for most of us living here when I say that when we think of our identity, we think of ourselves as British. It is our citizenship, our nationality, our culture, and our identity. When we travel abroad we don’t describe ourselves as English, but as British. We are quite aware British does not equal English, but the reverse is true: to be English is to be British – there is no difference in our minds in that direction. Obviously we all belong to the land that is called England, which we love very much, and which has a distinct feel to it, but it does not define us in the same way being part of the UK (Britain)* does. We do not feel the loyalty to the inner nation identity that Scots do.

When I think of the things that I identify with, culturally, there is very little that is uniquely English. Our sense of justice and fair play, our sense of humour, our traditions, fish and chips, cups of tea, even our love of Doctor Who (a show that began in London, is made in Wales and which features a Scottish lead) – it’s all British, much more than it is English. England is where I live – but it’s not what I feel and it’s not who I am. It is notable that immigrants to England call themselves British, but never English. I have never met an Englishman who does not consider himself British.

There are some English things that unite us – most notably, our ever-underperforming national football team – but besides a few sporting endeavours and some remnants of the past (Albion, Glastonbury, Pagans, Druids and the legend of King Arthur, for example), there is little that binds us together today. The English identity is so unimportant to us that we do not celebrate St. George’s Day, and we have allowed his flag, the supposed symbol of England, to be used by extremists such as the English Defence League. Many English people even feel afraid to wave it, for fear of being persecuted.

In fact, the idea of England as a nation, while it has existed legally for a long time (England & Wales have a separate legal system from Scotland), is something that most of us have only begun to think about as a reaction to the increased powers of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.

Why English people feel threatened by Scotland’s departure

I hope that this helps Scots to empathize as to why some of us have taken the issue of Scottish independence so personally. It is because we English see ourselves primarily as British that we feel so threatened by the prospect of losing Scotland. I can imagine many Scots see independence as purely a matter for Scotland. It’s easy to say “Well England can just carry on without us, they’ve got more people and more resources, they’ll be just fine, it’s not really any concern of theirs”. But the reality is, if you leave, we are thrown into not just a lot of hard work restructuring, but a major identity crisis.

Because I don’t feel proud allegiance to an English identity, the prospect of my country changing from Britain to something else is quite alarming. I want to be British, not English. And I don’t mean British as a historical origin, but as an active, ongoing definition of my citizenship, culture, identity and home.

I hope you can understand that if you take the word “Britain” out of my country (“The United Kingdom of England, Wales and Northern Ireland” is thought to be the most likely name for rUK) and render my national symbol, the Union Jack, nonsensical (the St Andrews Cross being a large part of it), that you are affecting my sense of self quite deeply. Especially for someone like me; after spending 7 years living in other countries, I have become much more aware of what it means to be British, and feel it much more intensely and more proudly than some others. If you reduce Britain from being a country to just a historical legacy – a concept – you change us all forever and you throw away what we are.

Clearly, Scottish independence is not just about Scottish identity, but British identity too. Please try and keep that in mind as you vote, and remember that you are voting as a Brit, as well as as a Scot.

We sleepwalked into inequality

The lack of a strong English identity is the backdrop that has allowed the curious situation to arise where the UK’s largest member nation has no political assembly dedicated to its laws and issues. There is no English parliament, and thus we have the imbalance of the West Lothian question.

It is not clear how this will be solved. Clearly this is something we are aware of, and have grumbled about, but the solution for us is not so simple and clear as it is in Scotland. We cannot devolve our parliament, England can never be independent from Britain, because every English person considers himself a Brit first, English a distant second and because the British parliament is already based here. We do not entertain the idea of England as a distinct country because our country is Britain and we have no desire to align to any identity smaller than that.

It is this that has made us blind to the problems of the “country of countries” model. We simply didn’t notice, because we didn’t feel the conflict between inner and outer nation in the way that Scots did. It took Scots arguing passionately for independence to make us realize – and many of us still haven’t.

This is why we’re a bit late to the party when it comes to trying to take action to change the democratic make-up of the UK. We were aware of democratic issues in the UK (like being ignored by London), but we never thought about these as a problem of sovereignty or sub-nation independence until you showed us how to think that way.

And this is why we have been a bit slow to react to the referendum. Not being given a vote (which makes sense to me even though it feels wrong) meant that it wasn’t until the news broke of Yes taking the lead that it hit us. The realization that almost half of you want to leave what we have always thought of as our shared nation, was a shock to many of us. And it was only when that happened that we, amidst feelings of panic and fear, started to really ask ourselves how we got here, what it would mean for Britain, and what we could do about it. It is that thinking that has lead me to be able to write this post.

Westminster’s time has come

Much of the Yes campaign in Scotland has focussed on the fact that the Westminster government is undemocratic for Scotland – that policies that were thought by politicians in London offices, with their corporate cronies just around the corner in the City, have no relevance and make no sense in the remote highlands and lowlands of Scotland.

Mention this to anyone in England and you might get a frosty reception. Not because we are defending Westminster, far from it, but because this is a problem that we are acutely aware of too. It is not a Scottish problem. It is an everywhere-but-London problem. Northumberland, Cornwall and Pembrokeshire suffer exactly the same issues with London-centric government.

If you look at the voting statistics for areas of England and Wales like these, in many cases you will see exactly the same problem that Scots know only too well: David Cameron, we didn’t vote for you.

And so, much though we understand your desire to express the need for democratic change at the ballot box, it seems, from an English perspective, to be cracking a nut with a sledgehammer to use an independence referendum to solve this democratic problem of being governed by Westminster. Sure, it’ll work, but it’ll leave a hell of a mess behind.

Let’s work together, within the United Kingdom.

So thank you Scotland, thank you for helping us understand your perspective. I know that many of you think that promises of “devo max” or further devolution across all regions of the UK, not just Scotland, are cynical last-minute promises made to persuade you to change your vote by the very people who you distrust the most. But it’s more than that. The whole of England has woken up to your plight.

But the truth is just by having this debate, things have changed. The public across the whole of the UK are engaged in thinking deeply about democracy, about the union, and about how to tackle the Westminster bias like never before.

I cannot imagine things simply going back to the status quo now. You cannot put the genie back in the bottle. It might not happen overnight, but things are going to change around here. The first tentative steps are starting to be taken, regardless of the outcome of the referendum.

Now that we know it is the “country of countries” model that is the root of the problem, we can start thinking about how to restructure the United Kingdom into a fairer, more democratic form. We can work on this problem – one that affects us all – together, and not have to spend the next ten years dividing up our assets and squabbling over our history to determine who gets what, like the participants in a messy divorce. I do not pretend to know the solution – a federation of nations, a devolved alliance of city states, a rethinking of the United Kingdom itself – but I do know that it is a problem we share (I wouldn’t be surprised to see similar movements in Wales and Northern Ireland soon), and which we can and should fix together.

You have shown us the way, now please give us all the chance to change Scotland and the whole of Britain for the better – as one nation, not two. If we separate now, there will be bitterness and resentment forever more. Let’s not spend the next decade looking inwards when we there are far bigger issues – common issues – to worry about, like our own citizens becoming extremists and beheading our own.

Let’s never forget, whatever happens, that we are all British, we are basically the same. We have families, communities and organizations spread across the land that can never and should never be divided. Whatever the vote, we will need to work together closer than we ever have before in the years ahead. Let’s resolve not to let the media divide us and turn us against each other like they have during the build up to the referendum. It’s not a question of whether Scotland can go it alone – I don’t doubt that it could – it’s a question of whether you need to abandon the Union to achieve democratic change, whether being part of Britain is something worth holding on to. If you believe in our people – the tenacious Brits from every corner of the Isles – you must know that we can do this. We have the oldest democracy in the world, and while it’s far from perfect, the government works for us, for the people – and through the will of the people, things will change and evolve, as they have for hundreds of years.

Our only hope for a peaceful, happy future for this sceptred isle, is to vote No on Thursday. No to Balkanization, No to giving up on the democracy that we have evolved over hundreds of years, No to putting pride and passion above considered reasoning, No to dividing up all the great work we have done together as one nation, No to taking huge risks, No to having to build a clumsy currency union when we can just use the currency we already have, No to letting rhetoric and spin doctoring and media hype influence our decisions, and No to never quite being one people any more.

Vote No tomorrow, and we – the people of England, not the stuffy Westminster elite – promise to fight alongside you for a fairer, freer tomorrow for all of Britain.

Epilogue: To finish, I will leave you with this. It’s fascinating viewing, Question Time in 1992 just before the general election debating the question “Are the days of the Union numbered?”. It resonates greatly with what has been said in the press this week, and contains some seemingly very prophetic insights from all the MPs on the panel – Alex Salmond, Michael Heseltine, John Smith and Alan Beith.

* A note on “Britain” vs “UK”: I use UK and Britain fairly interchangeably in this post. I hope that I do not offend any Northern Irish to do so, but it is my belief that the dominant culture in the UK is British. British is what it says on our passports, and I am not aware of a “UK-ish” identity.. I suspect that the culture in Northern Ireland is to a large extent British, just as it is in Gibraltar, Falkland or the Isle of Man, even if it is semantically incorrect to refer to those places as British (Great Britain being a geographical term for the island containing England, Wales & Scotland).

Here’s a round up of the movies I’ve seen so far at Fantasia Festival 2013.

I’ve organized the reviews by country (except for short films which I’ve grouped separately), so please pick a country or just read them all in order:

Australia | Canada | France | Israel | Japan |Netherlands | Spain | UK | USA | Short Films | International Collaborations

Reviews still to come: The Lady Assassin, 8:47, Night Giant, Beauty Mark, It’s Me It’s Me, Confession of Murder, Deal Travis In, VHS/C, V/H/S 2, The Treehouse, When a Wolf Falls in Love With a Sheep, Imaginaerum, War of the Worlds, Invocation, Antisocial, Cottage Country, The Battery, Doomsdays, Frankenstein’s Army, Helter Skelter, Horror Stories, I’ll Follow You Down, Key of Life, Love Eternal, Magic Magic, The Dirties, The Vessel, Les Rois du Rire, 24 Exposures, Cheap Thrills, Missionary, The Complex, How To Use Guys With Secret Tips, L’autre monde, Willow Creek, Vegetarian Cannibal, 113 Degrees, A Conversation About Cheating With My Time-Travelling Future Self, Death of a Shadow, Hibernation, North Bay, Reset, Restitution, Temma, The Vehicle, Gatchaman, The World’s End.

Check back soon for more!

Canada

The Dead Experiment (Canada, 2012, 74 mins)

Directed by Anthony Dixon

Maggie comes home one day to find her boyfriend Chris already waiting for her. This is particularly surprising because she saw him die two weeks earlier. As they come to terms with his resurrection, Chris’ friend Jacob demonstrates his expertise on the science behind this phenomenon and they must decide whether to let this awesome power loose on the world. This is an ultra-low budget sci-fi, reminiscent of Primer or Fantasia 2010’s Phasma Ex Machina. The director does a great job of showing that you don’t need big budget special effects to make a compelling and believable sci-fi story, and the actors make the characters completely believable. It lacks a little polish but you’ll soon forget about that and get drawn into the narrative.

Rating: 7/10
Availability: Fantasia only so far more
Links: Fantasia | IMDb | Trailer (SPOILERS)

View the full list of movies from Canada shown at Fantasia 2013.

Back to menu

France

Les gouffres (France, 2012, 62 mins)

Directed by Antoine Barraud

The premise of this movie is that a geologist joins a research team to explore some new sinkholes that have opened up in a remote Chilean jungle. His wife comes with him but waits at the nearby inn while he goes down with the sinkhole expedition. While she waits, she is increasingly distressed by apparent supernatural influences, perhaps the pull of the sinkhole themselves.
This movie is awful. It is slow, heavy, boring and meandering, with un-interesting characters. I find it hard to say anything good about it. The production values were ok I suppose, but the even the cinematography was poor, with heavy use of blurring and extreme darkness making it hard to see what is happening at times. But worst of all is the writing. Apart from lacking any real purpose or direction, it commits the unforgiveable sin of having a sizable chunk of the movie (its most interesting part, and the only part that actually takes place underground) turn out to be “just a dream”. Which just leaves you feeling like you wasted your time. Avoid this movie at all costs.

Rating: 2/10
Availability: Festival releases only so far. Let’s hope it stays that way. more
Links: Fantasia | IMDb | Trailer (mild spoilers)

View the full list of movies from France shown at Fantasia 2013.

Back to menu

Israel

Big Bad Wolves (Israel, 2013, 110 mins)

Directed by Aharon Keshales/Navot Papushado

At Fantasia 2011, this pair of film entrepreneurs launched Israel’s first horror movie, Rabies, one of the surprise hits of the festival. Now they are back with something even darker, “Big Bad Wolves”. The storyline concerns the pursuit of a pedophile murderer who has been committing hideous acts and must be brought to justice, and the lead characters, a cop and the father of one of the victims, are willing to go to any lengths to make the man they believe is the killer pay. It’s a clever and at times darkly funny narrative, which holds a mirror up to society and its mixed messages about “violence is ok if it’s done to bad people” – an issue of course which has even greater significance in Israel. Brutal at times but all-too-believable, it’s well worth a watch.

Rating: 7/10
Availability: Theatrical release later in 2013 more
Links: Fantasia | IMDb | Trailer (SPOILERS)

This was the onlyIsraeli movie shown at Fantasia 2013.

Back to menu

Japan

Library Wars (Japan, 2013, 128 mins)

Directed by Shinsuke Sato

Library Wars is a manga comic with a very original premise. It is 2019, and a government agency called the Media Betterment Agency, originally designed to prevent unsuitable materials from being accessible by minors has now evolved into a military force with the right to enter bookstores and homes and confiscate and destroy banned books. Meanwhile, the library system has been allowed to preserve those same books for the public record, and it too has developed a military arm – the Library Defense Force – which is allowed to use force to defend those books, though only on library premises. As the title suggests, the plot concerns an all out war between these two armies, a war over the freedom of information and of society itself. Once you suspend disbelief and get your head around the somewhat unlikely idea that a single government would fund two ideologically opposed armies, you realize this is a premise that really brings some great ideas to play – and of course is hugely topical given recent censorship/child protection developments in the US & the UK.

The movie adaptation is compelling largely because of the bizarreness of the situations, which allow for some great moments of comedy and drama. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a war film set in such a modern urban setting before, and this makes it particularly memorable. There are also some great speeches and dialogues about the importance of freedom and the dangers of censorship. The movie also has the obligatory love story as its framing device.. which is cute, albeit a little one-dimensional. On the whole I did like Library Wars – but more for the concept, for which praise is owed to the comic more than the movie… It didn’t do as much with the premise as it could have. There was the potential here to make something as ground-breaking and profound as 1984 or Fahrenheit 451 but the “war over censorship” was reduced to a plot device, an excuse for a battle background. I was left wanting more. I can only hope that when the inevitable Western remake comes around, they make something a little deeper and with a little more to say (and hopefully without reducing it to Independence Day style flag-waving).

Rating: 6/10
Availability: Japanese release & festival releases only so far more
Links: Fantasia | IMDb | Trailer (spoiler-free, no subs)

The Great Passage (Japan, 2013, 133 mins)

Directed by Yuya Ishii

If you’d told me someone could make an engaging and compelling movie about a group of editors compiling a dictionary, I wouldn’t have believed you, but that is exactly what “The Great Passage” is. We get to see the team working hard to achieve the goal of a “living dictionary for the modern age” over a 15 year period, and in doing so we see and feel the ups & downs, the loves & losses of the five main characters involved. This is a slow-paced character drama, but it’s also very engaging and moving. I am reminded of what William Zinsser wrote in “On Writing Well”, “You’ll find [how to tell a good story] if you look for the human element. Somewhere in every drab institution are men and women who have a fierce attachment to what they are doing and are rich repositories of lore.” And this is so true. Take any given moment in this story and it’s rather mundane – a love letter, an error in a dictionary, office tension. But when we are invited to step back and view this journey and the character’s lives at a larger scale it becomes something much more. We see some characters grow while others wither away, we see love and enthusiasm blossom while others battle hardships – in short, everything that happens in real life.

In watching this movie I felt like Jean-Luc Picard in the Star Trek episode “Inner Light”; I feel like I have lived a lifetime with these people, and spent time in their world. This is incredibly skillful writing, which of course is largely due to the original novel upon which the movie is based.. But to achieve this feat in the scope of a 2 hour movie is nothing short of remarkable feat. This is a moving piece of human drama, and is very well made indeed.

Rating: 7/10
Availability: Japanese releases & US/Canadian festivals only so far more
Links: Fantasia | IMDb

Thermae Romae (Japan, 2012, 108 mins)

Directed by Hideki Takeuchi

In Ancient Rome, architect Lucius Modestus is running out of ideas. Fortunately, inspiration is delivered in the most unexpected way. He passes out in the Roman bathhouse and finds himself in modern day Japan, a place with no shortage of bathroom innovations to draw upon. While there he is drawn to the young attractive 20th century girl Mami, an aspiring manga artist who may be just the muse he is looking for. But sometimes time travellers can disrupt history, and soon the fate of the Roman Empire and the reputation of Emperor Hadrian himself hangs in the balance. Can the pair combine their skills to change the destiny of mighty Rome?

This movie (and the comic it is based upon) is hugely original, and very skilfully executed, with a good pace, and engaging narrative, and above all plenty of jokes and humour as we follow Lucius on his adventures. It is refreshing how this movie never allows itself to get bogged down in the science-fiction of time travel, nor the cheesy tropes of the rom-com. While still doing a great duty to both aspects, it never misses an opportunity for fun! The audience was laughing all the way through; the director definitely is a student of the Back to The Future school of sci-fi.

The production values are great, but not perfect, and the sight of Ancient Romans talking in Japanese takes a little getting used to, but is soon forgotten. All in all a very solid sci-fi comedy. Recommended.

Rating: 8/10
Availability: Theatrical releases in 2012 more
Links: Fantasia | IMDb | Trailer (very mild spoilers)

View the full list of movies from Japan shown at Fantasia 2013.

Back to menu

Netherlands

Resurrection of a Bastard (Netherlands, 2013, 85 mins)

Directed by Guido van Driel

This movie is a crime thriller of sorts, but verges more to the philosophical than the action/suspense usually seen in this type of film. It had some interesting aspects to it, but as a whole it is something of a mystery to me what it was trying to achieve. There is the violent-but-sensitive kneecapper Ronnie, who is having a change of heart on his violent ways, asylum-seeking Angolan farm labourer Eduardo, with his dark past, and an older couple seeking revenge for their daughter’s murder. There is a slight supernatural element too, with suggestions of out-of-body experiences, clairvoyance and witchcraft. But these fragments do not gel together into a story or a purpose, and alas the movie did not move me or interest me enough to really care to make sense of it.

Rating: 4/10
Availability: Netherlands and festival releases only so far more
Links: Fantasia | IMDb | Trailer (spoiler-free, no subs)

Read my reviews of International collaborations including the Netherlands here
View the View the full list of movies from Netherlands shown at Fantasia 2013.

Back to menu

Spain:

Animals (Spain, 2013)

Directed by Marçal Forés

Pol is a 17 year old boy with a talking teddy bear. But to say that Animals is a movie about a boy with a talking bear is a bit like saying that Titanic is a movie about an iceberg that crashes into a ship. It’s true but that’s only one small part of a much bigger narrative. This movie is quite unique and very hard to convey in words, especially while avoiding spoilers; It feels mysterious and intriguing for much of its play time, and as you experience the challenges and growing pains that Pol and his friends face, your mind is occupied with bigger questions about the nature of the reality you are watching, and the motivations of the students at Pol’s English private school in Spain. A girl goes missing and you wonder if she died, committed suicide or maybe never even existed in the first place. Even a stray dog in the wilderness seems to take on a deeper significance. “Animals” manages to tackle some serious issues affecting teens while also staying somewhat light, playing games with the viewer as to what is real and what is not. The movie’s characters speak a mixture of Spanish and English, and surprisingly Martin Freeman plays significant supporting role. The movie I could compare it to most would be Donnie Darko – but it’s much more “real” and less sci-fi. If you like your movies deep and intriguing you’ll love this.

Rating: 6/10
Availability: Festival releases only so far. more
Links: Fantasia | IMDb | Trailer (mild spoilers)

View the full list of Spanish movies shown at Fantasia 2013.

Back to menu

USA

5-25-77 (USA, 2012, 115 mins)

Directed by Patrick Read Johnson

A dramatization of the director’s own life might seem self-indulgent, but in this case it’s not because Patrick Read Johnson has a very interesting story to tell. This is a period piece, telling the story of his formulative years, making home-made movies inspired by 2001 and Jaws, trying to figure out how to get into Hollywood, and the huge anticipation for what he hoped would be his life-defining moment of seeing Star Wars premiere on the 25th of May 1977. I’m about a decade too old to really feel the nostalgia of this piece (I was born in 1977 so didn’t see Star Wars at the cinema) but nonetheless I can appreciate it; as an 80s kid I certainly felt the influence of Star Wars and Steven Spielberg on the home-made movies I made with friends. And the tale of an awkward geeky kid trying to fit in while also following his passions for sci-fi is one that many of us can relate to. The movie showed in a rough cut; it still needs funding to be finished. But even so, it does a great job of capturing an era in movies (the same era explored by Rewind This!, the VHS documentary which is also showing at Fantasia 2013) and is funny and heartfelt to watch.

Rating: 7/10
Availability: Movie not yet finished. Rough cuts showing at festivals, funding sought to complete & distribute the feature. Director expects to release in 2015. more
Links: Fantasia | IMDb | Trailer (spoiler-free)

You’re Next (USA, 2011, 111 mins)

Directed by Adam Wingard

The Davison family get together at their parents’ mansion for the first time in years, all the children with partners in tow (some of which are not who they seem to be). Old arguments and tensions flare to the surface, but suddenly the family has to face an even bigger challenge, as masked attackers invade their home and begin committing brutal acts against them. This is a very solid and skilfully executed home invasion movie. The fact that it the preyed upon are a family not just friends adds a lot of emotional poignancy, and the hidden depths of the many characters keeps things interesting and unexpected. It has the usual “bad guys get what they deserve” vibe to it, and the violence is treated somewhat lightly. But this is not an outright comedy. It does have some very Whedon-esque “girl with a big axe” type moments that had the Fantasia audience yelling with delight. It doesn’t add anything new to the genre but what it does, it does very well and it’s a very well packaged piece of horror entertainment.

Rating: 7/10
Availability: International theatrical releases throughout Aug & Sep 2013 more
Links: Fantasia | IMDb | Trailer (very mild spoilers)

Plus One (USA, 2013, 95 mins)

Directed by Dennis Iliadis

If you mashed up American Pie, Scream and Frequency you might get something close to this movie – but actually that doesn’t do it justice, what we have here is a uniquely original sci-fi concept, something that’s not quite time-travel, not quite human cloning, but bizarre enough to provide dark moments, comedy and to raise some very interesting moral questions. The plot concerns three high school friends, returning from their first year in college to reunite with high school friends at a huge house party hosted by their wealthy friend… A meteorite lands and a strange electrical energy surrounds the party, setting in motion a chain of inexplicable events. As the trio try to come to terms with this they must fight for survival. On the face of it it’s just another “wild frat party gone awry” movie but in fact it has a lot more depth than that, and has some interesting points to make about fear of the unknown and what sinister acts perfectly normal people can be driven to under life-threatening circumstances or when fighting to win back a lost love. Also I’m glad to say this has far from your average Hollywood ending.

Rating: 8/10
Availability: USA & Festival Releases only so far more
Links: Fantasia | IMDb

Rewind This! (USA, 2013, 94 mins)

Directed by Josh Johnson

VHS was not just a new format. By putting movies in the home and in people’s hands, where they could watch, rewind and rewatch whenever they liked, it completely changed the relationship between cinema and the viewer. This documentary is a love letter to the VHS era, and features interviews with everyone who was anyone in the VHS industry. But more than that, it shows us how much more there is to VHS – the box artists, the collectors & flea markets, the bootleggers & tape traders, the permanent imprints that show how a tape was viewed.. it also shows us how it inspired a generation of movie makers to do it themselves. It also reminds us what we lose as we switch to Netflix, iTunes and BitTorrent.. a certain amount of freedom, choice and the value of a physical item. This is a great documentary which will be meaningful and nostalgic to anyone who’s ever owned a VHS tape.

Rating: 7/10
Availability: Festival releases and special events only so far latest info
Links: Fantasia | IMDb | Trailer

Read my reviews of International collaborations including the USA here
View the full list of movies from USA shown at Fantasia 2013.

Back to menu

UK

The Machine (UK, 2013, 92 mins)

Directed by Caradog James

This is one of those great, original pieces of sci-fi that never gets made in Hollywood. It’s not without action and tension, but it’s definitely more of a thinking sci-fi. In a dystopian and heavily militarized future, the UK is in a long and bitter cold war with China (though that is just the setting, not the plot). Most of the action takes place in a Ministry of Defence research lab, where scientist Vincent is trying to build the first truly artificial life form. He wants to use it to save his sick daughter, but of course the MOD have other ideas. The movie, which is very well grounded in computer science and current understanding of artificial intelligence, explores the question of what might happen when we are finally able to build a machine that can pass the Turing Test, that is, to build a machine that is indistiguishable from a human. It effectively asks the question: “When the lines between humanity and machine are blurred, what lies ahead for the world, and for the species?” The Machine has a very atmospheric ambience, with dark, partly lit scenes and slow lingering shots which are very reminiscent of Bladerunner. The score too, is very Vangelis-like, which really adds to the emotional power of the scenes. I don’t want to say too much about the specifics of what happens for fear of spoiling the plot, but what’s clever about it is that amongst the humans and the machines, there are both emotional, caring people and heartless, calculating types. This movie is in someways like Terminator, dealing with the question of the Singularity and machines overtaking their creators – but it is a much more human story. I would liked to have seen a slightly bigger story, but the team have done a masterful job with a very limited budget. It is certainly the best sci-fi to come out of Wales since Doctor Who was rebooted!

Rating: 6/10
Availability: Festival releases only so far more
Links: Fantasia | IMDb | Trailer (mild spoilers)

Check out my review of OXV: The Manual, another Fantasia 2013 movie involving UK collaborators.
View the View the full list of movies from UK shown at Fantasia 2013.

Back to menu

International Collaborations:

The Conjuring (USA/Australia/Netherlands, 2013)

Directed by James Wan

Back in 1971, paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren are called in to help investigate some very unsettling things that are happening to the Perron family in the farmhouse they have just moved into. This is a powerful and affecting supernatural horror movie, superbly executed so that it keeps you on the edge of your seat (and jumping off it in shock) from the very beginning to the very end. The fact that it is based upon a true story adds additional emotional impact to the experience. This movie is a real classic, and deserves to take its place up there with The Exorcist and Poltergeist as a landmark in the ghost-movie genre. It’s packed with very original scare moments and unexpected shocks but never feels cheesy. A very solid creepy-without-being-gory movie that will stand the test of time.

Rating: 8/10
Availability: International theatrical releases in August 2013. more
Links: Fantasia | IMDb | Trailer (very mild spoilers)

OXV: The Manual (England/Australia, 2012)

Directed by Darren Paul Fisher

This movie was nothing short of brilliant. In an alternate world everyone has a frequency, and this is an important part of who they are. Highs are destined to be lucky, lows are destined to have nothing go right. If highs and lows get too close, the world shakes violently. Zak and Marie are just such a pair of opposites, and can spend only a minute together each year. But Zak finds a way to change his frequency, upsetting the natural order of the universe and in doing so, calling into question love, fate and destiny. It’s an ingenious and hugely original piece of writing, which is expertly delivered through great acting, excellent cinematography and a perfect pace that feeds you more and more interesting nuggets that help you make sense of their world but also ponder the nature of our own – the ideas of the movie connect to everything from class and privilege to free will and luck.

Reminiscent of the work of Vincenzo Natali or Michel Gondry, it’s a hugely original, philosophical sci-fi that will leave you thinking deeply and feeling inspired; I can’t recommend it highly enough!

Rating: 9/10
Availability: Only at Fantasia so far. check latest info
Links: Fantasia | IMDb

View the full list of Australian movies shown at Fantasia 2013.
View the full list of US movies shown at Fantasia 2013.
View the full list of Netherlands movies shown at Fantasia 2013.
View the full list of English/UK movies shown at Fantasia 2013.

Back to menu

Short Films:

Jack Attack (USA, 2013, 8 mins)

Directed by Antonio Padovan and Bryan Norton

A dark and spooky little Halloween tale about a Jack-o’-Lantern carving session that takes an unexpected and disturbing turn. Well-executed special effects, good acting and good cinematography make it quite memorable.

Rating: 6/10
Availability: Festival circuit only. more
Links: Fantasia | IMDb | Trailer (spoiler-free)

I saw just some of the short films on offer. View the full list of short films shown at Fantasia 2013.

Back to menu

Fido charges up to $30/Mb for international roaming.

I recently got quite a shock. I looked in my bank account to find a large chunk of my savings wiped out. I didn’t have enough money to pay off my credit card, despite having just been paid. I couldn’t understand it. I found the culprit: Fido charged me $1,287.18 for one month’s mobile phone service. Over a thousand dollars on a phone bill!!

I always knew that Canadian mobile phones are the most expensive in the world, and I’ve blogged about it before, but I had no idea just how extortionate it is to use your phone overseas in any country other than the USA (and even then, it’s crazy expensive). The advertised rate for roaming is 3c per kilobyte. Which doesn’t sound that bad. But when you realize it’s over $30 per Mb, and that a megabyte can be downloaded over 3G in just two seconds you realize how ridiculous this is.

There are horror stories in the press such as the $9,380 bill one Canadian got, the $22,000 phone bill received by a British Columbia man, or the $201,000 phone bill in Florida. But it seems to me this can happen to anyone. As one friend put it very well.. the charges are so high, that if you knew in advance what they were, you would not use the service. They make huge amounts of money from customers’ mistakes – they profit from our lack of awareness or preparedness. I find this  immoral.

So based on my experience, here’s five questions I would like to know an answer to.

1) How much does it really cost the network to download 1Mb of data when roaming from a Canadian provider ?

Is it in the same ballpark as the $30 that Fido charge? How much of it is profit? How much is due to the amounts the phone companies charge each other?

2) Why is roaming from Canada so much more expensive in every country except the USA?

It seems reasonable to expect a similar data roaming charge in different countries, especially when many of those countries (UK, Japan, Germany) have much more advanced phone networks than the USA & Canada. What is the justification for charging three times more for roaming to any country except the USA?

3) Why does Canada’s official complaints commissioner forbid complaints about pricing?

Both the CRTC and the Consumer Protection office of Quebec refer you to CCTS, the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services for any complaints. This is an independent agency which telcos sign up to. In its mandate, it contains the following statement:

We are able to assist with most types of problems that can arise between you and your service provider, including […] billing disputes and errors (but not the price of the service itself).

[…] While we are able to assist with the issues above there are certain services and issues that are frequently associated with the telecommunications industry which we will be unable to assist. […] Examples of matters which we will be unable to assist you with are complaints about […] the pricing of services […].

In their FAQ, they provide the following question and answer:

I think my provider charges way too much for its services. Can you look into this?

Our mandate is to determine whether the provider has complied with its obligations to you under its Terms of Service and internal policies and procedures. The amount that your provider charges for the services it delivers is a business decision that it alone is entitled to make. Marketplace competition means that you may find a better deal with another provider.

Does this sound like a statement from a regulatory body that is protecting consumers? Or a statement from a conglomerate of media companies trying to protect their profits? Is that last sentence true?

4) Why is there no authority with a clear mandate to handle consumer complaints over cellphone pricing?

The CCTS website says that for matters it does not cover, consumers should visit their resources page. The only applicable resource on that page is the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association. The CWTA includes a code of conduct for its members (which includes all major telcos). What are you supposed to do if your carrier has broken this code? CWTA says you should complain to the CCTS. They send you back where you came from. Does no agency take responsibility for protecting consumers against high prices?

5) Why aren’t cellphone companies required to notify you or block you when your bill amount gets unusually and dangerously high (say > $300)?

This is something that has been recently discussed by CRTC. The media companies are in denial, saying “customers don’t want caps”. 

Telcos already have the mechanisms in place to cut you off if you don’t pay your bill. Do they they let such large charges build up simply because they know it’s pure profit they can keep?

These are important questions that must be answered. And if you agree, please sign the OpenMedia petition and Demand Choice.

If anyone knows where we can find answers to these questions or has other ideas, please add your thoughts & comments below.

Related reading: Why Internet access is like healthcare by Alistair Croll

“Science Friction” (2013, Canada) – Director Liam P Kiernan – sciencefrictionthemovie.com

“Science Friction” is a movie I really wanted to like. When I was invited to the first ever screening of a new Montreal-made sci-fi movie I was very excited. The trailer promised tense drama with lots of action and other-worldly happenings – an asteroid slowing as it approaches the earth; a glowing sphere, arcing with energy; a strange figure in a diving suit wandering through a cave; explosions, blood, and fire.

The narrative of the movie concerns reluctant projectionist Jack, who is tricked into chauffeuring three girls on a drug run across the Mexican border. Deep in the Mexican woods (which look suspiciously like Quebec, but that’s forgivable!), they take a wrong turn and find themselves in trouble, stranded by a dilapidated old house. Inside lives a crazed old man, Billy, and an alien presence lurks in the caves below.

The ideas underlying the narrative are clever: the alien compels each character to each face the demons of their past, to conquer the guilt that is, as one beautiful line of dialogue describes it, “tattooed upon their souls”. Flashbacks and smart Tarantino-style time jumps are used to convey backstory with good effect, and I enjoyed being left with a puzzle to piece together.

Unfortunately, the movie falls flat in the execution of this vision, suffering in part from bad acting, clumsy, anachronistic dialogue and poor sound & voiceover choices (one scene in Mexican prison feels almost ethereal due to the way it has been dubbed). Such issues snap you back to reality and make it hard to lose yourself in the story and the cinematic experience. However the movie’s biggest failing is this: It never SHOWS us anything. I wanted to feel for the characters as they fled or fought for their lives. But I was unmoved, largely due to the way in which monsters and threats are established – often through dialogue, exposition or auditory cues which are not as obvious as they should be. There is a certain unintentional distance between the viewer and the characters which makes it hard to empathize with them.

Often when I should have been scared or tense, I was instead confused, pondering the meaning of a line of dialogue, wondering what I’m supposed to think or whether I missed something. I found myself praying for an over-the-shoulder or point-of-view shot, something to place me closer to the action. But time and again, the filmmakers took the easy option of having someone say what’s happened rather than letting us experience it through the characters. This is Writing 101 – Show, don’t tell!

This creative problem can’t just be explained away by the low budget; movies from throughout cinema history, from 1963’s The Haunting to 2011’s Absentia, have shown that you can make an extremely un-nerving experience without ever actually showing the monster.

In fairness, there is one gripping scene – a flashback involving a small boy and his teenaged sister. Atmospheric and disturbing, this is perhaps the darkest moment in the movie and it really gives you the shivers – without showing everything. I wish Science Friction had more scenes like this.

The movie fares a little better when viewed as a science fiction rather than a horror. But a good sci-fi needs to ask interesting questions, and provide enough clues to let you try and answer them. Every alien entity or otherworldly phenomenon needs to have rules, motives and understandable behaviours. And I am sure the writers had these planned out, but not enough of those ideas made it to the screen; we never get to explore the nature of the alien sphere and how and why it is influencing people, because so much time is spent with the protagonists, “being scared”. Even after discussions with the director, I still find this a frustratingly unclear movie – with critical key facts being delivered far too subtly through fleeting shots or throwaway lines dubbed over scene transitions. As a sci-fi, Science Friction falls short because it doesn’t give you the viewer enough hints to help you know why things happen.

Even though the movie lacks something in targetting horror and sci-fi audiences, there are some redeeming features to this movie:

L. Paschal Tenet (the director, under his acting pseudonym) gives an outstanding performance. Billy is played beautifully and is perhaps the only character with an arc that is believable from start to finish – the crazed madman, schizophrenically switching back to a fearful but caring coward and ultimately gaining clarity and purpose. Kristina Bond is excellent as Eddi’s worried girlfriend, perhaps the most believable of all, and I would love to have seen her in more than just the two scenes that bookend the movie. Also of note is Stephanie Kollmar, the only one of the three main girls who seems to have any professional acting skill. She is extremely believable when being held captive, and you can feel her pain and frustration at the end.

The special effects in the movie are good, especially the alien sphere, the asteroid ship, and most of the fire and blood effects. I wish they hadn’t used Google Earth map screenshots to establish location though. On the whole, the movie *looks* great, with strong location choices, from artistically-lit cave interiors to a raging river, dark night-time roads and a rundown old shack. The sound effects and musical ambience work well, subtly blending into the background at all but one spot (where a dramatic drumbeat makes one line hard to hear). The opening and closing credits have strong musical accompaniments that make the movie feel slick and professional.

Overall though, this movie falls into that “middle ground” of mediocrity. It has a great concept, but is poorly executed, and fails to live up to the potential of its vision.

In conclusion, Science Friction is a watch-once-and-forget affair. It’s no masterpiece but it will keep your interest and keep you entertained for 90 minutes. Fair warning though – you’d be best advised to switch off your brain and not ask too many questions, or you’ll find yourself getting frustrated and reaching for the rewind button.

My rating: 4/10.

And so the weary wanderer sallied forth into the white
Wrapped in wools and bound in boots of animal hide.
Trudge, trudge, trudge; his footfalls heavy with waterlogged snow
Boldly he marched on, the rain soaking him right through to his bones.
As the icy wind buffeted against his cheek like a thousand tiny insects biting him, he had to halt.
The way was blocked: a raging torrent from left to right, its surging grey waters forming a vast lake before him.
Unwilling to ford the freezing floodwaters, he had no choice but to carve a new path.
Doubling back and around the obstacle, he bravely soldiered on,
squelching through the slurry, shivering and longing for the warmth of the home he had left behind.
As his expedition continued through the misty murk, he had to deal with more drifts and evade more snow-mires,
From time to time he was able to follow the half-melted footprints of adventurers past;
It gave him comfort to know that others had made it through. Perhaps he too would survive the journey.
Suddenly, he rounded a corner, and he was there. His pale face smiled as he saw it.
He’d made it. He entered the station, boarded the waiting train and got to the office right on time.

—
A little something I wrote on the way to work this morning. Feedback welcome.

This film is truly a delight to watch. It playfully skips between genres, being part film noir, part black comedy, part love story, to name just a few influences it pulls in. What’s more it plays games with the reality with which the viewer is presented. The narrative places us firmly within Aiden’s head, something that becomes evident when we are treated to some fantasy sequences which would not look out of place in an early Peter Jackson zombie movie. As well as this, a touching and occasionally disturbing inner monologue is overlaid through many of the scenes. As a result, we are never quite sure if we are viewing reality or his imagination, which is done in such a way as to add to the drama. At one point de Lauzirika manages to achieve that rarely successful move of breaking the fourth wall, and gets away with it!

Thematically, this is most similar to last year’s Super, though this is a far superior film in my view. You could also make comparisons to Falling Down, Drive and Dexter, though the feel is different from all of those. The cinematography (by William Eubank, the man behind last year’s dazzlingly-shot space movie Love) is perfect, with dark, moody shots balanced by scenes filled with brilliant white light. The score by Justin Caine Burnett is a perfect fit and helps us follow the ebbs and flows of Aiden’s mood. Robert Law’s script is right on the mark, delivering wit and tenderness in equal measure, and the characters are very believable, thanks to great performances and great chemistry from the Aussie leads, Josh Lawson and Emma Lung,. We get to see some surprising supporting roles too – played by Edward Furlong (that’s right, the kid from Terminator 2) and Ron Perlman (Hellboy, Drive).

Crave manages to both playful and deep, exploring both sides of human temptation. As Perlman’s character Pete puts it, “Everyone has a good wolf and a bad wolf inside them. Which is stronger? Whichever one you feed more.”

Crave is a skilful blend of darkness and light, a movie of laughter and sorrow that defies classification and deserves great success.

For those who want to know more, here is a trailer:

Crave premiered at Fantasia in Montreal on July 24th 2012. Release schedules will be announced on the movie’s official site.

My rating: 9/10