Mike and Jay talk about Peter Jackson’s latest trip to Middle-Earth, The Hobbit, and frustrate both Tolkien fans and HFR projection supporters in the process.
December 20, 2012
Half in the Bag: The Hobbit
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December 18, 2012
QotD: Time to look at repeal
Is America ready to repeal the first Amendment and regulate Hollywood and the video game industry? Free speech absolutists point to their peaceful enjoyment of action-packed Blockbuster movies where protagonists of those films are often portrayed slaying hundreds of people in simulated scenes of violence.
Yet, journalists are broadcasting America’s call for an end to the tragedies through the regulation of this so-called freedom that has already killed too many. “The debate is long overdue. The mass-killing perpetrated by America’s free-speech culture is our hottest story today,” said one network reporter. “Adam or Ryan Whats-His-Name was just another face. The real problem that must be addressed is America’s sick love affair with unsanctioned ideas and unfettered access to violent imagery.”
The founding fathers could not have imagined high-capacity mass-communications networks when they wrote the Constitution. Thomas Paine was a pamphleteer, not a mass merchant of kill porn on iTunes. Indeed, in the age of quills and parchment, Thomas Jefferson could not have imagined tweeting, or using the cable news industry to launch into the superstardum of American’s celebrity culture overnight.
“I’m a free speech moderate,” said one New York Times reporter reflecting upon the recent tragedy, “I’m in the news business because of free-speech. But, I’m also here to make a difference. If, because of this overdue regulation, it becomes more difficult to speculate wildly about the identity of the shooter based on an intern’s cursory scan of social media, so be it.”
Stephen Taylor, “Time to look at repeal”, Stephen Taylor, 2012-12-17
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December 17, 2012
The Hobbit: “The company of Dwarves isn’t the hand-picked band of mighty warriors … but ordinary (if short) blokes united by faith and loyalty”
We went to see The Hobbit on the weekend, with a bit of foreboding thanks to the numerous advance reviews warning us that Jackson had sold out his film-making heritage for shiny 48fps gadgetry that made everything look fake. Thankfully, we didn’t find that to be the case at all: all four of us loved the movie to a greater or lesser extent. I plan on seeing it again while it’s still in the theatres (which I rarely do).
A Very British Dude was also impressed:
Those who loved Sir Peter Jackson’s adaptation of JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy will love this movie. Those who didn’t, won’t. It’s as simple as that.
[. . .]
There are those critics who will think the movie “plodding” and over-long. That’s a complaint with Tolkien’s utter disregard for narrative arc. Indeed, it’s this lack of tidy endings, and profusion of sub-plot lines that make the mythology so compelling. It’s more like reality than many gritty cop-dramas or action movies today. There may even be purists who may take issue with the additions to the book’s tale, but as these are telling back-stories and tying the Hobbit deeper into the Lord of the Rings narrative, it didn’t bother me. [. . .]
The company of Dwarves isn’t the hand-picked band of mighty warriors that the Fellowship of the Ring was, but ordinary (if short) blokes united by faith and loyalty. This is a thread which runs through all Tolkien’s work: the idea that free people thrust into extraordinary situations will do remarkable things. Tolkien never claimed to have been influenced by his experiences on the Western Front in 1916, but it’s clear he was. He asserted there to be no analogy to the second world war in his books.
Gandalf’s greatest insight is that Hobbits — a sort of idealised rustic Englishman were a better bulwark against evil than the great princes and warriors of greater strength and fame, who’re too easily corrupted by power. This is perhaps the reason the mythological cycle of which the Hobbit forms a part is so appealing to the Anglo-Saxon world: it speaks to a dimly remembered folk-memory of doughty farmers and nascent local democracy dating from the dark-ages. The idea that we’re free, and they’re not.
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December 14, 2012
“… a landscape so breathtaking, it’s as if New Zealand and Photoshop had a baby”
Chris Knight carefully puts on Snarkya, the ring of criticism, and reports on The Hobbit:
Their leader is Thorin, son of Thrain, son of Thror. (These are the kind of spittle-producing introductions that will nicely boost a film’s running time, especially if you travel with 12 other dwarves, each with his own proud lineage, which is exactly what Thorin, son of Thrain, son of Thror, does.) Played by Richard Armitage, he’s a redoubtable dwarf, 5-foot-2 if he’s an inch.
The company arrives on the doorstep of Bilbo Baggins, perfectly embodied by Martin Freeman. He’s become known of late at Dr. Watson on TV’s modern-set Sherlock Holmes series, but his quintessential (or at least most relevant) role is probably that of Arthur Dent, Englishman and homebody, from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Middle-earth and middle-Essex are each home to a certain kind of reticent hero, and Freeman plays both with ease.
Gandalf and the rest of the dwarves — whose names, if you must know, are Balin and Dwalin, Bifor, Bofur and Bombur, Fili and Kili, Oin and Gloin, Nori, Dori and Ori — convince Bilbo that a spot of adventure would be just the thing to write home about, and they set off across a landscape so breathtaking, it’s as if New Zealand and Photoshop had a baby.
[. . .]
You’ve also got a host of excellent performances from the likes of Ian McKellen as Gandalf; Hugo Weaving as Elrond; and Cate Blanchett as token female, also known as Galadriel, whose flowing white robes are so artfully composed that she must have been sky-craned into her every scene.
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November 22, 2012
Creating Aston Martin DB5s to blow up real good
3D printing to the (budget) rescue for 007:
Sean Connery first rocked the iconic James Bond Aston Martin DB5 in 1964’s Goldfinger. That vehicle made a reappearance in this year’s blockbuster Skyfall with Daniel Craig at the wheel.
Spoiler alert: Craig’s DB5 meets an untimely end involving flames. You can’t just take a priceless real DB5 and blow it up on film, so the filmmakers turned to a high-tech prop solution: 3D printing.
Voxeljet, a 3D printing company in Germany, created three 1:3 scale models of the rare DB5. Each model was made from 18 separate components that were assembled much like a real car. The massive VX4000 printer could have cranked out a whole car, but the parts method created models with doors and hoods that could open and close.
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November 15, 2012
I, Pencil: The Movie
A film from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, adapted from the 1958 essay by Leonard E. Read. For more about I, Pencil, visit www.ipencilmovie.org
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November 2, 2012
The rise of celebrity endorsements is a sign of political immaturity
In sp!ked, Patrick West points out that celebrities who push political agendas or social issues are actually a sign of the failure of the political class:
This paradoxical egotism — protesting against ‘selfish’ right-wing people in order to make you appear morally superior — was mercilessly parodied in the 2004 film Team America: World Police. In it, marionettes representing the likes of Susan Sarandon, George Clooney and Matt Damon are shown as self-important dupes of Kim Jong-Il, parroting liberal-left vacuities. ‘As actors’, says Janeane Garofolo’s puppet, ‘it is our reponsibility to read the newspapers, and then say what we read on television like it’s our own opinion’. Like all good parodies, it helped to change the way people think. Sean Penn’s intervention on the matter of the Falkland Islands earlier this year generated unflattering comparisons to the movie, and I imagine Matt Damon still fears to speak on humanitarian issues, lest he be met with a collective cry of ‘Matt Day-Mon’.
Still, this hasn’t deterred the likes of Clooney and Whoopi Goldberg continuing to make known their support for the Democrats — who are liberal-left, and therefore Good People — in opposition to the Republicans, who are right-wing and by extension Bad People. Now from the pop world they have been joined by Katy Perry, who last week performed at a Las Vegas fundraiser for President Obama in the forthcoming presidential election, and by Madonna, who on Saturday declared at a concert in New Orleans: ‘I don’t care who you vote for as long as you vote for Obama.’ Having been met with jeers and booing, the Material Girl backtracked. ‘Seriously, I don’t care who you vote for as long as you take responsibility for the future of your country’, she recanted. ‘Do not take this privilege for granted. Go vote.’ Other Democrat supporters include Bruce Springsteen, Beyonce, Will.i.am and Jay-Z.
[. . .]
In terms of hollow egotism, popstars are not far removed from actors. The latter are fantasists and (literally) professional liars, pretending to be someone they aren’t, displaying emotions they don’t have. Popstars are often likewise insecure, craving attention and praise, to be told what good people they are — and consequently ensure that the world knows it.
They have been up to this sort of thing for years. Consider the self-important proclamations of John Lennon, imagining no possessions but having lots of them, Sting’s crusade to save the Brazilian rainforest and its noble savages and, of course, Bono, the humanitarian tax-avoider. The latter two featured in Band Aid, an ostentatiously big-hearted scheme that raised funds for governments in desperate need of more Mercedes-Benzes and Kalashnikovs. This is what happens when you combine paradoxical egotism and a Something Must Be Done mentality. Today, it’s the same toxic compound — intensified — that’s behind the grandstanding and aggressive ‘caring’ censoriousness you see on Twitter.
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October 31, 2012
The science of “shaken, not stirred”
Ah, those dedicated researchers at The Register! This time, they’ve got Gavin Clarke looking into the famous dry martini of James Bond:
“A distressingly large amount of rubbish is talked about cocktails,” Noel Jackson, top boffin at the Life Science Centre in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, tells The Reg.
Jackson, a Cambridge-University-educated chemist, has all the straight-up science on alcohol.
“We do a lot of debunking of things that people think are true,” he tells us. “There’s this business of shaken versus stirred. Once you heard it said from people in the cocktail world that shaking ‘bruises’ a liquid! That’s rubbish.”
The Reg, as part of our ongoing celebration of James Bond’s fiftieth year on film, was talking to Jackson about one of the signature elements of the 007 package: the dry vodka martini. Shaken, not stirred.
Jackson comes on the best of recommendations. We were put onto him by the boffins of the UK’s National Physical Laboratory, who have been instrumental in such developments as packet-switched networking and the “Dambuster” bouncing bomb of World War II fame.
“What he doesn’t know about drinks, doesn’t need to be known,” they told us.
We spoke to Jackson about chemicals and thermal dynamics. We start with flavour, and that means talking alcohol.
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October 28, 2012
Malaysian group calls for “Films that carry confusing messages” to be banned
A Bollywood film is at the centre of controversy in Malaysia:
An influential Muslim youth group said today that Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s “My Name Is Khan” movie confuses Muslims as it promotes liberal Islam and religious pluralism, and warned Malaysian broadcasters not to air the hit film.
The Muslim youth group’s statement comes after the Malay right-wing group Perkasa’s call last week for Muslims nationwide to boycott award-winning singer Jaclyn Victor for singing the Malay-language Christian song “Harapan Bangsa”, which she has said is meant for Christians.
“Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia (ABIM) strongly protests the screening of ‘My Name Is Khan’ on TV3 on the second Hari Raya Aidil Adha.
“Films that carry confusing messages clearly shouldn’t (tidak wajar) be screened by a main Malaysian television station,” the group’s vice-president Ahmad Saparudin Yusup said in a statement today.
He questioned the timing of the film screening, saying that it raises the question of where the “media’s care and responsibility in their broadcasting materials” went.
H/T to Blazing Cat Fur for the link.
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October 19, 2012
Why James Bond drove an Aston Martin instead of a Jaguar
At The Register, John Oates looks at 007’s motor cars over the years:
What car should James Bond really drive? It’s a hotly disputed question.
Our man on film is closely associated with the Aston Martin, the DB5 initially and DBS V12 of late. Clearly the producers of recent Bond outings hope to identify their character with the spirit of an earlier time regarded as iconic and special. And they should, because the DB5 is both of these.
All of which is rather odd, because the book that introduced James Bond — Casino Royale — referred to a 4.5 litre Bentley with an Amherst Villiers supercharger. However, this is Bond’s personal car, and hobby, rather than work vehicle. We’re told he bought it almost new in 1933 and stored it through the war.
“Bond drove the car hard and well and with an almost sensual pleasure.”
[. . .] Jaguar’s E-type had set the world on fire that year. It had a slightly smaller engine at launch than the DB5, but was 500 pounds lighter and looked like no other car before it. By 1964 the engine had increased to a 4.2 litre brute not far off that in Bond’s Bentley.
Broccoli supposedly called Jaguar to ask for a couple of E-types — the car had come out the previous year and was welcomed by Enzo Ferrari as the most beautiful car in the world. It cost half the £4,175 an Aston-Martin would set you back.
So Broccoli rang Jaguar boss Sir William Lyons and asked to borrow a couple for the film. Lyons told him to get stuffed. To be fair to Lyons his firm was already struggling to make enough E-types to satisfy the public clamour for the car.
So Broccoli phoned Aston Martin and Bond ended up in a DB5 instead.
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September 26, 2012
Coptic Christians and “The Innocence of Muslims”
Strategy Page has an article about the history of the Copts in Egypt after the Muslim take over:
An ugly and ancient aspect of Islamic culture recently triggered violent demonstrations throughout the world. The cause was a low-budget film (“The Innocence of Moslems”) made by an Egyptian-American Coptic Christian. A minority of Moslems have always been particularly sensitive about their religion and how it should be practiced. These conservatives have gone by many names over the centuries. The most common tags these days are Salafists and Wahhabis. These fanatic minorities have exercised an influence on Islamic culture far larger than their numbers (usually less than 10-20 percent) would suggest.
[. . .]
This brings us back to “The Innocence of Moslems” and why it was created by an Egyptian Christian who had fled his homeland. He’s one of many, actually. Some 1,500 years ago most Egyptians were Christians, nearly all of them belonging to the local Coptic sects. Then the Moslems invaded in the 7th century and used threats and financial incentives to encourage conversion to Islam. After three centuries of this, Moslems were the majority. Ever since, Egyptian Moslems have sought, often with violence, to convert the remaining Egyptian Christians (currently about ten percent of the population). Some converted, but increasingly over the last century, Copts have simply fled the country. Those who left had bitter, and ancient, memories of Moslem persecution. That apparently led to making the “The Innocence of Moslems” (allegedly financed by Copts in Egypt).
In response the Egyptian government issued arrest warrants for seven Copts (including the man believed behind the film) and an American clergyman noted for his anti-Moslem attitudes. All eight are accused of having something to do with the film. This is a largely symbolic gesture, as all those being sought by the police are outside the country. Copts living outside Egypt frequently say unkind things about Egypt and Islam, but these comments are usually ignored inside Egypt. Meanwhile, a senior Pakistani government official has offered $100,000 of his own money for whoever kills the Egyptian-American man responsible for the film.
Islamic terrorism often gets explained away as being a reaction to Western imperialism, or colonialism or simply cultural differences. No one, especially in the Islamic world, wants to admit that the cause of it all is religious fanatics who would rather appear righteous than be righteous.
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September 12, 2012
The real reason for the Cairo and Benghazi attacks
Tim Cavanaugh on the real as opposed to claimed reason for the attacks on American diplomats in Egypt and Libya:
Mohamed al-Zawahiri, brother of al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri, says he called a “peaceful protest” in Cairo as part of the 9/11 anniversary attacks on U.S. embassies that left the U.S. ambassador to Libya dead and the U.S. embassy in Egypt in shambles.
The putative cause of the attack in Cairo was anger over a satirical movie depicting the founder of Islam’s life. The attacks in the adjacent North African countries, both of which last year saw secular autocrats toppled, came on a day commemorating the Zawahiri family’s direct role in coordinated terror attacks that killed more than 3,000 people from more than 60 nations.
[. . .]
But there is no real point in rebutting Zawahiri’s stated claims about a movie. I’m not even sure the movie Innocence of Muslims exists, given that producer Sam Bacile told the Wall Street Journal it had a budget of $5 million, and that doesn’t match up with the production value in Bacile’s trailer. (Bacile’s “100 Jewish donors” seem to be the real victims here.)
The purpose of the attacks in Egypt and Libya was for the Sunni leadership to show it can unleash mob attacks against American diplomatic assets. (There may be some historical exceptions, but it’s more or less axiomatic than mob attacks cannot happen without government approval.) That point has been received by everybody except U.S. State Department employees.
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August 30, 2012
August 29, 2012
QotD: Government funding for the arts “stinks in God’s nostrils”
There’s at least a third reason to stop state funding of the arts, and it’s the one I take most seriously as a literary scholar and writer. In the 17th century, a great religious dissenter, Roger Williams (educated at Cambridge, exiled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony), wrote the first case for total separation of church and state in the English language. Forced worship, said Williams, “stinks in God’s nostrils” as an affront to individual liberty and autonomy; worse still, it subjugated theology to politics.
Something similar holds true with painting, music, writing, video and all other forms of creative expression. Forced funding of the arts — in whatever trivial amounts and indirect ways — implicates citizens in culture they might openly despise or blissfully ignore. And such mandatory tithing effectively turns creators and institutions lucky enough to win momentary favour from bureaucrats into either well-trained dogs or witting instruments of the powerful and well-connected. Independence works quite well for churches and the press. It works even more wonderfully in the arts.
Nick Gillespie, featured guest for “Economist Debates: Arts Funding”, The Economist, 2012-08-29
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August 16, 2012
QotD: Old wines
Some people poo-poo the idea of old wines because they lack the fresh fruit they expect to have in their wines. I for one embrace older wines, if for nothing else you’re tasting a piece of history. Hopefully by now you’ve seen the movie Sideways think back, to Maya and Miles sitting on her porch talking about old wines: “I like to think about the life of wine … How it’s a living thing. I like to think about what was going on the year the grapes were growing; how the sun was shining; if it rained. I like to think about all the people who tended and picked the grapes. And if it’s an old wine, how many of them must be dead by now. I like how wine continues to evolve, like if I opened a bottle of wine today it would taste different than if I’d opened it on any other day, because a bottle of wine is actually alive. And it’s constantly evolving and gaining complexity. That is, until it peaks … And then it begins its steady, inevitable decline.”
One of the oldest wines I can remember drinking was a 1970 Chateau Haut Bailly … it sticks in my mind cause it has special meaning in a couple of ways. It was the first time I had tried a wine from the year of my birth, and two I had it on the occasion of my engagement when my family had gathered around for a dinner to celebrate. I thought there was no better time to show off something old from a great Bordeaux vintage. Most dismissed the brownish liquid in their glass and turned their nose up at the interesting, and admittedly, odd smells emanating from the glass; but I relished in it and more people should learn and understand that if you spent X number of years cooped up in a bottle (in this case some 38 years +) you’d be a little crabby when you emerged too; but with a little time and a little air I’m sure you’d come around — start feeling like a more mature version of your old self … the same can be said for wine.
Michael Pinkus, “Tasting Old Wines from the Chateau”, Ontario Wine Review, 2012-08-16
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