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He also did some of the best classic Sci-Fi when he was young.

Put me in a vat and wake me up every 100 years for 5 years at a time.

So try and find "Brigadoon".

This might be as close as I have ever seen to "The Last Starfighter" in real life. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087597

I can't believe the scare tactics that are being used, as well as the fact there was no good reason to take this guys domain. What kinds of bullshit powers are these where people don't have a chance to defend their property, when it isn't even being user to solicit illegal activity as per caselaw?

Well, sadly, Team America: World Police has become true for copyrighted stuff.

Now the rest of the world has to deal with your asshat corporations and laws. America has now officially become a tyrant. Fuck you all. I'm sure they will start applying the morality of the puritans on the rest of us.

People fear Islam? You should fear American corporate interests -- at least a good portion of Muslims are sane and normal people. The same can't be said for multinationals.

It looks more like Johnny 5 to me.

capitalism: if it can be done cheaper, it will be.

piracy: if it can be done free, it will be.

what's the major difference, really. "piracy" is just a consequence of having a worldwide near instant distribution network and the ability to make infinite perfect copies of a product.

technology has allowed this, and there's no way in hell it can be stopped. distributors need to come up with something that is just as if not more convenient than getting the product for free. until they drop their prices and up their quality, that's not going to happen.

disclaimer: i work for a major film distributor.

Bullshit. I subscribe to "The Movie Network" with my cable provider and am also paying for my Netflix.ca account. I can download a lot of that stuff for free, but I am still choosing to pay; TMN gives me fairly recent movies that I can watch using the included On-Demand service and Netflix for a bunch of the older stuff (I just restarted watching the tv show Heroes from Season One). I don't have a full HDTV setup yet, so can't comment on the HD experience using those services.

You do have a point that distributors need to come up with something fairly quickly - Netflix works well and you can use a PS3/Wii to watch on your TV.

Piracy did a great thing for the world: accelerate distribution times. For instance SWEp1:The Phantom Menace was released May 19 1999 in USA/Canada, but people in some major E.U. markets had to wait until late September-Mid October to go an see it. By time time SWEp3:RotS was released, this was back to within 2 weeks!

Pirate parties do great work to get "our" rights back, e.g. if I buy a CD, I want to be able to rip it, convert to mp3/aac/flac, and put that on my portable player. This is a right that people have had for a long time. Ouch. What can we do. I know! Let's invent some silly form of "copy protection" on the CD. And THEN we make it illegal to bypass that. Woohoo! Problem of allowed-copy solved by disallow-bypass.

Pirate parties can also do great work with the "settlement letters' racketeering scheme.

capitalism: if it can be done cheaper, it will be.

piracy: if it can be done free, it will be.

what's the major difference, really. "piracy" is just a consequence of having a worldwide near instant distribution network and the ability to make infinite perfect copies of a product.

technology has allowed this, and there's no way in hell it can be stopped. distributors need to come up with something that is just as if not more convenient than getting the product for free. until they drop their prices and up their quality, that's not going to happen.

disclaimer: i work for a major film distributor.

Bullshit. I subscribe to "The Movie Network" with my cable provider and am also paying for my Netflix.ca account. I can download a lot of that stuff for free, but I am still choosing to pay; TMN gives me fairly recent movies that I can watch using the included On-Demand service and Netflix for a bunch of the older stuff (I just restarted watching the tv show Heroes from Season One). I don't have a full HDTV setup yet, so can't comment on the HD experience using those services.

You do have a point that distributors need to come up with something fairly quickly - Netflix works well and you can use a PS3/Wii to watch on your TV.

Piracy did a great thing for the world: accelerate distribution times. For instance SWEp1:The Phantom Menace was released May 19 1999 in USA/Canada, but people in some major E.U. markets had to wait until late September-Mid October to go an see it. By time time SWEp3:RotS was released, this was back to within 2 weeks!

Pirate parties do great work to get "our" rights back, e.g. if I buy a CD, I want to be able to rip it, convert to mp3/aac/flac, and put that on my portable player. This is a right that people have had for a long time. Ouch. What can we do. I know! Let's invent some silly form of "copy protection" on the CD. And THEN we make it illegal to bypass that. Woohoo! Problem of allowed-copy solved by disallow-bypass.

Pirate parties can also do great work with the "settlement letters' racketeering scheme.

Here is a movie which chronicles the happenings around early Apple and MS computers http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168122/

Nice

...such as PANs LANs...

Is this like PAN's Labyrinth? If so, that's awesome! I can't wait for eye-hand technology!

...such as PANs LANs...

Is this like PAN's Labyrinth? If so, that's awesome! I can't wait for eye-hand technology!

You would be amazed at what they can find in the trashcans they are emptying!

And this was the core strategy of a trader in "Ladies who do", a 1963 comedy http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0057241. He collaborated with a group of cleaners to make a fortune in which they all shared, based on access to inside information.

I remember Sinbad having that same problem.

Then Toyota came in with the Prius - also viewed by Detroit as an impractical science experiment sure to be rejected by the American Consumer - and Toyota proceeded to make tons of money on it.

For those who think this is a joke, cf. Lundgren's Wikipedia page, or his IMDB bio.

He has a master's degree in chemical engineering, and was awarded a Fullbright Scholarship to MIT, and just happened to get co-opted into being a movie-star while en route.

If you read the quotations, he's evidently intelligent and witty. He's also an actual martial-arts master, and a family-photo of his actually scared-off a couple of burlars who made the mistake of breaking into his house and attacking his wife (`your husband is who!? So sorry, ma'am!').

Buckaroo Banzai

Note to mods: this is a movie character... Not a bad choice, though ;-)

I enjoyed the scenes at the soccer stadium in El secreto de sus ojos. There was definitely some CGI that brings us from a helicopter view right down among the people in the stands.

And watch the camera go out off the ledge and down to follow the suspect as he jumps down to a lower level. (The camera man had a wire harness, and a quick crew behind him.)

That was pretty impressive filming, along with an interesting story and great acting. Unfortunately, if you have trouble understanding Argentinian Spanish, you'll have to read subtitles.

Who knew Angels & Demons was going to be a true story?

I was left stunned by IRREVERSIBLE as well.

I didn't see it in a cinema, but I imagine the reaction was much the same as when I saw the Toronto premiere of Polytechnique (Canadian film of the year, 2009); I'd never seen an audience sit silent and motionless through the whole credits of a film, before.

Or The Passenger by Michelangelo Antonioni. Take your time for this one. It's a slow but amazing movie and (on-topic) has a technically touch and long final shot.

The Iceman Cometh (IMDB; Wikipedia) has incredibly long scenes.

Reminds me of the scene in Airplane 2 where the TSA pulls an old lady out of the line and puts a gun to her head while terrorists walk through the metal detector with machine guns in the background.

Timecode is a 97-minute movie where the screen is split in four sections, each one following one character in a single take.

It was shot 15 times total, and the director apparently insisted that the actors wear different clothes each time so there wouldn't be any temptation to edit any two takes together!

The mother of all long takes. Will leave you squirming in your seat.

That's nothing Russian Ark.

"2000 Actors. 300 years of Russian History. 33 Rooms at the Hermitage Museum. 3 Live Orchestras. 1 Single Continuous Shot."

That's an hour and a half long with 2,000 people running around choreographed.

I was going to toss that one out there, but you beat me to it.

One thing I will mention about it for our friends out there in /. comment-land: in order to film a feature-length film in a single take, they needed to capture it digitally, because the equivalent amount of 35 mm film would have required a truck. They needed to develop some custom equipment (now available as a product, I expect) that would let them hot-swap the camera's hard drives while going a continuous shoot.

Another film that exploits the long-takes example: Irreversible . Like Momento it plays out in reverse-chronological order, and each ~14-minute segment was done as a single take. Why 14 minutes? That's about one reel of 35-mm film.

You could have a feature length film in one cut...

It certainly had its dull points, but A Russian Ark (aka Russkiy kovcheg) was a feature length film done in a single take. They had to develop some specific technology for the purpose, and filmed the whole thing digitally, IIRC.

Most films cannot be shot in a single take --35mm film is simply too bulky and would require multiple reels, and while I suppose that digital is making it possible, it's still not cheap.

No love for Russian Ark?

Or for Tiempo Real (Real Time) which "Holds the official Guinness World Record for being the 'First One-Take Movie in Film History'"

The entire movie has no cuts.

Raging Bull had a great long shot that also changes from a hand-held camera to a crane shot. It starts in Jake Lamotta's dressing room, and follows /leads him out into and down a hall, into the boxing arena, then becomes a crane shot, still following his trek to the ring....

Has anyone seen Roy Anderson's "Songs From The Second Floor"? It's a really great Swedish film about the end of the world that consists pretty much entirely of long, mesmerizingly awesome shots. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120263/

Joss Whedon's Serenity features a nearly ten-minute long scene with no visible cuts (there is technically a seamless dissolve half-way through for technical reasons -- watch the DVD commentary and you'll see what I mean). Whedon didn't do it to show off or grab attention, but actually to make the audience feel safe and trusting after the rapid cuts and scene/flow changes found at the very beginning of the film.

I find rapid cuts annoying and a way to draw the viewer away from a lack of detail or a scene that can't carry itself on the acting/sets/dialog/action alone. I don't seek out long takes though -- like most things in movies: if they're done really well you shouldn't be thinking about them, but rather about the plot.

Let's go for the really long takes.

In Kenneth Branaugh's Henry V there is one of the most amazing tracking shots ever filmed. It happens after the battle and starts when Henry picks up the dead boy. The next 5+ minutes are of him carrying the boy through the blood and gore of Agincourt to the soaring sounds of the Kyrie Eleison. It gives me chills just to think of it.

Penn and Teller once cleverly pointed out the obvious fact that having human beings behind the spying pretty much ensures that said spying will be abused (they did a rather amusing test to see if security staff would abuse their power if tempted, and almost all of them did). You can put all the regulations in place you like, but there will always be plenty of humans in charge who will ignore them for whatever reason ("Hey look, it's Angelina Jolie coming through the scanner! Get you're cellphone camera, Bill!").

kind of reminds me of this more..

Joe Dirt

That sounds awful. I hope they do make significant advances in stem cell research so that you and others can get the treatment you deserve. That being said, might I suggest you consider a career as a supervillain? I hear the pay is very nice and you get a cool lair.

"But inexplicably we designated the experiment a "failure" and decided to learn nothing from it."

I blame Pauly Shore's interference in the experiment.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115683/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086567/quotes?qt0453844

If you're a "Heavy Metal" fan, you'd know that the God in one of the sketches is named "Uhluhtc" (pronounced ooh-la-tech) - Cthulhu in reverse.

This is not the first time the defense industry got its ideas from a movie (or comic book).

Remember this classic idea for a plane-mounted laser?

If you are serious about protecting your privacy, both online and offline, then it is best to take matters into your own hands and learn the sorts of tradecraft techniques which are common to the intelligence community. There are many publicly accessible books and articles (of varying quality) on this and other relevant topics; finding them is left as an exercise for the reader. However, a good starting point is this exchange from the film Ronin .

Sam: Whenever there is any doubt, there is no doubt. That's the first thing they teach you.

Vincent: Who taught you?

Sam: I don't remember. That's the second thing they teach you.

I find for this this quote from Lawrence of Arabia to be appropriate:

Sherif Ali: Have you no fear, English?
T.E. Lawrence: My fear is my concern.

Once you decide that you will refuse to allow you opponent to know what you feel inside you're halfway there. Then, work on your thousand yard stare and fringe scanning. This allows you (from your opponents view) to look directly into their eyes, yet what you are really looking at is their shoulders and hips and yet you look completely impassive. I hear it is quite disconcerting.

Disclaimer: You should learn how to fight before using these techniques.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0238380/

It's worse than that. They pulled this straight out of the final 20 minutes or so of In The Loop where Malcolm Tucker (Spin Doctor) coerces a minister to doctor a report regarding the invasion of Iraq (WMD findings, if I remember correctly) to read as though it is actually a report in favour of the invasion. Paragraphs are moved or removed, dates are changed... Shit, I thought that film was a satirical comedy, not a documentary.

If you've not seen it, see it. Peter Capaldi (Tucker) is hilarious.

Well, as mentioned below the US does not recognize the Hague. But, I was interested in what the Geneva Conventions have to say about it and really, it seems to not be addressed. It is a complicated subject as different nations/states have their utilities controlled by governments and/or private organizations.

If it was really an issue, I think it would have come up relating to invasion forces using local water systems and sewer systems as these functionally are no different that an electric utility. I can't recall any invading force using the local toilets coming up as a war crime.

Pillaging relates to personal gain/profiteering, theft of captured soldiers personal effects, looting bodies or theft of opposing forces equipment for personal gain (i.e. Kelly's Heroes)

http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/CONVPRES?OpenView

http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/FULL/375?OpenDocument

"Part III. Captivity; Section 1. Beginning of Captivity, Art 18. All effects and articles of personal use, except arms, horses, military equipment and military documents, shall remain in the possession of prisoners of war, likewise their metal helmets and gas masks and like articles issued for personal protection. Effects and articles used for their clothing or feeding shall likewise remain in their possession, even if such effects and articles belong to their regulation military equipment."

I cannot find anything that restricts the capturing force's ability to apply the captured equipment (w/ the exception of certain medical equipment and medical circumstances) for their own purposes.

Every time I see that quote attributed to Duke Nukem, I bristle. The original quote came from a 1988 movie called They Live, starring wrestler "Rowdy" Roddy Piper and Keith David. I actually paid good money to go see that at a theater!

I guess Duke Nukem made the phrase famous, but still, it was blatantly stolen. The exact quote is:

I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubblegum.

In the movie, Roddy had just burst into a bank with shotguns looking to kill him some aliens. When he delivered the line, I thought I was going to die laughing, it was so over-the-top. Anyone who likes Duke Nukem should see the movie at some point to enjoy the original source of the quote in all of its glory.

At least, that's what the toy robot did in A Fistful of Yen.

Clearly this is can be work of only ONE criminal mastermind. Lex Luthor.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0779982/

LMAO

My company has been outsourcing jobs in India to East Asia. I doubt it is as romantic as the movie Outsourced

For these guys!