Category: Film and TV

WDYT?

(Spoiler zone in the combox!)

This weekend I went back to see INTO GREAT SILENCE a second time at the one venue it is currently playing, NYC’s Film Forum Theater.

I went with my 12-year-old daughter Sarah, who watched Papa’s two-minute plug for the film on EWTN’s "Life on the Rock" this past Thursday, and wanted to see it.

The screening was sold out.

Luckily I had bought tickets online, or we wouldn’t have got in. After an hour getting to the theater, turning around and going home would have been no fun. There weren’t two seats to be had together; I had to ask another patron if he would change seats so that I could sit with Sarah. (She loved the film, BTW.)

Apparently, that sold-out screening was indicative of a strong opening weekend; a contact at Zeitgeist tells me the film did very well in NYC (I don’t have numbers yet). So, this is good news for all of you who are hoping that the film will come to a theater near you, since art-house theater owners look to the NY opening of a film like this when deciding whether to book the film.

A number of readers have asked what they can do if the movie isn’t currently scheduled to play near them. Answer: Contact your local art-house/alternative theater owner(s) and ask them to book the film! The more interested patrons theater owners hear from, the more likely they are to book the film. And if it does come anywhere near you, make sure people who would enjoy it know about it.

Of course if you truly live in the sticks where there isn’t an art-house theater for three hours, you’re probably out of luck, but then you already knew that anyway.

P.S. Chicago-area readers: Note that the Music Box Theatre has moved up the film’s week-long run by a week, from a start date of April 6 to a start date of March 30!

WHERE AND WHEN (slightly updated!)

Over at Catholic Exchange, Terry Mattingly tells us about a new graphic novel / movie project from the creator of Earthworm Jim (left), Doug TenNapel.

Along with exploring the creative process that TenNapel employs, Mattingly describes how Creature Tech moved from a picture story on paper to a real , fer-sure Hollywood movie;

"The key moment came when the blogger called "Moriarty" posted the following at the Ain’t It Cool (aintitcool.com) site for film insiders:  "There’s no doubt. It’s weird . . . It’s also very funny, profoundly sweet and heartfelt, touching in a strange way, and serious about concepts like faith and family without being in any way preachy or corny.

"Simply put, Creature Tech is the best American animated film since The Iron Giant . . . Better than anything from any studio . . . It’s a movie that just happens to be in print."

Within minutes, studios started calling his agent. Regency Enterprises and 20th Century Fox won the bidding war and early work began on a live-action movie"

I want to see it already, just based on the sketchy (heh) description in Mattingly’s article. TenNapel deals with the creative problems that face Christian artists in an apparently organic, sensible and honest way. Of the current state of the entertainment biz from a Christian perspective, he states;

"People want a quick fix. Christians are going to have to learn that art isn’t automatically good if it’s made by Christians. And Hollywood will have to learn that art isn’t automatically bad if it’s made by Christians."

I did not grow up reading comics much, and am not that familiar with the graphic novel genre, but I hope to read Creature Tech before the movie comes out. Any graphic novel fans out there who might be able to give me some confirmation on the worthiness of this one? It sounds tasty.

GET THE STORY.

CHT to the reader who e-mailed

THIS STORY.

EXCERPTS:

A third television series in the hit Stargate franchise is now in development, GateWorld has learned.

A production source informs GateWorld that the new series is in the concept phase, and is being actively worked on by the Vancouver creatives behind Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis. No concept for the show has yet been revealed.

The third TV series is also not likely to be rushed into production for a 2007 premiere in order to replace SG-1, which takes its final bow with 10 new episodes this spring. Instead, a premiere in 2008 or later is more likely at this point.

Meanwhile, SG-1 will continue with two movies, presumably direct-to-DVD, currently aiming for a fall 2007 release.

MORE ON THE SG-1 MOVIES HERE. (SPOILERS)

AND HERE. (THIS ONE IS ALSO SPOILER-LITE.)

In the gap between Battlestar Galactica seasons 2 and 3, I wrote:

One of my favorite things to do when watching or reading a story is
to predict where it’s going and then seeing if I’m right or not.

So let’s see how I do with my predictions for BSG season 3. . . .

The predictions I made concerned the first half of season 3, and now that episode 311 (the half-way episode in the 20 episode season) has aired, I thought it’d be appropriate to evaluate my plot prognostications. Let’s divide them into predictions that have been CONFIRMED, PARTIALLY CONFIRMED, UNCONFIRMED, and DISCONFIRMED.

(Post continues in the down-below part of this post)

SPOILER WARNING!

Continue reading “BSG Predictions Scorecard”

CHT to the reader who e-mailed

THIS LINK.

It’s to a list of common situations in which movies and television misrepresent the usability of different technological interfaces. Watching these things has bugged me no end . . . like in Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, where the group gets into a Klingon ship and manages to figure out how to fly the thing in a couple of minutes of fiddling with the controls? Never happen!

I was thus entirely in sympathy with the list when it includes items like these:

1. The Hero Can Immediately Use Any UI

Break into a company — possibly in a foreign country or on an alien planet — and step up to the computer. How long does it take you to figure out the UI and use the new applications for the first time? Less than a minute if you’re a movie star.

The fact that all user interfaces are walk-up-and-use is probably the single most unrealistic aspect of how movies depict computers. In reality, we know all too well that even the smartest users have plenty of problems using even the best designs, let alone the degraded usability typically found in in-house MIS systems or industrial control rooms.

2. Time Travelers Can Use Current Designs

An even worse flaw is the assumption that time travelers from the past could use today’s computer systems. In fact, they’d have no conception of any of modern technology’s basic concepts, and so would be dramatically more stumped than the novice users we observe in user testing. Even someone who’s never used Excel at least understands the general idea of computers and screens.

You might think that people coming from the future would have an easier time using our current systems, given their supposedly superior knowledge. Not true. Like our travelers from the past, they’d lack the conceptual model needed to make sense of the display options. For example, someone who’s never seen a command line or typed a command would have a much harder time using DOS than someone who grew up in the DOS era.

If you were transported back in time to the Napoleonic wars and made captain of a British frigate, you’d have no clue how to sail the ship: You couldn’t use a sextant and you wouldn’t know the names of the different sails, so you couldn’t order the sailors to rig the masts appropriately. However, even our sailing case would be easier than someone from the year 2207 having to operate a current computer: sailing ships are still around, and you likely know some of the basic concepts from watching pirate movies. In contrast, it’s highly unlikely that anyone from 2207 would have ever seen Windows Vista screens.

3. The 3D UI

In Minority Report, the characters operate a complex information space by gesturing wildly in the space in front of their screens. As Tog found when filming Starfire, it’s very tiring to keep your arms in the air while using a computer. Gestures do have their place, but not as the primary user interface for office systems.

Many user interfaces designed for the movies feature gestural input and 3D data visualizations. Immersive environments and fly-through navigation look good, and allow for more dramatic interaction than clicking on a linear list of 10 items. But, despite being a staple of computer conference demos for decades, 3D almost never makes it into shipping products. The reason? 2D works better than 3D for the vast majority of practical things that users want to do.

3D is for demos. 2D is for work.

READ THE WHOLE THING.

It’s Captain Chase.

Looks a lot like Kirk, tho, don’t he?

Folks may know that there is currently a Star Trek XI in the works, and since J. J. Abrams is doing it, it may actually be the first exception to the "odd = bad, even = good" rule for Star Trek films, which has thus far been iron clad (at least if you understand it in a slightly more nuanced form of "odd = bad or at least less good than the most recent even, even = better than the most recent odd").

That’s not the only Trek video project under consideration, though, as the illustration on the left shows.

Turns out that, now that Paramount has gritted its teeth and put out the Star Trek Animated Series from the 1970s  on DVD (where’s The Star Wars Holiday Special, George?), they’re considering a new one modelled after the successful Star Wars: Clone Wars animations that were released to web/TV/and DVD.

Like Clone Wars, this Trek series is envisioned as being composed of short, more action-oriented chapters that are originally presented on the web but that form a larger story when strung together.

The setting for this story is described like this:

The setting is the year 2528 and the Federation is a different place
after suffering through a devastating war with the Romulans 60 years
earlier. The war was sparked off after a surprise attack of dozens of
‘Omega particle’ detonations throughout the Federation creating vast
areas which become impassible to warp travel and essentially cut off
almost half the Federation from the rest. During the war the Klingon
homeworld was occupied by the Romulans, all of Andoria was destroyed
and the Vulcans, who were negotiating reunification with the Romulans,
pulled out of the Federation.

The article then says:

The setting may seem bleak and not very Trek-like, but that is where the show’s hero Captain Alexander Chase comes in. Relegated to border patrol, Chase is determined to bring the Federation (and a ship called Enterprise) back to the glory days of seeking out new life and new civilizations.

I don’t know that this is distinctively bleak or un-Trek-like. We’ve had bleak Trek visions before, and it’s generally been some of the most interesting things they’ve done with the franchise (e.g., the episode with the alternate timeline where the Federation was losing a war with the Klingons, the whole Dominion War cycle on DS9; and then there’s the Borg). The happy, clappy "Gee whiz! Let’s go explore the galaxy, kids!" material has been the worst and least interesting.

Then the article says something that mystifies me:

The parallels with the real world are obvious.

Huh? What the heck are they talking about?

The view is that to be relevant Trek cannot skirt around issues. Rossi explains: "couching big social issues in allegories so they are more palatable is kind of passé now. Today shows deal with these issues head on, so we decided to  make the entire show an allegory. The premise is an allegory for the post-9/11 world we live in. A world of uncertainty and fear."

Excuse me, but when has mankind EVER not lived in a world of uncertainty and fear? 9/11 was not the introduction of original sin into the world. We’ve had division and secession and sneak attacks and invasions and assassinations and genocides and all kinds of nasty stuff like that for thousands of years. You’re going to have to get a lot closer to what’s going on today if you want me to see parallels to the modern world that are distinctive compared to what’s been happening all throughout history.

Unless you’re so George Bush-obsessed that you see every drama through the lens of the global war on terror, or unless you have no awareness of history at all, you’re just not going to be seeing striking parallels to today lurking under every rock.

I suspect the bit about the show being "relevant" to today is just spin on the part of the producers to try and sell the series.

GET THE STORY.

Or soon, anyway.

As folks may know, Babylon 5: The Lost Tales is now being produced as a series of direct-to-DVD mini-movies. The footage for the first pair is in the can. JMS writes:

As I write this, we have finished principal photography on "Babylon 5: The Lost Tales," coming in under budget and finishing a full day ahead of schedule.

This first DVD, entitled "Voices in the Dark," covers the same 72 hour period of time as Sheridan travels on board a Presidential Cruiser en route to Babylon 5 from Minbar for a celebration marking the 10th anniversary of the founding of the Interstellar Alliance. One part of the story follows Sheridan as he picks up an unexpected visitor on the edge of Centauri space, Prince Regent Dius Vintari, and a warning about what will come afterward delivered by the techno-mage, Galen. The other part of the story is set aboard Babylon 5, as Colonel Lochley summons a priest from Earth space to deal with a problem that may have dark supernatural overtones. The two parts of the greater story intersect at certain key plot and thematic points, so that they overlap and complement each other while telling separate, but simultaneous, stories.

READ MORE ABOUT WHAT’S GOING ON AND LOOK AT THE FIRST-RELEASED PRODUCTION PHOTOS.

It was a sad day, seven years ago now, when Sci-Fi cancelled Mystery Science Theater 3000.

I was watching when Mike and the bots signed off for the last time, the credits rolled, and the haunting Love Theme From MST3K played.

Sniff.

What a great show that was. I and my college buddies had been doing the same thing in our living rooms for years (in fact, I can still annoy people riffing movies we’re watching on DVD), but this show did all the comedy work for you–so you don’t have to!

The show is too cool an idea to remain forever dormant, and it may someday make a return to the airwaves (or at least the coaxial cables).

And now the digital millennium has brought the show back! . . . almost.

In an age when TV show producers are producing podcast commentaries that you can download and listen to as you watch their shows, Mike Nelson and his pals got the idea of cutting out that expensive middleman–the TV network–and bringing their mstings straight to you!

The result is RiffTrax, a service where Mike–together with Kevin Murphy (Tom Servo) and Bill Corbett (Sci-Fi’s Crow "I’m Different!" T. Robot)–produce mp3 riff-laden commentaries that you can download and watch along with the corresponding DVD (sold separately).

They even have a few DVDs that contain the riff-track ON the DVD, including a version of one of the most-requested movies that they never got around to doing on the show: Plan 9 From Outer Space! I know I’m going to get that one.

I’m pleased as punch to see these guys (a) bringing back their hilarious movie commentaries and (b) finding a way to make some money again after all these years, so

CHECK IT OUT.
(CHT: Catholic Whiteboy)

Don’t know what we’re talking about? Missed out on all the fun?

GET EDJUMACATED.

Incidentally, Mike Nelson is an Evangelical who has a special interest in apologetics. I’ve exchanged e-mail with him before, and he seems like a real nice guy. Some of the other regulars from the show, such as Kevin Murphy and Mary Jo Pehl (Pearl Forrester) were Catholic, and Christian and Catholic themes often showed up in the commentaries (along with other, less mentionable material on occasion, but you know what Ludwig Wittgenstein said about things we can’t talk about).

I just received a review copy of the DVD release of the A & E reality series "God or the Girl," which aired a piece back.

I didn’t see it when it aired, but it got very good reviews and was widely perceived as a thoughtful, responsible look at the issue of vocations discernment (despite its rather sensationalistic title), as exemplified by the experiences of several young men trying to discern whether they might be called to the priesthood.

A lot of folks in the Catholic community praised it, and now A & E Home Video has it out on DVD, along with new bonus features that were not part of the original broadcast.

If you’re interested but haven’t seen it, or if you have seen it and would like to again, or if you’d like to give it as a present to a young man discerning his own vocation, be sure to

GET
THE SERIES.