Archive: Posts about Movies
April 10th, 2011, 13 Comments »
This is a rare cross-post from this year’s side project, One Year, One Canadian. April is the month I add movies and TV to the list of consumables which must be Canadian.
Now we are getting serious.
Finding Canadian-made household goods has been a challenge, but switching toothpaste and deodorant is, by any standard, pretty much a foamy latte problem. The subsequent months–clothing and investments–have proved interesting distractions more than anything. There’s plenty more to learn in all three categories. However, April is where, to reference a famous American movie, the speeder bike hits the redwood tree.
I love going to the movies. Attending a weekday matinee by myself is one of the sweetest joys of my self-employed life. And I go to a lot of movies. In 2006, I saw 61 films in the cinema.
How many of those were Canadian? None, I’m afraid.
That’s not because I hate Canadian movies. There simply aren’t that many to see in the cinema. At any time in Vancouver, there are zero to one Canadian movies showing in the theatres. Those that are shown are often “good for me”–they’re the granola of movies. I don’t mind these movies, but it’s always an extra effort to go to them.
So, switching to only movies from the Great White North is going to be a sacrifice.
Everything Night in Canada
I don’t actually watch that much television. I’m an ardent Canucks fan, so I see most of their games. I also watch the occasional English soccer game.
After that, though, I download nearly all of my TV. Those shows are either middle-brow dramas like “Dexter” or “True Blood”, or middle-brow comedies like “Community” or “30 Rock”.
Am I loyal to any Canadian television dramas or comedies? Nope. Is that because most Canadian television can’t compare to the best American shows? I’m afraid so.
The saving grace, at least for a few months, is hockey.
What’s Canadian?
In discussing this month, people have been interested in talking about the rules. How will I identify Canadian movies and television? Does Battlestar Galactica qualify because it was shot in Vancouver with a bunch of Canadian actors? Is Juno Canadian because it’s directed by and stars Canadians?
Others bring up the Canadian Content question. Will I just refer to the CRTC’s list of approved programs? I looked into the qualifications for CanCon Television (the CRTC doesn’t oversee movies), and the requirements are pretty byzantine. Here’s the summary provided on their site:
- The producer must be Canadian and is responsible for monitoring and making decisions pertaining to the program
- The production earns a minimum number of points based on the key creative functions that are performed by Canadians
- A minimum percentage of program expenses is paid for services provided by Canadians or Canadian companies
I could go the CanCon route, but there’s actually a simpler criteria. It’s like that old maxim about pornography: we know it when we see it. Danger Bay? Canadian. Battlestar Galactica. Not so much. One Week? Canuck. Juno? Nice try.
That approach may seem overly simple, but I think it’ll work just fine. What do you think? Do I need a more sophisticated approach than “Canadians can spot a Canadian production a mile away”.
13 Comments »
March 29th, 2011, 7 Comments »
I just wanted to close the loop on my recent art project–making my own movie bar code. I had it block-mounted with a black edge, and it turned out very well.
If I did it again, I think I’d probably adjust the ratio so that it was more 1:3, as opposed to the 12″ inches high by 48″ inches long that this one is. Then I could do three movies and hang them one on top of the other (with some space in between), and they’d form a rough square.
7 Comments »
March 27th, 2011, 10 Comments »
Twenty years from now, how different will our homes look? What cultural objects will be left? CDs have pretty much become curiosities already. DVDs are headed in the same direction.
And we’re finally getting serious about buying eBooks.
It’s easy to imagine a home in 2030 that contains no books, CDs or DVDs. In terms of cultural objects, that pretty much leaves visual art (and, I suppose, tchotchke and knickknacks), doesn’t it? What’s the future of paintings and sculpture? Science-fiction movies would have us believe that our television and walls are converging, so that any vertical surface will become a display. Will that happen? Will we just display, say, a rotating gallery of Picassos on our walls? Or maybe walls will host loops of family videos, or some future version of Facebook, so that the fall is awash in video, photos and text updates from friends and family?
I’d be more confident in that prediction if those digital picture frames had really caught on in a serious way, or if more of our fridges and bathroom mirrors already had video displays embedded in them. But, as they say, the future is always just around the corner.
In the future, will the amount of cultural detritus in a house reflect its owner’s age?
I, for one, really like how our books look in our bookcase. I’m loathe to thin them out when we move, or the bookcase gets too full. They are, as a friend says, excellent wallpaper.
Will your home still have cultural objects in it in 20 years?
10 Comments »
March 6th, 2011, 5 Comments »
Earlier in the week I mentioned the great Tumblr blog Movie Bar Code, which renders films as abstract visual compressions. I also mentioned that I’d found some instructions describing how to make your own movie bar codes.
I downloaded an HD version of one of my favourite films, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and set to work. The instructions involved using the command line in Terminal, Apple’s Unix shell. This is unfamiliar territory for me, and about as close to actual programming as I’ll probably ever come (discounting some excellent work in BASIC when I was 12).
There was a lot of research, trial and error and general fiddling about, but I finally figured out how to make my MacBook generate a movie bar code. Building on Mr. Reid’s handy instructions, here are the steps I undertook:
- Use VLC to capture 1500 to 2000 frames from the movie. I first captured every 90th frame, and then (for reasons which will become apparent below) I did every 150th frame. Here’s the command I used for that (after aliasing VLC in Terminal):
vlc /Users/darren/Downloads/movie.mkv --video-filter=scene --scene-format=jpg
--scene-prefix=movie --scene-ratio=150 --scene-height=1080 --scene-width=1920
- In Adobe Photoshop, create an automated batch task to manipulate the images as desired. I’ll include a few examples below, but I ultimately choose to blur the original frames for a more even tone, and then shrink them to three pixels wide. I also cropped out the letterbox black bars.
- Use Graphic Converter to adjust the numbering of the images. It’s important that all the images have the same number of digits in them, as in 000001.jpg up to 165322.jpg. Otherwise, ImageMagick won’t arrange the images in the correct order.
- Use ImageMagick to generate the final barcode. Here’s the command I used for that:
montage -geometry +0+0 -tile x1 *.jpg barcode.jpg
It’s not rocket science, but if you’re not command line-friendly, it will take some experimentation. Don’t give up, though, as I’m really happy with the final result.
Compressed, cropped or blurred?
Here are a few versions that I created before settling on my fifth attempt.
This is the second version I created–the first one taught me about numbering my source images correctly. In this case, I just shrunk the images to one pixel wide. Click for a larger version.
I didn’t like those little horizontal lines you can see about halfway along the image. They’re from this scene, where Indy surveys a dig site.
As an experiment, I tried cropping the images to a one-pixel width instead of compressing them. As you can see, the result is much busier and less pleasing to the eye.
I ultimately decided that I wanted a longer shape, so I ended up collecting fewer frames (1 per 150 frames) and making each three pixels wide. I also blurred the source images–the result is a much smoother quality to the lines.
The resulting images is brighter than I would have thought, and less brown. Those really familiar with Raiders will be able to pick out a couple of the distinctive moments–“Start the plane, Jock!” from early in the film, and Indy and the team dig for the entrance to the Ark chamber. It’s easy to see where these moments fit on the bar code.
I’m going to get this last version printed, and see how it looks hanging on my wall.
UPDATE, March 29, 2011: Here’s what the final version looks like.
5 Comments »
March 2nd, 2011, 3 Comments »
My favourite new Tumblr blog is Movie Bar Code, which combines my affections for information visualization and movies. The creator builds images by compressing movie frames into one-pixel-wide images, and then squishing them all together. The result is this striking, abstract expression of a film’s tone and atmosphere. This comment from MetaFilter sums the artwork up nicely:
I like how it makes the overarching color theme of a film so clear — the terminal green of The Matrix, the electric blue of Tron, the unexpectedly rich palette of Kung Fu Panda. The King’s Speech is surprisingly dark, and Moon looks like, well, the surface of the moon. And is that a day/night cycle in Jaws, or a sky/cabin/water one?
I also like the drastic changes in the palette of Hero.
I wanted to include some images in this post, but I also wanted to respect the creator’s copyright, so please click through and take a look.
Happily, I also found instructions on how to build your own movie bar code. I’m totally going to generate one, print it out and hang it on my wall.
3 Comments »
February 16th, 2011, 6 Comments »
It’s been a good year of moving watching. As of today, I’ve seen all but one of the Best Picture nominees, which is better than average. The one I’ve missed is Toy Story 3. You know how I feel about public weeping.
I stole this list from the Huffington Post. I’ve used ‘Winner’ to indicate which film I think will win, and ‘Favourite’ to indicate the film or performance I’d like to see win.
Best Motion Picture of the Year
Black Swan
The Fighter
Inception
The Kids are All Right
The King’s Speech
The Social Network - Winner
127 Hours
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter’s Bone – Favourite
Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role
Annette Bening (The Kids are All Right)
Nicole Kidman (Rabbit Hole)
Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone)
Natalie Portman (Black Swan) - Winner, Favourite
Michelle Williams (Blue Valentine)
Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role
Javier Bardem (Biutiful)
Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network)
Colin Firth (The King’s Speech) – Winner
James Franco (127 Hours) – Favourite
Jeff Bridges (True Grit)
Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role
Christian Bale (The Fighter)
John Hawkes (Winter’s Bone)
Jeremy Renner (The Town)
Mark Ruffalo (The Kids are All Right)
Geoffrey Rush (The King’s Speech) – Winner, Favourite
Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role
Amy Adams (The Fighter) – Winner, Favourite
Helena Bonham Carter (The King’s Speech)
Melissa Leo (The Fighter)
Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit)
Jacki Weaver (Animal Kingdom)
Achievement in Art Direction
Alice in Wonderland
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1
Inception – Winner, Favourite
The King’s Speech
True Grit
Achievement in Cinematography
Black Swan
Inception – Winner, Favourite
The King’s Speech
The Social Network
True Grit
Achievement in Directing
Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan)
David O. Russell (The Fighter)
Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech)
David Fincher (The Social Network) – Winner, Favourite
Joel and Ethan Coen (True Grit)
Achievement in Film Editing
Black Swan
The Fighter
The King’s Speech
127 Hours – Winner, Favourite
The Social Network
Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Score)
How to Train Your Dragon
Inception – Favourite
The King’s Speech
127 Hours
The Social Network – Winner
Adapted Screenplay
127 Hours
The Social Network – Winner
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter’s Bone – Favourite
Original Screenplay
Another Year
The Fighter
Inception – Favourite
The Kids are All Right
The King’s Speech – Winner
What do you think I got wrong?
6 Comments »
December 31st, 2010, 6 Comments »
I grew up in West Vancouver. Up until the time I left for university, West Van had two movie theatres operating a total of five cinemas–the Odeon (it had a great marquee) and the Park Royal.
Since the latter closed in 1999, there have been no movie theatres in West Van. If you wanted to see a movie, you had to drive over to North Vancouver.
Recently, the Kay Meek Theatre–a community theatre attached to West Vancouver Secondary School–started showing movies on Monday and Tuesday nights (I previously wrote about the Kay Meek). The films tend to be recent, major independent fare like I Am Love or Exit Through the Gift Shop. I know somebody who works at the Kay Meek, and movie nights are reportedly very well attended.
While up in Sechelt over Christmas, Julie and I were looking for something to do in inclement weather. We discovered that the Raven’s Cry Theatre, a multi-use theatre operated by the Sechelt First Nations band. It’s a charming 274-seat space apparently used for all sorts of events: “plays, concerts, dance and first-run movies”.
For years, the number of cinemas across the country seem to be shrinking, or at least conglomerating into suburban googleplexes. I’ve often wondered, even with digital projection and some flexibility from movie distributors, whether there was a way forward for small towns which have lost their cinema.
This re-purposing of another performance space seems to be the solution. Do you know of other small towns that show movies this way?
I snapped the dodgy photo at the top of this post as we drove past Gibsons Cinema, a 214-seat theatre. Interestingly, it’s housed in a building originally designed by Arthur Erickson.
6 Comments »
December 15th, 2010, 8 Comments »
‘Tis the time of year to make lists. Usually I direct your attention to Fimoculous’s great list of lists, but from the looks of that site, we may not get a 2010 version.
In any case, I thought I’d make a quick list of my five favourite movies of the year. I don’t necessarily feel these are the five best or most Oscar-worthy movies I saw this year–just the five I enjoyed the most. For example, “The Social Network” won’t be on my list, despite it being a critical darling. And, obviously, I haven’t seen every major release that might make this list.
I tweeted these, so I’ll include my 140-character justification for each.
- The Kids Are All Right – A thoroughly-modern story that’s funny and charming without buffoonery. Also, an acting clinic.
- Winter’s Bone – A dark, gripping film, and a striking debut by Jennifer Lawrence. People actually speak like that in 2010 America?
- Oceans – A joyful love song to the sea. The eye candy was extraordinary, and there’s a sequence with a shark I’ll never forget.
- The American – A masterclass in on-screen stillness from Clooney. Slow without being boring, and an unusual portrait of small-town Italy.
- Inception – Christopher Nolan is a terrific director. Great cast. Not as sophisticated or complex as people think.
Films that didn’t make that list, but would be in my top ten, include Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Shutter Island and Greenberg. I suspect that True Grit might qualify too, though it’s not out until December 22.
On a related note, I just saw the trailer today for The Tree of Life, Terrence Malick’s new movie. It might be the 2011 film I’m most looking forward to.
What was your favourite movie of 2010?
UPDATE: Phillip asked sur la Twitter what my, uh, bottom five movies of 2010 were. In no particular order, they would be The Losers, Takers, Knight and Day, Predators and Dinner for Schmucks.
8 Comments »
