lifebsideben

I bought the 40-Year-Old Virgin DVD right before the parents came to visit in December, but didn’t get a chance to watch it before they showed up. While they were here I offered, but they said they had recently rented it and only got through 15 minutes of it before giving up, thinking it was too stupid/not funny/?. This is the same thing they said about Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, so I almost took that as a good sign. But, still didn’t get a chance to actually pop the badboy into the player until a few days ago.

Read more »

In this article at Wired about digital projection of films and anti-piracy measures, Brad Hunt of the MPAA is quoted as saying:

“We’re not trying to describe specifically what is being done, because the effectiveness of these technologies is based on a lack of knowledge.”

Ah, the old “security through obscurity” tactic. That always works so well… not. But hey, don’t tell the MPAA; their continued ignorance is probably an overall good thing: the more shitty movies get pirated, the less likely people will pay to go see them, the more likely quality movies are to be made, for which people DO pay for. I have seen a bootleg or two in my time, largely because with a 17-month-old, I don’t get many opportunities to go to the movies, and I want to see some things before the DVD is released. Movies I like, I buy the DVDs for. Many other people are the same way, I’m sure. (Actually, a lot of folks are probably renting the dvds and not buying them, via Netflix or Blockbuster, but I tend to like to own movies that are worth watching, especially if there’s extras on the disc.)

Aside from that silliness above, the article basically just says there will be a time & location stamp in the film. Big whoop. I suspect (a) this won’t survive through the projection->camcorder->encoding (and possibly ->reencoding) process, and (b) most pirates just don’t care. Until you have to show ID and have your picture taken going into the theater, I don’t see this being much of a deterrent. Better plan: have ushers (remember them?) or security folks observe people in the theater, and spot people with camcorders. But wait, this would cost the theaters money, and is likely difficult to acheive 100% success, which is almost needed, due to the multiplication factor innate to piracy.

But hey, maybe it’ll stop the low-tech pirates hawking cheap dvds at swap meets and on the corner. Maybe…. but internet-based/p2p piracy, I seriously doubt it’ll have any effect. You know what would work? Making quality movies, giving something extra to the theater experience (interactivity? better value? purchase the DVD at a discount on the way out?), and treating your customers with respect instead of apathy, disdain, and mistrust.

Tags: big_business, dvd, movies, MPAA, piracy, security

Actually went to a movie yesterday, which is wildly unusual now that we’ve got the wee one. Saw King Kong with my dad at the Metreon in SF. The nice thing about going to the 10:40am show is you can sit wherever you want! The bad part is, at the Metreon, there’s no matinee price break. $8/person, and after a 3hr move, $11 in parking at the 4th & Mission garage. Over $30 for two people to see a movie (including the 5oz bag of peanut m&ms: $3.80) seems pretty steep, but hey, it’s King Kong! Gotta see it on the big screen.

And see it we did. All of it. All 3 hours. Every little detail Peter Jackson could possibly dream up. Seriously, get a better editor. It never quite got boring, but certainly there was a lot of languishing on scenes, extra shots, that really didn’t add anything, but did draw it all out. Some of the stuff (the rescued kid on the steamer, the brontosaurus stampede, shooting the giant roaches off a person) even detracted, in my opinion. Still, there was a lot of neat stuff to see, the T-Rex vs. Kong part was entertaining if ridiculous, and the ending was really well done. I don’t remember much from the original, but I think the spirit of it was probably pretty accurately carried forward–adventurous, over-the-top, etc. I didn’t mind that we didn’t see Kong until the 1hr mark (except that if it were edited properly that would have been the 35 minute mark). Some of the effects were cheesier than I had expected (especially the stampede stuff), but that’s in part because I expect them to be perfect these days. Overall I’d give it a B-/C+. Mostly entertaining, but too long and not “perfect” effects. Not worth $8 to me personally, but some folks probably would think it is. I do believe it’s not going to be the box office savior a lot of folks are hoping for.

Tags: movies, review, Sony

I finally saw THX-1138, George Lucas’ first “real” movie, made in 1969-1970. I bought the new 2-DVD set sight- (and movie-) unseen at Costco about a month ago, and finally got around to watching it. There were several times through the “Director’s Cut” that I thought, “hmm, that’s a pretty sweet special effect for a relatively low-budget 1970 flick”… and then near the end I started thinking “uh oh, I bet George was hacking this up… that scene looks totally CGI and doesn’t quite match the rest of the movie…” And then it got worse, almost every scene near the end seemed to be obviously “enhanced”. So, I sat through the entire movie again listening to the director’s and co-writer’s commentary, expecting to learn about the scenes / tweaks that had been made for the DVD release. Not a word, nada! Apparently, if you aren’t familiar with the original, you’re supposed to think this version is the original. Incredible. I checked out a couple sites, and found what I was looking for… I found out he pretty much gave it the “Star Wars treatment”–significant cleanup (typically a good thing) and also significant changes/additions (typically not a good thing IMO). There’s even a scene were characters are radically changed, from (I presume) humans, to fully CG characters. Huh??

I just don’t understand some artists’ obsessions with “fixing” past (often, very old) works… there are basically a couple of arguments, one being “they are the artist and entitled to make any changes, any time” and the counter “once a work is published and is popular it becomes part of the culture/consciousness and should not be changed, especially surrepitiously.” I actually agree with both, but to varying degrees. From what I’ve gathered of the changes made in THX-1138, I think a few probably added to the experience and didn’t hurt the story (the mindlock eye-roll effect, cleaning up some of the audio, making the car crash more consistent, adding more bodies to the throng in the hallway), but others really seem like they do (cleaning up the video too much, adding CG to show “more” of the world (it’s supposed to be clausterphobic…), adding a silly-looking darting-car sequence in the beginning of the chase, making the asylum area too white such that the ‘thunder’ audio effect is nonsensical, showing the robot assembly details–totally unnecessary, etc.) And we’re talking a 35 year old movie here! The artist is no longer the same person–leave the original alone. At least give us the original and the “updated” version on the DVDs. Prince tends to do the exact same thing, changing old song lyrics to be more in lline with his new Jehovah’s Witness beliefs. Does he have the right to do this? Of course. Should he? No, if you ask me. Leave the songs as they were… don’t bother performing them if you don’t like their original content. Or make new songs (as he certainly does).
Read more »

So here I am watching the long-awaited release of Once Upon a Time in America, Sergio Leone’s classic gangster flick, on DVD. It’s on 2 discs, no problem, it’s a long movie. But what’s the deal with the disc split point? Right after a big action scene, it goes instantly to a FBI warning. No “insert disc 2″, no “intermission”, nothing normal, just the FBI Warning screen. Muy raro.
So I pop in disc 2, and 30 minutes later, we get the Intermission chapter. Hmm. I know sometimes the encoding just doesn’t work out the way you want it to, but that’s just odd. I thought we were past the days of random chapter breaks. And I still want a reissue of The Man Who Would Be King, dual-layered! That’s a great movie and flipping the disc 2/3 through really breaks the flow.