Photo © 1997 Sony Pictures Classics/Sandcastle 5 Productions

Rudolph's screenplay positions its characters--their backstories, personalities and trajectories--to align with patterns and ironies rather than actually do any useful work on the matter of illuminating marital decline. Lucky, for instance, is a genial philanderer, and not the biological father of his runaway daughter with Phyllis; ergo, he becomes the perfect suitor to adulterously inseminate Marianne, whose own husband Jeffrey, an intractable creep, frigidly spurns her wifely entreaties. Jeffrey--successful, and all of twelve years old--is prematurely disenchanted with his marriage, and his attentions drift in the direction of Phyllis. She responds to his voiced desire for "fine [aged] wine" and he, in turn, responds to her triple desires for diversion, novelty and adulation. Phyllis is the enthralling Mrs. Robinson, filtered through a frothier idiom, to Jeffrey's preppy, starchy Benjamin. She is ostensibly motivated, at the core, by sadness and regret, but those somber dimensions come to feel less like psychological underpinning and more like artificial incentives for flurries of fancy. What is more, there is too much complementary flight and self-contentment in Julie Christie's performance to make plausible that Phyllis would have ever settled into marriage (and with that guy). The glib unruliness of Christie's performance--the most lauded in the film--is an index of Rudolph's whole lassitude here as a filmmaker: having found a partner in filmic crime to invigorate his turgid screenplay, he indulges her excesses when he ought to have put the reins on them.

Though Lucky and Jeffrey coalesce into an unsubtle contrast of masculinity, Phyllis and Marianne are birds of a feather. To wit, Phyllis' ennui and gliding egotism are meant to show how Marianne's voracious personality might take to many more years of trophy housewifery. Let it be said that illuminations of that kind are dim, and betray a limited understanding of the opposite sex on the part of scenarist Rudolph. Characterization in the film is wretchedly poor, with everything held in an engineered equipoise.

Photo © 1997 Sony Pictures Classics/Sandcastle 5 Productions

Afterglow aspires to real heft, but never builds any stakes for its characters, who are left to act as agents of causality in a series of tedious exploits. Each role archetype agent is brought to life, by force of personality, through the talents of a four-temperament quartet: the younger pair by Johnny Lee Miller and Lara Flynn Boyle; the elder, by Nick Nolte and, as mentioned above, Julie Christie. "Talent" finds its loosest usage here: despite the awards one of them collected at the time of release, these performers range from innocently awful (Miller and Boyle) to complacently so (Nolte and Christie), with only Boyle sounding the occasional ring of truth. The camera circles them like a probe: its empty focus emptying them of any possible depth, and its limited expression limiting their reach.

Photo © 1997 Sony Pictures Classics/Sandcastle 5 Productions

The film itself ought to have a certain amount of reach, what with its braiding together of drama, comedy and romance (genre-fusing tends to expand a film's appeal). One's mileage may vary, but it's difficult to conceive of this as appealing to anyone other than people in Rudolph's own peer-group (that's the framing perspective it claims). It plays like a jazzy old tune uninspiredly remixed by the originating artist many decades past their prime, which is an indication of failure for a film that attempts to unlock the valves of "that old feeling" in order to find new and vital channels for it. Sadly, everything perishes in the barrenness of Rudolph's lounging pace and tone-deaf, Altmanesque style.

Photo © 1997 Sony Pictures Classics/Sandcastle 5 Productions

By the by, the story is set right here in Montreal. The choice of Montreal as a setting is too curious--this is an American film, after all--to be insignificant, but Rudolph's rendition of Montreal is far too anonymous and incidental for its backdrop presence to carry any observable significance. If one were to venture a guess at the intention behind the choice, one might point to the notion of Montreal as the Paris of North America. For his contemporary romantic comedy, Rudolph may have sought the synchronous splendours of two worlds: the metropolitan new-world he knows and the glistening haut-monde that we all know to be the world's Romantic capital. The intention, whatever it was, has yielded indifferent results, and potential is largely wasted. By way of compensation, the ritzy confines of the Ritz-Carlton see their fair share of screen time, serving as the site of critical, climactic revelations between the characters.

Rudolph would follow this up with the The Secret Lives of Dentists (2002), a much worthier film about troubled matrimony. As a storyteller, Rudolph brought to that tale precisely what, in hindsight, was missing from Afterglow: real angles and depths, and genuine laughs. A fine if not perfect film, Secret Lives left me with a lot to think about. After viewing Afterglow, the cinephile and Montrealite in me were simply left glowering.

The Island of Montreal is a wonderful cultural capital, harboring a multitude of centers, groups, institutes and special events organized around the medium of film. Montreal's vast film-cultural arena, favorable to the cause of cinephilia, can be entered into from any number of venues. Those looking to mingle among the cinematically inclined can join the Cinéclub Film Society, which meets at Concordia University's downtown campus. Those eager to experience classics as they were meant to be experienced can attend revivals at the Cinéma du Parc, one of the city's arthouse theatres. Those with an empiric's curiosity about the production of film can take guided tours of La Cité du Cinéma, our country's largest film production facility. Those with a taste for the fresh and exotic can obtain a "passeport" and arrange to see new releases at our annual International Film Festival, which is held in late August/early September. The list goes on and on.

Collecting is not a perfectly linear process, but in this case it involves three clear steps: first, the collection is planned out; then, purchases are made; lastly, those purchases are classified and shelved. You will cycle through these steps as you edit your plans, make new purchases, and rethink or reconfigure your classification system and shelving.

- Glossary -
alternate cut: a version of a film in which material has been edited in or edited out; the term is relative, and usually refers to cuts that are not compromised by regulation
blind buy: a home video purchase made sight unseen
domestic release: the original theatrical release of a film in its country of origin
transfer: featured media of a particular print quality (e.g. the Criterion Collection's famous digital transfers)

- You will require:

• Disposable funds
• Internet access
• Available shelf space
• A collector's devotion

- STEP 1: PLANNING -
Begin by plotting out your desired collection with some kind of list. First consider what you already own, as that will help point you in the direction of any holes that might need filling. For instance, you might be one Godfather away from a complete trilogy, or wish to part with an outdated version of a trusty film book and replace it with the newer edition. Furthermore, start thinking about the manner in which you will classify your developing collection, as this will factor into the compilation, the growth, and the reading of any "to buy list" you use as you add to the collection--not to mention, it prime you for the actual classification of your collection further down the line. With a (preliminary) attempt at some kind of orderly classification, you will find it easier to pick out and prioritize your "to buy" entries. You will also find it easier to go about adding to your collection in a balanced and measured way.

Consider joining Film Aficionado, a website that allows members to catalogue their changing and expanding home video collection with the aid of useful folders (e.g. film "wish list"), useful figures (e.g. the number of films in your collection directed by a particular filmmaker), and genre breakdowns. Others apps and programs, such as Collectorz Movie Collector, can be used for the purposes of cataloguing a film collection; however, they are paid downloads, and an account with Film Aficionado is free.

The films you list will likely far outnumber the books, and some cinephiles, by their very nature, are too visual to bother with books at all. However, worthy film books are thick with dense material that will help broaden your film perspectives and enrich your film-reading faculties; ergo, they are handy to have at your side. Book collections of course vary in accordance with individual film interests, but there are certain books that, for reasons of quality and scope, are essential.

Essential film volumes:

• The Oxford History of World Cinema (ed. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith)
• The Oxford Dictionary of Film Studies (by Annette Kuhn and Guy Westwell)
• The New Biographical Dictionary of Film (by David Thomson)
• Understanding Movies (by Louis Giannetti)

- STEP 2: PURCHASING -
Put what you have plotted into action. Shop around. Jump at the opportunity to spend less and acquire more.

Online shopping facilitates price comparison, stimulates blind buying, and aids in the procuration of titles and releases that are out-of-print. To these ends, one of the best sites available to you is Amazon: it has a "marketplace" through which small and private businesses put their merchandise, new and used alike, up for sale. Be wary, mind you, when buying used items, in adherence to a principle of economy, as your thrift could prove self-defeating. The condition of used items varies, usually from "Acceptable" to "Like New"--unfortunately, the purchase of anything below "Like New" quality is generally a gamble.

Caution to Collectors: When buying from sellers not fulfilled by the site, always peruse their customer comment history to make sure that they can be trusted. Items are returnable, but the process is inconveniencing, and the seller must first approve the return. Also, never buy books from marketplace sellers as it is too risky, and the price of shipping & handling is usually quite steep.

A film collection is naturally something to which you add, but you will also remove from it and, more importantly, update it. You might someday choose to start from scratch and update the format of your entire collection, as many did when DVD made VHS obsolete, but there is also ample room for updating within the bounds of your chosen home video format. Consider improved transfers, alternate cuts, and special edition releases, as these all have their benefits. Collector's editions of films, for one, are decked with special features that are privileging in a variety of ways (e.g. the commentaries of certain luminaries that provide insight). Bear in mind that you will be more satisfied with your film collection if it carries a little extra weight from title to title--that is to say, if its constituents have more to offer.

Caution to Collectors: Do not overspend or otherwise overindulge in the building of your collection. Collecting is a hobby, but can become a compulsion.

- STEP 3: CLASSIFYING & SHELVING -
Devise a way of categorizing your collection in preparation for shelving. You needn't reinvent the Dewey Decimal System, but it is in your best interests to conceive something consistent and considered. Managing and navigating within the collection will be a lot less daunting, especially as it grows to number in the hundreds. It will also look a lot more presentable. Your task will be easier will be a lot easier if you started thinking about this at the planning stage.

Suggested categories of classification:

In the interest of following a universally applicable system, and avoiding overlapping classifications, consider using domestic release dates--or possibly the alphabet, which is advisable when arranging the books in your collection.

Next, display your classified collection on available shelf space. Do not fuss about putting everything in one spot, especially if you have broken the collection down by way of classification. Unitary dispersals of shelving keep everything within reach, which is practical. As you will have already expended, and continue to expend, a great deal of money on the collection itself, consider using your shelves as stacking compartments to maximize space and avoid the need to construct more shelves.

On a final note, you are advised to keep a repository separate from your main shelves in which the items blind bought can be stowed away. Collectors sometimes find that certain titles are too embarrassing to display, and a hidden repository is useful in this way as well.

Collectors Strongly Cautioned: Remember that a great collection is a prized commodity, and more importantly, a private one. When your collection becomes a lending library, its very integrity is put in jeopardy. If so inclined, keep to a consortium of trustworthy people when lending things out.

While assessing the audience of the 1973 film Day for Night, mordant film critic Pauline Kael reached deep into her arsenal of coinages and hauled out "movie-struck. All claws retracted, my respect for film critics runs very deep, and I admit unreservedly to being one of the movie-struck. I share with the medium of cinema a history and ongoing relationship that, mind you, is the subject of a decidedly uncinematic life-story. As a greatly contradictory individual with a particular outlook on people and behaviour, I can attest to various powers of the cinema--to shape, to illumine, to influence, to move.

Before it welded me into a mess of contradictions, cinema was merely a cultural product that struck my fancy. My most prized possession as a young'un was a library of VHS tapes, and all of my allowances were spent on movie going. I could, for the sake of convenience, attempt to isolate an instance of revelation in which it became clear that film would be the greatest and most enriching passion of my young life, but like the film reel that breaks a celluloid moment up into a series of frames, that wouldn't be possible.

Comfortably under cinema's thrall, I entered adolescence and slid into social reclusion. (This maladaptive phase, I'm sorry to report, has yet to pass.) Film was my only close friend--pardon the anthropomorphic attribution--during those years, and exposed me to many of the experiences I was missing out on in my real life. I can trace all of the complexities and contradictions I've manifested back to this years-long case of voluntary isolation and indirect experience: my dual impulses towards pretension and self-deprecation; my hopeful, quixotic disposition and my dispiriting pessimism; my singularly self-protective instincts and my often self-destructive habits; my stoicism and my temperamental disposition; and so forth.

Much to my retrospective displeasure, I was rather a crude person before this adolescent phase--when I discovered quality, challenging films. Of particular note as a movie experience that forever changed me is Ingmar Bergman's Persona, a poetic opus about two women, one a modest nurse and the other a female actor of some repute, whose identities seemed to converge--in ways that, true to form, are difficult to explain prosaically--over the course of the narrative. The film was an eighth-grade discovery and, speaking a language well beyond simple words and images, it set me down the path of cinephilia. With two characters that in their separateness each corresponded to one of the halves of the personality I was to develop--the aloof actress, who assumed personae and absorbed experiences at one remove, and the unguarded, somewhat self-deprecating nurse who had truly lived--Persona had a great deal to say about the general plastics of identity: malleable as identity is to the vicissitudes of space, time and mind. I regret having discovered this peak of filmmaking so early on, but it equipped me with a useful yardstick for future viewing.

So, yes, I'm movie-struck, though I prefer the term cinephilic. To some, filmic dramatization may seem little more than a safe and simulated version of experience, but for better or worse it has shaped me: I've seen all manner of crisis and tragedy; I've travelled the world, in luxury and in poverty; I've had blessed romances and likewise a few ill-fated ones; I've trotted the rainbow of human emotions along its sweetest and its bitterest strands; I've stood witness to both healing and injury; and I've come away from it all with a richness of individuality, imperfect and inharmonious though it may be. High praise indeed, and there's still more to give: the movies also raised me. If I have any values, any empathy, it's all courtesy of the movies. I see my relationship with the movies, from its beginnings as a passionate fling, continuing for a good long while.

This movie is allegedly about the rise, fall, and re-rise of Steven Jobs. It starts with him as a jerky young man, and progresses until he is a jerky older man. In the spirit of full disclosure, I must admit that I only watched the first twenty minutes of this film. I feel that this was more than enough. You would too. This movie stinks. Don't watch it.

Let me explain... 

Movie Jobs is one of the most unlikeable characters I've ever seen in a film. At least Caligula was nice to his horse. Movie Jobs casually stabs everybody he meets in the back without the least shred of remorse. And with the rushed pace of the film, the story feels like it's jumping from one stabbing to another. You never get a sense of him as a person, just as a remorseless backstabbing machine. The story starts with him in college. He meets a girl sitting in the park doing a caligraphy assignment for class. He shows an interest in what she's doing. They have sex. He takes half her stash of acid. Then he's in the caligraphy class sitting one desk in front of her, completely oblivious to her or the pained, angry expression on her face. And, until the point I turned off the movie, this is how all his relationships go. Friends, parents, girlfriend (not the caligraphy girl, she's never heard from again), co workers, everybody is there for Movie Jobs to step on. If you're here to get some insight into Jobs as a person, you're in the wrong place. The alternative is that you're here to view this as a historical document, to see what happened.

This movie is as true to history as Paul W.s. Anderson's "The Three Muskateers" was to its source novel. And if you haven't seen it, Milla Jovovitch does bullet-time kung fu while steampunk airships do battle in the sky. (Dumas would be proud)

About 19 minutes into the movie, there's a scene where Steve Jobs is explaining to Steve Wozinak why the computer Woz just invented is so important.

I could end the review right here.

This is like somebody explaining to Jimi Hendrix how important his guitar playing is. No, scratch that. This is like having a scene in a movie about the history of the Beatles where John Lennon teaches George Harrison how to play guitar, when in fact George taught John how to tune one. According to Wikipedia (but I've heard) Wozniak was given an early draft of the script to read. "He read it as far as he 'could stomach it and felt it was crap.'" My guess is he made it about as far as I did.

This is where I turned off the movie. A bit more disclosure here: I have a B.A. in Computer Science and I'm also a bit of a computer history wonk. I have loads of books and movies about the history of computers. I was offended by how wrong this movie got things.

So let's watch this instead. It's a 2 hour discussion by several of the people portrayed in the movie.

One more thing...

Here are some GOOD movies/documentaries you should track down if you're interested in the computer industry and the unusual people who started it.

Pirates Of Silicon Valley

1999. Starring Anthony Michael Hall as Bill Gates and Noah Wyle as Steve Jobs.

Covering roughly the same time period as jOBS, it shows the rise of both Apple and Microsoft in an entertaining and informative way. Some minor points are changed, in the movie Microsoft chased after IBM when in truth it was the other way around, but it get way more things right than wrong. And Wyle's Steve Jobs was so accurate that Jobs invited him to come to a Macworld presentation to pretend to be him for a few minutes on stage, then Jobs would come out and "critize" him.

Micro Men

2009. Starring Alexander Armstrong as Sir. Clive Sinclair and Martin Freeman as Chris Curry.

This is what was happening in England around that time. It follows the top british computer manufacturers as they come to blows (literally) during the English computer boom of the early 1980's. Very interesting film.

Unfortunately it hasn't been released on home video, even in England. Horray for youtube

Triumph of The Nerds

1996. Documentary. Written and hosted by Robert X. Cringely. 

An amusing and informative documentary that uses interviews with many of the pivotal figures in the history of "modern" computers (1970-1995) to tell a story that's way better than jOBS. It's also amusing for the time it was made. They casually mention that Jobs has made a fortune thanks to his "stake in an animation studio". Toy Story was less than a year old. This is also before Jobs made his triumphant return to Apple.

As Steve Wozinak said on his website, "It was one of the best shows ever created of that kind. Everyone has the same opinion, so why ask me? I'm not a history expert and couldn't tell you what it missed or got wrong, but it seemed extremly thorough and insightful."

There was a semi-sequel to this documentary called "Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview". When the documentary was originally put together, they interviewed Steve Jobs for about an hour about his history and his legacy. When Jobs died, the producers of the documentary found an archive copy of the interview. Unfortunately, the audio quality is abysmal. There is a constant hissing noise that could easily be removed by any sound editing software. But if you want an hour of undiluted Steve Jobs, here it is.

Note: This article borrows heavily from the long-time research done by August Ragone, Steve Ryfle and Ed Godziszewski and David Kalat (as well as The Kaijucast podcast). Gentlemen, we salute you (with floppy rubber claws). Also, for convenience, I will be using the name "Godzilla", rather than the original japanese "Gojira". My deepest apologies (and sympathies) if this offends you.

As we approach the May 2014 of the latest American re-interpretation of "Japan's Favorite Mon-Star", we figured it would be a good time to look back to the beginning... 60 years ago to the original 1954 Godzilla. And appropriately enough for giant monster, it began with a giant problem...

GODZILLA: King Of The (Rubber Suit) Monsters

It's the spring of 1954, and movie producer Tomoyuki Tanaka is the one with the problem. For the past while he has been spearheading a project to make "Beyond The Glory", a big budget epic which he planned to film in Indonesia.  Unfortunately for him, the country had blocked the film from being made. In World War 2, Japan was (shall we say) unpleasant to the countries it tried to invade (including Indonesia). There is still a lot of animosity now, nearly 70 years after the end of WWII, so you can imagine what it was like only nine years since. 

So Toho Studios (Tanaka's employer) was stuck without an big budget event film for the year. He needed a good idea, and he needed it fast. In Stephen King's book "On Writing", he talks about how new ideas are created when two separate ideas smash together. Tanaka knew that one of the most successful movies from last year was "The Beast From 20000 Fathoms", an action packed film about a dinosaur revived by a bomb test that goes on a rampage in New York City and dies at an amusement park. 

Radiation and monsters...

It goes without saying that Japan was, and is, the only country where atomic bombs were used offensively on it. In Japan, radiation wasn't science fiction but real serious issue. He also knew about a recent tragedy where a fishing boat wandered too close to an US atomic bomb test and got dosed with radiation.

Tragedy...

As Mr. King might put it, "POW!"

What about a serious drama about a bomb test that unleashes a creature that goes on a rampage? The creature as metaphor for... whatever you want it to. The effects of unrestrained technology. The creature becoming a personification of the bomb itself. And how do you defeat such a creature? What are the ethical issues in creating worse and worse weapons? The story potential was limitless.

Tanaka knew he had his new event movie.

He also must have known henow had an unusual new problem: how to make it.

At this point in the history of film, "giant monster" movies of any kind were pretty rare. You could count all the ones made in America on the fingers on one hand, and the Japanese ones on the fingers on one foot. And so, like the old man in The Seven Samurai (which also came out in 1954), he needed to assemble his team.

First he needed a director. A serious director.

A Serious Director:

Ishirō Honda, was a director of serious dramas about serious issues. In addition, he also directed several movies about WWII. These movies required complicated special effects shots at a time where other Japanese directors considered special effects shots to be "cheating". And he had seen the aftermath of the bombing in Hiroshima first hand. A perfect fit.

But a giant monster movie without a giant monster isn't much of a movie (unless you count Cloverfield). Tanaka would need a veritable movie wizard to make this film happen.

The Wizard of F/X

Enter Eiji Tsuburaya, possibly the only special effects artist in the world to be condemned as a war criminal (albeit incorrectly). During the war, the Japanese film industry was pumping out propaganda film just as the US film industry was. For one of these films, Tsuburaya recreated the attack on Pearl Harbor using miniature special effects. When the war was over and the Americans were occupying Japan, they found the film. The effects were so good that they assumed that the movie was genuine war footage. And if this Tsuburaya guy who "created" them must have really got them through some secret evil means from the government itself. Perhaps he was even a spy of some kind? He wasn't, of course. What he was, was crazy about special effects. He had already made 30 special effects movies in his career before Godzilla came along. He also had a print of King Kong in his personal collection. 

With the visual side of the film in place, Tanaka now needed somebody to take care of the audio side. 

The Music Man

Akira Ifukube was the other member of the triumvirate that Tanaka put together. An award winning classical composer, he drifted into movie compositions and would eventually work on over 250 movies over his career. And in Ifukube, Tanaka got an unexpected bonus to the sound effects department. When nobody could figure out how to make an epic roar for Godzilla, he solved the problem with leather glove rubbing against the strings of a contrabass. Incidentally, May 31 of this year (2014) would have been his 100th birthday.

With his core team set they could now begin making the movie. And since that story is so long that whole books could be written about it (and have), so I'm going to skip to the end. How did they do?

Godzilla's Legacy

First, this group kept making Godzilla movies (as well as other science fiction films) for Toho for the next 20 years. Eventually, between 1954 and 2004, 28 Godzilla films will be made. (I've listed them below).

It has also lead to an army of toys and model kits.

From Amazon.com: The Godzilla Cake!

There's also the song from Blue Oyster Cult:

And of course theres the mountain of Godzilla clones from Gamera to Pacific Rim.

And the new film that kicked off this article in the first place

How can I bring some Godzilla into my life?

As the heroic scientist in Godzilla 2000 says, "there's a little godzilla in all of us." But if you want to own the movies, nearly every one has been relased on DVD or Blu-Ray (some with new editions to capitalize on the new film) If you want a really good deal on Godzilla, pick up "The Godzilla Collection" at amazon for $21. It includes

• Godzilla (1954) (both the Japanese and American versions),
• Godzilla Raids Again (1955),
• Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964),
• Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (1964),
• Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965),
• All Monsters Attack (1969), and
• Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975).

Each film has a commentary track from a noted Godzilla expert, as well as mini documentaries on various elements of the making of the films.

And if you like those, you might want to pick up the japanese giant monster double feature "Rodan / War Of The Gargantuas". It also includes the fantastic documentary "Bringing Godzilla down to size". During the 2012 Oscars, this nobody had some nice things to say about the Gargantuas movie when he talked about his first movie memory:

So, here's a list of the Godzillas, along with how much you can expect to pay for them on Amazon.

And, uh, yeah. Apparently there was some sort of American movie that came out in 1998 that was calling itself Godzilla. It's better known to the fans as GINO (Godzilla In Name Only).

BREAKING GODZILLA NEWS!

August Ragone is reporting on his website, a pile of the Sony Godzilla films will be released in May on Blu-Ray as double features. 

• GODZILLA VS. KING GHIDORAH (1991) & GODZILLA VS. MOTHRA (1992)
• GODZILLA VS. MECHAGODZILLA II (1993) & GODZILLA VS. SPACE GODZILLA (1994)
• GODZILLA VS. DESTOROYAH (1995) & GODZILLA VS. MEGAGUIRUS (2000)
• GODZILLA: TOKYO SOS (2003) & GODZILLA FINAL WARS (2004)

There's no word on what special features (if any) there will be on the disks, or whether they will be in English or the original Japanese. 

*Diamanda Hagan is a force of nature that occasionally reviews movies when not ruling over the free peoples of Haganistan with an iron fist. You can find her stuff here: http://diamandahagan.wordpress.com/ . All hail Hagan!

Now I'm sitting here talking to myself... that's chaos theory!

"This is rumour control. Here are the facts." - Alien 3

This article, as are most of my articles on this area of the website, has been written as part of a professional writing course I am taking at Concordia University, Montreal. Lurking in the course outline, like Cthulhu napping in Ryleh, was "The Interview Assignment". And suddenly, without warning (other than the course outline but who reads those things?) the stars were right and The Interview Assignment came lumbering across the landscape directly towards us. It was suggested that since I have an interest in DVD collecting (creeping toward 2000 movies) I should interview somebody who collects movies. Unfortunately I don't know anyone else who collects. I had nobody to interview. I was all prepared to kiss those marks good bye and hope I didn't bring down the class average too much when the teacher suggested I interview myself.

I can do that.

Before we get into the text of the interview I should say that the title is a quote from Jurassic Park. Jeff Goldblum is using an explanation of chaos theory to hit on Laura Dern when suddenly everybody runs off to see a dinosaur, leaving Goldblum alone and talking to himself. And alternate title for the piece might have come from Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side" from his "Take No Prisoners" live album where instead of singing it he does a 14 minute monologue about himself and the history of the song: "Me and my several selves discuss it at night..."

Reporter: Hello

Eric: Hello.

Reporter: So, Who are you?

Eric: Uh, well.. my name is Eric Cough Cough Hrumph. And I, uhm, I collect movies.

Reporter: Eric...?

Eric: Eric Cough Cough Hrumph. It's Lithuanian.

Reporter: Ah, ok. So, how long have you been a movie collector?

Eric: Hmm. Uhm, twenty, maybe 25 years?

Reporter: And, what's the first movie you bought?

Eric: Hmm, let's see. It's a toss-up between the Star Wars Trilogy, or Gorgo.

Reporter: Gorgo? Wasn't that Leonidas's wife in 300?

Eric: Maybe? But the Gorgo I'm talking about is this British giant monster movie.

There's this giant dinosaur like thing rampaging around rural Ireland. And it's captured. They bring it into to London to put into a zoo, and then its mom comes after it, and it's mom's 200 feet tall and starts knocking over buildings and stuff. Apparently, Steven Spielberg wanted to remake it. The story of a mother dinosaur looking for her baby dinosaur, what could be more Speilbergian. But then he decided to make Jurassic Park instead.

Reporter: Was this VHS, DVD, Laserdisc?

Eric: These were VHS's actually. I never collected laserdiscs. Didn't have the money for laserdiscs then. Way outside of my budget. No, these were VHS's.

Reporter: So, why do you collect movies?

Eric: It's probably some sort of... disorder, actually. An OCD sort of thing? Part of it is wanting to keep a record of things. Part of its just liking complete sets of things.

Reporter: Yeah, But it's already out there. In stores. You bought it from a store, you know? It's not like you're really saving anything because it's out there in the public domain anyway. Not "Public Domain," but it's out there. So, what are you saving?

Eric: Well. I'm not sure what you'd call it... but, it's saving things from "Lucas Syndrome". Heh, or maybe "1984-ization". 

The classic example is Star Wars. The version of Star Wars you can get on VHS is different from the version you can get on DVD. And I don't mean the whole "Han Shot First" thing, although that's part of it. But, even if you want... when the trilogy was first was re-released in the "Special Edition" before the prequels came out ... they had all these dandy new computer effects. You know, Han shooting first, new Jabba, stuff like that. But when they re-released them on DVD, they played with them again. So you can't even get on VHS... on DVD the version... the "mangled" version version you saw in theaters.

(Top: Jabba in the theatrical special edtion. Below: Jabba in the DVD special edition)

(Image courtesy of roadto7.blogspot.ca)

You have to get a re-mangled mangled version of the mangled version that was in theaters. The only place you can see the original mangled version of it is on VHS. And if you don't want that well then you have to go back to an earlier version of the VHS, or this crappy version Lucas released on DVD that's kind of lousy looking.

So as long as I have it, there's proof of it. I guess.

Here's another one. Here's two words that strike fear into the hearts of Sci Fi fans: "Highlander 2".

When Highlander 2 first came out in theaters, somebody thought it would be a really brilliant idea that the Highlanders should be aliens. That's why they're immortal, because they're aliens. When they released it on DVD they cut out the alien bit 'cause it pissed people off so much. So if you want to see the original theatrical version of it you have to go back to the VHS, you can't find it on DVD, even though they've released 4 or 5 different versions of the DVD, each one slightly modified.

That's kind of it.

Reporter: Ok. So, how do you feel about digital copies vs physical copies of movies?

Eric: Digital. Uhh... Like the horse says: "Nosir, I don't like it."

The problem I have with digital copies... there's two things...There's actually... heh. There's not two, there's many!

There's... I live in Canada. If I want to watch a high-def version of a thing online, streaming, it's going to eat up a chunk of my download bandwidth for the month. (SIRENS in the background) I can only download 75 gigabytes (GB) month, and that's because I upgraded. Last year I could only download 60GB a month. And you're talking about a movie that's 3GB, so that's 1/20th of my downloads for month. Well, so what? 1/20th? That doesn't sounds like much. But that's more than 2 days allotment of download. I mean, if I have 60GB of download, that's roughly 2GB a day. If I'm blowing 4 of that on a movie, well then that's one day of downloading I can't make and that's for one movie. So, it's streaming I don't like. The downloading eats up my bandwidth. I don't like that.

I don't like that... Let's say I buy the rights to having... the digital rights to download it and keep it. Well, there's nothing to stop the people who I bought it from, assuming it got some rights protection on it, from taking it away from me any time they want. The most famous example is when Amazon tried to release a digital version of the book "1984" (ironically). And, unfortunately they hadn't made... there was some sort of a rights issue and apparently Amazon did not have the rights to sell an electronic version of it. So one day people turn on their Kindles and find out "hey, 1984 is gone!" They'd been refunded, but they could just walk in and yank it out of your system. Or deny you the rights to watch it.

So, I don't like that. My physical copy here, I mean I have... (I say "I mean" a lot!) ... I've got my copies of Star Wars. George Lucas is not going to kick down my door and take 'em back from me. I've got my Star Trek things. J J Abrams is not going to kick down my door and take 'em back from. They are mine.

Also... the versions that they have online like that usually they don't have the special features. And I like special features. I like the behind the scenes stuff, even if it's really a processed, homogenized, cleaned up version of the behind the scenes stuff I still like it. Like... Battlefield Earth.

Battlefield Earth is this really really really bad science fiction movie. It was actually filmed in Montreal, so there's something we should be embarassed about. And, it's about these giant hairy monsters that come down from space take over the earth because they're capitalists. And, a thousand years after they've taken over we finally decide to get up off our butts and throw them out. And, the problem with the movie.. well the biggest problem, ignoring the plot and terrible acting, the whole movie is shot at angle. The camera is literally tilted off to one side. One side is lower than the other. Now, this normally this is called a "Dutch Angle", and they're used very sparingly in films and it usually is supposed to denote a change in a character's perspective on the world. Unfortunately, this guy... the director of the film decided to put the Dutch angle in every. Single. Shot. And it looks stupid.

We're the villains. Take us seriously. Please?

As one reviewer of the film put it, "The director knows that the great film makers of the world use Dutch angles, he just doesn't know why." It turns out this is almost literally true, because in the commentary track, which he didn't mention in any interview or anything and it's only in the commentary track, he talks about why he used these angles. He says he was trying to evoke the image of a comic book. Now, comic books try to have dramatic angles for their scenes. And they're usually down low, looking up, at an angle, kind of the thing. And that was what he was trying to accomplish here. He failed, but at least you know what he was trying to do. He wasn't an idiot. He wasn't just running along, doing whatever popped into his head. He had a plan. It was a stupid plan, but he had a plan.

And you get that kind of stuff from the special features.

And also, I just like having physical media... It's almost decorative. It's like, when you'd walk into ... once upon a time when people had loads and loads of books you'd walk into a person's study and they'd have really nice bookshelves and walls of books. Probably never even read them all. But it looked nice. And I just happen to think they look nice.

And I kind of like the idea of "Oh you want to watch this movie, I happen to have it here."

I just like having the physical stuff. And like I said in the other one, the physical version I have is permanent. If for some reason, say, they guy who directed Batman and Robin, Joel Schumacher, suddenly decided that he was going to go in and use hyper quantum computer to fix the film. Re-edit it, take out some characters, fix the dialogue, I don't know. And then release that into the world and suddenly that was the only copy of it you could buy anywhere. Well, I've still got my physical copy that's awful. So... you can't take it away from me.

Oh, and one last thing. When I die, I can leave these to somebody. I don't know who I hate enough to leave "Batman and Robin" but I can leave to somebody. Your electronic version, most of that stuff you can't leave to anybody because you don't have the rights to. You can't bequeath your online movie collection to somebody because it's tied to you. You can't bequeath your online music collection to anybody. Not that I'm planning on dying any time soon, but it's something to consider.

Reporter: The movies themselves. What do you look for in a movie to buy?

Eric: Tough question. Um... It depends. It's not enough for me to just like a movie. I've bought movies I hate because, maybe because of the special features. I've not bought movies I'd liked because I didn't think the special features were all that good. Of course I've bought movies I like when they've had no special features. So it all kind of depends.

There's one movie I bought, 84 Charing Cross Road -

- and I actually had to buy it from England because the American version of it was full screen, the square old fashioned thing for playing on old fashioned TVs. The British release of it was wide screen. It fit onto a widescreen 16 by 9 television. So that's the one I went with. It just looked better.

I've bought some movies specifically for the collector's value of it. One of them was the Criterion version of Hard Boiled. Bought that specifically because it was a collector's item. Spaulding Gray's "Swimming to Cambodia", because it was a collector's item. And it was really cheep too. Although they've just re-released so it's no longer a collector's item. Funny that.

I've got this. It's the non-cannon James Bond film, "Never Say Never Again".

There's a story behind this. The guy who wrote... once upon a time Ian Fleming and this guy, some guy I can't remember his name, and they were working on this script about stealing nuclear bombs and stuff. Movie script never went anywhere, so Ian Fleming took that scrip and basically turned into a James Bond book, called Thunderball. Got made into a movie called Thunderball. But the guy who co-wrote the script with him never got any money for it or credit or anything like that. So he sued, and he got the rights to it. Funny thing is this is also the book that introduced SPECTRE and Bloefield. You know, the James Bond villain who's bald in a grey suit stroking a cat? That's Bloefeld. Anyway he got the right to it and that's why you haven't seen Bloefeld in many films lately, or since the 60's, because the studio didn't have the rights. Anyway, this guy had the rights to plot of this James Bond book. So, sometime in the 80's, he was able to scrape together enough money to make a non-cannon james bond movie with Sean Connery. And at this time Roger Moore was playing James Bond. But suddenly there's two James Bond movies, one with Sean Connery and one with Roger Moore and the funniest thing is that Sean Connery is actually younger than Roger Moore even though Roger Moore was the young replacement for him. Go Figure. And it`s actually not a bad movie. It`s a lot better than the last official James Bond Movie. But I got that one mainly because I had a "Never Say Never Again" shaped hole in my James Bond collection, but partially because the Blu-Ray is a rare collector's item. [Editor's note: this is because it wasn't released with the official James Bond films. Look in that recent box set of all the James Bond films. This one isn't in there.]

So, sometimes it's a collector's thing. But there's all sorts of reasons.

I've bought movies because I like the movie but I really wanted the documentary that came with it. Terry Gilliam's Brazil. I mean the documentary "The Battle of Brazil", that's the documentary about the problems that Terry Gilliam had releasing his movie, I think better than the movie. A lot funnier too. I know. Blasphemy. I'm going to burn for that one. Whatever.

And then there's sometimes it's like "Wow, I'm going to buy that because its really really stupid." Last week, or two weeks ago, I got in Ontario... I went to a Walmart and got some DVDs from the $5 DVD bin. One is 8 hours of documentaries, and the thing is called "Secret Societies and The New World Order."

That should be good for a laugh. I think I may have to wrap my Blu Ray player in tin foil so that the NSA doesn't know I'm watching it.

They also had this set of 4 Pixar knock-offs for 5 bucks.

"The True Story of Puss n Boots", "Donkey-X", "Kira The Brave" - and this one's really funny because it's got "Kira The" in small letters and "BRAVE" is in huge letters and its starring this little red haired cartoon girl so it's like "oh gee, that's subtle!" - and the last one is called "Gnomes and Trolls" and I think it's a knock-off of "Gnomeo and Juliette". But like I said, 5 bucks and it should be good for a laugh.

So, I don't know. I have weird reasons for buying things. Sometimes, it's just to plug a hole in my collection. "Ooh, I do not have those movies, but I have all these movies that are somehow related to it. I think I will get it." I got this three pack of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movies on blu-ray for $12. There's only really one... the first Ninja Turtle movie is pretty good, the second one is meh, and third one's a train wreck. But now I can say I have all three of them, so hey great.

There's no one reason.

Reporter: Do you have any advice for movie collectors?

Eric: Wow... advice?

Not a lot... be careful? I guess. That's one thing. Recently... Pacific Rim was coming out and it's got all these variant... special editions that came out. I think it was at Future Shop in came in a tin box. And, one of the places it came in this plastic statue of the robot. In case you don't know, the movie's about giant robots punching giant monsters. And, one of the special editions came with a little plastic robot and you opened it up and put the disk inside. Pretty cool, I thought. It turns out it was supposed to be a Target exclusive in the states, but it turns out though it was an HMV exclusive in Canada. And I was really happy about this and I was all planning to buy it, and I go to the store and I get there and I look at it and even though in the states the Target version is the 3D version, in HMV it only contained the 2D version. And I have 3D TV. I don't use the 3D much, but I like to have the 3Dness of it. So I ended up not getting the statue version, just the regular 3D version. So, that's one thing: research. Check... If it's some sort of a fancy pants special edition, check what stores have what version of it. Some stores come with... if you got Man of Steel at HMV it would come with a little beanie hat. If you got The Avengers at Future Shop it came with a bobble head toy. If you got Man of Steel at Target I think it comes with a comic book. There's various stuff like that. Research.

Check the reviews. Even though something is coming out in a new special edition it may be inferior to what already exists. Apparently, Mortal Kombat 2, when it came out on blu-ray actually looks worse than when it came out on DVD. I don't know how you do that, but somebody did.

Another thing. Be careful when you're stuff buying online. I'm not talking about people stealing your credit cards. Just recently, somebody at work was asking me "Hey, it's Game of Thrones. Season 1 and 2. But the box looks funny. Can you take a look at it?" Took a look at it and immediately told him "don't buy that" because in the corner...

if you ever see a DVD cover and it's got a number in the corner on the front... might have in the corner a number in a blue circle [hexagon] and a number in a red something-or-other [circle] in the bottom left and right corners... that means that's the UK version of the disk. And that probably won't play in your blu-ray player. Or if it's a DVD, probably won't play in your DVD player. You might be able to play it in your laptop, maybe, depending if you have the right software. So, that's something else to consider.

Also, don't buy an HD-DVD version of it.

Maybe that's worth mentioning. Be careful when a new format comes out because you never know which one might succeed. A few years ago there was a big battle between the two high-def version of home video. One's Blu-Ray, and one was called HD-DVD. Personally I thought HD-DVD was the better version. It had a better set of features. It did more than Blu-Ray. The only thing is Blu-Ray was constantly being updated by Sony, HD-DVD really wasn't. Also, Playstation 3's played Blu-Ray, and if you wanted to play an HD-DVD on a game system, you had to buy an HD-DVD drive separately for your XBOX. So you're talking about a $200 in a drive that can only play movies. Not that awesome. So... at the end of the year, can't remember what year it was, Sony first announces "hey guess what. We've got an install base of like 20 million blu-ray players VS like a 100,000 or 200,000 HD-DVD players." About 2 weeks after that, Walmart said "we're dropping HD-DVD." About a week after that, Toshiba, the people in charge of HD-DVD, said "we're done." And some people, me included, were left with collections of 20 HD-DVDs that were rapidly becoming worthless because there were no new HD-DVD drives coming out, no HD-DVD disks coming out, and nobody wanted them.

I don't have much advice, other than the standard advice every collector should have, especially comic book collectors: Collect what you like. Because you're going to be stuck with them. And chances are your collection is not really going to be worth much, because anyone can buy it. The stuff that becomes rare is the stuff that goes out of print. And most stuff doesn't go out of print, unless there's a good reason for it.

That's about it on that.

Reporter: You have quite a few movies. It's not one of the bigger collections but's a pretty big collection. When do you think you're going to have enough movies? When do you think you'll stop buying movies?

Eric: I don't know.

Stop buying movies? Well... I mean as long as they keep making movies I'm probably going to keep buying them. I'm not going to stop. ... There's not going to be any rapid growth in my collection. Once upon a time it was "oh, I need all this and all of that and all of this coming out" but it's not like there are lots of new collections. I have all the Batmans, the Supermans, the Spidermans. All these things. I have all the Star Treks and the Star Warses and Alienes. The Godzillas. Whatever. I have all the... Sean Connery James Bondes. Heh. Sean Connery James Bonds, then immediately beside it, Daniel Craig James Bond. Nothing happened in between them. I'm just weird that way.

I don't know... I'm not constantly buying movies, but then again I'm probably not going to stop so it's sort of a slow growth now. But I'm not really going to stop. I'll stop when I run out of place to put them. Or when I run out of money. Or when they stop making them.

Reporter: What your favorite movie?

Eric: Of all time? Or just in my collection?

Reporter: Either. Both.

Eric: Favorite movie of all time? Not sure...

I mean I don't think I have a favorite movie of all time. The problem is with seeing so many blinking blanky movies that... it's hard to pin it down to one that "if you were trapped on a desert island which one would you want." I don't know.

Oh, I know. If I were trapped on a desert island I'd want something like "Roots". You know, something that's a dozen disks long so I could break them up and write help in the sand. Or if I were trapped on a desert island I'd want the special edition of Singing in the Rain, 'cause it comes with an umbrella. Is there a blu-ray that comes with a parka or something? Yeah, if I'm trapped on a desert island I'd want a DVD that turns into a campfire set.

Yeah, I know I'm stalling... best movie...

Can I give you a Top 10? How about a top 10. I can try to give you that, but unfortunately if you ask me tomorrow what my top ten is I'll probably change everything.

Top 10 in no particular order... How about?

Star Wars

Alien

Aliens

Blade Runner

84 Charing Cross Road

(5? 5 to go)

The Original Godzilla

I'll be pretentious...

Citizen Kane

I think it's better than North by Northwest. Phooey to you who say different.

Pirates of Silicon Valley

Can I say "The Cornetto Trilogy?" Yeah, what the hell it comes in one DVD case now so I'm going to say it.

(Image courtesy of www.amazon.com)

The Cornetto Trilogy

HA! (I know it's three movies, shut up.)

Two more? I don't know.

 How about...

The original King Kong

John Carpenter's The Thing!

Plus The Thing has a special place in my heart. Which I'm going to go into now. It's one of the best DVDs in my collection. 

The Thing has a special place because it was one of the first DVDs I bought got, 10 something years ago, when DVDs first came out. When DVD first came out, you might call me an early adopter. Although I didn't even have a DVD player, one that plugged into my TV. I had a DVD player for my computer. And back then, you couldn't just put a DVD in and play it in any computer. I had to buy this... it was a special kit that you got from "Creative Labs". It came with a DVD drive and the card you needed to decode the DVD. Computers then were not smart enough to play a DVD, you actually needed to buy a piece of hardware to handle playing the DVD. Heh, this how primitive things were once upon a time. And, some of the first DVDs I got were Twister, The Paper, Blade Runner was somewhere around there. The original Director's Cut. It was in the first year. Anyways, back then there was this thing called newsgroups. It was like a primitive chat board. Heh, anyone who was actually a follower of newsgroups would hate me for saying that, but I don't have any way to explain it quickly to a mass audience. It was kind of like a chat room where everybody could post messages. And there was one called Alt.Video.DVD. And this was the place where you found out new DVDs were coming, because there weren't really any websites that had this stuff. It was so primitive. So, I heard that John Carpenter's The Thing was coming out on DVD and I was like "Oh Wow, this is fantastic" because I'd only ever seen it on crappy VHS or once on I'd seen it on Betamax and it was always dark, and grainy, and zoomed in way too much because it was a widescreen so you have to cut off a huge chunk of the left hand side of the screen and a huge chunk of the right hand side (to fit on a standard definition TV) so you couldn't see what was going on. So it never looked good and it was always way too dark. So... I find out the DVD's coming out. "Sweet! This is fantastic." And then it just starts getting better and better. I hear about the specs. on this thing. It's got a commentary track. I hadn't heard a commentary track before but it sounded fascinating. You can watch the movie and hear this alternate audio track of people talking about the movie. "Wow, the director and Kurt Russell. I think they're friends. This should be really entertaining." Then the piece-de-resistance, it comes with a documentary on the making of the movie. And the documentary is as long as the movie. I remember that specifically blowing my mind. "Oh my goodness, this thing comes with a documentary as long as the movie." And I'd seen tiny little puff pieces on the making of films. I remember seeing on TV a Making of Nightmare on Elm Street 4. That was kind of frothy and kind of lame. Then there was The Making of Jurassic Park which was pretty cool, I remember buying that on VHS for 30 bucks, and feeling stupid about it when Jurassic Park came out on DVD came out for 20 bucks and came with the documentary. But, even that documentary that I paid for was only an hour. We're talking about this documentary on The Thing that's as long as the movie. "Holy Cow! It's like buying two movies!" And the documentary was hilarious and the movie looked fantastic. I mean it looks even now that they released it on blu-ray, but the funny thing is that they chopped up the documentary so that it plays in the corner of the movie as you're watching the movie. Why did you do that? Now I have to keep my DVD. So that has a special place in my heart.

Other DVDs? Well you've got the Lord of the Rings stuff. Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings. Those are very impressive. You've got the whole movie with, 3 or 4 commentary tracks? There's the writer/director's commentary track, the actor's commentary track, the cinematographer's commentary track and the special effects people's commentary track. 3 or 4 commentary tracks on the movie. And you've got the epically long documentaries on it. You have 8 hours of documentary, 4 hours on the movie, 4 hours on the history of lord of the rings. Like, the guy who wrote it and stuff. That stuff's impressive.

What else? Another film's that's got a special place in my heart is the Max Fleischer Superman Cartoons, because when I was younger... Whenever I'd get to go to Ontario to visit my grandparents, I'd always scour the discount stores because they'd sell... I don't know if you've ever seen them but the Max Fleischer Superman cartoons from the 30's... very realistic looking cartoon characters... not big feet and big eyes and stuff like that... they looked like people. They were hugely expensive when the movies were first made in the 30's, and they looked fantastic. They look fantastic now. And the thing is they sort of had fallen into the public domain so they'd keep on showing up on these crappy VHS tapes. And I had 8 or 9 of these tapes because they didn't make that many of these cartoons but the VHS tape would have episode 1, 2 and 4. And the next VHS tape would have 1, 3 and 4. So it's like I don't have 3 so I have to buy this VHS even though I have two duplicates. So eventually I was able to get a collection of these things. And then it came out on DVD, looking fantastic, and the whole set. So it's like "BUY... THANK YOU... MINE!"

I don't know. There's lots of stuff.

Hard to buy it down to a best DVD in my collection.

My copy of Toxic Avenger has a special place in my heart because it's autographed by the director.

My blu-ray of Ghostbusters is autographed by Dan Aykroyd. That was kind of weird. He was doing a signing at the SAQ because he was flogging his new ice... vodka... in a skull thing. And if you were buying a bottle of vodka he was very friendly it would be like uh hi sign off bye bye. I mean I don't drink and I don't know anyone who would want to drink it, so I'm sorry. But it was cool. That has nothing to do with the quality of the blu-ray. But that kind of reminds me. The DVD, the originally release of the Ghostbusters DVD had this really weird special feature where, if you turned on the director's commentary you'd see sort of an outline on the bottom of the screen, like a silhouette, of the director and one of the Ghostbusters, the guy who played Egon. You'd see their silhouettes on the bottom of the screen, so while they're talking you can kind of see them talking. See them as they're being recorded. Really weird. If you've ever seen Mystery Science Theater 3000 it was kind of like that. You know, a silhouette of people watching a movie. And, when they released it on blu-ray they didn't have that feature. They had the audio but never included that weird "watch them as they talk" thing. I don't know why, but they never did.

Watchmen. Watchmen and a bunch of other Warner Brothers films doing this now. I think they call it Maximum Movie mode where you're watching the film, and all of a sudden what you're watching will sort of zoom out and it will be projected behind the director, or whoever is talking, they'll talk to you about the movie a little bit, and then the movie will come back zoomed full screen. So it's like watching the movie with somebody doing a presentation on the movie. That can be pretty cool. Sometimes be pretty stupid at times, but it can be pretty cool.

I think that's enough babbling. Next question.

Reporter: What's your least favorite movie? In general or in your collection.

Eric: Least favorite movie? I don't know. The problem is I kind of like bad movies. It comes from watching Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K). And if you don't know what MST3K was, it was this... it started as a TV show but it's kind of gone online now, basically you'd watch a movie while the silhouettes of three people watching movie with you (sort of) is superimposed on the screen. You're watching the film and there's the silhouettes of chairs all line up at the bottom of the screen and these three guys watching the movie. And these are three of the... it's like watching the movie three of your funniest, sarcastic friends. So... and they make bad movies very funny. Because it's not just improv. Their process is to watch the movie a load of times, along with their team of writes, and they just write the best jokes they can. And then when you watch the movie it's like "boom! bad joke good joke good joke good joke don't understand that joke good joke." And even if you don't understand all the jokes, don't worry because there's going to be another... While you're trying to figure out what that joke meant, 3 jokes went by. So MST3K was very funny, but it also gives you an interesting appreciation of terrible movies. So even when you're watching a really bad movie, your inner snark starts to come out. Or at least with me. So if something stupid is happening on the screen I think "hey, I can make a joke about that". So even bad movies become entertaining.

So a really bad movie is hard to find for me. Because a bad movie doesn't necessarily mean a bad movie. Even something terrible like Batman and Robin you can make fun of.

I'm trying to think of a movie that's so horrible you can't even make fun of it. I don't to gravitate to those sorts of movies. I don't know.

Space Thunder Kids! In my movie collection, I'd say it's one of the worst movies I've got. It's just so bad. It's this terrible, awful, Korean knock-off anime clips show abomination thing that this... Somebody took about a half a dozen of piece of crap low budget knock-off Korean animated films, threw them in a blender, took what was extruded out and tried to lay a plot over it. It's just... it's boring and horrible and nonsensical. But even then it's hilarious. "What on earth am I watching?!!?"

Worst movie in my collection. I don't know. I'm trying to think of something that boring and depressing and sucks at the end and I'm "why the hell did I watch that?"

Or worst movie that I've ever seen. There's so many bad movies.

Phantom Menace. That movie pissed me off. And I was at the midnight screening when it first came out. That's how old I am. I am ancient. I am so old, God calls me "Sir".

Worst movie... I haven't seen that new Steve Jobs movie yet, so maybe that. There's one trailer that pissed me off. Every word in it was a lie!

I dunno. I'll go with... Highlander 2. We'll say that. Next question.

Reporter: Are there any movies you're looking forward to getting in the future?

Eric: Well... In the far off far off future, Monty Python just reformed and they're going to be doing one concert show. They're going to record it. And they're going to sell it on DVD and BluRay and everything else. I guess I'm looking forward to that.

I don't know. I mean, most of the good movies have been released already on DVD or BluRay. So it's not like I'm waiting on pins and needles to buy them. I mean there's stuff that hasn't been released yet, that they're not saying is going to be relesed, that I'd kind of like to have them release. I'd like to have Godzilla 1985. That's the weirdest... That was the 20th or 30th anniversary anniversary movie. Yeah, I'd say 30th anniversary. And it was picked up for distribution in America by New Concorde. I think it was New Concorde. Or maybe New World. One of those. It was Roger Corman's outfit. And they kind of re- edited it, and put Diet Pepsi, no, Dr. Pepper machines into every scene they added. And it was stupid. And somehow they kept the home video rights, so the silly thing hasn't been released again other than on VHS. Even though every other Godzilla movie has been released, probably twice on DVD. So, I'd kind of like that. But there's no plans for that one to come out any time soon.

I don't know. The big DVD box set that came out this November that came out this November was The Hobbit, which came out with an extended version of the hobbit, documentary stuff, and a cute statue of Godzil - not Godzilla, Gollum! That would be cool, Godzilla menacing Frodo. But it's Gollum menacing Frodo. It's that scene where Frodo is kind of creeping past some rocks while Gollum is above the rocks kind looking down on him. Be less impressive if it was Godzilla. I guess it'd just be a giant foot.

There's nothing where I'm "Oh gosh, I must get that when it comes out!" At least nothing comes to mind. I'm sure something will come along.

Reporter: What do you see as the future of collecting? Movies and stuff.

Eric: Is there a future? I think there will always be a future for collecting. What that future is I don't know. It's kind of... 

Everything can be collected, even if there's no way for anybody to actually play the DVD somebody might want a collection. I mean people collect... unopened food. They collect unopened bottles of beer. "Billy Beer" is apparently this really awful beer from the 70's. Apparently people collect unopened cans of this stuff even though... to drink it would probably kill you because it's full of rust. But people still collect them. Why? Because it's a collectable. Why do people collect unopened packages of baseball cards? You can't possibly know if there's anything valuable in there. And you can't eat the gum. So where's the value. I don't know. They're collectable. People collect all this stuff so I don't know...

The collecting of disks may continue, I don't know about the collecting of movies. So many people now... most people I know aren't into the special features of the disk and that is really the main reason to buy the physical media. Because of the features. If you just want to watch the movie... Televisions now, they connect to NetFlix. Automatically, practically. Or if not your TV, then whatever game system you've got plugged into this thing. Or maybe on your tablet, or wherever. They all connect to Netflix, or Hulu, or Youtube, or some, or Amazon, or some feature thing so that you can just watch whatever you want whenever you want. You don't need a physical copy. If bandwidth is not an issue for you, and you just want to watch a movie, go right ahead. You can watch it online. But you can't really collect that. Even if you have some sort of online... personal library where you bought the rights to... they don't expire. The movies are going to be there forever... they're either there forever or they're gone for everybody. So, there's no collectability and no collector's value. If you want to have a collection of every marvel movie ever made, it's not like you have to go out and hunt down the disks. If it's an electronic collection on Netflix or something you're just going click-click-click-click-done. There's no collecting to that. So... that's not going to happen. It's kind of like collecting electronic versions of comic books. Why would you do that? You're just collecting permissions, basically. You're sending your money to wherever, and they're giving you permission to watch them. That's not really collecting in my mind.

But, for the movie studios that's a fantastic deal. I buy a movie for, at best (for the studio), 30 bucks at the store and at worst (for the studio) 4 bucks at the store. And I can just watch it for ever and ever and ever and they don't make any money off it and it kind of sucks for them. But if its on Netflix and stuff then they're getting money forever. So the studio like that more than me buying plastic. So, eventually they're probably going to stop making movie disks. And when that happens there's not going to be any collecting going on is there, just of the old stuff? It's going to be like collecting comics, the old comics, they may become scarcer and scarcer but there's not going to be new stuff added added to the collection because there won't be new stuff created. So I don't know.

Maybe the future of collection is grim... and dark... and depressing... and there's never going to be any more collecting.

Or maybe I'm wrong and people will realize "hey, this whole online thing is stupid and we want to have disks." I don't know. 

One thing about the internet is that it's sort of a race to the bottom as far as pricing goes. So while on the one hand the studios get to control more of how much money they can make, if they're controlling the distribution through these online channels, on the other hand other hand people are less likely to spend large amounts of money online. So, they can control how much money they make, but they make less money doing it. Whereas you can take a disk that you produce for 25 cents, stick it in a box that costs a buck, put in some trinket of some kind that maybe costs a buck to mass produce, and then you can sell it to a consumer for 60 bucks and then call it a "super deluxe collector's item". You can't really do that online.

So, I don't know. It's really in flux right now. The future of my collection is I'm going to keep buying stuff. Slowly, I mean. There's not huge amounts of stuff I want to buy. That's about it.

Have I answered all your questions?

Reporter: Yes, I guess so... Well, I know where I can reach you.

Eric: Yeah, I my head.

Reporter: Thank you for time.

Eric: Thank you.

Works Cited:

All images courtesy of Wikipedia (or me) except the following.

The Jabba Graphic: http://roadto7.blogspot.ca/2013/02/the-many-versions-of-star-wars.html

"The Cornetto Trilogy" DVD cover: www.amazon.com

"Keep circulating the tapes."

On my future deathbed, I will reflect on my youth and regret the eighty minutes of life that were wasted watching this film. Screened at cinema Du Park in the McGill ghetto, Ivory Tower is a disappointing depiction of the rivalry between two brothers and their common love for the game of chess.

By the end of the opening scene, which revealed the main protagonist, Hershel, playing a nonsensical solo game, it was made painfully clear that director Adam Traynor and co-writers "Chilly Gonzales" and Celine Sciamma knew nothing about chess culture or the rules of the game itself. This ignorance was carried throughout the entire film, at times drawing insulting and inaccurate representations of the true artistry and intellect behind chess' greatest masters.

At the heart of the film lies Hershel's metaphoric concept of "Jazz-Chess" - a belief that the game should be played out of respect for the fellow opponent, minimizing the need for winners and losers and ultimately eliminating the competitive nature of society. Such a portrayal of the shallow problems faced by white, middle-class, heterosexual, and otherwise privileged males is only made worse by the fact that Hershel is played by Gonzales himself. This highlights the problematic degree of self-reflexivity and representation within contemporary cinema. In this sense, Ivory Tower does nothing more than re-present trivial, literal issues within society back to the viewer, containing little room for imagination or varied perception of what the film may be trying to conceive.

Another disappointment came from the lack of any explicit Canadian reference, despite it being filmed in Toronto and featuring multiple native musicians such as Feist and Peaches. While a significant work of art is not a film that is interesting only for the fact that it was made in Canada, the film should have taken advantage of any way to be deemed interesting at all. 
Ultimately, Ivory Tower fails in all aspects, lazily attempting to convey an unoriginal message and ironically isolating itself from those who actually know the most basic logics of chess.
By far, the best part of the whole experience was the cinema itself. While I have absolutely nothing positive to say about the film, I will be patronizing the independent screening house for as long as I am living in Montreal. It is conveniently located among several eateries and restaurants and makes for a great night out.

Review by Marc Ben-Avraham

The original The Evil Dead directed by Sam Raimi and featuring Bruce Campbell is a well known cult-classic in the horror genre. This was Raimi's directorial debut in 1981 and got the inexperienced director a lot of attention. The acting and low budget filming wasn't received the way it was intended - the audience found it funny and cheesy rather than scary. This ended up benefiting Raimi because he then got to make Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness, which portray Raimi's unique style of slapstick humour. Now, it is another director's turn to make his debut in the film industry- with the same movie title. Fede Alvarez makes his directorial debut with Evil Dead and luckily for Alvarez and his aundience, Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell insisted on producing this remake to ensure that it does not flop like many remakes do.

            Alvarez's Evil Dead is not a simple remake of the original with a bigger budget because that is wholly unimaginative and boring. Most fans of the horror genre have seen the original enough times and do not want to see a scene-by-scene remake. There is a new and creative plot that is not as jokey as the original, but it does not take itself too seriously either. Alvarez's style mirrors Raimi's in some ways; he portrays moments of humour in scenes with horrifying gore.

            This movie is a gore-fest with a high budget that can afford unlimited blood, but it is also shot beautifully. Alvarez shows tremendous talent and potential for future projects. Visually, this remake is much more stunning that the original due to its larger budget. This also means the gore is much more realistic and stomach churning. If you have a sensitive stomach and do not normally enjoy horror movies, you may wish to avoid seeing Evil Dead as it is exceptionally graphic. Horror fans may laugh at the over-the-top gore, but this sense of humour is not for everyone.

            Finally, both the subtle and overt throwback moments to the original satisfy all the fans. Little moments that only fans of the Bruce Campbell version would notice such as the car from the original movie sitting in the back of cabin are playful throwbacks for those die-hard fans. Then there are the overt throwback moments that every person in the audience is waiting for. For example, any moment one of those characters gets near the tool shed the audience is just waiting in anticipation to see that chainsaw. The audience feels a true moment of satisfaction when the unlikely heroine (no pun intended) of the film gets her one hand on the chainsaw.

            Overall this new version of Evil Dead is both creative and graphic - two features horror fans are always looking for. Fede Alvarez, much like his predecessor, makes a successful directorial debut with this film and shows great potential for the future. This film will satisfy any horror fan meanwhile disgusting those of a fainter heart.

            The second type of zombie genre is the "fast zombie". These zombies are slightly more terrifying because they do not simply walk towards you with slow-moving, decomposing limbs. They are more like rabid animals, able to run at you with great speed while they reach for your brains. Examples of this type of fierce zombie include: Dawn of the Dead (2004 remake), 28 Days Later (2002), 28 Weeks Later (2007) and Resident Evil (2004). Dawn of the Dead is directed by Zack Snyder and is a modern re-telling of Romero's film. The majority of the film takes place in a shopping mall -which sounds like an ideal hide out in a zombie apocalypse - but the zombies are not the traditional type. Zombies in this film look like rabid animals with blood spewing out of their mouths and they attack at rapid speed. In 28 Days Later (directed by Danny Boyle) and 28 Weeks Later (directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo), it can be argued that they do not include true zombies. In these films, there is a "rage virus" that breaks out after exposure to an infected chimpanzee, which makes those infected act and appear much like the zombies in the Dawn of the Dead remake. They are no longer human and attack those not infected and try to eat their flesh; therefore for arguments sake, they are fast zombies. Finally, the last examples of a fast zombie are the zombies in Resident Evil, directed by Alexander Witt. This is an adaptation of the video game, and the zombies are fast and ferocious. The "fast zombie" is often created by a break-out disease or virus and is certainly meant to be feared.

            The third and final type of zombie is the "comedic zombie". This is the zombie that is for those who do not deal well with blood, gore or terror. The horror genre is not for everyone, but luckily for these squeamish types there are still zombie movies to enjoy. A few examples of intentionally funny zombie movies include: Shaun of the Dead (2004), Fido (2006) and A Little Bit Zombie (2012). Shaun of the Dead is directed by Edgar Wright and is hilarious, much like other movies Simon Pegg and Nick frost lead in. The plot surrounds its male lead as he struggles to fix the relationships in his life all the while a zombie apocalypse is taking place. Fido directed by Andrew Currie is set in the 1950s era, but in an alternate universe. Zombies in this film have been domesticated by a sort of shock-collar and become mail men, milk men and house maids. The plot surrounds a young boy and his "pet" zombie. Finally, A Little Bit Zombie directed by Casey Walker is bound to make an audience laugh. Infected by a zombie- like virus, a quiet and normal young man struggles with his desire for brains with out ever fully becoming a zombie. All three of these movies do still include some level of gore, but the main focus of the films is to make the audience laugh. This is why the "comedic zombie" will satisfy both horror and comedy fans.

            No matter how you enjoyed being scared in a movie, there is a zombie movie for you. If you do not like being frightened, there are still zombie movies for you. All of George A. Romero's movies mentioned above are perfect for anyone that wants an introduction to zombie films and would like to see a classic, traditional zombie. For those that wish for a more in-your-face, terrifyingly fast zombie, there are modern remakes of classic films as well as new plots that often involve a plague epidemic. Lastly, if you are not one to enjoy a good scare, there are great comedies to enjoy that still successfully use the element of zombies. There are many more movies that can be mentioned in this list, but here is a broad over view of the three different types of zombies.

Photo Credit: Eun Ju Lee

Kyle Gatehouse is a local actor in Montreal that has been building his career and experiences for many years now. He has experience with theatre, television and film working along side actors such as Jake Gyllenhaal and Canada's own Jay Baruchel. Gatehouse has a lot of accomplishments to be proud of already, but his career is just beginning.  He has built the foundation of his career here in Montreal, but now it appears time for this young actor to move onto bigger things.

I started to get serious about it in high school, when I joined the drama program at John Rennie. I got involved in the Canadian Improv Games and met some really funny people. A big part of the reason I wanted to be an actor was my drama teacher, Louise Chalmers.  

She was great, and introduced me to a world I'd only ever admired from the outside. 

I've always known that I wanted to work in the arts, but as a young person I was led to believe that you had to be just one thing. So I would flip-flop between wanting to be a director, an actor, a writer, a visual artist... etc. Then I grew up a little and realized I could do a mix of all those disciplines that I find so stimulating, and that's where I'm at now. Not a great life decision from a monetary point of view, the arts are difficult to make a living in, but I don't think I'd have it any other way.

What is your earliest memory of performing?
I remember performing in a play way back in elementary school. I was very young, and don't think I had any aspirations of being an actor at the time, but it looked like fun to get up on stage and fool around. I was playing a "tough guy", like with a leather jacket and sunglasses and slicked-back hair. Kind of a fifties greaser type deal. All I had to do was enter, say a couple of lines and then exit. In order to really drill home the fact that I was a cool badass, they played that "Bad To The Bone" song on my entrance.

So it's the night of the performance, the play is going well, and it comes time for me to do my thing. "Bad To The Bone" kicks in, I enter, and for whatever reason thought it would be a cool idea to improvise a sexy tough guy dance, which was pretty much just me staring at my leg as I twisted it back and forth. The audience, composed almost entirely of supportive parents, started to laugh. It was the first time I'd ever gotten a laugh on stage, and it felt amazing and unique and powerful. I think that's when I got hooked on performance. 

How did you get into the professional world of acting/ what was your first gig?
Right around the time I was graduating high school, I heard about an open casting call for a new YTV kids show called Prank Patrol. It was a show where kids would write in wanting to prank their friend/sibling/parent/etc. and the show would help them pull it off, hidden camera style. It was like a toned-down version of Punk'd. 

They were looking for someone to play the host, so I borrowed a camera and made an audition tape. I had no idea how the professional film and television industry worked, but I knew I wanted to stand out, so I thought it would be a good idea to prank the casting agency where I was supposed to send the audition tape.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I dressed up as a fed ex guy and hand delivered the tape to the casting agent, who was like, "Where's your truck, why are you so young?" and because I hadn't thought any of this through, I just responded with, "haha pranked you."

Miraculously, it worked. The producers of the show saw my tape and liked it, but eventually decided to go with someone else for the host, but not before promising to write an episode for me.

So I did an episode of Prank Patrol, which led to me getting an agent and starting to take the whole acting thing seriously. 

What are your thoughts on the film industry in Montreal?
I think Montreal is a great city to start out in. It's not too big and not too small, which is great because it means you'll probably be able to book some early gigs since there isn't the same competition here as there is in a bigger city like Toronto or New York. That being said, once you've established yourself it's possible to hit a ceiling, and that's when a lot of actors move to bigger cities. An actor in Montreal will usually get big parts in small films and small parts in big films. 

What has been your experience so far/ what have you done?
I've worked in film, TV, radio, theatre and video games for around seven years now, so I've built up a respectable little body of work. I'm an associate member of a theatre company called SideMart Theatrical Grocery, with whom I've co-created and performed in a number of award-winning shows. I recently had a recurring role on the TV show Being Human, but they killed me off. Huge mistake if you ask me, I doubt anyone will watch it now that I'm off the show. I'll be in the new Roland Emmerich film coming out this summer; it's called White House Down. There are lots of explosions. 

I'm currently rehearsing a new Sherlock Holmes play at the Segal Centre, and it opens on May 5th. Jay Baruchel is playing Sherlock and I'm playing Moriarty. I think it's going to be a great show, I'm really excited.

Ever been star struck?
I've never really been star struck in my adult life. While I'm definitely excited when I meet someone whose work I respect, I've never been at a loss for words or anything like that.

I did however get max level star struck at a Fred Penner concert when I was a little kid. I was a huge Penner fan; I had all his albums and watched his TV show religiously. My mom took me to his live show when he came to town, and during his performance I started waving a piece of paper in the air. He saw this, walked off stage and came right to me, took the paper and autographed it then went back on stage and finished his song. It fucking blew my mind. 

Interestingly, I got to work with Fred this past summer on a comedy pilot I was in. It was very cool getting to hang with him as an adult, and I actually told him the autograph story. I got the impression that he'd heard similar versions of my story over and over from all of his now grown-up fans, but he was really gracious and fun about it. 

Do you have a favourite celebrity?
Probably Andy Kaufman. I love everything he ever did, and really respect and identify with his one-hundred percent dedication to stupid jokes. Some of the best live performances I've ever seen have been by comedians like Reggie Watts and Paul F. Tompkins. They're not really "celebrities" I guess, but they're the kind of artists I get jazzed about. 

As far as favourite actors, I'm a big fan of Peter Sellers, Joaquin Phoenix, Gene Hackman, Jimmy Stewart, John C. Reilly... I don't know, the list could go on forever. Lots of great actors out there. 

Do you have a favourite funny moment being on set?

I was shooting a film called Source Code, and I had a small part as a university student riding the train to school. In one of my scenes, Jake Gyllenhaal, who was playing the lead, comes up to me and asks what I'm doing, and I'm supposed to show him my homework and deliver my line. It had been a long shoot, and I was getting bored, so I drew a huge smiling penis that was waving and saying "Hi Jake" on my homework. I knew the next shot wasn't on me or the drawing, it was just a close-up on Jake, which was perfect. So it comes time to shoot the scene, we're going through it like normal, and when he asks to see what I'm doing I show him the drawing and deliver my line like normal. He was a real professional about it, barely flinched, but his eyes lit up when he saw it, and as soon as the camera cut he walked straight to the director and started talking angrily and pointing towards me. I couldn't hear what he was saying, but I was sure I was going to get fired. Then the two of them walked over to me, very seriously, and stood over me like chastising parents. There was an agonizing moment of silence. Then they both burst into laughter. Jake had pretended to be mad to frighten me, and let me tell you, it worked. 

Where do you see yourself in the future professionally? Still in Montreal?
I'm actually planning to move to Toronto in the summer. I'm doing a show in the Summerworks theatre festival called Trying for the Kingdom. So I'll live in Toronto for a while and see where that takes me. 

Gatehouse shows that with hard work and determination (in addition to being talented with a great sense of humour), you can make a name for yourself here in Montreal.

Here is a promotional video for the Sherlock Holmes play Gatehouse mentions staring Jay Baruchel

 http://www.segalcentre.org/whats-on/upcoming-events/theatre-3/segal-theatre/sherlock-holmes/

As well as a comedy website Gatehouse made a few years back.  http://www.mattandkyleandmatt.com/

Q: How did you get involved in the film/video industry in Montreal and
what is your current job?

A: I got involved in the cinema industry in Montreal two years ago

through my friend (now boyfriend) Cody Larocque. He had been working

as a gaffer/swing/grip for a year and he referred me to a producer.

I started mostly as a camera intern and a data wrangler. My current

job is freelance second camera assistant and first camera assistant.

Also, I am currently employed at La Cinématèque Québécoise in Film and

Video preservation/cataloguing. Last summer, I archived 16mm NFB films

after analyzing their condition on the Steenbeck.

I am also hoping to direct more music videos and short films in the

future. I recently shot a music video for Diamond Bones Band (Home is

Where). It is featuring a contemporary dancer from New York and a

model from Montreal. We got a good reception and recognition from a

few blogs, which is great and encouraging.

I also just finished directing a 16mm short film named «Beau comme

dans les films» about a 12 year old girl's fantasies. The movie is set

in the 90s and takes place during her birthday party and at school.

Q: Did you have to work your way up in the ranks in order to do what you do?

A: Yes and no. I was lucky enough to not have to work as a production

assistant on more than one or two shoots. I hate that position because

the camera department is my main interest and you don't get to hang out

with these guys when you're a newbie.

Q: What is your main ambition in the industry, and what goals do you

hope to eventually achieve?

A: My main ambitions are to get my AQTIS and IATSE [Union credit] camera assistant

trainings. Also, I am considering doing a master in film restoration

at the Selznick School of Film Preservation. I would also like to keep

on directing films and videos on the side and maybe push forward «Les

Productions Lost & Found» with my friends and collaborate on wonderful

projects.

Q: What are a few recent projects you worked on?

A: I have recently worked on an NFB interactive documentary named

«Insomnie» and a Jimmy Lee web serie screened on LibTv called «Sale

Gueule» as a 1st camera assistant.

Q: Who are your main artistic influences for your work?

A: My artistic influences for directing are people like Sofia Coppola,

Todd Solondz, Gus Van Sant and most of the Japanese and Chinese

contemporary filmmakers (Wong Kar Wai, Hou Hsiao Hsien, Zhang Yang,

etc.) For camera assisting, there are some big names who wrote books like

Doug Hart and blogs like Evan Luzi (theblackandblue).

By Jordano Aguzzi

Mariane's goal had always been to work as a professional in the camera department. On a professional film set, there are a multitude of roles and departments that involve numerous workers. The camera department, often a male-dominated realm, had always been Mariane's interest. Through determination and sheer reluctance to be swayed by her gender, Laporte made it her goal to break into the camera department.

Mariane Laporte is a young and ambitious motion picture professional based out of Montreal, Quebec. Growing up in Joliette, Quebec, Laporte moved away from her small town to Montreal in order to pursue her profession and passion of filmmaking. Small in stature but not in ambition, Laporte's skills grew exponentially as she was introduced into the local film industry at the early age of 20.

Prior to her work in the industry, Mariane worked on a few independent films and won awards as a member of the Concordia team in the provincial media production tournament, "La Jeux des Communications." Afterwards, she worked as camera operator on the independent short film, "Four Left on the Chessboard," a black and white mockumentary film set in the late 1960's. Her camera work proved to be extraordinary, and the film helped her gain attention amongst colleagues and professionals in the Concordia film community.

Eventually, she worked her way up in the film industry from a Production Assistant, to a 2^ndassistant camera operator, until now where she works as a 1^st assistant camera operator. The role of 1^st assistant camera operator offers many challenges; you are the go-to assistant for the director of photography, in charge of keeping the film in focus, keeping the gear clean and tidy, making sure the camera and accessories function properly, and keeping lenses clean from dust and dirt.

It is a highly technical position reserved often for people who have worked for years and have grown accustom to the tricks in the trade. Mariane was promoted to this role at the age of 21. As not only one of the youngest, but also as one of the few female 1^st assistant camera operators, she has worked on numerous medium to large scale productions, including multi-camera shoots in which she was responsible for all cameras.

Furthermore, as if work as an assistant camera operator wasn't enough, Mariane has proved to excel as a director as well. Having been the creative force behind Diamond Bones' hallucinatory music video for "Home is Where," Laporte proves that creative excellence also grows out of hard work and discipline to her practice. The music video portrays two mythical dancers in a dreamscape, trying to touch one another but never coming into contact. The music video gained success in the blogosphere, often praised for its hallucinatory dreamscape which matched perfectly with the band's ambient sound.

Using this music video as the foundation for her future work, Mariane set out to direct and write her own short film. Beau Comme Dans Les Films is a personal story set in the late 90's about a young girl attempting to deal with her big high school crush, the boy who she is convinced will marry her. The film is currently in post-production.

As talented as she is in both the technical and creative elements of film production, Mariane co-founded the production collective, Lost & Found, thus proving to be a triple threat in the industry: production, photography and direction. Though the industry is often criticized for being too hierarchical, Mariane has built a solid foundation for growth. 

Due to the relatively low price of digital video (in comparison to motion-picture film), it democratizes the filmmaking process, opening up new schools of filmmaking based on cutting-edge, alternative methods. Ganz and Khatib also argue that the digital cinema revolution also offers a mode of re-defining what cinema actually is: the space of who can see what is being shot is now open to all eyes on the film set, and shooting a movie is no longer a privilege for the cameraman (21). Despite these arguments, I will use this white paper to argue against the digital cinema revolution and for the pragmatic, realism of celluloid motion-picture film.

            My major argument against the digital revolution is that it does not re-create an image that is true to how our eyes perceive reality, because the film camera was specifically designed to re-create the properties of the eye whereas video cameras were not. My secondary argument is that the innovations of digital cinema should not imply the death of cinema, but rather, should add to the zeitgeist of production modes that can co-exist. Digital video and motion-picture film can co-exist in a world where certain productions demand certain mediums.

Whereas film uses light to capture an imitation of reality, digital cameras encode and decode a bunch of 1's and 0's. The colors aren't an actual representation of how light reacts to celluloid, but rather a formula of color replacement (Eisenberg). A common DSLR camera, often the easiest to use and most affordable consumer and intermediate video camera, do not actually perceive the color red. Rather, they are able to scan how much blue and green are in an image, and then an equation figures out how to portray red in an image (Eisenberg). Thus, colors are not naturally encoded in a video camera. Rather, they are deceptively calculated.

16mm and 35mm film stocks re-create reality in ways that are as true to reality as possible. Film gives the crispest of colors naturally and in-camera without the manipulation of image in post-production (Eisenberg). As mentioned in my backgrounder, the main purpose of film is to re-create an objective reality through the use of the medium of film, and a true "film" will never be created until one cannot tell the difference between film and reality (Bazin 7). Digital cinema moves the process away from the realistic and towards the flashy and stylish without the substance.

The Contradiction of Post-Production

The process of shooting digital image begins in flattening the colors as much as possible during the shooting process. The flat, monotone colors are then pushed and brightened in post-production (Ganz & Khatib).  Furthermore, according to Mike Eisenberg of the ScreenRant website, "Film possesses a certain texture that is unrivaled by digital cameras. A talented editor or colorist can easily manipulate digital footage to look more like film, but this seems contradictory in nature."

The contradictory nature is in fact the workflow of shooting digital. Video cameras are purposely configured to shoot in flat tones unrealistic to the vibrant colors of every day reality. Since the colors are manipulated to look flashy and unrealistic, the implications of video are indeed that its purpose is to be unrealistic.

You may question, isn't the point of cinema to be unrealistic and in essence, trick us into the belief of "movie magic?" Absolutely. But then the question becomes, should filmmakers attempt to create an illusion out reality, or an illusion out of an illusion.

Application of Both Mediums

            The film We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011), directed by Lynne Ramsay is an independent film and a great example of applying both mediums with purpose. The film was shot on 35mm film for the scenes where the characters of the mother and son are fighting, and then video is used for its impressionistic characteristics (We Need to Talk About Kevin DVD Bonus Features).  This is part of the reason why video should not kill film, but rather, why they should be in coalescence with on another.

Works Cited

Bazin, Andre. "The Ontology of the Photographic Image." Film Quarterly 13.4 (1960): 4-9. 

Casetti, Francesco. "Sutured Reality: Film, from Photographic to Digital." 

Dombrowski, Lisa. "Not If, But When and How: Digital Comes to the American Art House."

 Film History 24 (2012): 235-248.

Eisenberg, Mike. "Movie Technology: The Continuing Battle of Film vs. Digital."

http://screenrant.com/movie-technology-film-vs-digital-mikee-105167/all/1/

Ganz, Adam, Lina Khatib. "Digital cinema: The transformation of film practice and aesthetics."

New Cinemas: Journal of Comtemporary Film Vol. 4.1 (2006): 21-36.

Savitz, Eric. "Kodak Files Chapter 11"

We Need to Talk About Kevin Bonus Features

John Fithian, President of the National Association of Theaters stated in his annual state of the industry address: "For any exhibitor who can hear my voice who hasn't begun your digital transition, I urge you to get moving... Simply put, if you don't make the decision to get on the digital train soon, you will be making the decision to get out of the business" (Dombrowski 235). Truer words could not have been predicted, as on January 19, 2012, Eastman Kodak, the most innovative retailer in both still photography film and motion-picture film over the last century declared bankruptcy (Savitz).

So what's the big deal? Is it just a matter of purists holding on to an obsolete medium, or is there something authentic and "pure" behind shooting on motion-picture film? Furthermore, as digital cinema rises, what are the implications of the death of celluloid film and takeover of HD video? With this backgrounder, I hope to give an objective perspective on both sides of the argument.

            The argument for celluloid, motion-picture film is that it literally captures reality in hundreds of thousands still images projected consecutively. One second of film is equal to 24 frames, thus for a 90 minute film, 129 600 still images are shot through a motion picture camera, developed, and then reprinted onto a positive in order to be screened through a film projector. The quality of the image depends on the size of the film.

8mm was developed for an amateur consumer market, providing a "grainy" low-quality image with an inconsistent number of frames per second, thus making it impossible to sync sound to. Despite it's low-quality, 8mm (or Super-8), is often glorified in the present-day due to its vintage, nostalgic look. iPhone apps and music videos often apply filters to digital video in order to give it the  "super-8" vintage look. 16mm film is a step up from 8mm, giving a truer-to-reality image that maintains a nostalgic, imperfect look. 16mm is an intermediate format of choice for low-budget productions and student films because it is much cheaper than shooting at the standard Hollywood movie format of 35mm, yet maintains the distinct look of film. 35mm has been the Hollywood standard for decades due to its high quality image and advanced camera options capable of shooting with it. 65mm a medium format film that is rare to see used outside of IMAX and 3D films, but as of late, filmmakers such as Christopher Nolan and Paul Thomas Anderson have shot on 65mm film for their films The Dark Knight Rises and The Master, respectively. 65mm is extremely expensive, but produces an image with incomparable quality.

Andre Bazin, one of film criticism's most famed theorists, argues that the purpose of motion-picture film is to be able to re-create reality in the most objective and truest way possible (Bazin 7). He states, "This production by automatic means has radically affected our psychology of the image. The objective nature of photography confers on it a quality of credibility absent from all other picture-making" (Bazin 7-8). Though he wrote before the innovations of video, film purists often use his argument of film as objective reality to stand up against the digital medium. By achieving an image through the chemical recording of light on film and the physical manipulation of celluloid  in the camera, the quality of the film relies on the talent and skills of the filmmaker. Furthermore, motion-picture film holds a quality that Bazin describes as the "grain" of the medium, which describes the esoteric quality of celluloid.

Digital Cinema: HD as the new Definition of film

Adam Ganz and Lina Khatib argue in their article, "Digital cinema: The transformation of film practice and aesthetics" that the process of shooting, editing and screening digitally is not only a transformation of technology, but also of perception (Ganz, Khatib 21). With the rise of consumers seeking videos through digital mediums, such as online user-generated websites Youtube and Vimeo, people now see films differently. No longer are the objective qualities of composition and moving camera aesthetics examined, but rather, flashiness of color and quick editing cuts. Slowly and surely, audiences are becoming accustomed to sleek and stylish look.

Francesco Casetti writes in his article, "Sutured Reality: Film, from Photographic to Digital" that now the focus is not on how things are shot, but how things are edited (105). The emphasis is now ironically on a color correction in post-production to make a digital image seems more filmic (Eisenberg). The reason behind this is that audiences are still getting accustomed to the "digital look," and it is much cheaper to shoot digitally with flattened colors and to then boost the colors to seem more filmic in post-color production.  

Furthermore, a major argument behind the rise of digital cinema is the democratization of the world of filmmaking. Before the 1990's, film production was an inclusive realm that required not only years of slave labor for minimal payment, but also connections. In the digital age, the movement is now being pushed towards anyone being able to buy a digital camera and shoot without going bankrupt. As Dombrowski writes, "digital print costs between $100 and $300, while a 35mm print averages $1200 to $2000 or more" (236). The lessening of prices for high-quality and high-definition equipment thus allows more people to make films and attacks the elitist superstructure that is Hollywood. Film festivals such as Sundance showcase these low-budget but very creative films by young filmmakers.

The Comparison:

Publications enjoy pitting video against film due to the controversy of the subject matter, but in essence, there should be no battle. Each medium should be applicable to their appropriate uses. Digital video is a great option for young filmmakers or productions on a tight budget, while film may be the best option for those seeking a more authentic "grainy" look. When it comes to resolution, the highest quality modern digital video camera can shoot at 5k, which is basically five times the resolution of 1080p. 35mm film on the other hand has been used for decades and projects at 8k, while 65mm is 16k. On a basic visual style, the nature of film quality is higher, while the beauty of digital relies on post-production color and filter editing. Many argue that seeing celluloid film through a projector in a movie theatre is an authentic experience that cannot be re-created by digital projectors and video. Then again, maybe it's just because those critics were not born into the era of video, so only time will tell if digital will actually kill motion-picture film.  

 Bibliography

Bazin, Andre. "The Ontology of the Photographic Image." Film Quarterly 13.4 (1960): 4-9.

Casetti, Francesco. "Sutured Reality: Film, from Photographic to Digital."

Dombrowski, Lisa. "Not If, But When and How: Digital Comes to the American Art House."

Film History 24 (2012): 235-248.

Eisenberg, Mike. "Movie Technology: The Continuing Battle of Film vs. Digital."

http://screenrant.com/movie-technology-film-vs-digital-mikee-105167/all/1/

Ganz, Adam, Lina Khatib. "Digital cinema: The transformation of film practice and aesthetics."

New Cinemas: Journal of Comtemporary Film Vol. 4.1 (2006): 21-36.

Savitz, Eric. "Kodak Files Chapter 11"

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/01/19/kodak-files-chapter-11/

 Image source: Flickr