Star Trek Spoof Top Finnish Movie

Dotnaught writes to tell us Reuters is reporting that the science fiction spoof "Star Wreck: in the Pirkinning" has become Finland's most viewed movie. From the article: " [...] relying on free distribution over the Internet to reach more than 3 million viewers in less than two months. "Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning" is a full-length feature in Finnish with English subtitles. It was made by a group of students and other amateur film makers with a bare-bones budget and a few home computers to create elaborate special effects."

Comments

Reuters forgot to mention

[rubycodez]

it is also the only Finnish movie

Re:Reuters forgot to mention

[Coryoth]

Finland has a reasonably strong cinematic history. Probably the most notable film for non-Finns recently would The Man Without a Past which was nominated for best foreign film at the Academy awards, and won the grand jury prize at Cannes, among numerous other awards.

If you don't stoop to watching foreign film and hence never heard of that, you could always try the Hollywood films from Finnish director Renny Harlin which includes wonderful schlock such as Die Hard 2, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Deep Blue Sea, and The Exorcist: The Beginning.

Jedidiah.

Re:Reuters forgot to mention

[dunkelfalke]

the difference is vast. finnish is a whole different language family.

the most widespread language family in europe is the indoeuropean. the exceptions are: finno-ugric language family (finnish, estonian, sami, hungarian), and the basque language (isolated language, no family)

Re:Reuters forgot to mention

[fbjon]

They're just two more vowels that you don't have in English:

Ä or ä - like 'a' in 'at'
Ö or ö - like .. um.. somewhat like 'u' in 'burden', but a bit higher sound.

These dot's are called "umlaut" sometimes, coming from their German counterpart. Notice though, that they are not 'umlaut' in Finnish or any other nordic language, because they belong to the letter itself, they don't modify it. In Finnish they're called simply ä and ö, and the dots are ä-dots or ö-dots. Info on these vowels.

Re:Reuters forgot to mention

[CortoMaltese]

"The man without a past"? absolutely dreadful movie, not from an artistic point of view, but from a content point of view.

Today's cinematographers have forgotten how to tell a meaningful story. All they want is to convey their own feelings to the public.

I would like you to be a bit more elaborate on why you think The man without a past lacks content and has a meaningless story. I thought it was a great film with critique of the society and sharp observation about the human nature. It was about Life.

I wonder, how would someone tell a meaningful story without conveying their own feelings to the public? Please, give us some examples of such movies! And how exactly could you, for example, critisize the society without being somewhat subjective? There's no ideal society you could objectively compare to.

Of course, your mileage may vary. Familiarity with the Finnish culture, mentality and language might make a big difference in this case, even though the world of Kaurismäki is just one view of it.

Re:Reuters forgot to mention

[petril]

I can also highly recommend Koirankynnenleikkaaja (Dog Nail Clipper (English title)), it is by far the best finnish movie ever made in my opinion.

It was my first time I have cried in a cinema when I saw it. (And before someone who thinks he's being funny, suggests that I cried because it was so bad, that wasn't the case.)

IMdb entry for Dog Nail Clipper can be found here

Great movie

[updatelee]

its worth the watch, its quite good.

Re:Great movie

[Donniedarkness]

Heh... well, I watch most of the stuff that I do for the cheese. Why else would I watch Star Trek: TOS? What, do you think battle scenes between Kirk and Klingon soldiers to be action-packed?

Re:Great movie

[h4rm0ny]

There's a sudden shift in the quality of the film about twenty minutes in, when they complete the spaceship. Something radical must have happened at that point in making it as it becomes much more impressive and a lot funnier.

They get Sheridan and Ivanova down perfectly. I've only ever seen a couple of episodes of Star Trek (thought it was grim), but Babylon V is very well parodied. Love the boot screen, on the weapon too (blink and you'll miss it).

Torrent

[Anonymous Coward]

From their website:

http://www-uk.starwreck.com/torrent/star_wreck_itp _subtitled_xvid.torrent

Re:Torrent

[tortap-0]

Torrent is good and all but you probably will get better speed with the direct downloads from the mirrors. 15 kb/sec vs 1500 kb/sec. Your choice.

Star Wreck...

[Donniedarkness]

It's quite good, I'm told. I've not got access to broadband, but I hear that it will be coming to DVD (not that anyone expects to make any money off of it). I'll be getting it, and from what I've heard it's one of those movies that I would buy on DVD even if I DID have access to broadband. I encourage anyone who has any intrest in it to check it out.

Re:Star Wreck...

[Icedman]

The DVD has been for sale from August. The order form is on the main site. One thing about the DVD: It's in PAL format. IIRC, they were making an NTSC version of the DVD. So all of you who don't own a DVD-player which can play PAL DVDs, I recommend you wait for the NTSC version.

Here's the link for their Foreign orders page: http://www-us.starwreck.com/dvd/index_e.html

Re:Star Wreck...

[d.valued]

Are you kidding?

On any kind of broadband, this should run to your system super-fast. There are hundreds of seeders for this thing!

Even a 56k modem should get this chunked through within a day.

Light Balls? I thought you said "Light Beers?"

[Anonymous Coward]

... and who could possibly forget the awesomely powerful weapon ...

The Twinklers!!!

well done

[NoGuffCheck]

It amazes me to see what can happen when corporations and communities embrace these sort of online ditribution methods. If it were in america you'd have who ever produce Star Trek screaming about pirates stealing the food out of their mouths and the shirts off their backs..

Well done, this can only lead to more free entertainment.

Re:well done

[stubear]

Actually, Roddenberry's son, the guy who owns the rights to the Star Treck franchise, allows fan films to exist as long as they do not make ANY money from them. I don't think this is unreasonable at all, in fact I think it's pretty damn generous. There's an article in the recent issue of Wired that discusses another Star Trek fan project. Personally I find it sad that far too much attention is paid to fan films and music mixes instead of the the truly inspiring original works such as the shorts on AnimWatch, the stuff done by studios like , or the music from thousands of small bands too numerous to list here.

Re:well done

[www.sorehands.com]

Spoofs and such can't be prevented by the rights owner. For example, the Barbiegirl song, in Mattel v. MCA Records.

Re:well done

[Golias]

Personally I find it sad that far too much attention is paid to fan films and music mixes instead of the the truly inspiring original works...

An easy sentiment to applaud, but if said original works were so darn inspiring, wouldn't they manage to, oh I don't know, inspire more attention?

The flash-based Strongbad letters on homestarrunner.com managed to carve a niche mostly through word of mouth, as have various on-line comics such as Penny Arcade, Megatokyo, and Order of the Stick.

Now, the vast majority of people doing that sort of thing don't really manage to make any money (though Piro managed to quit his day job and live of t-shirt sales and book deals), but if something deserves attention in this content-starved age, it usually gets it.

Besides, spoof, fan-fiction, "shipper" stories, doujinshi, etc., are an art form in and of themselves. Some would argue that they are a more pure art from than the stories they are derived from, since they were motivated entirely by love of the subject matter and the desire to create, rather than to meet some TV station's shooting deadline and get a paycheck.

I'm not saying I'd rather read an erotic "Spuffy" fan fic than watch the final episode of Season 6, I'm just saying that there's really nothing that makes such a composition any better or worse, culturally speaking, than some starving writer's attempt at a first novel.

Slashdot timeline

[karvind]

Star Wreck Trailer (December 12th, 2003)

Star Wreck 6 Finally Complete (August 22nd, 2005)

Star Wreck Released as Download (October 1st, 2005)

VERBS

[smart.id]

USE VERBS IN YOUR HEADLINES! Where is the verb? Star Trek Spoof is Top Finnish Movie! Does this piss anyone else off?

Re:VERBS

[Supurcell]

I thought "Finnish" was the verb and something called "Star Trek Spoof Top" was the subject.

Re:VERBS

[jc42]

USE VERBS IN YOUR HEADLINES!

Ah, but part of the fun of English-language headlines is that so many words can be misread as verbs. As others have already pointed out, both "spoof" and "top" can be verbs in this headline (though an 's' should probably be added if you're American). Also, "Finnish" can be read as a mistyping of "finish" and treated as a verb, which is a standard pun in some circles.

One of my favorites, from around 15 years ago, was the newspaper headline "American Ships Head to Gulf". I just did a check, by googling for "Ships Head to Gulf", and found that at least one Australian and one Russian have also shipped their heads to the Gulf.

Or maybe I'm misreading them, and these three people shipped someone else's head to the Gulf ...

Re:Now downloading..

[Directrix1]

Creativity is not directly proportional to profit, therefore corporate America (including Joe Dumbass who let himself be bought a long time ago) do not care about relaxing any of these restrictions.

woohoo

[nemik]

can't wait for the slashdot effect on the torrent...it is rather sluggish.

Re:woohoo

[juventasone]

I watched the movie when it was released, enjoyed it, and have been seeding it ever since in hopes it'd help more people watch it. At this moment there's actually more seeds than peers. I say bring on the slashdot effect, this is what torrents were created for after all.

Not JUST a Star Trek spoof

[Phroggy]

To be fair, they also spoofed Babylon 5.

Avoiding the infamous Klingon Copyright

[Alien54]

it is also the only Finnish movie

I thought it was some newly invented star trek language, to get around the copyrights on Klingon.

Klingon is copyrighted, yes?

although this is still a good tactic.

Leningrad Cowboys Go America

[quenda]

Finland has a reasonably strong cinematic history. Probably the most notable film for non-Finns recently would The Man Without a Past...

How could you not mention Aki's greatest work, "Leningrad Cowboys Go America" ?
It was a big hit as far away as Australia, where the band actually did a concert tour - I swear!
It didn't hurt its popularity that the movie was mostly in English. Well worth watching, if you like twisted humour.

Don't bother ordering if you're in the US

[psi42]

Unfortunately, they wouldn't sell me a disc, citing "legal reasons." Oh well, maybe I'll buy a t-shirt or something.

Re:Don't bother ordering if you're in the US

[Blind_Justice]

The disc is now available for US too. Just took a while to make the legal assesment of the liabilities and fair use analyses. Try again.

Better than the Turkish "spoof?"

[Almonday]

From the Seanbaby video review:

"In the original Star Trek, Captain Kirk was all that is man. He'd tear his shirt off and fight a lizard monster from a space couch covered in green alien sluts. In Turkish Star Trek, reverse all of that. The movie starts with Kaptan Kirk practically prancing over to his chair to sit down cross-legged and daintily lisp out orders...."

Periode 1 - A German Trek Parody

[OzPhIsH]

There was a German Star Trek parody that came out last year called (T)Raumschiff Surprise - Periode 1. I haven't seen it, but I saw ads on television for it when I was in Germany last year, and it looked pretty goofy. Raumschiff is the German word for spaceship, but Traumschiff would be like "dreamship". So it's like a dual meaning. Periode is Period. 1 is 1. Has anyone seen this movie? Is it worth watching? My German is only so-so, but my Trek is pretty good:) Will I be able to understand enough of this movie without a universal translator? Cause I'd really like to see it.

Re:Periode 1 - A German Trek Parody

[ammoQ]

I've seen it; but honestly I don't think it's worth seeing, unless you think that the 602nd gay joke is just as funny as the 601st.
"Kirk" and "Spock" in this movie are a gay copule, and almost all supposed-to-be-funny scenes bear on that.

I watched it a couple weeks ago

[saskboy]

If you keep in mind that it's a comedy first, and a drama second, then you won't be disapointed. It's not supposed to be Star Trek, it's Star Wreck, another universe, so don't be whining about how it doesn't match Star Trek canon.

The ending kinda disapointed me, but mostly because I wanted more! So overall I think I gave it a [5/10] because for an amateur production it's 10/10, but up against real actors and writers it's more like a 3/10. The special effects are top drawer though, in any league.

For other Star Trek spinoffs, look up http://www.newvoyages.com/ they have two episodes of original Trek available for free by torrent. A third is on the way soon and features Star Trek TOS and Babylon 5 actor Walter Koenig [spelling?] - Chekov / Bester.

Re:That movie was cool

[Leroy_Brown242]

What?

Zero budget?

Well, hollywood has just informed me it cannot be good without a budget in the millions!

Re:So happy I could make this lame joke...

[CyanDisaster]

In Soviet Russia, jokes shoot you.

Hope be with ye,
Cyan

More Realistic

[miyako]

Amature films, as these guys have shown, are all the time becomming more realistc. With the computer power and high availability of digital camcorders any group of friends can write, film and star in a full length movie. With the open source Cinipaint and Blender special effects can even be done on a home computer that can rival a lot of the best special effects of movies from the mid to late 90's, and in some cases even very recent movies.
I've been working on just such a project, doing special effects for a fantasy film that's going to be shot in greece. The entire group consists of the writer/director, a camera/lighting guy, a makeup artist/costume designer, a set guy, 3 actors, an actress, 1 guy doing editing and postprocessing, and myself, doing CGI. That's 10 people, working on a budget of about 12,000. [shamless self-promotion] The script is quite a bit better than most of the dreck that comes out of hollywood- without having the pretentious or preachy feel that people (wrongly) associate with independent films. The makeup effects and costumes are top notch considering the budget (the makeup artist studied with Tom Savini of Night of the Living Dead fame), and the special effects are comming on quite nicely- there is a scene we affectionatley call "Helms Deep" with over 200 creatures that should be one of the main story arcs that I've been working on for about a month.
The movie is going to be released free on the net, with DVD sales hopefully making up for the financing that's come out of pocket from a lot of the people who've been working with the project.
I think this is the reason the MPAA is afraid of Peer to Peer networks, and the internet in general. People now have the ability to make and distribute movies all across the globe for less than the catering budget of most big hollywood movies. It's not that they are afraid that people are going to pirate their movies, it's that they are afraid people are going to make the obsolete.

Re:More Realistic

[RAMMS EIN]

``It's not that they are afraid that people are going to pirate their movies, it's that they are afraid people are going to make the obsolete.''

I'm pretty sure this goes for the RIAA. It's probably true that the spreading of music that P2P has brought about increases the popularity of the music, and it's not hard to imagine this would lead to increased sales of RIAA-endorsed media.

However, movies are different. A movie costs much more to make than a song, and ends up being watched far less often than most songs get listened to. So you both lose a lot more when someone gets your movie for free instead of paying you for it, and people are far less likely to pay for a movie once they've seen it.

In short, I think the movie industry has a good reason to fear lost sales due to piracy. In addition to that, of course, there's the fact that the 'net and distribution methods like Bittorrent facilitate competition. I couldn't say which is the bigger threat, though.

Re:More Realistic

[Maxo-Texas]

A large part of the reason movies are so expensive is what people in california cost.
In fact, I'd guess that over 60% of your 100 million dollar budget is not spent on physical consumables.

So... doing the math... thinking about how hollywood folks are different than skilled programmers... I can't see why outsourcing is not a severe threat to them too. There are millions of talented people who can make increasingly high quality entertainment for less and less money every day. At the very least, I can't see why you would spend $120k on an editor when you can get an editor in india for a tenth of that (who has probably edited a LOT more films since they still make a lot more films over there).

And as far as the 'talent' goes- I found at least a third of the actors in Star Wreck to be pro-level acting and only a couple seemed poor (after taking into account it's a spoof). I personally find it hard to get up the interest to see a Tom Cruise film since I don't respect him after the Brooke Shields thing where he came across as a world class idiot.

Now when I see MI I see Jim Phelps (world class idiot) fighting the bad guy (as an idiot) and going on a mission (as an idiot).

So seeing a decent looking actor, who can read the lines well and just play the damn part who doesn't have a trainload of baggage seems more appealing every day.

Re:Understood 'to be' or not 'to be'

[Timothy Chu]

The reason a verb is necessary is that the word "Spoof" could be interpreted as the verb, making the headline sound like Star Trek is doing the spoofing.

Re:Understood 'to be' or not 'to be'

[Narcogen]

Then it would need to be "spoofs", at least in American English, since "Star Trek" would be considered a collective singular noun. In British English, if the rule for referring to collective nouns as plural even when the word itself seems singular, such as in the names of sporting teams, applies in this case, then I suppose the line could be misconstrued as you mention.

Previous top movie

[emakinen]

Before Star Wreck previous top movie was made 1955, and in 50 years it has gathered an audience of 2,8 million. The movie is called Unknown soldier (Tuntematon sotilas), and it is based on novel by Väinö Linna. Basically it's a story of a finnish army unit in second world war, and it's point is to tear down the myth of clean and heroic finnish soldier.

About Star Wreck being the most popular: can you really compare a strictly finnish audience with a potentially global audience? Excluding Aki Kaurismäki's Man without past, this is one of the few finnish movies, that have ever got any international distribution.

An objective assessment of this movie

[ThufirHawat]

As a non-Finn who speaks fluent Finnish and has an extensive knowledge of the Finnish movie world let me add a few things on this fan movie.
The lead character is a sterotyped Finnish youth, i.e. loud, half-drunk, not very subtle nor very polite.
The plot is not that clear, but the special FX are not too bad.
Should you ever make the mistake to consider that this is a typical Finnish movie, please don't: go look for movies made by Aki Kaurismäki and see by yourself what a master Finnish director can produce.
All in all this is neither brilliant nor dreadful. Nothing to write home about either.
I recall a Star Wars spoof which was quite more successful at spoofing, but perhaps they got a "cease and desist" letter meanwhile...

Re:Call me shallow but...

[Coeurderoy]

I do agree totally, but of course I'm sure the reason her name does not appear is because I'm the only one who needs her name and phone number :-).
(Now I wonder why I didn't get it yet, must be all that spam clogging down the Internet.)

  Cheers ;-)

Ummm.... no?

[TubeSteak]

Unless my math is screwy, you can't DL 541MB through a 5.6KB modem in under 24hrs

5.6 KB/s * (60 sec / 1 min)
336 KB/m * (60 min / 1 hr)
20.160 MB/hour

541.38 MB / 20.160 MB/hour = 26.8541666666 hours

Close, but not quite 24 hrs.

/I retain such esoteric knowledge from my 56Kb days

Re:Understood 'to be' or not 'to be'

[geoffspear]

In British English

I prefer the term "English English", to further distinguish it from any peculiar usages in Wales and Scotland.

i watched the trailer

[circletimessquare]

all i can say is i didn't know i would be learning the finnish word for "fragfest" today, but there you go