Review: Taken
On Sunday evening I saw Taken with Liam Neeson. I really liked it.
Human Trafficking
Human trafficking provides the back-drop for this movie. It doesn’t make light of it. Trafficking is a serious problem worldwide. http://www.humantrafficking.org/ is an excellent resource for looking at the state of human trafficking worldwide.
To the people who don’t want it to be spoiled, warning: there be spoilers here!
Father’s Protection
I guess was surprised me the most about this movie was its singular focus. This movie wasn’t about the evilness of human trafficking, but more about a father saving his daughter from a faceless evil. There is no one nemesis for him to face. I was even surprised by the number of nationalities that were brought into the film as Brian’s (Liam Neeson) obstacles. We have Albanians, French, American, and Arabs that all involved but they are only there as supporting characters for Brian. Even when he saves a girl and cleans her up from drugs, even she is a means to an end, to gain more information about his daughter. He doesn’t even call an ambulance for the other girls he unintentionally rescued.
Another interesting note was how they went out of there way to prove that Brian was in no way responsible for her abduction. Brian enemies were not to blame and even his ex-wife’s new husband’s business partners were not involved. In the end, it was his absence (and the experience that he gained) that ended up saving her, where his presence would have fallen short.
Review: Spore
After years of hype, a year of propaganda, and friends ceaseless praise, I finally broke down and bought Spore. I’ve heard nothing but good things about the game play and was curious to try it out myself. This review is not about the game play of Spore. This is a review of the installation process. In the past, the installation process was what only took a few minutes and you never had to think about it again, this was not the case for this installation.
My History with EA Games
First, I feel like I should give a bit of my own history with EA Games. I just want to prove that before Spore I bore them no malice. I grew up playing the original The Sims games. I thoroughly enjoyed them. I also appreciate their support in the A.L.I.C.E. project which I think is a good way to help people learn how to program.
Procurement
I ended up getting it at Walmart of all places. Note that I didn’t pirate it.
Installation
I got home and did the normal preparation for a game. Make sure I have enough food for the week and getting things organized to optimize gaming comfort. I then started installing the game. I installed it and I entered my information to register for Spore. After hitting submit, I got an error saying that my license key was in use. This came as a shock since I had just 30 minutes ago opened up the nearly excessive packaging. I called up EA Games and after navigating their phone maze I got a hold of a live person. When I explained my circumstance, he recommended that I go back and return it to Walmart. He told me that Wal-mart does their own packaging so someone must have copied down the key as they were packaging it. So, returning it to Walmart was his solution. I told him, “Wait a minute can’t you guys just generate me a new key?” He put me on hold and when he came back he said I should take a picture of my receipt, the case, the manual, and the disc and send it to EA Games and they would generate a new key. It was interesting logging into EA Games to upload the pictures since it was during the registration process/EA account generation for the game that I was stopped because of a bad license. When I finally uploaded the pictures, I re-called EA Games. After re-navigating through the phone maze, I finally got another live person. He got my case number and he said that more than likely they had a misprint where they just printed the license keys twice. He generated a new license key and sent it to me. It dawned on me that I wasn’t done. I asked him, “So, does this mean I have to reinstall it?” “Yes,” was the answer. So, I uninstalled it and reinstalled it. Honestly, after all that I was too tired to play the “fabulous” Spore and a bit bitter.
Lessons Learned
Other than the obvious lesson of keeping pictures that have the pictures proving that I purchased it for when the DRM bites me during one of my annual rebuilds of my computer, I feel like I learned more. Truth be told, DRM has never hit me like this. I don’t pirate things. That being said, I am against DRM. To me, DRM is the industry’s (I mean this in the very general sense music/game/…) reaction to not being ready for a digital age. Imagine what money could have been made by a music subscription service online in the early/mid-90s, if the industry wasn’t ignoring the opportunity. Again, I am no expert, but I don’t think DRM is the answer. Creativity is. I really like Larry Lessig’s talk about copyright. He raises some good points and I hope they are considered as people look for a better solution to copyright than DRM. I also appreciate the XKCD’s analysis of this problem:
XKCD's Analysis of Piracy
I know EA Games has already had a huge blacklash for the DRM of this game, but I’m sorry, if you are having problems with legitimate people playing ones game due to very restrictive DRM your system is broken. I couldn’t even install it for the first time without DRM stopping me from playing it. If a keyed door had the same problem, where not allowing a person to get through who is allowed is worse than allowing people to go through who aren’t, one would throw away the key.
Okay, I’m done with my rant, now to go vote on Amazon . . .
Review: Eagle Eye
I was able to see a pre-screening of Shia LaBeouf’s “Eagle Eye” some time ago and I wanted to record some thoughts about it. One thing to note is that I’m not planning on holding anything back so SPOILER ALERT!
Initial Reaction
I though it was an interesting movie with and interesting premise. I very much liked the GLaDOS evil computer (it even looked a bit like GLaDOS with all of her orbs) pulling the strings and utilizing its resources to keep the United States safe. It was an entertaining flick with so much going on you can’t help but pay attention. It was an intriguing combination of “Enemy of the State” and “I, Robot”. After thinking through the movie though . . .
What Disappointed me About the Movie
I was disappointed on many levels with this movie. I was disappointed in the character development in this movie. Everyone would agree that Michelle Monaghan’s character “Rachel Holloman,” didn’t really grow in the movie either. She is a two-dimensional mother to her son, which is a fitting foil for our hero “Jerry Shaw” who doesn’t seem to care about anything including family. But I would submit that our hero “Jerry Shaw” didn’t seem to grow in this movie either. As much as I love happy endings I feel that having a happy ending for this movie killed any chance for overall character development. If Jerry Shaw would have died saving his country, he would have grown. Jerry would have gone from not caring enough about anything to stick to anything, to caring enough about his country and for his brother to not let either go without a fight. But in the end he didn’t almost die to save his country, he died to save his new girl friend. The beginning of the movie you already know that he will expend some effort to impress a girl. He falls in love with her and in the end we are shown that he is a part of her and her son’s life.
This aside, I have other concerns about this movie. Issues this movie brings up are very relevant. You have privacy and artificial intelligence (even more current considering the recent Turing Test), which are two big issues of today. This movie doesn’t attempt to make statements about either. There was ample opportunity but this movie fell short from being a relevant movie contributing to the discussion to simply an action flick. Not that I should be surprised since . . .
What Disappoints me About this Genre
I must say that this entire genre disappoints me. I couldn’t help but think half way through the movie, “This computer is obviously not Three Laws Safe.” When will we get over our, as Asimov would put it, “Frankenstein Complex”? Man makes machine, machine kills/controls man is getting old. I admit it some of it hasn’t been too bad like “Bladerunner” (this actually goes both ways), “Matrix,” or the “Terminator” trilogy+. But really, I would like to see some movies that do better.
… robots, are a subject to which the modern science-fiction writer has turned again and again. There is no uninvented invention … that is so clearly pictured in the minds of so many: a sinister form, … vaguely human, … and speaking with no emotion. The key word in the description is “sinister” and therein lies a tragedy, for no science-fiction theme wore out its welcome as quickly as did the robot. Only one robot-plot seemed available to the average author: the mechanical man that proved a menace, the creature that turned against its creator, the robot that became a threat to humanity. And almost all stories of this sort were heavily surcharged, either explicitly or implicity, with the weary moral that “there are some things mankind must never seek to learn.” — Isaac Asimov “Robots I have Known”
This is as true in our time as it was when Asimov wrote it in the 1950s. Asimov’s solution to this was the “Three Laws of Robotics” which in the end didn’t stifle his ability to write on the subject. I’m tired of these “I, Robot” (which I submit is completely miss named) and “Eagle Eye.” I would like some more intelligent movies that don’t have the “Frankenstein Complex” but show that Robots could really have some of the ideals that humanity is missing/or deficient in. Loyalty, concern for life, and humble service are some of the possibilities.
Well, that is what I thought about “Eagle Eye.”
The Last Newspaper
Newspapers have always had a romantic interest with me. In high school, I was a bit of a news junkie and would read it everyday. I told myself that once I was on my own, I would get a newspaper. So I did. I subscribed to the Sunday paper over a year ago. Ever since then I’ve been awoken by the newspaper delivery person throwing it at my door at ~4am – 5am every Sunday morning. I understand how much easier it is to deliver if one doesn’t need to climb the stairs to my 2nd story apartment. The first time it happened I thought that something had crashed into the apartment building. I called in complaint three times to the Seattle Times to no avail. I told them to feel free to leave it at the bottom of the stairs. Last Sunday, early in the morning I was awakened for the last time. I called the newspaper and had it cancelled. Although I will not regret being able to sleep in on Sunday mornings, I feel I will miss the newspaper.
What is so special about the Newspaper?
After much soul-searching, I think I know why I like the newspaper so much. It was part of my family daily ritual. My Dad used to read it every day. My mom was a champion coupon clipper. My extended family members would periodically appear therein. I grew up in a wood stove home and the paper kept it warm. The paper was intrinsically part of home/family life.
I think another part of it was that the Newspaper was part of the community of my youth. I grew up in the small town of Yakima. It may not look like much but the Yakima Herald indeed was a “daily part of your life”. Not only did it provide the news of the day, but it also kept you up to date on who was getting married, who had died, and all the other news of the area. More often than not, people I knew wrote in for the “Letters to the Editor.” Friends worked at the paper. The paper helped support my High School sports teams and took on fellow students to write a weekly articles. The Yakima Herald is part of the community that is Yakima. Subscribing to the newspaper, wasn’t only for the paper, but also helping support something that gave back to the community by chronicling it, providing jobs, and giving back itself.
My New “Paper”
Truth be told, I hadn’t been actually reading the Sunday paper. My main reasons for keeping it was for the nostalgia detailed above. I’ve turned to the Web as my news outlet. For news I have Reuters and Google News. For weddings and other gossip I have Facebook or Twitter. I can read my friend blogs whether they be WordPress or LiveJournal through aggregators like my personal fav Google Reader. Instead of supporting my physical community, I’m helping support my digital community by blogging and by contributing to sites like Yelp. The Web is becoming my portal to the not only digital, but physical community. As long as the Web doesn’t become my only portal to the outside world, I think this shift is fine.
George Orwell’s 1984
I have a confession to make. I had never read 1984. I felt it was something I needed to read, if I wanted to continue participate in culture. Although it was definitely a response to the social conditions in July of 1950, I think it has much to speak about the importance of privacy and ultimately what it means to be human.
One of the first things that Orwell shocks us with is that Winston Smith is being watched. This is not completely foreign with our society and its love of reality tv. You find through the book that not only is everyday relationships with people effected by this constant surveillance, but also family relationships, love interests, and ultimately thought itself is controlled by the ever watching “Big Brother.” This loss of privacy seems to had been given away both consciously and sub-consciously by the prevailing masses.
The Party attempts (and I feel suceeds) in controlling the memories of its people. People cling to memory and experience as what defines their reality. If memory can be made untrust-worthy, then reality is changed. This reminds me of the replicants in Blade Runner clinging to their photographs. Memory is part of what makes us human. Learning and growning, and not stagnating as beings or as a society.
I enjoyed 1984. If you haven’t read it I recommend that you do and apologize for giving so much away.
A blog about Life, the Universe, and anything else that comes to mind.