Pacze Moj

HypeDyn The Big Stick

2012-02-17T23:52:00.002+04:00

HypeDyn ("hyped in") is a recent tool for making interactive stories (or, officially, a procedural hypertext fiction authoring tool for people who want to create text-based interactive stories that adapt to reader choice) developed by Partner Technologies Research Group from Singapore.

It's open source and runs on Windows, Mac and Linux.

A short time ago, I wrote about similar software called Twine. Twine and HypeDyn work in the same way: create nodes (chunks of text: Start, A, B, C1/C2), link nodes (direct choice: which text to display next, A or B?), and add conditions (indirect choice: if you chose A, display C1; if you chose B, display C2).

In other words, you can do things like specify where a link will lead depending on which condition is met. For example, in some past node, the reader may have been given a choice: eat an apple or not eat an apple. Now, nodes later, the reader is at a node with only one link—something innocuous, like "Proceed down the corridor." However, depending on which past-node the reader visited (EatApple or NotEatApple) the link actually leads to either DeathByPoison or FurtherDownTheCorridor.

You can also use conditions to change how much or which text of a given node is displayed. Let's say that, in a past node, the reader could have killed someone and taken that person's knife. Now the reader is at the node AccostedByBandits, which you've programmed to work like this:

[Display]

You are accosted by rough-looking bandits.

[If reader didn't visit MurderTakeKnife, display]

You've nothing to use in your self-defense but your fists, which is not very much at all. You're no fighter. You manage only a short struggle before the bandits overwhelm and kill you.

[If reader visited MurderTakeKnife, display]

They try to overpower you, but you take out your knife and manage to wound one and the fend the rest off. You'll be a fighter yet, son.

Like with Twine, the result of all your crazy machinations is displayed as a map on which you can move the nodes around without severing any of their connections. It's a tremendously useful overview. Here's an example of mine:

Where HypeDyn is still pretty barren is in its presentation of the final story. Output is easy and everything works great, but it doesn't look especially pretty. Twine stories look better. There's also, as far as I can tell, no way to format text in HypeDyn. You can't italicize, underline or make bold. Other than that, the software is great. It's easy to use, intuitive and runs quick-as-you-like.

My story:

"The Big Stick"

I wonder if something like HypeDyn, with its map visualization, links and conditions wouldn't also be useful in a non-fiction context. For example, could a legal statute be presented in "interactive" format? The reader would answer several questions (visit a series of nodes) and then arrive at a super-node that ostensibly had the full-text of a statute but actually displayed only the relevant parts based on the reader's previous choices. Are you physically disabled? Did you discover your claim before date-Z? If no, strip away the provisions that deal with disabled people and claims-before-Z. Or use interaction to track a process: Did you file Form-AA on time? If yes, it's time to serve papers on Mr-F. How do I serve papers? Am I in jurisdiction A or B? If A, [...] Meanwhile, if I didn't file Form-AA, display that I have to file Form-OOPS. And serve the papers and Form-OOPS. Maybe flowcharts are better for some of this type of stuff, but the appeal of HypeDyn is how easy it is to use for non-programmers. You can keep tweaking and expanding, too, way past the point when flowcharts become unwieldy, if not impossible, due to sheer size. The beauty of an interactive "story" is that it can be big as nobody's business yet made to display small, digestible parts of that giant whole.

The Circular Logic of Space Exploration

2012-02-13T07:47:00.002+04:00

Appleton rushed to scratch the message onto the backcover of a magazine lying face-down on a table near the telephone. Scratch—because the pen didn’t want tocooperate; the ballpoint stuck. Appleton’s fingers shook.

It was a prank, surely. The conversation had beenrecorded. He would end up on a website somewhere, the anonymous out-of-touchbutt of some teenager’s joke.

Yet there was something in the quality of that voice, avoice that didn’t belong to any teenager, that forced the shapes of the lettersthrough his wrist, onto the paper. Even as he felt the fool, he also felt thechronicler. The words could be historic.

The words:after a plain “hello,” the voice had excused itself and muttered somethingabout a wrong number and galactic interference. Then it had said, exactly, “Nomatter, you will have to do. My name is Charles R— and I am calling from Mars.First, record the date and time of this communication. Second, please bring itto the attention of one Mrs Mary Clare of 34 Wentworth St, Nottingham. Passalong also that I am doing fine and that, though food is scarce, I have had myfill, and that water is plenty once one digs past the red surface of things.”

That was all. Then the phone went dead. The connectionhad not been good to begin with, but there was no doubt about any of it.Nothing had been made up. There was no uncertainty.

Having written these five sentences, Appleton let go ofthe pen, wiped his forehead and retreated to the safety of his customaryevening chair. It was a few minutes after six—his regular reading time—butAppleton gave no thought to books. Today, he sat silently in his chair untilthe clock struck seven. His neurons fired incessantly.

By eight, he had made up his mind: in the morning hewould fly to Nottingham and personally deliver the message to Mary Clare.

There was only the slight problem of the wife.

She would arrive home tomorrow afternoon and find itempty. She would worry. Appleton’s greatest fear was that the wife would worry.She was of good breeding and delicate constitution, and worry might weaken hersystem enough to allow otherwise harmless bacteria to set up residence, whichwould lead to complications and eventually a prolonged bedridden death. Heshuddered at the mere inkling. Right, he would have to compose a note: “Mydear, I am off on a scholarly pursuit. Do not worry. I will return byWednesday. Sincerely, your devoted husband.”

He folded the note and placed it on the dining roomtable. That, he realized, was more writing than he’d done since his tenure atOxford. He felt productive again.

* * *

The plane skidded as it touched down, but the flight was otherwise withoutincident. Outside, grey clouds produced a cold mist that collected drops ofwater on the brim of Appleton’s hat as he waited by the terminal. Although noone could say so by looking at him, he was nervous:

He nearly misspoke while telling the driver the address.In the taxi, he caught himself rubbing his thumb compulsively against hisforefinger like he hadn’t done since his rugby days.

* * *

The house at 34 Wentworth St was made of pale yellowbrick. It was smaller and set farther from the road than neighbouring houses. Astone path led to the front door, on either side of which bloomed a well-kemptgarden. Appleton walked the path slowly, cherishing the smell of wet flowersand realizing that over the last twelve hours he’d developed a particularmental image of Mary Clare. It was something like the opposite of the wife.

He stood for a few moments before the front door anddeliberated whether to ring the electronic bell or use the bronze knocker.Eventually, he rapped his knuckles against the wood. A woman opened the door.

“Yes, hello,” said Appleton.

The woman looked suspiciously at his hands, but he wasn’tcarrying anything except the back cover of the magazine on which he’d writtenthe message from Mars.

“I’m not selling,” he said, “I’m looking for Mrs MaryClare. I’ve been informed that she lives at this address. I have a message forher from Charles R—.”

“Did he send you, the scoundrel?”

Appleton blinked.

“Well did he or didn’t he, speak up. All these years andhe can’t even come back to show his face, sends some other poor fool.” Her eyesstudied Appleton’s hat. “Or maybe he’s dead. Maybe that’s what you come to tellme. Last of kin or some such.”

“No, Mrs Clare—“

“Simpson, butone and the same as you’re looking for.”

“Mrs Simpson,” Appleton fumbled the correction, he’dshoved one hand into a cloak pocket and was furiously rubbing his fingerstogether, “Yesterday evening I received a phone call. I wasn’t meant to receiveit, you see, there was a mistake with the connection. The call was from MrCharles R—. He asked that I deliver this message.”

Appleton read aloud what he’d written on the magazinecover.

The woman laughed and stomped her foot. She was in hersixties, Appleton realized. Sections of her hair were greying. The lines underher eyes were deep and permanent. Her laughter was not a joyous laughter.

She said, “Whatever trick it is you’re playing, andwhoever you’re playing it with, I’m too old for it, you understand? The past isdead. Mr Charles R— is dead. And I deserve to be left to my own peace. Don’t comeback here.”

But before she could close the door, Appleton put hishand on her shoulder. It was a soft shoulder. Appleton gasped. Never had hebeen so forward, not with a woman.

“Please, Mr Charles R— is not dead. I spoke to him. Iheard his voice. I’m telling you the truth. He’s alive. He’s just on anotherplanet. It’s utterly remarkable!”

Mrs Simpson looked at Appleton with suddenly sympatheticeyes and, even as she removed his hand from her shoulder, kept her voice calm:

“He’s dead to me.”

Appleton’s hand fell limply against the side of hiscloak.

“There are certain things you do that, once you do them,their consequences are permanent. There is no pretending and there is no comingback. Take care now, Mister.”

With that, she shut the door.

* * *

Upon returning home, Appleton’s life returned tonormal—at least in all superficial respects: he smiled to his wife, he kept tohimself, and, at Six O’clock each evening, he retreated to his customary chairto read his customary books. The magazine cover on which he’d written themessage from Charles R—, he placed in a private drawer in the desk in hisstudy, underneath unfinished essays and research into particle acceleration andmagnet engine propulsion and other old academic bric-a-brac.

For weeks, whilst trying unsuccessfully to locate moreinformation about Charles R—, he kept the drawer unlocked. But, once he’d givenup hope, he turned the key and, with one click, banished all thought of Marsfrom his mind.

Or at least that’s what Appleton intended. For there arecertain neurons that, once they start firing, are impossible to stop. At most,they can be slowed—their work delayed. They are not obtrusive neurons: they donot prevent, say, smiling to one’s wife or reading customary books. But they arepersistent and every so often they make the results of their operation known.This happens most-of-all at unexpected times, as, for instance, when Appleton,having bent to retrieve a particularly large pine cone from the grass, stood upwith the complete schematic for the Magna-IV Engine before his eyes, or, uponhaving been asked by the local lady grocer for his opinion about a recentstretch of fair weather, replied, “My God, Ruthenium!”

Once such ideas made themselves known to Appleton, hebegan putting them to paper. Once they were on paper, he tasked other, morecompliant, neurons with dividing and conquering any problems that the papersmade apparent; and, once those had been solved, what else was there to do butgather the necessary materials and construct the first prototypes?

Appleton kept mum about this, of course. To his physicistcolleagues, he was still at work on the same book he’d been working on for thelast decade: he was still irrelevant. The wife, as long he smiled to her,suspected nothing. It was only his books that could have given him away—lyingunopened on their shelves, their regular Six O’clock appointments longforgotten, their yellowing pages gathering dust—but books by themselves cannotspeak. Appleton’s secret was safe.

Even as the project approached completion, not one soulsuspected.

When launch-day finally dawned and Appleton, havingcomposed a note to his wife indicating that he would be away until Wednesday ona scholarly pursuit, packed the pieces and prototypes into the back of a rentedtruck and drove to an old farmer’s field, from where he would blast off thatvery noon, the whole world was still naïve to the history that would soon bemade.

In the field, Appleton worked diligently. He filled theshell of the rocket with each of the separate machines he had designed andconstructed. He had a life support system, a navigation system, acommunications system. He had propulsion. He had fuel. He had everything thatwas necessary. Nothing had been overlooked. As the sun rose, it rose on yearsof endless effort that, today, had physically and for the first time cometogether in the middle of such a previously-insignificant English spot onEarth.

By Ten O’clock, the rocket was nearly complete. All thatwas left was the installation of the final ingenious detail: the captain’sseat: Appleton’s own customary evening chair.

That done, Appleton looked for one last time at theearthly sky, its thin clouds moving slightly across an orange sun, then climbedinto the rocket and closed the hatch. The pneumatics sighed. The inside air waswarm. As he set the navigation, every click and beep audible as if within hisown skull, Appleton wondered what became of Mary Simpson. But just as it hadcome, the wonder passed. He confirmed his intended destination on the smallliquid crystal display and took a deep breath.

The destination was unbelievable: Appleton felt feverish.He maneuvered into his chair and strapped himself in. Space was tight but hewas not uncomfortable. Besides—he thrust a needle into a vein in his arm—hewould be asleep for most of the journey. The sedative began to flow. Heactivated the countdown sequence. When he awoke, he would already be inSaturn’s orbit.

* * *

“Hello? Can you hear me?”

The communications equipment produced only a monotonoushiss punctuated by crackles. Appleton scratched his head. He’d programmed thesystem to link directly to the telephone in his home. The signal was strongenough. It should be working. He tried another connection.

This time, there was a faint click and the echo of avoice.

“Darling! It’s me. Please say something,” Appleton spokeinto the receiver.

The voice wobbled.

“I hope you can hear me. I hope you haven’t beenworrying. I hope I haven’t caused you harm. Please, darling, say something sothat I know there isn’t a malfunction.”

The echoing voice suddenly came into rather clear focus,“Who is this? And do you want to speak with my mum?”

Appleton knew right away that it wasn’t the voice of thewife. In fact, it wasn’t even a female voice. It was the voice of a boy.

“My name is Appleton,” said Appleton, “I am attempting tocontact the wife. Unfortunately, I may have miscalculated. Nonetheless, ifyou’d be a good lad and please make a note of the following: I am calling fromTitan, which is the largest moon of the plane—

“Saturn, I know. I’m not stupid.”

Appleton cleared his throat and adjusted his headset.“Yes, that’s mighty good of you. As I was saying, I am on Titan, having onlyjust arrived, you see. But the situation thus far appears manageable. I predictI shall make a fair go of living here.” He remembered his reason for calling.“Right, then, if you could tell as much to the wife, whom you will find livingat 11 Golden Pheasant Lane in Beaconsfield, I would be much obliged. Her nameis—“

The connection went dead. The communications system wentoffline. Try as Appleton might, no amount of banging, prodding andreprogramming ever brought it back.

* * *

Phil Jones replaced the telephone receiver.

“Who was that?” his mother asked.

Then disappeared down the hall without waiting for ananswer.

Phil went back to the homework spread out on his bedroomfloor, whose doing Appleton had interrupted. Geography lay beside history,which bordered an island of English. Phil tried all three subjects—cross hisinnocent heart, he did—but all at once the history was too boring, the Englishtoo imprecise and the geography too much pointless memorization. He rubbed hiseyes. Next year he’d be in high school. The homework would only get harder.

T-I-T-A-N

He typed the letters almost absent-mindedly into a Googleimage search.

The moon stared at him.

Somewhere inside his head, certain neurons were beginningto fire.

Super Bowl $16.50

2012-02-06T10:26:00.001+04:00

Electro-Motive Diesel Inc. was a ~~Canadian~~ (*) company that made locomotives. It made lots of them, and good ones. It had a plant in London, Ontario. Eighteen months ago, EMD was acquired by U.S. company Caterpillar. The price was low ($820 million) and Caterpillar got, in addition to the London factory, EMD's technology, trade secrets and ready-made customers.

A few weeks ago, Caterpillar proposed to the workers in the London factory: take a 50% pay cut to $16.50/hour or we'll close you down. It was an obvious move. The workers made a fuss, the unions stepped in, a train was stopped, a few local stores stopped selling Caterpillar products; and, two days ago, Caterpillar announced it was shutting the factory down and moving production elsewhere, where it would pay its workers the $16.50. Caterpillar's argument was never that it needed to move production—it recently announced a profit of $5 billion—but that it wanted to and could.

People lost jobs, but Caterpillar is right. It did what it was within its rights to do. More: it did what it should do. Caterpillar is a corporation and corporations exist to make money. While it's nice to think they should also serve other interests, it's difficult to define those interests. And once a person is free to act on undefinable interests, all actions become justifiable because every action can be argued to further some interest. That's bad. It's better that corporations, through their directors, continue to pursue profits, are punished when they don't, and leave the other stuff to governments and interest groups.

That's not to say that Caterpillar shouldn't be punished. It should. But, because Caterpillar exists to make money, it should be punished by causing it to make less money. Just as Caterpillar is free to buy and dismantle EMD, Londoners (and Canadians) are free to not-buy Caterpillar products. Granted, not everyone buys a locomotive or construction equipment, but Caterpillar also makes clothes, and people certainly buy those. That means remembering that Caterpillar is a ruthless corporation. It also means not-buying when the Caterpillar product is the best or cheapest one.

If people don't do that, they: (1) don't know what Caterpillar did, (2) know but don't care, or (3) can't afford to be so selective. The first two options are the more likely. This is especially true because of how virulently anti-union, if not anti-worker, Canadians have become. Read the comments section of any Canadian newspaper story about the Caterpillar affair and be shocked by the anger directed towards both the workers and the unions. The general message is: shut up and take it. The general reasoning is: I make less than you were making, so you're greedy and it serves you right. That Caterpillar made $5 billion and that these workers' wages were coming out of that—and were not being somehow taken from other "regular Canadians"—rarely factors. If it does, it's soon followed by the pinko-commie label.

Worker solidarity is dead.

Unions are not dead but many people think they should be. Yes, unions are often bloated bureaucracies and some union members get by doing nothing but useless politicking. Such is the way of bureaucracies. You work the assembly line, you pay your dues, and union-rep Jack spends his day in the union room playing ping-pong. However, much of what all workers take for granted is the result of past union activism. For example, when you point out that $16.50 is still higher than the $10.25 minimum wage in Ontario, you might also mention that the minimum wage itself was the result of union pressure. Do away with unions and inevitably you do away with what they've accomplished. There's a whole history of it and it deals not only with wages, but with workplace health and safety, pensions, work security and other desirables.

Especially odd is when the person who argues that Caterpillar is free to do as it likes, as long as what it does is within the law, then argues that unions need to be dismantled. It's precisely because Caterpillar can do as it likes that unions need to exist!

Why would a corporation not work its workers for 12 hours/day and pay them $0.50 if it could? Why would a corporation not fire a pregnant woman, hire a child or cut off your arm the next time it gets stuck in one of its valuable machines if doing so wasn't illegal or prohibited in a contract?

Under Ontario's Business Corporations Act, a director of a corporation has a duty to "act honestly and in good faith with a view to the best interests of the corporation". If it's in the best interests of the corporation to cut wages by 50%, a director must do so. If it's in the best interests of the corporation to cut off your arm (and the law allows it), the director must do so. If he or she doesn't, he or she is in breach of the law. Hence, not only would corporations love to return to a state of primitive nineteenth-century capitalism, but, if allowed to do so, they would have to. The only reason that's fine is because laws prohibit some activities (such as arm-cutting) and unions are able to achieve concessions through collective bargaining that lone workers would not be able to get. I mean: however bad or inefficient unions are, surely they're better than corporate employers whose statutory duty it is to exploit you to near-death and pay you as-little-as-possible for the pleasure.

None of that is news, however. What is news is the endgame. I said that Caterpillar closed up shop in London and went to where they'd pay $16.50/hour. That place: Muncie, Indiana.

It used to be that companies would scare Canadians with threats of "going south" and mean Mexico. Later, that threat became the southern States. Now, the threat is just across the border. It's frightening that the United States—where, after all, much of the aforementioned union activism took place—is quickly becoming a source of cheap labour. (Incidentally, Indiana just passed anti-union legislation.) The threats, suddenly, don't ring so hollow.

Which brings up a final point. As the vitriol spills onto unions and Caterpillar, it mostly spills around the government. Yet under the Investment Canada Act, the federal government has the power to block any large foreign investment if that investment is not to the "net benefit" of Canada. There's a list of factors that can be taken into account but the test is necessarily as vague as it sounds: the government can do as it likes; and has. In 2010, it blocked the takeover of Saskatchewan's PotashCorp by global mining giant BHP Billiton. Why was the Caterpillar deal allowed to go ahead when it was reasonably clear that what Caterpillar was after was not to Canada's "net benefit"? God only knows. (And God, dear Dorothy, is dead.)

(The Act applies to a "Canadian business", which it defines as a business carried on in Canada that has (1) a place of business in Canada, (2) an individual or individuals in Canada who are employed or self-employed in connection with the business, and (3) assets in Canada used in carrying on the business.)

There's that old joke about the genie and the one wish: "You can have anything, but only if your neighbour gets twice as much," he says. To which the wisher responds, "Gouge out one of my eyes."

The joke's not funny anymore.

Hollywood Studios: A Bibliography

2012-02-05T09:21:00.000+04:00

Long ago, eight studios dominated Hollywood. Five of these were vertically-integrated, meaning that each controlled all three phases of industrial filmdom: production, distribution and exhibition—i.e. the same studio made a film, moved the film and showed the film in its own theatres. Two others were almost there, but lacked the theatre chains of the first five. The eighth was an odd duck.

Each studio had its own style and, in hindsight, each became associated with at least one larger-than-life figure who was neither an actor (or actress) nor a director, cinematographer, editor, etc. Mostly, they were executives. Fox had Darryl F. Zanuck, MGM had Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg, Paramount had Adolph Zucker, RKO had David O. Selznick, Warner Bros. had the Warner Brothers but especially Jack, Universal had Carl Laemmle, Columbia had Harry Cohn and United Artists had its actor-founders. With the exception of the last bunch, these men didn't make films in the auteur sense; but they made films. Sometimes they made them like other men made automobiles or cigarettes, as businessmen—as moguls.

Here's a short list of books about each studio:

Fox Film Corp. / Twentieth Century-Fox

The Company

Solomon, Aubrey. Twentieth Century-Fox: A Corporate and Financial History (1988).

The People

Custen, George F. Twentieth Century's Fox: Darryl F. Zanuck And The Culture Of Hollywood (1997).
Mosley, Leonard. Zanuck: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood's Last Tycoon (1984).
Sinclair, Upton. Upton Sinclair Presents William Fox (1933)

Loew's (Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer)

The Company

Eames, John Douglas. The MGM Story (1975).

The People

Altman, Diana. Hollywood East: Louis B. Mayer and the Origins of the Studio System (1992).
Carey, Gary. All the Stars in Heaven: Louis B. Mayer's MGM (1981).
Eyman, Scott. Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer (2005).
Flamini, Roland. Thalberg: The Last Tycoon and the World of M-G-M (1994).
Marx, Samuel. Mayer and Thalberg: The Make-Believe Saints (1975).
Thomas, Bob. Thalberg: Life and Legend (1969).
Vieira, Mark A. Irving Thalberg: Boy Wonder to Producer Prince (2009).

Paramount Pictures

The Company

Irwin, Will. The House That Shadows Built (1928).
Eames, John Douglas. The Paramount Story (1985).

The People

Zucker, Adolph. The Public is Never Wrong: The Autobiography (1953).

RKO Pictures

The Company

Jewell, Richard B. The RKO Story (1982).

The People

Haver, Ronald. David O. Selznick’s Hollywood (1980).
McNamara, Paul. Those Were the Days, My Friend: My Life in Hollywood with David O. Selznick and Others (1993).
Thomson, David. Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick (1992).

Warner Bros.

The Company

Sperling, Cass Warner. Hollywood Be Thy Name: The Warner Brothers Story (1994).

The People

Warner, Jack. Jack of All Trades: An Autobiography (1975).

Universal Pictures

The Company

The People

Drinkwater, John. The Life and Adventures of Carl Laemmle (1931).

Columbia Pictures

The Company

The People

Dick, Bernard F. The Merchant Prince of Poverty Row: Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures (1993).
Thomas, Bob. King Cohn: The Life and Times of Harry Cohn (1967).

United Artists

The Company

Balio, Tino. United Artists: The Company Built by the Stars, vol. 1, 1919-1950 (2009).

The People

(There are plenty of books about at least four of the corporation's five founding members: Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, D. W. Griffith and Mary Pickford.)

The Big Stick (of Twine)

2012-02-05T04:49:00.000+04:00

Twine is neat and easy-to-use software for creating interactive fiction. It's based on TiddlyWiki ("a reusable non-linear personal web notebook"), which is itself a wonderful little invention, boasts a graphical interface (no coding!) and outputs to HTML.

Twine stories are interactive fiction in the most literal sense—not in the IF-Zork sense. You are not standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is no small mailbox here. You are more-or-less seated at a wooden desk with a pen in your hand. Customization, basic variables and other goodies are possible, but Twine is geared toward writers, not game-makers. It's not Inform. Meaning: it's not as powerful and is much quicker to learn. But it's also not confined to producing digital choose-your-own-adventures. Hyperlinks can be put to more creative use.

Really, what you need to learn to use Twine is TiddlyWiki formatting. HTML formatting is second-nature to many people and it may be annoying to use something else. Other than that, you're set. Craft chunks of text, establish the links between them and let Twine display all of it visually on a sort-of map. Arrows show which chunk leads to which other chunks and you can click on each to edit it. You can also drag the chunks around to make the map more to your liking. When you're done, "build" the story as a single HTML file and host it online.

Here's an example:

The Big Stick

I wrote this on a dare. (You know who you are!) The content is necessarily crude, perhaps the form a little less so.

(see also: Hypertext fiction)

Paranoia (Ditvoorst, 1967)

2012-01-22T11:52:00.000+04:00

(Confused? See: Cine-Euro 2012: Introduction)

AMSTERDAM—The Cine-Euro 2012 kicked off with aplomb this afternoon in front of a crowd of 52,000 at the Amsterdam Arena. Anticipation had been building ever since the groups were announced, and it exploded into applause as soon as the projector clicked and the first frames of Adriaan Ditvoorst's Paranoia flashed across the screen.

The film is Ditvoorst's debut. It's in black-and-white. It's very much an art film, though one with a semblance of plot that wouldn't be out place in a Hollywood thriller or German Expressionist classic: Arnold Cleever is a soldier, he's returned home, he's got a girl and an apartment in the midst of a housing shortage, but he's also got problems in-the-head. There will be murder and mistaken identity and gunshots, but the film starts calmly, with shots of Cleever in military garb, waiting for a train. Jump-cuts until it comes, Cleever gets on, he rides into Amsterdam. Several years later, he ducks into a record store. The crowd is Bohemian, loud. They overpower the soundtrack. Cleever pushes past and asks the girl working the front desk if he can take a record into one of the listening booths. She nods. Inside, the soundtrack fades. And as Cleever drops the needle onto the spinning record the music starts—except it's not music: it's shooting: it's guns, explosions and other war sounds. Cleever sinks against the wall of the booth. He seems happy.

The first half of Paranoia is hit-and-miss. There's no hiding that the film is a debut. The crowd, so expectant at the beginning, mellows. Twenty minutes in and a few scenes had dragged. But Ditvoorst never quite loses his audience. Not only is Jan de Bont's cinematography too good for that, but after every pacing mis-step there's a moment of exuberant, young brilliance that makes up for it. Once upon a time, Ditvoorst was compared to Jean-Luc Godard; it's easy to see why. Ditvoorst is obviously an admirer of Breathless and the French New Wave. By 1967, perhaps that style was stale. In 2012, looking back, 1960 and 1967 seem like one. The crowd doesn't care. They like the zest and zaniness and nuggets of poetry in Paranoia.

The story unfolds and Cleever does the same to a newspaper. Text and a photograph stare back at him. His face? Perhaps or perhaps not, but close. The man in the photograph is wanted. He's an ex-soldier. He collaborated with the SS. He's a murderer. The physical description matches and the article points out that, due to shell shock, the man speaks forever in a whisper. Cleever speaks in a whisper. He's got a sore throat. Paranoia sets in. It's never convincing how Cleever comes to believe that he is the man in the photo (he was a soldier but retreated before engaging the Germans, so maybe he's trying to cover up feelings of untested masculinity) but the resulting effects of paranoia are convincing. The crowd knows it's watching an extended student film but the student is talented and the film reflects that. By half-time, he's got them. And little do they know that the last 45 minutes will be better than the first.

The best scenes in Paranoia are the ones that don't advance the story. Cleever hates his landlord. He's becoming obsessive. He thinks the landlord wants to kick him out. The law may make that impossible, but the law doesn't always work. Cleever wants to take matters into his own hand. He thinks about blackmail. He visits a fat man—a rich fat man he knew before the war and who may be his uncle. The uncle is grotesque and married to a younger minxish woman. The uncle used to take compromising photos. Perhaps, thinks Cleever, if he can arrange a situation for the landlord and the uncle can take a photo, perhaps, that will give Cleever the upper hand. Unfortunately, the uncle doesn't do that kind of work anymore. The climate's changed, technology's changed. But the uncle wants to show him something. They go into a room. It's a mess. The uncle digs around. Cleever picks up a revolver without the uncle seeing. Boxes of books and paraphernelia fill the frame. They head out, walking by a bathroom. The aunt is taking a bath. She's nude in bubbles. We see her behind. She knows she's being watched. She flirts.

The uncle has a private projection room. Cleever takes a seat and the uncle starts up the projector. Now, the whole of the Amsterdam Arena is watching someone watching film clips. The clips are historical: Netherlands in wartime. Police or military police confront ordinary people, try to keep order, lash out. The aunt walks in with a cigarette and robe. The robe is nonchalantly open. Her bra and panties peek out. She slides onto a bench in front of a piano. Yes, there's a piano in the room, like in a silent-era theatre. The aunt starts to play. The clips continue. Her playing becomes the soundtrack of historical wartime Netherlands.

Later, Cleever's girl starts to have a greater role. There's a long but intimate sex scene. Before that, she stands at his second-story window as he reads a book. Next she's in a restaurant, sitting on a step near a jukebox. A waiter brings her a cola. He pours some into a glass and hands her the bottle. She doesn't know where to put it down. It's not acting; she didn't know where to put it down. She starts a song. It's in French. It's a love song. The camera stays on her, still on that step, then pans to a middle-aged couple dancing. They're in love. The man isn't attractive. The woman isn't attractive. She has plaster casts on her arms. But the way they look at each other, their expressions—you can tell they're in love. He blows a few strands of hair away from her face. They dance and then he lowers her arms. Before doing it, he asks, without words, if he can, if it won't hurt her damaged limbs. She smiles: "yes."

The music continues and suddenly we're elsewhere. Two silhouettes: male and female. They're fighting. The man picks something up (a knife, scissors?) and threatens the woman with it. The image is exaggerated, straight from an old horror movie. He chases her around. She tries to get way. She can't. From outside a window we see him press her body against the glass and his arm rises and falls, rises and falls. Maybe he stabs her, maybe he doesn't. The love song continues. The couple is still dancing. The girl is still on the steps. A young man bursts in. He has a paper, which he reads from. It's political, he's an activist. His politics have been distilled into points. He recites two, something about the police, before running back out into the street. His voice fades at the third point. Ditvoorst cuts away and in just as a car smashes into the activist on street. Suddenly we're above everything and a policeman on a motor speeds toward the scene of the accident.

Only rubes care about the plot any more. Paranoia increases. Cleever lets his girlfriend strip, eggs her on; and pushes her, naked, into the hall. Will the landlord come? What will happen? She loves him, she begs him to open the door. He won't. Time passes. She cries. She curls up into a ball. The door opens. Her eyes: suddenly sparkle. A plate slides out, with food. She goes for the door instead. Cleever shuts it. He's far gone. He thinks he actually is the SS murderer. The landlord indeed arrives in his beat-up car. There's another man with him. Cleever's in his room, playing with the revolver. He holds it to photographs of people and pulls the trigger. The end comes quickly. Bang, bang, two dead: the landlord and the girl. Why the girl? Cleever opens his second-story window and disappears. Suddenly we're above everything and Cleever lies, dead, on the pavement below.

The camera moves past, seeming to focus on Amsterdam itself. Cars shoot past behind the branches of a thick tree. The Amstel river flows.

Twenty years later, Adriaan Ditvoorst arrived in his home town and drowned himself in a river. He'd made four other feature films and never gained the audience he'd hoped for. This information is not displayed on the screen at the Amsterdam Arena. The crowd claps. It has been a successful start to the tournament. If the remaining 15 films are at least as good as this one, it will be a Cine-Euro to remember.

Starting Eleven

Cine-Euro 2012: The Draw

2012-01-22T06:06:00.000+04:00

(Confused? See: Cine-Euro 2012: Introduction)

The rules are set, the groups are known and the films have been selected. It's now time to draw the screening order out of a hat.

01. NED / B / Paranoia (Ditvoorst, 1967)

02. RUS / A / The Story of Asya Klyachina (Konchalovskiy, 1966)

03. POL / A / The Calm (Kieślowski, 1976)

04. ESP / C / Aunt Tula (Picazo, 1964)

05. UKR / D / The Stone Cross (Osyka, 1968)

06. CRO / C / The Melody Haunts My Memory (Grlić, 1981)

07. ENG / D / Bluebeard's Castle (Powell, 1963)

08. SWE / D / Hugo and Josephine (Grede, 1967)

09. DEN / B / We Are All Demons (Carlsen, 1969)

10. CZE / A / Coach to Vienna (Kachyňa, 1966)

11. IRL / C / Poteen (Quinn, 1978)

12. ITA / C / The Messiah (Rossellini, 1975)

13. FRA / D / Marguerite of the Night (Autant-Lara, 1955)

14. GRE / A / Days of '36 (Angelopoulos, 1972)

15. POR / B / Trails (Monteiro, 1978)

16. GER / B / Palermo or Wolfsburg (Schroeter, 1980)

So there you have it. The tournament begins in Amsterdam and ends with a three-hour marathon in Wolfsburg. Consecutive screenings of films from the same group should prove interesting, as those films will be directly competing against each other. Who will benefit, who will suffer? Group D looks especially tight, with 3 of the films coming in a 4-film stretch, then France ending the group quite a bit later. Incidentally, word out of the French camp is that they are happy with the order and think they may just spring a surprise or two despite being widely regarded as the worst team in the tournament. The Germans, meanwhile, were defiant at being drawn last, refusing to admit that they'll inevitably be compared to every other film. The Irish appeared pleased just to be here and João César Monteiro made a huge mess eating a pomegranate.

Cine-Euro 2012: Group D Films & Preview

2012-01-21T15:10:00.001+04:00

(Confused? See: Cine-Euro 2012: Introduction)

Teams: Ukraine, Sweden, France, England

UKRAINE
Film: The Stone Cross
Director: Leonid Osyka
Year: 1968
IMDB votes / rating: 36 / 8.5

This selection was tough. I whittled my choices down to three from Ukrainian cinema's most open and poetic period: Kira Muratova's A Long Goodbye (1971), Yuri Ilyenko's The White Bird Marked With Black (1971) and my eventual selection, The Stone Cross. I made my pick based on chronology. I went with the earliest film. I also kept in mind that both films from 1971 were suppressed and that Group A is my group for suppressed films. Then there's the wild rumour that The Stone Cross is superior to even Sergei Parajanov's mesmeric Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, on which, to make matters complicated, Yuri Ilyenko was the cinematographer. I need to investigate such claims!

Other films I've seen by the same director: none

Familiarity with national cinema: Low

SWEDEN
Film: Hugo and Josephine
Director: Kjell Grede
Year: 1967
IMDB votes / rating: 106 / 6.6

I'm predictable. I started with Bergman, though without much conviction, and was happy to see all his films rise easily above my 200-vote limit. I tried Troell, too. None of the 1960s Swedish sex movies appealed to me. Then I found a filmmaker named Kjell Grede, whose film, Harry Munter, saw Cannes in 1969. I could have gone with that film but I looked back and saw that so many of my other choices were serious or heavy, so I scanned Grede's remaining films until I saw one that seemed lighter, happier. Hugo and Josephine it was.

Other films I've seen by the same director: none

Familiarity with national cinema: Low

FRANCE
Film: Marguerite of the Night
Director: Claude Autant-Lara
Year: 1955
IMDB votes / rating: 69 / 5.6

I had Philippe Garrel's The Inner Scar penciled in, but decided I wanted to try the other direction: what did The New Wave hate? Well, they sure were systematically unkind to Claude Autant-Lara. I burrowed further. Truffaut once said that the New Wave happened because of Jacques Rivette. Rivette, reviewing Marguerite of the Night in the Cahiers du Cinéma, awarded it a bullet (less than one out of four stars). My choice was made.

Other films I've seen by the same director: none

Familiarity with national cinema: Low

ENGLAND
Film: Bluebeard's Castle
Director: Michael Powell
Year: 1963
IMDB votes / rating: 25 / 7.7

It's my last pick, so I'm going to play twister with good faith in applying my own rules and go with a rarely seen late-career Michael Powell. Yes, it's in German (it's an opera). Yes, it was produced in Austria. Yes, the lead actress was born in Uruguay. Yes, the lead actor and producer is American. But: the director is quintessentially English and I'm curious to see what he did after Peeping Tom. I justify my selection by pointing to the foreign managers the English have employed in the past decade.

Other films I've seen by the same director: Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes, Peeping Tom

Familiarity with national cinema: Low

PREVIEW

When it comes to soccer, this is the group I'm least interested in. When it comes to these films, I'm intrigued. I think there's going to be a great variety of styles and moods to experience and choose from. It may make judging difficult, but part of the challenge is evaluating apples against oranges and deciding which will advance to take on a kiwi or grapefruit in the quarter-finals. Where the bookies see a huge gap in talent between first and last, I see the potential for a strong group of varied films. Will Ukraine and England go through, will France be the worst team in the tournament? Only time will tell.

Cine-Euro 2012: Group C Films & Preview

2012-01-21T13:28:00.000+04:00

(Confused? See: Cine-Euro 2012: Introduction)

Teams: Spain, Italy, Ireland, Croatia

SPAIN
Film: Aunt Tula
Director: Miguel Picazo
Year: 1964
IMDB votes / rating: 111 / 7.3

Buñuel was too popular (or else not in Spain), Bardem and Berlanga's available films all had more than 200 votes, and so I gravitated toward the lesser-known regions of Spanish film history and came upon Picazo. He hasn't made many films, I hadn't heard of him, but the few places that do speak of him, speak highly, and I am eager to see if they are right.

Other films I've seen by the same director: none

Familiarity with national cinema: Low

ITALY
Film: The Messiah
Director: Roberto Rossellini
Year: 1975
IMDB votes / rating: 96 / 6.5

I've always wondered about Rossellini. His post-war films are praised to the heavens. They're unavoidable. His slightly-later films are celebrated without being obligatory. Then there's years and years of work that no seems to have bothered to see, bits of which come out on a new DVD once in a while, sold as "late" Rossellini, there's excitement and "rediscovery" and then it fizzles out as quickly as it came. Are the films ultimately disappointments padded with memories of early-career talent? Are they boring or diffcult? I will try to see. The Messiah is Rossellini's last feature film. It's about Jesus. It has almost 4,000 less IMDB votes than Pasolini's film about Jesus.

Other films I've seen by the same director: Rome, Open City, Germany Year Zero, The Flowers of St. Francis, The Machine That Kills Bad People

Familiarity with national cinema: Medium

IRELAND
Film: Poteen
Director: Bob Quinn
Year: 1978
IMDB votes / rating: 60 / 7.4

This was the only non-documentary Irish film I could find that matched my criteria.

Other films I've seen by the same director: none

Familiarity with national cinema: Very Low

CROATIA
Film: The Melody Haunts My Memory
Director: Rajko Grlić
Year: 1981
IMDB votes / rating: 125 / 6.9

I very much wanted to see Ante Babaja's The Birch Tree (1967) and even found a copy of it, but, alas, there were no subtitles. I decided that would be unfair. My second choice was The Melody Haunts My Memory, which is by a director born in Zagreb mentioned in the Wikipedia article on Croatian cinema, which qualifies him as Croatian for me until something else proves otherwise—in which case I'll be back at The Birch Tree.

Other films I've seen by the same director: none

Familiarity with national cinema: Very Low

PREVIEW

Spain and Germany are probably the front-runners to triumph at the real Euro 2012. Both are unknown quantities in my Cine-Euro. Then again, I at least have some inkling of what to expect from a Spanish film from that period. Ireland's film is a complete question mark. On the other end, Italy enters the group stage with the best pedigree and a director I know but will it be enough? At the last World Cup, Italy gave a dismal showing and struggled against New Zealand. Before that, they won. Rossellini might be erratic, too. The bookies see Ireland topping things when the dust settles, but to me that seems highly unlikely. That Spain will be there (bookies have them second) I can agree with, but Ireland first and Italy last?

Cine-Euro 2012: Group B Films & Preview

2012-01-21T12:17:00.000+04:00

(Confused? See: Cine-Euro 2012: Introduction)

Teams: Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Portugal

NETHERLANDS
Film: Paranoia
Director Adriaan Ditvoorst
Year: 1967
IMDB votes / rating: 52 / 7.3

I don't know anything about Dutch cinema and have seen little beyond one or two rather bad newer films and an interwar short by Joris Ivens. My pick is, therefore, somewhat shot-in-the-dark. I basically picked what I could find. My only morsel of knowledge: Jan de Bont may be the cinematographer.

Other films I've seen by the same director: none

Familiarity with national cinema: Very Low

DENMARK
Film: We Are All Demons
Director Henning Carlsen
Year: 1969
IMDB votes / rating: 5 / 7.2

Danish cinema is immense before the war. It's less-easy pickings afterward. I knew Carlsen's name from a list of Palme d'Or nominations I'd looked at (he was nominated in 1966 for his Knut Hamsun adaptation, Hunger) but nothing else. We Are All Demons played at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1969 and appears to be about a sea captain or sailors.

Other films I've seen by the same director: none

Familiarity with national cinema: Low

GERMANY
Film: Palermo or Wolfsburg
Director Werner Schroeter
Year: 1980
IMDB votes / rating: 62 / 6.8

Much like with the Czechs in Group A, I knew the movement I wanted to pick from—German New Cinema—but not the film. I first heard about Schroeter when he died last year. Someone wrote about his work. I remembered him. A cursory glance at the filmography of Rainer Werner Fassbinder made it clear I wasn't going to find anything with less than 200 votes on that list, so I typed in Schroeter's name, went to the only film of his I'd ever heard about and: only 62 votes! The die was cast.

Other films I've seen by the same director: none

Familiarity with national cinema: Medium

PORTUGAL
Film: Trails
Director João César Monteiro
Year: 1978
IMDB votes / rating: 61 / 7.2

I wasn't going to upset the fragile balance of this group with a director whose work I'd already seen. Off the top of my head, I know only three Portuguese filmmakers: Oliveira, Costa, Monteiro. I've seen a Costa, so: out! Oliveira? Nah, too tame compared to what-I-perceive-to-be the insane Monteiro, whose work I've been meaning to check out anyway. Trails came recommended.

Other films I've seen by the same director: none

Familiarity with national cinema: Low

PREVIEW

The real Euro tournament promises this to be the "group of death". For me, it's the "group of the unknown". All four directors are new. I know German film history and can recognize my way down a list of German directors, but Schroeter remains a mystery. My already-limited knowledge of Danish cinema starts and ends before 1939. Portugal is Pedro Costa as far as my experience is concerned. In fact, I know so little about these filmmakers that I don't even know whether I should be excited or not. The bookies seem equally oblivious: their most-favourite and least-favourite films are separated by 0.5 points! It couldn't be any tighter. First place will no doubt hinge on which director manages to hook me with his idiosyncratic style. Second place may come down to head-to-head comparisons.

Cine-Euro 2012: Group A Films & Preview

2012-01-21T11:37:00.000+04:00

(Confused? See: Cine-Euro 2012: Introduction)

Teams: Poland, Greece, Russia, Czech Republic

POLAND
Film: The Calm
Director Kryszstof Kieślowski
Year: 1976
IMDB votes / rating: 134 / 8.4

Kieślowski made The Calm in 1976, but its release was delayed for four years due to political reasons. It was his third feature and is the only one without an English Wikipedia entry. I chose the film because I'm curious about Kieślowski's Polish period and because I didn't want to pick anything about World War II. It ultimately came down to Kieślowski and Zanussi and I'm less familiar with the former.

Other films I've seen by the same director: Camera Buff, The Decalogue, The Double Life of Veronique, Three Colours: Blue, Three Colours: White, Three Colours: Red

Familiarity with national cinema: High

GREECE
Film: Days of '36
Director: Theo Angelopoulos
Year: 1972
IMDB votes / rating: 196 / 6.9

I initially wanted something by Michael Cacoyannis, but all the titles that I could find landed just on the wrong side of 200 votes. Then I discovered he was also born on Cyprus and that nudged me toward the other Greek filmmaker I've always wanted to try: Angelopoulos. Unfortunately, Angelopoulos is a staple "world director", so that as I went down his list of films, I found that all had way too many votes. Then I hit on Days of '36, his second feature. It snuck in a mere 4 votes shy of my limit! Perhaps this won't be an ideal introduction to Angelopoulos but I'll see what all the fuss is about.

Other films I've seen by the same director: none

Familiarity with national cinema: Low

RUSSIA
Film: The Story of Asya Klyachina
Director: Andrey Konchalovskiy
Year: 1966
IMDB votes / rating: 156 / 7.0

I think I've established a theme. Here's another early feature from a director who went on to worldwide fame. Like Kieślowski's film, The Story of Asya Klyachina was also initially shelved by the state. But for much longer. It wasn't until Gorbachev that the film had its first domestic screening. Incidentally, Gorbachev was also an outspoken fan. Then, like Kieślowski to France, Konchalovskiy headed West to make films.

Other films I've seen by the same director: Runaway Train, Tango & Cash, House of Fools

Familiarity with national cinema: Medium

CZECH REPUBLIC
Film: Coach to Vienna
Director Karel Kachyňa
Year: 1966
IMDB votes / rating: 161 / 7.2

I was never going anywhere other than the Czech New Wave with this pick, but which specific film? I excluded all the usual suspects (more than 200 votes) and was left with a choice between a handful of films. Two were directed by Kachyňa, so I decided I had to pick one of those. I decided on this one because the story touches on Russia, which is also in Group A.

Other films I've seen by the same director: none

Familiarity with national cinema: Medium

PREVIEW

In the soccer Euro, this group is the worst of the four. I doubt that will be reflected here. I've seen films by both Kieślowski and Konchalovskiy and their entries would have to be wild aberrations to be disappointments. I've also seen a handful of Czech films from the same period and absolutely loved their style and mood. Angelopoulos is the real wildcard. He's a giant but he also seems polarizing. Then again, as we know from previous Euro tournaments, Greece can sure spring a surprise!

The bookies predict an easy march for Poland, with the Czechs edging the Russians for second. I wouldn't be so sure.

As far as I go, this group is definitely my most comfortable.I have a decent familiarity with at least three of the four national cinemas and a solid grasp on the histories of all four countries. Whether that translates to richer viewing experiences remains to be seen, but I have high expectations for all four films.

Cine-Euro 2012: Introduction

2012-01-21T10:30:00.000+04:00

This idea ~~is a complete rip-off of~~ was inspired by Sachin's festival-tournament here. Except where Sachin's chosen films and books, and his films were all produced between 2008 and 2012 (i.e. the period between Euro 2008 and now), I'm going with films-only and older ones.

The Idea

To use the upcoming Euro 2012 soccer tournament as a foundation on which to construct a personal film festival.

The Rules

Sixteen films will compete: one film from each country at Euro 2012. The structure will mirror that tournament's structure, with four groups of four films and the top two from each group advancing to the quarter-finals. Matches will be "played" by pitting two films against each other and declaring either a winner or a tie. Wins are worth 3 points, ties are worth 1 point. There can be no ties in elimination games.

Sachin has developed criteria for judging, but mine will probably be less formal. However, I will still try to explain why one film is better than the other, and not just good or bad. I will also write something about each film separately, probably after I watch it, to keep my memory from going fuzzy on me.

The Selection Criteria

I made my choices by adhering to these limitations:

(1) One film from each country competing in Euro 2012

This one is self-explanatory, but, because I'm looking for older films, there is one problem. Ukraine, the Czech Republic and Croatia are young states. However, I recognize that they're established nations. And when we talk about cinemas, we talk about national cinemas. Following that principle, my Ukrainian film was produced in the Soviet Union, Czech film produced in Czechoslovakia and Croatian film produced in Yugoslavia.

(2) Only films produced between 1953 and 1983

It seems arbitrary, but has private meaning. It's also a refinement of my desire to watch older films. Why older films? Because I consider the internet an amazing place to find films that would never play in a theater or that may not even be available on DVD. On the internet, cinema does not have to die. At worst, it stays hidden.

(3) Only films that have less than 200 user votes on the IMDB

The previous criterion narrowed down the years. This one narrows down popularity. I want little-known films. I want to make discoveries. One of the pleasures of soccer tournaments is watching and recognizing players that were unknown. It's their stage. If a team does well, club teams will suddenly want their players. Likewise, I want to find and showcase forgotten or obscure international films.

The Groups

Group A (preview!)
Poland, Greece, Russia, Czech Republic

Group B (preview!)
Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Portugal

Group C (preview!)
Spain, Italy, Ireland, Croatia

Group D (preview!)
Ukraine, Sweden, France, England

The Screening Order

01. NED / B / Paranoia (Ditvoorst, 1967)

02. RUS / A / The Story of Asya Klyachina (Konchalovskiy, 1966)

03. POL / A / The Calm (Kieślowski, 1976)

04. ESP / C / Aunt Tula (Picazo, 1964)

05. UKR / D / The Stone Cross (Osyka, 1968)

06. CRO / C / The Melody Haunts My Memory (Grlić, 1981)

07. ENG / D / Bluebeard's Castle (Powell, 1963)

08. SWE / D / Hugo and Josephine (Grede, 1967)

09. DEN / B / We Are All Demons (Carlsen, 1969)

10. CZE / A / Coach to Vienna (Kachyňa, 1966)

11. IRL / C / Poteen (Quinn, 1978)

12. ITA / C / The Messiah (Rossellini, 1975)

13. FRA / D / Marguerite of the Night (Autant-Lara, 1955)

14. GRE / A / Days of '36 (Angelopoulos, 1972)

15. POR / B / Trails (Monteiro, 1978)

16. GER / B / Palermo or Wolfsburg (Schroeter, 1980)

Dear Bette Davis

2012-01-13T07:03:00.000+04:00

Don't get me wrong. If I remember anything from The Big Sleep it's Lauren Bacall with a cigarette between her lips. And Bette Davis had gloriously sad smoking eyes when Paul Henreid lit up a deuce in Now, Voyager. Later, there was Monica Vitti, Giulietta Masina and Anna Karina. I don't remember if that trio smoked, but, if it did, I'm sure the puffs were sensual and glamorous (and possibly heartrendingly tragic in Masina's case). So don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against the movies. I spent a good part of my childhood lusting over dead and aging actresses. But besides the time I put an end to my mom's cassette deck with a copy of Nights of Cabiria that I borrowed from the library and never returned, the movies lie. The stench and the irritation of the eyes and the bad teeth don't penetrate the silver screen. The story ends before the skin yellows and tightens into the leather they use to make fake Italian sofas. And don't get me started on the clothes: saturated with an entire history of matches and lighters and Saturday afternoons spent coughing in the garage.

Listen, I don't mean to sound like a smoking infomercial. The truth is that I don't care how many people die from throat cancer or if underprivileged kids have to suck in second hand smoke because their parents get the shakes if they don't light up every hour on the hour. All I care about—and what I can't get out of my head—is the sweet mouth of Ginnie Peters in the eighth grade, open and waiting for me and my tongue in a little nook on the southwest wall of St. Bartholomew's Elementary. I'll never forget that first taste of saliva. No lingering mintiness of sugar-free gum, no taste bud memories of a winter morning’s bitter black coffee. Just sweet, warm and fresh saliva replenishing itself with the swallow-swallow frequency of a nervous teenage girl. If you happen know the album cover for King Crimson's In The Court of the Crimson King or maybe Edvard Munch's Screams, you know that once adulthood hits, open mouths become the gaping maws of monsters. But back then it was still the pinnacle of burgeoning eroticism to see those jaws spread and the spit coming down the sides of Ginnie Peter's teeth like my own private Niagara Falls. I stuck my tongue into that beautiful cavity and lapped up the taste.

Recess and noon hour and sometimes after school, weeks upon weeks, we spent in that spot with our faces joined at the lips, exchanging fluids. Of course, it wasn't all about the saliva. There were also the teeth and the tongues, and the hotness of breath making the tiny hairs on your upper lip stand. Sometimes there were the hands, too, but we didn't do much of that. It was other young couples that snuck off to explore the insides of each other's underwear. We were mouth people.

Even before our lickings and suckings started we'd been friends. Ask my mom where I was when I wasn't home and she'd nine of ten answer, "He's probably off with Ginnie somewhere." Nine of ten she was right, too. Probably in Ginnie's basement, where she and her brother Felton had set up a room especially for the audio-visual. A giant rear projection TV against the wall, a Japanese stereo and, in both corners, big Bose towers with enough bass to restart your heart. Although Felton generally left us alone, he was our primary source for movies. He was older than Ginnie—in his last year of high school. A couple of his friends were already in college, so he'd raid their college libraries for us, bringing back 70s rock albums and the classics of Hollywood and European cinema. If there was anything more appealing than sucking out every last drop of Ginnie Peter's unspoilt saliva, it was feasting on that saliva while Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Graham fell in love on screen.

The trouble with Nicholas Ray films, however, is that they usually don't end well for the lovers. You see, brother Felton picked up another thing from his college buddies: the taste for nicotine. I first caught on from the faint smell on his jacket. He was discrete with his habit and good at airing out his clothes, but versus someone with an acute sense of cigarette smell like me it wasn't enough. When I sheepishly asked him about it one day while Ginnie was in the bathroom, his face turned red to match the colour of the popped blood vessels in his eyes and he begged me not to tell Ginnie or his parents. Cigarettes weren't all he was smoking, and he was glad to buy my silence for a pack of Camels that I didn't even particularly want. I wasn't going to talk anyway but he pushed them into my hand and nodded like we'd just concluded an international arms deal, so I kept them.

Which brings me back to Lauren Bacall with the cig dangling from her lips in The Big Sleep, me and Ginnie on the couch, our lips mutually wet, and Ginnie's hands making a rare trip under my shirt, then down my body to the tops of my jeans and toward the front pocket where I'd stashed my Camels that day so that I could brag about them to a friend at school. She didn't actually stop kissing me until she pulled out the pack and smiled, saying, "I didn't know you smoked." I was about to say that I didn't when the shot came up—Bacall sucking on that filter-less piece of shredded dry tobacco—and I let my pulsating youth get the better of me.

"You should try it," I said, "I bet you'd look good with a cigarette."

She laughed and took one out of the pack. She held it up and looked at it, then spun it round a few times before sticking one end between her lips. I felt a pang of jealousy. Then she smiled and struck a Hollywood pose. There she was: my own personal Vivian Rutledge. I told her to stay right there and I ran to my book bag, where I carried the cheap camera the school had given me to take pictures for the yearbook. She struck another pose and I got a decent shot. And another. And she said, "Wait, it won't look the same without the smoke," paused, then added, "but there's probably a lighter around here somewhere."

There wasn't. So she came back with an old book of camping matches—the kind that supposedly work underwater—which worked just as well above it. She lit the cigarette, inhaled, and exploded into a sandpaper-coarse cough. She took another drag and it looked good to see her struggle with it. When her coughing calmed down a little I took some more shots. She'd been right. She did look better with her softly moving lips cushioning the smoke up toward the ceiling. The only regret I had was that the world wasn't in 35mm black and white.

After she'd smoked the cigarette down to the nub, she handed it to me like an urn of human remains and with the utmost reverence I put it in the garbage, even wrapping it in a used issue to make sure it wouldn't be found.The movie had already finished and no one had shut off the television when I got back on top of her and licked her lower lip. She stunk bad up close, that much I could tell right away. But it wasn't until I actually tasted the inside of her mouth that the full horror of what I'd done stuck its talons into the tender underbelly of my heart and ripped me open. I didn't throw up in her mouth. I at least managed to pull away and run. But I didn't manage the bathroom, either. I stopped somewhere between the kitchen and the dining room and flung out my dinner onto the Peters' faultless hardwood floor.

Ginnie helped me clean up. She was sweet as usual. That was probably the worst thing about it. I could handle the embarrassment and the lack of self-respect that comes with throwing up in front of the girl you're in love with, but to see her unchanged sweet exterior while knowing that inside she was changed—charred. I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. I looked into her eyes, "Promise me, Ginnie, promise that you'll never smoke another cigarette." She promised and sealed the promise with a kiss on my cheek. I clamped down on my teeth till I tasted calcium to stop from shuddering at the smell of her smoke-infected hair, but I believed her

July 24, 1945. Potsdam. President Harry S. Truman leans over to Joseph Stalin and whispers that the Americans have perfected the atomic bomb. Stalin nods in understanding. Truman scratches his head at the lack of a reaction, Stalin makes a mental note about the expediency of spying. Consequently, while I was never one to advocate peeping on one's allies, espionage among friends is a little like torture: condemnable, but with benefits. And so the Monday after next I decided to sleuth after Ginnie after school. Where was she going, I asked. To her aunt's for dinner. Where did she go? To our little nook on the southwest wall of St. Bartholomew's Elementary.

By now we both think we know how this ends. There is no other boy. There is no secret lesbian girlfriend. There is only Ginnie and her fingers fiddling with a pack of Camels that she paid her brother to get for her.

Or at least you think you know how this ends. What you don't know is that every second that it takes her fingers holding the cigarette to reach the level of her lips is a punch to the liver. What you don't know is that each sniff as she runs the cigarette under her nose and delights in the smell of the paper is a dull knife scratch to the wrists. By the time she takes out a lighter and ignites the flame, my knees are buckling. Blood is coming out of my nose, my ears. And when she touches the flame to the tip of the cigarette, my limbs catch fire.

Suddenly her eyes move to look straight at me across the school-yard. She takes a step toward me. I want to run. I want to get away, but I can't move. All I can feel is the heat. She takes a drag. The sound is unbearable: like my soul being sucked out. My skin crackles and starts to melt from my bones. She comes closer. I think people are starting to scream. Or maybe I'm screaming. I touch my face but there isn't one any more, only a hard, white skull. She smiles. There are two cigarettes in her mouth. She puffs on both. Then takes one from her lips and holds it out to me. I don't want it, but I can't swat it away. My arms are charcoal. She pushes the cigarette between my teeth. My body burns out from under me. I feel myself getting shorter and shorter. Soon, I am nothing but a skull resting on a hill of ashes

"Don't let's ask for the moon," she says as she picks me up and holds me in her hands, "we have the stars."She gives me a kiss and our teeth clatter against each other.

There is no saliva. There is no wetness.

If I am ever properly buried, please write the following on my tombstone:

Dear Bette Davis,
Fuck You.

Bombaj štampa

2012-01-12T08:34:00.003+04:00

Bombaj štampa was a bosanskohercegovačka (how's that for an adjective?) pop-rock group formed in Sarajevo in 1992. It was fronted by Branko Đurić, a TV personality and film actor whose first role was in Emir Kusturica's Time of the Gypsies, with Nedim Babović on guitar, Neno Jeleč on bass, Nikša Bratoš on keys and Ademir Volić pounding the drums. If Google translate is to be believed, Babović was a former policeman who retired due to schizophrenia to make music.

The band was associated with Yugoslav New Primitivism, released two studio albums and got together again a few years ago for a reunion concert. Their music is catchy, propulsive and zany, with just the right amount of enough rough-edge to it. I like the self-titled debut album more than the follow-up, which is odd because one of the tracks on the former is in English, a language that many East European rock bands tried, none mastered, and most butchered beyond all recognition. Bombaj štampa doesn't do too badly, though. The song itself is a crazy pastiche of American country tunes and possibly Wings-era Paul McCartney.

Bombaj štampa
(1987)

(rapidshare)
(YouTube preview)

Ja mnogo bolje letim sam

(1990)

(megaupload)

(YouTube preview)

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

2012-01-09T06:36:00.002+04:00

What happens in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (adapted from Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy—commas got cut) isn't complicated. Yet it seems that way while being told; which, I assume, is what doing [counter-]intelligence feels like: a mess of information that comes out right simple in the end, if you're good enough.

The decision to confuse and, to an extent, bore, is deliberate. Tinker Tailor flashes back and forward. Normally, films flash-about with superimpositions ("London, 1978"). Here, we're left largely on our own. For example: a character dies; in the next scene, he's at a party. Clearly, if he's dead, the first scene happened after the second one. If because Tinker Tailor is a cheater. Not all characters who die are dead. I'm ambivalent about that. Yes, spies often don't know. No, viewers expected to piece together a puzzle shouldn't be tricked so cheaply.

However, the decision to confuse is not absolute. The film pulls more punches than both the British mini-series and the book. The beginning is a pander. And the jargon (Circus, Karla, etc.), though there, is less than in le Carré. Perhaps this is necessary in a movie. You can't reread a sentence or skip back to pages with bent corners. You also see the characters. Read Tinker, Tailor and you're thrust into the thick of it. Characters have first names, last names and other names, but you don't know them until you find out. You never see a face. Watch Tomas Alfredson's film and you can't forget the faces, they're so distinct. That said, Alfredson and co. still take half measures. They want to confuse you and help you at the same time. And, as any loyal viewer of TV's Breaking Bad knows: never a half measure where a full measure's due.

What ultimately undoes Tinker Tailor is not the complexity of its plot but the shallowness of its characters. I knew what the characters were doing. I didn't always know why: why does Smiley go here, why is the mole—? Even the explicit explanations aren't satisfying. The book does the same to a point, but not the same point. The Cold War, which is in what all the spies are drowning, is too deep for them and us to understand. It isn't too straightforward; it's too spidery. The intricacies trap them, make them distrustful. In Tinker Tailor, the Cold War doesn't really exist. All the characters are overwhelmed without there being anything to overwhelm them.

Which is the crux: when it was published, le Carré's Tinker, Tailor was topical. It was more-or-less about the present. The Cold War, even when missing from its pages, was inherent, in the air and all around. In 2012, Alfredson's Tinker Tailor is a period piece, and though it recreates clothing, wallpapers, cigarettes and auto-mobiles, it leaves the politics and actual history alone. All context evaporates. Czechoslovakia becomes Hungary, Istanbul is Hong Kong. Those are probably costs decisions, but they don't make a whiff of difference. That's the problem.

There's a key conversation late in the film about aesthetics. It explains little except the film itself: beautifully shot, stylish and detailed in images that, upholstery aside, may just as well have taken place on another planet.

Not just us!

2012-01-08T08:03:00.000+04:00

*

Sverige, joy:

Persian dad, Finnish mum, all-Swedish goal: Mika Zibanejad scores the winner in OT (1-0) and Sweden wins its first U20 World Championship since 1981!

(Canada's hockey-historian PM Stephen Harper recently called Iran the greatest threat to world peace. Clearly, he was influenced by Zibanejad's dynamic play on the wing in this tournament. And to think: he—Mika, not Stephen—is a natural centre-man.)

Silver-medalist Russia, which had to play in the quarter-finals, was gassed by this time, but almost squeaked it out on guts, goal-tending and an excellent chance with 30 seconds left in the third period. At the end of the second, they were being out-shot 39-4.

Next tournament is in Ufa, then Stockholm. In 2013, Canada gets both home-town Russia and the Americans in group play.

Till then: Sweden wears the crown. (Or tre?)

2 minutes for high sticking.

2012-01-03T10:50:00.001+04:00

Russia's overtime game-winner against the Czech Republic in the quarter-finals at the 2012 IIHF World U20 Championship:

Good game, tremendous goal-tending from both goalies, and a clearly blown call that led to Zheldakov's OT goal. Kucherov skates into the Czech zone, shoots, and smacks the Czech player in the face with his stick on the follow-through. The Czech goes down, slides out of the play, and the Russians end up scoring.

In the NHL:

A “high stick” is one which is carried above the height of the opponent’s shoulders. Players and goalkeepers must be in control and responsible for their stick. However, a player is permitted accidental contact on an opponent if the act is committed as a normal windup or follow through of a shooting motion. (Rule 60.1)

According to Rule 530 of the IIHF rulebook:

a) A player who carries or holds his stick or any part of it above the height of his shoulders that makes contact with an opponent shall be assessed, at the discretion of the Referee, a:
    Minor penalty (2’)
     or
Major penalty + Automatic Game Misconduct penalty (5’+GM)
   or
    Match penalty (MP)

b) A player who carries or holds his stick or any part of it above the height of the shoulders that makes contact with an opponent and causes an injury with his stick or any part of it to an opponent shall be assessed at the discretion of the Referee a:
    Major penalty + Automatic Game Misconduct penalty (5’+GM)
     or
    Match penalty (MP)

c) However, if the high sticking action that caused the injury was judged accidental, the offending player shall be assessed a:
    Double Minor penalty

In the IIHF, there is no follow-through exception to the rule against high sticking.

The referee should have stopped play as soon as Kucherov got control of the puck behind the net. The Czechs should have had a 2-minute 4-on-3 powerplay. Instead, they lost the game.

Nobody but us.

2011-12-17T12:08:00.001+04:00

Each year, the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) organizes the World U20 Championship—a.k.a. the World Juniors. Every December, the best young hockey players leave their junior-hockey teams, forgo Christmas and New Year's and compete against each other in a grueling 10-team tournament that no one on Earth gives a hoot about.

The Facts

No one, that is, except us.

The opening game of the tournament is usually held on Boxing Day (December 26th), but the tryouts take place in early December and the team is announced mid-month. There is drama, sometimes politics (Canadian junior hockey is divided into three leagues: a Western league, an Ontario league and a Quebec-and-Eastern league,) and often at least a little bit of heart-break.

Hockey reporters tweet about the goings-on and speculate about who will be on the team and who will be left off. Recently, there's even the issue of the NHL: some U20 players are playing important roles for their professional clubs—will they be released? When the second round of cuts is announced, cameras travel with the coaching staff as they knock on hotel doors and make 22 young men, aged 16-19 (but mostly 19,) about as happy as you'll ever see. Then they interview the ones who didn't make it. Most are stoic, some will try again next year. But you can see that all of them hurt.

If you think that's silly, remember this: over the next few weeks, the entire country will get to know these kids. They will go from unknowns to household names. While the rest of the world (with the possible exception of Minnesota) lives in blissful holiday ignorance, Canadians will live-and-die with bated breath with every goal and game and injury. TSN, ESPN's Canadian little brother, runs the tournament as headline news. All games are covered, not just ones in which Team Canada plays a part.

Yes, this momentum is partly drummed up. TSN isn't stupid. It quickly caught on that families with free time will sit down and watch good hockey together. But it's not invented. The hockey is good and the players are playing for pride as much as scouts. If ever there was a true Team Canada, this is it. The players are also teenagers. They're emotional, they're brash, they can be brilliant but they can also lose control and make mistakes. Especially when the entire country is watching: the flip-side of all this attention is expectation.

Every year, we expect gold—nothing less; and perhaps even more when the tournament is held "in our own backyard" (which it is quite often.) The resulting pressure is enormous.

When it is held in our backyard, arenas sell-out. In 2008, the tournament was held in Pardubice and Liberec in the Czech Republic. Attendance averaged 3,328 people per game. Non-playoff games and games not involving the Czechs were poorly attended. In 2009, the tournament was held in Ottawa. Average attendance per game was 14,622. It never fell below 90% arena capacity. In the Czech Republic, 149 people showed up to watch a relegation-round game between Kazakhstan and Denmark. In Ottawa, 9,173 people came out to an equally "meaningless" game between Kazakhstan and Latvia.

Now you be 18 years old and step onto the ice in a must-win game you know the whole country will watch and dissect and go to bed either euphoric or depressed over. Better yet, do it at home.

Many of the players who play on Team Canada at the World Juniors will go on to have solid NHL careers. A handful will become hockey's best players. They might represent Canada again, perhaps at the Olympics. There is pleasure in watching such talent develop. Yet for many Team Canadians, this is the emotional pinnacle of their hockey careers. They are the ones you cheer for the hardest.

The tournament itself is organized like this: 10 teams are divided into 2 groups (A and B) and each team plays once against each team in its group. The winners of both groups advance to the semi-finals. The 2nd and 3rd teams from Group A play the 3rd and 2nd teams from Group B in the quarter-finals, the winners of which advance to the semi-finals. The winners of the semi-finals advance to the finals

This year, Canada opens against Finland, faces the Czech Republic three days later, then plays Denmark on January 29th and faces the U.S. in the final group game on New Year's Eve. If all goes according to plan, that game will decide who finishes first in Group B and gets a bye into the semi-finals. In pubs, bars and in homes, Canadians will drink and watch and wait. If Canada wins, they will wake up in 2012 with a headache and a huge, toothy smile. If we lose, we will drink and wake in anger, and we will shake our fists, and our players will give solemn interviews about how they need to play better, and they will grind their teeth and chew the blue-lines off the ice to get another shot at the Americans.

Group A is comprised of Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, Slovakia and Latvia. Sweden and Russia are two other teams with which we have histories, but more on that in a second—

The Memories

Now something more personal: scattered but permanent memories of some of my most joyous and painful moments of the World Juniors.

"Chubarov wins it in overtime."

One of my first memories is from 1999. It was the first time I actually followed the tournament from start to finish. I was going to high school, to which I had a 30-minute bus-ride each day, and I remember being on the bus the morning of the gold medal game and talking to my friends about Canada's chances. We were up against Russia and it hadn't been a good tournament for Canada. We opened with a 3-2 loss to Slovakia and also lost 5-2 to the U.S. but did manage to get out of our group in second place. In the quarters, we beat Kazakhstan and set up a date with Sweden in the semis. Sweden had topped its group and was undefeated. Everyone was bracing for a loss. And then that Canadian thing happened: the team that started so poorly came together and crushed the Swedes 6-1!

Now I was on the bus and we were arguing over who was going to win the gold. Someone said Russia, someone else said you shouldn't bet against your own country, and I put $2 on the Canadians.

The game was tense. The Russians out-chanced and out-shot us close to 2-to-1. Nerves frayed. The Russians were the better team, by far, but the third period finished 2-2 and off to sudden-death overtime we went, having no one but Roberto Luongo (our goalie) to thank for that. And then (4:40) it happened:

Forget the Vancouver Canucks in the playoffs, forget Canada's gold at the Olympics in Vancouver. Roberto Luongo stood on his head in this game and when he sprawled on the ice after letting in Artem Chubarov's goal, it broke Canadian hearts.

The next morning, I dutifully paid my $2, but not even the guy who won the bet was happy. From 1993 to 1997, Canada had won five straight gold medals. In 1998, we finished a terrible 8th, but it was seen as an anomaly. In 1999, we were "back" but we lost. In life terms, consider the 1999 World Junior final as the day you realize that your dad, great though he is, isn't always right and isn't as perfect as you believed. Innocence: lost.

Toews Takes Three

In 2007, Canada was chasing its third straight gold medal and through the round-robin things were looking up. We topped our group and, thus, took a breather until the semis. There, we soon learned, we would be facing the Americans. The U.S. had started off its tourney with two losses: a shoot-out loss to Germany(!) and a 6-3 loss to us. But then they'd tightened their skates and started playing some very good hockey. In the last game of the group, they beat Sweden in overtime and won quite easily against Finland in the quarter-finals.

When we met up on January 3rd, no one was feeling comfortable. Canada-U.S. World Junior games tend to be scorchers. The players know each other (the Americans play in our leagues and sometimes ours players play in their colleges) and, most importantly, the refs let the players play. The games are fast, physical and there is always high drama. This semi-final was no exception. After three periods and an overtime we were still tied 1-1. So, we came to the shootout:

The shoot-out rules are best-of-three, then one-for-one until someone wins. After a team's first three shots, which have to be taken by three different players, the coach can select anyone. In this game, 14 shots were taken: 7 by each team. Three of Canada's shots were taken by Jonathan Toews. He scored three times, on three different moves, including the winner. On the 14th shot, American Peter Mueller had to score—and Carey Price made the save. Price had also made a "must-save" earlier in the shootout. Notwithstanding, this was Toews' win, Toews' team and Toews' coming out. No one who watched this tournament and this game could have been truly shocked when the Chicago Blackhawks later made a 20-year old Jonathan Toews the third-youngest captain in NHL history.When we beat Russia 4-2 in the final, the shootout win against the U.S. was cemented in Canadian hockey history.

Best Junior Team Ever

The most memorable tournaments are those to which Canada doesn't send a clearly-dominant team. In 2005, that was not the case. This was the only World Junior I've seen where other teams didn't stand a chance. From the first drop of the puck, you could see that Canada simply could not lose. They were men against boys, in a class of their own, whatever cliche you pick: for a few weeks, it was true. In hindsight, that's not surprising. Canada's roster included: Cam Barker, Brent Seabrook, Braydon Coburn, Dion Phaneuf, Shea Weber, Patrice Bergeron, Jeff Carter, Sidney Crosby, Ryan Getzlaf, Andrew Ladd, Clarke MacArthur, Corey Perry and Mike Richards. But that's the beauty of the World Juniors. You don't watch it in hindsight. You don't know that more than half of the players will be quality NHLers. You just watch and your jaw drops and you take it all in, period by period.

Canada sometimes expects the World Juniors to be a coronation. Adversity and trouble? Sure. But like in a Hollywood script, with a golden Hollywood ending. In recent years, the level of play is more balanced than ever, so coronations don't happen. It makes for better tournaments and more gut-wrenching emotions. The 2005 team was the exception. There weren't any white-knuckle moments. It was easy. We just watched the Canadians play, enjoyed every second, and knew we would never see a team this dominant again. Therefore, if 2005 had its defining moment, it wasn't a game or even a goal. It was this hit by Dion Phaneuf:

Canada - U.S.A Begins

In 2004, Canada and the U.S. were in different groups and destined for each other from the start. Both teams were good, both played well in the round-robin and both finished top of their respective groups. We ran riot over the Czechs in the semi-finals, 7-1, and the Americans squeezed by Finland 2-1. The final was an amazing game. Rarely am I as excited for a hockey game as I was for this one, and it didn't disappoint. The only better Canada-U.S. hockey game (World Junior or otherwise) was the round-robin game in 2008, which we won 7-4 (tying it 3-3 in the first period after going down 3:0!) Anyway, this final seemed to be heading in our direction, too. We started the third period leading 3-1. But the scoreline was definitely unfair to the Americans, who were playing incredible hockey, albeit in fits. In the third period, they gave it to us. First they tied it up 3-all, and then this happened:

It was a fluky goal and it held up. The Americans won 4-3, shattering Canadian hearts all around the country. For me, the pill wasn't as bitter because the Americans played great hockey, better than Canada, and it was their first ever gold medal. But it still stung. It's my belief that every time we play against the Americans, it's to "get back" for this loss. Until 2004, we had always been the best North American hockey team. For a long time, American hockey was second-rate. All of a sudden, here come these young American players (Zach Parise, Patrick O'Sullivan) and not only do they beat us, but they beat us by playing with speed and playing hard and playing to the very end. For Canada, it was normal to believe—we're in a tough spot, but of course we'll win: we're the best. Now behold: an American team that believed just the same as us and had the talent to back it up.

The Lowest Low

If the defeat to the U.S. doesn't sting as much, last year's meltdown against Russia still burns—and how...

Last year's tournament was one in which the Canadians grew as the games rolled along. They started off iffy but by the time they'd made the final against Russia, it was celebrations all around. We'd beaten the U.S. in the semi-final and the Russians, it was believed, were lucky to be in the final at all. And through two periods, that proved to be the case. Canada scored 3, Russia scored none and start the fireworks, boys and girls, because it's another gold for Can—

We were up 3-0 in the third period of the gold medal game against a Russian team that was sputtering, not playing hockey. And by the time the period mercifully finished, the score was 5-3 for Russia. It was as if someone had taken a sledgehammer and smashed the entire country right in the gut, leaving us bent over and gasping for air. Sports journalists often describe events as "unbelievable." For once, it was true. I'm generally a cautious hockey fan. I don't trust scorelines until the final whistle blows. But even I was sure this time. I mean there was no possible way for the Russians to score a goal, let alone make the game close.

What happened?

I think it was a combination of Canada thinking too soon about the medal ceremony, the Russians scoring two quick goals, and Canada not being able to shift back into the gear in which they'd played the game thus far. Against the Americans, you can't let off. Against Finland, you can't let off. Against Sweden and especially against Russia, once you're up a few goals in the third period, you can coast until the game is over. The Russians give up or else abandon any concept of team play and resort to selfish hockey: one-man end-to-end rushes and other forms of ineffective desperation.

But what was bad for Canada was great for Russian confidence. The Russians came out in the third period with nothing to lose and they played loose, crisp hockey. One pair of easy goals later and it's Russia with the mental advantage. There was never getting back into it for Canada. Once it was 3-3, it was lights out. You could see Canadian sticks shaking on the ice.

Shots on goal in the third period were 10-9 in Russia's favour (they'd been out-shot 29-17 until then,) so every other Russian shot went in.

I still haven't gotten over this loss.

The Highest High

The year is 2009. The Canadians are coming off an emotional win against the U.S. in one of the best U20 hockey games ever played. Their semi-final opponent is Russia. The Canadians are clear favourites but the Russians have been unpredictable all tournament. Throughout the game, Canada holds the edge. But whenever Canada scores, the Russians come right back. Canada was up 1-0, 2-1 and they're up 3-2 as they start the third period. Within a minute, the Russians tie it up. Five minutes later, Canada takes a one-goal lead for the fourth time: 4-3. Less than a minute later, the Russians tie it up again!

The game gets underway tied 4-4. The Ottawa crowd is roaring. Everyone is sitting on edge. We're waiting for that fifth one-goal lead, the one that'll finally win it for us. Even a neutral would tell you: the Russians don't deserve to be tied. We've been outplaying and out-shooting them all game. Then the unthinkable happens! Dmitri Klopov takes a shot and scores. It's his second goal of the game. The Russians take their first lead of the hockey game with 2:40 left to play in the third period. The crowd is stunned into silence.

Except there's no silencing 20,000 people for long. The fans get behind the team, the team starts playing, pressing. Time is winding down. We pull our goalie for an extra attacker. I've been watching the game while on the exercise bike but at some point—I don't remember when—I stopped pedaling and now my face is cold, with sweat pouring off my eyebrows into my eyes. There are five people in the living room and no one is breathing. These are Polish people; this is Russia.

Canada loses the puck and a Russian player picks it up. He skates toward the red-line (the centre line) and looks up. If he gets to centre and dumps the puck into the corner, the Russians can probably kill the game off. But he doesn't do that. He feels the adrenaline and goes for glory: before passing centre, he shoots for the empty net. The shot misses, the ref blows for icing. Canada gets a face-off in the Russian zone. Canada lives for 30 seconds more:

Maybe if you're not Canadian, it doesn't give you goosebumps. It gives me goosebumps. And just like last year there was no way back for Canada, in 2009 there was no coming back for Russia. They survived the overtime but lost in the shootout. It was inevitable. Canada ended up beating Sweden 5-1 for the gold.

Here's a video of the same game-tying goal against Russia but taken from somewhere in the stands:

Nobody but us.

Hazelnut Street (Audio version)

2011-12-13T10:12:00.000+04:00

Listen to me read my story "Hazelnut Street," which I wrote in 2009 and which was one of the first stories I published. The fireworks sample is courtesy of dobroide.

Designing an eBook Cover

2011-12-12T09:49:00.001+04:00

Because I'm fooling around with publishing some of my short stories as eBooks, I've been knee-deep in Photoshop, making cover images. Many writers seem to have problems with covers. Here's a write-up about my process. Maybe it'll help.

Goal

To design a cover for my old sci-fi story "Vista".

Materials

Image-editing software
Images
Idea

That's pretty much it. The software can be free or commercial. I used Photoshop, but you can use GIMP or something that does vectors, like Illustrator or Inkscape. The images you can make yourself or get online. The idea—well, no ideas are original: think about your story and start from there or look at other covers and try to mimic what you like about their design.

Process

It's nice if you have an idea before you start, but this time I had nada, so I opened up my software and started a new document: 800 x 1200 pixels.

Because blank pages are scary, I immediately put down guidelines. What do I mean? I mean I drew a line through the middle of my document (vertical, 400px from the left) and again (horizontal, 600px from the top). Pretty basic, so keep going. How? Use the rule of thirds or anything else that strikes your fancy. The trick is to think of the lines as elements of your design: text or images, centres, edges and try to "see" at least one thing you like.

I saw my idea rather quickly this time.

(Another approach I sometimes use is to choose a thin brush tool and just draw lines and curves all over the document. You'll be surprised how quickly your eyes will decide to like a given line in a given spot or how two lines look together, or the amount of space between lines, or the shapes they accidentally make, etc.)

The title of my story refers to a screen that's been put up in place of a window. The story was also (at least in my head) about operating systems. Easy enough. I decided to base my design on a window. The first type of window I thought of was the stereotypical rectangle-with-a-cross-inside. I made a white background layer and a second, black, window layer.

The key at this stage is not to get obsessed with your idea. It's just there to get you started. By the end, it may be invisible. But that doesn't matter. Go with what looks better, not with a rigorous application of The Idea. For me, that meant getting rid of the window frame (just leaving the cross). The frame was ugly. How many covers have you seen that have a black border around them? Rephrased: how many covers that you liked have you seen with a black border around them?

Now I had a white page with a black cross on it. I thought: I could write the title on the horizontal part of the cross! Except the title had to be small to fit. It didn't look good. I made the cross thicker and increased the font size: still didn't look good. I deleted the text. One mini-idea in the trash, time to look for another.

Windows are made of glass. You can see through glass. The point of a window (but not Windows) is to see through it. In my story, the vistas project skies. One of the important images is a cottage-type scene. I needed an image of a cottage to stick behind my black cross. I didn't have any of my own handy and I didn't want to create one from scratch, so I went where I always go for royalty-free and public domain images:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Public_domain_image_resources

That page has links to all the images you will ever need.

I picked one of the links and did searches for keywords "meadow", "idyllic", "cottage" [and so on] until I found someone's photo of a vertical landscape: blue sky and clouds above, grass and tree below.

Once I pasted the thing into Photoshop, I realized I could play with the size and position until I got what I wanted. I wasn't satisfied, though. It looked too plain—and where the deuce was I gonna put the title? I had two options: title above the horizontal bar of my black cross or below it. I chose the latter and filled my two bottom window "panes" with black. Ever see a window like that? Me, neither, but that's the point. Don't stress. As my window disappeared, my cover started to appear.

Because of the way the photo was positioned behind the former-window, all the green grass was now covered up. Only the sky remained. Happy accident! I liked it. It reminded me of Windows 95. I actually attended a local convention when that came out. There was a big presentation on a big screen. I still have the pens—

Anyway, the grass was gone and good riddance. But suddenly I didn't like that both upper "panes" were showing blue skies. In my story, the sky is often grey because skies are products and sunny skies cost more than drab skies and the main character is a bit of a cheapskate (and poor.) I started looking for other skies, got bored of that, found a pretty picture of a fire and tried that out: too extreme. I didn't like that it suggested a violent conflict.

I was stuck. I no longer wanted symmetry. I wanted something different in the right "pane" than was in the left "pane." But to make differences, one can add; one doesn't have to replace. I was also getting tired. When I'm tired, I drink coffee. I hate energy drinks like Red Bull—it doesn't give me wings. Wait: wings? Wings!

In my story, the main character, who's pretty down on modern life, gets addicted to designer memory-pills. In fact, he keeps "flying away" to one specific point in his real past, recreating it again and again, trying to perfect it. Plus: wings just look cool. I searched for "wings" and almost right away found a photo of a row of stone statue angels. They had wings. Into Photoshop, and I'm operating on a single wing. When it's selected nicely (Photoshop has a helpful magnetic lasso tool), I select the inverse of my selection, "feather" it by a few pixels and then delete. Statutes are gone; only one wing remains. I toss that onto my cover and the natural place to put it is behind the vertical black bar. Why behind? Because that way I can hide the ugliest part of my wing-job—where it got severed from the angel.

I think about cloning and mirroring that layer to get two wings, but my initial hunch was asymmetry, so I stick with that. And it looks good. It gives the cover a classical (Roman, Greek) vibe, which I like. There are many types of science fiction and my story isn't a space opera or hard sci-fi. It's more whimsical, romantic, introspective. This severed statute wing communicates that to me. More to-the-point: the quality of the photo was high, the lighting is dramatic and the wing looks good against a blue sky (whose colour I slightly tweaked.)

Let me interject: it's important to take your time and do the mundane technical tasks reasonably well. Do cut precisely, do paste carefully. Zoom in and erase the excess pixels. Add a slight blur. And when you end up cutting corners anyway, make a virtue out of it. If you need a picture of a banana and the only one you can find has a bad resolution, run it through some filters, make it look intentionally rough. Don't stick it in as-is and hope no one cares. It'll ruin the entire cover.

Returning to my former-window now-winged cover, I looked at it and started thinking: Title. My title is short. I can, therefore, make it big. I pick any font and a whopping font size and type. I decide on all-caps for reasons of balance. I've got a wing on the left side of my cover. If I add my biggest letter to that side, the cover will keel over. I choose a size by sight and centre the title on the document. I flip through a bunch of colours. I want a light colour but maybe a gentle tint? Nah, I choose to go white. I tell myself it's because I'm sticking with my classical theme. Plus, I've already got a few colours there: black, white and blue. Why add more? I do the same with font. I even head over to dafont, check all the free fonts (you can search by "free"), spend time browsing their Roman and Greek fonts, then their digital fonts—I figure the contrast between classical and digital might fit—but nothing clicks, so I choose one of the fonts that came with Windows. It's neither too elegant nor too futuristic.

As soon as I finish the title I break my own "rule" about colours. The bottom half of the cover is still too empty. I add my name under the title, being careful to match the size of the text exactly to the size of the lower limits of the last two letters of "Vista," because I'm insane that way. Incidentally, I choose to put my name under the right side of the title because—remember—the wing is on the left. My name helps with balance. I try to do that often: if I put one element on the left, I put something else on the right. You'll see if one side is heavier than another. Unless you've done it on purpose, it'll bug you.

I need one last element to fill the space at the bottom of the cover. I also want something organic, alive. Because my story isn't hard sci-fi, it's about people, I figure a humanoid would be nice. The main character of my story is a man, but women are more beautiful than men and, I rationalize, there are female characters in my story, so I dig around in my own stash of digital photos and pull one out. I could have done another image search online but I'd done that twice already. I want a personal touch this time.

I load the chosen photo into Photoshop, decide I want to give the impression of someone sleeping, rotate it by ninety degrees and fiddle with the size until it looks good to me. I take an eraser tool and erase away the parts of the photo I don't want. I also tweak the contrast and colour balance and try out several filters, none of which I end up liking. I notice that my text has started to hide behind my model's face. The photo layer is above the text layer. It's a neat effect. It simulates depth. But, ultimately, I want my title to be legible so I swap the order of the layers (though I was close to another happy accident!) Now I see something else I like. I like that the title appears to be resting on the green material.

(See: I didn't want another colour and now I've added a bunch of other colours—be flexible, experiment.)

I adjust the size of the text so that it fits entirely onto the material and, as one final touch, tinker with the font used to write my name. I decide that I don't want the same font as I used for the title.

I step back.

I like it.

I have fun with various glows, shadows and bevels that Photoshop allows you to have fun with, but nothing looks better than pure, simple white letters. I take care to zoom in and out, too. Some of the effects looked good close-up but much worse when the image is smaller. A cover should look good from "far away" (as a thumbnail) and "nearby".

And that's that. What began as a window mutated and turned into a sleeping woman and a black pillar with one stone wing. More importantly: what began as nothing now looks half-decent.

Start with lines and curves, or even doodles of shapes, until you catch something that looks good. That's your foundation. Half of a good cover is making sure the elements work together, regardless of what those elements become. After that: keep it simple. Don't load up on pictures. Keep text clean. Start with a limited palette. If you're ever in a pickle about what colour to make a new element, use your eye-dropper tool on something already in your document. Also, clutter is generally ugly. Sometimes when you've gone too far, subtract and reposition. Repositioning is important. You'll amaze yourself by how much you can improve (or destroy) a cover just by nudging things into slightly different spots.

Anyway, that's how I made this cover and how I usually do them. I think they're a riot to create and don't think writers should shy away in fear.

You can see some of my other covers @ my stories page.

You can read "Vista" @ Smashwords.

Global Hamlet

2011-12-08T21:36:00.001+04:00

Googe Analytics gives wonderful graphs, charts and other visualizations of a website's traffic. One example: a map of the locations of IP addresses that accessed this blog between November 7 and December 7, 2011.

During that period, I had 770 total visitors from 56 countries and 6 continents (no Antarctica.) Unsurprisingly, the top three were the United States, Canada and Poland; but there were also lone guests from Algeria, Estonia, Hungary, Ireland, Iceland, Jordan, New Zealand, the Philippines, Réunion (I know, I know—not a country,) Slovenia, Tunisia, Taiwan, Vietnam and South Africa.

On average: 13.5 visitors per country.

If we say there are 196 countries in the world, in one month people from more than a quarter of them (28%!) paid me a visit. 40% came through search engines, 40% were referred by websites and 20% visited directly. They combined for 2,270 unique pageviews.

Marshall McLuhan prophesied that communications technology would create a global village. Whatever he meant by that term, he later revised it to global theatre. This blog is not a village. It's too small. 770 residents is a blip on the Internet. What's smaller than a village? A hamlet. How fitting, then, that that word fits so beautifully into both of McLuhan's metaphors.

Journey

2011-12-06T23:47:00.001+04:00

Journey
by Julian Tuwim

He rode the vast, deepeningocean,

For long, long weeks,

A tempest came as a storm then,

All was quiet and meek.

He rode water thick and profound,

Until he called at a joyfulport,

He stepped out onto hot-smellingground:

“What will I do, work of whatsort?”

The dark boys swarmed around him,

Yelling that they’d take hiscases,

All were equally strange-seeming,

Except—who took his baggage—hisface was—

He walked behind him, thisone,

To the white hotel,

Now he was the old porter’s son,

He wanted to cry: “Father,” and“friend!” as well.

Smiling, a blackservant-woman,

While shifting the whites ofher eyes,

Brought—they all did—some waterto him,

He was left alone (with theflies.)

And thought: “To go backhome,

Again I'd have to travel forlong, long weeks,

Across a deep and terribleunknown,

Which was both sad and a miracle to me.

But go back I must, I must,

For I lied that the world ismy homeland!

A homeland is the sad terrace,

On which for years I couldnot stand!

There: it’s now twilight, raining, grey April,

Rain falls on a broom below…”

And, the saddest man inthe world,

He stood up and gazed out thewindow.

To the Simple Man

2011-12-05T01:05:00.001+04:00

Here's one of Tuwim's famous "serious" works. (I think it's more naive and simplistic than his children's poems, but....) It's already been translated into English at least twice—there's a popular online version that omits about ten lines, and there's another version in a new book by Marcel Weygand, who received the Polish government's Order of Merit in 2005. I haven't seen the latter but I also haven't been decorated by any governments, so my translation is probably worse. The poem sometimes goes by the translated title "To the Common Man." Enjoy!

To the Simple Man

by Julian Tuwim

When again to walls withdripping glue,

They start to paste theirsigns,

When to dear people and dear soldiers too,

The ink blast-blackens through,

And every goon, and every foolishswine,

Takes this everlasting lieas true:

That one must go and bycannon rip asunder,

Murder, poison, burn andplunder;

When in the thousandth waythey charm,

“Homeland, harm”—and by thissleight

of-hand delude withcoat-of-arms,

And incite by reason of “historicalright”,

The power, the glory, the frontiers,

Of our fathers,forefathers and their banners,

Of heroes and martyrs;

When the bishop, priest andrabbi,

All emerge to bless yourrifle to the skies,

Because they themselves haveheard God say,

For the homeland all mustfight today;

When the cadaverousscreech of vulgarized

front-page paper headlinesrings,

And herds of wild women canonize

—with flowers—our brave little soldierlings:

“But, my dear unlearn'edfriend,

My brother from this or otherworlds!

Know that they beat their drumswith dread,

These kings with paunchymaiden-girls;

Know that it’s a sham, a common ruse,

When they command you: “Shoulderarms!”,

For somewhere deep their oil’sbegun to ooze,

Yielding a harvest ofdollars;

That banks aren’t quite totheir liking—that

they’ve sniffed out cash inplaces easier to access,

Or else set-sights, thesefattest cats,

On even fatter taxes.

Thresh the streets with bullets until you free the soil,

The blood is yours, theoil theirs!

And from capital tocapital

call out, defending your blood, sweat and toil:

‘Fuck you—it’s us, you noble heirs!’”

Do prostego człowieka

Julian Tuwim

Gdy znów do murów klajstrem świeżym

Przylepiać zaczną obwieszczenia,

Gdy "do ludności", "do żołnierzy"

Na alarm czarny druk uderzy

I byle drab, i byle szczeniak

W odwieczne kłamstwo ich uwierzy,

Że trzeba iść i z armat walić,

Mordować, grabić, truć i palić;

Gdy zaczną na tysięczną modłę

Ojczyznę szarpać deklinacją

I łudzić kolorowym godłem

I judzić "historyczną racją",

O piędzi, chwale i rubieży,

O ojcach, dziadach i sztandarach,

O bohaterach i ofiarach;

Gdy wyjdzie biskup, pastor, rabin

Pobłogosławić twój karabin,

Bo mu sam Pan Bóg szepnął z nieba,

Że za ojczyznę - bić się trzeba;

Kiedy rozścierwi się, rozchami

Wrzask liter pierwszych stron dzienników,

A stado dzikich bab - kwiatami

Obrzucać zacznie "żołnierzyków". -

- O, przyjacielu nieuczony,

Mój bliźni z tej czy innej ziemi!

Wiedz, że na trwogę biją w dzwony

Króle z pannami brzuchatemi;

Wiedz, że to bujda, granda zwykła,

Gdy ci wołają: "Broń na ramię!",

Że im gdzieś nafta z ziemi sikła

I obrodziła dolarami;

Że coś im w bankach nie sztymuje,

Że gdzieś zwęszyli kasy pełne

Lub upatrzyły tłuste szuje

Cło jakieś grubsze na bawełnę.

Rżnij karabinem w bruk ulicy!

Twoja jest krew, a ich jest nafta!

I od stolicy do stolicy

Zawołaj broniąc swej krwawicy:

"Bujać - to my, panowie szlachta!"

Wojciech Has

2011-11-24T05:09:00.001+04:00

Wojciech Has it or doesn't, there is no "sometimes," I was arguing with the Baron about a niggle in our collective appraisal of the director's cinematic mastery. The Baron and I habitually agree, so it came as a shock to hear his contrary opinion expressed so boldly. This was particularly so because the Baron and I are one person. But I shall stop talking: the people in the shoppe are staring again...

1947: Harmonia [YouTube]
1947: Ulica Brzozowa [YouTube]
1949: Parowóz PT 47 [YouTube]
1950: Moje miasto [Direct]
1950: Pierwszy plon [YouTube]
1951: Mechanizacja robót ziemnych
1951: Scentralizowana kontrola przebiegu produkcji
1952: Harcerze na zlocie
1952: Karmik Jankowy [must register]
1952: Zielarze z Kamiennej Doliny [must register]
1955: Nasz zespół [must register]
1957: Pętla [Direct]
1958: Pożegnania [Direct]
1959: Wspólny pokój [Direct]
1960: Rozstanie [Direct]
1961: Złoto [Direct]
1962: Jak być kochaną [Direct]
1964: Rękopis znaleziony w Saragossie [Torrent]
1966: Szyfry [Direct]
1968: Lalka [Direct]
1973: Sanatorium pod Klepsydrą [Direct]
1982: Nieciekawa historia [Direct]
1984: Pismak [Direct]
1985: Osobisty pamiętnik grzesznika... [must register]
1988: Niezwykła podróż Baltazara Kobera [Direct]

The Impetus and Energy of Pery Eks

2011-11-23T09:55:00.001+04:00

Here's my translation of the short story "Rozmach i energia Perego Eksa," by Polish sci-fi author Adam Wiśniewski-Snerg. His birth name was Adam Wiśniewski, but there are many Adam Wiśniewskis and some of them are writers, too; so this particular Adam Wiśniewski made up the word Snerg and added it to his surname to stand out. Snerg is most famous in Poland for his debut novel, Robot, and its follow-up, Według łotra, in which a man wakes up and finds that his eggs are made of plaster and the girl in the telephone booth is actually a plastic-and-rubber mannequin.

The Impetus and Energy of Pery Eks
by Adam Wiśniewski-Snerg

Motto: All doubt will beinterpreted in favour of the accused.

One fine day Pery Eks wasaccused of an absolute impossibility of accomplishing anything. Considering themagnitude of the allegation against him, the mentator immediately got down toit.

First he went to Egypt, wherehe was kind enough to stop in the shade of the pyramid of the Pharoah Cheops. “Itcould just as well be standing on the other side of the Nile,” he told the reporterswho’d gathered and, without expounding on this quite-correct view any further, pushedhis body against the pyramid with all his might.

The spectators held their breath.Pery Eks stepped back just far enough to get a running start, then lowered his headand impressed upon the pyramid once more. Unfortunately, something didn’t quitework, but…

The experts measured how farthe pyramid had moved.

“The difference in thelocation of the pyramid lies within the margin of error,” he heard, “We haveour doubts, though it’s not out of the question, that perhaps by a little bit…maybe not, or maybe a tad….”

“Exactly!”

The crowd cheered without end.In response to a request for an encore, the mentator bent his body to theground in a bow.

By noon, he was already inPisa.

“The plane for Paris doesn’tleave for a quarter of an hour,” he told the city’s mayor, “How is she, stillcrooked…?”

“Well…”

“No matter. In a second we’llstraighten her out a little.”

And Pery Eks, with all theimpetus he’d generated on his journey, walked himself into the tower soforcefully that, on impact, something inside of him yelped. The tower didn’t move an inch,but…

“We don’t have any instrumentssensitive enough to measure the difference,” the troubled experts exclaimed, “But,to the naked eye… by something like a hair… No, decisively no! Though that’snothing certain….”

“Exactly!”

The crowd cheered without end.In response to a request for an encore, the mentator bent his body to theground in a bow.

In Paris, after he’d exitedthe plane, Pery Eks called in a booming voice:

“Hand me a rope!”

They handed him a rope. One ofits ends was tied to the top of the Eiffel tower. The mentator braced himselfand, with an inhuman effort, tugged at the other end. He labored for naught,but…

“When we have nothing betterto do, we’ll measure what needs to be measured to determine that nothing’s beentilted,” the experts promised after a short pause, “In the meantime, we have nogrounds on which to rule out the possibility.”

“Exactly!”

The crowd cheered without end.In response to a request for an encore, the mentator bent his body to theground in a bow.

In Buenos Aires, the mentatorprepared a few warm words, with which he greeted the nation.

“Are you unhappy?”

“Oh, how unhappy we are!”

With a spring in his step, PeryEks entered the office of the president. There, hiding behind a stack of greatdifficulties, he let loose from a revolver straight at the chest of the cruelhead of state. In vain. The bullet hit a fence, but… it was the fence surroundingthe tyrant’s headquarters. The bullet made in it a tiny hole, through which blewin the winds of history. The rest was accomplished by the president’s adversaryand the nation.

“Are you happier now?” askedPery Eks, out of formality more than necessity.

“It’s possible. We don’t have anytools accurate enough to know right away whether that’s the case, but, on theother hand, now we do have some very serious doubts….”

“Exactly!”

The crowd cheered without end.In response to a request for an encore, the mentator bent his body to theground in a bow.

An Interview with Lem

2011-11-23T04:11:00.001+04:00

This is my quick English translation of an interview that Przemysław Szubartowicz conducted with Polish sci-fi writer Stanisław Lem in 2005. Lem died the following year. You can read the original here. The title of the interview is "Matka Boska się nie zjawi" or "The Virgin Mary Won't Appear."

I wanted to ask you about the meaning of life, but life is either so broador so banal that I’ll ask a different question: what’s the future of life?

If you’re asking about the futureof mankind, then, thinking about it, I feel a constant anxiety. We’re heading inevitablytoward a nuclear conflict. I don’t know, however, when the decisive scrap willtake place because, if I did, I’d probably be sitting locked inside the U.S.president’s reinforced safe.

That’s a terrifying prognosis.

Terrifying, but supported byfacts. All it takes is one look at this fragment of the political landscape: atthe time when Teheran declared that it wants to continue its nuclear program, Isrealipolitician Benjamin Netanyahu avowed that he has a plan to bomb Iran’s nuclearfacilities, to which Teheran responded by purchasing short- and mid-range missilesfrom Russia that are to be used in case of an eventual attack. Such tensiondoesn’t speak to long-term peace.

Do you think the United States could lose control over all of this?

But the United States, asCanadian prime minister Paul Martin said, is a giant without a head. PresidentBush possesses exactly this quality—he is stupid. Take as attesting to this thefact that he came out against the theory evolution in favour of so-calledintelligent design, the substance of which is that no one knows what thesubstance is. His entire administration is forcing this idiotic theory, butthey all simply lack reason.

The idea of intelligent design, based, among other things, on thebelief that God dipped his fingers into the evolutionary process, is rejectedby the scientific community but not by the political right. Bush, after all,consults nightly about his decisions with the Creator himself.

Oh, please, but not every politicalright is stupid, reasonable ones come along, too. For example, the Englishconservatives are not idiots.

And the Polish political right, which has just come to power?

What is there to say, sincePoland—if you’ll excuse me—is a backwater of civilization that doesn’t really meana thing in the world? No one cares that we have some kind of Kaczory [a pejorative term for the Kaczyńskibrothers that plays on the word kaczoror duck]. I read recently in “Przegląd” your conversation with the directorAndrzej Żuławski, who called this all by its proper name: the era of Rydzyk isupon us. Nothing to add, nothing to take away. I always thought that twins aremore reasonable. Meanwhile, this attempt to solve Poland’s problems bysharpening the penal code is, unfortunately, child’s play: just give me a bigstick and I’ll set everyone straight. It’s not even worth talking about.

Maybe not worth it, but I see that it nonetheless gets your emotions high.

Certainly, negative ones. Becauseif someone keeps insisting that 3 times 7 is 40, it’s hard to keep still andsit quietly. If I were 30 years younger, then I’d probably want to leave Polandagain. Except there’s nowhere to go.

Yes, it’s unpleasant everywhere.In Switzerland it’s boring, in the United States it’s dumb…

Yet I’m going to insist that we say a few words about Poland. What elsedon’t you like about here?

That I keep being told I havethree legs when, in fact, I have two. For example, what did we get out of our—togetherwith the United States—invasion of Iraq? Nada. Why should we still be keepingour forces there? Or becikowe [lumpsum payment for one or both parents after the mother gives birth]. I subscribeto the view that if a woman decides to have a baby only for the money, sheshould have her parental rights taken away because she has no sense. For athousand złoty, the woman’s husbandcan, at most, go out and drink vodka a few times, but of course for such a sum onecan’t raise a child.

What do you think about lustration [limiting political participation offormer communists in current government and other fields, or at least callingthem to account]? The Kaczyński brothers flew this idea of settling-accounts likea banner.

It’s nonsense, because one mustlook to the future, not into the past. Today they say about [Sławomir] Mrożek,who of course was harried by the SłużbaBezpieczeństwa [Polish communist secret police] and left the country, thathe mocked Poland. What utter nonsense! All of our mucking about in the past isbased on that if some idiot says something today, then not even 40 philosopherswill be enough to unscrew it. We stand today before other challenges. But thesehordes of moherowe berety [mohairberets: a pejorative term for conservative Catholics in Poland] won’t help usone bit if some Arabs decide to set off a bomb in Warsaw’s metro. Some timeago, there was an experiment that was meant to test the vigilance of Polishsociety in case of a terrorist attack: a suspicious package was left in apublic place. What happened? Did someone report it to the police? No, becauseone of our countrymen simply stole the package. That’s the condition of our senseof civic responsibility. That’s what we need to work on, not on the past, whichno longer exists and will never exist.

Do you think that we’re not ready to deal with the dangers of thecontemporary world?

But will a politician win anelection if he decides to sell to the people a sense of danger, even if thedanger is real? Politicians prefer telling fairytales. That’s why the governmentshould occupy itself not with what privileges should be granted to FatherRydzyk [leader of Radio Maryja, aninfluential Catholic-conservative radio station in Poland] or how to convince[Andrzej] Lepper, but with creating a long-term program that would allow, forinstance, the hydrogenation of coal, which would decisively strengthen our economy.

Now you’re just selling us a utopia. After all, we don’t even have agood freeway, let alone this talk about improving a complicated technology thatwould require billions.

Well, it does seem terribly likea utopia; even in Slovakia they have better roads. But, you know, if you don’troll up your sleeves and get to work, then everything will always end on goodintentions. And the world truly is heading toward a precipice. The situation inIraq is a swamp. Syria isn’t too clean, either. Teheran surely won’t be afraidof the U.N. Security Council. Really, I believe that it’s not important whowill be the president of Poland. What’s important is who is the president ofAmerica. Every day, dozens of people die in Iraq and this dimwit keeps sayingthat things are getting better. So what can be done with a person like this?

Maybe impeachment?

There’s no constitutional basis.And even if some ugly Arab gets him, then we have vice-president Cheney, who’sno better than Bush. It’s because of people like these that the world is in aworse and worse state.

I see that you’re keeping to what you said in your conversations withStanisław Bereś, that the world is ruled by either idiots or madmen?

But isn’t that the case? One day,I hear Lepper say: Balcerowicz must go; another: Balcerowicz must stay; and then,later, [Lepper] decides: Balcerowicz should work in a rock quarry. And what?Even though Lepper has no political program, people still vote for him and hetakes third spot in the election. Moreover, through some miracle he’s able to surroundhimself even with university professors. And then Kaczyński allows him tobecome the vice-marshall of the Sejm [Polish parliament]. I mean, if someone stillhas some hairs on his head, then, looking at all this, he should rip them allout. Fortunately, I don’t have any hairs.

Except that things will be even worse here because, really, nothing’sstarted yet.

Yes, it will start for real onDecember 23, when Kaczyński officially becomes the president. But he’s alreadydoing the honours, because when Condoleezza Rice flew in, he was the first torun in and shake her hand.

Because we depend very much on America’s friendship.

What else can we do? There’s no chanceof friendship with Putin, because he doesn’t like us, not only for the OrangeRevolution [in the Ukraine], which, anyway, as we’ve seen, didn’t change anything.I’m not talking only about political conflicts but also about peoples’ qualityof life. My friend, the writer Radek Knapp, who lives in Austria, was invitedto Lvov and when he came back he told us, terrified, about how the water runsthere for only three hours every day, terrible hardship, abject poverty, the streetspaved in 1939. It’s especially painful for me because, after all, I was born inLvov.

Do you see any chance for Poland in the European Union?

Do you think it’s possible to be,like Romcio Giertych [Polish Catholic-conservative politician, with the diminutiveRomcio used in place of the name Roman], simultaneously an opponent ofthe EU and waiting for its money? For what reason should they held us? Becausewe don’t like them? It’s actually quite a complicated situation because we havea strange desire to do harm to ourselves. When I read western newspapers, and Iread them often, I don’t find in them any special interest in Poland. Theytruly do, in general, ignore us; but when they do write it’s usually somethingbad. We’ll regret that one day. As, incidentally, we’ll regret many othersthings.

For example?

Say, the presidency of AleksanderKwaśniewski [former Polish president and former communist]. Those who spit onhim today will someday see that they were wrong. Obviously, he was no angel,but he knew the language, worthily represented us abroad, fulfilled his officeas one should.

Though those who attack Kawśniewski today want to go further: theydream about putting him before the State Tribunal.

It’s a typical little Polishhell: if someone is just a little better than everyone else, they’ll quicklypull him back into the cauldron. Today, Poland “B” elected Kaczyński, but onthe other hand Tusk [centre-right politician, Kaczyński’s opposition] was nosalvation. To me that’s the biggest problem with Polish politics: we don’t havesuitable parties, there’s no one to vote for.

Did you vote this year?

Yes, my wife made me (laughter).The whole of Kraków voted for Tusk, so it’s no surprise they wrote on Kaczyński’sbillboards: “Kacza Grypa” [play on words and bird flu]. But, you know, on theother hand I don’t believe in the stories that these [Kaczyński] twins are somekind of demons bent on ensnaring all of Poland with their tentacles. They’llfade away, thought they might ruin the economy before they do. When I hear theideas proposed by Mrs. Lubińska, I give up. Or Lepper, who wants to just printmore money.

What do you think—why, after 16 years of so-called freedom, are theelections won by, let’s not mince words, ciemnogród[pejorative term for the backward, usually religious and/or sociallyconservative segment of society]?

160 years is not a lot, let alone16. The only thing we can be happy about today is the freedom of the press andthe lack of institutionalized censorship. Everything else is as it was. Forexample, the number of influential intellectuals in Poland could fit into theroom we’re having our discussion in. We also only have one meaningful literaryprize for everyone. If someone writes an interesting book about philately, hecan try for a Nike award. Surely this isn’t normal.

And Polish science?

(laughter) Give me a break. Inthe realm of science we haven’t won a single Nobel prize, so what is there tosay? Today in Poland anyone can become a professor, we’ve professors inabundance, except that this appalling quantity doesn’t want to translate intoquality. My son studied physics at Princeton University, he as an academicdegree. He returned to Poland. And what’s he to do here? Catch atoms with hisbare hands?

And one more Polish sin: anti-semitism. To me it’s astonishing that thePolish government respects a radio station on which anti-semitic chats are adaily occurrence.

Anti-semitism is rooted deep inthe social consciousness. One of Mrożek’s stories is a good illustration: shotsring out, someone asks: “What’s going on?” comes the answer: “Oh, it’s nothing,they’re just shooting a few Jews over there.” Anti-semitism is based on asimple schema: they’re worse than me. And this worse can be anyone: acommunist, a freemason, a gay. When it comes to this, the Polish mentalityremains unmoved. But not only when it comes to this. We don’t want to fightagainst ideas, we’re not interested in reason. We’d rather go to church onSunday and after mass forget everything. That’s the safest way.

You pointed out that we complain all the time? I keep hearing thattoday it’s terribly unpopular: to complain.

But what can one do if the onlygood thing that one can say about Poland is that we have very pretty girls.They may not always be smart, but at least they look good. That’s at leastsomething, don’t you agree?

I agree wholeheartedly.

It’s not surprising, you’re stillyoung, but I don’t hide that for me it’s also comfort, even though, these days,I don’t gain anything by it. But seriously. I’ve lived through so manypolitical systems that I can complain as much as I want, especially because Idon’t consider what I’ve lived through to have been especially appealing: theSoviets, the German occupation, then the Soviets again, then PRL [CommunistPoland], and now who-knows-what. At the beginning of the conversation youwanted to ask me about the meaning of life, but you fled from the question. ButI’ll gladly answer: everything depends on where and when one lives. My wife andI are often amazed that we lived through it all and still managed to makeit. But we made it.

Do you see any hope?

For the world? Feeble outlook. Forexample, how can one successfully fight against terrorism, which is gainingstrength, if even the threat of a death penalty isn’t a useful deterrent. Indeed,they’re just waiting to die. As I said at the beginning: slowly, butirreversibly, we’re heading toward a nuclear conflict. And this isn’t some kindof discovery, it’s obvious.

And for Poland?

Right now we’re in forstagnation. But only for four years. Then the nation, like a horse with acactus stuck under its tail, will start to kick and all traces of the twinswill disappear. They’ll simply vanish into the vastness of their unfulfilled promises.

I was thinking more about long-term hopes.

Oh, well, I think that the VirginMary would probably have to appear to change our fate. Unfortunately, I don’t muchcount on that happening. The Poles are, as Norwid said, a magnificent nationand a worthless society. That hasn’t changed for years, if we look at history.If poets are to throw themselves onto bayonets, then by all means, but to live day-to-dayas a generally honest person and not do anything lofty, that’s a problem. Ifyou want to lead a happy life in Poland, you need to have money and noscruples. Otherwise nothing will come of it.

There’s a film by Woody Allen in which the main character is making aTV movie about a certain well-known and aged intellectual who passionatelyrecounts all that he experienced in his life, but suddenly, right after thefilming wraps, commits suicide, shocking just about everyone. Do you think thatknowledge about this world of ours could dishearten one about life?

Maybe. But my own view is this:in a vast and starry abyss there suddenly appears a tiny, downright microscopic,flash of consciousness—mine or yours or an ant’s or some bird’s—and then, whenlife ends, that consciousness goes out and the vast nothingness continues. Itseems to me that it’s worth it for that consciousness to flash. But in May ofnext year the new Pope will come for a visit and he will surely tell us far moreinteresting observations about this theme.

Limes Inferior, chp. 1

2011-11-21T07:52:00.001+04:00

Polish science fiction is often synonymous with Stanisław Lem. That's not without good reason, but there are inevitably other writers worth reading—many of them well-regarded within Poland. One example is Janusz Zajdel. Unfortunately, Zajdel seems not to have been translated into English.

So: Here are the first 2000-or-so words of his best known novel, Limes inferior, which I translated for fun and practice on a cold and rainy day, a long long time into the future...

From over the water rose a subtle mist—a delicate veil softening theoutlines of the city, whose panorama looked from here like a thin grey ribbonstretching across the border between water and sky shredded at the top into aset of the most fantastic little teeth.

The boat rocked gently on small waves that hit evenly against its board,the rhythm of the rocking and splashing of the water inducing a certainlaziness.

People demand decidedly too much from life, meditated Sneer, stretchedout on the boat’s bow. Almost all of them, by the sweat of their brow andgenerally without success, try to achieve what could otherwise be achieved moresimply and easily. They search for happiness and contentment without definingwhat these ideas mean… For me, for instance, a decidedly good realization ofthese ideas is when one lays on one’s back, being rocked by waves, warmed bythe rays of the sun… When one truly feels the flow of time. The rhythm of thewaves gives the illusion that time is but a single process unfolding all aroundone’s self; time that is clean, generalized, filled with nothing but thesplashing of waves against the board. If you can allow yourself not to countthe hitting of the waves nor the flow of moments, if the passing of time doesnot evoke a panic in your mind—you are truly happy.

He opened his eyes and without moving his head slid his gaze across thelake. It appeared that only a tiny fraction of the millions of residents ofArgoland shared his outlook on the question of happiness. Filling Sneer’s fieldof vision were only a few sails and two motorboats drifting lazily withoutpower. The rest of the seekers of happiness were wallowing about in theconfines of the ragged grey ribbon that separates the dark blue of Lake Tibiganfrom the clear blue of the cloudless sky above the western horizon.

The happy don’t keep time, he remembered the old saying. There must besomething to it if they’ve been saying it for so long. But I’d phrase itdifferently: the happy who don’t need to keep time don’t keep time.

In a situation where no one wants for food, clothes, shelter, or evenentertainment—time becomes a value in itself and ceases to be merely themovable background to life, the landscape of the second stage, escapinginescapably through the window of a speeding train. Time is the primary elementof reality, the inevitable ingredient of existence, endurance… Yet it’s as ifpeople don’t realize this, as if they fail to assess the meaning and value oftime. The age-old maxim persists: “time is money”. “Money” became an emptyword, died in the process of the social transformation, though here itthoughtlessly lingers and the primitive approach to the question of timeremains, doing penance, in the popular consciousness.

Why? Surely, Sneer answered his own thought, because the overwhelming majorityof people are at heart thoughtless and primitive individuals. Is it really sohard to reach the obvious truth that he, Sneer, discovered so long ago, whilestill a student: time is simply life. Life is a finite piece of time thatyou’ve been gifted, like a blank sheet of paper—to colour, scribble over, orcrumple up and toss into the garbage. Time is life. And life is so valuable andunique that it would be sheer foolishness to attempt its conversion into anyother material good…

Because these two notions—time and life—are so inextricably bound up withone another that within one human life they mean the same, it follows that“free time” equals a “free life”.

Free time is time during which we may do as we like. A man’s greatesttreasure is the time that results after he subtracts all time spent on fulfillinghis duties to society and providing for himself the bare material necessitiesof life.

The ideal of freedom would, therefore, be a situation in which a man doeswhat he likes at all times. Sneer was consequently approaching this ideal: hewas exempt from helping others by the power of Argolandian law. His socialclass did not qualify him for any compulsory activities; personal invention andtalent, on the other hand, allowed him to minimize the hustle of acquiring themeans necessary for the enjoyable spending of free time—or, to say it anotherway: a free life.

Sneer didn’t regard as pervious the fact that he prospered beyond andlived significantly more comfortably than other members of his class: since,according to the tenets of the social system into which he was born and inwhich he lived, the idea “maximum comfort and freedom from minimum effort andresponsibility” was the grand objective and predicted future for citizens ofall classes.

Sneer believed that he was outpacing the social evolution merely by asingle step… well, maybe by two, leaving behind the statistically-averagefourman, who was travelling in the same direction after all, albeit moreslowly, only by a bit. And, as we know, history respects those who anticipatetheir own epochs, even if they never quite receive due acclaim at the time.

A strong crosswind rocked the boat. Sneer, lying on his back, instinctivelyspread out his shoulders to avoid suddenly finding himself in the cool lake.His hand encountered the warm body of a girl, about whom he’d nearly forgottenwhile pondering philosophy.

Actually, the girl was an unnecessary relic on the yacht. Sneer wasn’tplanning on taking anyone on today’s trip. The happy passing of time issomething that one sometimes wants to experience alone.

He was fed up with the companionship of others, especially ofgirls—there, on land, in the colourfully-cacophonous jungle of Argoland, incramped bars, on the streets, in hotel rooms…

If he had motioned with his hand, it was only out of habit, seeing thegirl’s greedy eyes following his movements as at noon he untied the boat fromthe buoy in the yacht pool.

He regretted it almost immediately, but it was too late: the girl hadalready pushed her beach bag into the baggage compartment, dove beautifullyfrom the shore into the water and after a few seconds resurfaced near theyacht.

She was an attractive specimen—young, at most twenty, with beautifullytan skin and a rather voluptuous shape—but Sneer knew too many similar specimensto fuss particularly about this one, loitering by herself around the marina.Luckily, she didn’t prove to be a burdensome passenger. In truth without anyurging on Sneer’s part, she pulled off the top part of her bathing suit as soonas the yacht was past the breakwater—treating it, no doubt, as the least amountof revenge she could take on her captain benefactor—but later, sunbathing onthe bow right next to Sneer, she didn’t interrupt his stream of thoughts, or atleast with nothing more than the interesting shape of her full breasts, whichentered his field of vision whenever a more powerful wave happened to rock the yacht.

From the few words they exchanged in the span of the hours they spentrocking lazily on the water, Sneer found out that the girl’s name was Grace andthat she was studying history with a specialization in the history of earlymodern ethics.

Presenting this young student, half his age, with his own quite originaland bold ideas about ethics seemed irresponsible to Sneer. And because conversationabout others topics never gelled, he ended up deep in his own thoughts. Thecontemplation of clean, uncontaminated time engaged him so thoroughly that itwas only when he accidentally brushed the girl’s shoulder that he remembered hewasn’t alone on the boat.

The girl treated the touch as a sort of introduction to furtherintimacies and answered by squeezing his hand, but Sneer didn’t take up thegame.

“We’re going back,” he said coldly, “I’m a little hungry.”

Already in the next instant he regretted the statement, because thegirl—with not a hint of bashfulness—asked where they were going for dinner.

Sneer wasn’t tight-fisted, sometimes he even liked to spend extravagantlyfor a meal with an attractive young girl at a good restaurant—it bolstered hisimage with his friends and belonged to the cost of advertising in his line ofbusiness. He knew, however, how this would end: the girl was plainly used tofair play and was overeager to pay him back for his kindness, which—taking intoaccount her student earnings—meant payback could only take one very specificform. But today of all days Sneer had no desire for female companionship in ahotel room.

“Well…” he growled, spinning a Key in his fingers as if by accident insuch a way to flash the symbol of his class, “We’ll drop in somewhere on theboulevard.”

She wasn’t put off by his four. Quite the opposite.

“I thought you were at least a twoman. Never in my life have I seen afourman who rents a yacht for six hours,” she said with a smile while Sneeronly now realized how wonderfully grey-green her eyes were, “You must be a veryable fourman if you can afford to spend money like that!”

One could see she was prepared for every possible development in herrelationship with this man she’d only accidentally met, because as she waspulling out of her beach bag a pair of worn jeans and a meager leotard top, outtumbled a toothbrush.

“For me,” she said, putting on her clothes on the shore, “Class doesn’tmatter. With my specialization, I could become a teacher… Well, maybe a TVjournalist, but that would probably require a higher class... So if I had mypick… I’d like to get a four and have a lot of time…”

“Uhm…” mocked Sneer, “When you’re a young and pretty girl, all you needis a four and a little bit of nerve.”

“I’ve never had big aspirations,” she said, shrugging her shoulders, andthen, looking Sneer carefully in the face, added: “Something tells me that youdon’t really like me? I bet you prefer intellectual women.”

Sneer detected a hint of disappointment in her voice, and, since he had asoft heart, he put his arms around the girl and they set off together towardthe centre of the city. He’d known from the start that this was how it wouldend. As a fourman, he wouldn’t even be able to explain himself needing to getup early for work… All things considered, the girl was completely alright andmaybe really didn’t have the points to spend on dinner. Sneer hadn’t forgotten thefinancial problems of his own student days, and toward the young—especially ofthe fairer sex—he had always had a sympathetic disposition.

Straub-Huillet

2011-11-21T02:07:00.001+04:00

When I still lived, I was Béla Kun's dog. This was before 1919, during the Great War. I was a big dog, a white Kuvasz, but I had on me a tainted and uncommon coat of grey mottles and perhaps because of this my master took only selective care of me, and so, in time, we went apart, as happens in such a circumstance, both taking leave of one another in the fall: he, being the master, keeping to his home and political affairs; and I, the servant, being thrust out upon the streets.

The change—I won't deny—was swift, the weather wet and cooling. Food was scarce-and-meager and my years of pampering had dulled my instincts for the hunt. Because survival was my only goal, I kept to the side streets and alleys, and prepared, and took advantage of the unsuspecting and the drunk so that, when winter came, I was wild enough and able. The city, though it does not appear so, is full of warm and unattended places and attainable dinners.

In the spring, I became bored. The other dogs would have none of me, and, to be truthful, I, none of them. In hindsight, you may believe the times to have been important and exciting, but, I tell you, what's excitement to a pauper or a wounded soldier, let alone a cast-out dog, without companionship? And of companionship, there was none. It was a divisive time. Man against man, dog against dog, man against dog, sometimes even man against himself. Thus, to pass the time, I took to night-stalking and the interior pursuits of the mind that accompany such activities. I followed humans to base and noble destinations and watched acts of love, charity and murder—all to the colour of blue moonlight and burning streetlamps.

But it was the Babadula that I followed most. I followed it before it even had an image, when it was just a sound, a whisper. The evenings on which I heard that whisper flow, softly, from between the harsher sounds of mankind and machines, I was happiest of all and I forgot my boredom and loneliness. The Babadula became both my source and my destination. Its whisper led me from discovery to discovery, on a leash of crisp northern wind ever-on the edge of breaking, yet holding, and spoke to me like my master never had: in a language of pictures.

I gave up eating and slept during the day, all for the Babadula. I became wholly nocturnal. My fur fell out. My body turned pink and gaunt and I felt best hidden deep within shadows. When they came upon me, children screamed at the sight of my skull-like head with its tight pale skin and sunken eyes. But I did not stop—no, I did not stop...

I did not stop until the Babadula's whisper ceased and I had seen everything.

I awoke in the morning. The sun was bright, the city quiet. I had barely enough strength to stand, but did, and scavenged scraps of food that others—animals all—had picked apart and left as garbage. I ate bones and sawdust. I saw no one. As afternoon came, I felt close to death.

But I did not die; and my looks eventually improved, because the children no longer scream when I come upon them in the night. Often, their eyes look through me without understanding. Perhaps they cannot see me: not yet. I can tell that some can hear my breathing. I sense their reaction and feel my breath tugging at the collars of their shirts. I cannot describe the feeling, but the sound: it sounds just like a whisper: one that flows out, softly, from between the harsher sounds of mankind and machines...

Machorka-Muff (1963) [YouTube]

Nicht versöhnt... (1965) [Torrent]
Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach (1968) [Direct]
Der Bräutigam, die Komödiantin und der Zuhälter (1968) [Direct] [eMule]
Les Yeux ne veulent pas... (1970) [Direct]
Geschichtsunterricht (1972) [eMule]
Einleitung zu Arnold Schoenbergs... (1973) [Dailymotion]
Moses und Aron (1975) [Direct]
Fortini/Cani (1976) [eMule]
Toute révolution est un coup de dés (1977) [YouTube]
Dalla nube alla resistenza (1979) [Direct] [eMule]
En rachâchant (1982) [Torrent]
Trop tot, trop tard (1982) [Direct] [eMule]
Klassenverhältnisse (1984) [Torrent]
Der Tod des Empedokles (1987) [eMule]
Schwarze Sünde (1989)
Paul Cézanne im Gespräch mit Joachim Gasquet (1989) [Direct]
Antigone (1992) [Direct]
Lothringen! (1994) [YouTube]
Von heute auf morgen (1997) [Direct]
Sicilia! (1999) [Direct]
Operai, contadini (2001) [Direct]
Il Ritorno del figlio prodigo - Umiliati (2003) [eMule]
Une visite au Louvre (2004) [Direct]
Quei loro incontri (2006) [Torrent]
Europa 2005 - 27 octobre (2006) (TV) [YouTube]

Leopoldo Torre Nilsson

2011-11-06T00:47:00.000+04:00

It was my first night in the Argentine and I didn't know much about the local cinema. All I knew was that I had a package and that a mafioso named Obregon had paid me to deliver it to an American named Johnny Farrell. The package was heavy but I didn't ask questions. That was part of the deal. That was why they hired me. That was why they counted on me. But what they didn't count on—what none of us counted on—was Gilda...

I suppose that's all in the past now, or most of it. Obregon's dead and Johnny Farrell disappeared off-continent. I'm not in the Argentine anymore, either. I didn't like the weather. Too many insects. As for Gilda: she said she loved me, then took the package and never looked back. How I would have loved to have seen her face. That smug, beautiful face realizing she'd been had. But there's no stopping a woman like Gilda. There'll be other men, other packages. Except there won't be other packages like this one. No, this package was special; and I've got the contents stashed in a safe in Acapulco, just like Obregon taught me. It's a pity he had to die, but how else would I have been sure?

You'll have to end up the same, of course. It can't happen any other way. But my manners! The ropes aren't too tight, are they? I hope your limbs aren't going numb. And the temperature: I hope you're not too warm. Say, I'll have the hotel boy bring up something cold in a little while. In the meantime, let me open the safe for you—let me show you what it is I killed for:

1947 El muro
1950 El crimen de Oribe [eMule]
1953 El hijo del crack
1954 La tigra
1954 Días de odio [Direct]
1955 Para vestir santos [Direct]
1956 Graciela [eMule]
1956 El protegido
1957 Precursores de la pintura argentina (short)
1957 Los árboles de Buenos Aires (short)
1957 La casa del ángel [Direct]
1958 El secuestador [eMule]
1959 La caída [eMule]
1960 The Party Is Over
1960 Un guapo del 1900 [Direct]
1961 La mano en la trampa [eMule]
1961 Los suicidios constantes (TV series)
1961 Piel de verano [eMule]
1962 Setenta veces siete [Direct]
1963 La terraza [eMule]
1965 Once Upon a Tractor [eMule]
1966 El ojo de la cerradura [eMule]
1966 Homenaje a la hora de la siesta [eMule]
1967 La chica del lunes [Direct]
1967 Los traidores de San Ángel
1968 Martín Fierro [Direct] [eMule]
1970 El santo de la espada [Direct]
1971 Güemes - la tierra en armas [Direct] [eMule]
1972 La maffia [Direct] [eMule][2]
1973 Los siete locos [Direct]
1974 Boquitas pintadas [Direct] [eMule][2]
1975 El pipe Cabeza [eMule]
1975 La guerra del cerdo [eMule]
1976 Free for All [eMule]

Ritwik Ghatak

2011-11-05T23:01:00.000+04:00

It's Sunday. The mail doesn't come on Sunday. Yet you pour yourself a cup of coffee and walk to the mailbox. Outside, the air is early, crisp and silent. Everyone is still sleeping. You open the mailbox; you see an envelope; it is old and yellowed. Perhaps the mailman lost it decades ago and decided that, now, once found, it could wait no more—decided that it must be delivered today, on Sunday. That is your first thought. You take a drink of coffee, put the cup on the mailbox and pick up the letter. It feels thin. There's no address written on it. Perhaps the address was written on it decades ago, in pencil. The pencil-written address would have faded. You should be bothered: if there is no address and the mailman only found the envelope today, how did he know to deliver it to you? You should be bothered deeper: how do you know the envelope is for you? But these thoughts don't occur to you, for you are looking at the only thing on the envelope worth noting. You are looking at the stamp.

Later today you will open the envelope and find it empty. This will both intrigue and anger you. You will feel like a joke has been played on you. You will want to climb into the envelope and send yourself away. Except that is impossible. You are a person and the envelope is small and frail. Finally, you will regain your senses. You will sit and you will stare and you will focus on the stamp. You will use a magnifying glass. And you will see the following tiny letters printed all along the edge:

Features

The Citizen (1952) [Torrent]
The Pathetic Fallacy (1958) [Torrent]
The Runaway (1958) [Torrent]
The Cloud-Capped Star (1960) [Torrent]
E-Flat (1961) [Torrent]
The Golden Thread (1965) [Torrent]
A River Called Titash (1973) [Torrent]
Reason, Debate and a Story (1974) [Torrent]

Shorts / Docs

The Life of the Adivasis (1955)
Places of Historic Interest in Bihar (1955)
Scissors (1962)
Ustad Alauddin Khan [YouTube]
Fear (1965)
Rendezvous (1965)
Civil Defence (1965)
Scientists of Tomorrow (1967)
Why/The Question (1970)
My Lenin (1970)
The Chhau Dance of Purulia (1970)
The Turbulent Padma (1971)

Jean-Luc Godard

2011-11-05T09:03:00.000+04:00

"What is cinema?" one turtle asked another. "Godard," answered the second. This is after the human period. This is when turtles rule the Earth. Turtles are not cinematic creatures. They prefer the slower arts. "So, who is Godard?" the first turtle enquired. The second said: "Godard is cinema." The first turtle thought for a moment. For turtles, a moment is much longer than for us. While the first thought, the second turned on a film projector. They are in an abandoned theatre. These turtles are anthropologists. The projector creaked and hummed and a beam of light shot out onto a screen. The darkness abated. The light-images flickered, the light-people moved. Finally, the first turtle asked, "But, if Godard is cinema, what came before cinema—who came before Godard?" On the screen a human struck a match and lit a cigarette. The turtles watched the cigarette burn, the human put it to his lips and inhale. Neither turtle took his eyes from the moving picture. The second turtle said, "There was no before. There will be no after. It is Godard, always Godard. Godard stands on the shoulders of Godard who stands on the shoulders of Godard." The first turtle gasped: "Surely, you can't mean...

The sentence lay for a moment, unfinished, in the musky air—before the second turtle said, "Yes. Godard: all the way down."

Early Works

1954 Opération béton [Direct]
1955 Une femme coquette
1957 Charlotte et Véronique [YouTube]
1958 Une histoire d'eau [YouTube]
1958 Charlotte et son Jules [YouTube]

French New Wave (1959-1967)

Features

1959 À bout de souffle [Torrent]
1961 Une femme est une femme [Torrent]
1962 Vivre sa vie [Torrent]
1963 Le Petit soldat [Torrent]
1963 Les Carabiniers [Direct]
1963 Le Mépris [Torrent]
1964 Bande à part [Torrent]
1964 Une femme mariée [Torrent]
1965 Alphaville [Torrent]
1965 Pierrot le fou [Torrent]
1966 Masculin Féminin [Torrent]
1966 Made in U.S.A. [Direct]
1966 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle [Torrent]
1967 La Chinoise [Torrent]
1967 Week End [Direct]

Shorts

1961 "La Paresse" [Torrent]
1962 "Il Nuovo mondo" [Direct]
1963 "Le Grand escroc" [Direct]
1964 "Reportage sur Orly"
1965 "Montparnasse-Levallois" [YouTube]
1967 "Anticipation, ou: l'amour en l'an 2000" [YouTube]
1967 "Caméra-oeil" [Torrent]
1967 "L'amore (Andate e ritorno dei figli prodighi)" [Torrent]

Political Films (1968-1972)

1968 Le Gai savoir [Direct]
1968 Ciné-tracts [Direct]
1968 Un Film comme les autres [Direct]
1968 Sympathy for the Devil [Torrent]
1969 British Sounds [Direct]
1969 Pravda [Direct]
1969 Le Vent d'est [Torrent]
1969 Luttes en Italie [Direct]
1971 Vladimir et Rosa [Direct]
1971 1 P.M. [Direct]
1972 Tout va bien [Direct]
1972 Letter to Jane [Direct]

Transitional Period (1974-1978)

1974 Ici et ailleurs [Direct]
1975 Numéro deux [Torrent]
1976 Comment ça va? [Direct]
1976 Six fois deux, sur et sous la communication [YouTube]
1978 France/tour/détour/deux/enfants [Direct]

Second Wave (1979-1988)

Features

1979 Sauve qui peut (la vie) [Direct]
1982 Passion [Torrent]
1983 Prénom Carmen [Direct]
1985 Je vous salue, Marie [Direct]
1985 Détective [Direct]
1987 King Lear [Torrent]
1987 Soigne ta droite, une place sur la terre [Direct]

Shorts

1979 Quelques remarques... [Direct]
1982 Lettre à Freddy Buache... [Direct]
1982 Changer d'image
1982 Scénario du film Passion [YouTube]
1983 Petites notes... [Direct]
1986 Grandeur et décadence d'un petit... [YouTube]
1986 Soft and Hard [YouTube]
1986 Meetin' WA [Torrent]
1987 "Armide" [Direct]
1988 Closed Jeans [YouTube]
1988 Closed [YouTube]
1988 On s'est tous défilé [Dailymotion]
1988 La Puissance de la parole [Direct]
1988 "Le Dernier mot/Les Français entendus par..."

1989 - Present

1989 Le Rapport Darty
1990 Métamorphojean [YouTube]
1990 Nouvelle Vague [Torrent]
1991 Allemagne année 90 neuf zéro [Direct]
1993 Les Enfants jouent à la Russie [Vimeo]
1993 Hélas pour moi [Torrent]
1993 Je vous salue Sarajevo [YouTube]
1994 JLG/JLG, autoportrait de décembre [Torrent]
1995 2 x 50 ans de cinéma français [Direct]
1996 For Ever Mozart [Torrent]
1998 Histoire(s) du cinéma [Torrent]
1999 The Old Place [Direct]
2000 De l'origine du XXIe siècle pour moi [Direct]
2001 Eloge de l'amour [Torrent]
2002 Liberté et patrie [Direct]
2004 Notre musique [Torrent]
2006 Vrai faux passeport
2006 Prière pour refuzniks (1)
2006 Prière pour refuzniks (2)
2010 Film Socialisme [Torrent]
2010 Tribute to Eric Rohmer [YouTube]
2012 Adieu au Language (Farewell to Language)

"There is no such thing as intellectual property." (JLG, 2010)

Cannes 2010 [+ 18 months]

2011-11-04T23:13:00.002+04:00

Eighteen months have passed since the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. Question: What's the digital availability of films that screened at the festival?

Answer:

In Competition (100% online)

On Tour [Torrent]
Of Gods and Men [Torrent]
Outside the Law [Torrent]
Biutiful [Torrent]
A Screaming Man [Torrent]
The Housemaid [Torrent]
Certified Copy [Torrent]
Outrage [Torrent]
Poetry [Torrent]
Another Year [Torrent]
Fair Game [Torrent]
Route Irish [Torrent]
My Joy [Torrent]
Our Life [Torrent]
Burnt By the Sun 2 [Torrent]
Tender Son - The Frankenstein Project [Direct]
The Princess of Montpensier [Torrent]
Chongging Blues [Direct]
Uncle Boonmee [Torrent]

Un Certain Regard (68% online)

Adrienn Pal
Aurora [Torrent]
Blue Valentine [Torrent]
Chatroom [Torrent]
The City Below [Torrent]
Socialism [Torrent]
Hahaha [Torrent]
I Wish I Knew [Direct]
Heartbeats [Torrent]
Life, Above Al
The Lips
October
Lights Out
Rebecca H.
R U There [Torrent]
The Strange Case of Angelica [Torrent]
Tuesday, After Christmas [Torrent]
Flight [Torrent]
Carancho [Torrent]

Cannes 2011 [+ 6 months]

2011-11-04T22:02:00.003+04:00

It's been six months since the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. I was curious about how many of the films that screened at the festival—especially in competition—are available online. Results:

In Competition

The Skin I Live In
House of Tolerance
Pate
Footnote
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
The Kid with a Bike [Torrent]
The Artist
Le Havre
Hanezu
Sleeping Beauty [Torrent]
Poliss
The Tree of Life [Torrent]
The Source
Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai
We Have a Pope [Torrent]
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Michael
This Must Be the Place
Melancholia [Torrent]
Drive [Torrent]

Others

Miss Bala [Direct]
Restless [Direct]
Wu Xia [Torrent]
Yellow Sea [Torrent]

Bolivian Cinema x 14

2011-11-04T20:30:00.001+04:00

By the time you realize you're lost, you've forgotten your wife and your kids seem like a half-remembered hallucination. You've only your dog, beside you, and the winding dusty path ahead. It winds into a mountain peak. The afternoon was hot. Now the clouds have covered the sun: thick grey clouds: rain is coming. Without warning, an oxcart overtakes you. Strange, you think, I should have heard its approach. The oxcart has a lone passenger, an old man. The oxcart stops several paces ahead and the old man looks back and smiles. He has a full set of yellow teeth. He motions for you to jump onto the oxcart; you do. Your dog hops on next to you, curls up, and immediately goes to sleep. The oxcart beats its own rhythm. You feel sleepy, too. The old man doesn't say a word. You're sure he doesn't speak English. Before you close your eyes you notice the tins. There are fourteen. Each is labeled. The labels say:

Yawar Mallku (Sanjinés, 1969) [Torrent] [Direct]
El coraje del pueblo (Sanjinés, 1971) [Direct] [eMule]
Chuquiago (Eguino, 1978) [eMule]
La nación clandestina (Sanjinés, 1990) [Direct] [eMule]
Jonás y la ballena rosada (Valdivia, 1995) [Direct]
Para recibir el canto de los pájaros (Sanjinés, 1995) [eMule][2]
El día que murió el silencio (Agazzi, 1999) [eMule]
Dependencia sexual (Bellott, 2003) [Torrent]
Mama no me lo dijo (Galindo, 2003) [eMule]
American Visa (Valdivia, 2005) [Direct]
Di buen día a papá (Vargas, 2005) [eMule]
Sena/Quina, la inmortalidad del cangrejo (Agazzi, 2005) [Direct][2]
¿Quién mató a la llamita blanca? (Bellott, 2007) [Direct]
Los Andes no creen en Dios (Eguino, 2007) [eMule]

João César Monteiro

2011-11-04T09:05:00.002+04:00

This morning, João sat on a wooden bench. (Sometimes the bench sat on a wooden João.) He thought and scratched his beard. Out fell a pomegranate seed. João looked at the seed. It was the shape of a woman. The bench looked at the seed. The seed was the shape of a female bench. "Feed me," said the bench. João growled and wrapped his fist around the pomegranate seed—but, just then, behind them both, the wall receded and the receding ripped open João's fingers and sucked the seed inside, into itself.

In nine months there will be one João, sitting; one bench, sat-upon; and three walls, one large and two small, standing. João will scratch his beard every day but no more pomegranate seeds will fall out. The bench will never be happy.

Sophia de Mello Breyner Andersen (documentary, 1969) [YouTube] [subs]
Quem Espera por Sapatos de Defunto Morre Descalso (short, 1971) [eMule] [subs]
Fragmentos de um Filme-Esmola: A Sagrada Família (1972) [Torrent] [eMule] [subs]
Que Farei com Esta Espada? (1975) [Torrent] [eMule] [subs]
Amor de Mãe (1975)
Os Dois Soldados (short, 1978)
Veredas (1978) [Direct]
O Amor das Três Romãs (short, 1979) [Direct]
O Rico e o Pobre (short, 1979) [Direct]
Silvestre (1982) [Direct]
À Flor do Mar (1986) [Direct]
Recordações da Casa Amarela (1989) [Torrent] [Direct]
Conserva Acababa (1990) [Torrent] [Direct]
O Último Mergulho (1992) [Direct]
Passeio com Johnny Guitar (short, 1995) [Direct]
Lettera amorosa (short, 1995)
O Bestiário ou o Cortejo de Orpheu (short, 1995) [eMule]
A Comédia de Deus (1995) [Torrent]
Le Bassin de John Wayne (1997) [Direct]
As Bodas de Deus (1999) [Torrent] [Direct]
Branca de Neve (2000) [Direct]
Vai~E~Vem (2003) [Torrent]

Fired for being gay?

2011-11-04T04:53:00.001+04:00

Employees at a Baptist university in Georgia—Shorter University—are being asked to sign a "Personal Lifestyle Statement." If an employee refuses to sign, or signs and then fails to live up to what he's signed, he gets fired. There's a brief story about it in The Toronto Star. I wonder: would this type of requirement fly in Ontario, given our human rights legislation?

The Ontario Human Rights Code says:

5. (1) Every person has a right to equal treatment with respect to employment without discrimination because of race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, creed, sex, sexual orientation, age, record of offences, marital status, family status or disability.

It's an employment situation. Sexual orientation is a prohibited ground of discrimination. And, at least according to The Star, the employees "are being told to sign a statement declaring they aren’t gay or be fired." But is that actually what the school requires—not being gay?

Part B of the the Personal Lifestyle Statement lists four principles. The third principle is about sex and homosexuality. You can read the others, but note the language: "I will be loyal," "I will not engage in the use of," "I will not use." Look at the second principle. It's short. It says, "I will not engage in the use, sale, possession, or production of illegal drugs." The prohibition is clear. If you sign the statement and then use, sell, possess or produce illegal drugs, you will have violated the statement.

Now look at the third principle:

I reject as acceptable all sexual activity not in agreement with the Bible, including, but not limited to, premarital sex, adultery, and homosexuality.

There is no prohibition against being homosexual. Indeed, there is no prohibition against engaging in homosexual acts. The principle only requires the employee to "reject as unacceptable" a set of sexual activities. An employee can sign the statement, not reject being homosexual and still be in compliance. Furthermore, an employee can sign the statement, engage in homosexual sexual activities and still be in compliance as long as that employee "rejects as acceptable" what he is doing. The principle requires adopting a certain attitude to a set of activities—not refraining from engaging in them (as it does when it comes to drugs, for example.) It's like my coveting my neighbour's wife while simultaneously believing that what I'm doing is sinful. I do it, but I still believe it's wrong. Put another way, the principle could read: I agree that sexual activity not in agreement with the Bible is sinful.

The story in The Toronto Star goes on to quote Hubert Krygsman, president of the Redeemer Christian University in Ontario:

"While most Christian universities and colleges in both Canada and the USA (many of which are members of the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities) do have some form of conduct policy for employees, board members, and students, these policies are expressed in many different ways. I have never seen a case where an employee has been asked to sign a statement stating specifically that they are not homosexual."

So he's yet to see one, because Shorter University's statement doesn't require an employee to state that he or she isn't gay. Nor can the university fire an employee for being gay.

There was a similar case in Ontario a few years ago, Heintz v. Christian Horizons. Christian Horizons wasn't a school; it was a government-funded Evangelical organization that helped people with developmental disabilities. Heintz was a religious woman who worked at Christian Horizons and who later discovered that she was a lesbian.

One day, Christian Horizons decided to have its employees sign a lifestyle statement akin to the statement required by Shorter University. The statement stipulated that employees had to abide by Christian teachings and listed examples of activities that were incompatible with Christian teachings. The list included "homosexual relationships." Employees had to sign the statement to keep their employment. If they subsequently broke the agreement, they could be fired.

Ontario's Human Rights Tribunal decided that requiring employees to refrain from "homosexual relationships" was a violation of the the Ontario Human Rights Code and could not be saved by a provision in the code that excepted certain special interest groups (see: below) because Christian Horizons served everyone, not just members of its own faith.

18. The rights under Part I to equal treatment with respect to services and facilities, with or without accommodation, are not infringed where membership or participation in a religious, philanthropic, educational, fraternal or social institution or organization that is primarily engaged in serving the interests of persons identified by a prohibited ground of discrimination is restricted to persons who are similarly identified.

The Ontario Divisional Court later ruled that the Tribunal had erred on that particular issue, but still held that the no-homosexual-relationships requirement was a violation of the law. The prohibition was not "tied directly and clearly to the execution and performance of the task or job in question" and, thus, had to go. (Christian Horizons was also ordered to pay several types of damages, which, because Christian Horizons is funded by our money, meant we the taxpayers were the real losers.)

Yet there's a vital difference between the prohibition in Christian Horizons and the prohibition proposed by Shorter University. The former was discriminatory on the basis of sexual orientation; the latter is not. A prohibition against accepting homosexual (and other non Biblically-approved) sexual activities as valid casts a wide net, from advocates of zoophilia to heterosexuals who don't happen to have anything against homosexual sex. A prohibition against homosexual relationships catches just homosexuals.

Hence, Shorter University's statement should fly just fine in Ontario.

But, also in my opinion: why not just cull these requirements wholesale? Christian Horizons can still require its employees to sign statements to the tune that the employees will not smoke pot, have extra-marital sex, watch pornography or lie. And these employees can still be fired for breaking the agreements. None of these remaining prohibitions are discriminatory (though any number of things, from sex addiction to drug addiction could be considered a "disability"), but are they any more or less connected to job performance than being in a homosexual relationship? If I cheat on my wife or lie to my landlord, does that mean I'm suddenly worse at helping someone with developmental disabilities?

Either we take employer's rights seriously—and let employers hire or not hire anyone for any reason they choose, even reasons that are discriminatory—or we side with employees and get rid of arbitrary non-work-related requirements altogether. The middle ground we have now is silly.

Consider the Christian Horizons case. Heintz had engaged in a homosexual relationship. Presumably, that means she had sex with a woman. She was not married to this woman. Christian Horizons could therefore have fired her for having a homosexual relationship or for engaging in pre-marital sex. One option is now off the table. It's discriminatory, sayeth the courts. The other, though equally as unrelated to job performance, is still available.

Humberto Mauro

2011-11-03T10:03:00.000+04:00

Brazil: before Cinema Novo, there was Humberto Mauro. That was in the era of silents and the early days of talking. Today, if you say "cinema" in São Paulo, the old ones who know say Ganga bruta and Peixoto's Limite and "the-best" film. But if you live on surfaces of other continents and may even know Limite you answer, "Mauro?" who is for you for ever your stranger...

Valadião, o Cratera (1925)
Na Primavera da Vida (1926)
Thesouro Perdido (1927) [Torrent] [Direct] [eMule]
Braza Dormida (1929) [eMule]
Symphonia de Cataguases (1929)
Sangue Mineiro (1929) [Torrent] [eMule]
Lábios sem Beijos (1930) [Torrent] [Direct]
Ganga Bruta (1933) [Torrent] [Direct] [eMule]
A Voz do Carnaval (1933)
Favela dos Meus Amores (1935)
Cidade Mulher (1936)
Descobrimento do Brasil (1937) [eMule] [Direct]
Argila (1940) [Torrent]
O Canto da Saudade (1952) [eMule]
Brasilianas (1955) [YouTube]
A Velha a Fiar (1964) [YouTube]
Carro de Bois (1974) [Vimeo]

DIY Miklós Jancsó Retrospective

2011-11-02T22:26:00.002+04:00

This is a list of feature films by Miklós Jancsó, one of Hungary's most-renowned directors. The older films are better known than the newer ones. A lot of them are online. Jancsó also made quite a few documentaries and short films, which aren't listed here.

1958 The Bells Have Gone to Rome [Direct] [eMule]
1962 Cantata [Direct]
1964 My Way Home [Direct]
1965 The Round-Up [Torrent]
1967 The Red and the White [Torrent]
1968 Silence and Cry [Direct]
1969 Decameron '69
1969 The Confrontation [Torrent]
1969 Sirokkó [eMule]
1970 Égi bárány [Direct]
1970 La pacifista [Torrent]
1971 La tecnica e il rito (TV) [DVD?]
1972 Red Psalm [Torrent]
1974 Roma rivuole Cesare (TV)
1975 Electra, My Love [Direct]
1976 Private Vices, Public Virtues [Torrent]
1978 Hungarian Rhapsody
1979 Allegro Barbaro
1981 The Tyrant's Heart [Torrent]
1984 Faustus doktor boldogságos pokoljárása (TV mini-series)
1984 Omega, Omega, Omega (TV movie) [Torrent]
1986 Dawn
1987 Season of Monsters [Torrent]
1989 Jesus Christ's Horoscope [Direct]
1991 God Walks Backwards
1992 Blue Danube Waltz
1999 The Lord's Lantern in Budapest [Direct]
2000 Anyád! A szúnyogok [Direct]
2001 Last Supper at the Arabian Gray Horse [Direct]
2002 Wake Up, Mate, Don't You Sleep [Torrent]
2004 A mohácsi vész [Torrent]
2006 Ede megevé ebédem [Direct]
2010 So Much for Justice!

DIY Chris Marker Retrospective

2011-11-01T06:12:00.000+04:00

One day, I was curious about how many films there are online. I picked a well-regarded but obscure filmmaker, Chris Marker, copied and pasted his filmography from Wikipedia and started searching. I searched streaming sites, torrents, direct downloads and eMule. I found many more films than I expected—more than are available on DVD (obviously) and more than you would see at any "real" Marker retrospective.

Here are my results:

Olympia 52 (1952) [YouTube]
Statues Also Die (1953 with Alain Resnais) [YouTube]
Sundays in Peking (1956) [Direct]
Letters from Siberia (1957) [Direct]
Les Astronautes (1959 with Walerian Borowczyk) [YouTube]
Description d'un combat (1960) [eMule]
¡Cuba Sí! (1961) [YouTube]
La jetée (1962) [YouTube]
Le joli mai (1963, 2006 re-cut) [Direct]
Le Mystère Koumiko (1965) [YouTube]
Si j'avais quatre dromadaires (1966) [YouTube]
Loin du Vietnam (1967) [Torrent]
Rhodiacéta (1967)
La Sixième face du pentagone (1968 with Reichenbach) [eMule]
Cinétracts (1968) [Direct]
À bientôt, j'espère (1968 with Marret) [YouTube]
On vous parle du Brésil: Tortures (1969)
Jour de tournage (1969)
Classe de lutte (1969) [eMule]
On vous parle de Paris: Maspero, les mots ont un sens (1970)
On vous parle du Brésil: Carlos Marighela (1970)
La Bataille des dix millions (1971)
Le Train en marche (1971) [Direct]
On vous parle de Prague: le deuxième procès d'Artur London (1971)
Vive la baleine (1972) [Direct]
L'Ambassade (1973) [Direct]
On vous parle du Chili: ce que disait Allende (1973 with Littin)
Puisqu'on vous dit que c'est possible (1974)
La Solitude du chanteur de fond (1974)
La Spirale (1975)
A Grin Without a Cat (1977) [Torrent]
Quand le siècle a pris formes (1978)
Junkopia (1981) [YouTube]
Sans Soleil (1983) [Torrent]
2084 (1984) [YouTube]
From Chris to Christo (1985)
Matta (1985) [YouTube]
A.K. (1985) [YouTube]
Eclats (1986)
Mémoires pour Simone (1986)
Tokyo Days (1988) [YouTube]
Spectre (1988)
L'héritage de la chouette (1989) [Direct]
Bestiaire (three short video haiku) (1990)
    Bestiaire 1. Chat écoutant la musique [YouTube]
    Bestiaire 2. An owl is An owl is an owl [YouTube]
    Bestiaire 3. Zoo Piece [YouTube]
Getting away with it (1990)
Berlin 1990 (1990)
Détour Ceausescu (1991)
Théorie des ensembles (1991) [YouTube]
Coin fenètre (1992)
Azulmoon (1992)
Le Tombeau d'Alexandre (1992) [Torrent]
Le 20 heurs dans les camps (1993)
SLON Tango (1993) [Dailymotion]
Bullfight in Okinawa (1994)
Eclipse (1994)
Haiku (1994)
    Haiku 1. Petite Ceinture
    Haiku 2. Chaika
    Haiku 3. Owl Gets in Your Eyes
Casque bleu (1995)
Silent Movie (1995) [YouTube]
Level Five (1997) [Torrent]
Un maire au Kosovo (2000)
One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich (2000) [Torrent]
Le facteur sonne toujours cheval (2001)
Avril inquiet (2001)
Le souvenir d'un avenir (with Bellon 2003) [Direct]
Chats Perchés (2004) [Torrent]
Leila Attacks (2006) [YouTube]

+

Immemory (CD) [Direct]

+

Chris Marker on Vertigo (PDF) [Direct]

Kino-Pravda

2011-10-18T23:48:00.003+05:00

Links to Dziga Vertov's Kino-Pravda short films—with streams preferred to direct downloads:

Kino-Pravda 1
Kino-Pravda 2
Kino-Pravda 3
Kino-Pravda 4
Kino-Pravda 5
Kino-Pravda 6
Kino-Pravda 7
Kino-Pravda 8
Kino-Pravda 9
Kino-Pravda 10
Kino-Pravda 11
Kino-Pravda 12
Kino-Pravda 13
Kino-Pravda 14
Kino-Pravda 15
Kino-Pravda 16
Kino-Pravda 17
Kino-Pravda 18
Kino-Pravda 19
Kino-Pravda 20
Kino-Pravda 21
Kino-Pravda 22
Kino-Pravda 23

The Help

2011-10-17T05:07:00.001+05:00

Hatred of Blacks, wife-beating, cancer, snobbery, sugary music, a shameless use of history and all that's missing is parental abuse of a retarded kid (maybe there is—I'm not sure: "You is smart. You is kind. You is special.") to combine into one fabulous piece of stinky blue cheese. Except I had a choice between watching The Help and watching The Tree of Life and I never hesitated: the poor crystal-clear BluRay of Terrence Malick's supposed masterpiece never had a chance against Tate Taylor's tame Civil Rights weepy in all its PPVRip fuzziness (there's a cam version that looks better.) Am I brain dead?

A few weeks ago I watched A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies. Listening to Scorsese talk about his favourite Hollywood movies made me nostalgic. Some I'd seen, others I hadn't, all—at least in the clips—looked masterfully-made. But Scorsese didn't talk much about editing or framing or "film language," and none of those things is what made me nostalgic. I was nostalgic for what Scorsese was talking about: plot, character, theme. That's the bad stuff, the non-heady stuff, the stuff that was foisted on filmmakers by studios that just wanted to sell products. It was what the best Hollywood directors learned to work around to make good films.

It's also the stuff that's easiest to digest. There are characters, they have goals, they struggle to achieve them and then we laugh or cry or both, often on musical cue, often without much overt stylization. It's manipulation. But, increasingly, I want to be manipulated. Give me a choice and I'll sign up for manipulation, not Béla Tarr. Give me time to think and I think that perhaps manipulation isn't so easy. I think longer: maybe filming a long take of cows coming out of a barn for ten minutes isn't as hard as I thought. At least the manipulation, the black maid beaten by her husband that makes me sad, has a point; there's a connection between the film and me; there's a display of skill. What's the point of the cows? Are they a metaphor (of what?) or am I supposed to make of them what I will, given that reality doesn't need a point hence neither does a film? Sometimes the cows just look nice: aesthetic bovine, dummy. That's fine but that's manipulation, too. It's composition pulling at my eye-strings. It's the visual doing what the narrative gets derided for.

I miss narrative cinema, narrative art.

I'm grumpy and slowly aging and yet I don't think that everything was better "back in the day" (it wasn't my day, anyway) but when I pick a movie to watch I feel I can either watch something old or choose one of: art or narrative. When I choose the former, I end more-or-less disappointed and bored out of my skull. The one bonus is that art films are the focus of many an-interesting and eloquent online criticism. Those can be fun to read. They can also be disheartening. Sometimes I can't shake the tingly-feeling that the critic knows more than the filmmaker and is attributing to the filmmaker fascinating ideas that the filmmaker never intended and possibly didn't know about. I picture a festival press conference: a critic talks for ten minutes about the significance of cows coming out a barn in relation to the eurozone crisis or Bertolt Brecht, after which the director nods his head and says, "Yes." Art cinema is intellectual cinema. If you take the intellect out of it, ain't much left but bones.

A good piece of narrative cinema is more honest. Its intentions are clear. There's a close-up of a kid crying and violin music: I'm supposed get teary-eyed. If I do, the filmmakers have accomplished their goal. If I don't, they haven't; but at least I know what the goal was. There's no "you didn't get it," defense. They put their money on the table and bet with it, the rules of the bet were clear. It's like going to a carpenter. You want a chair, you order a chair, he agrees to make you a chair. There's room for personal touches but also clear expectations. You expect an object you can sit on. You might also expect a certain level of comfort or certain elements, such as armrests. If the carpenter ends up delivering a coat-rack, you both know he screwed up. Art films are like going to a carpenter and asking for an object, after which the carpenter delivers a shoddy-looking chair-looking thing and whenever you try to raise your voice and say that it's a shoddy chair, he shushes you and says, "but, my friend, it wasn't meant to be a chair." And when you finally decide to ask, "then what, dear fellow, was it meant to be?" there's a poof of smoke and no more carpenter.

Which brings me back to The Help:

It's a safe movie and a feel-good crowd-pleasing (which sounds like an insult—but shouldn't) period piece about the Civil Rights era with ample doses of Whiteness to make it appealing to White people. It reminds me of Terms of Endearment and I imagine the popularity of Mad Men didn't hurt its being made. It's a touch funny, a touch tragic, a touch romantic and, all-in-all, there is a crassness in the way it is so obviously a consumable. One that I don't mind for two reasons: (1) I wanted to consume it, so the most the studio did was put it on my plate; and (2) it still tasted pretty good. One of the neat aspects of watching films on a laptop (especially poor quality digital copies of films) is that you end up paying more attention to narrative than majesty (there's very little awe-factor in small-screen viewings—when films have a visual impact, it's because of colour or composition.) I compare that with listening to music on low volume. You don't get the bombast of the bass and Wagner sounds less dramatic, but you get a better appreciation of what's underneath. People who work with sound and music on their computers know that not only is loudness bad for your ears, but if something sounds good quiet, it'll sound even better cranked up.

The quietness of The Help is its presentation and storytelling. For example: it's a two-hour movie that has more than fifteen primary and secondary characters. The characters are distinct. They don't melt in your head. They interact with one another and have clear personalities. Many have back-stories. Two hours divided by fifteen is eight minutes. That's how much time the filmmakers had to introduce and develop each character. They had to do this while running the main plot and a handful of minor plots, one of which takes place in the past. The plots tangle and untangle and to an extent this is all the writer's job. Writing, however, is not enough. It's also the casting director's job to pick actors who fit their roles, the actors' job to act their parts, the costume-makers' job to pick clothes that reflect the characters and set them apart, and so on. It's largely thankless work. If done well, it's invisible. If that invisibility means it's not artistry, then so be it (although, by that token, an illusionist isn't an artist, either.) Whatever one calls it, its impressive. Calling it efficiency is a good fit but efficiency connotes business which, by way of knee-jerk, is known as the anti-thesis of art, as if art was inefficient by definition.

The best filmmakers have been described as poets. Poetry is considered the pinnacle of the literary arts. Journalists use prose, so it can't be that special, the thinking might go. But poets are another species altogether. Poets are lofty. Yet poetry is also the most ruthlessly efficient form of writing and—at least until the modernists got to it—the one most reliant on form. Not all poetry is narrative, true; but what's more important: poet as fitter of fewest words into rigid forms to create meaning or poet as one who rambles on and on (and on) about sweet ambiguities? To me, it's the former. Yasujiro Ozu was a poet who made films, as was Alfred Hitchcock. Andrei Tarkovsky was not. He was a great filmmaker, but not one for established forms and certainly not one for efficiency. Point: A non-poet can still be a great filmmaker and a poet-filmmaker can make boring, though efficient, films. Conclusion: In the showdown between Tarr (and his cows) or Malick (and his dinosaurs) and The Help for the crown of poetry, The Help wins.

I wanted a chair, I got a chair. The chair was well made and I enjoyed being manipulated in it. Afterward, I felt like a codger.

The Hampdenshire Wonder

2011-10-07T02:20:00.016+05:00

My library's edition of J. D. Beresford's The Hampdenshire Wonder is part of The Garland Library of Science Fiction ("A collection of 45 works of science fiction selected by Lester del Rey") but this 1911 novel about a big headed freak-child has more to do with cricket and philosophy than science fiction.

The narrator is a journalist writing a book about the son of a supremely talented bowler with gorilla-long arms whose career was cut short by injury. At first, the cricketer appears to be the titular Wonder. Then we discover the truth: the Wonder is the child, purposefully bred to become a better bowler than even the father. The purpose doesn't pan out, however. Victor Stott is no bowler. He's too delicate and aloof. His gaze, so penetrating and intelligent, frightens all upon whom it falls. He is a new species—a human evolved.

But this is not a horror story. Or at least not in a bloody sense. Victor does not rampage. On the contrary, he says little, processes information at an incredible pace and is seemingly perpetually bored. He lacks emotions. For example, his father leaves the family; Victor doesn't bat an eye. Yet the scene does present a neatly scary power play: Stott Sr. has a favourite chair. He sits in it daily, obsessing over cricket. One day, Victor sits in the chair. The father tries to command the son to move; their eyes meet; and the father lowers his head and walks away forever. He has been defeated. The mother treats her son as a god.

What Beresford focusses on the most is the disconnection between Victor and his surroundings. The Wonder or "freak" is solitary. No one understands him but he understands everything. He has no companionship and no interests. The novel ends on a philosophical discussion ("The Uses of Mystery") that suggests humanity is in its infancy and the enjoyment of life comes from the process of learning, step-by-step, at working for and then experiencing revelations. Had we all knowledge, it's not the knowledge itself that would destroy us, but the fact there wouldn't be more knowledge to pursue. We'd waste away like Kane in Xanadu: arrived at our goal; now what?

This places religion in an interesting spot. One of the novel's characters is a priest. The Wonder offends him (presumably by undermining the foundation of his religion,) and the priest then tries to destroy the Wonder. The priest is not a villain—the novel has no villains—but he, the spiritual father, much like the Wonder's biological father, ends up emasculated by the boy. Indeed, the only one untouched by the Wonder's powers is a true idiot, a blabbering mental retard (Beresford is unkind to him.) I won't spoil the mystery.

Although much of The Hampdenshire Wonder is journalistic, Beresford is capable of sudden shocking bursts of beauty. My favourite passage: "A spear of April sunshine had pierced the load of cloud towards the west, and the bank of wood behind them gave shelter from the cold wind that had blown fiercely all the afternoon." It's only one sentence, but so vivid.

There's no wrong in describing The Hampdenshire Wonder as science-fiction and reading it solely because it's a precursor to countless wunderkind stories; but it doesn't do Beresford justice. The novel begins with the narrator in a railway carriage reading Henri Bergson and ends with a brief philosophy of knowledge. The chief emotion is sadness. Victor Stott's life: tragic. And the presentation always sober and understated. More than sc-fi, The Hampdenshire Wonder is good literature.

The Green Child

2011-10-06T05:56:00.001+05:00

Herbert Read was a British poet and anarchist and an influential art critic. In 1953, he was knighted—strange, for an anarchist. He also wrote a strange novel that was published in 1935. The novel is called The Green Child. It's the only novel Read wrote and is an autobiographical political fantasy. In the novel, the green children are two but one dies; The Green Child is three parts:

The first part begins, "The assassination of President Olivero, which took place in autumn of 1861, was for the world at large one of those innumerable incidents of a violent nature which characterise the politics of the South American continent. For twenty-four hours it loomed large in the headlines of the newspapers; but beyond an intimation, the next day, that General Iturbide had formed a provisional government with the full approval of the military party, the event had no further reverberations in the outer world. President Olivero, who had arranged his own assassination, made his way in a leisurely fashion to Europe. On the way he allowed his beard to grow."

Olivero was Oliver, who is British. Oliver returns to his childhood home and is nostalgic. He stands on a bridge, watching a stream, which runs in the opposite direction it did when he was a boy and schoolteacher. He follows this mystery to its source.

The Green Child isn't a popular novel, but the people who've read it often say this first part is the best, the most poetic. That's not true. The first part—in which we learn about the green children who came to the village when Oliver left and the fate of the surviving child, now a green woman married to a stupid husband—is the weakest of the three, but does contain beautifully-written descriptions of delicate translucence. Oliver rescues the green woman.

Part two is the past. Oliver travels Europe, arrives in South America and Olivero inadvertently becomes the hero-liberator of a small country peopled mostly by simple Natives. Olivero takes naturally to politics. He stages a coup d'état and becomes the political theorist behind the new government. Read even includes a short constitution that states, "Liberty and equality are guaranteed by justice, which is the principle of government in a society of free men." Voting rights are interesting: male heads of households and widows may vote; priests may not. Usury is abolished, the government oversees all international trade, the government is three men, elected, and a secretary whom they appoint. When a bandit-type raises problems, Olivero leads a successful expedition against him. Eventually, the Bolivar life becomes boring and Olivero heads to England (to Part I.)

I like this part of the novel because it reminds me of Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory, which was published a few years after. Read's treatment of the Jesuits is fascinating.

The third part of The Green[e] Child is its most fantastic. Oliver goes with the green woman to her underworld, where life is not a cycle but a progression from the mobile and social to the introspective and hard. The green people are crystal people. They study, create and think about crystals, which are perfect. When a green person dies, his body is taken to a room, where crystal entombs it. The crystallized bodies are stacked and the vast caverns of the underworld will one day be full of them; and the living will have no more place. One reviewer called this a fascist world. I don't understand Read's intentions but his world flows counter to fascism, which thrives on and dies without perpetual action and mass movement; the green people strive for impenetrable stillness.

There are also pet beetles and snakes that curl around necks: The Green Child is an imaginative novel. The writing is curt and images striking, yet the amazing feels personal. If you can find The Green Child, you should read it.

Pirate Hunt

2011-09-15T08:53:00.004+05:00

Jeremy Hunt is Britain's Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport. He wants to get tough on "piracy" by setting up a "cross-industry" snitching committee and forcing credit card companies and advertisers to boycott sites that, presumably, the snitching committee decides are "pirate" offenders. Jeremy Hunt believes this must be done because,

Unlawfully distributing copyrighted material is theft—and a direct assault on the freedoms and rights of creators of content to be rewarded fairly for their efforts.
(source)

Let's start with the hyperbolic but least contentious point and agree that, indeed: unlawfully distributing copyrighted material is a direct assault ("Over the top, boys!") on the rights of creators of content to be rewarded fairly for their efforts. Yet so are organizations like the MPAA and RIAA, and they'd be the ones taking part in the snitching committees. Plus, if it's the creator we want to reward, why does copyright extend past the creator's lifetime? Based on the stated objective, copyright should be an unlimited monopoly held by a creator until his death. The dead don't care about money. At most, they care about the tasty tasty brains of the still-living...

Next is the assertion that unlawful distribution of copyrighted material is a direct assault on a creator's freedoms. I assume the freedoms are ones related to the creator's creations, but I don't understand how my operating a website that links to pirated copies of your works limits your freedom. You can still sell or give away your creations. Indeed, you now have an additional way to do it: on my website. Yes, you face increased competition and may need to offer incentives to get people to purchase your creation from you rather than get it from me, but you can still do everything you could do if my website didn't exist.

Finally, we get to the oft-repeated statement that unlawfully distributing copyrighted material is theft; which, even on its own terms, doesn't make much sense. If anything, it's downloading copyrighted material that's theft. Anyway, theft is a property offense. Copyright is not a form of property. In a perfect world, the analysis ends there. Unfortunately, under Britain's Theft Act 1968 "property" includes "intangible property", which includes copyright. As usual, confusion springs from the notion of property-as-relationship and property-as-thing. The Act says of theft,

A person is guilty of theft, if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it;

Copyright can't exist by itself. Copyright attaches to intellectual works, such as stories. Let's say you have a copyrighted story. I digitize the story and upload it to my server, from which others can download it. Someone downloads it. Theft, as the Act says, is an appropriation of property; copyright, according to the Act, is property. Is uploading or downloading a copy of your story an appropriation of your copyright? It's not. Furthemore, even if we somehow construe "property" to mean the story itself, neither my uploading nor someone else's downloading deprives you of your story—not permanently, not even for a second. Hence, it's not theft.

What gets my goat most, though, is when someone makes the argument (actually, I like the arguments and they can be well-made by intelligent people) that even though copyright infringement isn't theft, it's nevertheless fine to call it theft. Here's a good example by a lawyer named Terry Hart who knows more about this subject than I will ever learn. Hart concludes:

The debate over the labels we give to copyright is interesting in an academic sense but largely meaningless in the real world. Creators often use words like “theft” to reflect how they feel about acts of infringement.

And I may refer to my speeding ticket as "being raped by the cops." That doesn't mean I was actually raped by the cops. But, if I was, the cops could always just say they "were having a good time." After all, that's what both sides felt.

This chair is not property.

2011-09-13T03:46:00.008+05:00

There’s a chair in my room. I made this chair. I own this chair—or, more accurately: I hold ownership in this chair as first possessor of a new thing. Ownership is a form of property. The chair itself is not property. The chair is a thing. Property is not a thing. Property is a relationship between me, everyone else and the state in relation to a thing. In a world of only me and the chair, property is meaningless. In the real world, ownership means I can rely on the support of the state to exclude everyone else from the chair. The state stands behind me. The state has courts, jails and more guns than everyone else.

In my room, there's also a piece of paper with a poem written on it. The paper is a thing. The poem is not a thing. A thing must have a physical existence. Hence, while I hold ownership in the paper, I do not hold property in the poem. If you sneak into my room and take the paper, you're interfering with my ownership of the paper. If you sneak into my room and copy the poem onto another piece of paper, you're not interfering with my ownership of the paper; and I've never held property in the poem. The poem is not a thing. Property is a relationship between me, everyone else (you), and the state in relation to a thing.

According to Bruce Welling (Property in Things in the Common Law System), there are four types of property: ownership, right to immediate possession, possession, and a statutory form called a security interest. If you take the piece of paper, you also now hold property in the paper; you hold possession. I continue to hold ownership. You can rely on the support of the state to exclude everyone else from the paper except me. If someone then sneaks into your room and takes the paper from you, that person holds possession and can likewise rely on the state to exclude everyone else except me and except you. I still hold ownership; you hold right of immediate possession. If this second thief makes a hundred photocopies of the paper, we only hold property in the original. And the poem—to beat a dead horse—is not a thing in which property can be held. "Intellectual property" is an intentionally misleading term. A copyright is not a property right.

Unfortunately, Ontario's Rules of Civil Procedure and other legislation sometimes confuse property-as-relationship with the everyday usage property-as-thing ("This chair is my property.") Hence, under the Rules of Civil Procedure, we find that courts can issue orders "directing the sheriff to take any other personal property of the defendant, to the value of the property that the sheriff was prevented from recovering, and give it to the plaintiff," and various references to the "recovery of possession of personal property," which don't quite make sense.

How can a sheriff give or take property? It's no more give-and-take'able than a friendship. Only the things in which someone holds property can be taken. And what is the value of property? The legislators, again, probably meant the value of the thing, but the value of property depends on the type of property. Possession is usually less valuable than ownership. As for recovery of personal property: possession is a form of property; what is the recovery of possession of possession?

On the other hand, courts have routinely accepted that "intellectual property" is personal property when it comes to the Rules of Civil Procedure, so judges confuse the issue, too—not always with bad results.

In Easthaven, Ltd. v. Nutrisystem.com Inc., a judge decided that a domain name cannot be property because a domain name "lacks a physical existence." The decision is correct but the reasoning is wrong. All property lacks a physical existence. Ownership and possession don't physically exist. My chair physically exists but I hold a non-physically existent ownership in it. Hence, a domain name can be property in the sense that it can be a new form of property, like ownership and possession. If that was the case, we would say: I hold a domain name in this chair. What the judge in Easthaven meant, however, is that because a domain name doesn't have a physical existence, it is impossible to hold property in it.

The Ontario Court of Appeal recently ruled on a similar matter. The outcome in Tucows.Com Co. v. Lojas Renner S.A. is that one can hold property in a domain name (that the "bundle of rights" held in a domain name constitutes a form of property and therefore qualifies as "personal property" under the Rules of Civil Procedure.) This is not the same as saying that a domain name is property. The judges were careful about that—at least for most of the judgement. But I disagree with the result. I wrote that property must be held in a thing and that a thing has a physical existence. The judges canvassed opinions and relied on several academics to come to the conclusion that property can be held in something intangible, like a domain name. Granted, their "emerging consensus appears to be that domain names are a form of property," which differs from their own statements about a domain name being the subject of property, but I don't want to be pedantic.

My beef with Tucows is the premise that we can have property without things. I think this unnecessarily confuses property rights with concepts like patent and copyright and moves toward an application of laws developed for tangibles to an inherently different class: intangibles. Ideas are not chairs and it'll be a sad day when "intellectual property" actually does mean [intellectual] property.

Lesson

2011-09-12T13:15:00.000+05:00

Lesson
by Julian Tuwim

Learn, dear child, the Polish tongue:
These are graves—that across the yard are sprung,
Little graves, a vast cemetery…
This is your primer, such are your ABCs.

They’ve arranged themselves in rows,
Black crosses in the dirty snow,
Over Warsaw the mourning dusk is hung,
Learn the beauty of the Polish tongue.

The winter storm dances with the gale,
Phantoms dancing—one male, one female,
As the baby phantomlings shrill…
Will you remember? Yes, I will.

At night, even in your sleep you cry,
Counting the terrible birds in the sky,
In the morning—through the earthen grist,
You search for a tiny severed fist.

Learn the rubble, learn the debris,
Sit with the phantoms at their feast,
And into a world that’s wide, a world of wrong,
Howl the Varsovian children’s song!

—Paris, 1939

Lekcja
Julian Tuwim

Ucz się, dziecko, polskiej mowy:
To przed domem - to są groby,
Małe groby, wielki cmentarz...
Taki jest twój elementarz.

Ustawiły się w szeregu
Czarne krzyże w brudnym śniegu,
Na Warszawie mrok żałoby,
Ucz się pięknej polskiej mowy.

Tańczy wicher ze śnieżycą,
Tańczy upiór z upiorzycą,
Piszczą małe upiorzęta...
Zapamiętasz? Zapamiętam.

W nocy przez sen gniewnie krzyczysz,
Straszne ptaki w niebie liczysz,
Rano - w ziemi rozoranej
Szukasz piąstki oderwanej.

Ucz się gruzów, ruin ucz się,
Z upiorami siądź przy uczcie,
W świat potężny, w świat plugawy
Pieśń warszawskich dzieci zawyj!

—Paryż, 1939

Sexy Beast: The Sex Offender Registry

2011-08-18T12:45:00.005+05:00

Elections in Ontario are coming up in October. One of the sensational [though generally unimportant, like most political] issues raised by Ontario's Conservatives is sexual crime. Ontario has a sexual offender registry. It's an aid to police. The Conservatives want to make it public.

Why? They say: public safety.

The registry has existed since 2001. Then, the Conservatives were in power. They've been out of power since 2003, and the Liberals have been at the helm. The Liberals haven't gotten rid of the registry; indeed, they've vowed to strengthen it and also used it as political capital.* Sexual crimes, which are over-reported in the media*, are grease for government and campaign wheels spun by politicians whose real calling, no matter their stripe, is power. They thrive by telling people very earnestly what they think earnest people want to hear.

Anyway, the registry operates concurrently with Canada's national sex offender registry. According to the government of Ontario, the compliance rate of its registry is one of the highest in the world. As of 2008, there were 8,513 ~~men~~ people on it.* That's about 0.06% of Ontarians. For comparison's sake, neighbouring New York has rate closer to 0.17%.

The Ontario government explains the need for a registry under the heading "What is it and why do we need it?":

The actions of sex offenders have profound and long-lasting consequences for the victims and their communities.

Experience shows that police need enough information so they can act quickly when investigating the abduction of a child for a sexual purpose. Of those victims who were murdered:

44% were dead within one hour after the abduction
74% within three hours
91% within 24 hours.

Time is of the essence for police when monitoring sexual predators and investigating crimes committed by these offenders. The Ontario Sex Offender Registry helps police in these investigations by identifying all registered sex offenders living within a particular geographic area.*

Sounds reasonable, sounds good. Protecting children is a noble idea. And those numbers look scary. Yet, there's a link missing. A registry is a list of people who have offended and been released. The explanation assumes that knowing and being quickly able to locate past offenders will save kids from grisly murder. It might, but only if many offenders are re-offenders and thereby in the registry.

Are they?

In 2002, the U.S. Department of Justice (through its Bureau of Justice Statistics) released a report on the recidivism of prisoners released in 1994.* For example, how many of the 272,111 prisoners released in 15 states in 1994 were arrested again [for anything] within 3 years? The answer: 67.5%, of whom 46.9% were convicted of another crime, of whom 25.4% were in prison for this new crime. Thieves and illegal weapons-criminals had the highest re-arrest rates (70-80%) and murderers, rapists, other sexual criminals and drunk drivers had the lowest (40-50%).

When it came to committing the same crime again: 2.5% of rapists were convicted of another rape and 1.2% of murderers for another murder. Of 9,691 sex offenders, 5.3% were arrested for another sex crime. The rate was 3.3% for 4,300 child molesters.

Therefore, although about half of sex offenders will likely be arrested again within 3 years, significantly less than that will be re-arrested for another sex offense. The rate for those who've committed sexual crimes against children is even less, and the rate for murderers lower-still. Keeping tabs on these people may be wise, but not because they are likely to re-offend in the way they've already offended. And if we chose to keep an eye on them, rapists, molesters and murderers are the least of our concern.

Granted, the Department of Justice report does focus on recidivism within 3 years of release.Perhaps rates change drastically after that; but it's unlikely. More likely is that, even if the registry works perfectly, it will only help once in a long while because most sexual crimes, and sexual crimes against children, are committed by first-time offenders. Under the opposite assumption, the registry might even be counter-productive. Police may spend time and resources on repeat offenders who are unlikely to have committed the crime-at-hand.

If we accept the numbers, a sex offender registry is not a good way of preventing sexual crimes.

We can still keep it, of course, knowing that it might help in every twentieth case. That might be enough justification (though it's not one typically offered by politicians.) But are there others—ones not related to public safety?

There's the big-and-glaring-obvious-one that, once uttered, is often understood as the conclusion rather than start of an argument:

Vengeance.

We may want Ontario's 8,513 registered sex offenders to be treated differently, more suspiciously, by the police. We may want their names made public and their whereabouts known. And not because it will keep our children safe (it may keep them slightly safer) but because we think or feel that the crimes committed by these people are so heinous that they deserve to be marginalised. We want them served their just deserts.

Politicians—Conservatives today, Liberals before—will not come out and say vengeance plainly, but that's because politicians will hardly say anything they believe people don't want to hear. Imagine a room full of 100 people and one politician. The politician wants vengeance and seventy people want vengeance, but there's a way of getting vengeance and calling it public safety, so that's what the politician will say, because that's what the seventy people want to believe about themselves, because vengeance has grown into a bad word.

If a sex offender registry isn't an efficient way of keeping people safe because the vast majority of offenders won't re-offend, making it public won't make it efficient. Making the registry public will, however, further intimidate and harass those on the list. There's no inherent shame in wanting that. Vengeance, despite its reputation, is natural (which doesn't mean moral), has been with humanity for a long time, and is one of the goals of our legal system.

However, vengeance has a cost. In this case, it might be the cost of the registry. Making it public will not increase this cost, so perhaps if the registry is a form of vengeance, we aren't maximizing our societal returns unless we make it public. Others argue that a public registry, because it marginalises, prevents offenders from integrating and keeps them secretive, hence increasing their chances of re-offending. That might also be an acceptable cost. A slight increase in sexual crimes—tangible harm to members of our society, an increase to our own risk of suffering harm—might be a fair bargain.

But talk about a suicidal political argument: "I propose we do something that quenches our taste for vengeance but may mean a few more abused and dead kids."

Until then, public safety it is.

Football (Soccer) Boardgame

2011-08-17T10:57:00.006+05:00

Concept

A football (soccer) boardgame without cards-and-dice that shares the spirit of true football: an inexpensive game with simple rules that anyone can play.

What You Need To Play

A pitch, twenty-two lads and a ball.

The Field

A piece of paper and 247 dots.

A scrap piece of letter-size (8.5" x 11") paper works fine. A black marker makes good dots. I said 247 dots, but that's just one possibility. I find that a 13 x 19 dot-grid is good for standard matches, but, like in football, pitch size can vary and various sizes are more conducive to specific tactics (possession, wing play, etc.)

The Men

Like with pitch size, it's partly up to you, but two teams of eleven men works well for my pitch size.

Painted nut-bolts are able footballers.

The Ball

It can be a marble. It doesn't have to be round.

How You Play

(see UPDATE at the bottom!)

The Men

Each player has 11 men: 10 outfield and 1 goalie. Outfield men can occupy any of the dots on the pitch except for the five dots that make up the goal. A goalie can only occupy goal dots.

Men move along straight lines and diagonals but cannot move through other men. A move is one move, no matter whether the man travels one dot or ten.

Although men can occupy dots along the touch-line and goal-line, if a man doing so also has the ball, he is out of bounds and a throw-in, corner, goal-kick, or goal ensues. In my experience, this doesn't happen often—except as a result of tackles.

Two men cannot occupy the same dot.

The Ball

There is one ball and only one man can have the ball. However, the ball can also occupy a dot on which there is no man. These three possibilities—red team has the ball, blue team has the ball, no team has the ball—dictate the number of moves the player can make.

Movement

The team with the ball (the attacker) must make 2 moves per turn: 1 move by the ball and 1 move by a man. The order doesn't matter, so: the attacker can move a man first, then move the ball (i.e. pass / shoot); or move the ball first, then move a man. The ball itself moves just like a man, along straight lines and diagonals.

The team without the ball (the defender) must make 3 moves per turn: 3 moves by 3 different men.

In rare circumstances, the ball ends up on a dot that's not occupied by any of the men (i.e. it's a loose ball.) If this happens, each player makes 1 move until someone takes possession of the ball, after which the normal attacker / defender rules apply.

The only constraint on movement applies to the attacking player's first move: he must move one of his men into the other player's half.

The Set-Up

Three rules: (1) Each players places his men inside his own half; (2) Each player has one goalie; (3) Each player places at least one man on one of the three dots [in his half] that border the centre dot.

Players can either take turns putting down one player each or designate a home team and an away team. To simulate the advantage of playing at home, the home player places his men after the away player's men are already on the board.

Flip a coin to decide who gets the ball first.

After a goal, the men are taken off the table and placed again. The player who scored places his men first.

Other Mechanics

The game features no fouls. However, it does have tackles, offsides and set-pieces.

Tackling is like checkers. If it's the defender's turn and one of his men is in a clear line (straight or diagonal) with the attacker's ball carrier, then the defending man can "tackle" the ball carrier—jump one dot over him and grab the ball. Players can tackle in all directions. Here's an illustration:

In this situation, the blue team's centre forward has decided to have a solo go against the red team's defenders. Let's call him Balotelli. It's now the red team's turn. Men 10, 4, and 6 can all tackle Balotelli. Man 9, though he also has a clear sight, cannot. Why? Because Player 6 already occupies the dot where Player 9, if he tackled, would land.

(The original idea was to only allow tackling in a forward or side direction, not backwards, to simulate getting behind defenders. I'm still back-and-forth on that.)

Next up is offside. This works pretty much as in real football.

In the above situation, Player 9 is offside and Player 6 is not. If red's ball carrier passes the ball, the blue team gets a free kick.

Which brings us to set-pieces. Throw-ins and free kicks are the same. The only difference is the dot from which they are taken. Corners are a little different. The corner-taker can pass to any of his teammates in the attacking half of the field.

In our offside scenario, if red makes the pass, the blue team takes its free kick from the dot where red's Player 9 was standing offside. Blue can designate any of his men to take the free kick. Meaning: take a man, put him in that spot and give him the ball. Because blue is now the attacker, he has his normal amount of moves moves.

The one important tweak to these rules is the touchline or goal-mouth (not strictly goal line) tackle. Here's an example:

Blue's man has the ball on the wing. It's red's turn. Red's Player 9 can tackle blue's ball carrier. However, doing so will, according to the standard rules, place him in possession of the ball on a touchline dot—making him out of bounds (remember: a man can move along the touchline but if he also has the ball, he's out of bounds.)

There's nothing unworkable in this. But it favours the attacker, who would get the ball back as a throw-in. We want to favour the defender. We want the defender to get the throw-in. So that's exactly what we do. We assume the challenge is bone-crunching but clean and that the ball bounces last off the attacker's man.

Let's say that Player 9 makes the tackle:

He ends up on the touchline and in control of the ball, but let's consider it a mental shortcut. He's not out of bounds. He's in-bounds and ready to take the throw-in. We want possession to change and we want the odds stacked in the defender's favour.

The goal-mouth exception is functionally similar, but let's take a look anyway:

Game over? Hardly.

Red is the attacker. It's the beginning of his move. Red's Player 9 shoots the ball at blue's Player 3, after which red's Player 11 moves forward and tackles the same blue man. Technically, red's Player 11 lands on one of the dots that belongs to blue's goalie. That's not allowed. However, under the circumstances, we want red to score. The result: Player 9 lofts a ball into the box and Player 11 runs, leaps and hits a glorious header into the goal!

Shooting

It's intuitive. The only rule is: you can't shoot from your own half.

Miscellaneous

I've not established the length of the game (measured how: by tick-tock time, moves, "first player to x goals"?) and there are some quirks to be worked out, but the general game seems playable enough.

The biggest struggle is to make defending easier. Right now, because of the wide number of moves available to the ball carrier and his potential pass-targets, it can be difficult to "trap" him and force him to turn possession over. And if you over-commit and get too many men involved in chasing him down, you lose your shape and can get hit on a quick counter. In some ways that's good. It's like playing against Barcelona and prevents mindless rushes forward. But it's not always fun when winning possession is too hard, especially because the attacker can easily get the ball back into his own half even after your defenders do a fine job stopping the attack.

One solution I've toyed with is to "rugby up" the rules and make back passes illegal (except from corners or throw-ins.) That works, to an extent, but it causes more problems than it solves.

Another solution—a much more elegant one, I think—is to expand the shooting limitation to passing: you can only pass to men in the same half as you. It would make the build-up more important and make it impossible to "reset" by passing all the way back to your central defender if a move didn't work out. The attacker could still, of course, bring his central defender into the attack by bringing him into the attacking half. It would also cut down on potential turtle-ing by the defender by making it in his interest to move his players forward to impede the attacker's flow of men into his own half. It seems a plausibility, at any rate.

Lastly, the game needs a name.

UPDATE

Giving both players 3 moves (the attacker moves 2 different men and the ball, the defender moves 3 different men) and restricting passes to men within the same half helps with game balance.