SOC

Today I became informed a new digital threat on the horizon: Selectable Output Control. In previous posts I have noted my disdain for DRM (digital rights management), DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act), HDCP (high-bandwidth content protection) and the like. These terms are in effect in various forms in our media today. SOC is new to the game, and hasn't been put into effect yet, but if it gains ground and gets rolling, the way we view media and purchase media-viewing devices could change drastically.

Selectable Output Control is a creation of the FCC wherein the broadcast signals put out by cable companies would only be viewable through pre-approved video equipment - SOC-compliant TV's, DVD players, DVD recorders, home theater speakers and receivers, etc. This means that if you bought a brand new HDTV today, and SOC came into being in 6 months, it's very likely that you'd have to buy a completely new and different HDTV. SOC could give a cable channel the right to refuse your viewing rights if you had a DVD recorder hooked up to your TV, even if you weren't using it to record.

It's sounds like a scary "Big Brother" type concept, but this isn't the first time that big media corporations have tried to tell us what we can and can't do with broadcast media in out homes. Universal Studios and Disney sued Sony in 1976 when Sony tried to bring Betamax to the US. Betamax was going to allow people to record from their televisions at their leisure, and that was seen as profit-reducing in the eyes of Disney and Universal. (Disney made $100 million dollars in home video profits alone in 1986. Guess it wasn't such a bad idea.)

Betamax ended up losing the format war to VHS, just as HD has recently lost the digital format war to Blu-ray. There are many reasons as to why these wars were won and lost, and that's fodder for another post. Right now companies, such as Disney, are trying to make sure that we have limited access to that which as been paid for legally and fully. When I buy a DVD I should be able to do whatever I want with it, just like when I buy a CD or bought a VHS tape. I should be able to make a backup, I should be able to make a copy. If I have a timeshare in Florida, maybe I want a copy of my DVD collection down there so everyone can use it. I could have done that with VHS. (If I'd had the time, but that's not the point.)

SOC is just the newest blip on the regulatory radar. Buying a DVD makes that your property, for use as you see fit within fair use guidelines. Companies these days are not interested in fair use, and aren't learning from the past. The harder you hang on to something, the less control you really have. People who download the most illegal MP3's are also the ones who buy the most CDs, LPs and concert tickets. (Yes, I said LPs!)

SOC will potentially also control the type of electronic devices we buy, and if that happens, there are two outcomes: We lapse into consumer laziness and buy whatever we have to buy to watch TV; People get together and start manufacturing their own electronic devices that fall outside the realm of media conglomerates. Ubuntu is an example of the latter outcome: an open-source OS made by its users and contributed to by its users without any DRM whatsoever. Let's just hope that the people in charge realize that the more they let people experience their goods and services, the more people will want to buy said goods and services.

Articles of note:
- "Selectable Output Control", Cory Doctorow, Make Magazine
- "FAQ: Betamax - tech's favorite ruling", John Borland, cnet.com
- "50 years of the Video Cassette Recorder", Sylvie Castonguay, WIPO Magazine

Thanksgiving

Since we will be out of town over this coming holiday, we had a great dinner last night courtesy of the GF herself. Halloween may be my favorite holiday in all of its aspects, but Thanksgiving is a great one too. Firstly, you don't have to spend ridiculous amounts of money buying gifts, nor do you have to spend any time wondering what you want for yourself. The holiday is completely stress-less and delicious to boot! Christmas is great, but I like the atmosphere surrounding that holiday more than the actual holiday itself. Sometime next month I'll write about the things I like that put me into a Christmas mood, but right now here are some of the bonuses of the November holiday season."Garfield's Thanksgiving":
Holiday specials don't really exist for Thanksgiving, but Garfield has a built-in character trait perfect for this particular holiday: gluttony. In this special, Jon, Garfield and Odie's owner, successfully invites the vet, Liz, over to the house for Thanksgiving dinner. She has recently put Garfield on a diet so he can't have any of the traditional Thanksgiving foods. In retaliation, Garfield ruins everything Jon makes, although Jon doesn't need too much help. Shortly thereafter, Liz takes Garfield off the diet in the "spirit of the season" I suppose, and Garfield than has to face the dinner that he ruined. But Jon's grandmother comes to the rescue and makes a full, perfect Thanksgiving dinner anyway, and everything is fine, until next month when Garfield sabotages Odie's Christmas gifts.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles:
It's hard to forget that this story takes place over the subtle tones of Thanksgiving. Most people associate it with Christmas, if they associate it with a holiday at all. Someone in the business, when asked about comedy writing, said that he writes the story first, and then adds the jokes in later, because without a good story, no movie is worth while. Planes, Trains and Automobiles is really funny, but has a good heart too. There isn't a better turn-around of a character than Steve Martin's Neil Page, when he figures out that John Candy's Del Griffith is homeless and not as stoic as he lets on. So Neil takes Del home with him and it's assumed that they become good friends, deep friends, if not daily drinking buddy-type friends. Oh, and there's this great scene at the rental car place with a lot of swearing. If it weren't for this two-minute scene, this movie would be PG and not R. (No one says "cocksucker" like Ian McShane, and no one says "fucking" like Steve Martin.)



Norman Rockwell:
Some people hate his stuff because it hits you over the head with traditional symbols of the holidays, but Norman Rockwell was an amazing painter, and I'll always be touched by his works. For Thanksgiving, Rockwell created the very famous "Thanksgiving", which is the family sitting at the table with the turkey about to be set in front of the patriarch for carving. But I prefer "Cousin Reginald Catches the Thanksgiving Turkey":

South Park episode #61, "Helen Keller, The Musical!":
Once again South Park manages to put me in the mood for the holidays with a musical based on "The Miracle Worker", but with a turkey jumping through a ring of fire. The episode is structurally based around "A Charlie Brown Christmas", as Timmy, the wheelchair-bound child, goes to the turkey farm to pick out a great turkey for the show, only to come back with Gobbles, a retarded turkey who isn't very smart and drags his head everywhere he goes. But it all works out and Gobbles ends up amazing everyone by jumping through the ring of fire anyway, and Timmy turns out to be the hero. There aren't any casualties, except for Kenny and Alinicia, the professional performing turkey who the kids hire when they find out that Timmy picked Gobbles to be in the show.

So there you have it, the things I like about Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving isn't always smiles and light, however. I remember one year when we all sat down to watch the highly anticipated premier of the XFL, Vince McMahon's pro football league. What a fucking waste. I guess it was pretty obvious that it wasn't going to be what people wanted: pro wrestling and football combined. But the cheerleaders were pretty hot, although the concept seemed to be stolen from BASEketball. Oh well.

CGI - the early days

It's hard to imagine that CGI came before AOL instant messenger and before the IBM PS-1, which was my first computer. CGI has been around for a while, since the mid-eighties, and it bears knowing where it came from and how we got from The Professional: Golgo 13 and The Last Starfighter, to The Incredibles and Wall-E. Computers have been used in film from as early as 1971.


In 1971, according to the wikipedia article, Timeline of CGI in Film and Television, a computer was used to render 2-D animation for a short, called "Metadata", by Peter Folds. In 1973 Folds made another short, "The Hunger", wherein a picture of a woman turns into a picture of an ice cream cone. It is the first time a computer was used to estimate the alteration needed to transform one image into another. The next listed instance of CGI was in Westworld, a sci-fi thriller written and directed by Michael Crichton. In Westworld, Yul Brynner stars as an android-cowboy in an amusement park that goes crazy. (Yes, I have this on DVD somewhere. I'll be watching it tonight.) Brynner's POV shots are created with CGI, 2-D wire-frame images depicting his robotic "eyesight". Metamorphosis CGI was also used to great effect in Willow in 1988.CGI comes up again in Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope, (1977). During the scene that the x-wing fighter pilots receive their briefing about how to destroy the Death Star, a 3-D wire-frame schematic is shown, illustrating the Death Star's weak point. The Star Wars series is responsible for many movie magic advancements, and George Lucas started his own effects house, Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), to help him achieve all of his wildest drams on camera. (ILM has consequently been at the forefront of many CGI feats in movies, including developing the dinosaurs for Jurassic Park and the T-1000 for Terminator 2: Judgment Day.) My dad, when he was an engineering student at the Univ. of Michigan, worked with a CAD program that had some pre-loaded images on it to illustrate its capabilities. He says that it took the program about an hour to draw a 3-D wire-frame image of a space shuttle. Here's the space shuttle I made in five minutes starting...now!


...and mine's not wire-frame. So, if you didn't know, we've come a long way in regard to CGI and all things computer-generated. It's hard to even notice things like the Death Star schematic, or the navigation monitors from Alien (1979), which were also computer-generated. But in the 1980's, things became a lot more noticeable, and kinda cool looking too.

Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan took a giant leap forward in 1982 when ILM created a fractal landscape from a computer for Khan's adopted home planet. This program was called "Genesis Effect" and I think the effect is pretty good, even for today. I don't remember seeing anything fake-looking in that movie, other than creature effects, so I think they pulled off something great. The first time a CGI object was integrated into a movie to replace a real-world object or model was in The Last Starfighter, (1984). The spaceships in the final battle sequence were all rendered in CGI, and while it's painfully obvious that it is CGI, considering where effects were two years prior, this is a monster step in the right direction. No matter how bad you think The Last Starfighter is a a movie, without it we wouldn't have Jurassic Park.


The United States wasn't the only country experimenting with CGI in the early 80's. An anime movie from Japan, The Professional: Golgo 13, which I referenced in my previous post, has s sequence at the end of the film using CGI helicopters shooting out the windows of a huge sky scraper. The CGI is all polygons and gradients, but it's still interesting to see how they worked it in, and it's fully ahead of it's time, since CGI didn't become mainstream within anime for another ten years. (Too bad the sequence itself looks horrible and doesn't even come close to blending in.)



In 1984 Temple of Doom and The Last Starfighter were released into theaters. What a contrast of viewing experiences! That would have been a great double feature: movie effects then and now, followed by movie effects of the future. Seeing the early steps is fun, and reminds of what we take for granted every time we go to the movies.

Off the [well] beaten path

Disney is responsible, in my mind, for making animation a mainstream thing. Adults and children alike have enjoyed Disney films, and will continue to enjoy them as long as they keep coming out. (It doesn't hurt Disney's prospects at all that they fused with Pixar to make the most fantastic animated movies in the world. And on a side note, Pixar started as a computer company selling 3-D graphics-capable software and hardware. In order to demonstrate their products' capabilities, they began making animated shorts, and thus Pixar - and Wall-E and and Toy Story and Monsters Inc and Cars - was born.) So Disney is popular, and will remain so, but some other folks have made successful and great animated features,and they deserve to be recognized, even though you may not have seen them due to Disney's huge status and wide-ranging fame.

Don Bluth was an animator at Walt Disney Studios in the 70's, but left in 1978 after deciding that Disney films had lost their magic. He opened his own studio with a couple other animators who left with him from Disney, and in 1982 they put out a great animated film called The Secret of NIMH. This movie, which I watched probably 20 times when I was a kid, is such a perfect piece of magical storytelling, I cannot recommend it highly enough. It deserves its PG rating, and parents should watch this film with their younger children, but the parents will enjoy it too. It is dark and funny and has more than a few memorable characters. Don Bluth's studios also put out An American Tale in 1986, which is another wonderful non-Disney animated movie.


If you really can't stand children's films, then check out 1976's Once Upon A Girl, an X-rated pornographic animated movie about the characters from Mother Goose romping around and basically fucking one another. It was animated by Disney animators as a sort of "rebellion"...so at least you know the quality is pretty good. My favorite part is the Jack and the Beanstalk segment, wherein Jack goes up and has a fling with the giant's wife, also a giant. The moral of the story is, he fits anywhere!


If that's too hardcore for some of you, as I understand that it might be, check out Heavy Metal, a sci-fi piece of animation with a ton of robot-on-robot violence and futuristic scenery taken directly from the magazine of the same name. It's a fun movie, albeit a little outlandish and often choppy in its storytelling. If you like sci-fi, action and sex, then Heavy Metal is something you should see. The soundtrack is full of good music too: Sammy Hagar, Cheap Trick, Nazareth, Blue Oyster Cult, Stevie Nicks, and many others.

Back to the tepid side of the pool, my GF would kill me if I didn't bring up The Land Before Time, from Universal in 1988. I don't remember liking this movie that much myself, but I haven't seen it since the theaters, and any film that ends up producing 12 sequels must be worth checking out. If you like dinosaurs, (and really, who doesn't?), then this movie is for you, and your kids...and probably your kids' kids too.

So things aren't always so Disney-centric. If you start to feel that all the animation is coming from one place, just search a little harder to find the hidden gems. The movies I've mentioned aren't out of print, nor were they obscure cult films...except that fairy tale porn one...and they can found in any rental outlet. I only bring this up because these days it seems that larger corporations are taking over, and that everything we use and see is from one or two places. This list goes to show that even in the heyday of hand-drawn animation, others were doing their own thing without the help of a distributor power-house like Disney. To close, here's a list of some other wonderful animated films that don't start with an image of the Magic Castle.

All Dogs Go To Heaven (1989)


Akira (1988)


The Professional: Golgo 13 (1983)


The Water Babies (1978)


The Phantom Tollbooth (1970)


The Hobbit (1977)


Fritz the Cat (1972)


Wizards (1977)


Watership Down (1978)


Charlotte's Web (1973)


Project A-ko (1986)

What if...

In art, as with science and etc. there are some concepts and questions of potential but impossible being that are fun to discuss. It sounds like I'm being complicated, but I'm not. Among bibliophiles, the most often discussed topic is the contents of the lost-to-fire library of Alexandria. It was a huge building that housed the most complete collection of manuscripts in the ancient world. Now you can read more about it if you want.

The library of Alexandria was lost to the world by one of a few possible means, fire, attack, decree or Muslim conquest and destruction. No one knows what many books and papers it held that are now possibly lost forever, so for those who are interested in books, it's a good time stretching the imagination to speculate on what great works of literary art are now gone forever. It's the same with movies. Even for large movies there are casting auditions. The studio heads have ideas of who they want to cast in the lead roles, and sometimes these work out and sometimes they fall through. Here's a few examples: Al Pacino was not originally supposed to star in The Godfather. Robert Redford was originally supposed to take that role. Princess Leia was almost played by Jodie Foster. Stanley Kubrick was supposed to direct A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. (He passed away, and his exhaustive notes were used by Steven Spielberg to make the film instead.)


It was the same with original Star Wars movies. I knew part of this story before, but today I found out the other half, and it got me excited to write. When George Lucas was trying to find a director for Return of the Jedi, (originally entitled Revenge of the Jedi), he first asked David Lynch and David Cronenberg. Cronenberg passed and went on to make Videodrome, The Fly and The Brood. (More recently he made A History of Violence and Eastern Promises.) Lynch passed because he wanted to make Dune, a film which he did end up making. If you have ever seen a David Lynch film, (Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive, Wild at Heart), you know that he has a uniquely weird creative mind. I can only imagine what the Jabba's palace scenes would've looked like with Lynch or Cronenberg at the helm. It would've been ten types of fucked up weirdness, and it would've been great.


But Lynch made Dune instead, and he did a great job. It's his film, no doubt, but it's also a good adaptation of the book. (It's a massive book, so paring it down wasn't easy.) However, was almost something completely different as well. Maybe if David Lynch had taken on the Jedi job, we would have gotten a Dune movie directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky, the man who made El Topo, which features a western gunslinger fighting a large man with no arms who always carries a man on his shoulders who has no legs. (This way they function as one being.) And who was going to design the men and monsters of Dune? H.R. Giger, who designed the alien in Alien, and Moebius, an artist who worked on Alien, The Abyss, several iconic graphic novels, and The Fifth Element. Oh, and instead of Toto doing the music, Pink Floyd was supposed to collaborate with Jodorowsky in the score. Now that might not seem like a crazy fucked up movie of incomparable grandeur yet, but here's who Jodorowsky wanted for the cast: Orson Welles, Mick Jagger, Salvador Dali, Geraldine Chaplin, Gloria Swanson, Alain Delon and David Carradine.


You would need a kryptonite projector to screen a movie like that. For me, and other cinephiles, it's fun and agonizing to wonder what that movie would've been like. But there's a reality that I cannot ignore. When writings started piling up in the library of Alexandria in the Middle East, and monks up in northern Europe were writing all they could, there was a lot of borrowing and forgery that went hand in hand. Many of the libraries' manuscripts were loaned out, copied, and the copies were sent back to the library. So the reality of that situation is that, most likely, as a result of the proliferation of copying, we probably still have most of what existed in the library. Anything that was of little importance to people of the day is of little importance to us. (Wouldn't it be nice if all the copies of Soul Plane and Cool As Ice just faded into the distance, leaving no copies, by the year 2200?) So a Lynch Return of the Jedi might be fun to think about, but it also might have been a huge disaster. A lot of director's only do their best while working from their own material. Lynch would have been reigned in by Lucas and his creative vision would've been stifled. Jodorowsky and his monster cast could never have worked with each other. Too many egos in that movie, so I doubt if it could've been made at all...or that the finished product would have very good. Blade Runner is an iconic work influenced by Moebius' art, and that just wasn't ready for people at the time of its release; Dune might have fallen prey to the same tastes.

The reason we have an imagination is so that we can play with possibilities. The above movie scraps are are just elements that we can use to build wondrous scenes in our own minds, other than that they're trivia. The realities of the situations can't stand up to the great images we can create ourselves, so it's fun to play, and sometimes it's okay that things didn't turn out as originally planned.

(The pictures, in order:
-Dune II by H.R. Giger [vehicle concept]
-Dune Worm XII by H.R. Giger [sand worm concept]
-image of the "baby" in Eraserhead
-image from El Topo)

Paradox of the "print screen" key

The catalyst that finally got me up off my ass and made me start writing in this blog was copyright nonsense. In this post, you can see an example of lawyers gone crazy and the inanity of over-protecting media. This trend is only getting worse, and the more ways to create and distribute media that are invented, the crazier and wilder become the copyright laws.

A website that I reference often, link to frequently and get inspired by daily is boingboing.net. Boingboing.net is a blog compiled from entries by several people, and some weekly guest bloggers. (Lat week's guest was Susannah Breslin who is the author of one of my favorite blogs, The Reverse Cowgirl.) A driving force and frequent poster for boingboing.net is Cory Doctorow. He is a fucking smart individual, (and if you want a sneak peek at what a smart man is interested in, here's his interview with the A.V. Club). Mr. Doctorow wrote a book called Little Brother which is a a work of fiction intended for young adults. I haven't read it yet, as I am without a computer at home, and therefore have no way of printing off the pages, but I'll get there eventually. Here is the synopsis:

(from http://craphound.com/littlebrother/about/)

" Marcus, a.k.a “w1n5t0n,” is only seventeen years old, but he figures he already knows how the system works–and how to work the system. Smart, fast, and wise to the ways of the networked world, he has no trouble outwitting his high school’s intrusive but clumsy surveillance systems.

But his whole world changes when he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his crew are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison where they’re mercilessly interrogated for days.

When the DHS finally releases them, Marcus discovers that his city has become a police state where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. He knows that no one will believe his story, which leaves him only one option: to take down the DHS himself."

Mr. Doctorow is very passionate about our digital rights and is full of useful information and opinions about why digital copyright is dangerously close to taking over our daily lives. We all use computers, so yes, we are susceptible.

Today's necessary reading is a post by Mr. Doctorow on locusmag.com. His thoughts about copyright law are very interesting and should be read by everyone. Check out what he has to say, and then reevaluate the things you do online every single day.

http://www.locusmag.com/Features/2008/11/cory-doctorow-why-i-copyfight.html

This brings me to something else that I find endlessly interesting: the nature of people to think that what's going on now is unique and original. Mr. Doctorow's novel is not the first time an author has explored the idea of kids being vastly technologically superior to adults. Here's a great short story by Bruce Bethke title, "Cyberpunk". Keep in mind that this story was written in 1980.

Quantum of information

This is a picture of Daniel Craig, as James Bond, running along the roof of a hotel located in the middle of the desert. Who would stay there? No one, it seems, unless you're a criminal doing a dirty deal. Maybe it's just that the hotel hasn't officially been open to the public yet, or maybe I'm thinking too hard. It's a challenge to write critically about something that you really enjoy. For instance, I thoroughly enjoyed Quantum of Solace, yet I'm about to begin writing critically about it. Here we go.

Daniel Craig's James Bond, as I have previously stated, is closer to the books than the 20 movies proceeding Casino Royale had portrayed. The recent James Bond reminds us that killing isn't glamorous and is in fact a dirty business done by dirty people. (Sure all the ladies want to fuck James Bond, but do you really wanna live with him? The only reason that his apartment is clean is because he's never there. And while we're on the subject, have you seen the posts from women who want to fuck Heath Ledger's Joker? It's ridiculous. And insane. Do these ladies really think that they can survive the night with that psycho?)

Anyhow, Quantum of Solace was amazing to watch. The action, which was about 90% of the movie, was great, and inventive, highly stylized, really well done, packed a punch, etc. I have to say,though it makes me sound aged and infirm, that there was far too much cutting and breaking of the most basic rule in film, the 180 degree rule. I know that rules were made to be broken, but there is a scene in which Bond chases a criminal through a maze of underground sewer tunnels. Sometimes it seemed as if James Bond was no longer the pursuer but the pursued. Director Marc Forster could learn a few things from The Bourne Ultimatum, which had a ton of tightly filmed chase sequences. The thing that separates The Bourne Ultimatum from Quantum of Solace is that you never lost your place in Bourne. There were a few moments where I had to turn off and simply accept that I knew Bond was chasing the bad guy and just wait for the next clear depiction of that so I could participate in the film again.

Quantum of Solace did have its moments of greatness, like its nod to Goldfinger. I won't spoil that scene for you, but it's unmistakable and awesome. I felt that Quantum of Solace wanted to reference another Bond movie: From Russia With Love. The evil baddies in Quantum are a group of powerful people with a uniform motive, and I felt that Quantum was trying to be a bit of a throwback to S.P.E.C.T.R.E. (Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion). But From Russia With Love did it better, and with more humor and irony. S.P.E.C.T.R.E.'s agents are everywhere, as are Quantum's, but Quantum is full of a bunch of people who are the same. S.P.E.C.T.R.E. is a group made up of wildly unique individuals. From Russia With Love shows us that in a 5 minute sequence. Quantum of Solace provides us with cursory and unsatisfying information regarding their villains in about 30 seconds. Advantage: From Russia With Love.

Go see Quantum of Solace. It is a crazy ride and you'll have a great time. The action is some of most fulfilling I've seen in a while, and the locations are grand and colorful. The only thing that seems to be left behind is plot, but it does exist, it's just very sparse. You might be reminiscing that the old Bond movies weren't very plot-heavy either, but I think you'll find that you are wrong. Go back and watch a few Connery / Moore Bond movies and you'll see just how deeply their plots go. There's something at stake in those movies, and you really feel that Bond is the only man for the job. Jason Bourne could've easily waltzed his way through Quantum of Solace and probably have cost his government a lot less money.

Um...right...

Sometimes you are made aware of something that everyone must see. Everyone must see this. Apparently it is no a doctored photo. it is not photoshopped, not fake, not a hoax. The photo originates from whitehouse.gov which, as you know, is an official site that I'm sure is heavily monitored for crap. Let's hope this picture stays up a while.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/11/images/20081112_d-0077-5-515h.html

Before you ask, the answer is Yes. You are seeing exactly what you think you're seeing.

Enjoy!

This blog is not yet rated

Film ratings are an enigma. The Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) rates all movies that are submitted and there are benefits and disadvantages to the ratings given. It's hard to imagine a time when movies weren't broken down by content-signifiers, but in 1984 a term called PG-13 was bandied about following the release of Gremlins and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Those movies were on top of the list of films that were considered too dark and scary for PG, but didn't deserve an R. As a result PG-13 came to be, and while it sometimes doesn't do anything but let you know that someone might say "fuck" once during the film, it has its uses. The R rating wasn't in existence until the late '60's after movies like Bonnie and Clyde and The Wild Bunch were released. There just wasn't a need for it before then.

There is a gray area for all ratings, but the problems that arise for the public are the differences between PG-13 and R, and R and NC-17. NC-17 came about because the rating of X was never copyrighted. Since it was never copyrighted, pornographic films started using the X rating, and XXX rating - which is just a gimmick and doesn't really exist, to convey to the public that their films had staunchly adult material in them. Because the MPAA didn't want to have anything to do with the pornography industry, they changed the rating from X to NC-17. This has lead many people to believe that NC-17 means that the film in question has gratuitous sexual content, but that is not always the case.

The issue with NC-17 and its perception of sexual content is encouraged through the MPAA's actions, even though they vehemently deny NC-17 as being a rating solely to connote high sexual content. NC-17 could be slapped on a film just for large amounts of graphic violence...but the MPAA and their ultra right-wing conservative Christian value system always views sexualized content as being worse than violent content. Therefore, a film is very rarely given an NC-17 rating due to its violence, but often given NC-17 due to its sexual content. On this basis it's easy to understand why people think that NC-17 is a synonym for "graphic sex".

Most people don't want an NC-17 rating for their films because that limits their audience severely. It's normal to want your film to make money, so re-cutting it and re-submitting it for another rating is perfectly acceptable. However, the MPAA is vague about what needs to be done in order to re-submit a film. Different filmmakers have different experiences and differing opinions on the MPAA's policies. Kimberly Pierce had a lot of trouble with the MPAA when she submitted Boys Don't Cry. On the other hand, Eli Roth has nothing but good things to say about his treatment by the MPAA in regards to Hostel and Hostel Part 2. This is the issue with the MPAA: their treatment of violent films and sexual films is too divided. The MPAA told Eli Roth exactly what to do to Hostel Part 2 in order to get an R rating, but they were not specific at all when it came to Kimberly Pierce's Boys Don't Cry. This disparity is because the MPAA regards the subject matter of a film like Boys Don't Cry as worse than the content of the Hostel films.

Don't get me wrong, I love Hostel Part 2. Love it. But it's a much worse movie than Boys Don't Cry simply for its motives. Boys Don't Cry is an R-rated movie, but it shouldn't have been put under the microscope like it was, and it shouldn't have garnered an NC-17 rating at any time. There is a great documentary about the MPAA called This Film Is Not Yet Rated. You can rent it from netflix, and every so often it's played on the IFC channel. The movie shows scene side by side that are basically the same, but are rated differently by the MPAA. These scenes are of a sexual nature, and depending on the sexuality on the screen, the movie is rated one way or another.

Take for instance a scene wherein a man pushes a woman up against the wall as they fuck. It's not rape, just upright-against-the-wall-fucking. That movie was rated R it's first time around. A different movie that happens to have a scene shot in much the same way, but with two men, one up against the wall, was rated NC-17. I'm serious when I say, the scenes are lit the same, shot from the same angle, and they last similar lengths. The same problem is shown to arise with movies that have sexual scenes of women receiving pleasure. A movie with a sex scene of a woman going down on a man is rated R, a movie with the man going down on the woman is rated NC-17. (The oral sex is kept off-camera, these are regular movies, not porns.)

A great example of the inconsistency that arises within the MPAA's system is Scarface's rating. Scarface was submitted and it received an X rating. (It was pre-NC-17.) A specific scene was pointed out that caused the rating to be so harsh. Brian De Palma re-cut the scene and resubmitted it about 5 different times, and they always got the X rating. De Palma re-submitted a last time with the film in its original state, before any cuts had been made, and it was given an R. So the version you watch today is the version that was first given an X. So obviously, content doesn't matter, the MPAA just wants you jump through hoops...or maybe desensitization occurred.

Which brings us to The Dark Knight, as good a movie that has come out in the past five years. Enough has been said on why the movie is so goddamned brilliant and amazing, so I won't waste your time with that, but The Dark Knight is rated PG-13. It is the hardest PG-13 I've ever seen. I know what a PG-13 is allowed to show, in a ball-park way, and never feels like anything short of a "hard R". Anything could've happened in that movie. I was not aware of any boundaries for violence while I watched that film, yet a 13-year old can go see it by himself, but that same 13 year old cannot see There Will Be Blood which had no nudity or graphic violence of any kind, yet is rated R. If you've ever got some free time, check out imdb.com and see what ratings other countries have given to our films. Many European countries rate by age, 12/12+, 15/15+, etc. It's interesting to see what France allows its 15-year olds to watch, while we restrict that content to 17 years and up. And it's nice to know that the rabbit can get in to the NC-17 movie, but that dog-giraffes can only see G-rated fare.

The gang's all here

The GF and I watch The Food Network a lot. I think everyone around our age, who doesn't have a job that makes them work 22 hours a day tends to tune into The Food Network at least a few times a week. It's hard not to pass it up, it makes food prep look so glamorous. I am not a huge fan of The Food Network, and am finding out that TV entertains me less and less as the days go by, but I do find a few things to like when I sit down to watch people make cakes and compete at flounder broiling, etc. The main thing that I enjoy about The Food network is the atmosphere between its stars. It harks back to the Golden Age of Hollywood at MGM, and how MGM's big stars would work together a lot to draw attention to the studio and to movies.

Last Christmas, and I assume this Christmas and et cetera, The Food Network had a couple shows wherein its various stars came together to teach us how to prepare large banquet-style meals in holiday fashion. I remember one show where a woman had to make a big dinner for her husband and his fellow firemen cronies. She had a pretty tiny kitchen, but not to fear, because the stars from The Food network stopped by to aid her in the preparation of the courses. Robert Irvine was there as well as Giada, and I think Tyler Florence as well. It was fun to watch them all collaborate in the shows. There was another special last year called All-Star Holiday Desert Battle. Cat Cora and Paula Deen competed against Tyler Florence and Robert Irvine to create holiday-themed desserts. I enjoy the camaraderie between the networks' stars, and it reminds me of an MGM special from 1931 called The Christmas Party.

In The Christmas Party, Jackie Cooper wants to throw a Christmas party for the guys on his football team. Jackie's mother says OK, but there are too many kids who want to come, and the party won't fit inside their house. Jackie Cooper pleads with Norma Shearer to ask Louis B. Mayer if he can have the party on one of the MGM soundstages. (Louis B. Mayer was the head of MGM at the time. MGM = Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer...get it?) So Jackie gets to have his party with all the kids from his neighborhood at MGM and the stars of the time serve all the food. By stars of the time I don't mean second-rate guys who have nothing better to do, I mean Clark Gable, Norma Shearer, Jimmy Durante, Anita Page, Lionel Barrymore (Drew's grandfather), Marion Davies, Wallace Beery and a few others. The Christmas Party is only 9 minutes long and was designed as a way to show off as many stars as possible in as little time as possible, but it's also a lot of fun to see all the famous faces, especially when they have to spoon out mashed potatoes to a bunch of kids while wearing their signature furs and suits.

That was what movies were like back in the day: the stars worked for the studios and all of them knew each other, so they often worked with each other in these little shorts. Today that would never happen. The big stars don't work together because that would be too much competition, they don't know each other, don't live near one another and can you imagine Tom Cruise, Brooke Shields, Will Ferrell, Angelina Jolie and Tom Hanks getting together to serve sweet potatoes and turkey to Dakota Fanning's classmates? Of course not! Dakota Fanning doesn't have classmates. But The Food Network is keeping that atmosphere alive, and it makes that channel a welcome place to hang out.

There's a shit-ton in a name

Last night the GF and I got an invitation to head down to our favorite bar, Level B, and watch a movie and play some Rock Band and grab some drinks. The Rock Band and the drinks were great. The movie our friend decided to show, which is in my collection as well, was Death Race 2000. No, it's not set in the year 2000, the film makers just tacked on the "2000" at the end to jazz up the title. That pretty much explains most of the artistic choices in this movie. Death Race 2000 is a Roger Corman movie. If you don't know who Roger Corman is, think of someone who likes bad movies so much that he purposefully makes them on shoe-string budgets, and in so doing has given many many talented actors/writers/directors their starts in Hollywood. That's right, Roger Corman, the man who brought us, among others, Piranha, Deathsport, The Wasp Woman, A Bucket of Blood, Little Shop of Horrors (1960) and Frankenstein Unbound, also allowed the following people to get to work on their big careers: Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, James Cameron, Martin Scorsese, Joe Dante, Jack Nicholson, Talia Shire, Peter Fonda. This is a partial list.

It just goes to show that the lowest rungs on the movie ladder are not to be taken lightly. You don't begin your career by directing The Godfather, you begin by directing a little movie called Dementia 13. But this is all just exposition. Death Race 2000 sparked a little conversation between the GF and I about iconography in cult movies. Why do you like movies like Death Race 2000? she asked. Well, I began, there's just something about witnessing movies that are financially and creatively the antithesis of big-budget Hollywood extravaganzas. (It didn't come out quite so eloquently at the time, but I've had almost 24 hours to think about it.) Also, certain names just make you excited, even if the movie is a total piece of shit when compared to a greater film such as, Days of Heaven or The Sting. Names have resonance. If some people [me] were to see that there was in existence a move that starred David Carradine and Sylvester Stallone, produced by Roger Corman and guest starring Martin Kove (the evil sensei from The Karate Kid), about a race set in the future wherein high scores depended upon the number of people you ran over, you'd rush out to view the ridiculous spectacle. Some things just cannot go unseen.

There are a few people that make me excited when I hear their names. I see them in movies, usually in cameos and walk-on roles, and it makes the complete viewing experience that much better. Here's a list of some of the ones that come readily to mind: Bruce Campbell, David Carradine, Tim Curry. Whenever these guys are involved in a movie you know that there's a good time to be had, even if it's just their particular scene. (Examples: Campbell in The Majestic, Intolerable Cruelty, The Hudsucker Proxy; Curry in Home Alone 2, Scary Movie 2, Legend; Carradine in Kill Bill, Circle of Iron, Hell Ride.) Lately a lot of movies, mostly comedies, have been making the most of this concept by giving famous actors little guest spots in movies where you wouldn't expect to see them. The best example of this is in Austin Powers: Goldmember. In the opening sequence an Austin Powers movie is being filmed within the movie you're watching. It's been some years, so I think it's safe to give it all away: Tom Cruise plays Austin Powers, Gwyneth Paltrow plays Dixie Normous, Danny Devito plays Mini Me and Kevin Spacey plays Dr. Evil. It's fucking hilarious and completely unexpected. Tom Cruise also played a fat, washed out Hollywood agent in the recent Tropic Thunder. Ben Stiller does cameos all the time and it just lights up my face to see him as the guitar store owner in Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny, or as the head of a local Spanish news station in Anchor Man: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. Tim Robbins also got in on the Anchor Man... set as another anchor in a big fight scene between rival news stations.

It's nice to know that there is still some fun to be had in Hollywood and that actors understand the joke. So in closing, Death Race 2000 has elements within it that make it a fun movie. Being reminded of what some actors can bring to the table is a good time, but seeing people in their infant stages on screen is also rewarding. For some fun, check out Leslie Nielson in Forbidden Planet, George Clooney in Return to Horror High, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Chris O'Donnell and Cole Hauser in School Ties, and Brad Pitt and James Gandolfini in True Romance.

Revisionistic

My last post talked about how far from the ticket line I'll be when the new Sherlock Holmes movie comes out, but the movie itself does give us a good jumping off point for a topic which divides movie-goers, and readers. Revisionist takes on classics can be great, refreshing beginnings for things decades-old. They can also be kryptonite for many hardcore genre fans. To say that there are some who didn't welcome 2006's Casino Royale with open arms may come as a surprise for those from my generation, but some people didn't like the movie studios fucking with James Bond. I am not one of them. Casino Royale was great and it helped wake people up to what James Bond's life would be like in reality. Laugh if you want, but Casino Royale was more realistic than any other Bond film yet. There's so much camp and tongue-in-cheek material in the 21 Bond films that proceeded Casino Royale, that the series needed an injection of seriousness.

Bond's ability to avoid death will never be realistic, but his personality is much more realistically portrayed by Daniel Craig than by, say, Roger Moore. James Bond can be divided into three sections: book Bond, movie Bond, Daniel Craig Bond. Book Bond, as originally envisioned by Ian Flemming consists of Bond being as careless with life and death and women as in the movies, but there is a classiness that Flemming tries to illustrate about Bond's lifestyle that he hopes cannot be denied by anyone. Bond is a serious person, he just likes his daily doses of martinis and sex. Movie Bond is much more carefree. He throws caution to the wind, but not because he must, he does it as a boast. He knows he'll be winning, and he never looks like he's actually trying. Daniel Craig Bond knows exactly what he needs to do, doesn't really enjoy every minute of it, and struggles to overcome the odds. Sometimes he loses, badly. I shudder to think what his balls looked like for the few weeks that followed his rope torture at the hands of Le Chiffre. I don't think Vesper Lynd was getting much action in their hotel room in Venice.

I am okay with the new Bond. Some people would complain that the new Bond isn't the true Bond. The new Bond is too serious and there's no joking around, no Q and no banter with M about the spies' desire to use a Beretta instead of the Walther. After decades of indulgence, I welcome the change that Daniel Craig's Bond has brought us. When everyone knows the ins and outs of a certain type of character, it's nice to have a chance to examine the reality that movies tend to hide. Westerns are a good example. Unforgiven is a revisionist western. Most westerns have the hero drawing and shooting his pistol with ease - faster than anyone else in the West. These types of iconic heroes can't age or get hurt. Unforgiven reminded us that that was all bullshit. Outlaws were subject to the same ailments as us normal folk. They lose their eyesight as they age, their joints creak and they lose range of motion. No way someone's going to draw a pistol at the same speed at 70 that they could when they were 27. But to the people who are most likely to follow stories like Bond's and Eastwood's, middle-aged men, the realities are elements better left out of these tales. These heroes aren't supposed to age or grow infirm.

I'm not saying I want to burst bubbles or steal peoples' enjoyment, but sometimes a healthy dose of reality is what's needed to keep something from getting stale. I like Unforgiven, but I also like Silverado. These movies are at odds with each other, but what really makes and Unforgiven and Casino Royale stand out is that they're not spitting in the eye of their predecessors. They know from whence they came, they're just out forging new territory, like any animal does when it has grown and is ready to leave the nest and start its own life.

Irregularities on Baker Street

Sherlock Holmes is one of literature's best-known characters. He was never a real person, and if you go to Baker street in London to locate his house, you would instead find a bank that takes over the entire block. Despite this drawing of Holmes [fictional] and author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle [real person], Holmes exists only in stories and on film. I bring this up because of my inner conflict revolving around Guy Ritchie's new Sherlock Holmes movie starring Robert Downy Jr.

If you don't read about upcoming movies, then you don't know that this movie is being made right now, but it is. Jude Law is playing Watson, Downy Jr. is playing Holmes, Rachael McAdams is Irene Adler, and that's all we know. This movie is being based off a graphic novel by Lionel Wigram and will portray Holmes as a more adventurous, action-type protagonist. Based on these pictures it looks like the movie will Portray Watson with no alterations from his literary past, but will in fact portray Holmes as a disheveled tramp. Downey Jr. already knows how to play this role, so it should be an easy retread for him. I'm not saying he's a bad actor, I'm just unimpressed by his ragtag image as Holmes. It all ties in to the portrayal of Holmes in this movie, and I'll start you all off with a little info about literary Sherlock.

Sherlock Holmes as originally envisioned by Conan Doyle was a pretty regular London gentleman of his time, the late 1800's. He was a genius at deduction, played the violin, never had any romantic entanglements, (although he was attracted in some way to Irene Adler - it never came to anything tangible) , and he sometimes enjoyed imbibing a 7% solution of cocaine. Leaving out the fact that cocaine was perfectly legal at the time (why do you think they call it Coca-Cola?), thereby stating my opinion that Holmes was never a lawbreaker, his drug usage was defined by the times and has nothing to do with "coke-heads" of the here and now. Guy Ritchie has already said that he intends to play up the drug use. As far as my own deductions are concerned, what with the admission that it will be an action movie, that someone has been cast as Irene Adler, and the trumped up drug use, I don't think this movie will appeal to anyone who is a real fan of the stories. It might get some younger people to read a story or two, but once they see how boring the tales are compared to the movie, they're going to grow tired very fast.

Background on Irene Adler: She appears only in one story, "A Scandal in Bohemia", and is mentioned by Holmes in a few others, but Holmes and Adler never get together or fuck each other, which I'm sure they will in this movie. Their relationship in the stories can be related to the relationship that Grissom and Lady Heather have in CSI: a relationship of respect, interest and admiration, not lust and carnal desires. Another note about the cocaine usage in the original stories: Holmes never used it while he was working on a case. It was always strictly on his own time. This movie is going to increase his drug usage and I won't be surprised if we see Holmes bump a line or two.

To some people that might be an exciting revisionist take on the character. I personally find it more exciting to think that there is someone who has qualities that I respect and admire and envy who can casually use a drug for recreation without it taking over his life. But I guess that message is too risque to put out to the public. God forbid that we impart any message other than if you're in the same room as some substance, then you are tainted for life and will probably die young. Better to let the kids know that if anyone has ever used a drug at all, then they were probably hard up for it all the time. Maybe Downey Jr.'s Sherlock will resemble Tyrone Biggums more than the sometimes snobbish, always calculating and proper Holmes of literature. Here's hoping we get some scenes of Holmes beating a crack-whore or hocking Mini-Disc players for $8 a pop on the street to support his habit.

What about me?

There is a lot of speculation out there about the connection of peoples' MP3 playlists and their personalities. This concept was most recently examined in the comedy that I haven't seen yet called Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist. (It looks pretty good, I just haven't gotten around to see it...I'll probably end up renting it.)

Because I have nothing better to write about, and because I like giving people new material to bore themselves with, I'm putting in a list of every tenth movie on my Netflix queue. Why every tenth movie? Because I have 244 movies on the list, and there's no way anyone's going to go through them all, but 24 movies is pretty manageable. Here we go.

1. Sukiyaki Western Django
11. Night of the Comet
21. The Bird People in China
31. Scenes from a Marriage
41. Au Revoir les Enfants
51. Hopscotch
61. Kiss Kiss, Bang bang
71. The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi
81. The Tiger and the Snow
91. Dark Star
101. Versus: Director's Cut
111. Four of the Apocalypse
121. The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh
131. The Lair of the White Worm
141. Jungle Holocaust
151. Harold and Maude
161. Charlie Wilson's War
171. Zardoz
181. Severance
191. Flesh Gordon (that's not a spelling mistake)
201. The Decamaron
211. Evolution
221. A Simple Plan
231. Re-Cycle
241. Macumba Sexual

There you go: A bunch of shit you've never heard of...for the most part. Putting up a list like this is also a good way of completely avoiding the dreaded question: What is your favorite movie? I hate that question. There's no possible way to answer it.

RIP Michael Crichton

Michael Crichton died yesterday following a battle with cancer. He was only 66 years old. I'm kind of glad he won't get to see Jurassic Park 4. I've only read a few of Crichton's books, Jurassic Park, Lost World and Sphere. My girlfriend has read all of his books and they are her favorite works of fiction. His next book is still listed as coming out in December according to Amazon.com, but the title is pending, so who knows?

Michael Crichton's books taught me a lot about science without trying hard to teach. I'm not a scientist and I have never taken a large interest in science, but I think I took away a lot of science education from the three books that I read. I learned about DNA and the responsibilities of researchers from Jurassic Park. I learned about evolution as it pertains to the environment in Lost World. In Sphere I learned about "spacetime".

When I read Jurassic Park I was in Florida at my grandparents' house. They lived in a retirement community that consisted of trailer homes. The air was very humid and heavy. The temperature was too very warm. The humidity and heat mimicked the conditions I imagined the characters in the book had to deal with. It was great to read that story in that setting. Jurassic Park had a lot to do with genetics and things that you had to be taught in order to grasp. Lost World was more intuitive.

In Lost World, the genetics was scraped in favor of trying to figure out how the dinosaurs would have behaved based on animals that exist today. This was science I could be a part of because it was deductive. Dinosaurs with long necks must've eaten from the tops of trees! Nope, not all of them. In Lost World the protagonists notice that the tree tops are full of leaves, while the lower branches and surrounding brush has been stripped bare. So why the long necks? Crichton postulates that the dinosaurs have long necks in order to balance out their tails, which they need for protection. Without the balance provided by their necks, they couldn't swing their tails.

Another interesting tidbit gleaned from Lost World was the way science changes over time. When I was younger I thought facts were facts and that once something was discovered it was always going to be the same. In Jurassic Park we all learn that tyrannosaurus rex had poor eyesight and couldn't see it's prey unless it moved. Therefore, if a t-rex corners you, just stand still! In Lost World we discover that theories have changed and when one of the villains is cornered by a t-rex he freezes up...and is promptly eaten causing a nearby witness to proclaim that he was "misinformed". Guess science is more fluid than I thought. It make sense now, but when I first read the book it was a revelation to me.

What I took away from Sphere is much more complicated and I have no idea how to explain the higher implications of it to you. There is a part in Sphere wherein the characters are talking about time travel and space distortion and one of them brings up the theory of spacetime and explains it for the benefit of all of us, the stupid readers. Spacetime is what you get when you combine time and space into one diagram or equation. If you throw a ball from one person to the other in a straight line, it'll take a second to get from person A to person B. If you throw the ball in a high arc it'll take 5 seconds to get from person A to person B. The balls have the same spacetime. You can't get a ball to go in the straight line and take 5 second to make the trip, similarly you cannot make a ball that is thrown in an arc get to person B in 1 second. Spacetime is involved when discussing gravitational pull of objects in space. I'm not saying anything else, because I'd just be making it up. You now know what I know. Here's some more information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime

So "Thank you, Michael Crichton" for entertaining the hell out of me and forcing me to learn in the process.

vor v zakony

Sometimes a movie will come out that has within it some piece of culture that was before unknown to most of us. Donnie Brasco taught us the difference between a "friend of mine" and a "friend of ours". The Godfather taught us what it meant to "sleep with the fishes". Eastern Promises gives us some knowledge of the Russian Mafia, and the way it operates. But the real peek at a different culture comes through in the tattoos.

I'd like to say that I knew about Russian criminal tattoos this whole time, but I found out because of Eastern Promises. The Russian criminal tattoo is a language that exists within the Russian prison system. Not everyone who has tattoos are in the mafia, but all mafia have the tattoos. Much like hieroglyphics, the criminal tattoo is informative only to those who know what they're looking for. The basic symbols that reappear in these tattoos are stars, card suits, epaulettes, spiders/spider webs, cats, eyes, etc. Depending on what symbols the tattoo consists of and where the tattoo is on the body, the tattoo can mean anything from indication of rank among a gang to passive sexual status within the prison system. These latter types of tattoos are forcibly applied to the back or lower stomach area to indicate that the person is a passive homosexual or that he has welched on a debt or gone against the thieves code.

It would take too long to go into all the variations and meanings, but in Eastern Promises there is a scene wherein Viggo Mortensen's character, Nikolai, stands before a jury of elders and has his tattoos examined and translated. It is very much like your boss reading your resume. The jury looks at the number of turrets in the cathedral tattoo on Nikolai's back and determines how many prison sentences he's endured. They see the cat tattoo on his arm and know he is a respected thief. ("Thief" doesn't necessarily mean "robber" in this circumstance. It is just a word meaning "gangster".)

Nikolai has empty space on his knees and above his chest so that he may one day receive the tattoos denoting a high ranking within the thieves underground. Stars on the knees and chest mean that there isn't anyone who can tell this guy what to do, and that he kneels to nobody. The scene is really amazing, and you truly feel like you're a fly on the wall of some top secret meeting. In truth, these tattoos aren't used much anymore, but they still exist. The book I have at home, Russian Criminal Tattoos Vol. 2, details accounts of people getting new tattoos in the early 2000's and late 1990's, so it hasn't completely gone out of style. It's interesting to me to think about getting my driver's license and going to high school in 1996, while in Siberia this guy was getting his fake tattoos cut out of his skin by fellow inmates. Oh by the way, tattoos that you have that aren't earned are deeply frowned upon, by which I mean you might get killed if you're found to have tattoos that you don't deserve.

These days practically everyone has a tattoo. But the tattoos you see of Chinese characters on 15 year old girls' backs weren't applied by some degenerate inmate's hand, nor were they inked from a mixture of shaved boot heel and urine. Also I'd assume the tattoos you see every day were applied with a high-quality needle, instead of an old metal guitar string attached to an electrical razor. Learning about Russian criminal tattoos is like discovering another planet. It's a fascinating piece of culture to immerse yourself in.