Best blog headlining image ever

Howling at the Moon

Toronto plays host to many film festivals throughout the year, from tiny fringe fests like the Macedonian Film Festival, Cabbagetown Short Film & Video Festival, Bicycle Film Festival, imagineNATIVE (among many, many others), to massive, globally recognized celeb j-o seshes like the Toronto International Film Festival. Film festivals are exciting, uniting, and invigorating. At their best, they can reaffirm our faith in cinema as a transcendental and thought-provoking art form, and at their worst, they can at least provide a conversation starter: "You mean you attended Breast Fest too?". Kris and I recently bought passes to the Midnight Madness program at this year's TIFF, which is always a trip; even if the film sucks the bag, there are bound to be some sort of peripheral shenanigans and/or substance abuse-fuelled mania that make the whole thing more than worthwhile. "CARNIVALE!!!"

One fest to which I pay particularly close attention is the always spectacularly curated Toronto After Dark Film Festival, a celebration of new horror, fantasy, sci-fi and cult film that started out a few years ago as a weekend shindig (but has now expanded to a full week), begins next Friday (Aug. 14). The fest is beginning to take on a mantle similar to Montreal's thus far unparalleled - for North America, at least - Fantasia, and that's saying a lot. Five years ago, when my partner and I lived in Montreal, I bought a 10 ticket package to Fantasia and it turned out to be one of the cinematic landmarks of the past decade for me. Unfortunately, I'll be out of town for a celebration of the end of spontaneous blow-jobs while playing video games, er, I mean, a wedding, on the Friday and Saturday, but you can bet your dick (or vag - we're mad equal-opp at The Buff) you'll find my ass in the grungy seats at the Bloor Cinema for many of the other screenings in the TADFF fest.

One of the awesome things about living in the city is the opportunity to go to the cinema at any time and be awed, altered, saddened, elated, entertained, frightened, uplifted, enlightened. The fact that I have all these opportunites at my fingertips at any given moment is something I take for granted far too often. That all changes now. Get thee to a cinema.

Gobots!

Found this little gem on Rochester's Tech blog http://www.tomstechblog.com/post/Amateur-analysis-from-supposed-experts.aspx

Interesting reading.....

Sporgey


Hi. I'm Tom from TomsTechBlog.com. Here at TomsTechBlog.com, We strive to answer your questions about technology so you can be happier.

Last week we talked about making a standard DVD player into a magic box that will play everything from vintage Mexican 78rpm Mariachi records to warped 12” Panasonic Laserdiscs to 8-tracks. That was easy. Today we're going to talk about turning your bicycle into a robot bicycle! All you'll need is a bike and some scotch tape.

First you take your bike apart and make a robot out of the spare parts. I know how to do this because I did it in England, twice!. I'm also a media technology graduate and have a bike that I've named Benjamin so I've definitely got a leg up on you there. The hardest part will be building the gyro-slant balancing unit. I used my front fender, a rear reflector and part of the chain to make mine. It worked perfectly – just like it did back in England where it's legal for me to work. You might want to get one of these if you're not a technology graduate like me. http://www.robotshop.ca/arduino-lilypad-accelerometer.html

Okay....

Step one.... locate your bike. Here it is!



















Step two.... take it apart
























Step three...rebuild it to look like this - a proper UK robot bike!


























(Alternate Step three..... or this!)



Friends, you shouldn't be afraid of technology. I'm not! If you don't know something – just make it up! That's what I do.

Cheers!

Tom.

Gamorra

Gamorra is awesome, I've never seen a mafia movie that's actually anti-mafia. Goddfellas, Sopranos there great movies but in the end they glorify violence and crime Scarface being the biggest example. It's nice to see that Italian neorealism isn't completely dead , it's a style I really like and when done well the viewer is able to see into the live of real people. The movie is a great look at how the Camorra control life in Naples and the sourounding areas and it's devestating effects on the local populace, every thing about this movie is top notch but to me the acting the cinematography really stood out. Defiantly the best mafia movie ever made.

The Criterion Project

I was just scrolling through the Criterion titles on their website to see which titles we were missing, and it struck me going through the list how few of the films I have seen, or how long it's been since I've seen some of my favourites. I have decided to undertake a sort of self-taught whirlwind history of the cinema, beginning with spine #1, I plan to go through them in the order of their spine numbers, as that will be a little less tedious than doing them chronologically, and allow me to watch, say, John Woo's The Killer immediately after A Night To Remember. Who knows how long it will all last, but I feel like I've been getting lazy watching films lately and I hope this brings me back on track. No schedule or deadline per film; when I watch it, that's when I watch it. No rules, really, other than the spine number order. I'll try to post reviews after I've watched each film, and they'll probably be fairly short as most of these films have extensive criticism already available (indeed, many include novella-length booklets of essays and interviews pertaining to the film). So, first up will be Criterion title #1, Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion...

(Also, certain titles have gone out of print, although we have a copy in some form or other, perhaps not Criterion; this is perfectly acceptable, as it is merely the films I wish to see, and am not handcuffed to the label, merely using it as a guide and not a rulebook. Oh, and yes - I am going to watch The Rock and Armageddon...again).

People. Are. Lilac.

This is the disparaging nickname that the Americans gave the PAL (Phase Alternate Line) system back in the day. It was in response to England referring to the yanks format as Never Twice The Same Colour while the frenchies SECAM was dubbed System Essentially Contrary to the American Method. Funny and interesting no? Well jog on then.

DVDs come in both Pal and Ntsc here at the buff but what we really need to worry about is the kind of copyright control over 'regions' of the world, North America being '1' and Europe being '2' etc. However, (ALL *edit) MANY DVD players can play any region DVDs. They just need to be "Unlocked"

disclaimer: Do this at your own risk neither I nor the buff will be responsible if you drop your remote in a cup of coffee whilst attempting this.

Simply find the brand and model number of your player and google it along with "region unlock code" i.e. "Sony DVR150 region unlock code", with a little time and research you can quite easily find a code for most players. This usually involves some sort of sequence of buttons you press on your remote, et voila. An all region player.

Edit* According to stellar dingleberry Tim Curry:

"About 1/3 of the DVD players made today are Universal, the other 2/3's being either exclusively PAL or exclusively NTSC. Even after the Region Code is hacked, the players in the later category cannot play DVD's from the the other format. You have to specifically get a Universal player for that. They are often refered to as "Multi-Region" players to make matters even more complicated"

CINEACTION is a Toronto-based film periodical that I pick up from time to time. I've gotta admit that some past issues have been a little unwieldy – the articles seem intent on sucking any joy that cinema has to offer by intense over-analysis – but this latest one, possibly the result of it's accessible Superhero theme, is terrific. As I skimmed through it, I couldn't help but think back to Dropkick's defense of the Superhero genre and here's one of cinema's headiest periodicals doing the exact same thing. Kudos Kadas. Not much in the way of online content on their website but I'll bring the magazine over to the FBE when I'm done with it if anyone's interested.

I, Giulio

Wow, what a film....

Il Divo, from writer and director Paolo Sorrentino, is one of those rare movies that restores and reinforces one's faith in cinema. You need one or two of these a year to make wading through all the mediocre stuff seem worthwhile. The film sketches the later part of Italian politician Giulio Andreotti's life, from around the early '90s to date (he's still alive, now 90). His career includes being Prime Minister of Italy several times and the film's title is drawn, with good reason as it turns out, from a name given to Julius Caesar. Andreotti's party, the Christian Democrats, after ruling for most of Italy's post-war period, floundered in the mid-nineties - the result of a series of damning corruption and Mafia connection charges - and has subsequently disappeared from the political scene. The film is anchored by an outrageous tour-de-force performance in the title role by Toni Servillo. It starts with a bang - quite literally - at point zero, and continues to crank up a weird tension for a solid two hours. A barrage of information is thrown at the audience in rapid-fire succession that worried me out of the gates. Was I supposed to take all this info in? It turns out not to matter – the intent of the details is simply to establish how expansive Andreotti's influence and power was.

Interestingly, Il Divo is everything that Oliver Stone's W. wasn't – stylized, surreal, informative, creepy, funny and most importantly, not afraid to take a position on the film's subject. It also needs to be said just how important Toni Servillo is to the film. His portrayal is simply astonishing and amongst the most nuanced and enigmatic performance I've had the pleasure of seeing. The score is excellent, the locations breathtaking, and the whole thing is brimming with an intensity and reckless excess that makes it hard to tear your eyes from the screen. It's big, complex and brilliant.

I don't know when it releases on Region 1 DVD (the one I watched is a UK PAL import), but this will be a sure-fired winner when it does. With Gomorrah and now this film, here's hoping that we're witnessing a bit of a renaissance in Italian filmmaking. They're two of the best films I've seen this year.

Sporgey

Tom is a big nob

It would seem the only way to get any exchanges flowing around here is to make some derogatory remark about someone, or comment on their spelling. Rather than contain all this fun to the comments pages, I decided to move my latest volley to a top-level blog post. My contention is noted in the title. Your misspelled/grammatically-challenged comments are most welcom. Stay tuned for my BSG Part 47 review titled; "Kendall can be a bitchy little Cylon at times" post in the next few days.

S

BSG Review, Part 46

After a self-imposed, 3 year cell-batical, I admit to being pretty stunned by the technological wallop packed into “smart” phones these days. It's a little like peering into a future that's already arrived. Coincidentally, I also just finished the final season of BSG, a series that - at its core - is a cautionary reflection on (and warning about) the perils of unchecked technological advances.

BSG's dystopian vision of humanity probably seems more important than it really is, but the series is distinctly (and by definition) a present-day construct, a pop-culture dissection of the trends and possible futures of a global society with right now as its starting point. Regardless of BSG's place in the science fiction canon, it's hard not to be impressed with the scope and thought that went into the series. To be frank, about half of it is well-packaged rubbish but the other half is though-provoking Sci-Fi at its finest. The series worked best when it was stripped down to pure survival mode. What needed to happen, who stepped up and who didn't when the chips were down made for great story telling and BSG excelled when the writers concentrated on the challenges of this struggle. When it wandered off into quasi-religious mode, the series noticeably deflated and became a bit tedious at times.

While it isn't integral to the BSG story arc, the brief glimpses offered into Caprica before the fall are underdeveloped and if BSG had a plot hole, this is it. For all the “beware-the-machine” rhetoric of the series, the rift at the core of the conflict goes strangely unexplored. Having seen the opening volley of the new series “Caprica”, which is set in the period when machines develop a consciousness (of sorts), I gather that the series' creators felt the same way. We'll have to see where they go with it. That being said, the vague cautionary tale about technology that BSG circles around might be deliberate and gives the series the benefit of allowing the viewer to imprint whatever they want on the warning. Depending on your perspective, the show could be about the automobile, big oil, the nuclear industry, the military, Apple or any of a dozen other things. Regardless of the rotating metaphor, what was evident during these pre-war-life-on-Caprica flashbacks, was the airy indifference displayed by its citizens to the pitfalls associated with their technologically advanced society.

Which brings me back to my new “smart” phone. The increasingly ubiquitous wireless world of cell phones, Twittering, text messaging, iPods, and other personal communication tools has grown exponentially in recent years and it's changing our society in ways we haven't begun to understand. Our individual and collective behavior is shifting to align with these new forms of interaction in both good and bad ways. The sheer accessibility to information, knowledge (and maybe more importantly, each other) also manifests itself in increasingly conflicting ways. We've all tried to have a verbal discussion with someone so completely immersed in their cell/text world as to become nearly impossible to engage with in the real one. Their attentions are difficult to maintain because they can't stop texting and twittering long enough to focus on an analog discussion. The huge irony of course is this - for all the new communication lines opened to them by their wireless devices, the cell-outs have lost their ability to communicate using the one they're born with. Amongst nearly all the converts, there also seems to be little realization that their most intimate communication is now modulated and controlled by third parties, a particularly troublesome relinquishment of their right to (and need for) privacy.

What I took to be the essence of the BSG story line was the danger associated with unchecked faith in technology. Granted they took it to a metaphoric extreme – the machines rise up and kill us – but the story is not new. It's been done countless times before - from H.G Welles to Planet of the Apes to The Terminator series, but at their core, these tales are all about the same thing.

In a way, BSG took the easy way out. By making the machines the aggressor, the show's creators removed human culpability from the equation, at least in any direct way. At worst, the humans were presented as a combination of arrogant and blissfully ignorant. The Cylon Frankenstein they created simply rose up and mutinied against their masters. It might have been interesting if they had explored the idea that benevolent passivity in a society addicted to a mode of communication that sometimes lessens rather than expands real discourse was ultimately to blame for its downfall.

Out of interest, I think that's where we are right now.

Sporgey.