Outpost #31

The laughable battery life of the iPhone makes it next to useless to watching movies on (which is fine because you should really be using an Archos anyway), but out of the increasing number of apps that I’m finding useful, MovieStar is the best film/tv related one.

When you first get your iPhone and stop moaning about the battery having the life span of a fruit-fly you can then start complaining about how crap the browser is. Thankfully there are a number of apps that bypass Safari, so for example I use Wikipanion rather than try and navigate Wikipedia and Tweetie for Twitter. MovieStar is a handy way to navigate the IMDB:

Rabbits aren’t your bag Roy

A few minor quibbles are the name (it’s not restricted to just movies or indeed stars), it throws up the occasional error message and sometimes has the odd oversight. For example it failed to find Taxi! at all unless I went at it via James Cagney’s filmography, but that could be down to the IMDB (which, let’s face it, is far from perfect).

Stuff it has that I tend not to use include a news tab, featured titles on new release and the ability to search for trailers (that then pop up via YouTube). But for a quick way to scan and search the IMDB while on the bus or in the back of a cab it’s pretty damn cool. It’s also free - just search for it at the app store.

kit IMDB, iPhone, MovieStar, Night of the Lepus

influences Jarmusch

In typical idiotic fashion I contrive a new Twitter account for this place and then when I stumble across an exclusive bit of movie news  while drinking by candle light in a Blitzed out pub I drunkenly tweet the secret URL on my other account. Oh well.

The link was to The New Frontiersman dot net and is all over the shop now. Just a holding page for the moment, but I’m assured by reliable sources that there’s some killer stuff going on behind there.

I’m just about to pull Watchmen down off the shelf for a re-read ahead of the (probable) March release. Care to join me?

Pic via Total Film. Oh and I stuck some of last night’s tweets after the jump for those that missed them…

Read more…

Watchmen, linkage New Frontiersman, Twitter, Watchmen

“They’re paying me 5 cents a word so you’ll pardon me
if sometimes I’ve told you more than you wanted to know”

grabs Billy Bob Thornton, Coen Brothers, quotes, The Man Who Wasn't There

“Not lost, but gone before” - Here No More - The Breeders

Uncategorized 2008, dead

I mentioned a Japanese Columbo in the comments to the previous post and to save some Googling I think these are the links you’re looking for:

Furuhata Ninzaburo:

One of the most popular television dramas in the history of Japanese television… Most of the stories follow the following pattern. The audience sees the murder and the cover-up (usually involving the criminal trying to make it look like an accident). Then comes Furuhata’s debut. The criminal, usually staying near to the scene of the crime to make sure it does not get solved, hangs around Furuhata, or else he does something suspicious to Furuhata and the detective ends up hanging obnoxiously around him (much to the dismay of the criminal, of course).

The charm of the story is that it is a logic game—Furuhata has all the pieces, and he (as well as the audience) usually knows who the murderer is. It is now Furuhata’s job to prove it and get the killer to confess, and our job as a viewer to guess what all Furuhata’s clues are.

Sound familiar? Check it out:

He pokes his forehead with his forefinger when thinking…

Uncategorized Columbo, Furuhata Ninzaburo, Japan

I’m working my way through every episode of Columbo at the moment. It started off as research, but is a real joy. I’ve always had a soft spot for Peter Falk’s character and I can’t think of a series that’s even as remotely rewatchable. Most of the time its like revisiting old friends, but each episode has at least one little surprise. I’d completely forgotten about this chance meeting for example:

As a bonus this otherwise weak episode features a boy genius by the name of Steve Spelberg (a nod to Spielberg who directed on the show a few years earlier) and some deliciously clunky computer terminals. Each episode though has at least one stand out moment that raises the bar - be it a murder committed in the aviator shades of Robert Culp or some funky use of split screen. I’ll pull some of that together here from time to time.

A lot of good people honed their craft on Columbo and it seems to me now that experimentation was encouraged as long as Falk remained the reliable lynch-pin. For all the familiarity that the series bleeds, no two episodes were quite the same (even when guest murderers such as William Shatner popped up more than once) and at least two of the TV movies threw the tried and tested Columbo formula out of the mix completely (both based on 87th Precinct novels by Ed Mcbain).

There’s also something to be said about the unflinching way Falk’s detective would grasp technology that was usually far above his pay scale (although not usually as literally as above). Lots of the men and women that Columbo eventually arrested were early adopters who used cutting edge technology to try and baffle the LA police department.

Thankfully Lt. Columbo was always able to see past the tech and work the human angle…

television Columbo, Ed McBain, Peter Falk, Robby the Robot, Robert Culp, Spielberg, William Shatner

“You’re not special.”

grabs 2008, American Teen

Tilda Swinton founded her own film festival last year in a way that was in direct contrast to the more glamorous festivals found across the globe:

“no red carpets, no ranks of paparazzi and no designer evening dresses. Entry to the films will cost you £3 or a tray of home-baked cakes; and the audience will sit on beanbags.”

If the Ballerina Ballroom Cinema of Dreams opens its doors this year I’ll be there. It doesn’t really matter what the programme contains - it’s a festival put together by people who love the films shown. This year for me is all about projects that I believe in - the first full year in fact that I’ll be working exclusively on stuff that I want to work on. The flip side of that is that I’ll be keeping a close eye on projects from others that are formed in the heart and I’ll be talking about them here (and elsewhere).

Swinton also narrates this excerpt from one of my favourite books of recent years, The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall:

“The lake in my head has just become the lake in your head…”

When she begins to speak of streams of ‘text, pictures and spoken words’ she could be talking about the way we live in the early years of the 21st century - now more than ever we have the opportunity to allow our own streams to overlap and interact with others. Technology is a beautiful thing made more impressive by the stumbling individuals that create and utilise it.

Homework for those of you that haven’t read the book: go find a copy. It’s part thriller, part love story and belongs on your shelf next to Paul Auster and Mark Z Danielewski. It’s also the best book about Spielberg’s Jaws I’ve ever read. Like House of Leaves the text fragments in parts and memorably leaves the reader open to shark attack.

Should be an interesting year ahead for all sorts of reasons. Keep watching…

Thanks to Tom Sparks for the heads up about the video several months ago

influences Auster, Cinema of Dreams, Danielewski, film festivals, Jaws, love, Raw Shark Texts, Spielberg, Steven Hall, technology, Tilda Swinton

Make a move and the bunny gets it

grabs con air, john malkovich, quotes, scott rosenberg, simon west