Movie Night

 

We sat down to The Zookeeper's Wife knowing only that it was a tale of Second World War heroism. After the opening sequence our attention was rapt. The sheer brutality of the Nazi machine flattening Poland was demonstrated by the bombing of Warsaw Zoo. The Germans rounded up prized animals for genetic experimentation then systematically slaughtered the defenceless remainder.

We caught our breath from this action and followed the resistance activities of the zookeeper and his wife who went on to smuggle hundreds of Jews out of Warsaw using the zoo as a way station. It was highly satisfying to see the Nazis turn the zoo into a pig farm for meat only to have the owners drive around Warsaw in a cart, obligingly collecting scraps for pig food, while all the time picking up and hiding children for later release right under their noses.

The following night we watched The Way Back, a deep character study of a former basketball star who had fallen into alcoholism after the death of his young son. We see him find purpose again coaching a failing high school team back to greatness. You don't need to know anything about basketball to appreciate this, just about humanity.

The Last Full Measure

 

War films often place over-reliance on action to maintain your attention but last weekend we watched an example where less is more. The Last Full Measure is based on the true story of William H Pitsenbarger, a US Air Force Para-rescue-man whose heroism in the Vietnam War had never received the recognition it deserved.

Pitsenbarher’s story is told through the research of Pentagon staffer, Scott Huffman who is ordered to shelve his fast-track career and instead follow up a request which has been receives for an Air Force Cross to be upgraded to a Medal of Honour. Very reluctantly and without much enthusiasm Huffman interviews former comrades of Pitsenbarger and demonstrates his lack of compassion and indeed lack of knowledge about their sacrifices in the Far East.

Gradually he is drawn into a conspiracy which has prevented Pitsenbarger from getting his true honour. The stories of selfless heroism which are shown in flashback and reveal Pitsenbarger to have been truly a man ready to lay down his life for his fellow fighters, most of whom were army soldiers and not even known to this Air Force man.

Much of the story takes place in offices and living rooms and the scenes involving the airman’s father played by Christopher Plummer are poignant indeed. Huffman puts his career on the line and takes the case to the highest level where eventually he succeeds and at the conclusion, amid stirring speeches, Pitsenbarger’s award is rightfully upgraded to The Medal of Honour.

The Jungle combat scenes are short but realistic and the enduring effects of what would then have been called Shell Shock are plain to see in his surviving colleagues. I can highly recommend this as thoroughly absorbing look at a piece of history and of justice done.

Weekend movies and cycling

‘Blinded by the Light’, based on real events, is at heart a coming of age story. Javed, a Pakistani teenager, lives with his controlling father and obedient mother in Luton, North London. We meet him in 1987 as a high-schooler attempting to stay afloat on the high seas of family expectations, the lure of western music, vicious racism and girls.

His passion for writing poetry and a chance introduction to the music and lyrics of The Boss lead to an awakening of the soul and inevitable conflict with his father’s rigid ideology. Jared has formed a close relationship with an English girl and is torn between his cultural roots and the freedom and excitement of the west. Boiling point is reached when Jared wins a writing competition and insists on travelling to New Jersey (Springsteen’s birth place) to pick up his award and his father tells him not to come back.

Happy endings abound when the two reconcile after Jared gives a heartfelt speech at a school event revealing that he has ample space for both his new lifestyle and his South Asian roots. The film shows the beauty of music and love against a backdrop of ugly racism, demonstrating how an immigrant boy can learn to embrace a new culture yet remain loyal to his origins.

‘The Legend of Tarzan’; not our typical film fare but, intrigued by the trailer, we gave this a go and soon found ourselves immersed deep in the African Congo admiring the lush jungle and its wholly credible CGI beasts. The old Edgar Rice Burrows creation is retold with a nice mix of reverent fidelity and exciting action scenes. To help those unfamiliar with the tale, Tarzan’s upbringing by apes and subsequent return to a life of British gentry is shown in neat flashbacks.

In short, the thrust of the plot is Tarzan freeing Congolese men from the grip of slavery under Belgian King Leopold; an apt theme for the times we live in. Naturally our man gets separated from his feisty wife Jane but manages not only to unchain the slaves but to rescue his mate from the jaws of death.

A British emissary sent to the Congo as Tarzan’s sidekick provides some fun with self-effacing humour and Jane is played superbly by Margot Robbie. If there’s a weak point it’s perhaps the great man himself. While he looks the part, all chiselled abs and flowing locks, his demeanour is low key. Nonetheless he impresses with much effortless swinging through tall trees and wonderful relationships with the jungle animals.

           

Cycling has become our latest weekend activity. We ride on quiet, Sunday morning roads to reach the Confederation Trail where we can start loops around and through Charlottetown, steadily increasing our range. This time we reached the centre of town where the Trail ends. Nearby is the former Railway Station building, now home to the Workers’ Compensation Board of Prince Edward Island, while at Peakes Quay the former engine sheds now house a series of diners and cafes.

We spun through a deserted downtown and out to Victoria Park where a bike lane takes you past the harbour and on to sleepy residential roads. Soon we were back on main roads for a fast downhill coast on North River Road to Ellen’s Creek then a sharp uphill effort and we were home, 26kms under our belts.

Toy Story

"Reach for the Sky!"

"To Infinity, and beyond!"

 

Are these phrases ingrained in your psyche? They are in mine because Toy Story has gripped the imagination of my girls. Their recently preferred viewing schedule has involved watching all three films in order on rotation, resulting in a Buzz 'n Woody fest of mammoth proportions. Just to be clear, video is mostly reserved for after-bath, before-bed scheduling. I do like to see them play with real toys too. If you haven't seen the films then you must have been on a different planet, maybe stationed in the Gamma Quadrant, Sector Four!

 

If you have seen them then you'll know they are a powerful example of what modern computer graphics can achieve; virtual reality is not an over-statement. Skin tones, reflections, shadows, graduated tinting, textures, facial expressions, body movement and landscapes make old cartoons look like, well, old cartoons.

 

But the Toy Story trilogy is not just about visual realism, it's an homage to all children's toys from the late twentieth century, their quirks, foibles and endearing qualities, to children and to growing up. The pixel-people are endowed with proper personalities, and even nicknames, so you care about them. But wait, the films are even more. There are spectacular voiceovers from Tom Hanks and co, including the above catchphrases and dozens more; makers Pixar developed storylines that really matter, involving the eternal struggle between good and evil, capture and escape, fear and fun, love and loathing all culminating in the coming of age of the toys' owner, Andy. There are credible relationships, camaraderie and strong emotions.

 

It's a fascinating and immersive experience with strong appeal from the cradle to the grave. Watching the films on Blu-Ray highlights the astonishing work of the graphic artists. High definition is a phrase which barely does it justice. But even the very best, photographic quality imagery is only half the story though, it demands a script of the highest standard, and here Toy Story delivers consistently across all three films. The humour is subtle and succeeds on more than one level. Kids can laugh at the stunts and scrapes, while peppered throughout are references to the full range of popular culture, which have this old granddad chortling.

 

I love watching these films and I love watching my girls watch them.

"There's a snake in my boot!"

Brave, The Movie

 

Tonight the girls and I watched Brave, the Disney animation. The blurb proudly claims 'from the makers of Toy Story' but gosh that's dangerous territory to claim. And of course the film fails to live up. While convincing animation has become the norm, Toy Story set the bar impossibly high in terms of tight, clever plotting and characterisation.

 

The basic premise of Brave is a meeting of Scottish clans, presumably sometime in the 1800s, to choose a husband for the King and Queen's daughter, Princess Merida. The daughter is against the idea and during the feasting and merriment she escapes to enlist the help of a witch to try and change her mother's mind. The spell goes wrong and the Queen turns into a bear.

 

Brave's highly sophisticated computer graphics produce facsimiles of living beings but with cartoonish features. The youthful protagonist appears almost doll-like, no doubt to appeal to a very young audience, while the Scottish braves are hilarious caricatures, complete with eyebrows like hedges, bright orange hair, and beards you could lose a badger in. There is much swishing of tartan and droning of bagpipes. The voice-overs feature a wide range of Scottish accents, foremost among which, and instantly recognisable, is Billy Connolly as King Fergus.

 

The computer generation of rugged Scottish scenery, castles, lochs and forests is undeniably dazzling but... I kept thinking of that implied comparison with Toy Story. That's unfortunate because Toy Story is in another league. It couldn't fail to melt the hardest of hearts with its loveable cast of favourite toys, intricate plots and sub plots, and smart references to popular culture. You can suspend disbelief, the anthropomorphism is so credible and often humanly poignant.

 

Sadly Brave flatters to deceive; it's a film of style rather than substance. The girls still loved Brave, empathised with Merida and hid behind their fingers at the intense bear scenes. I guess that's what matters.

Karaoke/Cold Lazarus

In 1994 playwright Dennis Potter was dying of pancreatic cancer. In a moving and memorable TV interview he calmly explained that he was racing against his terminal diagnosis to complete a final pair of television plays. He accomplished this just weeks later and with only days to spare. Eventually in 1996, in accordance with Potter's request, the two four-part plays were screened weekly on the BBC with repeats the same week on Channel 4 in a rare show of co-operation.

I watched 'Karaoke' and its immediate sequel 'Cold Lazarus' seventeen years ago. This week I broke open my DVD box set to watch them again. By the mid nineties Potter had perfected a unique style which had begun with his groundbreaking work in the sixties and reached its full potential with 1986's The Singing Detective. He wove stories of the human condition in claustrophobic settings for the small screen, in which characters would burst into song, miming to relevant popular songs of the forties and fifties, then drop back into sharply written dialogue.

This sometimes perplexing approach polarised opinion but for those, like me, who fell under his beguiling spell, the results were pure genius. His protagonists often sought and found love in the face of adversity or ill health. Potter drew heavily from personal experience and just as his fictional singing detective suffered from the same debilitating psoriasis as Potter himself, so the main character in his final plays, Daniel Field, has terminal pancreatic cancer.

Dropping any pretences, Potter not only gives Field the same diagnosis as himself, but also scripted him as a playwright racing against time to finish a play before his death. Field begins to lose his mind, writes, drinks heavily, and tries to right a series of wrongs from his recent life. He draws a new Will, writes detailed final instructions and elects to leave his body to medical science; to an experimental cryogenics clinic. 'Karaoke's' auto-biographical details give the viewer a direct insight into Potter's own frame of mind.

The sequel 'Cold Lazarus' takes place three hundred years after Field's death so he is the only character common to both plays. Field's head has been preserved and future scientists reanimate it in order to examine embedded memories. Ultimately the reanimated, disembodied head begs the scientists to let it die.

'Karaoke' adopts a classic film noir style complete with rain soaked streets, furtive conversations, prostitutes and dingy bars. The sets for 'Cold Lazarus,' in stark contrast, are like cheap 1960s science fiction. Shapes are organic with seats and buildings resembling petals and toadstools; the straight lines and stark minimalism we mostly ascribe to the future, absent.

Despite my very brief summaries, the stories are long and complex, each running for four hours. Themes of love, loss, anger, redemption and death permeate both plays and, good though they are, I feel Potter has portrayed them better and with more emotion in earlier works. Nonetheless the plays are exquisitely written and stand as a fitting final testament to an exceptional writing talent.

The Wall live in Berlin 1990 – Roger Waters

I’ve owned this DVD for a long time but only got around to watching it last night. I have the entire Pink Floyd catalogue, many CD bootlegs of concerts from the ‘70s, DVDs of Waters’ ‘In the Flesh’ and Gilmour’s ‘Pulse’ so you could say may expectations for Waters' 1990 concert were high.

Shame, because it’s a letdown. But why? It’s all there: the fabulous setting in no-man’s land by the Brandenburg Gate, site just the previous year of the former Berlin Wall; superb musicianship; a stage show of gargantuan proportions including the gradual assembly of the vast wall in front of the performers (only to be dutifully demolished after the Trial Sequence); and a cast of international musical superstars to help Roger out.

Perhaps it’s like trying to paint a better version of the Mona Lisa. You can’t improve on perfection. Instead what you get is something different and it’s not as good. Ten years after the original album’s release, musical tastes were already shifting away from the grand and pompous and although the show attracted a huge crowd there is no life, no soul.

It suffers from ‘too many cooks’ syndrome. Van Morrison is so out of place on Comfortably Numb, Cyndi Lauper is a crazy long-haired and hilariously overacting kid on ‘Another Brick in the Wall’, Joni Mitchell appears bewildered on ‘Goodbye Blue Sky’ and Jerry Hall’s spoken part is just cringe-worthy. Research tells me the crowd was subdued on the night so every lull in the music was filled in the studio with a crescendo of multi-layered cheering and roaring. Some tracks suffered equipment failure and mistakes resulting in rehearsal performances from previous days making it onto the disc.

 

Waters is a renowned perfectionist. Perhaps that’s why so many performers are caught out lip-synching to backing tracks when their moment in the limelight comes. Bryan Adams is miming his guitar parts as are The Scorpions. Even Waters himself is nowhere near a mic for the start of one of his spoken parts.

 

On my surround sound system the DTS 5.1 soundtrack is loud and detailed. The video predates high definition and looks average. The whole thing is trying so hard to be Pink Floyd but it isn’t. It can’t be. 4/10

prometheus (take 2)

This film polarises opinion. Want to know what I really think? It's a silly escapade on a distant world and bears no relation to reality. It’s daft fiction with a pseudo-science basis. Instead of genuinely seeking the truth of man’s creation, a trillion-dollar jaunt into outer space becomes a study in juvenile meddling.

The film opens on Earth with an alien humanoid erupting after drinking juice from a mysterious phial. His DNA breaks down and mingles with native material. So much for the back story of creation. Swiftly we move to a gigantic spaceship (flown by an android-cum-butler) carrying a familiar motley crew of social misfits and buffoons at the speed of light. The chums awake from their induced slumber, crack inappropriate jokes and some begin smoking.

Cave paintings on Earth have clued them into their destination and when they land they waste no time in jumping out to explore. Before long the helmets are off and they are declaring, “Mmm, this smells nice.” Never mind about gravity, atmospheric density or airborne micro organisms.

Inside a hollow mountain their android pilot finds some creepy goo which he decides to pocket. Soon they find an apparently long dead being whom they guess to be an Engineer – a creator of humankind. With his severed head in a bag they troop back to the ship. Naturally they leave behind a couple of twits who got caught in a dust storm.

Quarantine is for wimps, so they haul the head straight into a lab aboard ship to examine it. This procedure is left to the girls, who giggle and stick an electrode in its ear while they wonder how much juice is enough to revive it. Remember, this is the most exciting discovery in the history of the Universe. Re-animation doesn’t go so well and after some lip-smacking and eye-rolling, the head explodes like a watermelon hit by a sniper.

The dodgy android slips the goo into someone’s drink and he’s sure to be a goner, you just know it. Meanwhile the guys left in the mountain find an alien cobra thing. Do they run like the wind? No they get up close with it and then it bites a lot. A search party is dispatched headed by the infected guy. The cobra is down someone’s throat in next to no time and they all run back to the ship.

Naturally anyone knocking on the back door is granted admission and a fight ensues, a fight won by the mission leader with her flame thrower. Somewhere along the line a girl performs her own caesarean section and removes a squid-like object. No one seems bothered that she is smearing blood everywhere. And these are scientists, right.

A very wrinkly old man (the mission funder), played by a youthful but heavily made-up Guy Pearce, arrives on the scene to examine an alien space craft that’s all set for lift-off with a cargo of alien goo. Pearce wrestles with another Engineer and comes off worse. Actually, why not just have a real old-man-actor? The Engineer is so angry he tears the android’s head off next. They all decide to jump in their spaceship and escape the mayhem.

After launch most decide to sacrifice themselves by flying into the aliens’ craft as it takes off. One girl sensibly stays behind to try her luck in the obligatory escape pod. Remember the squid? Now it’s swollen to a crazy size and sets too with an Engineer. I forget which ship they are on or if it even matters.

Bottom line, this is beautifully filmed and the effects are outrageous but don’t expect an iota of common sense. All that glitters is not gold.

prometheus

Film franchises are not obliged to run chronologically forwards. This was pointed out elaborately but, in artistic terms, entirely unsuccessfully by George Lucas with his Star Wars prequels, not one but three. Ridley Scott has taken an altogether more serious and potentially more exciting approach.

The Alien trilogy is well known to science fiction aficionados for its merciful avoidance of slapstick characters in favour of gritty realism. (Jaja Binks relegated what remained of a tidy story to a cartoon. In my opinion.) It’s over thirty years since Alien and twenty since the second sequel. A lot has happened in the field of computer generated imagery and the public’s expectations are higher than ever.

Prometheus is not precisely a prequel but, after elaborating on some of Alien’s themes, actually appears to be heading further back in time, rather than catching up. Ridley Scott might have stumbled on a money-spinning notion whereby each of his creations delves further back in time to seek its own creator. And so On. Funded by a wealthy philanthropist, an unlikely assemblage of travellers (of whom more later) head to the outer reaches of the known universe where they believe they will find the Engineers who created life on Earth. What they find turns out to be a space ship loaded with Engineers who had died before being able to escape the dreadful biological life forms we now know as the ‘Aliens’.

The special effects are simply astonishing, the other-worldly scenes gigantic and entirely convincing, and the technological wizardry on board the spaceship Prometheus is mind-blowing. This is a real feast for the eyes and the imagination. That said, there are the usual and inevitable scientific loopholes although casual observers will easily overlook these. The intrepid crew consists of a couple of crazies whom no right-minded organiser of a trillion-dollar voyage would take along, members of several ethnic groups and of course a smidgen of female eye-candy. The earlier films gave us the memorable scene where a slithering parasitic creature burst from the belly of its host. It's fair to say there is no lack of such excitement in the latest instalment.

 

Prometheus is a current clear winner in this genre thanks to a number of genuinely tense protracted scenes and the very credible Alien life forms. There are chase sequences and titanic struggles of mind and body which are riveting. The face-clamping organism from the original films is there in a larger and quite frightening form, resembling a large squid with horrific tentacles. Its struggle with a reanimated ‘Engineer’ is masterful. Also of particular note is a scene where a female crew member, pregnant by a contaminated partner, arranges her own surgical termination with the aid of an automated operating room. Not for the squeamish.

 

Beneath the gloss and the excitement there are serious undercurrents of deeper meaning. Many scenes are based on eternal themes like beginning and end, death and resurrection, sorcery, narcissism, sacrifice and redemption. Without doubt this is a film which will reward subsequent viewings. 7/10

borrowing DVDs, permanently

How very satisfying to trudge home through the snow clutching your latest box-set of a solid British drama series. Even better as the Library lends DVDs for free. There are buts coming and they're tricky ones. But what if the set is in high demand so the loan period is only seven days and there are four discs containing twelve one hour episodes? What if you have a busy week ahead just as this treasured series has become available?

Make copies! Not for broadcasting or sharing of course but to allow you that little extra time to view them in. Oh, and it’s useful to have the set handy in case you want to watch it again, right? But DVDs are usually between 6GB and 8GB in size whereas a blank DVD-R holds a mere 4.7GB. What to do? Are we thwarted? Not on your Nelly!

Squeezing lots of video data onto a small disc is certainly possible but you have to shrink the file. I have an interest in solving technology challenges and this is the copying method I have developed. The freely downloadable software DVD Shrink is a good place to start. It compresses the data during copying to ensure it will fit comfortably on any commercially available blank DVD. It’s easiest to choose to rip the disc as an ISO image file.

But to back up for a moment (pardon the pun), it is a good idea to clean the discs thoroughly first. In the case of well-worn discs, deep scratches will be unreadable by a computer drive so you may as well give up at this stage and save yourself the hassle. But light scratching, which will be bothersome to a computer drive, can be polished down sufficiently using a car body scratch remover – the kind that will gently buff away surface scratching.

Sometimes no matter what you do, the disc may be impossible for your drive to read, it may be badly pitted. Or perhaps you want to rip a ‘Region 2’ disc in your ‘Region 1’ drive. Try DVD Decrypter. That has more powerful features, will crack regional encoding and seems less fussy. Europe is Region 2, North America is Region 1 but DVD Decrypter will render the copied image region-free. However, the ripped file you end up with this way will still be far too big, so you will need to reduce the ISO file size in DVD Shrink. Earlier we shrunk an actual DVD but this time you will need to “mount” the ISO file on a virtual drive. Magic ISO will achieve this by treating the ISO file as a playable DVD and will allocate a virtual drive letter to it.

When you’ve at last got an ISO file on your hard drive coming in at just under 4.7GB then you’re ready for the easy bit, the burning. I use Nero or Roxio but any burning software will put the ISO image file onto a blank DVD. I find DVD-R discs are readable by most DVD players. I don’t notice an appreciable loss of quality even though the copied image is considerably smaller than the original.

After all that effort you’re ready to watch. Slip into your old slippers, light your pipe and relax in your favourite armchair... and don’t forget to take the DVD back to the library, you don't want a late fee do you!

conspiracy theories

Loose Change What really happened on 9/11.
Endgame The blueprint for global enslavement.
Zeitgeist The spirit of our age.
The Greatest Story Ever Denied The UFO phenomenon.
Esoteric Agenda Global conspiracy revealed.
Secret Space Extraordinary revelations about space.

I used to be sceptical about anything which I couldn't see or experience myself. That has changed in recent years and I now have an open mind about theories like those expressed in the above documentaries.

The films show how easily false truths can be propagated and the real truth suppressed. An unsuspecting population will believe almost anything it is told and will seldom bother to search for the bigger picture. Various conspiracy theories are put forward here in clear and credible terms by intelligent articulate contributors and there are many areas of overlap.

Each film runs for about two hours so the complete list does require a significant investment of your time. If you can afford that investment it will repay with highly thought-provoking content.

Happy viewing.