Recently in Film Category

I'd seen a bit of this film when it played at my theatre a few years ago (the line "would you like to polish my knob" is unfortunately stuck in my brain), but I only recently sat down to watch it for the series. On_Line is aimed at the young, tech-saavy youth of today, who think they will be able to use the internet to help fulfill their sexual wants and desires. It focuses on an introspective young guy named John who runs a service with his roommate Moe called Intercon-X, where people can connect with others through video chats to help get each other off or possibly meet-up IRL. The irony here is that John is unable to get over his ex-girlfriend and spends all his time updating his video blog and admiring girls without ever contacting them.

Things get more interesting when cheating, potential suicide, and bisexuality are introduced, but overall this was a pretty tame film with some lofty ambitions to update the classic romance formula with new technology. Let's take a look at some photos.

Note: On_Line is the first film in the "movies and the internet" series to be viewed in High Definition, which didn't really make much of a difference, except that I was forced to take literal screenshots of my display for the images. Of course, there is something weird about watching something in HD that contains a good amount of footage obtained via webcams.

This is our protagonist, a classic internet nerd with nothing much to say except things like "the world is a lot smaller than you think" and "this is my life, these are my obsessions"--ugh.

Whoa, this shot is underneath the desk! There were so many attempts to make sitting at a computer seem dynamic and sexy.

Check it out--John's roommate is totally Michael from LOST!

This is the computer of the totally sexy lady Jordan who drives the guys crazy. Let's take a look around--furry pink monitor! a dildo! a wig and sunglasses for pretending to be that other character!

To get deeper into John's world, make sure you use the SnorriCam.

John meets up with Jordan and the screen explodes into dozens of frames! This made my head hurt--what am I supposed to pay attention to?!

Moe meets this lady Moira who likes to spend time with the suicide-obsessed on "Final Exit", chatting with people why they talk about how miserable their lives are.

Look! Moe/Michael is totally playing with himself!

Things don't work out with Moe and Moira, so John steps in and she helps him get over his ex, who we find out is the girl on the "Angel Cam" we have been watching the whole film. Something about watching your ex live her life out on a web cam seems a tad bit unhealthy, no?

I didn't really enjoy this film, since it compromised in too many areas while it tried to be provocative and progressive. The use of video chats was somewhat cutting-edge, but I'm unaware of any sites that actually have the bandwith alloted to maintain a half-dozen simultaneous video chats some 4-5 years after this film came out. The film mostly doesn't work because there are only so many ways you can convey information via computer screens, and it tries way too hard to make that interesting.

I leave you with a few more choice quotes from the cast:
"How exquisite it must feel to be a thing of beauty"
"Of course I believe it--it's on the fucking internet!"
"It's much easier to love an image than a real person."

I return with some findings about HD presentations, specifically in regards to this whole KING KONG letterboxing situtation. Thanks to everyone who commented on my previous entry, and thanks to the various sources on the wonderful internet (see below) who provided the answer to this short-lived mystery.

Turns out KING KONG was shot on Super 35 mm film, which allows the filmmakers to utilize additional space on the film that the soundtrack would have previously used, to create a larger negative to work with. It also helps to enhance the presentation of different formats, as it can add horizontal space to home video releases, and with todays widescreen televisions means you can see a significant amount more of the horizontal image.

Of course you are losing some of the vertical image as a result, as is always the case with non-letterboxed scope aspect ratio films, but the difference is less noticeable than it used to be on a standard 4:3 television. For the HBOHD version, they made it open matte to show the additional horizontal image that was always there. Which is basically the same thing they've been doing for full-frame TV versions, but here at least you aren't losing as much. Kind of an interesting compromise if you think about it.

Check out this thread on AV Science Forum where a bunch of nerds like myself went over the same comparisons. (Thanks to cag.com member Ph8te for pointing me in the right direction.)

Also, if you feel like delving even deeper into this, check out widescreen.org's aspect ratios and filming techniques page (their motto is "defending the visions and intentions of film makers").

Okay, I still have some movies and the internet stuff waiting to get published, but before I finish that series I need to post some HD-related "Consumer Reports-type" content. I've been meaning to comment on the different presentation qualities present among the broadcast HD channels, and now I can also see how they compare with the current Blu-ray and HD-DVD technologies (yeah, I have both). First up was the obvious comparison of recently debuted on HBOHD "King Kong". Since my HD-DVD player came with a copy of "King Kong" on HD-DVD, it would be easy to see it stacked up against my Comcast HBO feed.

Upon tuning in to HBOHD I immediately noticed that the movie was not being shown letterboxed. This surprised me, considering that I had watched a bit of the HD-DVD and knew it to be heavily letterboxed (Peter Jackson loves his epic, cinema-scope scenes). I took a few screenshots to directly compare how they displayed the exact same shot. What I found astonished me:

First we have this close-up shot of Kong on HBOHD:

Then the corresponding shot on HD-DVD:

Whoa! It actually looks like the letterboxed HD-DVD is cutting off part of the image! I would have guessed the opposite to be true. To further illustrate my point let's take a look at a wide shot of the airplanes that attack the giant ape:

First we have the shot on HBOHD:

Then the corresponding shot on HD-DVD:

You can totally see more sky above, and also more of the plane in the lower right corner. Weird. I guess I need to find out more about what kind of version HBO receives--and if the HD-DVD is actually fake letterboxed?! If anyone has any idea what is going on, feel free to comment. Also, I should point out that no amount of fancy HD technology could possibly make me enjoy this piece of shit film--"but it looks pretty good."

SNEAKERS, released in 1992, features an "all-star cast" of Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier, my old John Sayles buddy David Strathairn, Dan Aykroyd, a pre-death River Phoenix, Mary McDonnell (another Sayles alum), Ben Kingsley, Donal Logue, and a final cameo by Darth Vader. Pretty cool lineup, right? Pretty lame movie...

It covers the same surveillance territory that FF Coppola tackled in 1974's THE CONVERSATION, only with more updated, computer technology. I became immediately skeptical of this film the second they tried to make me think this rag-tag bunch would be capable of infiltrating high-level security.

Aykroyd is annoying as ever as "Mother", full of tired conspiracy theories. Strathairn's "Whistler" gets a few comedic turns as a blind man whose hearing is so acute he can detect the slightest change in audio levels, etc. Also, he gets to read braille Playboys and drive a van. Phoenix doesn't do much except be a pretty boy charmer, and Poitier almost saves himself with a good one-liner at the end. Redford carries the film for the most part, but can't do much to save the boring, implausible script, which basically involves the group stealing a high-tech espionage device, then having to re-steal it. HIJINKS!!!

Let's look at some photos:

Here is the braille Playboy--perhaps the joke is that old saying that guys like the magazine for the articles.

This is the guy they have to steal the device from initially, and yep, it's Donal Logue, AKA Jimmy the Cab Driver. I bet he'd like to forget how lame he looks as a nerd in this film.

Ha Ha! The blind man dances funny! Ugh.

More blind jokes--look, "Whistler" is hacking in the dark.

At least he is able to decode this mess.

Obligatory license plate enhancement shot:

The film takes an amazingly dark turn for a second when Poitier's character "Crease" lets loose on some bad guys with the line "Motherfuckers mess with me, I'll split your head!" WHOA.

James Earl Jones shows up at the end to provide some unneeded comic relief, granting blackmail wishes to the crew.

Finally, Redford looks like he is just as glad as I am that this film is over with.

Next up in my series is 1995's THE NET, starring Sandra Bullock. The movie starts with an awesome crane shot into our protagonist Angela Bennett's house, as she plays Duke Nukem and chats with her employer. He asks her to dinner, but she "has a prior engagement", which we then find out is ordering pizza.

Oh, look--it's pizza.net! Which, 11 years later, is "the world's largest pizza search engine." Who knew? At least I can say I've ordered pizza on the internet before, so let's give credit to the foresight shown by THE NET's creators.

After some slices we find Ms. Bennett chatting with her cyberfriends, and the movie feels compelled to make things more aurally interesting, so all of the chats are spoken in computer voices.

How great is "the net is ultimate condom"? Very great.

Angela obviously needs to take a break from this stressful life, so she goes on vacation, but first she needs to make her airline seat reservation:

Despite the basic graphic, this is another instance of THE NET actually delivering on a technological promise.

When Angela shows up at the airport the next day, things have gone a bit haywire due to, yep, a computer malfunction.

Would they really say "Hijacked"?!

Eventually she makes it to her destination, where she meets this alluring gentleman, who makes the moves on her with his smooth words "We're sitting on the most perfect beach in the world and all we're thinking about is where can I hook up my modem."

Brilliant sexual metaphor man!

Okay, I've grown bored of describing the plot, so here are the rest of the movie's highlights:

Don't mess with dudes who know computers, they could give you virtual VD.

When your budget is tight, call on Dennis Miller for the love interest.

Then kill him off because no-one is buying it.

Look at how cute that laptop is. Awwww.

Just don't press that button.

Now you did it.

I enjoyed THE NET more than I thought I would, mostly as a historical artifact. The movie really preys on the early internet privacy fears, and is probably the reason people still won't order things off the internet, but will instead call up some catalog and provide a live human with their credit card number. I can't wait for THE NET 2.0.

Watching Lebowski for the umpteenth time the other night (first time in HD though), I noticed a couple things.

1. Aimee Mann plays the female nihilist (aka, the one who sacrificed her toe). So, the table at the pancake house features Flea, Mann, Peter Stormare, and Torsten Voges, whose career certainly peaked with that 1998 performance. An excerpt from an Onion interview with Mann from 2000:

O: Do you have any proper lines in that movie?

AM: Um, he says to me, "Do you have the key?" And I say, "No, you have the key." We had an argument about who had the key. "Well, you had the key, you locked the door!" "No, I didn't lock the door, it locked by itself." It was really stupid. Then the waitress comes and we order pancakes.

2. Also, David Thewlis plays Maude's excitable friend, a man more well-known for his Harry Potter performances, even though I always confuse him with Alan Rickman.

Yesterday I attempted to ignore the heat while watching the made-for-TV movie "Mission Of The Shark", about the USS Indianapolis, a  battleship lost in the Pacific Ocean towards the end of WWII, shortly after dropping off a vital piece of the atomic bomb.  Anyone who has seen "Jaws" will hopefully remember the scene towards the end of the film where the three main men are drunk and Robert Shaw's Quint character describes how he was on the ship that sank and watched his fellow crew members get picked off by sharks.  There was even talk about making one of the Jaws sequels a serious prequel regarding this incident.  However, that never happened and instead we are left with this tame film. 

The subject of the boat's survivors being abandoned and the subsequent court martial of the captain (along with the delivery of the atom bomb) is quite fascinating, and should have made for a decent historical war film.  Of course I wasn't expecting much from something custom-made to insert commercials, and the story is therefore way too condensed.  Also, adding sharks to the mix is kind of an afterthought to the maker's of "Mission", and it would be nice to see this story remade with a decent budget. 

Awhile ago I wrote about watching Yasujiro Ozu's "Tokyo Story", and how I had to overcome my initial lack of interest to discover the beauty of his realistic cinema. I recently watched my second Ozu film, Good Morning, which has further cemented my appreciation for the social and familial elements in his films. In some ways it reminds me of the work of my favorite director John Sayles--I'll never forget the transformation that occurred upon viewing "Lone Star" in the theater--"this is what it's like to actually think in a movie!"

Except Ozu is a bit more subtle than Sayles--he keeps things simple and there is a certain brilliance behind all of his characters. "Good Morning" is actually kind of a comedy, complete with fart jokes (I'll get back to that). The majority of the film is spent following a pair of brothers who go on a vow of silence in protest to not having a television set. It's the late 50s and the neighbor's TV is beckoning them to watch wrestling matches, which clashes with their parent's desire for them to study. (This premise is easy to relate to--I remember having to earn enough money doing chores to buy my first Nintendo--but I suppose it was that much sweeter.) The small suburban community plays a big role in the film, complete with dirty rumors and false smiles. In the end I was a bit disappointed when the kids get their TV only because their parents wanted to do a favor for the man who landed a new job, not because they showed they deserved it by being responsible.

Oh yeah, and the fart jokes--the kids eat pumice stones which makes them emit the kindest farts ever heard on film.

It's time again for another weekend of films that define the genre of "kick-ass cinema"--the Grindhouse Film Festival starts this Friday at the historic Hollywood Theatre!

Last year we showed Portland a rare print of the massively influential classic "The 36th Chamber of Shaolin" and a number of other greats like "Shogun Assassin" and "Lady Snowblood" that Tarantino pulled from to make "Kill Bill." This time things are a bit more diverse, representing KUNG FU, BLAXPLOITATION, SAMURAI VENGEANCE, SPAGHETTI WESTERNS & ZOMBIE genres.

Titles include:
Coffy, Pam Grier's most famous role in a beautifully restored print. I've never seen it so I'm highly anticipating checking it out for the first time on our big screen.

Zombie, Lucio Fulci's legendary take on the zombie genre, where a zombie fights a shark!

Executioners From Shaolin, another Shaw Brothers classic where we see the character of Pai Mei (seen recently as Uma Thurman's martial arts teacher in Kill Bill) defeat foes with his legendary Tiger Style. His crotch grab move is unbelievably awesome.

For A Few Dollars More, Sergio Leone's classic spaghetti western with Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef in a restored print.

Fist Of The White Lotus, which I've been instructed to promote as "an old-school ass-kick-a-thon"--featuring Shaw Brothers legends, Gordon Liu and Lo Lieh. I haven't seen this one, but with those headliners I am super-pumped to check it out.

Shogun Assassin. A fan favorite from last year, Shogun Assassin returns as a blood-soaked samurai revenge tale with amazingly haunting dubbed narration. The blood squirting in this one is insane.

Five Masters Of Death. A lost Shaw Brothers classic directed by Chang Cheh, "the Godfather of Hong Kong cinema." This guy directed over 100 films!

Chinese Boxer. A super-fun/bad-ass hybrid with Jimmy Wang Yu from last year's Master of The Flying Guillotine. For some reason he puts on a surgical mask and oven mitts and goes to work getting revenge for the death of his martial arts master.

I wrote about a (somewhat) new documentary Tell Them Who You Are over on the MNP blog.

Last week I had the pleasure of viewing David Lynch's Eraserhead for the first time on DVD. I've seen most of his films/shows, but knew little about this first feature of his, which definitely heightened my experience. For those that haven't seen the (somewhat) newly released "Eraserhead 2000" (available only through Lynch's official site and Netflix), you are in for a treat.

The first text that appears on the screen is a prompt letting you know that you will need to adjust the brightness of your television for optimum viewing of the film. After turning the brightness all the way down I pressed the forward button and was prompted to turn the brightness up until I could see the image on the screen. Now I was ready to watch the film in its intended contrast of black and white. (This type of dedication is probably only possible when you have thr rights to release the DVD yourself.)

I won't get into the specifics of the film, but suffice to say it was one of those times where I couldn't believe I'd waited so long to see it. Anxious to check out the bonus features (something Lynch is notorious for not including--the guy doesn't even allow chapter tracks), I was totally amused by the 90 minute documentary, mostly featuring Lynch sitting in a chair and telling anecdotes about people that helped him make the film. A typical excerpt is something like "oh, he was such a good driver--you never were jerked around in your seat when you were in the car with him, because he would feather his braking just perfect."

In addition to these stories you do occasionally hear pertinent tidbits about the production, such as the fact that it took so long to film that there is one shot where the transition between opening the door and walking into the room actually comes from two different time periods 18 months apart.

So, for the netflixers that haven't seen it yet--add this to your queue!