Author: Jaap van der Velde

I live and breathe software, love games and spent many a vacation touring Europe on my motorcycle. Currently diving, riding, hopefully flying and gaining perspective around Oz.

Repo Men

(2010) – [rate 3.5]

A typical Philip K. Dick type of story, this is not a bad science fiction movie at all. It tells of a near future where expensive cybernetic implants have become commonplace, but are very expensive to produce. People take on insane financial plans to save their lives and when they can no longer pay the bills, the repo man comes around to take back the company property.

You can pretty much see where that’s going and the movie couples it with a buddy movie of the ‘military buddies sticking together’ kind. The plot develops in a decent enough way and though it loses some of its pace halfway through, I found the ending redeeming.

But I did have many issues with it. The characters are stereotypical even though the movie offers ample opportunity to change that. Also, I was incredibly annoyed by the blatant Volkswagen ads that appear every few minutes, with no bearing on the story whatsoever. I would recommend that people who rip and torrent this movie take those scenes out, for the same reasons they take commercials out of TV series. (of course, you shouldn’t be doing that kind of stuff in the first place, but you know what I’m saying…)

If you like dystopic scifi and don’t mind a bit of very graphic body horror, this is probably going to be right up your alley. It sure beats watching pointless torture porn like Saw XIV and it has some interesting themes, but don’t expect a masterpiece.

Fantastic Mr. Fox

(2009) – [rate 4]

A star-studded cast in this latest Wes Anderson movie. And not just a movie, stop-motion animated movie about animals fighting humans in a Watership Down meets Wallace and Gromit if Roald Dahl had written it sort of way. Roald Dahl did write this story and his specific brand of humour, combined with some scenes that are no less Wes Anderson than his non-animation features make this one a worthwhile watch – though it is said that mr. Anderson’s actual involvement with the movie wasn’t as extensive as the billing might lead you to believe.

The voice acting is very good, the jokes are well-paced and sharp and there are many visual gags that got a healthy laugh out of me. This movie is very funny, looks great and will appeal to all ages, or at least the ages that Roald Dahl generally appeals to.

The plot could perhaps have done with a little more interest and depth, even as a movie for all ages. Apart from a subtext about the nature of creatures, both psychological and biologicalm the story is pretty straightforward, but lacking the whimsical twists and turns a good Wallace and Gromit will offer.

Do watch the title roll at the end – you might be amazed at the amount of fame in there, especially considering the brevity of some of the roles.

Summer Wars

Summer Wars (2009) – [rate 4.5]

The festival kicks off (for me at least) with a wonderful animated feature about a boy lucking his way into spend a week of the summer with the most popular girl in school, who happens to be a young daughter of former Japanese nobility. Sound to sappy for your tastes?

Just wait until the fate of the world ends up in the hands of a gamer fighting off a rampant A.I. bent on destroying the world because of a penchant for games and no moral inhibitions. Did I mention the boy is a math genius, skillful enough to break serious encryption overnight? Wargames anyone?

The strange mix of approaches actually works very well and the attention to detail of everyday Japanese life, as well as the family situation lend a great deal of character to a movie that feels very ‘now’. There’s some serious fiction in here, but it’s set in today’s world and addresses our place in it with very lighthearted drama and even though there’s some impressive action sequences, I’d expected this movie to be rated all ages.

Recommended and very humorous, I’d say you can’t go wrong watching this.

The die has been cast!

Temperatures are climbing, the sun is showing more of itself every day, birds are laying their eggs and spring is in the air. Yes, it’s that time of year: time to lock ourselves indoors and watch the dancing shadows on the silver screen. It’s time to get creep-ed out, chilled to the bone, bewildered with enchantment and amused to tears. It’s Imagine, the Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival!

After careful deliberation we’ve managed to plan a festival itinerary that will take us through 29 movies in under 9 days. Here’s what we’ll be seeing:
Continue reading The die has been cast!

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009) – [rate 4.5]

I love movies by writers and directors that aren’t just creating movies, but who are shaping an oeuvre – a coherent body of work that stands out from the crowd. Lynch, Cronenberg, Scorcese, Herzog and many more share this trait. Although it’s less obvious in the case of Terry Gilliam, after seeing his movies I do always feel he belongs in their ranks.

I suppose that Gilliam is not as clear cut (some would say obvious) as Cronenberg – who always explores the separation between reality and the absence thereof and often has the protagonist crossing the line in any way imaginable. In Existenz, the characters take place in an incredibly realistic virtual reality game that has a virtual game inside it and soon you start to doubt whether you know what is ‘actual reality’. In Dead Ringers, twin gyneacologists spiral out of a carefully balanced reality in which each has to see himself and see himself see him. Both living and observing their lives, they don’t like what they see. And you can go on, all his movies are about different perspectives or definitions of reality.

Gilliam is more like Lynch, in that he’s very true to a particular style and his stories are set in the everyday world. But they focus on characters that seem to live in this world, but aren’t a part of it at all. The world is their habitat, but their universe is Gilliam’s/Lynch’s fantasy and in their case, different rules apply. But where Lynch is paradoxical, dark, moody and a bit too weird for most tastes, Gilliam is more charming, enchanted, humorous and sooner silly than weird.

The Imaginarium is a typical Gilliam movie. Nothing is coincidental, but a lot of it doesn’t make sense if you look at it too closely. If you just allow the movie to carry you where it wants to take you, whilst observing the scenery, you can often deduce some of the inspiration for many of the details with hindsight. And if you take that approach to his movies, you won’t be distracted by plot holes or strange incongruities.

In the Imaginarium, you can complain about the wagon changing size and form between scenes, you can be annoyed by the unclear changes in apparent motivation of the characters, you can comment on differences in acting style between scenes, but does it really matter? The movie is not perfect, but it is unique and it casts a spell with a specific Gilliam signature – and I love to be enchanted by this old Python.

A final thing I like about Gilliam – or the way he presents himself and his work – is the serendipity and synchronicity of his enterprises. Whatever goes wrong with his movies and whatever personal problems he runs into in his career, it all appears to serve some purpose or affect his work in some mysterious way. The loss of Heath Ledger is tragic and surely some films in the future would have been better with him performing a key role, but for the Imaginarium it’s almost a blessing in disguise – and I do hope I don’t offend with that remark. It necessitates the performances of Depp, Law and Farrell as stand-ins for Ledger in the scenes beyond the mirror of Doctor Parnassus, but this works out so well, Gilliam couldn’t have imagined it better.

Settings in the hash part of a URL

The use of Javascript to add interactive components to websites has become commonplace. Whether you use jQuery, Mootools, Yahoo UI or any of the other popular JS libraries to enhance the user interface, AJAX really helps to add fluid interaction driven by server side data, without requiring the entire page to reload. (or AJAJ if you like JSON like I do, let’s just say the ‘X’ stands for ‘any structured data format’)

If you’re serious about accessibility, you’ll also keep the WCAG in mind. One of  its requirements is that you should never hide content behind a technology with limited availability. So, no information presented in a Flash application if you don’t offer a non-Flash alternative. Strict supporters of such guidelines take it one step further and demand that all functionality, even the features you add for convenience or plain bling, is essentially available if most of the supporting technology is turned off.

The reasoning goes a little like this: a website is there to perform a function or provide information. If people want it to look nice, they can have CSS. If they want interaction and save time on page reloads, they can have Javascript. If there is something that absolutely requires more than a webbrowser has to offers (at the time), you can consider writing a Flash application. Video used to be such an application, but HTML 5 promises to change that

The Problem

One part of the interface that’s commonly forgotten in all this is the URL. Of course the WCAG give you some guidelines on how URLs should be formatted, but compared to web pages, that’s like only covering HTML and CSS and forgetting about scripting.

The URL is an important part of the user interface. Some people use it to identify what it is they are looking at. Some of those may even modify the URL as a shortcut to reaching a specific place on the website. The URL is also what all browsers use to create bookmarks and what some add-ons and plug-ins use to get information about what the user is looking at.

But for (very good) security reasons, you have little or no control over the URL from JavaScript, at least not without a round-trip to the server, reloadig the entire webpage. An example of a security reason is that a user should not be fooled into thinking they are looking at ‘paypal.com’ when they are actually looking at ‘iscamyou.net’.

Still, having no control over the URL means that the user is limited to bookmarking the page that they originally visited. Any changes you make to the page through JavaScript interaction won’t be reflected in the URL.

The Solution?

You could notify the server of change on the client using AJAX. But this will only work if the user returns using the same browser, or when they are logged in somehow. Since many people use multiple computers or browsers sharing bookmarks using applications like Xmarks, this doesn’t really work. It’s also no good if you want to share a bookmark with a friend, since the saved information won’t be available to them.

There is one part of a URL that you are allowed to modify using JavaScript, the hash. This the very last part of a URL: protocol://user:password@domain/path?query#hash. For example ‘#/two/four’ in http://grismar.net/hashjs/#/two/four. The problem with this approach is that the hash string is not sent to the server when the browser sends a request.

So, although you can save some information in the URL, allowing you to bookmark it and allowing plug-ins and add-ons to detect a change, it still won’t allow the server to determine what to send you.

The Clincher

The final piece her is to use JavaScript to read the hash right after loading the page and making needed updates (including getting any needed information from the server through AJAX) based on the hash.

Of course you should limit any information in the hash to changes you’re willing to limit to JavaScript-enabled users only. So, for anyone taking the WCAG seriously, this means cosmetic changes or changes in usability that simply require the use of JavaScript to work (animation, dynamic changes, etc.)

I ran into a good use case where I needed this when helping design a search interface for the Nationaal Archief (National Archives) of the Netherlands. Here, the need arose to search in many collections of information at once, while presenting the results in separate areas of the user interface. Some users prefer not to see specific collections and closing one of the results will allow more space for the rest of the results.

From a usability perspective, users might expect to ‘bookmark’ the state of the application as well as the query they had just run. But users also wanted to be able to change the configuration without having to reload the page after every change.

You can see a simplified example of that result here and just view the source (XHTML+CSS+JavaScript) and feel free to use it. The example uses jQuery, but of course this is not required to employ the technique. You can download a copy of jQuery from http://jquery.com.

Le Scaphandre et le Papillon

Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (2007) – [rate 5]

(The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)

A celebration of life and a reflection on mortality, this movie is a powerful testament to the story-telling potential of film. Although I’m sure the book would be an equally – if not more – powerful statement of Jean-Dominique Bauby’s will to live, the movie puts you in a place and state of mind that is hard to achieve in any other way. The soundtrack is subtle but powerful. The camera work is disruptive and disorienting but it sweeps you along and helps to put you in the place of the protagonist, played by Mathieu Amalric [IMDb].

Whether he is a masterful actor, or whether the scenario and the voice-over are just sublime, I’m not sure. But he manages to get a strong character across that belies the fact that we only get a few minutes of this man on his feet and about. Most of the movie you see the main character paralyzed, unable to move more than his eyelid and yet you feel for him and with him.

It’s a true work of art and it needs nothing more and nothing needs to be taken away. That’s not to say everyone will like it, but I doubt there is a lot of room for improvement in terms of anything this movie could be. It takes you on an emotional roller coaster and left me unsure about how I would deal with a situation like his. It’s a true story, so calling it unrealistic is unfair. But it’s hard to imagine taking such incredibly bad odds so well. And yet the film manages to get across how this might be possible. Wonderful.

With Basquiat and Berlin already on his list of completed work, I can’t wait to see what Julian Schnabel‘s [IMDb] next movie Miral [Vimeo] will turn out to be, apart from highly current – as it deals with the Israel / Palestine situation.

Das Weisse Band

Das Weisse Band (2009) – [rate 4]

(- Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte; – A German children’s tale)

Interesting movie about the effect of following a specific (very strict) set of rules, particularly those of early 20th century German protestants in a small village. Under the patriarchical rule of a nobleman, a reverend and a schoolteacher and through the compliance of many other men in the village, the youths seem to fill a niche and form a shady movement that causes all sorts of social disturbance and excutes mob justice.

It’s a slow moving story, where detail matters but it’s engaging and time flew by as I watched it. It keeps you on your toes, not in the last place because Michael Haneke has a style of story-telling in which he leaves a lot unsaid. Das Weisse Band is more explicit in its story-telling than his recent Caché for example, but the viewer is still left the task of deciding what actually happened. Even the movie itself is not necessarily a truthful account, as it’s the story of the voice-over telling of events that he didn’t even witness himself in many cases.

Whether the story in anyway explains the rise of national socialism, the start of the first and second world war or any other events that follow is something left up to the viewer too. Personally, I feel it only – very clearly – shows a complex social mechanism play out, as it may have in many villages in early 20th century Germany. Some of it is very recognizable, more so if you’ve ever lived in a small village for a long period (I grew up in one).

This is certainly one of the more engaging movies I’ve seen in 2009, but it’s definitely not for everyone. Also, I feel it could have done without a few threads in the story, so I arrive at a respectable 4/5.

Close the gap already!

E-1001, N900, T101h, iPhone 3G, N95 8Gb
E-1001, N900, T101h, iPhone 3G, N95 8Gb

I’m wondering what is causing phone manufacturers to keep inching towards the gap, but never quite closing it. What gap am I talking about? Well, the netbook/phone-gap of course. Early this year, I was very excited about Asus’ plans for the T101h. At the time, I was using a Nokia N95 8Gb. Now, we’re 8 months on and I’m using an Apple iPhone 3G 16Gb and Nokia has just announced the Nokia N900. At the same time, Asus’ ideas are being used by others like Fuyijama with the E-1001.

What all these devices have in common, is that you can stick a SIM card in them and use them to access the internet. Granted, with the iPhone I’m using I had to jump to more than a few hoops to actually get that to work, but rest assured I broke no laws in the process (unless buying a second-hand iPhone breaks a law somehow). What these devices also share, with the exception of the N95, is a touchscreen.

So, what’s this gap I’m talking about? The voice-capability! You cannot place a phone call with the T101h or the E-1001. Somehow, it seems that sizing up these devices causes them to lose phone capabilities somewhere along the line. Even though you can stick a SIM card in them, these devices are unable to use them for their original intended purpose: connecting to a mobile voice network.

Another thing that seems to ‘have to break’ when you scale up a phone is a decent camera. For some reason, Asus and Fuyijama seem to think that my desire to shoot a decent image disappears once I have a decent screen and a keyboard. Or, if you want, decent camera’ s and phone capabilities magically appear when you scale down a device far enough.

Come on people, stop feeding us these devices that just miss the mark. I know you’d like us to buy a few more devices before we finally get one that pretty much does it all. But at least offer something that has a 10-inch swiveling touchscreen, a 5MP camera, a physical qwerty-keyboard as well as an on-screen one and all the capabilities my 10-year old mobile has. Put it out at a premium, I don’t care. But while you’re at it, allow me to stick in at least one SIM card, get 3G and Wifi and stick in decent GPS as a bonus. Give it a normal 3.5mm jack and a regular mini-USB port as well as a memory expansion slot and we’re all set.

None of that is innovative, none of it is impossible to combine. The only innovative feature I want to see is the possibility to answer my phone, no matter the position of the screen and no matter the power state of the device (standby, on, booting). Sure enough, having all those functions will put a serious load on its battery (that’s why you need to be able to turn stuff off with just a few taps) but my iPhone only lasts a day too and I still use that. The revolution here will be that I no longer need to drag around 2 devices, but just the one. Hell, I’ll even promise I’ll buy a nice carrying sleeve (as long as it allows me to still answer the phone when it’s in there).

(oh, and more on my N95-8Gb vs. iPhone 3G later, it’s not an open-and-shut affair, sadly)

Fear Me Not

Fear Me Not (Den Du Frygter, 2008) – [rate 3.5]

I didn’t score this movie as well at the festival, for a simple reason: it’s not really a fantastic film. Sure enough, it’s about the world as we perceive it and how our perception of it shapes our reality. But isn’t any drama with an intro-spective main character? You could compare this one to Special, but that one has a fantastic theme to itself, even if you take the drugs and their effects out of the equation. Fear me Not doesn’t but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad movie. Quite the opposite in fact, it’s engaging, well-paced and has a cool style about it that reminded me of Haneke movies.

The story is kept small and plays out in few locations, with a focus on the characters and their changing situation. A good story about grief and growth, this one is recommended for anyone with a taste for gloomy scandinavian drama.