TV Download Services - Reviews Coming

It's been a long time since I watched any TV. Mind you, I'm actually a big fan of serialized dramatic visual arts (the art formerly known as "TV shows"). Some stories just cannot be told in a two hour movie. But I gave up on broadcast and cable both when Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer retired. I canceled my subscriptions then because there simply wasn't anything left to watch. I nearly came back when Firefly came out, but then it was canceled in mid-season and I felt completely justified in rejecting the broadcast establishment with disdain. If anything good did happen to make it to the airwaves by accident, I knew it would be out on DVD and available from Netflix soon anyhow.

Lately, however, there have been a few twinkles of hope, and my Netflix queue has become clogged with TV DVDs. Battlestar Gallactica got me hooked first, then The Unit and Heroes. Now I have 327 discs in my queue and not much hope of ever getting through them all. I actually broke down and decided I should consider downloading some episodes. (No, not that way. I mean legally.) I picked a few oddball things from iTunes, but I realized that iTunes is not the perfect solution. As Chris Breen said (or was it really his daughter?), NBC are being poo-poo heads and pulling their shows from iTunes. And just when I want to watch Heroes and the new Bionic Woman, too. Grrr!

So I think it's time to take a look at the various online services available and see how they compare to each other and to the DVD experience. I know going into it that this is going to be an especially trying experience, because iTunes is the only commercial service that supports Macs. All the others require Windows. That means I have to jump through flaming hoops to get them to work, because all my computers are either Macs or run Linux.

Sigh. Nothing is ever easy. I'll write future posts on my experiences so you can follow along at home.

What's the largest grossing movie?...

It’s amazing to see the difference in the worth of a dollar today compared to a few years ago. For all you that think The Lord of The Rings Trilogy was the greatest thing ever, and if you think that the grosses were gargantuan, think again. Boxofficemojo.com has compiled a list of the 100 largest domestic grossing movies after being adjusted for inflation, and a lot of what I saw on that list was kind of shocking. Compare it to the All Time U.S. list from the imdb.

iTunes Plus (that is, Minus DRM)

I've been waiting for this one since they announced it, and now it's here. Today you can upgrade your iTunes client to version 7.2, and then you can upgrade (some of) your iTunes purchases to 256kbps, DRM-Free versions! (Shop at iTunes now)

It's been said before, and those who know me also know my opinion, but for the record: DRM is bad, bad, bad. It's bad for artists, bad for fans, and bad for online music retailers. It's even bad for the media distributors who use it, although you may have a hard time convincing some of them of that.

EMI seems to get it, though, as their music is now up and running. I am not a big purchaser of music in general, but I have been saving up to vote with my dollars. As I write this, I am listening to my newly purchased, non-DRM Rolling Stones tunes. Wow this stuff sounds good!

Higher Quality DRM-Free Music on the iTunes Store

Finally, someone must have hand-delivered a clue to a major record label. I am slightly amazed and pleasantly surprised to hear that EMI listened to Steve Jobs of Apple. The major record labels have been pushing Apple to allow higher prices on the iTunes store, but Apple rightly insisted that regular folks won't pay more money unless they get more for it. So EMI has agreed to distribute their music on iTunes for a higher price, but to provide more quality and, most importantly, more freedom to us, the buyers and listeners.

Finally, mainstream music will be available for download (legally) without DRM! And at double the standard bit-rate, so even the picky audiophiles should be satisfied with the quality. I think this is awesome, and I fully intend to pick up a few tracks as soon as they come available to show my support. Let's see if we can persuade the rest of the industry to provide us with products we really want!

Michael Crichton does genetics...again. "Next"

Michael Crichton novels have always been a nice piece of escapism. They are usually easy and enjoyable to read as well as adventuresome. Some are based in reality (Disclosure [IMDB]), and others in the absurd (Sphere [IMDB]?).

Next seems to be a story where Crichton wants to hit on every possible angle he can aim his pen (laptop?) at. The angles though, as the story proceeds, are ones of moral and ethical questions on the processes of genetic research and the laws that dictate what can and cannot be done. The author makes it quite clear what he thinks of modern law in the field of genetic and medicinal research, yet his opinions on the ethical questions is quite absent. Those answers are left up to the reader.

Unlike Crichton’s last novel, State of Fear, Next never seems to jump into an adventure that keeps the reader flipping pages, salivating for more. There is however, a lot of teasing. Many aspects of the story give us glimpses of possibilities that don’t go anywhere. Instead, each one ends with what appears to be open-ended questions… Should we? Shouldn’t we? What does the law state? Is there a law? Fun reading as long as you’re not expecting an adventure story.

My only problem with the novel was that through the first half of the book Crichton introduces so many characters I couldn’t remember who was who. At more than one point I found myself turning back a few chapters in order to remember what significance a particular character was playing. Dizzying. I think the inordinate number of characters is what made it possible for the author to end each scenario with questions rather than following them to logical conclusions.

As seems to be Crichton’s habit lately, he ends the book with notes on his own research and conclusions. Also included is a rather large bibliography giving the reader glimpses into what inspired the writing.

After all is said and done, I believe this novel is best summed up by Crichton’s own blurb in the middle of the title pages.

“This novel is fiction,
except for the parts that aren’t.”

Film School in a Box for $25

If you want to learn about making movies, but you don't want to, you know, go to school for it or anything, probably the best resource you can get for the money is the box set of the "Mexico" trilogy by famed indie Robert Rodriguez. It contains his first film, El Mariachi, which he made only for practice, but was so impressive that it opened Hollywood's doors to him. Next is his follow-up film Desperado, showing what he could do with a real budget. Finally comes Once Upon a Time in Mexico, in which the filmmaker declares "film is dead" and converts his entire operation to digital.

Anyone with aspirations to indie movie making should memorize the commentary track on El Mariachi. Rodriguez there details how he begged and borrowed his way into sets, props, and actors for his zero-budget film. In addition to the excellent commentary, El Mariachi also contains Rodriguez's first "Ten Minute Film School" segment, in which he shows several examples of how his film-making style allowed him to shoot the movie for practically no money while delivering astonishing production value.

In the Desperado commentary, Rodriguez describes how he applied his unique creative style to a "Hollywood" movie. A tiny budget by Hollywood standards, but literally a thousand times what he had to spend on Mariachi! Rodriguez also gives us the second installment of his ten minute film school, "Ten More Minutes: Anatomy of a Shootout". Here he describes his use of "video storyboards" as a fast method of combining rehearsals and storyboards to communicate the intent of the scene, and also as a sort of test run for planning shots. Brilliant.

In his commentary on Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Rodriguez at once expresses his frustration with the "Hollywood way" of making a movie, and his epiphanic liberation on discovering that digital acquisition and a digital workflow allowed him to return to his rebel roots. One of the extras on the DVD is "Film is Dead, an evening with Robert Rodriguez", in which the artist gives a talk (to film students?) about shooting on digital and how it reawakens the creative process of movie-making that gets lost in the technical complexity of managing a film shoot.

Rodriguez adds another film school installment, "Ten Minute Flick School: Fast, Cheap, and in Control", in which he expresses the importance of being well versed in special effects and technology. Also included is "Inside Troublemaker Studios", a tour of the artist's private lair. If you are at all into the technical side of of the trade, you may simply expire from envy of what this man has in his garage. "That's just an Avid," he says at one point, waving at a huge bank of computer and HD monitors backed by a hundred thousand dollars of computing power and storage. "We have a couple more upstairs."

The disc also includes "The Anti-hero's Journey", a more traditional "making of" documentary, in which the creator talks about all three movies, and "The Good, The Bad, and The Bloody: Inside KNB FX". Not to mention the first installment of the Rodriguez "Ten Minute Cooking School". (Notice that the entire cooking school segment was shot by Rodriguez by himself with a small video camera.)

I love this guy, his work, his attitude, and most of all his free encouragement to all the rebel movie makers out there. And at this price, you'd have to be pretty broke not to snap up a copy of the Mexico trilogy for reference and inspiration.

Flags of Our Fathers; Letters from Iwo Jima

I wanted to review Flags Of Our Fathers earlier, but I decided to wait until I could view its sister film, Letters From Iwo Jima, as well.

I’ll start by saying that I believe Clint Eastwood has crafted two exceptional, but flawed films.

Flags Of Our Fathers tells the story of the U.S. Marine Corps landing on the island of Iwo Jima through the eyes of three of the six men that were immortalized by the photograph of the famous flag raising. This is the films strength and its weakness. Using three main characters to tell the story gives the film focus, but its continual use of flash-back and flash-forward editing takes away from that focus, and removes any type of emotional tie-in we might have with them. Instead, you are left as an objective viewer watching the stories of three individuals unfold. Maybe that was the point?

The battle scenes, as filmed, are truly horrific and powerful and play on the screen as they should; yet we seem to follow the main characters on their bond drive in the States more than on the island. This I believe is what makes me feel like the film lacks a proper denouement, and I figured maybe we would get to that in the next film.

Letters From Iwo Jima is the same battle as told from the perspective of the Japanese soldiers. While the obvious agenda of this film was to humanize the men the Marines fought, I was worried it would carry it too far. Some of the dialog has the Japanese commanding officer saying that if he could keep his home safe by continuing to fight, then he would do so. Yet history shows that the U.S. never made any type of military advance on Japan until after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. But the film did not move in that direction. A small part of the story even made a point of showing the cruelty dished out by the Japanese soldiers on those they captured.

Because the telling of the story of Letters from Iwo Jima remains on the island throughout the film, it comes across as more focused than its predecessor. It follows a few characters as they realize the hopelessness of their situation, and their willingness do to as their country wants them to do right up to the point of complete extermination.

While this is a great companion piece to Flags of Our Fathers, I still felt like I wasn’t given enough at the end. I was curious about the completion of the taking of the island, and I thought some stats showing what and how the U.S. used it once they had it needed to be included at the end of either film. So instead of a film trying to give you the complete war history of one island, you get two films telling the separate stories of a few characters involved in the same battle.

Two great films on human interaction in the face of horror, but lacking in the history department.

Flyboys

Wow! Flyboys has one of the best DTS audio tracks I have ever heard. Sounds of plane engines, weapons firing, bullets whizzing by, explosions all over the place, and whatever else they could jam in there comes to full, exuberant life in this World War I film. It was so realistic; my wife came running downstairs to see if I was firing guns in the house (she had warned me about that before). The problem though, is you find you don’t really care.

A film about the Lafayette Escadrille, the first American fighter pilots serving under France in WWI, seems to be a promising premise worthy of a good film treatment. Yet the direction, screenplay, and photography of this film come across as so by the numbers, that nothing plays as exciting or emotional as it should. Instead, I found myself bored and not caring about the characters I was watching. I think some of their dialog was inspired by some fine Roger Corman movies.

All through the viewing, I could tell that the filmmakers worked really hard to make a good film, and at times maybe too hard. Most noticeably in the musical score. The music by itself sounds great, but for the film, it’s so overwrought that it becomes irritating. There was even one theme that played throughout that sounded eerily a lot like some of James Horner’s fine score for Braveheart.

Watch it if you know nothing of the history of this particular story and aren’t interested in reading a book. Just don’t expect too much. I don’t think it’s a terrible movie, I just think the subject matter deserves more.

Band of Brothers

I wasn't quite sure what to expect before viewing Band of Brothers (imdb). I hadn't researched any of it, so I believed I was sitting down to watch a fictionalized account of WWII, and I wasn't sure I would like it. I was wrong on all counts.
From the moment the first of this ten part mini-series started, I was slammed on all sides of my senses just from the effect of viewing and listening. Never have I seen such a vast storyline with the ability to place the viewer in the middle of a harrowing, emotional, fear-ridden journey kept on constant edge, and then hold it for over ten hours! Band of Brothers did just that.

I fear talking about the story since I don’t want to give anything away to those viewers that may not have seen it. Suffice it to say that this is a true story. It is not a “based upon a true story” film. It is a dramatization of the stories told by the survivors of E Company of the 101^st Airborne of the U.S. Army, mixed with a few items of historical significance. In it we follow E Company from the time of their pioneering paratrooper training in the U.S. to their deployment in England, to their D Day jumps over France, and through their entire European campaign. Along the way we learn who the men are, and even find a few contradictions between what these men say, and what our history books tell us happened. And the film does so without being revisionist.

As a Marine that served in Africa and was a part of some battles in Somalia, and having studied much of WWII, I felt I knew what to expect. Yet, by the time this series was completed I felt emotionally drained and exhausted. It makes me wonder how drained and exhausted these men must have been. I could never in my wildest imagination see myself going through what the men of E Company did. By the time the story has run its course, you feel like you know some of the men personally and realize that truly, these men are from a different era. To heighten this feeling, there is a bonus 11^th part to the series that caps everything off perfectly. It is a documentary of interviews with some of the men that served with E Company and their personal stories of survival.

As far as filmmaking goes, everything about Band of Brothers is perfect. The cinema-photography adds value to everything seen, and only occasionally do directorial and editing styles show differences between the episodes. These are only minor, and I think you would have to be specifically watching for them to notice. (I admit to doing this, but only because I watched the entire series a second time). The special effects are above and beyond great. When checking out the extras on the last disc, there were shots pointed out that were digital effects that I thought were real.

Wholeheartedly recommended.

Now if someone would just do the same thing for the Pacific campaign...

Net Neutrality and Municipal Networks

Lawrence Lessig, creator of Creative Commons, has written an insightful article touching on the issue of network neutrality and municipal wi-fi. Lessig is hinting at a concept I have been thinking (and hearing) more about lately. The issue with network neutrality is the conflict of interest experienced by a monopoly or pseudo-monopoly company who both operates the physical infrastructure of the network, and provides services through the network. Competitors in the service realm are at a disadvantage because of the necessity of paying a competitor to maintain the network. The operator has the opportunity and the incentive to leverage their ownership of the infrastructure against their service competitors by manipulating rates and terms of service.

One potential solution, as Professor Lessig hints, is municipal ownership of the infrastructure. Actually, this is not just one idea. There are several workable models of municipal networks, wi-fi or otherwise, with varying degrees of public and private involvement. In some places, the city "owns" the infrastructure, but grants a franchise to a third party to operate it. In other cases, a not-for-profit organization is created or appointed to own and/or operate the network and sell bandwidth "wholesale" to service providers. (Personally, I like that model.) Some municipalities may operate the network themselves, and others grant franchises to owner/operators similar to cable companies. Any of these models has the potential to be the right fit for some city somewhere. These plans cut right to the heart of the net neutrality problem by separating the entity operating the network from the entities providing services over the network, elimiating the conflict of interest and the major incentive to abuse network ownership.

These plans can also address other first-world problems like the choking bandwidth in the last mile of delivery. Many nations in Europe and Asia have faster connections at home than we have, and more homes connected at high speeds. Faster and more broadly available network access would allow newer, better, faster services to the end user.

The only catch is, to give these ideas time to bear fruit, we have to keep the incumbent operators and their armies of lobbyists from forcing through legislation that would ban these good ideas. The telecom and cable companies who own vast infrastructure (much of it built with help from tax-payers and government protection) would rather pay lawyers and lobbyists to block competition than pay engineers and scientists to compete. They will fight to preserve their old business models even as the rest of the world passes us by with new models and new technologies.

I don't know who will decide the winner or how, but I sincerely hope that the winner will prevail based on the merits of their technology and business model in providing progressively better service to their customers, rather than political influence stifling progress for the sake of milking an aged cash cow.

Speaking of Richard Donner...

I started cataloging my DVD collection this weekend, and came across a Richard Donner movie that most folks may have missed. Ladyhawke
was made in 1985, and I have to admit, it shows a bit. Now, you're probably thinking that any movie that stars Rutger Hauer and Matthew Broderick is questionable at best, and you'd be right. On the other hand, Michelle Pfeiffer is one of the greatest actresses of the 20th century, and one of the most beautiful women. As soon as she comes on screen, you forget all about the cheesy 80's synth score and Broderick's fake accent, and the film becomes all about the title character, a beautiful lady cursed by a jealous and powerful suitor to live half her life, the daylight half, as a hawk, while her lover is transformed by night into a wolf, so that they are eternally separated.

As I said, the movie certainly has its flaws. The DVD is also not terrific. The print is a bit rough, and it's mastered as 4:3 letter-boxed rather than the superior 16:9 enhanced version, which doesn't help. There are no extras to speak of, just production notes. This DVD was an early release, before studios knew what to do with the format. I would love to see a remastered special edition, but I'm not holding my breath.

What Ladyhawke has going for it is an involving, compelling love story that drives into your heart and pulls you in despite yourself. You sympathize with Hauer's Navarre, and instantly fall in love with Pfeiffer's Isabeau. If you're not careful, you might even find yourself liking Broderick's rascal Phillipe "the mouse". The lovers are torn apart by a curse, and you feel their ache to be reunited, as well as Navarre's urge for vengeance. You even feel Phillipe's conflicting fear of involvement in magical matters and desire to assist the hero in his quest.

Whether a movie's budget is a hundred million or just a hundred dollars, ultimately it is the story and its characters that define its success. By that measure, I find Ladyhawke to be a worthy endeavor, and well worth viewing.

Just don't buy the soundtrack album. Yikes. :)

P.S. For the truly movie obsessed, this film plays a role in another Richard Donner film, Conspiracy Theory, when a chase scene takes the characters through a movie theater where the climactic scene of Ladyhawke is playing on the screen.

Ten Reasons AppleTV is Lame

Today Apple announced, among other things, it's AppleTV product. As a media junkie I was really looking forward to this. But after the announcement I am so underwhelmed, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to bother buying one. As promised, here are ten reasons why this device is just lame.

1. It doesn't work without a computer. This is not component for your home theater, it's an accessory for your Mac. Without a computer, it's a $300 doorstop.
   


2. Apparently it doesn't include cables of any kind (except power). How's that for great out-of-the-box experience? You can't even plug it into the TV without buying "accessories".
   


3. No composite output, so you can't hook it up to older TVs.
   


4. No 1080p output, so you won't get the optimal experience on brand new HDTVs.
   


5. No Firewire input. Forget about hooking your DV camera to this thing.
   


6. Tiny hard drive. My iPod has more storage than this thing. I carry 50GB of media around in my pocket, with a built-in player for all of it. I have 300GB of hard drive filled with content, and more coming in every day. I'm supposed to be excited by 40GB? Not enough. Not nearly.
   


7. No Blu-ray.
   


8. No HD-DVD.
   


9. No DVD player!!!
   


10. No CD drive!!!
    

What the hell were they thinking? How do you make a media gizmo like this and NOT put a DVD player in it? It's so simple and so obvious! Okay, a hi-def drive belongs at a higher price point, but regular DVD drives are cheap and absolutely vital to any home theater. It can't play my DVDs. It can't play or rip CDs. It's got 720p output, but iTunes doesn't have any 720p content for sale so what good is that?

AppleTV just is not a revolutionary product. In fact, it's a step backward. It's like a crippled iPod. Take an 80GB iPod with the Universal Dock, remove the screen, remove the battery, remove half the hard drive space, add a power cable to make it immobile, add an HDMI port that doesn't support 1080p, add 802.11 wireless. That's your AppleTV. You know what? Don't bother. Take your iPod with Universal dock, and just hook that to your TV with the handy s-video or composite connector. You'll have to sneaker-net to sync it, but you get the bonus of a mobile media player.

For my money, the mac mini still makes a much better media box. It has a bigger hard drive. It has (optionally) a dual layer DVD drive for playing and burning music and movies. Firewire input for your digital video camera. Front row software for a ten-foot interface. It doesn't have HDMI out, but it does have DVI and optical audio outputs, which do the same job with some extra cable.

After all the anticipation, the AppleTV was a big let-down for me. I say take your $300 and get a new iPod instead. Or a bigger hard drive. Or a Wii.