Let us forget for a moment that Surrogates started out as a graphic novel. Somewhere along the movie's course of development, someone probably had the grand idea of making a movie concerning the morality of humanism - that is, that we are social creatures and need the natural input of others to be healthy and balanced, and that it is our responsibility to be a part of the larger human mechanism and advance the species, etc., etc. Unfortunately, this sentiment, noble as it is, never made it to the final product; instead, we get a wildly implausible, half-baked actioner dressed up in sci-fi drag.
Long story short, everyone (literally, everyone) on the planet has now forsaken their humanly weaknesses and uses a robotic avatar to go out in public and do their daily business. These avatars can take an astonishing amount of damage and not transmit that damage back to the "operator." This has led to an almost total drop in crime and disease (it must be noted that this movie takes place a scant 14 years from now), and life is good for everyone, except if you happen to not want an avatar and would rather go to the corner store yourself and pick up a six-pack. These people are shunned and live on reservations for avatarless "meatbags." Eventually, meatbag revolutionaries figure out a way to kill operators through their avatar's data connections, and it's up to Bruce Willis to blah blah blah.
It should be immediately obvious how blatantly implausible this movie is, even from conception. The whole story is built around this core of these telepresence machines that people use to do their everyday work. How can literally everyone on the planet afford an avatar? There are countries today that don't even have a complete electrical grid or reliable plumbing, let alone being able to supply every single person with a freaking lifelike robot.
Also, from a business standpoint, this is implausible in that this method of telepresence is insanely cost-inefficient. Imagine for a moment the sheer amount of money it'd take to construct and maintain a super-strong, super-fast robot. Multiply that by the number of employees you have. Now, compare that to the cost of setting up a camera and mic and streaming a meeting over the Internet. As one would imagine, the more business-friendly option is rather obvious. This technology could possibly be used for police officers or firemen, for example, or maybe soldiers, but it's doubtful that your pizza-delivery guy will ever see a practical need for a robot (and if somebody could afford a freaking robot, would you really be delivering pizzas?).
As far as the actual movie itself goes, it's a mixed bag, if these so-called mixed bags were filled with compost and medical waste and old leaky batteries. The important thing to remember here is that everyone in the movie is a robot, so the acting is - hopefully purposefully - very stiff, artificial, and, well, bad. Everyone - from the big names to the one-line walk-ons - is blatantly clay-faced and monotonous. The supporting actors, particularly Willis's partner (the otherwise-wonderful Radha Mitchell) and his wife (Rosamund Pike) are woefully underused and left powerless to fight the weak story.
The cinematography, particularly during the action scenes, is clunky, inefficient, and confusing. This isn't helped by ham-handed editing and frankly uneven pacing. Overall the production (again, particularly for the action scenes) looks painfully amateurish.
The visual effects on all fronts are cheap and poorly-rendered. The practical effects are obviously flimsy-looking; the studio should have sprung for Stan Winston's studio to step in and set up some decent animatronic robots. Everything that is computer-generated is obviously so; from crashing vehicles to pretty much every green-screen background, every CG element is not only poorly-rendered but badly composited as well. Even the sound effects seem isolated, blatant, and unnatural.
Surrogates is directed by Jonathan Mostow, who previously gave us the excellent Breakdown and the piss-poor Terminator 3. If he wanted to make an action movie, he should have made an action movie, and made it look like an action movie. This shoddy attempt at a sci-fi/action hybrid feels cheap and sloppy.
Also there's no such thing as the Tooth Fairy. So there.
so my brother's girlfriend is named Derya, and hails from Turkey, her mother recently visited them in Philly and taught my brother and Derya how to make yogurt. "It's Easy!" they all agree.
If Gamer had a point at any time in its development, we may assume that the filmmakers had some sort of argument they wanted to make re: the fact that humans are predisposed to enjoy visceral entertainment; that we et al. get thrills out of watching and/or participating in activities that seemingly engage us in dangerous situations but leave us ultimately unharmed; and that, combined with the unsavory antisocial side-effects of the forces of socio-technological development (vis-à-vis telecommuting/telepresence/nonpersonal communication), that the next logical step in the evolution of human and machine would be the loss of some degree of humanity as we become one with machines – and that’s a bad thing.
One could further postulate that the reason this is a bad thing is that telepresence would free humanity of things like morality and responsibility, in that not only would repercussions of one’s actions – good or bad – would never truly be recognized by the participant, but also that the freedom of responsibility of community among mankind would result in not only further alienation and division, but it would free the participant from even maintaining a body in which to live.
If one were to make a movie about this and call it Gamer, one may expect some kind of conversation, a tête-à-tête between two sentient beings – one, the strong soldier, concerned for his fellow combatants in a real-life deathmatch, the other the strategic mind, the physically weaker controller, not physically committed to a bloody battle, connected through satellite. This conversation may take place entirely in the mind, and may concern the logical need and want of freedom of choice and the paradox of free will in the presence of a higher power. Or it may take a different tack and seek out the absolute borders of essentially two minds in one body, both seeking control. Or, if one were to really stretch, the conversation may concern the freedom of not having a choice, and the dominant/submissive relationship taking place on a purely cerebral level.
As I said, this may have been what the filmmakers were originally going for. Instead we got Gamer, as written, directed, and produced by the makers of Crank and Crank II: High Voltage, which, had I known that before I went to the theater, would have drastically changed my level of anticipation. It must be noted that as of this writing, Gamer is scoring an improbably high 7.2/10 on IMDB.
Essentially, the Gamer that exists today is nothing more than a montage of quick, shaky cuts that would leave even Tony (The Last Boy Scout, Domino, The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3) Scott nauseous. If there was a story it’d be something like Gerard Butler is a wrongly-imprisoned death row inmate who is fighting for his freedom with the help of a brain implant that connects him to a 17-year-old videogame freak and ultimately must break free his bonds to save his wife and daughter from a fate worse than death. Also there’s a classically unambiguously evil bad guy whose intentions are literally to control everyone on Earth.
The movie comes so close to actually accomplishing something several times through the course of the movie, but quickly backs away, seemingly because the filmmakers didn’t want to have to write themselves out of any of the previously-mentioned sticky situations. There are no grays here, only a black-and-white, straightforward actioner with enough onscreen nudity to fulfill any R-rating requirements. There are no surprises; if you came up to me and, based on the trailer, told me what you thought would happen in the movie, I bet you’d get pretty damned close.
There are some positives, though. Butler brings a certain sense of blunt force to his character; watching him during the action scenes is definitely entertaining (see above), especially for a crowd that has obviously played their fair share of first-person shooters (FPS). The set pieces, particularly in the battle zones, are wonderfully detailed and remind one of fondly-played urban warfare maps in certain FPSs.
Ultimately, though, it’s a poor attempt at making a “message” movie by the guys who “brought” us (“forced upon us”) the Crank movies. Despite terrible dialog, hackneyed plot development and a complete lack of cohesive story holding it together, there are tiny spots of actual interesting development, but ultimately they are quickly ejected by the seasick editing. Unfortunately, we don’t pay to see good intentions; we pay to see good movies.
For the super, super, super-nerdy, watch for a rather shockingly in-your-face callout to Blade Runner.
When a content creator becomes a personality of some celebrity through a direct result of their work - or something less savory - they live forever in danger of becoming more famous than their actual art. Enter Quentin Tarantino. The one-time wunderkind responsible for Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill volumes 1 and 2, etc., etc., has become more than a director; indeed, his name is more well-known than some of his movies. Some of these latter-day movies didn't perform well at the box office, and questions naturally arose as to whether or not he had washed up.
It is without question that Tarantino is a walking film database - a student to virtually every kind of cinema, paying homage after homage to the works of old in every one of his movies. He doubtless knows more about movies than I ever will; has seen more movies from more directors in more languages and from more countries than I ever will; and has been more successful at constructing his own works out of his own ideas mixed with collages of older movies than I probably will be at doing anything.
I, on the other hand, really liked Pulp Fiction.
It's with that in mind that I went to see Inglourious Basterds, his latest offering, apparently in works at least at one time or another over the past decade or more. Originally titled Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France, the story involves a hardened squad of Jewish-American soldiers dropped into France to terrorize the National Socialist party members and soldiers there (it must be noted that apparently in Tarantino's WWII there was no difference between a Nazi and a run-of-the-mill German soldier). Led by.. well, I'm going to assume you already know this part. Suffice to say that the movie runs about two and a half hours and contains more on-screen scalping than probably any other movie ever made, ever.
Basterds is a movie of conflicting directions. Marketed by the foundering Weinsteins (who continue to bankroll projects like the sequel-to-the-remade-original Halloween II) as a WWII-style action flick, scalpings aside, it's really more of a meditative, borderline-psychological thriller than an actual action movie, although it does have chunks of action dropped in briefly, presumably to wake up the less patient viewer. Tarantino has been able to infuse actual tension into his work for the first time in meory since Pulp Fiction. The opening section, bestowed with the movie's original title, is a gloriously tight 20-minute chunk of honest-to-God Spaghetti Western. The atmosphere that Tarantino is able to create between two characters about whom we know nothing is incredible. There are scenes later in the movie that carry this tension to a fine pitch - the basement, the projection room, etc.; it is some of Tarantino's best work.
However, in between these admittedly excellent scenes are scenes that move slowly, perhaps in an attempt to carry that tension from scene to scene, perhaps to let the atmosphere grow. Unfortunately these do tend to be a little too slow; the story could be set up to move a little more quickly without losing much of the wonderful anticipation he creates in other sections.
As for the Basterds themselves, we have no characters at all. Tarantino drops them right into the story - good, in that we are spared the training and/or instruction montage, but without any frame of reference as to where they came from or where they are going. One could argue that that's not the point; these men are simply there to kill Nazis. Oddly enough we are give the backstory for one or two minor characters, but because they're not really the main characters, the effect was distracting. We are left with a band of Jewish-American soldiers butchering their way through France, tireless, fearless, merciless, and remorseless. Despite the fact that the movie is named after them, they are in so little of the actual movie (my estimate is that we are Basterdless for nearly half the movie) that Tarantino could really have left the title of the movie as Once Upon a Time... and nobody would have been the wiser. It's difficult to feel any empathy for their characters because we see so little of them, and indeed the lion's share of the emotional involvement goes to the smaller, more nuanced roles.
Speaking of which, the story of the movie theater owner and, indeed, her backstory, are exceptionally well-done, and her character, despite not being one of the actual Basterds, is one of the most fleshed-out, empathetic characters in the entire movie. Really, the world around the Basterds is more interesting than the Basterds themselves.
Unfortunately, coincidence (read deus ex machina) resolves the climax of the movie, where two storylines - military and civilian - merge into one in one cataclysmic night at the movies. Additionally, one of the characters, who to this point has been the point of much empathetic work on Tarantino's part, suddenly becomes the antithesis of everything he's displayed so far in the movie, without much of a reason, and the whole thing felt forced.
At any rate, the pros - particularly the "villain," Col. Hans Landa, who is excellent (see also: Don Logan and Bill the Butcher) - outweigh the cons. Inglourious Basterds is more of an atmospheric offering than we're led to believe by the advertising, and taken as that it's quite enjoyable. The slow spots that separate certain scenes are something that indeed could be easily excised and maybe reduce the movie to an even two hours, but I'm sure film students of the future will revel in their glory. You'll have a good time with Inglourious; just don't go looking for Basterds.
I had been looking to make the jump to a smartphone. My previous phone, my trusty, battle-worn QWERTY LG enV VX9900 was great, beacuse all I really used it for was texting and making calls; however, I wanted to also be able to write and check emails, access my Twitter and, if necessary, look up stuff on Wikipedia and have access to Google for regular searches. Unfortunately, due to the crushing cost of Verizon's data plan, I was unable to justify the cost of doing so, and stuck with their regular text plan, thank you very much.
Finally, though, my contract with Verizon was up, so I went searching for a reasonably-priced QWERTY phone on which I could install apps, check email, sync m calendar, etc., etc. Through my searches I discovered that Nokia made a number of phones that fit my criteria perfectly, most notably the e71 and the e75. Both are gorgeous monuments of engineering, but unfortunately the cost of the handsets was prohibitive at best. I snooped around for another few months but nothing really exciting came down the pipe (although HTC's Touch Pro 2 proved to be equally beautiful and useful) - that is, until AT&T offered a branded, locked-down version of the previously internationall-unlocked e71, their e71x. The e71x looks like a jet-black, polished version of the silver-and-gray e71, the only visible difference being a tiny AT&T logo on the stainless-steel body. That, however, is only the beginning of how different those phones are.
I went down to my local big-box electronics retailer and picked up the e71x on sale with my new AT&T plan. The reason I was attracted to this phone was because it claimed to be abel to sync up with Gmail and the Google calendar and contacts without problems. However, these claims were made with the e71, not the e71x. I'd soon find out exactly what that meant.
After the guys at the big-box store got my contacts shifted over from the old phone to the new phone (a service I'm infinitely grateful exists), I brought the phone home and started the process for getting the email systems synced up. It had been recommended to me to skip the AT&T XpressMail and Microsoft Exchange setups in favor of Nokia's own Messenger software, which indeed seamlessly synced up with my Gmail. However, that's about as far as I got.
The con to the seamless pro was that I could see the mails in my inbox, and reply to them, but I could not access my contacts to write a totally new email. This, as you can imagine, was frustrating to say the least. Additionally, I hadn't yet found ANY way to synchronize the calendar, despite visiting many Nokia- and AT&T-friendly forums.
Admittedly I made some halfhearted attempts to set up XpressMail, following the advice of one of the guys at my local AT&T store, but that led to a mysterious problem of ghost inboxes shownig up with nothing in them for email accounts that didn't exist. I also made forays into setting up the Exchange server software but I very quickly found myself in over my head, trying to answer questions that didn't appear on any page of the manual.
So I was left with a system of "try a new app, find it doesn't work, and hard-reset (format) the phone." I repeated this about four times before I finally grew frustrated enough to throw out a blind query for help on my Google Reader account. Lo and behold, the answer came from my new friend Nancy (@nancy_martira), who happened to know someone who worked for the Nokia corporation. She was able to get me in touch with someone who knows what they're talking about, and I was able to figure out about 95% of my problems. What follows is a paraphrased conversation we had, with my obvious technical deficiencies elided for reasons of saving face.
"Keeping in mind the ultimate goal of having my complete Google suite (email, contacts, calendar) synced to my phone, I need to have certain pieces of software installed on my phone so that the local server protocol (be they POP3 or IMAP; this problem appears to exist for both) can push the information to my phone and vice versa.
"The major program I tried to use is Google Sync, naturally. This was a program created for the Symbian60 (s60) operating system build 3.1. Google Sync works by talking to another piece of software, written by Nokia, called Mail for Exchange (abbreviated MfE or sometimes M4E) - note that this is actually linked off Google's website as a necessary step in installing their software.
The problem here is that when AT&T locked the phone, the OS jumped from build 3.1 (for the unlocked e71) to build 3.2 (for the e71x). Unfortunately something was lost in the transition and when I try to install the base Nokia MfE software (admittedly labeled quite clearly as for the e71 non-x) it plainly says in an error message on my Nokia's screen that the software is not compatible with the device. This is after I had done a complete hard reset and rendered the machine as new as it came out of the box.
Using other third-party applications runs into the same problem; another popular program, Nuevasync, runs on that same server software as Google Sync and I get nowhere installing it.
"Of course, I have tried taking a different approach entirely with a different protocol. I've downloaded and installed Nokia's own email software, named simply Nokia Messaging (keeping in mind that again this was designed for e71 non-x) - this installs perfectly and works GREAT for replying to e-mails already in my inbox, but for some reason it categorically refuses to display my contacts! Unfortunately this means that I can't write a fresh email to anyone who doesn't have an email sitting in my inbox."
I also go into detail about my inabilities to sync my calendar, etc. I honestly sent out this email without any great hope of getting useful information, or any information of any kind, actually, in reply. Instead, I got a whopping 2,000-word response for a guy named Dustin. Again, shortened, abridged and paraphrased, here's the helpful response:
"The E71x comes ready to use Mail for Exchange with no external download. It can access the web from the device and install the correct version. All that you need to do is start the Email Settings Wizard by pressing Menu > Messaging > Set up Em. When the wizard opens press Start > Mail for Exch. Then enter your Google Account as follows:
Email Address:
Password:
Username:
Domain:
Mail for Exchange server name: m.google.com"
(Here, I had already found one thing I had been doing wrong, as in my previous attempts to set up an email system, I hadn't known what to enter for the Domain or Mail for Exchange Server blanks.)
"After you enter this information the device will connect to the Internet and download the correct version of Mail for Exchange that works with the Nokia E71x. Download and install. The version shown should be 2.09(158).
"By default only your Email will be synchronized. Since this is not supported by Google we need to change this. Press Options> Edit Profile to change these settings. Open Connection and verify the following settings are selected:
Exchange Server: m.google.com
Secure Connection: Yes
Access Point: If you have the unlimited data plan you should select Internet.
Sync while roaming: Default is Yes, always but this is a decision that you choose.
Use default port: Yes."
(Now, here's the really interesting part. Their exchange server software isn't totally compatible with Google's Gmail system, so really we're just doing all this to get the calendar synced up. This follows.)
"Synchronize Calendar: Yes.
Sync calendar back: I strongly suggest not doing All entries. This takes up space and execution memory and can result is poorer than expected performance of the device.
Initial Sync: Delete items on phone.
Synchronize tasks: No (Not currently supported by Google)
Synchronize contacts: your choice"
(I tried contact sync but it didn't work as I had anticipated, and after hard-resetting and going through this process again, I opted to not use it. More on that later.)
"Initial sync: same as calendar setting
Synchronize Email: No (Not currently supported by Google)
"If you are set up to be Always Online, the device will begin it’s sync run with the next change that arrives. If you want to synchronize everything now, which is likely the case, simply scroll to Current Status and press the center select key, then Yes to begin synchronization. This should get you up and running with your contacts and calendar."
So, after that gargantual email I was able to finally get my calendar synced up. It's not that I'm necessarily a busy guy, but I like to be able to carry my calendar with me so I can add things as they pop up.
Moving on, I discovered that the order in which I did things affected their operating abilities greatly. The four major things I needed to do were:
1) install my phone contacts
2) sync calendar
3) Install Nokia email for my Gmail-checking needs
4) configure phone
Ideally one could install all of these individually at any point, but unfortunately there were several instances of phantom Inboxes showing up, so I had to go through a nine-hour-long trial-and-error gauntlet to see what would work. What I found to work best was:
1) Go through the above steps and sync the calendar FIRST. If this is successful, then you can move on.
2) Install phone contacts. I did this using data backed up from my original phone though a program called Nokia PC suite. WARNING - do NOT use PC Suite to sync your calendar or emails or anything else except applications that have nothing to do with the calendar, and contacts. Otherwise information can be duplicated or corrupted, etc.
3) Once you're successful with that, the rest is easy. You can throw Nokia Messenger on there for Gmail syncing (still no Gmail contacts, oddly enough), and other applications (I have a few on there, like a Twitter app and a 3rd-party web browser, etc.).
In closing, I am definitely impressed with Nokia's customer service; however, the guy helping me seemed greatly surprised when I suggested that all these sync necessities (Google Calendar, Google Contacts, Gmail itself) be in ONE software suite. He said he'd pass the idea on, since there was interest.
Engineers. Hah.
If you can believe it, it's time once again for Karsa. You may have no idea what that means, which is why I'm writing here today.
The rumors are true: today is Karsa. What's that you say? Well I'll tell you!
For those of you who haven't heard Fernando's Mormon jokes, my family belongs to a tiny tiny ancient Eastern religion known as Mandaeanism. There's a pretty decent article on Wikipedia, but the basic idea is that it isn't an offshoot of anything, despite the importance of John the Baptist; it's the only Gnostic faith still being practiced in the world; it may in fact pre-date Judaism (there are experts looking into it); and there are like, I don't know, 40 of us in the world. You haven't heard of it, and it's not surprising.
Karsa comes but once a year. The setup is actually pretty cool. Earth is guarded by untold numbers of angels. Millions of years ago or whenever these things happen, you know, all the angels left Earth and ascended to heaven to ask god (Haai Zaaken) how the world works. This exchange is printed in one of the Mandaeans' holy texts aptly titled The 1,012 Questions, and it's pretty awesome to read. There are things like Why is the grass green or Why is the sun so small and the answers are all correct, in modern scientific terms. I personally don't think there's anything mystical to it; ancient Babylon was after all home to the world's first scientists. It's just really great to think about my heritage in that way.
Anyway, back to Karsa: humans, being as we are slightly clueless and extremely accident-prone, find ourselves completely open to attack from the evil beings who also inhabit Earth and who sadly do not have a convention of their own to attend that day. As a result, we do not leave our homes for 36 hours, just to be on the safe side. No one is allowed in from outside (exception can be made if you are a Mandaean and have not crossed a body of water), and you're not allowed to touch plant life or use running water. In our house we still use water, but not excessively -- no showers, but if you think about it, who are you try to impress? You're not going anywhere.
Most people get confused on this point: the belief is not that this happens each year. Rather, it's something that's done as a tribute to the time it happened. I compare it to the lighting of the candles at Hanukkah.
My mom really digs on this holiday because it means Bessam and I are mandated to hang out with them for a whole day.
The last time I was in london I went to the Tower and enjoyed it so much I thought it was worth it to go a second time. Since my last trip, they've added this crystal sculpture where the beheadings used to take place with a crystal pillow on top of a disc type thing
Cambridge is a truly beautiful place. The town sort of winds and sprawls all over the place and felt a lot more pedestrian friendly than it actually turned out to be. So this is the river by cambridge.
now I'm back and it's time to play catch up. Things were so jam packed the last few days in london it was hard to get everything I wanted to done, but it does leave me with a nice excuse to go back. Though, even that has always seemed like a funny thing to say about a place, because honestly, no matter how long I've ever spent anywhere, there was always stuff I wanted to do or see that I didn't get to . . .
My flight home was slightly eventful, not the flight itself, but the pre-flight. I got this shuttle thing to take me and my friend to the airport, and it delivered me to the airport with EXACTLY the amount of time to get through security and get to the gate in order to board. When I used my passport to get my e-ticket, it told me to report to the info desk. At this point, I was convinced I had been placed o the no-fly list for reasons unknown to me, perhaps a joke I made while somewhere with cameras. The UK has a 2-1 Closed Circuit Television to Person ratio (per Chrissy, also loosely quoted), so it seemd relatively likely that they had overheard some portion of some story I'd told and all of that paranoia . . .
as it turns out, they wanted me to volunteer to go on standby, and in return, they would give me a free roundtrip ticket to anywhere Virgin flies . . .GREAT! I thought! I'M IN!!
so, I show up at the gate, because that's what you do, and low and behold, I was selected for the standby, put on the 2:30 flight. So I go to the transfer desk halfway across heathrow, and they tell me that they still have a seat. So they made some calls, and it turned out they had room for me anyway.
so I ended up in the crappy middle row. Though I was next to two hilarious english ladies and a college student returning from Kenya. It was GREAT!
anyway, the following is a catchup of my last few days.
