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.