07/08/2005
The unavoidable death of Time?
The recent collapse of the Granville Technology Group has been compared
by many to the MG Rover collapse, and in some ways they're similar - a
large company, poorly managed to death - but it is, however, a unique
situation. In the case of GTG, we have a company which seems to have
aimed to alienate customers by deliberately selling them shoddy kit -
something which even the Phoenix consortium would have baulked at - and
then locking the customers in just to annoy them.
Time Computers, the brand used by GTG for most of its life, was never a
particularly good company - it sold machines on the cheap through
newspaper advertisements with cut-back components, overreaching software
deals and financing agreements. It was, however, a profitable one -
right to the point when its founder, Tahir Mohsan, not only became so
rich he ended up on the Guardian's young Rich List, but became president
of the Federation of Asian Businesses into the bargain; in fact,
recently he was listed by the Manchester
Evening News, on 31st May this year, as being worth £80m.
What exactly happened between the point when they were able to buy the
charred remains of Tiny back in 2002 (Tough It's Now
Yours, according to computer-repair slang) and the bankruptcy of
today?
Well, as we all know, they started pulling stunts. Before this time,
they were only slightly worse than every other direct retailer; only
using slightly worse components, with a tendency to overload software
and charge for tech support. Firstly, they started charging extra for
reload discs - so you had to pay GTG £60 if you even wanted to restore
the computer to factory condition - even if the system had been damaged
by a virus, Trojan or component failure. Insultingly, all the £60 CD-ROM
did was unlock a partition hidden on the computer in the first place
which contained the restore software; this was a stunt pulled by no
other UK computer vendor. Most don't supply original Windows CDs (with
the notable, and unusual exception of Dell), so the only recourse is to
wipe the system back to factory condition using the restore discs -
which come in the box. Time didn't do that, and this undoubtedly gained
them a huge amount of adverse publicity; especially since they also had
the most expensive technical support number in the UK computer industry,
a £1/minute 090 monster, which considering that Dell use an 0870 seems
to be outstandingly poor value.
I started to write about Time when the company pulled its most visible
and outrageous stunt, in late 2003. They had taken a practice previously
seen amongst US computer vendors (but not their European offshoots)
of locking the system's modem so it could only dial particular telephone
numbers, locked it to the numbers of their ISP offspring company - the
still-running and must-avoid Supanet (Internexus Group) - and
then for a time smugly told customers to go buy a USB modem if they
wanted to dial their own ISP. The modem was always a standard Conexant
HSF software modem - a piece of kit you can buy very cheaply online -
and all that was ever locked down was the driver; the modem was not
locked in hardware, it was entirely Time/Tiny's creation and definitely
not the "optimisation" their PR people later tried to claim it was. This
got me to put up my now-mostly-useless Time page
- in its original form, just a somewhat vitriolic "10 Reasons Not To Buy
From Time" list, which then quickly expanded as solutions to the locking
problem started to come out, GTG found a way to lock the driver harder,
and more solutions came through.
Later, Time put up a page containing software to unlock the modems,
which I'm sure was due to Internet pressure; but it still required the
user to create a Supanet account to access, if they weren't lucky enough
to have a mate with a knowledge of what to do, and had several
suspiciously unnecessary restrictions. These meant that if a user has
one of the last Time PCs, they cannot unlock the modem using Time's
software even if they find someone that's kept it - the unlocking
software has a challenge-response protection which requires a key
generated by Time's now-nonexistant website. (Plug: my Time page still
has the registry-based unlocking method, despite pleas from GTG to
remove it, which should hopefully still work.) It's almost like they
wanted to give their customers one last screw.
I received many emails from Time employees during the page's existance,
which were the main reasons it was kept up - the company was not only
screwing customers, it was screwing its employees too. I also had the
entertainment, on occasion, of GTG's Internet PR team showing up in the
page comments (having followed the link from the pro-unionisation ITEF
site) - now sadly lost by HaloScan, I promise you I didn't delete
anything - making occasionally salient points about the page's vitriol
but otherwise parroting a one-note "We didn't do it" song, easily
disprovable with Romulus2 and Watchdog. I'll leave it to an ex-employee,
posting recently, to give the gist of much of the commenting:
I am not sorry nor surprised to hear of the collapse of Granville
Technology! I worked for the company for 2.1/2 years, 3 months in the
Legal Dept, the rest of the time on the front line customer service team
and the Supanet Dept.
In 40 years of employment,(I resigned voluntarily in January 2001) I
have never worked for a worse company - it was difficult to decide who
was treated worse: customers or staff. The management were abominable.
(Neil Foster, 31st July 2005, comments)
Many of the comments before this, now lost in HaloScan's black hole of
doom, were in the same vein.
I made a comment on the 21st of April update that I hoped Time wouldn't
become "the MG Rover of the British computer industry" as long as they
fixed themselves. At this time, I really didn't know that Time were
going to become the MG Rover of the UK computer industry - they'd been
losing £2m a month since January and it's been suspected by some that
they were insolvent even at the time I wrote it (they were taken down by
defaulting on a HSBC loan, taking out their credit card facility for
their High Street stores and killing off the company.) They'd sold a
dodgy line of plasma screens under the Tiny brand name that had a
lot of people very, very angry (AV Forums thread - I hope you don't
need registration), they were pulling all the usual stunts, and people
weren't taking the bait anymore. They'd finally started to run out of
marks; but too late for many. And that's what's so sad about the demise:
the fact that unless you bought using a credit card (which should always
be done for >£100 purchases, but too many people don't realise this),
you will have paid hundreds or even thousands of pounds for either hot
air, or faulty kit, and there's nothing you can do about it except
complain at somewhere like tinycon.com.
It's the biggest shame of the entire affair - that the people most
responsible for the death of GTG are those who will be least affected by
the consequences. Isn't that just so sad?
[EDIT: Grammar and sentence construction corrected. *Sigh*.]
|
11/08/2005
Ill-informed opinions + BBC Scotland = idiocy all round
There's been a peculiarly Scottish political controversy running for a
very long time about slopping-out in prisons - it's still happening up
here, despite the fact that the prison system in England and Wales
stopped it in 1994 as part of the Strangeways fallout. The
Scottish prison service, on the other hand, couldn't be arsed to fix the
problem, despite being warned that the European Convention on Human
Rights was coming into law - it actually became part of Scots law before
the Human Rights Act appeared in England - and so have been on the
receiving end, quite rightly, of various legal judgements against them.
What's sadly not peculiarly Scottish about the situation is the general
reaction: "how dare those prisoners complain about having their
rights violated and actually being paid for it? Shouldn't they
just shut up and shit in a bucket like they're told to?" The issue has
recently come back to haunt us because the Scottish Prison Service,
instead of actually fixing the problem by, you know, installing flushing
toilets, is just setting aside more and more money to pay off the legal
judgements against them - currently £40m, and since you consider that
the judgements are only about £2000 each that's a lot of them. The Daily
Mail is going off, although the people it should be going off on
are the Scottish Executive for diverting the £13m it would have taken to
fix the problem completely to the Parliament building
yet another "Just Say No" drugs scheme.
Enter BBC Scotland. BBC Scotland now have a facility where
any person can send in a "My View" article, and have it
published on the most respected news site in Britain, and naturally
since very few people know about this and because BBC Scotland have a
liking for sensationalism (see their Luke Mitchell coverage) the most
ill-informed, stupid articles will almost certainly turn up on the site.
A good example is, indeed, an article on the slopping out issue: "Prisoners
with more rights than victims", by an 'information assistant' from
Aberdeen.
Going into what's wrong with this article would start with the title, go
straight through all the clichés and end up at the just plain wrong -
currently, slopping out affects three jails in Scotland, one of which is
the Polmont Young Offender's Institution and thus not exactly
"those in jail for the most heinous crimes" (see Dominik Savage's Out
of Control (2002) and these
Guardian
articles
for what else
is wrong
with YOIs) - but what's much more shocking is the comments section. Now,
I do give BBC Scotland credit for adding a "Have Your Say" system
to an article which basically a conversation starter (on USENET, we'd
call it a 'troll') in the first place, but what I was totally unprepared
for was the way in which everyone seems to... agree with her.
No kidding, either. They almost all agree with her completely and judge
those that might like to disagree with them as "Liberal Hippies" - which
is the kind of thing I'd expect to see on FreeRepublic, not on the BBC's
system. This gets to such the point that that someone says they're
playing "devils advocate" - and then puts the view that we have
inalienable human rights! There's the usual "this is politically
correct" bollocks, "bring back flogging!", various "liberal do-gooder"
references and such jaw dropping comments as this:
Hear hear Karen. I saw a news clip the other night showing prison
conditions in Manila, with filthy conditions, serious overcrowding and
mixing ALL prisoners together in the same cells, whether they were petty
thieves or paedophiles. The first thing I thought was 'that is how
prison should be in this country'. [JL, Wishaw]
I'm actually ashamed to be in the same country as this guy.
What these people aren't realising are a few basic facts. Peterhead
prison has slopping out on the remand wing, i.e. for people who
haven't yet been convicted of any crime; "innocent until proven guilty"
isn't exactly in these people's vocabulary, but it's still legally (and
rightly) there. At the time the £2500 prisoner was suffering
slopping-out, he was on remand. They also don't realise what slopping
out is: it's shitting in a bucket. Not only is this completely
unhygienic and thus dangerous for both prisoner and anyone else who has
to handle it - eczema was the least of this guy's problems, since they
don't actually have sinks in there either - but it's humiliating,
unnecessary and does absolutely nothing to aid the rehabilitation of the
prisoner. A modern prison should focus not on punishment but on
rehabilitation, since just punishing them generally won't solve the
problems that caused them to commit the crimes in the first place
(whether psychological, societal, educational, financial or just plain
greed); however, any attempt to change the emphasis from one way gets a
huge media outcry, fired by the Sun and the Mail and the
media transmitters on how it would all be better if we went back to the
Victorian prison system. This is amusing in a way, since they also like
to go on about how we're a "nanny state" - which is, of course, mutually
contradictory to their own "family values" positions - but since when
did the rightwing media make any sense?
In fact, this is all part of the attack on the Human Rights Act
currently coming from all corners: from those parts of Blair's
government who'd like to see "terrorists" (i.e. people who've looked at
the wrong website; as well as actual terrorists, although they probably
won't get too many of them) disappear permanently without any need for a
trial, to these right-wing media attacks on what they like to call
"liberal namby-pambyism", to the far-right-wing attacks on anything that
isn't white (and especially nothing that has any shade of Islam) having
any rights whatsoever. Even the Telegraph, which has well-written
news articles and a commendable libertarian bent that makes its opinion
columns at least occasionally agreeable to those of a leftier
persuasion, called for the removal of the HRA recently; the Scum
did it much more loudly, and the Express is getting so loud it's
even making the Mail uneasy. And if we're not careful, and make
sure our opinion is heard just as loudly as theirs, we could lose the
only thing Blair's government should actually be proud of doing;
ensuring our rights to free speech, expression and thought.
Sadly, however, in this case the comments are already closed.
|
On regional differences
Currently, BBC2 in England is showing the World Athletics Championships;
an event which only takes place once every two years, where all the
world's best athletes (plus the Brits) race against each other to find
the best there is and which is one of the few sporting events I actually
care about wanting to see.
BBC2 in Scotland, on the other hand, is showing an aimless, irrelevant
second-round UEFA Cup tie between MyPa 47 of Finland and Dundee United.
YOU DON'T DO THAT. Especially when people with analogue terrestrial
therefore can't watch the WACs; this therefore restricts the athletics
to Sky or NTL, both of which allow viewers to watch real BBC2 on
an alternate channel and both of which cost an awful lot of money.
Telewest, my cable provider, don't do this; I'm lucky, however, because
they've kept the red-button interactive athletics running, so at least I
can watch it on that. Quite a lot of people can't do this, and they
shouldn't have to.
On the other hand, BBC Scotland are pretty much a what-not-to-do
station: there's chopping off the last twenty minutes of Newsnight
for obsequiously awful interviews with MSPs (with, again, no alternative
for anyone without real BBC2), there's their truly crappy 'home-grown'
comedy, there's the useless Reporting Scotland (which seems more
interested in reporting Glasgow), there's moving Have I Got News For
You to 10:35 so they can fit in their 'comedy' and River City,
possibly the worst soap ever, and so on. Just because we actually choose
to live up here doesn't mean you have to punish us...
|
13/08/2005
This new last.fm/Audioscrobbler site is rather good...
It's possibly the best use
of CSS I've ever seen. It's fluid, it works in IE and Firefox,
it uses tables only for what tables should be used for (lists of
items), and it looks rather good. So much so that I'm going to use their
journal system for specific music-blogging (articles mirrored on here,
of course).
Go on, join up. You know you
want to share your music taste with the world...
|
14/08/2005
Ladytron - Witching Hour (early preview)
Let's play a game: you are a huge Big Four record label; let's call you
"Universal Island". You sign up an excellent British electro band, which
we'll call "Ladytron", and
pay for the recording of their new album with DJ Shadow's engineer
(Kasabian's too, but we won't mention that); then you release their
single, "Sugar", with absolutely zero promotion, without iTunes Music
Store and so despite being "Single Of The Week" all over the place the
band fails to get in the Top 40. Now you're coming up to release a new
single, "Destroy Everything You Touch", which was fantastic as a cut-off
speeded-up demo MP3 capped off a mix show on Radio 1 and is even better
in the flesh, and... there's no out-and-out promotion for that, either,
right now, no Radio 1 C-listings or anything. Then you move the date of
the album so that not even the band's webmaster knows when it's coming
out; currently, they're saying "October", and it was originally set for
later this month.
And then you send out promos of the album before the tracklist's even
been announced on the official website, without even the slightest
attempt to keep them secure, and thus the album thus turns up at the
"usual places" in luscious VBR quality. On one torrent site, it's got
over a hundred seeders, which indicates somewhat demand for the
material... Does Universal want to kill the band or what?
You can, of course, save them by simply buying the album when it comes
out, because it's really very good; at least on second listening. It's a
more varied album stylistically than Light & Magic, and I
think that helps it; it's different, and yet it's still recognisably the
same band. It's slower, which I'm not entirely sure is a good
thing; but on the other hand it is wide ranging and keeps the very
commendable aspects-of-dark seen on the previous albums. Also, you'll be
able to buy this album, whereas 604 and Light & Magic
are missing in action (courtesy of both their previous British and
American record labels going under).
Or maybe, just maybe, the only reason the album is everywhere right now
is clever peer-to-peer promotion; it's unlikely, but practically my
entire CD collection has been built up from previewing albums on P2P
services, liking them and buying them, and I'm sure there's others like
me out there. What say you, Universal? More thoughts on this and other
matters as I listen to the album more.
|
Never run an ATM on NT4
I've just had my debit card eaten by a Bank of Scotland ATM at the
Shandwick Place branch in Edinburgh (the second one as you head towards
Princes Street) and I'm not happy. Especially since the card in question
was from a completely different bank. Aaargh...
It was an interesting event, no doubt about it: I walked up to the ATM,
inserted said debit card into the machine, and watched as it failed to
put up the "Enter your PIN" screen, instead flashing to a Windows
desktop, logging off, shutting down to the sight of the NT4 Workstation
logo, rebooting for a suspiciously long time, loading an old McAfee
VirusScan and finally bringing up a "Sorry, this machine is out of
service" screen - all this while not even thinking about ejecting my
card (although whirring the cash motors during the reboot almost felt
like it was taunting me.) I thus rang the HBoS line, helpfully printed
on the front of the ATM, at this point, to be told there was no way the
machine would give me my card back, to go ring my bank's lost-and-stolen
cards line and get it cancelled, and that they really were so dreadfully
sorry. How infuriating.
Whilst the process of getting the card cancelled and reissued is just a
five-minute call to an 0870 number (although now I have to wait a week
for them to sent a new card back), it's still really annoying to have
this kind of thing happen to you because instead of using a fully
tested, reference platform environment (like, funnily enough, my bank's,
which has entirely text-based ATMs running on top of what appears to be
a custom operating system) NCR have just tacked some pretty pictures on
top of the now no-longer-supported-and-security-flawed-to-hell NT4, put
it on a local Intranet instead of a custom protocol just so they can
display "Buy Your Mortgage At HBoS" with graphics rather than text. I'm
sure custom-OS ATMs can crash too, but they seem a hell of a lot more
secure to me and at least they'll probably ask for my PIN first.
|
21/08/2005
ISX@EIFF2005 #1: The first five reviews
entry posted by Inquisitor at 24:38
(permalink).
edited on: 27/08/2005 24:27.
categories: Movies
Well, as promised, I am at the Edinburgh
International Film Festival, a highlight of my year - and, if you're
a film-lover, it should be a highlight of your year too. This year, I'm
seeing a wide variety of wildly differing films; linked only by what I
most liked the look of. And isn't that just what you want to do at this
event?
As previously mentioned, I didn't manage to get Serenity tickets
and didn't bother with Paul Schrader's Dominion, the two biggest
tickets this year. But I do have some very fun (and big, as well) films
lined up, and I will buy tickets for Best of the Fest when they're
released on Monday, so a Serenity review from a non-Firefly fan
may still be upcoming. In the meantime, here's some reviews of what I've
already seen:
1) Wah-Wah (w/d Richard E. Grant, UK/France, 2005, no distributor)
Wah-Wah is a semi-autobiographical tale of a young man growing up
in colonial-changeover Swaziland, dealing with his father (a high-up in
the colonial administration), his lovers, the internal tensions within
the aristocratic community and the man's self-discovery. The young man,
of course, was Richard E. Grant himself; the names are changed in the
movie, but he admitted as much in his introduction.
It's Richard E. Grant's directoral debut, and he comes through it with
style; making full use of his Swazi and South African locations, and
using some very creative camerawork. Wah-Wah is a seriously good
movie, well-made and affecting; which makes it such a surprise that it
took him five years to collapse together the funding for it - with
backers pulling out all over the place and very limited funding. This
thus begs the question: if a star on the magnitude of Richard E. Grant
can't get film funding for an obviously high-quality film, is there
really any hope for the British film industry?
If you want to start a film festival with a bang, you could do worse
than a movie like this; it may not be a Hollywood blockbuster like they
get at Cannes, but at least it sets the quality threshold.
2) Ferpect Crime [Crimen ferpecto] (w/d Álex de la Iglesia,
Spain/France, 2004, dist. Warner Spain)
Ferpect Crime is described in the Film Festival programme as "Are
You Being Served? on crystal meth", and on this I'd have to concur.
The writer-director, Álex de la Iglesia (Perdita Durango, Acción
Mutante) is from the same school of Spanish filmmaking as people
like Guillermo del Toro: directing fast and furious, black-humoured grand
guignol on a massive scale. This is, of course, massively
entertaining and, most importantly, very funny.
The plotline is set in a big Madrid department store, where two salesmen
are at war over the coveted floor manager position: Rafael (Guillermo
Toledo), a perfectionist Casanova who has slept with every single female
member of staff bar one, and Don Antonio, who's more interested with the
men in the sportswear department. Don Antonio ends up getting the post,
hurting Rafael's chances with the ladies and worse hurting his work
output, and the rivalry intensifies to its logical and somewhat nasty
conclusion... especially when someone else gets involved.
This is a slickly made, hilarious, glorious mess that really needs to go
unspoiled - especially since the EIFF programme itself goes too far - so
if you've got a dark sense of humour, go see.
3) The Magician (w/d Scott Ryan, Australia, 2005, no distributor)
This micro-budget - and when I say micro, I mean micro - DV
feature is another example of the Australian cinema that brought you Chopper
- unafraid to be charming, even when it's considering the darkest
topics. In this case, The Magician takes the form of a
'documentary' about assassin Ray Shoesmith (played by, er, Scott Ryan),
'made' by his film student neighbour Max, following Ray as he goes to
work on whichever poor sods he ends up getting paid for.
Now, this could have been very Man Bites Dog, but the film
remains compulsively watchable: mainly because of the black humour in
the situation. (Amongst other things, Ray discusses subjects such as
whether Clint Eastwood was in The Dirty Dozen while he's about to
make an unfortunate guy dig his own grave.) It's inherently Australian
sentiment thus saves the day - it makes the movie more than just the
shockfest it could have been, and instead an intelligent, funny and
shocking movie emerges out the end of it. Highly recommended.
4) A Bittersweet Life [Dal kom han in saeng] (w/d Kim Jee-Woon,
South Korea, 2005, dist. Tartan Films)
Yes, it's a film from Korea. As you may be aware, Oldboy was my
favourite movie out of last year's EIFF selection, and A Bittersweet
Life is cut from the same cloth - a twisted little revenge tale from
director Kim Jee-Woon (A Tale Of Two Sisters).
The less you know about the movie, the more you'll get out of it - and
it's possible to get a lot out of this movie. Suffice to say that it
combines all of the standard elements of the SE Asian revenge tale -
graphically depicted but mostly off-screen physical torture, inventive
ass-kickery, black comedy and a lonely lead character - into something
of its own. It's not at all like Oldboy plot-wise, but you can
compare it to Chan-wook Park's previous Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
- Sympathy is more profound, but this is still a very good movie.
It has excellent widescreen cinematography, decent music and fantastic
fight choreography. What more do you want from a movie?
5) Land Of The Dead (w/d George A. Romero, USA/Canada, 2005,
dist. UIP)
A zombie movie doesn't really need a plot, but a Romero zombie movie
does: as it is possible to see from the title, zombies have taken over
the earth. In Pittsburgh, the city has been sealed up; the rich live in
the "Fiddler's Green" shopping development, the poor scavenge a living
on the streets. The city, run by sorta-Republican Kaufmann (Dennis
Hopper), has its food needs catered for by raiding abandoned
supermarkets in the countryside around; the film follows the people who
do it, on their hi-tech tank the 'Dead Reckoning' (the original, much
better title). At this point, the zombies start to learn how to use
tools, led by ex-petrol station attendant 'Big Daddy' - and lead an
assault on the place from whence the Dead Reckoning came.
George A. Romero invented the zombie as we know it, and has been sorely
missed since the release of the hated-at-the-time Day of the Dead
back in 1985. He therefore has more right than anyone else to change the
zombie film, and Land's evolving zombies perfectly tap into this
requirement - and, of course, he's being slated for it in places like
the IMDB boards or Ain't It Cool, both not exactly known as the place
for reasoned criticism but also representing the opinions of fanboys all
over the world.
I, obviously, think they're wrong. What the IMDB board people are
missing: this movie is fun. It's well-made, it's satirical ("We
don't negotiate with terrorists"), it has all the necessary social
references, it has the gore and it's fun. Day isn't fun.
And that's why I liked Land - it's its own movie, and it's a
bloody good one.
BTW: how on earth did it get a BBFC 15 when there's more intestine
visible than at your local farmer's market? (One suspects it'll be an 18
on video - although Shaun of the Dead wasn't uprated, so you
never know.) It's amazing what they allow through these days, isn't it...
Anyway, coming up: "Popular Music", a tale of wanting
to be a rock star in a place where even the Beatles are considered
satanic. Surprisingly, this isn't the Deep South, but Sweden in the late
60s. Stay tuned...
|
27/08/2005
ISX@EIFF2005 #2: A bit late blogging...
...I've just forgotten. Still, too late is better than not at all, so...
(Previous entry has also been modified to put in a Magician
review - I somehow forgot about it when writing up the previous one.)
6) Popular Music [Populärmusik från Vittula] (w/d Reza
Bagher, Sweden, 2004, no distributor)
Based on a hugely popular novel, this coming-of-age tale centres around
two boys growing up in an outpost in the middle of nowhere, Pajala, the
kind of place where the locals are astonished at seeing their very first
black man (a Christian missionary) and everyone lives by a somewhat
restrictive moral code. Set during the 60s, it follows the boys' voyage
of discovery after discovering rock music and seeing their dreams of
becoming Rock Stars thwarted at almost every turn, until the outside
world finally starts to seep in.
There's nothing in this movie that hasn't been done 5000 times by
Hollywood already, but it does have a certain charm to it; besides, its
north-east Swedish location is very much at odds with the standard
Hollywood portrayal. And it does have some extremely inventive
direction, which for the visual purists among you will at least be an
attraction. But otherwise, one for the dedicated fan only, I think.
7) The President's Last Bang [Geud-dae geusaramdeul] (w/d Im
Sang-Soo, South Korea, 2005, no distributor)
Ultra-controversial in its native Korea, The President's Last Bang
is a historical tale about the 1979 assassination of General Park
Chun-hee, Korea's long-time army dictator, by the head of his own secret
service at a hired "entertainment venue". The movie chronicles the
incompetence and stupidity on all sides of the affair as the plan goes
wrong in far more ways than anyone involved can count.
Again, the movie is brilliantly styled; and gives an in-depth portrayal
of a world that is, thankfully, gone. It gives an insight into the
culture of the time, effectively recreating this lost world; and at the
same time, bringing to life the interplaying of characters in one of the
worst-planned (yet successful) assassination plots of all time. May be a
bit too dense for some, and possibly will only confuse the uninitiated,
but it's still very much worth seeing.
8) The Aristocrats (d Paul Provenza, USA, 2005, dist. Pathe)
This is almost certainly the funniest film I've seen at this EIFF, and
it's a very welcome entry. It's basically a documentary consisting of a
gigantic number of talented comedians talking about and telling their
own versions of the "Aristocrats Joke", a joke which is endlessly
improvisable on: all it is is a base framework on which to hang
unspeakable obscenity.
And that's what's so great about it. The Aristocrats joke is different
for every comedian; the only thing that's consistent is the obscenity.
The film doesn't chicken out of this at all: this is why most of the big
US cinema chains are refusing to show it. Anyone easily (or even at all)
offended probably won't want to see this movie. Anyone else will have a
blast; the audience was laughing consistently throughout, as was I.
And if that doesn't sell it to you: there's a South Park version.
9) Low-Life [Haryu insaeng] (w/d Im Kwon-taek, South Korea, 2004,
no distributor)
Interestingly, this works well as a companion piece to The
President's Last Bang - it's set between 1957 and 1972. It tells the
tale of a young gangster working his way up the ranks in
pre-and-post-army-takeover-Korea; as well as kicking ass in various
gigantic battles.
A visual feast shot entirely on studio backlots, like the big Hollywood
musicals, it contrasts its Godfather-like gangster plotting with
kinetic, brutal massive fight sequences and a political tale of the
times. Thus it is completely unlike anything that the US film industry
would turn out; and isn't that what you go to a film festival for? It
deserves a much higher rating than the pitiful one it has on IMDB; it's
well made, affecting and brilliantly done, despite a few minor flaws and
a very sudden (and, sadly, unresolved) ending. Incredibly, it's the
director's 99th film - here's hoping for some bigger distribution.
10) Kinky Boots (w Geoff Deane/Tim Firth, d Julian Jarrold,
USA/UK, 2005, dist. Buena Vista)
From the people who brought you the surprisingly funny Calendar Girls
comes another true-life tale of surprising oddness. After his father
dies unexpectedly, marketing trainee Charlie Price inherits his father's
Northampton boot factory; discovering exactly what a bad state it's in
ends up as a hideously depressing experience for him as he has to lay
off dedicated workers who've been with the company for a really rather
long time; his salvation is cabaret drag queen Lola, played by the
stunning Chiwetel Ejiofor (Serenity, Dirty Pretty Things),
from whom he realises two things: that there's a niche market out there
for women's shoes built for men, and that he really wants to keep the
factory going and not sell it to a property developer. You can basically
guess the plotline from here on - Nick Frost plays Don, the man's man
who feels himself threatened by Lola's sexuality (and steals almost
every scene he's in); the old ladies of the factory rally behind the new
product line, they rush to meet a deadline for the Milan shoe fair etc.
It's significant to state exactly the main reason why you should go
watch the movie: Chiwetel Ejiofor. He wears the makeup and acts the
drag-queen believably, he actually sings the songs (confirmed by the
credits), he takes over the character. It's a tour de force
performance of magnificent proportions which the rest of the film really
doesn't deserve - it's nowhere near as funny as Calendar Girls,
although it does have its moments and isn't a bad or unfunny film at
all. But at heart it's a character piece, and as a character piece it
works, well; and that's mainly down to Chiwetel. Here's hoping he goes
big; with this and Serenity, he really deserves to.
NOTE ON: The List Surprise Movie
There was something of a heart attack moment just before the movie
started when the Festival director came out to give tickets to the
Business after-show party to anyone who guessed the movie he was giving
clues to: released on 30th September, set in Netherlands, concerning
prostitution and murder, rejected by a famed Dutch director etc...
someone then yelled out Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo. And he
won the tickets. People actually walked out on hearing that - "Sorry,
but it was the best we could do," as the director sadistically put it.
But then, in typical surprise-movie style, it turned out he was actually
giving clues to a completely different movie than the one that was
rolling. Thankfully, this was pretty much revealed the second Jimi
Hendrix started blasting across the sound system - after all, the estate
wouldn't dare license to Deuce Bigalow, would they? The movie
was, in fact:
11) Lords Of Dogtown (w Stacy Peralta, d Catherine Hardwicke,
USA, 2005, dist. Columbia Tristar)
Thank God this wasn't Deuce Bigalow 2. Anything would seem better
than that hunk-o-shit, and Lords of Dogtown turned out to be a
very acceptable alternative. Set in the skateboarding scene of the
mid-1970s, as the sport went pro, it follows three of the talented
boarders who made it go that way; all real people. In fact, the writer
Stacy Peralta was one of these people, and thus someone actually
plays him in the film he wrote.
It's based on a documentary Stacy Peralta made, Dogtown and Z-Boys.
Dogtown is Venice, CA - "ghetto by the sea" according to one of
the Z-Boys, the board team. The film offers an often melancholy look at
times gone past and gone, of a sport tainted by professionalism and
"sold out"; at the same time, there's a humour about it, and a truly
wonderful rock soundtrack put together by Mark "Devo" Mothersbaugh
(Hendrix, Bowie, Sabbath, Iggy, Neil Young... everyone but the Zeppelin)
which perfectly evokes the spirit of the time. If you give this movie
time, it rewards; it perfectly evokes the skateboard lifestyle, in
imagery and in style. It is what it is and it's proud of it; without its
flaws, it wouldn't be as convincing a portrayal as it is. Think of it as
Stacy's own view of the time, and it fits; and well. Recommended.
Coming soon: German serial-killer flick Antibodies and the
closing gala, 80s-set Brit-gangster yarn The Business. Reviews
probably will be uploaded on Sunday.
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29/08/2005
ISX@EIFF2005 #3: "Don't See The Business", the last two reviews
entry posted by Inquisitor at 4:24
(permalink).
edited on: 29/08/2005 4:42.
categories: Movies
Well, that's the end of my engagement this year with EIFF - I'm not
seeing any Best of the Fest films, since Serenity tickets were
somewhat unavailable - and it's been a decent festival. More on that
after the reviews, though...
12) Antibodies [Antikörper] (w/d Christian Alvart, Germany,
2005, no distributor)
Basically, if you're making a serial killer movie any time soon, you're
going to want to make one like this. If you don't, you're probably
insane. Antibodies follows the events after the capture of serial
child-killer Gabriel Engel; a religious, somewhat naive small-town
policeman is sent to interview him, questioning whether he had committed
a particularly nasty, haunting murder in his area. Unfortunately, Engel
knows exactly what he's on about and, as a result, starts to play with
him...
Since there hasn't been a really good Hollywood serial-killer movie
since Seven in 1995, there's a gigantic void in the market for a
film like this. Antibodies, in fact, follows a similar
template to David Fincher's brilliant movie - letting the audience
imagine what the nastier things are instead of showing off poor gore FX
(and things sometimes get very, very nasty), atmospheric and very
effectively contrasting cinematography, and a very clever script
focusing on character conflicts instead of "how's the next guy going,
then?". It isn't, however, a ripoff; it is its own movie, and
brilliantly so, intertwining religious themes with high concept in a
compulsively watchable way. It shocks deep without once being gratuitous
- everything is important to the plot - which puts it miles above any of
the shit Hollywood's contributed to the genre recently. It is, in short,
the best film I've seen this festival; absorbing, brilliant, and almost
totally flawless.
While the film was made on a small budget, it doesn't really look it -
it looks immaculately professional in every way, and is all the more
convincing for it. (The killer's performance is so good that Francis
Ford Coppola's already hired him for his next film, according to the
director...) This absolutely must-see movie is doing its festival rounds
right now - it's also at Frightfest in London, has been at Tribeca and
Montreal - and if you can catch it, do. If this doesn't get UK
distribution by the end of this year - the German distributors are
Kinowelt, who own Momentum Pictures over here - I'll be very surprised...
13. The Business (w/d Nick Love, UK/Spain, 2005, dist. Pathé)
Now from the best film of the festival to the worst film of the
festival, the Closing Night Gala of a World Premiere. And boy, is it
bad. In this piece of shit, Danny Dyer plays a young man by the name of
'Frankie', who after delivering a fatal beating to his wife-beating
father, is sent off to Spain to avoid the law and deliver a 'package' to
club-owner, drug-courier and ex-armed robber Charlie. Cue Frankie living
the 80s dream in sunny Malaga - tracksuits, sunglasses, mobile phones,
pool-side living, Duran Duran, organising Moroccan orphans to ship
cannabis across the straits of Gibraltar when the patrol boats are out
the way (and sometimes if they aren't), and so on. But then cocaine hits
the streets, he and Charlie get in above their heads, and the entire
enterprise falls in on itself in a fatal sort of way.
Now, if I felt that the movie couldn't have been better than its EIFF
programme description, or that any improvements would be minor, I would
be giving a much less harsh review; what really bugs me when film
watching are films that miss their potential, that could be much, much
better than they actually are, and The Business is one of these
movies (along with stuff like Alien Resurrection, Terminator 3
et al). If you're watching an Ed Wood movie, you're not exactly
expecting Citizen Kane - and Ed Wood's movies are actually very
enjoyable, although not on the level Ed expected them to be. Film
reviewing must be relative - it must judge by genre and its inherent
quality.
The Business has a lot to live up to. This movie wants
desperately to be Goodfellas meets Trainspotting (with a
large amount of theft from Scarface), but fails on every level.
The narrator's an obnoxious little wideboy shit who I was rather hoping
would end up getting killed nastily at the end a la the vice scene in Casino
(no such luck), and his character thus has absolutely no sympathetic
qualities whatsoever. This wouldn't be such a problem if the film wasn't
completely centred around him, as if the light of a thousand suns was
shining out his arse; or didn't obviously put him forward as a 'lovable'
example of his generation. Now, I don't find people who think that
Spanish customs machine-gunning Moroccan orphans is a cost of doing
business 'lovable', but it's obvious that the director does. Just in
case you think I'm judging on moral criteria, I'll explain my reasoning: Trainspotting
works because it makes it obvious that the addicts' halcyon view of
their existence is just that, a halcyon view with no resemblance to
reality. This film believes that halcyon view. Something like Casino,
which has no likeable characters whatsoever, works because the
characters are three-dimensional, multifaceted, brilliantly written;
even Joe Pesci's character has decent attributes, despite the fact he
enjoys torturing people with workshop equipment. No character in this
has anything more than one dimension - the likable wideboy, the
wideboy's nasty hard-man partner (and main villain), the slutty wives,
the villain's temptress girlfriend (who the lead must never touch, and
so of course does) and so on. What character development there is is
perfunctory (wow, they've lost all their money and have to steal their
ex-mates' wives' handbags - but they're still the same people really!)
This is the main problem with the film.
The film has other major flaws which make it impossible to like: the
casual misogyny may well be representative of the way gangsters think,
but having every single female character being either a wicked temptress
or a "slut" is a bit too revealing of the writer-director's own thoughts
on the matter; the film is somewhat amateurishly put together, with a
loud-at-all-costs sound design that makes a lot of dialogue completely
inaudible over badly mixed music (it's the film equivalent of an Oasis
album); and as previously mentioned the entire film has been put
together from cliché and whole cloth and smells distinctly of a large
number of much better movies (the low point being a theft from, of all
things, The Shawshank Redemption.)
What really hurts about The Business is that, in better hands, it
could have been a good movie; its art direction perfectly captures the
essence of the time, the cinematography is at least visually stylish,
the director at least doesn't have shakycam syndrome and the plot
synopsis is interesting - 80s gangsters enjoying the good life in
Malaga, in a black-humoured tale of drug-dealing gone wrong to a corking
soundtrack of the times. Shame it mostly isn't funny, apart from a
Maggie Thatcher joke involving her statement about sleeping only four
hours a night, the effects of cocaine and an implication that the two
things were related. But the soundtrack's OK, once you get past the
audio engineer's badly tuned compressor - using only minor amounts of
decent Duran Duran and giving a decent precis of what was big in the Top
40 at the time, even if at mostly inappropriate times and even though
there was much, much better stuff around at the time (some of it even in
that Top 40, like New Order 12" singles.) But basically, the main
problem with the film is its characterisation, or lack of same; it just
isn't believable.
BTW: You may remember writer-director Nick Love - or his lead, Danny
Dyer - from such films as The Football Factory or Goodbye
Charlie Bright. While I don't generally do IMDB reviews (see the
spectacularly missing-the-point Starship Troopers reviews for an
example why), the UK-film ones are much better than the US-film ones;
hence here are some other people's clever one-liners on these films that
I haven't seen:
Unfortunately, this film has less to say on the subject of
hooliganism then Ron Atkinson has on how to kick racism out of football.
[IMDB user comments for The Football Factory (2004), a
surprisingly popular film following three guys in the Chelsea
Headhunters as they kick the shit out of opposing fans and each other,
user Bex_Bissell on 28.11.2004]
Or how about this one?
A well made but shockingly derivative Britflick.
[IMDB user comments for Goodbye Charlie Bright (2001), a
coming-of-age tale set on a South London estate, user Al-80 on
17.05.2001]
It looks like he's got a history of this sort of thing, hasn't it? The
film is too loud, too brash, too tasteless and too shit, and what's
worse, it could have been so much better. It is a laddish wet
dream of a movie, but that doesn't make it acceptable. Sorry, Nick, it's
easier to deliver a bad review than a good one, and this really is a bad
movie.
God, I wish I hadn't spent £7.20 on this.
Coming soon: The ISX Film Festival Awards. No prizes for guessing
which film wins the booby prize...
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