Archive for February, 2009

The Pirate Bay trial going well

Back in January 2008, Swedish prosecutors filed charges against four of the individuals behind The Pirate Bay for “promoting other people’s infringements of copyright laws”. The trial began yesterday, and the prosecutors are supported by companies such as Sony BMG, Universal Music & Pictures, MGM, EMI, Warner Music, Nordisk Film, Columbia Pictures, and 20th Century Fox. Torrentfreak has a nice coverage of the trial, and according to the site it seems like the prosecutors ran into some problems today.

A lot of the evidence consists of screenshots, and today Pirate Bay co-founder Fredrik Neij (TiAMO) pointed out that most of the trackers in these shots cannot be linked to The Pirate Bay. This led to the prosecutor Håkan Roswell dropping 50% of the total charges, i.e. all charges blaming the site for “assisting [in] copyright infringement”. Pretty impressive after 2 days in court. It amazes me that the prosecutors are so badly prepared. Yesterday Roswell could not get his PowerPoint slides running, and he didn’t know the difference between megabits and megabytes.

Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse

Dollhouse

Joss Whedon’s new show, Dollhouse, premiered this friday. This is his first TV show since Firefly and of course I’ve been looking very much forward to it. The show plot outline is as follows

In Dollhouse, Eliza Dushku plays a young woman called Echo, a member of a group of people known as “Actives” or “Dolls.” The Dolls have had their personalities wiped clean so they can be imprinted with any number of new personas, including memory, muscle memory, skills, and language, for different assignments. They’re then hired out for particular jobs, crimes, fantasies, and occasional good deeds. In between tasks, they are mind-wiped into a child-like state and live in a hidden facility nicknamed “The Dollhouse.” The story follows Echo, who begins, in her mind-wiped state, to become self-aware.

I was a little apprehensive about getting my hopes up, since Whedon surprisingly chose to work with Fox again, and the studio has already given the show the dreaded Friday night spot. Furthermore Eliza Dushku plays the lead, and I really didn’t like her in Buffy. In this show she has to play a lot of different characters and I wasn’t sure if she could pull it off.

Now that I’ve watched the pilot I guess I have to get used to her, because I really liked it. Dushku actually did a pretty good job, and so did the supporting characters. There’s not much Whedonesque humor, but it’s a pretty serious show, so that’s expected. The main story line, regarding Echo becoming self-aware, is interesting, but what I’m looking most forward to is the storylines concerning the tasks of the Dolls.

Spoilers ahoy. E.g. in the pilot Echo gets the mindset of a hostage negotiator who was kidnapped as a child, and during her mission she encounters this kidnapper, which naturally has some consequences for the engagement. We also get to see a little Doll-as-a-Special-Forces-soldier-badassness in the end, I can’t wait to see Echo with the mindset of an assassin.

Escape From City 17: Part 1

I just had to post this short film, amazing effects.

Max Payne

I know this is a cheap shot, but I just have to rant a bit about this movie. I knew this was gonna suck, but all I wanted was one thing: Bullet-time firefights. I mean, that’s basically what the games are about. So, at what point in the movie do we see the first bullet-time firefights? Fucking never. Sure there are a few action scenes in slow-motion but that’s not the same. And the first proper action sequence doesn’t take place until one hour into the movie. Anyway, fuck Fox, and I’ll leave you with this magnificent quote:

That dude playing Robin: “I will confess everything!”

Max Payne: “That’s not good enough!”

Right.

Also, taking drugs with batshit crazy side-effects as a remedy for hypothermia is one of the most retarded things I’ve ever seen.

Max Payne: 2/10.

Blindness

blindness_poster

Here be spoilers, but read on anyway, it’ll save two hours of your life.

I’ve seen a lot of movies dealing with the disgusting behavior of humans stuck in bad situations. When done right I’ve found these movies very interesting; it’s fascinating, and scary, to see how humans may react when they’re able to do what they want, and for a while Blindness seemed to be going in the right direction.

In the movie a lot of people simply starts going blind, and because of a fear of infection they are all quarantined in a hospital. However, Julianne Moore’s character, we never hear her name, can still see, but she fakes blindness so she can take care of her blind Doctor husband. The wards with the blind people quickly deteriorate into anarchy, and the people start turning on each other. As seems to be common in these situation, the strong take control. In this case it’s the horrifying leader of Ward 3. Somehow he gets a hold of a gun, and now his ward is controlling the food rations. Initially they want valuables for food, but when the other wards run out of stuff to barter with, Ward 3 starts demanding something else: the women.

And so, everything is set up for the climax. As mentioned Moore’s character is the only person who’s able to see, and the Ward 3 people don’t know this, giving her a huge advantage. When the control of the food rations started I was looking forward to Moore using this advantage, but even when they start demanding the women she actually does nothing. Instead eight women volunteer to be raped, and at this point I think, okay, this is a part of her plan, she’s gonna go in there and stab the fuckers or something, but no, she just submits herself to rape! At this point I’m just disgusted by the movie, in a Funny Games-kind of way where I know the main character should and is able to stop the fucking madness, but the person does not. I mean, would you rather be raped or risk losing your life trying to save seven other women from being raped? Everyone else is blind for fucks sake, she could just sneak in there, and at least steal the gun! Even killing the asshole leader would seem appropriate, but no, she does nothing, and it doesn’t make any sense. At one point her husband even talks about wanting to just grab the pistol and stop it all. But still, she does nothing. And that’s my problem, because it’s so out of character, it’s so ridiculously stupid, and it ruins a movie that was very entertaining and interesting until this point.

One raping goes by, and another commences. Finally she snaps, and when she then goes in there and kills the asshole it’s too late. It doesn’t make sense. I’ve lost all respect for the movie. Then it becomes even weirder. When everyone finds out the leader is dead the Ward 1 people start blaming the unknown murderer for starting a war. I mean, come on, those people just raped your girlfriends and wives, you did nothing, and now you complain when someone avenged them!

Bad movies is one thing, but when you watch movies that seem to be extraordinary and then suddenly turn around and ruin everything that was built up the last hour, it’s just sad. I mean, if the Ward 1 people had just said “No, fuck you, cocknugget” and started fighting back, when the other guys proposed a mass raping, the movie would’ve been great. Now, when she finally stabs the guy, I didn’t really give a crap, I just felt sad.

Blindness: 4/10.