Film

Life according to the movies

After a friend quoted Braveheart to me I go to thinking about movie quotes and arrived at the realization that if something is worth saying it will be parodied in the movies.

So which movie quotes do you remember, or maybe just cannot get out of your mind. Classics like Scarface’s “Say hello to my little friend”, Rhett Butler: “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn” (Gone With the Wind) or most of the The Godfather tend to appear on people’s list of all time quotes – and for good reason. But when I think of movie quotes I end up with some of the more odd stuff like Ghostbusters – “Back off, I’m a scientist” (which another friend of mine wanted to have on the cover of his thesis but thought better of it – it seemed unnecessary to piss of the examination committee). Another cool one is “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!” from Dr. Strangelove.

I am also fond of scenes when movies parody other movies. Here is the smoking man from the x-files “doing” Forrest Gump:

“Life…is like a box of chocolates. A cheap, thoughtless, perfunctory gift that nobody ever asks for. Unreturnable, because all you get back is another box of chocolates. So, you’re stuck with this undefinable whipped mint crap that you mindlessly wolf down when there’s nothing else left to eat. Sure, once in a while, there’s a peanut butter cup, or an english toffee, but they’re gone too fast, and the taste is…fleeting. So you end up with nothing but broken bits filled with hardened jelly and teeth-shattering nuts. And if you’re desperate enough to eat those, all you’ve got left is an empty box filled with useless brown paper wrappers.”

But what about the quotes that are funny besides themselves like: “You’re gonna need a bigger boat” from Jaws or “Soylent Green is people” from Soylent Green.

Or two quotes which can illustrate the demise of the writer in the movies: “When I’m good, I’m very, very good, but when I’m bad, I’m better” Mae West as Tira in “I’m No Angel” compared to  “Yo, Adrian” – Sylvester Stallone in “Rocky”. OK so this was maybe an unfair comparison 🙂

Whatever your tastes and needs a good movie quote is always good to have.

Posted on by mklang

Brodén's dark shadows

My friend Daniel Brodén will be defending his thesis Dark Shadows over Folkhemmet: A Cultural Genre History of Crime Fiction in Swedish Cinema and Television (Folkhemmets skuggbilder. En kulturanalytisk genrestudie av svensk kriminalfiktion i film och tv) on Saturday. His english abstract is here. Here is a snippet from the beginning of the abstract:

This dissertation investigates Swedish crime film with a combination of genre history and cultural analysis. The main focus is how this popular genre has elucidated dark aspects of the welfare state model widely known as Folkhemmet (“The People’s Home”), since it was established in Swedish cinema during World War II.
Through the visual metaphor Shadow Images (“skuggbilder”) this dissertation clarifies how crime films cast a dark shadow over social life with fictional stories about murders and criminality. Crime is a term associated with ruptures and uncertainties, just like the concept of Modernity. An exhaustive study of all crime fiction produced for Swedish cinema and television shows how the genre continously has reflected and commented critically on the changes in modern society.

Daniel has seen most (actually I think he has seen all) Swedish crime films and he has an amazing memory and ability for retelling them. I am looking forward to attending the thesis defence. It’s open so if you are in Göteborg then you can attend on Saturday (6th December) at 10.00 am, room T302, Arkeologen, Olof Wijksgatan 6.

Posted on by mklang

The real Monty on YouTube

This is last weeks news but what seemed to me to be an international piece of news seems to have been vaguely missed or ignored by most. So here it is again: Monty Python has decided to create a Monty Python Channel on YouTube filled with high quality material?

Why?

For 3 years you YouTubers have been ripping us off, taking tens of thousands of our videos and putting them on YouTube. Now the tables are turned. It’s time for us to take matters into our own hands.

We know who you are, we know where you live and we could come after you in ways too horrible to tell. But being the extraordinarily nice chaps we are, we’ve figured a better way to get our own back: We’ve launched our own Monty Python channel on YouTube.

What’s more, we’re taking our most viewed clips and uploading brand new HQ versions. And what’s even more, we’re letting you see absolutely everything for free. So there!

But we want something in return.

None of your driveling, mindless comments. Instead, we want you to click on the links, buy our movies & TV shows and soften our pain and disgust at being ripped off all these years.

All I can say is Parrot Sketch, The machine that goes Ping and  Something completely different…

Posted on by mklang

More than a commodity

While browsing around for a starting point on my next project I came across an article I had forgotten. The article “Copying Kill Bill” is written by Laikwan Pang (Social Text 2005) and is an exploration of the connections between copyright and cultural borrowing, or stealing depending on the perspective I suppose.

A film is not only a commodity but also a complex system of cultural representation, in which cultural exchanges are so complex that today’s copyright discourse can never clearly differentiate between copyright infringement and cultural appropriations, as clearly shown in Kill Bill.

This was just the type of article I was looking for to inspire me to move forward. We have to take a step back and look seriously at the larger picture which is infinately more complex and much more interesting.

Posted on by mklang

Dibley, terrorism, dvds & other annoyances

Recently I bought the a box collection of BBC comedy The Vicar of Dibley after enjoying the content I did not turn off the DVD in time and I caught the advert against piracy which included the amazing news that “piracy supports organized crime” and “piracy supports terrorism”

This type of false propaganda annoys me on several levels. So ok I can accept that there may be a link between organized crime and piracy but terrorism???

So what between planning to fly an airplane into a building and bombing innocent civilians, terrorists sitting in caves mass pirate dvds and upload films on the Internet? What a load of bull!

Actually another thing that annoys me about dvd’s is the compulsory and very annoying copyright and piracy infomercials in the begining. It almost makes you want to be a pirate – at least they cut away that crap. If I buy a dvd I actually think it should be my right to be able to jump past the annoying useless stuff in the begining.

Posted on by mklang

A must see thingy

The venerable blog Blackadder Hall (as an important bearer of pre-Bean culture it deserves the venerable title) has put the documentary The Whole Rotten Saga online. The 1,5 hour documentary has been split into seven parts. They write:

This documentary looks back at the hilarious historical saga of Blackadder, the enduring comic creation of Rowan Atkinson and Richard Curtis now celebrating its 25th anniversary. The programme charts the behind-the-scenes story of the show, from early development to its rise as one of Britain’s best loved sitcoms. Featuring rare rehearsal footage of the team at work and in-depth interviews with key cast and crew such as Richard Curtis, Ben Elton and Stephen Fry.

This is not a time to think of copyright. Just sit back and enjoy!

Posted on by mklang

Friday list 1: Worst 100 films

Everyone needs a useless list. Especially on a Friday. Among the more interesting useless is the 100 worst films (ever). This comes from the Internet Movie Database. Here are the worst ten films ever:

90. 2.3 Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952) 671
91. 2.3 The Quick and the Undead (2006) 803
92. 2.3 Kazaam (1996) 9,637
93. 2.3 Levottomat 3 (2004) 1,660
94. 2.3 Shark: Rosso nell’oceano (1984) 1,018
95. 2.3 Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie (1997) 3,077
96. 2.3 House IV (1992) 797
97. 2.3 Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 (2000) 31,463
98. 2.3 The Last Sign (2005) 972
99. 2.3 Track of the Moon Beast (1976) 1,254
100. 2.3 American Soldiers (2005) 1,417

Makes me want to go and rent them!

Posted on by mklang

The lost minutes of Metropolis

The film Metropolis was not a success when it was first released and in order to improve it it was cut by almost a quarter by Paramount. The last time anyone saw the full original was in 1927. The new shorter version made less sense and in reality the whole thing should probably just have ended up in the rubbish.

The film is set in the futuristic city of Metropolis, ruled by Joh Fredersen, whose workers live underground. His son falls in love with a young woman from the worker’s underworld – the conflict takes its course. At the time it was the most expensive German film ever made. It was intended to be a major offensive against Hollywood. However the film flopped with critics and audiences alike. Representatives of the American firm Paramount considerably shortened and re-edited the film. They oversimplified the plot, even cutting key scenes. The original version could only be seen in Berlin until May 1927 – from then on it was considered to have been lost forever. Those recently viewing a restored version of the film first read the following insert: “More than a quarter of the film is believed to be lost forever.” (Zeit Online)

Despite the mutilation the film Metropolis has lived on as a cult classic. One of the great film dystopias and a sci-fi classic. It also has a role in gender and technology studies as including the first female robot – something which to this day is rare.

The new (old) material is in need of restoration work but soon we will hopefully be able to see the full length version of Lang’s classic.

Posted on by mklang

Shooting Back

Providing cameras and video cameras to different groups is not an uncommon method which allows the subjects to bring their own lives into focus without the direct mediation of the “outsider” camera/filmmaker. Naturally all uses of technology contain risks of bias and slanted views – nobody still believes that the camera never lies? Even if many still believe that fashion images are “real”.

In January 2007, B’Tselem launched Shooting Back, a video advocacy project focusing on the Occupied Territories. We provide Palestinians living in high-conflict areas with video cameras, with the goal of bringing the reality of their lives under occupation to the attention of the Israeli and international public, exposing and seeking redress for violations of human rights.

In projects such as these technology in the form of the cameras and Internet as a distribution medium can be used to empower those involved in a conflict while still providing a preaceful alternative way of coping with everyday violence.

Posted on by mklang

CCTV music video

An unsigned Manchester band The Get Out Clause wanted to create a music video but did not have a camera crew so they got creative. They set up and played in front of surveillance cameras at different locations and then requested the surveillance tapes from the under the Data Protection Act and cut together a music video of the results.

cctvmusic.jpg

The result is a very cool grainy effect – My favourite part is when they are playing on a buss! More information about the video here – Check out the actual video on YouTube!

(via Boing Boing)

Posted on by mklang