Monthly Archives: December 2011

Luc Besson: You’re My Hero!

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For the longest time, I’ve considered novelist Robert A. Salvatore to be my mentor. I can’t say that he’s my friend, though I’ve met him, met his wife, and I’ve written him and been written to by him. I’ve read nearly all his books, and I love his writing style.
However, as I slip more and more into the filmmaking world, I’m really becoming a follower of another man. I’ve loved the work of Luc Besson for a very long time. The first film of his that I know I watched and loved was Leon the Professional, which introduced the world to Natalie Portman and the United States learned of Jean Reno. I didn’t know Luc Besson at the time; I didn’t know who he was or what the hell a director was. I just knew I liked the movie a lot!

Later, he did the Fifth Element with Bruce Willis and Milla Jovovich, and again I was in awe. Although I nearly consider myself a devotee to the religion of Star Wars, when I’m asked what my favorite movie is, I state early and in no uncertain terms: The Fifth Element. Yes, it can be cheesy. Yes, there are some special effects flaws that bother me. Yes, the costumes are outrageous and Chris Tucker can be irritating as hell in it. But you know what? I love the hell out of that movie! There are lots of reasons why, but the story, the themes, the ironies, the mise-en-scene, the music, and far too many other things all just hit me in just the right fucking way. Would I give a kidney for the Fifth Element? No, but I willingly watch it every opportunity I have!

Over the last two weeks, I’ve come across two films that Besson wrote, though he didn’t direct them: Wasabi and Columbiana, and they have equally amazed me! Wasabi tickled me in all the right ways because it was decidedly French, which I found to be clever and cliche in a refreshing way, colliding with Japanese culture which I have a complete love for. Columbiana, on the other hand, tickles that part of my consciousness that loves strong female characters that just happen to be utter badasses…

In some ways, Wasabi and Columbiana are the Professional and Fifth Element draped in different clothes; there’s definitely a similarity between the films respectively. But I rather than say Besson is being lazy, I would actually declare him an auteur instead. The guy is quite rapidly becoming my hero as I get closer and closer to attempting to enter the film industry…

I’ll be frank… The way to get into the film industry is apparently by becoming an intern someplace and working your ass off for little pay for a long time, looking for just the right break while you put your dues in. I get that, and I’m not going to complain about it. It’s just the way things are. I don’t think I can handle that, mind you, and I’m hoping I can find a break via another path, and I’m looking to explore those meager options, but in all honesty, if I had an opportunity to just sit down with Luc Besson and work as an intern for him for a few months, I really think I’d strongly consider it. I’m liking his style, and I’m thinking that he’d really approve of a particular character I have in mind, perhaps a second as well.

Hell, even without the opportunity to work for the man, I think I’d like to sit down with him for a while and pick his brain on the Fifth Element and Columbiana, and see how I can apply his French perspectives to my own work! Mr. Besson, if by some miracle you read this, please drop me a line! I’d love to just talk with you for a while!

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

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Although I’ve more than once on this site screamed that “this will be the last spoiler warning I ever give” because I generally just don’t give a damn, since this film has not yet been released, I feel obliged to at least warn folk this time around. I’m not going to say that I’ll never give you a heads up again, but I think it’s unlikely that I’ll care as much to do so in the future. Any how…

So, there’s a book. It’s called “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.” It’s been out for a few years and it’s garnered a lot of attention. Ever hear of it? Yeah, I’m sure you probably have. We all knew this movie was coming. Well, anyone that vaguely heard of it the book at any rate, so I’m not going to go into any details about the plot. But I will say this right off the bat:

WHAT THE HELL IS SONY DOING WITH THE OPENING?

Ok, let me back up a bit, and explain a few things. I saw the movie tonight, Monday December 19, legally and for free with a number of friends. It was a preview showing they were doing in Birmingham, Michigan, and the head of my program at Oakland University alerted the department students that this preview was happening. So, a few of us independently got ourselves passes and guests and made our way to the theater to watch this film. After nearly getting killed on the escalator due to bad planning with regards to admittance to the theater, we all surrendered our cellphones and all other recording devices prior to entry into the exhibition room. (By bad planning, I mean they allowed the line of people passing through security to grow long enough to block the top of the escalator where people were basically being thrown into the line by virtue of no place else to go and the irresistible force of the heavy machinery deciding you can’t stand still…) Surviving the chaos, we turned off our phones, had a metal detector run over us, and handed over the phones. Fine whatever.

Then we got a verbal warning as a collected audience about the slim chance that we might have managed to sneak a recording device into the theater. If there had been time and room for a strip search, I’m sure it would’ve been conducted as well. At the height of our boredom and wandering minds (mostly wondering what time it was since we all had to surrender our phones), the theater darkened and the movie began.

And I began to wonder how bad this film was going to be.

I didn’t jump on the Millennium Series bandwagon until kinda late. In fact, I didn’t read Dragon Tattoo until early this year, and I haven’t read the other two books yet, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect out of this film. I generally avoided the previews and trailers, because I wasn’t sure I was going to watch this film. My expectations were really, really low that they could pull it off. And the opening computer generated animation with the techno music reinforced my fear that this was going to be a shitty film enjoyed with friends. As speechless as I was with the opening, I was just as speechless with the abrupt end of it and the shift to the much slower pace that I expected of the film. If I had to describe this transition, I’d have to say it’s like using one of the openings to a James Bond movie — perhaps “Casino Royale” with Chris Cornell’s “You Know My Name” blaring — and then suddenly finding yourself in “The Da Vinci Code.” That’s the God’s honest truth: the opening is so out of place with the rest of the film that I honestly think it was bolted on by some Sony exec that thought it would liven the film up.

In reality, the film doesn’t need it. I think Sony would be better off dropping that opening, and use something more at home with the film’s actual pace, utilizing bits of footage that they undoubtedly shot but didn’t use in the film… Perhaps some news coverage of the Blomkvist trial… Really anything connected to the film rather than some abstract music video. Don’t get me wrong, it was interesting to watch, but ultimately it’s a horrible way to open the film.

Once you get past that opening, the movie is overall very good. There are a number of *REALLY* uncomfortable moments in the film, however. Maybe the film is taking a European ethic with regards to sex scenes, maybe it was just in an effort to be faithful to the book, but there are a couple of key sex scenes in the film that you wouldn’t normally see in a Hollywood film. In both cases, my “trained” American film sensibilities screamed that the sex acts would be cut at a certain moment, and we’d be on to the next scene or at least jump a few minutes or hours in time to the aftermath. That’s how Hollywood has trained us for decades; we don’t see people having sex, typically, for longer than a few seconds except on very rare occasion. THIS is one of those rare occasions, and it’s very uncomfortable, even for someone that was expecting them like I was. They were [mostly] faithful to the book, but they made even me uncomfortable.

That said, all in all, this is one of the more accurate film adaptations of a novel that I’ve seen. There were differences, naturally, some of which my dear friend E. and I predicted before the film as a way of “dumbing” down the story, others we suspect were done to eliminate possible confusion. As I seem to have guessed a few things incorrectly in the book that were apparently told correctly in the film after all (despite my proclamations otherwise to E. on the way home), I won’t go too far into them, but fans of the book: you will notice the differences, but you probably won’t be too upset with them. The quality of the film and the story outshine the sometimes significant discrepancies, and in the end, no harm is done to the story.

Rating… I think I used a 10 point scale previously, so I think I’ll stick with that here… I’d give it a 9.5 our of 10; I have to knock half a point off for that opening, but otherwise Stieg Larsson’s work is too good to be muddied by the differences between novel and film.

Perhaps Verizon will open its eyes now

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So, in my note last week chronicling the Verizon Wireless and the Galaxy Nexus Saga, I stated that the phone isn’t the iPhone. And clearly it isn’t. But, according to various reports, the Galaxy Nexus has sold out at some Verizon Wireless, Best Buy, and Radio Shack stores, and it was listed as backordered for 8-9 days on Amazon.com until this morning. For a while today, on Amazon, it’s was backordered for 1-2 months! (Having just checked it again, it’s back to 8-9 days, so someone at Amazon must have entered a huge order for them! ) No, it’s not an iPhone, but considering how badly Verizon was treating the phone maybe this will wake their asses up and perhaps, just perhaps, if Google gives them another exclusive on a Nexus phone in the future they’ll be a bit more responsible about its release.

Verizon Wireless and the Galaxy Nexus Saga

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I haven’t posted on this subject yet because it hadn’t been a big enough pain in the ass to make it worthwhile and I was too busy writing papers for the classes I took this semester… But things have changed. I’m now out of school for the rest of the year, and though I thought I’d have been the hell off of T-Mobile’s crappy network by now, Verizon Wireless has become a major pain in my ass.

I suppose I should back up a bit and give you a little background information.

Until January, 2009, I had been a Verizon Wireless customer, but since they hadn’t announced any plans to allow Android based phones on their network at the time and my contract had just expired, I went to the only company that was offering Android phones: T-Mobile. From day 1, I wasn’t happy with T-Mobile, but I had little choice. The main reason I was dissatisfied with them was that I could sit completely still in my house in Detroit, Michigan, and watch my signal come and go for both voice and data. While I was (and believe it or not still am) reasonably happy with the G1 hardware and software T-Mobile’s service was and still is shit.

Fast forward a year and a lot of developments and improvements on Android, a lot of new models were released, including the first long rumored “Google Phone”: the Nexus One. I tried to get T-Mobile to give me an early upgrade in exchange for extending my contract another two years, but being the shitheads I think they are, they refused. So, I canceled my G1 contract, paying the early termination fee, and ordered the Nexus One which I’m still in love with to this day. Sadly, in the three years that I’ve been a T-Mobile customer, their service hasn’t improved here in the slightest, so I’ve been planning to go back to Verizon or maybe even switch to Sprint pretty much all year. My destination depended on one thing: who would be carrying the next Nexus.

Back before the the Galaxy Nexus was officially announced, it was rumored to be exclusive to T-Mobile or Sprint and eventually, and accurately, Verizon, at least for a limited time. Given the service that I had gotten from Verizon in the past, I was really hoping for them to get it at just the right time to allow me to switch back when my T-Mobile contract expired, or perhaps even a month or two before. The only thing that was negative in my mind at all was that Verizon had just killed their unlimited data packages. In all honesty, I considered signing up with them in early July to get “grandfathered” into their unlimited data plans, but I decided to wait and see how things played out: after all, it was possible that Verizon wouldn’t get the new Nexus at all, let alone as any kind of exclusive. After all, if Sprint picked it up, I could probably get unlimited data for less than I could get 2 GB/month from Verizon. Don’t get me wrong, I really wanted Verizon, but I wanted to be smart about this…

October 18th rolled around, the Galaxy Nexus was officially announced, but was not confirmed for any U.S. carrier. Rumor held, however, and appeared to be verified shortly thereafter that the phone would have a limited time exclusivity deal with Verizon! This was great news for me! Better yet, rumor held that the release date was only a few weeks away, November 10th to be exact! Perfect! But Verizon never said anything.

In fact, they still haven’t said anything about it. While there’s an ad for the Galaxy Nexus running on the Verizon Wireless site whenever you search for “Galaxy Nexus”, there’s no official information, no announcement, barely any references to the phone at all.

The rumors started flying, of course, especially with release dates. For the last month, the release date was always just another few days away, and Verizon said nothing. People blamed Google, thought that there must be flaws in the software that prevented the release, but Google said nothing as well. I think my theory probably is the most valid for the delay for all of November: Google had just released the Motorola Droid Razr during the week that we suspected the GNex would come our way, so it seemed and seems probable to me that they delayed the GNex so that the Razr would have some reasonable chance at selling considering it’s coming with a older version of Android than the new Nexus. (Android 2.3.x versus 4.x on the Nexus.)

The Razr is a nice phone I’m sure, but without some of the key features in the Nexus line (NFC in particular since the Nexus S came out last year, and of course the new version of Android) it would’ve been buried by the Galaxy Nexus. As much as I hate bullshit like that, I accepted it because it made sense from an economic viewpoint for Verizon. Besides, if they had a 2 month exclusivity deal with Google, they could hold back the Galaxy Nexus a month to get sales of the Razr, then still sell the Galaxy Nexus as an exclusive for a month.

And this seemed to be exactly what Verizon was doing… As December 9th approached, there seemed to be more and more activity going on with the Galaxy Nexus at Verizon. The number of leaked emails and information started to skyrocket, there were even photos of the phones being stocked at Verizon Wireless and Best Buy stores in preparation for a launch today…  Most of us didn’t care a whole hell of a lot that Verizon got their way with the phone a bit to add some of their software. I prefer plain vanilla Android, but I can tolerate two unobtrusive apps being added to the phone’s image, but apparently Verizon decided to fuck around a bit more than that…

Despite the fact that Google Wallet has been around for months, and is installed by default on the Sprint version of the Nexus S, and also the fact that Verizon execs have had God knows how many builds of Android 4.0 on various Galaxy Nexus sample units, they decided in their infinite fucking wisdom to wait until the launch was imminent to tell Google to pull Wallet. Never mind that the firmware image was already updated to fix some bugs before the release here in the United States, at which point they could have told Google to pull Wallet, but they decided to wait until the proverbial last second to start causing some problems over Wallet.

So what’s the big deal? Well, Verizon is claiming that Google Wallet will require additional hardware in the phone as well as infrastructure changes that they aren’t prepared for in order to properly handle security and secure transactions with Google Wallet, and thus they want it pulled from the phone. The problem with that request is that it’s software based: data encryption is already being done between the app and Google’s servers where I’m sure the actual credit card information is being stored. There’s no need to have any additional hardware in the phone, but for the sake of argument, let’s say there was. Doesn’t Verizon think that Google and Samsung would’ve already thought of this considering the Samsung Nexus S on Sprint’s network has the very same NFC technology and the very same application? Does Verizon think that Google and Samsung missed something?

I seriously doubt it. You see, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile are partners in a mobile payments software company called Isis, which will be making a product that pretty much competes directly with Google Wallet using NFC to initiate the transactions. The problem? Isis isn’t complete yet, and rumor has it they won’t have their software ready for nearly a year. So rather than give Google Wallet a full year to establish itself on the Galaxy Nexus on Verizon’s networks, Verizon is digging up technical mumbo jumbo bullshit to say that the phone isn’t properly secure for this purpose nor do they have the infrastructure. This is bullshit because if they can transmit and receive data to and from the phone, then they have the infrastructure; Google is already handling the encryption and security for the transactions.

Why am I saying this instead of Google? Well, they’re just too fucking polite to state the obvious, but I think I know a few engineers over there would be screaming “fuck yeah!” if they ever read this. Google has to maintain a cordial relationship with the carriers in order to get their phones on to their networks. If Google had already put out 20 different phones, that sold millions on the release date, Verizon wouldn’t be trying to push them around. The Nexus phones aren’t iPhones, even if me and half million other buyers think they’re better… Apple sure as hell wouldn’t be getting this kind of treatment from Verizon…

So what’s the logical answer given this hubbub? I say Verizon should NOT block Google Wallet in any way shape or form, and Google shouldn’t pre-install it either. Google should put Wallet in the Market and make it available for download for phones with NFC. Why? So that we the users, the people paying or will be paying Verizon a monthly bill have the choice. This should be our choice because we’re the ones that may or may not use Wallet or Isis. It should be up to us to decide who we trust and how we pay for goods, not Verizon.

So another rumored release date has come and gone, this time with the phones in stock at retailers… They’re not allowed to sell the phones yet because Verizon is apparently waiting for Google to pull Wallet… Well, Google, I hope one of your managers reads this blog entry… Pull Wallet exactly as the fuckers at Verizon want you to do… Then release it in Android Market once the phone has gone on sale exactly as I suggested above… You’re the application developer, and Verizon claims that they don’t block any app… So, do what you want to do… Grow some balls, and do what’s right for your customers… If Verizon wants to be a whiny baby and decide not to carry the next Nexus after this one, fine… fuck them. You’ve got Sprint, AT&T, and T-Mobile customers drooling over your phones already, and I’m sure that if necessary, I’ll find a happy home with Sprint after my Verizon contract ends…

Update 12/14/2011: Verizon’s finally gotten around to announcing that the Galaxy Nexus will be released tomorrow… About time…! I’m not saying all is forgiven, but at least we can start getting this mess behind us…