By Jason Apuzzo. The wait is nearly over. Transformers: Dark of the Moon arrives in theaters as early as this evening, depending on location. I will admit that I haven’t looked forward this much to seeing a film in quite a while. Check out the ad above to get a sense of why I’m so excited.
I’m also excited because all indications are that Bay & Co. are pushing the technological boundaries of native 3D filmmaking out to a new level. Plus the UN appears to be among the villains. Plus Buzz Aldrin appears in the film, along with Bill O’Reilly.
And most importantly, we get Victoria’s Secret super model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. In 3D.
So if you’re not interested in seeing this film, especially as the 4th of July weekend approaches, please have yourself checked for anemia.
By Joe Bendel. Istanbul might be a beautiful city, but the women living in the Aksaray neighborhood would not know. That is because it is a red light district and most of the prostitutes there are slaves, confined to seedy sex clubs and prison-like quarters. Crusading photojournalist Mimi Chakarova tells the stories of the voiceless women trafficked into sexual slavery in The Price of Sex, which screens during the 2011 Human Rights Watch Film Festival.
There is no question, sex trafficking is a problem in Western Europe and the Americas. However, when Chakarova wanted to investigate ground zero for sex slavery, she took her hidden cameras to Istanbul’s Aksaray and Dubai – two cities which obviously have absolutely nothing in common, right?
Chakarova briefly acknowledges the hypocrisy of Muslim communities rather openly indulging in the fruits of sex slavery. Evidently in Turkey, pre-marital sex is illegal but prostitution is not. There would seem to be an inherent contradiction there, but the crooked cops doggedly look the other way. While conditions might be slightly better in go-go Dubai, the fundamental realities remain the same. Demand for Eastern European women is also quite high in both “markets,” reflecting a “Natasha” fetish amongst the clientele. Indeed, the frequency with which Eastern European women are targeted by trafficking rings hit close to home for the naturalized Bulgarian-American Chakarova.
By Joe Bendel. Life on Earth has become untenable. It is not so much environmental conditions, per se, but man’s own inhumanity towards man that is destroying the planet. With drug cartels taking over Europe and Chinese militarism running unchecked, war is the only terrestrial constant. As a result, many have evacuated in giant space arks. Those lucky enough will find refuge on the planet Carpathia (named for the ship that stopped to rescue Titanic survivors). However, the colonists of Forthaven will find their new home is not exactly an Eden in Outcasts, a new eight-episode science fiction series that premiered on BBC America this past Saturday.
Though still a relatively young community, Forthaven already has a tragic history. During its early years, a mystery disease called C-23 nearly wiped out all of its children. The steps President Richard Tate took to deal with the disease will haunt the geneticist turned political leader in future episodes. With post-C-23 birthrates perilously low, the arrival of a new ship from Earth is understandably big news. Forthaven needs to replenish its future generations. Bringing down the transport safely is Tate’s highest priority, but a domestic incident will have macro implications for the colony.
Viewers quickly learn Carpathia’s dirty laundry. Tate had initiated and then canceled an ambitious genetic engineering program to create cloned humans, or “Advanced Cultivars” (AC’s). Presumed dead, those AC’s now live a nomadic existence outside Forthaven, which they most definitely hold a grudge against.
After a strong start, episodes three and four get somewhat bogged down with the dour ethical implications of the AC program. Fortunately, Outcasts rebounds thereafter (no sense crying over spliced genes), as the nefarious Julius Berger, a prominent survivor of the transport ship (and both a New Agey religious zealot as well as a moral relativist), plots a coup d’état against Tate. Series creator Ben Richards establishes a suitable environment for intrigue, with the PAS officers (the cops in charge of internal security) remaining loyal to Tate, while the XP’s (the military Expenditionaries) are inclined to side with Berger. As if Tate did not have enough to worry about, he also learns in dramatic fashion there is a reason the Carpathia’s indigenous hominid life forms died out eons ago. As they say in science fiction, they are not alone.
Richard Tate is a great sci-fi character and the key reason why Outsiders works so well. Initially he appears to be a commanding humanitarian in the Jean-Luc Picard vein. Yet Tate is a darker, more complicated figure. Profoundly touched by tragedy, he is still able to make hard decisions and sleep relatively well at night. Character actor Liam Cunningham has the perfect hard-nosed gravitas for the part, as well as the sonorous voice that plays so prominent a role in episode one.
From the BBC's "Outcasts."
In a bit of a misfire, Hermoine Norris plays PAS chief Stella Isen, Tate’s closest ally, with frosty reserve – much like her character Carol Jordan in Wire in the Blood. That worked much better playing off the manic squirreliness of Dr. Tony Hill than the steely resolve of Tate. Conversely, Amy Manson and Daniel Mays are rather engaging as Fleur Morgan and Cass Cromwell, respectively, our primary POV PAS agents, who harbor a Tracey & Hepburn attraction to each other – but are also burdened with secret pasts.
Though the special effects of Outcasts are eminently presentable, the series is more concerned with social speculation and character development. Sadly, it appears that the first eight episodes are all we are getting, at least for the time being. While the conclusion offers a measure of satisfaction, it provides little closure, leaving Forthaven poised on the brink of a multi-front war for survival. Indeed, one could easily envision the story continuing in a hard-driving action film. It is worth hoping for. Indeed, Outcasts is one of the better conceived and executed science fiction series featuring a genuinely compelling lead protagonist. It is recommended for all sf fans and Anglophiles, and it debuted this past Saturday on BBC America.
By Joe Bendel. Imagine an Islamist police state ruled by Dianetics. That is basically the state of what passes for reality in Turkmenistan. They also have obscene oil and natural gas deposits. As a result, a lot of people who should know better have feigned interest in the Ruhnama, a book supposedly written by the largely illiterate president-for-life Saparmurat Niyazov that co-opted elements of Islam for the sake of his personality cult. Director Arto Halonen (the quiet one) and co-writer Kevin Frazier (the gabby one) try to ask some of Niyazov’s international enablers why they think the Ruhnama is so swell in their would-be muckraking documentary Shadow of the Holy Book, which screened last night as part of DocPoint’s tenth anniversary celebration tour of New York.
Appointed by Gorbachev as Turkmenistan’s Communist Party strongman, Niyazov was a hardliner who supported the 1991 coup attempt against his patron. Indeed, Niyazov’s dictatorship incorporated the worst elements of Communism, Fascism, Islamist extremism, and flat-out lunacy. Yet Halonen and Frazier largely ignore the ideological roots of Ruhnamania for inexplicable reasons (though perhaps that picture of Castro in their office is a clue).
When Shadow documents the institutionalized insanity of Niyazov’s Turkmenistan, it is jaw-droppingly scary. Subjects like algebra and physics were banned from schools, in favor of greater Ruhnama study. Architectural behemoths combining Fascist pomp, Islamic symbolism, and what can only be described as kitsch have been erected to glorify the crackpot tome. There is even a gargantuan book with pages that actually turn.
By Patricia Ducey. In 1957, a group of eight California engineers, unhappy at their jobs at Shockley Semiconductors, decided to leave en masse for more compatible environs and wrote to a Wall Street banker for help in finding just the right employer. That banker, Arthur Rock, saw other possibilities and flew out West to convince them to start their own company. He would provide the capital, they would provide the scientific know-how. Later dubbed “The Traitorous Eight” by Shockley, they had to ask Rock what venture capital was and why they would want to start their own company, but they acceded. Rock and his investor and engineers then formed their entirely new company, Fairchild Semiconductors—and Silicon Valley was born.
The new documentary SomethingVentured tells their story and numerous others; and it’s as sparkling, sweet—and potent—as a champagne cocktail. SomethingVentured is also an unapologetic paean to capitalism, dispensing a much needed corrective to the current cries of “Tax the Rich,” “At some point you’ve made enough money” or “Off with their heads!” All right, I made up that last one, but you get my point.
Producers Paul Holland (a partner himself at a venture firm) and Molly Davis chose Emmy-award winning filmmakers Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine to helm the film. The able duo mix pop music, priceless old footage and facts and figures with interviews of the now octogenarian money men who funded the future. Holland, and many of the people in the film, aim to inspire a new generation of entrepreneurs—and, perhaps, to gently encourage our government and media to consider the upside of capitalism for once.
But the filmmakers include the downside of the high risk atmosphere of startups, too. The investors note that about half of the original founders of startups are replaced within 18 months of a new corporate structure. Sandy Lerner, a founder of Cisco, recalls painfully how she was fired from the company she loved by the new owner/managers (and how many times has Steve Jobs been fired?), while Tom Perkins and Pitch Johnson recall a few of the inventions that turned out to be duds and companies (termed “the living dead”) that never took off.
If at times the film feels like a storytelling session with the boys at the coffee shop, that’s because it started out that way. Linda Yates, Holland’s wife, introduced him to the semi-retired investors, and he enjoyed their stories so much he decided to share them. These are men of good humor, optimism and ambition and clearly relish their role as facilitators to the innovators they met along the way. They insist that the entrepreneurs of Apple and Genentech, Cisco and numerous others of their startups, are the real heroes. Their own passion is to create and grow businesses where no business existed before, and they still are spreading the good news today – in their typically larger-than-life fashion. (Pitch Johnson, for one, jumped in his private plane one day in 1970 and flew to Cuba to convince Fidel Castro of the superior benefits of capitalism. No word yet on Castro’s response.) Continue reading Venture Capital & The Origins of Silicon Valley: LFM Reviews Something Ventured
By Jason Apuzzo. Take a look at a new trailer above that aired during the NBA Finals for Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and tell me if you’re not left with the impression that this film will feature the UN collaborating with an alien invasion of planet Earth. If that’s the case … thank you, Michael Bay! You get better with each film.
In other news, Relativity Media has apparently just picked up distribution rights to Act of Valor, described as a “very patriotic” action thriller about the Navy SEALs, starring a cast of unknowns … along with actual, active-duty SEALs. The film was written by 300 screenwriter Kurt Johnstad, and may also be getting an IMAX release. You can read more about the project here, and there are already some production photos available.
This is good news. I’m liking this new SEAL-movie trend because it indicates that Hollywood is finally becoming responsive to actual, present-day events. If only this had been the case ten years ago …
