ex libris » movies

the runaways

Mike — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 16:31:09 +0000

I recently watched this biopic about them and really enjoyed it. I’d never really listened to their music although I’m a big Joan Jett fan. “I Love Rock N’ Roll” is one of my favourite songs of all time and “Bad Reputation” is pretty awesome too. The Runaways were kind of like the Sex Pistols in that originally they were a manufactured band that got away from their svengali (in this case, Kim Fowley).

I subsequently also watched Edgeplay, a documentary about the band. It was interesting but with Joan Jett not participating, incomplete. Sort of like documentaries about Apple with no Steve Jobs. Kim Fowley comes off as even more of a bastard in this one than in the Hollywood version.

beer wars

Mike — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 16:39:44 +0000

Very cool documentary about the American beer industry. Covers the rise of craft brewing as well as the underhanded business tactics engaged in by the BMC (Bud/Miller/Coors) swill merchants to try to maintain their market share. Sam Calagione from Dogfish Head is featured prominently and to a lesser extent, the always amusing Greg Koch from Stone. Here’s the trailer:

greasemonkey script + browser rant

Mike — Thu, 13 May 2010 14:45:47 +0000

I’ve always thought greasemonkey had a lot of potential but I don’t really use it for much. I’m always pleased when I find a really useful user script for it. I love this script which adds rotten tomatoes ratings on imdb pages. Every week, I go through the new dvd lists at the library trying to decide what’s worth watching. We link to the imdb records from the catalogue and that gets me some basic info but is not all that useful in terms of assessing the quality of a movie. There’s an average user rating out of 10 and one random user review on the first page but the fact of the matter is the vast majority of imdb reviewers/raters have neither taste nor film reviewer credentials. Rotten tomatoes, which amalgamates reviews from higher up the review food chain is much more useful in this regard.

On a related note, I finally got around to taking a look at chrome. I was pleased to find it contains built-in user script support. However, due to its XSS security restrictions, certain scripts (like the one above) do not work on it. Fail! I wanted to like chrome but in just a few hours found enough annoyances with it that I went back to firefox. A few things I noticed:

no print preview?!? wtf?
not wild about the lack of a separate search box
some oddities when using the wordpress editor in terms of text selection/cursor positioning and nesting of tags which works differently than in firefox and makes my life harder
there seemed to be a second long delay in opening bookmark folders [forgot this one]
was pleased that the basic necessary extensions (adblock, flashblock) are available

Which brings me to my next annoyance: firefox upgrades. When 3.6 came out, I installed it only to find that most of my add-ons no longer worked. So basically firefox’s greatest strength (rich add-on library) is now also its greatest weakness when upgrading. I went back to 3.5 until yesterday when I tried again. By now, many of my add-ons had been updated but three still had not: backend software information, print context menu and unofficial google translate. I ended up disabling extension compatibility checking so I could continue to use them:

pirate radio

Mike — Sat, 08 May 2010 15:32:45 +0000

Thoroughly enjoyed this English comedy about a 60s pirate radio station operating from a boat off the coast of England. Great soundtrack with the exception of one Cat Stevens song which made me want to stick chopsticks through my eardrums. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays the token American DJ onboard and is great as always.

this film is not yet rated

Mike — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 15:56:56 +0000

I really enjoyed this Kirby Dick documentary investigating the MPAA’s ratings board, a shadowy organization exercising what amounts to strong censorship powers over the films released in the United States through the threat of an NC-17 rating. Additionally, the film alleges a preferential treatment for big studio offerings vs. independents. In the film, Dick hires a private investigator to uncover the identities of the people on the ratings board. He also interviews filmmakers who have had run-ins with the ratings board.

Late in the documentary, things take a humorous turn for the self-referential as Dick submits his own film for a rating. It is given an NC-17 which is appealed unsuccessfully. (according to imdb, the rating was “surrendered” which I guess means the film was released unrated)

You can watch the main trailer here and below is an alternate trailer containing one of my favourite scenes explaining what the current rating system means in layman’s terms.

mac docs

Mike — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 16:43:43 +0000

Watched a couple of documentaries about apple/macintosh this weekend. I thought they were both kind of slight but I guess I would equivocally recommend one of them.

I’d assumed Welcome to Macintosh would be about the creation of the mac. Sadly, this was not the case. It is essentially about the history of apple from the beginning to the present. Most of those interviewed are not what one would think of as central figures to the story. The most recognizable characters are Andy Hertzfeld and Guy Kawasaki. However, interviews with ex-apple engineer Jim Reekes made this worth watching. Possessing a Lewis Black-like demeanour, he manages to cut through the bs surrounding apple and tells some very interesting stories (Reekes created the mac startup sound, for example).

Macheads, on the other hand, focuses primarily on the “cult of mac” and the company’s relationship with its users. Many of the same people are featured in this documentary with the addition of a host of rabid mac fans. But let’s face it, the bulk of them are just annoying. I did not find this one held my attention.

So, check out Welcome to Macintosh if you get a chance but frankly, you’d be better off watching Pirates of Silicon Valley or reading Insanely Great.

a couple movies

Mike — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 03:07:17 +0000

Just re-posting a couple reviews from the library website of movies I enjoyed recently:

Humpday — This one’s definitely for adults only, but a hilarious low budget comedy. Operating at a higher level than the Apatow vein of stuff but there are certainly some similarities. My description won’t do it justice so here is what the case says:

“It’s been a decade since Ben (Duplass) and Andrew (Leonard) were college bad boys. Ben is living contently with a good job and a great wife, until his old buddy Andrew shows up on his doorstep late one night. Andrew, who lives as a vagabond artist, invites Ben out to a wild party. Excessive drinking combined with the irrational need to oneup each other, leads to a mutual dare that locks them into entering an amateur porn contest together.”

Orphan — At first, I thought this was just another version of “The Omen” but ultimately, I found it much more entertaining with an excellent and realistic twist at the end. Well written and great performances from Vera Farmiga as the mother and Isabelle Fuhrman as the evil child. First rate horror flick.

caligula vs. i, claudius

Mike — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 15:39:27 +0000

Reading Caligula For President prompted me to revisit a past interest of mine: ancient Rome. I had never watched Bob Guccione’s notorious 1979 film Caligula and figured I should finally check it out. At the same time, I was reminded of the excellent 1976 BBC miniseries I, Claudius. I felt this bore re-viewing so ordered the dvds from Amazon. Since both of these cover a lot of the same historical events, it’s interesting to compare them.

Despite its reputation, Caligula is definitely worth watching. The cast includes some fine actors: Malcolm McDowell, John Gielgud, Peter O’Toole, Helen Mirren. Of course, there is the whole “art porn” aspect to it but honestly, given the subject matter, I can’t help but think that in being so over the top, its tone probably is not too far off from the decadence of Caligula’s reign.

I, Claudius on the other hand certainly is a little more substantial. It covers a somewhat larger swath of history and at 13 hours rather than 3, it can afford to go into a little more detail. Again, an excellent cast: Derek Jacobi, John Hurt, Patrick Stewart, John Rhys-Davies. And of course a better pedigree of source material for the script: Robert Graves’ two outstanding novels.

So I’m going to have to give this one to I, Claudius but Caligula decidedly fared better than expected!

vod @ the biblio

Mike — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 15:53:26 +0000

This past week, downloadable video was added to the Overdrive site we share with other local libraries. I remember looking at such an offering from another Ontario library a couple years ago and thinking how awful it was. It seemed to be all laughably outdated industrial and educational fare.

The good news is that now there are actually feature films available. But that’s about the extent of the good news. The films in question are C-list at best. I noticed one I’d seen before: Bubble. Also Night of the Living Dead which I guess is in the public domain since you can download a Blueray rip of it from archive.org.

The quality is also terrible: low resolution, low bitrate windows media files.

Yeah, I’m disappointed but not surprised. But at least it’s something. If you want to see what’s there, go to the site and click on the video link near the top.

one week

Mike — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 15:51:31 +0000

This is definitely one of the better Canadian movies I have ever seen. And the reason it succeeds where so many others fail is it is not trying to be an “American Movie”.

Ben Tyler (Joshua Jackson) learns he has cancer and reacts to this news by fleeing Toronto, his job as a teacher, his fiancee and his family to ride across the country on a vintage motorcycle.

Jackson already showed us that some acting talent came from the Dawson’s Creek pool in Aurora Borealis (as did Michelle Williams in Wendy and Lucy). The film also features cameos by Canadian musicians Gord Downie (Tragically Hip), Joel Plaskett (Thrush Hermit) and Emm Gryner.