Posts filed under 'Film'
My big Christmas gift to myself came as a result of wandering through the Mystery section of PublicDomainTorrents.com.
While my collection of Sherlock Holmes DVDs are well rounded-out with Brett, Rathbone and others, some of the earliest films have always eluded me, and in particular those of Wontner and Owen as the Master Detective. I did find Wontner’s The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes for $1 in the discount bin at a Wal*Mart, but all three copies they had there were defective, crashing Windows and refusing to be read by either Mac OS X or Linux. So it was a pleasant surprise to trip across four Wontner and Owen films in this torrent archive (the films fell into the public domain years ago), free for download.
The quality is not the greatest, of course –these are films made in the 30’s and these copies are not taken from the masters– but they’re still a great find for me nevertheless. If you’re interested, point your BitTorrent client (I use Azureus) to PDT and catch Reginald Owen in A Study in Scarlet (1933, and bearing no resemblance whatsoever to the novel), and Wontner in The Sign of Four (1932), The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes (1935), and Murder at the Baskervilles (1937, a.k.a., Silver Blaze). There are also a few of the Rathbone/Bruce films in the Mystery section as well, although those are somewhat easier to find elsewhere.
December 29th, 2005
When I heard that the Spielberg was going to remake the War of the Worlds, and heard some early commentators claim (mistakenly, in retrospect) that he was going to remain faithful to the original spirit of the book by H. G. Wells, I was excited. After all, this is the main who put such care and effort into recreating a different time (both physically and psychologically) for Schindler’s List, and Wells’ allegory of humanity’s Empire-building aspirations is as powerful a lesson today as it was over a century ago. Rather than consider Schindler’s List (in which Spielberg had an emotional investment) as a reference, however, perhaps I should have remembered Hook.
Herbert George Wells was like the Shakespeare of science fiction. Not the first, but the earliest person of influence, one whose works have blazed the path for the genre to come. Besides The War of the Worlds, we have The Invisible Man, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Time Machine, The First Men on the Moon, The Days of the Comet, and several other major works of fiction that still stand up today as powerful commentaries on how technology can affect our lives. In The War of the Worlds, he tackled the imperial attitude of British colonialism and expansion, usually to the detriment of native civilisations, and the chilling effects of a “higher” culture’s inherent ignorance of other races and creeds. (And, after all, isn’t this somewhat parallel to events happening in Iraq today?)
This issue is central to the book: the English, secure in their sense of superiority and complacent in their providence, cannot believe that the slow and sluggish Martians pose any threat to them. Think about how British invaders might have looked to natives of Africa and India… scrawny, pale, overdressed soldiers marching slowly shoulder-to-shoulder with bright red coats, a line of walking targets. But, oh, when the fire-power and organistion was brought to bare, things changed. And so the Martians destroyed the infinite complacency of the Londoners who thought themselves invulnerable, who were astonished by the coordinated attack of the three-legged machines with their deadly devices.
Instead of pursuing this allegory, Speilberg instead focuses on Joe Everyman (played by Tom Cruise), an ineffective father surprised by the emergence from beneath the street of alien machines, and whose struggle throughout the movie is to get his children to Boston where their mother now lives. This sets up the special effects extravaganza that is the only reason to watch the film. Humanity succumbs, but not in a moral lesson, but rather to a long series of computer-generated explosions, death rays, disintegrating bodies, and metal tentacles.
Spielberg can do adventure, and do it with aplomb. But this roller-coaster carries none of the wit or keen observations of films like E.T. or the Indiana Jones series. I was actually bored by stretches of this film because I just couldn’t learn to care for the characters.
For better versions, I’d certainly recommend the 1938 Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater broadcast that supposedly caused panic across the nation (which was truer to the original premise of the book, albeit with a complete change in format), and the 1952 film version, which at least was a lot more fun, despite the primitive special effects as compared to today. However, the book still holds up well today. A nice version with Edward Gorey drawings can be found at Amazon, and you can always download the book at Project Gutenberg if you don’t mind reading it on a computer or printing it out.
See War-of-the-Worlds.org for an overview of the many versions of this story, and The History of Mr Wells at the Fortean Times for a great article about his life and influence.
November 23rd, 2005
Anyone who has worked in video/film or larger multimedia projects knows that the tasks of scriptwriting and pre-production are not as easy as they first appear. Now, it’s not just the rigid structure of the script itself which is the only issue — if it were, the simple macros for Word, OpenOffice.org Writer and other word processors would suffice — but it’s also the need to track characters, share the script with others, write production notes, do breakdowns of scenes, characters, props, CGI, special effects, locations, and so on. And if you opt for a professional scriptwriting applications like Final Draft or Movie Magic Screenwriter, you’ll have to forfeit several hundred dollars US for applications that are often buggy, or at least outmoded by modern UI standards. So if you’re a budding screenwriter or a multimedia scripter on a limited budget, what are your options?
A few hours away from me, in the unassuming little provincial capital of Newfoundland named St. John’s (pop. about 120K), there toils a little crew pumping out some high-class software. Their flagship product, a screenwriting and pre-production application called Celtx, is something I’ve kept one eye on for a long while. (Coincidentally, I wasn’t even aware that this was a local project at first.) An Open Source application based on the Mozilla –yes, as in Firefox– code, it’s come a long way in the past year or so. When last I peeked at it, it was a very early version that proved rather slow, bug-ridden, and the cause of much aggravation when doing any degree of writing. But how it’s changed! Now, it’s a little shining star carrying with it hope for all those who have been burned by the unstable and costly Final Draft (or one’s inability to afford it in the first place).
Celtx is a comprehensive software package designed for people who work in the Film, TV, Theatre and New Media industries. It combines full-feature scriptwriting with media rich pre-production support and enables online collaboration. (celtx - Overview)
I’m seen a number of Mozilla-based applications in the past, but this one puts them all to shame. Not only doesn’t it “feel” like a browser in any way, but the functionality is, by far and away, one of the most comprehensive scriptwriting experiences I’ve ever encountered. Besides including a server synchronisation that permits others to see the script, its pre-production breakdown and database system allows you to insert text, graphics, video and audio which are all linked to the salient parts of your script. For example, when you mention a particular location, for example a park, you can have the script link directly into its database where you can keep a picture of the park and some key points to remember about it. Almost anything can be linked into this database, including props, makeup, F/X, production notes, electrics, and so on. In essence, it’s a one-stop shop to take you from writing the script all the way into pre-production — perfect for multimedia use and independent filmmakers.
And since it’s Open Source, it’s free of charge. If you’re a scriptwriter of any type, or dream of writing the great American/Canadian/etc. screenplay, be sure to check out Celtx.
November 21st, 2005