Trollhunter is a Norwegian "found footage" mockumentary looking at a government conspiracy covering up the existence of Trolls in the Norwegian countryside.
The style is a cross between "Blair Witch Project" and "Dark Side of the Moon" (I loved the clip towards the end where the Norwegian PM is talking about trolls impeding the expansion of the Norwegian electricity grid). Three students investigating bear poaching come across a suspicious man (with truly frightening scratches down the side of his vehicle) and decide to follow him. They get more than they bargained for, including a thorough smearing with "troll stench".
Highly recommended if want to watch something different and enjoy horror movies.
I'd noted the parallels in the first episode to Fred Turner's book "From Counterculture To Cyberculture", so I wasn't particularly surprised to see Turner make an appearance in this episode, along with Stewart Brand, and the tracing of these ideas back to Bucky Fuller.
What was new about this episode was the repeating of common misconceptions about "The Limits To Growth" and the strange line of reasoning that seemed to argue that the search for "equilibrium" (ie. a scenario where our overall impact on the environment is trimmed to the point where we don't end up having the population crash as we overwhelm the planet's carrying capacity) that "Limits" undertakes is really arguing for a form of political stasis where no radical change is to be contemplated.
While this may have been a goal of the Technocrats that preceded them, it doesn't ring true for the systems theorists.
Curtis even notes that Jay Forrester and the "Limits" crew explicitly said they weren't considering politics, but discounts this as a form of dishonesty rather than accepting that the book is just outlining scenarios around resource consumption, population and pollution rather than being a political manifesto (which would have been entirely counterproductive).
Where is does veer towards politics (in the section entitled "Transitions to a sustainable system", where it prescribes the changes required to make our global economy sustainable), the practices recommended are both positive and a change from the general status quo today - it doesn't read like a manual for perpetuating elite control and forbidding political change, with the non-technical recommendations including :
* poverty reduction * nonviolent conflict resolution * accurate/unbiased media * “decentralisation of economic power, political influence and scientific expertise” * “stable populations” and “low birth rates” by “individual choice”
Curtis' main point (like Turner's before him) - that the counterculture / hippie / cyberculture ideal of a world without politics is a fantasy - is valid, but he really goes off the rails trying to blame the systems theorists and ecologists for the problems of the world today.
The section about the colour revolutions in eastern europe, in particular, seemed wildly off base - he assumes that this genuinely was a case of leaderless uprising spontaneously organised via network culture - when instead they were orchestrated from the US to expand western influence at the expense of the Russians - and naturally enough faltered once the population realised that their interests weren't really being advanced at all by the changes (just as we'll most likely see with the current "Arab Spring" equivalent).
Moon is an entertaining psychological thriller with a slightly Gattaca'esque feel to it.
The movie is, unsurprisingly, set on the moon, and features Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell. Sam has two weeks left of a three-year stint overseeing the mining of Helium 3 from the far side of the Moon.
Sam longs to see his wife and daughter again, but in the meantime is cared for by an over-protective computer named GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey). Before his stint ends, there is an accident, and when Sam re-awakes he is startled to encounter another Sam…
The movie got great reviews from At The Movies and an impressively high 90% rating at RottenTomatoes - and I've got to say I rate it highly as well, both for the acting and for some of the ideas explored (although I thought the ending was a little weak).
127 Hours was inspired by the true story of Aaron Ralstron, an adventurous young man in his 20's who went on a solo trip through Canyonlands National Park in Utah and, low on water and food, got his arm caught between a boulder and a wall of rock.
Ralstron wrote a book about his experiences (entitled Between a Rock and a Hard Place) and received considerable publicity at the time, so the story wasn't a mystery to me, however given that it was showing at the Open Air Cinema I thought I'd check it out.
While the venue was (as always) awe inspiring, the film itself felt flat - Crikey sums it up:
While 127 Hours impresses on a technical level the film’s bouncy aesthetics and restless energy don’t do its psychological depth any favours. The film lacks the emotional core it desperately needed for the story to resonate. It should have felt inspiring as a triumph over adversity human interest story but, sadly, it doesn’t.
Guy Rundle has a meandering piece of commentary at Crikey looking at the minority governments in the UK and Australia which closes with a note about the cancellations of Tony Blair's planned signing of his auto-biography at Waterstones in London - Faith, hope and clarity? Nah, it’s faith no more.
Desperation and bad faith is the leitmotif of our final contestant, Tony Blair, who has just announced that he will be pulling out of his anticipated huge book signing at Waterstone's on Piccadilly, after a Dublin signing was turned into chaos by protesters.
The Waterstone's signing, with a page of security instructions, was to b a late fixture in the protest calendar; hundreds if not thousands would have turned up to bear witness against this delusional mass murderer one last time. By tonight, Blair must have realised that that was all it would be remembered for. There is already a proliferating campaign to reshelve his portentous work in the "crime" section. Blair's response to the gathering storm: he was cancelling his signing because of the possible presence of British National Party protesters.
Yah, right. Faith gone bad is the word.
Tony Blair figured prominently in Roman Polanski's latest film, "The Ghost Writer", which I saw recently and thoroughly enjoyed.
The movie is based on a novel by Robert Harris, involves an unrepentant former British prime minister who took the UK into the war in Iraq.
It includes thinly disguised portraits of Cherie Blair and the late Robin Cook and floats an interesting theory as to why Blair was so unconditionally supportive of the neoconservative war in the middle east, mentioned glnacingly here in this HuffPo review:
The novel by Harris -- he was a friend of Blair who broke with him over the Iraq War -- is very good. As is the basic story, good enough for me to know the novel well and still enjoy the twists and turns of the film.
Blair, the only Labour Party leader in the history of Britain to win three national elections -- beginning with his Obama-like popular ascension to the office of prime minister in 1997 -- was well on his way to becoming the global statesman of the age before he fatefully threw in with with the seemingly far more conservative Bush/Cheney White House. Together, they invaded Iraq and pursued ruthless tactics in what was called the war on terror.
Which, in the end, left many wondering in astonishment and anger how Blair could have been such a down-the-line, uncritical partner in disastrous policies. And which left Blair himself, struggling to explain, saying that he would have invaded even had he known that the intelligence he'd had spun up to present an imminent threat of weapons of mass destruction was illusory, dodging angry crowds of protesters to testify before an official inquiry into the origins of the Iraq War in late January.
But before that, Blair, long the favorite to become the first president of the European Union, found himself last fall in the same city as Polanski. The director was in Zurich because he was in jail there following his shock arrest on a three decade-old sex charge. Blair was in Zurich to meet with Swiss financial and corporate power brokers to try to save his candidacy for the European presidency.
While Polanski, to the surprise of many, was able to complete the production of The Ghost Writer while incarcerated, Blair's time in Switzerland proved less successful. He delivered a speech to appeal to leaders of the continent's dominant center/right faction, arguing that government intervention into markets should not go too far. But leaders from the right still found him too liberal and leaders from the left could not forgive his tight alliance with Bush and Cheney on Iraq and the war on terror.
Harris's story (he co-wrote the screenplay with Polanski) provides an answer as to why Blair, Adam Lang in the thinly fictionalized version, threw in with Bush and Cheney. It may be outrageous balderdash, but it is quite logical.
And for many, as Blair undoubtedly knows, a logical explanation will do.
Which is why he, along with Polanski, is quite likely a ghost of what he'd been.
"Get Him To The Greek" features Jonah Hill as Aaron Green, as a junior executive at "Pinnacle Records", who is sent by his boss (played by Sean Coombs) to fetch notoriously unreliable British rock star Aldous Snow (Russell Brand) to play an anniversary concert at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles.
Once Aaron reaches London he finds himself trapped in a fairly debauched version of the mis-matched guy travel movie (think "Midnight Run" or "Planes, Trains and Automobiles", but with a lot more gross-out humour involved), as they sample the delights of London, New York, Las Vegas and LA on the way to the gig.
The movie made me laugh out loud more than anything I an remember in recent years and in the aftermath I've decided I've got to get a furry wall for my house.
The ending is a little flat (but I guess mandatory for Hollywood) but definitely worth watching.
Into The Wild is based on Jon Krakauer's 1997 book of the same name, chronicling the adventures of Christopher McCandless. The film was directed by Sean Penn (who also wrote the screenplay).
The movie has a pretty low key, documentary type feel to it, telling the story of McCandless's early adult years and his troubled relationship with his family via a series of flashbacks, interspersed between the story of his venture into the wilds of Alaska, where he lives alone in an abandoned bus, tryig to build up sufficient wilderness skills to be able to survive on his own.
Its an interesting story, albeit a slightly depressing one, and the film is well executed.
Like Gran Torino, "Looking For Eric" is a political fable, though in this case its a socialist tale rather than a libertarian one.
"Eric" tells the tale of embattled Manchester postie (and United fan) Eric, suffering from depression and with 2 broken marriages behind him and 2 slightly troubled teenage boys to look after on his own.
Eric struggles to keep in control of his life when one of his sons gets into trouble with a local gangster, and finds refuge in a phantom Eric Cantona, who materialises out of thin air from time to time to offer him advice.
The film had a number of flashbacks back to highlights (and lowlights) of Cantona's soccer career which brought back pleasant memories of my first stint in the UK - and overall the tale of worker solidarity helping Eric to put his life back together and overcome his gangster problem was quite an uplifting one.
Clint Eastwood's latest movie, "Gran Torino", didn't always get great reviews (although Margaret and David from At The Movies liked it well enough), but I found it a worthwhile and enjoyable film to watch.
In similar fashion to the way "Unforgiven" (Clint's best movie) rehabilitated him as a Western movie maker, "Torino" follows in the footsteps of the "Dirty Harry" movies, but with much more grace.
In this film, Clint plays Walt Kowalski, a retired Detroit auto-worker who has recently been widowed, who lives in a rundown Detroit neighbourhood now populated largely by Hmong refugees.
The film doesn't have the slick production values of Unforgiven, but the acting is high quality and you get a good feel for life in the decaying suburbia of the rust belt.
Walt doesn't much like his new neighbours (or his now remote children and their families) but he finds himself drawn into their world as gang trouble disrupts the lives of the newly arrived family next door.
Like most of Clint's movies, this is a libertarian fantasy of sorts, with one man defying an unpleasant collective and finding a way to overcome them (I was expecting a re-run of the ending of Unforgiven as the movie unfolded, but was pleasantly surprised to see a novel ending). Unlike his other fantasies, in this story the lone hero relies on the state to administer justice in the end, so maybe Clint is mellowing as he reaches the end of his career.
I watched this French documentary on a flight to Perth recently and found it to be quite riveting.
The movie is based on French funambulist Philippe Petit's book, "To Reach the Clouds", and tells the story of a group of people involved in Petit's 1974 high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of New York's World Trade Centre and the preparations needed in order to successfully perform this unauthorised daredevil act.
Petit began his career as a street artist who evolved into a tight-rope walker. He started with the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, moved on to a performance above the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and then eventually achieved his dream of "walking" (and more) between the World Trade Centre Towers.
Some of the most impressive footage is of Petit practicing his act in a field in the countryside, with his friends doing their best to dislodge him from a jury-rigged rope set up and Petit managing to stay aboard no matter what they did.
In some ways the story is a tragedy, given the comedown suffered by all the participants once they had achieved their goal - I found it quite moving, and highly recommend seeing it if you get a chance.
Judging by the ratings at Rotten Tomatoes I'm not alone in being impressed by the film, with all 136 critics who reviewed the film giving it a thumbs up.
Petit is still an active wire walker today, and has long held an ambition to walk across the grand canyon - however getting the financial backing to do this has been one challenge he hasn't been able to successfully overcome.
Wikipedia has a good description of the walk between the towers itself:
Petit was first inspired while he sat in his dentist's office in Paris in 1968. He came upon an article on the as-yet unbuilt towers, along with an illustration of the model. He then became obsessed with the towers, collecting articles on them whenever possible. Petit also traveled to New York on several occasions to make first-hand observations. Since the towers were still under construction, Philippe and an amateur photographer went up in a helicopter to do aerial photographs of the WTC.
Using his own observations and photographs, Petit was able to make a scale model of the towers to help him figure out the rigging he needed to prepare for the upcoming wirewalk. Petit made fake identification cards for himself and his collaborators (claiming that they were contractors that were installing an electrified fence on the roof) in order to gain access to the towers. Prior to this, Petit sneaked into the towers several times, hiding on the roof and other areas in the unfinished towers, in order to get a sense of what type of security measures were in place.
To make it easier to sneak into the buildings, Petit carefully observed the clothes worn by construction workers and the kinds of tools they carried, as well as the clothing of businessmen so that he would blend in with them when he tried to enter the buildings. He also noted what time the workers arrived and left, so he could determine when he would have roof access. He once even claimed that he was with a French architecture magazine wanting to interview the workers on the roof. The Port Authority allowed Petit to conduct the interviews, but the real reason he wanted to be up on the roof was to make more observations. He was once caught by a police officer on the roof, and his hopes to do the high wire walk were dampened, but he eventually regained the confidence to proceed.
Petit and his crew were able to ride in a freight elevator to the 104th floor with their equipment the day before the walk, and were able to store this equipment just nineteen steps from the roof. In order to pass the cable across the void, Petit and his crew decided to use a bow and arrow. They first shot across a fishing line, and then passed larger and larger ropes across the space between the towers until they were able to pass the 450-pound steel cable across. Cavalettis (guy lines) were used to stabilize the cable and keep the swaying of the wire to a minimum. For the first time in the history of the Twin Towers, they were joined. The 'artistic crime of the century' took six years of planning, during which he learned everything he could about the buildings, taking into account such problems as the swaying of the towers because of wind and how to get the steel walk cable across the 140-foot (43 m) gap between the towers (at a height of 1,368 ft (417.0 m)).
On August 7, 1974, shortly after 7:15 a.m., Petit stepped off the South Tower and onto his 3/4" 6×19 IWRC steel cable. The 25-year-old Petit made eight crossings between the mostly-finished towers, a quarter mile above the sidewalks of Manhattan, in an event that lasted about 45 minutes. During that time, in addition to walking, he sat on the wire, gave knee salute and, while lying on the wire, dialogued with a gull circling above his head.
Port Authority Police Department Sgt. Charles Daniels, who was dispatched to the roof to bring Petit down, later reported his experience:
I observed the tightrope 'dancer'—because you couldn't call him a 'walker'—approximately halfway between the two towers. And upon seeing us he started to smile and laugh and he started going into a dancing routine on the high wire....And when he got to the building we asked him to get off the high wire but instead he turned around and ran back out into the middle....He was bouncing up and down. His feet were actually leaving the wire and then he would resettle back on the wire again....Unbelievable really....[E]verybody was spellbound in the watching of it.
Petit was warned by his friend on the South tower that a police helicopter would come to pick him off the wire. A rain had begun to fall and Petit decided he had tempted the gods long enough, so he decided to give himself up to the police waiting for him on the South tower. He was arrested once he stepped off the wire. The police – provoked by his taunting behaviour while on the wire – handcuffed him behind his back and roughly pushed him down a flight of stairs. This he later described as the most dangerous part of the stunt.
His audacious high wire performance made headlines around the world. When asked why he did the stunt, Petit would say "When I see three oranges, I juggle; when I see two towers, I walk."
