Being a film nut this answered a question I’ve been asking from the day I discovered Spotify.

Is it possible to create something like Spotify for streaming movies/video?

And like the man from Delmonte, well, Voddler says… yes.

Now before you scream “Isn’t iTunes and a ton of other sites doing pay for rental already” let me just be clear, I’m only commenting on the idea that films can be streamed for free, supported by non intrusive advertising.

I appreciate that true cinephiles will instantly turn their noses up at the idea that your movie experience will be interrupted by advertising, and to be fair there’s a little bit of me that agrees with this nose play, certainly if the advertising is handled irresponsibly.

Voddler is not currently available in the UK so I’ve not been able to stream anything to investigate this so let’s just assume for the point of argument that Voddler’s advertising is basically a video version of an ad-spot that interrupts your showing at key moments (end of scenes etc) much like that of Spotify.

So free films on demand, that’s a good thing right?

As home cinema is becoming a recession favourite what better way to pipe films into our homes. Legally.

Hang on, won’t free films supported by advertising, take money away from the film industry and pile even more capitalist propaganda into our already saturated mind boxes?

Possibly but that all depends on how Voddler vet there advertising, surely this can be utilised by the very film companies to sell their films at the box office, much like the big festival push on Spotify. And surely a financial agreement is reached between Voddler, The advertising companies and the Film/TV studios, thusly providing the studio’s with fixed contracts and measurable income.

“Arrrrrrrrgggghhhhhh me hearty’s”

As far as Voddler dragging money away, I think the use of BitTorrent etc. is already having a good phycho-esque stab at that anyway. But is the industry really being damaged by piracy? Good piece on that here

Either way, drowning those pesky pirates would surely please the movie industry immensely.  I would hazard a guess that free streaming movies would at least severely capsize the pirates.

I’m sure that like me, in the very distant and forgivable past you’ve downloaded an album or two, but since the dawn of Spotify if I want to listen to something I don’t own I’ll fire up Spotify and search away… to be honest if what I’m looking for isn’t there, illegally downloading it doesn’t even cross my mind, because my easily distracted attention has no doubt been lead on to something else by the Spotify UI. And after all that if i’m still desperate for the latest record, I can always buy it off of Spotify if it’s blocked by it’s free service or utimatley use iTunes.

Alrighty then, the mighty Broadway Cinema* in Nottingham UK pitched the question – But will it replace the thrill of the big screen?

As a regular cinema goer, my opinion would be; of course it won’t replace the thrill, but surely it’ll provide more access to films that you might not have made the trip out to the cinema, or opened your wallet for.  Also providing on-demand access for cinema to more remote communities in whatever form is certainly not a bad thing.

*Broadway cinema, is probably my favorite cinema/media centre in the UK, I urge you to check it out if your Notts way.

As the Voddler service is HD I wonder how well it would project?

Is there any mileage for Voddler to act as a service to curate film festivals, whereby, somehow, a public performance licence is granted to a set of specific films allowing communities to screen their own film festivals in Public places on their own digital projectors?

What do you then do about the logistics of those local communities charging for the pleasure?

Perhaps Voddler could charge for the public licence, much like how they already do for their rentals, actually I don’t know, I going off on a tangent.

All in all I think free streaming films/media is a great idea, and despite the fear of potential industry damage, I thoroughly support the expansion of our Scandinavian friends’ innovation and eagerly await such a service to arrive in the UK even if I’ve got to be occasionally sold insurance by anthropomorphic digital animals or irritating moustachio opera singers.

The Video:

I wonder how long it’ll be before we can live render this kind of detail… I think a virtual world of this perfection would be a real threat to reality for many folk. So that’s visuals and sound nailed… Now who’s working on simulated environment interaction, and Smell Stimulus?

Brilliant art.

Beautifully presented and retreated in this awesome collection by Vertigo…

I’m popping down to P45 in Nottingham to get the second installment. Top stuff.

Suspense, genius exposition, intrigue, masterful camera work, tricky set navigation and Voyeurism, voyeurism, voyeurism. These aspects of Hitchcock all in one place, together with brilliant acting from James Stewart, Grace Kelly and a well received injection of humour from Thelma Ritter, made this story about confinement, isolation and voyeurism a truly intriguing movie, that puts you right in that wheel chair lifting those binoculars up to your eyes.

Hitchcock cleverly creates a subtext about relationships, fear of commitment and marriage through the observation of James Stewart’s neighbours’ domestic woes. This sib-text is all wrapped up in a suspense filled journey through suspicion, murder and ultimately near-death and another broken leg (Hang on maybe that subtext wasn’t so deeply buried).

The movie is entirely shot from James Stewart’s apartment looking down onto the courtyard of his block, which was built from scratch on a soundstage, this beautifully rendered artifice is shot in Technicolor and paints a rather comic-book environment in which our film takes place. An intense lighting rig was created to alter the time of day at the flick of a switch creating a theatrical yet believable ambience to support the themes of this picture.

I must revisit Charlie Kaufman’s ‘Synecdoche, New York’ which had a rather more ambitious meta-version of this type of set.

Rear window, also used its music well, keeping much of the score diegetic, allowing the audience to listen to music that other people are listening to; earwigging our way through some great sounds of the period.

I haven’t disliked anything that I’ve set my peepers on yet in the Bedroom festival and Rear Window certainly doesn’t break this trend. 5 out of 5 sweaty binoculars and a new and paranoid set of ‘Back Yard Ethics’ to be going on with have set me up nicely for the next film in the festival (and one of my favourites) ‘The Third Man’.

Kermode’s book ‘It’s only a movie: Reel life adventures of a Film Obsessive’, was rather more interesting than I was suspecting and actually found myself really engaging with his “life” “story” much more than I imagined. I really respect Mark’s view on film, but I feared that his auto-biography would perhaps assume a somewhat pedantic mode (which makes his film reviews so entertaining) and over analyse his story into a rather dull dank place. This is not the case, the book is highly entertaining, cleverly written and generally worth a good giggle.

His stage performance that stands in for his book tour is equally entertaining and doubly hilarious even if the whole presentation is just that little bit crap (but that makes it endearing).

Mark kept an audience laughing for well over 90minutes (yeah I know we were all a little warm to the Ker(mode)) which is something that most stand-up’s struggle to do.

Top stuff, Mark Kermode has made my life just that little bit more Wittertaining. (I did expect mayo to pop out at some point though and give mark a good telling off)

Staggering performances, particularly from the Peter Lorre playing a very challenging role, even for today’s standards, help make this my favourite movie of the period.

M has no non-diegetic music, making the city streets seem deserted and sinister providing a paranoid absence of sound, priming it’s audience for the terrifying onset of a whistled rendition of ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’:  The child murder’s theme.

The most interesting sequence for me is the underground trial conducted by the city’s organised crime network. This trial turn’s the idea of crime and punishment on its head as the criminals judge the murderers crime whilst the heavy handed largely parodied police force rely on coercion to finally track down the location of the child killer.  It is during this scene that Lorre’s Beckert is at his most brilliant, portraying a psychologically tortured man trapped in the headlights of a angry mob bent on ‘M’urder to end murder albeit through potentially corrupt intent.

Although in genre M helped take ‘The Bedroom Festival’ creepily into the ‘Intrigue and Suspense’ section, common themes of Law/Order, Crime/Punishment, Right/wrong helped bridge the gap.

M is truly ‘M’arvellous.

Her delicate strokes painted just off the colour of the base layer at first appeared to be the sort of thing that I normally don’t get along with, but as I double took; form started to spring from the canvas, and the longer I looked the more interesting these images became.

A ghostly beauty rewarded my patience which haunted me so I had to go back today to take another look today. Equally as impressive.

Truly worth tripping down to Nottingham Contemporary to have look at Maaike Schoorel’s work plus a host of other interesting work that the BAS7 invites you to appreciate… or not.

I’m really looking forward to night of the Comet on the 5th of November as an alternative to a bonfire or two. I believe tickets are still available. Get them here:

TICKETS PLEASE

The Social Network is a movie about a great many things and nothing at all at the same time. What essentially could have been a very dull story is thrown up onto our screens and masterfully told by Sorkin, Fincher and (importantly) Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross.

Sorkin sets up the film with the breakup of Zukerburg and his girlfriend through snappy dialogue cutting the red ribbon to Fincher’s presentation of the Facebook story and Reznor and Ross then bull ride the narrative without even leaving the saddle.

READ ALLOWED IN A MARK ZUCKERBERG VOICE

Fincher’s visual style and editing genius very much shout Fincher.

Sorkin’s trademark punchy, witty dialogue is firing on its usual 1000 words a minute.

Reznor and Ross’ edgy mix of orchestral, bitmap electro and industrial contain all the style and dark sophistication of there previous works.

Fincher + Sorkin + Reznor and Ross = very fine piece of cinema.

Something that is really haunting me about this film is the ethereal nature of the “Product”, the “Value” and the “Emotion” concerning the story of Facebook and of course all its major players:

It’s been said that this is a film very much of its generation and I guess depending on your viewpoint you could say either The Social Network is a damning indictment of the vacuous, intangible and temporary state of a culture obsessed with the cult of celebrity or… actually stop… Is it about friendship, power, the inability to connect with those around you, trust, betrayal, entrepreneurialism, gender observation, team work, institutional rebellion, finance.

Maybe it’s none of the above, perhaps it’s a movie cut by a popular screen-writer, an ex-music video director, and a pop star simply employed to make something dull come alive on screen, cashing in an internet and cultural phenomenon thusly making more money for Hollywood to put back into their “System” to get ready for the next big on screen exploitation.

I think it’s all off these things and more, and that’s what makes The Social Network such an important piece of contemporary cinema. Love or hate Facebook there is a sub-text in there for everyone and an undercurrent of reality flowing through an ethereal mist of noughts and ones.

Whatever The Social Network is about I strongly urge you to see it.

Pop over to “the” Facebook and check out what’s going on:

http://www.facebook.com/

and coming soon from Hollywood: Twitter: The Movie (Working title: 140 Characters)

This Halloween I was lucky enough to enjoy the spectacle that was Mayhem Horror Festival at the Broadway Cinema in Nottingham.

Rather than give you a blow by blow account of the delicious dark joy of each of the films programmed on the Sunday, I just wanted to extend thanks to the Mayhem team for organising such a well run (erm is that irony), friendly and entertaining day as part of the festival of which I shall be attending all three days next year. (If Broadway hasn’t gotten bored of my shifty mush that is). Actaully, I can’t resist, I’ve got to have my gram of flesh:

Amer

The highlight of the day for me was the mesmerising, dark, sexy, creepy beast that is Amer. It’s the first Gaillo film I’ve ever seen and if there are any more as hypnotically disturbing as this one then I’m all in. Amer is densely rich in atmosphere and materialised through artistic composition both aesthetically and aurally, drifting through 3 set pieces ranging, horror, sexuality, madness and ultimately death.

Amer gets five bags of salt thrown under the door out of 5.

Other movies in order of preference.

We are what we are:

Cannes loved it. 4 out of 5 ticking clocks, plus a tasty limb. I liked it, but would love to have seen it out of the horror context.

Frenzy:

2.5 bags of spuds + an extra bag, 50% spuds, 50% body parts out of 5. Was awesome to see it in 35mm with an audience.

Alien vs. Ninja:

For its place at the opening of my Mayhem Sunday: 5 parasitic phallic jelly babies out of 5. For its place in the halls of horror: 1 silly line of dialogue out of many.

Altitude.

Forget Snakes on a plane. Altitude was ‘5 Whiny 20 somethings playing much younger college kids, that I couldn’t wait to see die on a plane’… I think in retrospect I can see what the director was hoping for. Didn’t work for me. Had high hopes for Altitude… but they were dashed on the rotting remnants of a monster infected Dawson’s Creek episode. 1,000 feet out of 24,000.

Despite the one slightly rotten egg, you’ve got to take the rough with the smooth and I guess cater for all tastes. All in all, no regrets. Cheers.