matthewgruman.com

Reign of Fire

Me: “What happened to Matthew McConaughey?”

Friend: “The dragon killed him. How did you miss that?!

Lord of the Rings (the first one)

Me: “I thought Liv Tyler had a bigger role in this…”

Friend: “She did. You slept through it.

Wedding Crashers

Me: “Goddamn it, I just paid $12 for a nap. How was the movie?”

Friend: “Really funny; you should actually watch it if you get the chance.”

Wallace and Gromit

Me: “Hey, dude; wake up. The movie’s over.

Friend: “Huh? Oh man, did I fall asleep? What happened?”

Me: “I have no idea; I only made it about 10 minutes.

The Passion of the Christ

Me: “Oh no! Did I miss the trial?!”

Friend: “Yup.”

Friend: “Goddamn it. That’s my favourite part of the New Testament!

He’s rocked, too, by Jules, an eerily familiar Robert Longo piece. “Is that the picture they used in American Psycho?! Damn!”

Kanye West in Spin Magazine.

I don’t watch a lot of movies – I actually don’t think I’ve even been to a theatre in 2007. Call me a product of the ADD generation, but I don’t like the concept of sitting in one place and focusing my attention on one thing for two hours. I have the habit of renting movies, watching the first half hour, and then returning them (hopefully) before late fees kick in. The Last Kiss was one of those movies – it was rented and returned back when it first came out on DVD.

The O.C.

Much Music starting airing The O.C. last month; despite numerous comparisons to Adam Brody (dorky Jewish guy who’s really into music? Really?), I’d never actually seen an episode. I was out of town last weekend and allowed a lot of time to watch the impeccably-timed OC MARATHON – it’s been incredibly entertaining to finally get caught up on pop culture references from four years ago. The music really WAS good on that show.

Rachel Bilson

Rachel Bilson is in The O.C. Rachel Bilson is also in The Last Kiss. Lunch with a friend, and a conversation about looping, led me back to that Imogen Heap video I love so much. Zach Braff, the the other guy people are constantly comparing me to, hosts that Imogen Heap video where he mentions how Rachel Bilson helped get Hide and Seek into The Last Kiss. Zach Braff is in The Last Kiss. He’s also in Scrubs, which is an AWESOME show, but that’s irrelevant.

The Last Kiss

I spent a lot of this weekend working on a very fun, but very labour-intensive, project and was a little burnt out. The whole Rachel Bilson/Zach Braff/The Last Kiss/The O.C./MMM what you say? thing made me want to rent The Last Kiss again, so a trip to the local video store and a chat with stoner-clerk later, I had it in my hands.

The first time I “watched” The Last Kiss, I shut it off within the first half and hour because the very idea of Rachel Bilson’s character, Kim, ever being interested (in the specific way that she is interested) in Zach Braff’s character, Michael, was absurd. But, mostly likely due to an ever-growing Rachel Bilson fascination, I watched it all the way through this time and, SHOCK and AWE, I found it very touching and enjoyable.

I figured out why Kim would be into Michael – she isn’t real. Not in the context of the movie, but in the context of a holistic reality. She represents the “brunette I won’t ever kiss again” (paraphrasing one of Michael’s speech) – the temptation that everyone, male or female, feels when involved in a relationship. So she’s not ACTUALLY into Michael, she’s just the ever-present variable in all the character’s lives.

Commitment

This is a very conceptual movie which suffers a bit from it’s intense realism: the situations are inherently real, but there is little chance that they would ever happen to the people involved. I definitely didn’t (or didn’t want to) get that concept when I first watched it, but now it’s pretty hard to ignore. The metaphorical situations the characters get involved in create parallels to real-life scenarios that make it difficult to NOT relate. That’s a bit weird though, isn’t it? Creating a movie that requires an abandonment of reality to be understood, but requires that same reality to be appreciated? Maybe I’m looking into it too much, but I really think there’s something special about The Last Kiss that just takes a little bit of effort.

Canada Likes Movies

Sympatico MSN has posted an unsurprisingly banal article on the state of movie piracy in Canada. All quotes, if not otherwise mentioned, are from that article.

“A few years ago Hollywood began to ‘watermark’ films sent to theatres, so if a movie leaked online, it could be run through a process that could prove what theatre it originated from” begins Frith. “And so this is how we know in 2005, for example, roughly 24 percent of pirated movies online emanated from Canadian theatres, mainly from the Montreal area.”

Anyone who’s lived in Montreal could have told you that.

Another reason why Canadians may download movies more per capita than our American neighbours is because we don’t have a legal alternative. In the U.S., for example, you could download movies for a few bucks apiece from online stores such as iTunes, Movielink, CinemaNow, Real Starz on Demand, Amazon’s Unbox, and soon, Wal-Mart. Warren agrees: “Once we can download movies legitimately in Canada we should see a bit of a drop in piracy.”

No evidence to back that up? It’s a shame there wasn’t a striking analogue like the digital music industry. Oh wait!

Dated Discussions

“I’m not persuaded by the argument that a single price deters piracy,” [EMI Group Chairman Eric] Nicoli said at a news conference in response to comments from Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs, who last month called music companies greedy for seeking variable prices for song downloads. “I’m not persuaded of the fact that a lower price deters piracy. What I am persuaded of is that making music more convenient and better value is a deterrent to piracy.”

- Via MacNN.

DRM does work. The problem is, it?s too easy to find alternatives. Every year, 20 Billion songs are sold DRM-free on CDs (as opposed to the ~2 Billion sold with DRM on iTunes), and Billions more are shared on the internet through p2p programs. So, DRM isn?t failing- it?s simply just as cheap, or cheaper, in terms of money, time, and security to download a song on p2p as it is to download a legal copy. That?s the problem, and that?s not DRM?s fault.

- Via Exchange.

Question for You

Does anyone have access to recent stats that show if illegal downloading has been affected by the advent of online music stores?

Nothing New

“Piracy might not affect the stars as much, but what about the lighting guys, script agents, grips and other unionized workers?” asks Warren rhetorically. “Not going to the movies because you downloaded the film for free hurts the overall pot of money, so studios may slash the budget of new films or they don’t produce as many.” Jobs will be lost, and smaller independent films, actors and directors will also suffer as investors might be less likely to take chances on new ideas.

That’s simply absurd. Studios will not slash the budget of a movie if they think that budget cut will affect eventual profit. If a movie is good enough, people will WANT to see it in the theatre and will buy the DVD. There are reasons why bands can give away their music for free/have it stolen, but still make a living through CD/mp3 sales, concert tickets, and merchandise. I’m also fairly unconvinced that the backers of our country’s independent films are going to be swayed by a medium that actually allows people to WATCH their work as opposed to hearing about the week-long engagement that I hadn’t heard about and now it’s too late to see. And have they never heard of Canada Council? I can’t remember the part of that grant application where it says “we are unwilling to fund your project due to fear of piracy.”

Give in to your Urges!

And keep in mind many Canadians are employed in the movie business, especially in markets such as Toronto (“Hollywood North”) and Vancouver. By downloading that free movie from the Internet you may be hurting that neighbour you drink beers with.

Until the laws get tougher to make pirating movies a deterrent, Warren urges Canadians to simply “resist the urge.”

Oh they called Toronto “Hollywood North” and mentioned beer! I’m so distracted by national pride that I’ve forgotten about the article’s lack of a cogent argument! Maybe we can just continue doing things as we are and let the cream rise to the top? Or maybe Hollywood/”Hollywood North” will realize that if someone REALLY wants to watch a movie, that TC-Cam version probably isn’t going to suffice. Make movies that reject the objectively shitty quality of internet downloading and people won’t download them from the internet.

Back in University, I wrote an essay about Beowulf and its relationship to the idea of bildungsroman. My original topic was quite different, but I lost control on the essay about halfway through.

So Many Books

The first part of my research involved the “Beowulf Wall” at UBC’s’s Koerner library. I’d never read Beowulf, so I decided to grab a few (13 in total) different translations along with a number of essay collections. For a week, it was rare to see a section of bedroom floor not covered by various texts of/on Beowulf.

Anglo-Saxon

I read most of the 13 translations all the way through, and was left confused (annoyed) by the extreme amount of variation between the translations. I found myself selectively quoting different translations to fit my purpose, but I hit a big snag with one section. Every translation was completely different, and it seemed to hinge on the meaning of a handful of individual words. So I went back to the library and got a couple of Anglo-Saxon to English dictionaries, and a copy of Beowulf in the original language.

The Best Citations

Manually translating the passage made all the difference. The entire story opened up for me. There was an obvious (to me) interaction between Beowulf and Grendel that was glossed over in every translation (yes, even the Seamus Heaney version!) I had read! Breakthrough! I took that passage and agonized over it, synthesizing what I’d learned from other translations, and supplementing my own for parts that didn’t make sense to me. I ended up quoting the original Anglo Saxon in my text and footnoting my own translations – something I’d only ever done with French.

Things Go Wrong

It was at this point that I lost it a little. I spent (at least) an entire weekend insisting people call me Beowulf. I was interpreting life the way an Angle-Saxon would (or at least how my mushed up mind told me they would). Friends tell me they saw me muttering under my breath for a few days with words that sounded English, but had a Germanic edge to them. The essay was terrible. The content was there, but I was completely unable to organize my thoughts in any cogent way. Eventually, I did one last copy edit, turned it into a readable length, hit print, and tried to forget about it.

I think I got a B+. Pretty melodramatic if you ask me.

Another Movie

So I’m really exited about this movie. Why?

1. I love Beowulf.
2. Roger Avary AND Neil Gaiman are executive producers.
3. Angelina Jolie as Grendel’s mother? Swoon
4. It doesn’t look so completely awful that I won’t end up watching it.
5. I REALLY love Beowulf.

*** Read Beowulf at Project Gutenberg.

…than a movie about a child being creepy:

I love movies about precocious children. It’s nice to hear Dave Matthews on the soundtrack, too.