Really fantastic movie that was tightly paced and wonderfully directed. A beautifully rendered dystopia. Great performances by the actors and I didn’t even hate Clive Owen in it which makes a change.
It occurred to me also that V for Vendetta should have been filmed this way. Far more convincing portrayal of a future totalitarian British dystopia.
BBC News: Could X-ray scanners work on the street?
X-ray cameras that would “undress” passers-by in a bid to thwart terrorists concealing weapons, could be coming to a street near you, according to reports. Aside from the obvious privacy issues, would such a plan work?
Leaked documents said to have been drawn up by the Home Office and seen by the Sun newspaper say cameras which can see through clothes could be built into lamp posts to “trap terror suspects”.
X-ray type cameras have their place in the security framework but in the War on Terror they would be costly and ineffective if implemented widely like surveillance cameras.
They are effective in situations where specific locations need securing such as airports as they can be used to filter out individuals for additional scrutiny by security guards who are hand to do so.
Surveillance cameras are used in an entirely different manner they are predominantly used as a visible deterrent against criminal acts or as evidence gathering devices for prosecution of criminals after the fact. They are very rarely used to apprehend criminals in the act.
Security expert Bob Ayers, of Chatham House, believes putting an X-ray lens on a lamppost poses all sorts of resource questions.
“Some guy walks past and his picture is beamed back to a control room to say that something is under his jacket. What do you do? Despatch a police car to hunt him down and frisk him?
“The real question is not whether the technology can see something under the clothing. It’s how you respond to it when the technology says there’s something unusual.
This may well have been obtained from leak Home Office documents but I doubt even that incompetent government department would pursue this ill-thought out scheme.
BBC News: YouTubers to get ad money share
It was bound to happen at some point that Youtube would have to start pay those people that make the site what it is today – the video makers. Although to be honest the success has mostly been off the back of material that infringes copyright rather than the truly user-generated stuff.
But with other video sharing sites such as MetaCafe and Revver already having business models that reward the creators of well viewed movies then YouTube had to do the same or risk losing their number one spot.
The Guardian: The director of public prosecutions, Sir Ken Macdonald, put himself at odds with the home secretary and Downing Street last night by denying that Britain is caught up in a “war on terror” and calling for a “culture of legislative restraint” in passing laws to deal with terrorism.
The use of the term War on Terror only serves to justify in the minds of the terrorists that they really are waging a holy war rather than committing and conspiring to commit what are essentially criminal acts.
The Guardian: Celluloid dreams set to disappear in a digital puff
Before long film will be but a memory at your local cinema as reel projectors are replaced with newer, sharper digital systems.
I think that digital projection will be a great boon for cinemas and the independent movie industry. I think it will be quite a long time until the projection of film is phased out completely, we at The Little Theatre will be running both systems alongside one another for the foreseeable future.
One great advantage of digital projection is the lower distribution costs for the medium as currently the cost of a producing a single print of film is thousands of pounds plus there is the substantial courier costs for transporting 10 000 feet of polyester film (celluloid was discontinued decades ago). Digital ‘films’ will be distributed on hard drives and therefore will be of the order of £100 rather than thousands.
Lower costs will mean that more independent movies will be able to get a wide release among cinemas across the country. Better choice for the moviegoer and better chance for the small movie producers to compete against the big boys.
Screenhead presents The Unfilmables: A List of the Hardest Novels to Film and then proceeds to explain how they might after all be filmed and which film director might be best suited to the task.
This is well bloody disturbing. His raucous laughter in this context seem like the pitiful screams of a tortured soul. [via]
Following on from Eliot Van Buskirk’s Wired column Who’s Killing MP3 and iTunes? (in which he pontificated on the future of the MP3 file format in comparison to DRMed alternatives like Apple’s AAC format as sold in their iTunes online store) there is the news that EMI has announced that it will no longer produce CDs with DRM.
One swallow doesn’t make a summer but this would seem to be an indication that even the record companies are coming to doubt the efficacy of DRM.
Frankie Flood a University of Illinois School of Art and Design student produced a number of beautiful but deadly looking pizza-cutters for his MFA Thesis Exhibition[via]
This is my favourite of his works featured.
PLF “Pizza For Life” 2002
Powder coated aluminum, stainless steel, and ball bearings
4″ x 9 1/2″ x 1 1/2″
This one looks like a particularly vicious weapon as used by an assassin in a steampunk novel. Cardinal Chang of The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters
