Written by Suchandrika Chakrabarti | 26 January 2010 | in reviews - DVD

As dedications go, the one to (500) Days of Summer tells you immediately that we are definitely not in rom-com land anymore, Toto: "Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Especially you Jenny Beckman. Bitch.” Wow. And although the film is fun, occasionally true and makes you feel incredibly sorry for the main character, Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), the underlying bitterness makes the female lead (Summer, played by Zooey Deschanel) a mysterious caricature. Why does Tom bother falling for her at all? But first, the good stuff. Watch out for the spoilers...

Written by Laurence Boyce | 20 December 2009 | in reviews - DVD

Now available to buy on DVD, September remains one of the most affecting and beautiful British short films of the past few years. The film beat off stiff competition from the likes Sam Taylor Wood’s passionate and impressive Love You More to walk away with the 2009 BAFTA Award for Best Short Film (Live Action) to add to its numerous other awards and accolades.

The film tells the story of Marvin, a man gradually seeing his life erode as he toils away at a motorway service station. But a chance encounter means his outlook on life begins to change and a life of flipping burgers and unfulfilled dreams seems to become more remote by the second.

Written by Chris Locke, introduced by Nic Wistreich | 24 May 2009 | in reviews - DVD

As Austria wins the Palme D'Or, Austrian Film Geek is buzzing the web alight with his sharply cut reviews of his list of 'the most awesome films ever' on the tube. Here he is on Chuck Norris's Invasion USA film - 'it should be distributed to every country in the world - it's the only way to make sure 100% sure that America stays safe.' Thankfuly there was no DRM on the Geek''s copy of the film so he could cut this promo:

I found this via Chris Locke's tweets. Chris, onetime commenter of Netribution, is currently celebrating the tenth aniversary of Cluetrain's publication, and wrote the below essay for the CluetrainPlus10 group blog, where essayists and bloggers were invited to write a post about one of Cluetrain's 95 thesis. I republish this below, not by permission (couldn't find a copyright notice), but because I presume you're more likely to read it than if you had to click the link.

From Rageboy.com - Thesis #1: Markets are conversations by Chris Locke

But. You know there's got to be a but. Sometimes I really bombed. Stumbled onto the stage. Forgot what I was going to say next. Saw all those perplexed faces looking up at me wondering in a vaguely hostile way, "And just how is this supposed to make me a better Allstate Insurance agent?" That was a bad one. Oh yeah. The worst was the keynote talk to the annual meeting of the Direct Marketing Association in New Orleans. Something like 15,000 professional hucksters all in one place. I made fun of their pompous stagecraft and circle-jerk self-congratulation. They didn't like me. It was mutual.

While some have suggested that civility is the most important value we should propagate in our social exchanges, I think that sometimes the most honest conversation can go a little like this.

"Fuck you!"

"Yeah, well fuck you too!"

ENOUGH!

I am trying to give you the impression here of what it feels like to stumble onto the stage. Here I am, at least two days late to this Cluetrainplus10 confab, having promised to write words of wisdom on our book's most oft-quoted dictum -- "markets are conversations" -- and I'm all like oh hai... um... er... that is...

Truth is, Doc Searls should be writing this one. It was Doc's line. Markets are conversations he said, and you could tell he'd thought about it for a really long time. I love Doc. He's the best. Every once in a while he'll call me from some x-random airport and crack me up with some of the funniest shit I've ever heard. Just off the top. Not necessarily connected to any objective issues or events in the contemporary scene -- he knows I don't give a crap -- just these brilliant little dissociated takes on this and that. Hard to explain, really. If Doc were in that ancient marketplace I wrote about in Cluetrain, I'd get out of bed early and go down there to hear him pitch Vegematics.

Because you know it would be funny. And that slicing and dicing cucumbers wasn't really the point. And that right in the middle of things -- in media res, as my Inner Pedant is compelling me to interject -- he could stop on a dime and say something arrestingly important.

Imagine me trying to explain that to 15,000 suits at the Direct Marketing Association. Yeah, brutal.

Now me, I'm still trying to get my head around "Markets are conversations." I often worry (not that I lose any sleep, but still) that people will take this as a reversible reaction, to use a probably inappropriate metaphor from chemistry. I mean: that they'll think, oh right, and therefore "Conversations are markets."

But no, I don't think that would be so good. In one week, Oprah racked up well over half a million followers on Twitter. There's an instance of a "conversation" -- and you know we need the scare quotes -- being treated as a market. No matter how much you like Twitter, no matter how crucial you see it as being to the brave new world of social media, I'm sorry, that's just the same old bullshit.

Somewhat in advance of that blessed event -- I mean, Ashton Kutcher topping the 1,000,000 mark and all (btw who TF is Ashton Kutcher?) -- I created an account for "fake_cluetrain." Yes, and I have 565 followers. It's not fair! Especially when I have such important things to share. Like take for instance this tweet...

"Hobgoblins are the consistency of silly putty." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
10:09 AM Mar 28th from web

In all the hubbub and hullaballoo about who was going to break the One Million Followers Barrier, I don't think my falsely attributed quote got the attention it deserved. I'm hurt by this. I mean, it's subtle, it's humorous (is it not?), and it makes an interesting observation about America's deep cultural and spiritual legacy. But did it garner any mention in People magazine? On TechCrunch? In Wired? No, it did not. So this is the part of the conversation where I say, "Fuck you!"

I'm taking my text editor and going home.

The opening salvo of The Cluetrain Manifesto was not "Markets are conversations." It was: "We die."

Did we fall asleep? Just for a little while.

We only have a little while to live. Such a precious time to be here. Wherever here is. To see each other and this awesome, incredible world. So let us not talk falsely now. Let us be what we truly are, which is human, and try to get our heads and hearts around what that might conceivably mean.

And mostly, miracles of science notwithstanding, let us not take ourselves too overfuckingseriously.

Written by Nic Wistreich | 06 April 2009 | in reviews - DVD

I did not get sent a review disc, but saw this one in Morrisons on Sunday in a two for one offer on Disney films. There weren't many classics, but picked up Ratatouille which I could watch a fair few more times yet, and Wall*E. It's not just that I like to be able to watch it on TV but I have a vague idea that if I had grandkids one day it'd be great to be able to show them the box.. 'what, you have the original cardboard box! These things used to be physical! Wow!). And box indeed it is, packed in the weirdest cardboard container I've yet seen. It was partly the checkout guy who stuffed the DVD in the case in a strange way, which took me a few minutes to figure out how to unpack so as to get the DVD out without ripping the box. But then, joy!

Kind of. A collection of further pieces of cardboard with various promotional leaflets, and some strange folds to suggest you should be able to fold this into your own Wall*e or at least a DVD case. But the main interest is the discs inside.

The first one, disc two, (i know that's the second one, but it was the first one i looked at, :) had the extras, and was packed. on my tv with dodgy dvd player missing it's remote, i couldn't do much but choose the top thing on each page, which took me to an interesting documentary on how they shot the film and tried to emulate the 70mm Panavision lenses that space epics like 2001 were shot on. As British cinematographer Roger Deakins, who alonside Star War's DP Dennis Murren, was a consultant on photography on the film, says how after decades of trying to remove the slightest flaws in the lenses, the computer guys are busting to recreate the errors in a flawless CGI environment, so as to make it feel more real. It's certainly an incredible landscape, stunningly lit and shot, and makes a stark contrast with Pixar's other human-centric film - The Incredibles, from a director, Brad Bird, whose background was in 2D animation (with the excellent Iron Man). We get to see Deakins lead a lighting workshop, and we get into a discussion on the effect of pulling focus on  70mm lense to image proportions. Certainly not family entertainment, in the best possible way!

Written by Suchandrika Chakrabarti | 25 January 2009 | in reviews - DVD

Elite Squad has its UK DVD release tomorrow

Rio de Janeiro, 1997. The Pope is about to visit. Some doofus has put him up right next door to a notorious favela. The Special Police Operations Battalion (BOPE) have to clean it up before he gets there. So we get to take a look at a Brazilian slum through the eyes of the supposed law enforcers.

Where City of God, despite the bloodshed and endless vendettas, is essentially a nostalgic, sometimes humorous, look back by a boy made good, Elite Squad is an unflinching morality tale from which no one emerges unscathed, least of all the average middle-class viewer with an "occasional use only" attitude to drugs. Unlike City of God's Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues), the narrator of Elite Squad continues to contend with the favela's problems, and is far more cynical. He has reason to be.

Written by Suchandrika Chakrabarti | 23 September 2008 | in reviews - DVD

Future Shorts, the film label behind Rock'n' Roll Cinema and Secret Cinema , as well as global distributor of short films, has released its first DVD, a bit of a greatest hits called Adventures in Short Film - Volume 1. They chose well for their inaugural compilation.

Written by Suchandrika Chakrabarti | 11 August 2008 | in reviews - DVD

Wow. When Mike Leigh goes comic, he really goes for it. Happy-Go-Lucky , the tale of Poppy, a North London primary school teacher with a very un-London persistently sunny nature and a whole host of whacky quips, gets driving lessons and talks too much. That's the film. The latest Mike Leigh film. No, really.

Written by Suchandrika Chakrabarti | 06 April 2008 | in reviews - DVD

When David Lynch calls a film "simultaneously horrific, erotic and funny," and master surrealist Luis Buñuel says that it is "exceptional," you know it's probably not an easy watch. Martin Scorcese, Francis Ford Coppola, along with Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia, helped to finance a new print of the film, that's how much they love it.

First released in December 1966, The Saragossa Manuscript   is a mind-bending adaptation of some of Jan Potocki's equally difficult eighteenth-century novel. The complex narrative weaves together a group of tales set in Spain, where more characters than you can keep track of stagger (or sometimes caper) through wildly clashing movie genres: the gothic, the historical, the satirical. There is very little warning when the film abruptly delivers you from one storyline to the other. Isn't it great when a film makes you think?