5 Movies Guaranteed to Make You A Better Person*

  • Not an actual guarantee, obviously

I’ve got a friend in Rome. He’s a smart guy, funny, very well-read. But there’s a problem. A big problem. Are you sitting down? He has not seen The Goonies.

I know, it’s totally fucked, right?!

In fact, he hasn’t seen a lot of movies. I think he was raised Amish or something. Whenever I catch myself saying “Did you see that movie…?” I remember who I’m talking to and say “Of course you didn’t. You haven’t even seen The Goonies.” I don’t know why, but the fact he hasn’t seen The Goonies really bothers me. I guess it’s because I love that movie to a ridiculous degree. That and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. When I was 10 or 11, I would get up extra-early before school, just so I could watch one of those movies. I did this every day for more than a year. I can’t explain it. OCD or autism, maybe. I dunno. Either way, the idea that someone hasn’t seen The Goonies just stikes me as ridiculous because that, to me, is an essential movie. I will say right now, on a stack of bibles, this movie made me a better person.

So, here are the movies that I can say will make you a better person.

There Will Be Blood

Let’s start with some hyperbole. There Will Be Blood is, by a long way, the best film I have seen in the past ten years. It’s the kind of film that, when I think about it, I realise how glad I was to have been able to see this film in the cinema, in the same way as I’m so incredibly bummed that I wasn’t born to see Apocalypse Now when it came out first. It’s a huge, virtuoso film, and the fact that the filmmakers managed to contain it perfectly still shocks me. In short, it’s the 2001: A Space Odyssey of our generation. Yeah, I went there. If you haven’t seen it already, you should stop reading the rest of this article and just go watch it. Right now. There, was that enough hyperbole for you?

The Fountain

I feel sorry for The Fountain. Stuck in development hell for ages, finally limping out of the gate a couple of years later with a quarter of its original budget. It got completely overlooked. I saw it as part of the Dublin International Film Festival, and the cinema was maybe half-full. After the film, most people went home grumbling about it being a load of old bollocks. Except it’s better than most people give it credit for. It was clearly a labour of love for Aronofsky. A deeply personal film about appreciating the moment instead of worrying about the future. What could have been a throw-away piece of cheap sentiment (not that I’m against cheap sentiment) suddenly blossoms into one of the most striking and moving films about mortality that you’ll be likely to see.

Evil Dead 2

Rob: Let’s just say that I hadn’t seen it and I said to you, “I haven’t seen Evil Dead II yet”, what would you think?
Barry: I’d think that you’re a cinematic idiot and I’d feel sorry for you.

Koyaanisqatsi

Yes, I know I already wrote about this back in 2005 and I probably sound like a broken record, but it’s still breathtaking. I said at the time that it was the most extraordinary movie I’ve ever seen and one of the most beautiful films ever made. And I stand by that (even if the rest of my writing then was more than a little up my own hole).

Big Trouble in Little China

This might not be John Carpenter’s greatest movie. It might not even be John Carpenter’s greatest movie with Kurt Russell. It’s an absurd, over-the-top romp through Carpenter’s id. All flashy neon and high-flying stunts. But it knows how ridiculous it is. It enjoys the juxtaposition of “a reasonable guy” experiencing “unreasonable things”. In other words, it’s trying to say: don’t take things too seriously. Or, as Jack Burton says, “Like I told my last wife, I says, ‘Honey, I never drive faster than I can see. Besides that, it’s all in the reflexes.’”

Hitlers Must Die

Cryptic Sea’s No Quarter is a series of indie games described by the developer as “an album of original games inspired by arcade and console classics. Think of it like an album of music except with games instead of songs.”

Quite.

Part of this ‘album’ is Hitlers Must Die!, a “run and gun where you play a Soviet special forces guy assigned to kill Hitler clones.” Basically, a 2D shooter, with some neat John Woo-style stunts in there, like sliding backwards while shooting. But there’s the question: why not just have some cookie-cutter space aliens or monsters? Why Hitler?

But the answer is obvious. Why the fuck not?

Proof that, like Philip Glass, Moonlight Sonata makes any video infinitely cooler.

Ghostbusters: The Videogame

ghostbustersshootslimer

A while ago, I talked about the way that, when dealing with popular franchises, creators are often unsure of how to introduce something new so they fall back on fan service as a way of masking their insecurity. By wrapping something new in familiar clothing, they hope it makes it easier for people (especially those all-too-fickle fanboys) to accept. Or, worse still, in trying to recreate the success of the originals, they use the originals as a actual recipe. Take a dash of this situation, a pinch of that character, two heaped tablespoons of this trusted joke and - bingo! - something similar-yet-different.

Ghostbusters: The Video Game is another perfect example of this. The first few levels are like playable deja vu. You start at the Sedgewick Hotel, you meet slimer and Venkman get slimed. You wreck the ballroom. Then you jet across to the Library where you meet the Librarian ghost and the whole thing ends with a fight against the Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man. It’s all so very obvious and unremarkable. It kind of makes me think of my idea for creating a sequel to a movie by just taking the original movie and cheaply dubbing in the word “again” after every line (e.g. “Zed’s dead again, baby. Zed’s dead again.”). Otherwise known as the Rocky II school of sequel-making. In Ghostbusters: The Videogame, the first hour is filled with lines that basically follow this setup. “He slimed me again!” “She shushed us again!” And there are far too many “Hey, remember that time…” for my liking. To quote Joni Mitchell, nobody ever said to Van Gogh, ‘Paint a Starry Night again, man!’.

But then, halfway through the library level, something special happens. You leave the confines of the movies behind. No longer tethered to ticking all the boxes for the fans, they are free to play about a more experimental storytelling palette, and the game improves dramatically. You visit the ’extradimensional’ version of the library which had the potential to be generic and unremarkable, like Xen from Half-Life. Except with Egon and Ray nerdgasming over the walkie-talkies, it feels like something that genuinely belongs within the Ghostbusters universe. It’s completely believable and enjoyable.

After all, what are the main reasons why someone would play Ghostbusters: The Videogame, the things that separate it from other videogames? The universe and the characters. People didn’t respond to the films just because of the kick-ass theme tune. They responded because the world was interesting and the characters were entertaining in the way they behaved within this world.

With the exception of Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis, the entire cast is back, lending their voices to their characters. And the whole thing has been written by Dan Ackroyd and Harold Ramis, the writers of the Ghostbusters movies, so the writing even feels consistent with the movies. And there’s plenty of meat on these bones, if you want it. You’re encouraged to “scan” the environment, Metroid-style. This then pops an entry into “Tobin’s Spirit Guide”, which you can read later. Again, that’s if you want it. If you want to just shoot things and cause an assload of damage, that’s okay too.

I only have one, minor problem with the game, and that’s the fact that you play as a no-name rookie, a new addition to the Ghostbusters squad. This would be fine - I mean, I’m not demanding that I have to play as one of the original Ghostbusters (although you can in multiplayer) - except that sometimes, it feels as if you’re the only one who actually does any work. Very often, it’s up to you to fight and capture ghosts while the rest of the characters stand around spouting (admittedly funny, if slightly repetitive) one-liners. It’s a very minor quibble, and one that can almost be forgiven as a standard videogame trope.

First few levels aside, Ghostbusters: The Videogame is fan service done right.

B+

Cheap

Near my house is a daily street market with stalls where you can buy all sorts of things. I sometimes buy household items here. Cheese graters and slotted spoons and the like. Things I can use in the kitchen, but don’t need top-class quality from.

Walking past these stalls last night, I saw the vendors packing away their things. They had a whole box of cheap, cloth dolls. Each one identical, in its little plastic bag, neatly stacked into the box. And I have to be honest, it depressed the fuck out of me.

Because, let’s face it, these dolls were made in some sweat-shop somewhere. Someone was paid a bowl of rice a day to churn out these little things. To the street-vendors who sell them, they’re just another product they’ve gotten a shipment of and they need to sell. Next week, it could be socks, it doesn’t matter to them. And who would buy these things? They’re not the kinds of dolls that make you stand up and take notice. They’re little, cloth knockoffs that cost maybe a euro, assuming you don’t fancy haggling the vendor down.

So there’s two possibilties. The first is that no-one, from the person who made it to the person who bought it, cares even slightly about this little doll. For some reason, this really depresses me, but then I’ve always ascribed human emotions to inanimate things. When I was younger, I used to feel sorry for the toys I didn’t play with as much as others, because I thought they felt left out.

The other possibility is that this doll will go to someone who will love this doll beyond any reasonable expectation, not really knowing or caring about its past. This will be their doll, the kind that gets all grotty from being dragged around everywhere and this cheap, ratty doll will get more love than most of us could even possibly imagine.

I’m not sure if this is more or less depressing than the first possibility.

But then I realised how judgemental I was being and that depressed me, too.

Driving in Rome

Before actually buying our car, we checked a lot of classified ads for second-hand cars. In a lot of the ads, you would read about cars being “properly Romanized”. Which was a bit of a weird description, except when you start looking at the cars driving on the streets of Rome. The majority of them are covered in scrapes, scratches and dents. They’re nothing to be ashamed about. More like badges of honour. War wounds.

When people ask me what it’s like, driving in Rome, it’s very difficult to answer, and so I basically give a pithy answer. “It’s like the Wacky Races,” which is actually closer to the truth than people might think.

For one, Romans are extremely skilled drivers. I guess it’s just the culture. F1 is like a national religion (after food, football and, y’know, catholicism), but this doesn’t really explain how they’ve got near-superhuman eye-hand coordination and spatial awareness. And it’s amazing when you can keep up with them. You really do feel like a genuinely good driver.

But then there are two problems that make it less fun to drive on the roads. The first is that they have almost no understanding of the rules of the road, which means that red lights mean nothing, indicators mean nothing (this weekend, on the motorway, I drove for 10km behind a guy who was indicating to turn left - where are you turning, buddy? Into the barrier?). In fact, I have a personal theory that they flaunt things like red lights and road signals to keep the other drivers guessing.

Which brings me to the second problem: Romans drive with an almost heroic disregard for their safety or the safety of other drivers. Another example from this weekend - I was in the left lane, turning left. I had indicated the whole time, slowed down checked ahead of me. There was nothing coming in the opposite lane, so I started my turn, when a maniac whizzed past me on my left-hand side. He must have been doing at least 100km/h. Now, this was a three-lane road, there was almost nothing else on the road with me. He overtook me on the left-hand side, almost completely side-swiping me, just for the thrill of it. Overtaking me on the right-hand side would have been easy. Maybe a little too easy.

For a further example of this, there’s a wonderful section of the GRA (the giant ring-road that surrounds Rome, think of it as a better, more functional version of Dublin’s M50) which was only recently repaved. They haven’t gotten around to painting on any of the lanes or street markers. And, to a bunch of drivers to whom “lanes” are only a suggestion anyway, it’s like complete freedom. You will never see as much dodging and weaving outside of, maybe, Brand’s Hatch.

All of this, though, is definitely making an impression on me. And I’m worried. At Christmas, even though I wasn’t driving in Rome at the time and just sitting in the back of taxis, I still found myself driving much more aggressively than I normally would have. God help us when I do actually go back.

“Properly Dublinized”

(I’m worried about this blog just turning into another outlet for me to complain about Rome/Italy/Romans/Italians, so I’ll be writing some random, inane bullshit soon, I promise)

End of Childhood

This hasn’t been a great year to be a celebrity icon, especially if you were big in the 80s. First Farrah Fawcett, then Michael Jackson, then Walter Cronkite and now John Hughes. As N’Gai Croal puts it “Why does 2009 hate my childhood?” or as Street Boners put it, more succinctly, “STARMAGEDDON!

Of all these deaths, though, I’ve been most affected - disproportionately so - by the death of John Hughes. I guess it’s because his movies not only reflected my childhood and teenage experiences, but in a large part also helped define them. And this sadness isn’t helped by the outpouring of love and tributes for the man. The more I read written both by and about him, the sadder I get - he seemed like a genuinely nice person. I mean, he was married to his high school sweetheart until his death. Also, he left the movie business behind and became a farmer because he blamed Hollywood for the death of his friend, John Candy. Think about this: he left the job that gave him fame and allowed him to, I’m assuming, live very comfortably, because of his beliefs. These are all tremendously rare

Anyway, here are some of the articles I’ve been highlighting in my Google Reader shared items that I think people should check out.

First, there’s Vacation ‘58, the hilarious short story that kicked off his career and also served as the basis for National Lampoon’s Vacation. But there’s also Foreword ‘08, in which Hughes talks about the process of writing Vacation ‘58 and the melee around getting it published.

There’s also the tremendous blog post by Alison Byrne Fields who describes her experience with John Hughes as her pen pal.

“You’ve already received more letters from me than any living relative of mine has received to date. Truly, hope all is well with you and high school isn’t as painful as I portray it. Believe in yourself. Think about the future once a day and keep doing what you’re doing. Because I’m impressed. My regards to the family. Don’t let a day pass without a kind thought about them.”

In the New York Times, A. O. Scott does a tremendous job of describing why I’m having trouble with all the recent deaths.

It’s a little eerie that Mr. Hughes died so soon after Michael Jackson, another fixture of ’80s popular culture locked in perpetual youth.

Their deaths make me feel old, but more than that, they make me aware of belonging to a generation that has yet to figure out adulthood, for whom life can feel like a long John Hughes movie. You know the one. That Spandau Ballet song is playing at the big dance. You remember the lyrics, even if it’s been years since you heard them last. This is the sound of my soul. I bought a ticket to the world, but now I’ve come back again. Why do I find it hard to write the next line?

On that note, someone made a montage of scenes from John Hughes’ movies put to the tune of The Who’s Baba O’Riley, and it fits perfectly.

Speaking of montages… okay, this isn’t exactly new, but since John Hughes understood that all the best movies have at least one montage sequence (though two is always better), someone took the dance montages from his movies (and, uh… Footloose and Mannequin, but you can ignore those bits) and put them to the tune of Phoenix’s Lisztomania and, again, a perfect fit.

RIP John Hughes.

Reconstructing Rome from Photographs

A group of researchers from the University of Washington are conducting a project to construct a 3D map of Rome based on the more than 2 million results on Flickr for “Rome”. There won’t be any real results for another couple of months (so much for their “Building Rome in a Day” thing), but they’ve already got a nifty video showing their results in constructing the Colosseum. You should check it out.

rome-day

But one thing that caught my eye from their video was the idea that we can also learn about the layout of the city based on where the photographs were taken. For example, this frame from their demo video shows where all the cameras were when they snapped their shots of the Colosseum, and what direction they were pointing - that long line going down to the bottom-left corner is going down Via dei Fori Imperiali. This street is only pedestrianised on a Sunday, so we as well as placing them spatially, we can also (roughly) place these in time. I’ve put the frame next to a screenshot of the same scene from Google Earth, so you can actually see it on a map.

But look at all the whitespace - it shows exactly where people cannot or are not allowed to go. With this information, we could construct something at least as interesting, if not entirely as whizz-bang-gee-isn’t-that-nifty cool as the 3D Rome project.

So, armed with phpFlickr (to access the Flickr API), gheat (to generate the map overlay), and a couple of hours to myself, I went about constructing a heatmap showing where the most photos are taken in Rome. I did this by grabbing around 2000 photographs geotagged to within 5Km of Piazza Venezia, ranked in order of “interestingness”. There are some interesting results.

[caption align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Photo heatmap of Rome”]Rome Photo Heatmap 2[/caption]

[caption align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Heatmap of Piazza Venezia / Colosseum”]Rome Photo Heatmap - Piazza Venezia / Colosseum[/caption]

For example, even without the map underneath, someone familiar with the layout of Rome could probably recognise this as Piazza Venezia/Colosseum area just from the shape of the “hot spots”.

[caption align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Heatmap of St. Peter’s Basilica”]Rome Photo Heatmap - St. Peter’s Basilica[/caption]

I find this one pretty interesting because it’s a close-up image showing where people tend to take photos within St. Peter’s Basilica. They take photos right within the doorway and then above that, where the Pieta is. Then they head further in (left) and take photographs around the high altar.

I’m not sure there’s a practical application for all this, but I’m still absolutely fascinated by it - being able to see the “interestingness” of a city. From a bird’s eye level, you can see what parts of a city are most interesting (or at least visually pleasing), and then you can zoom in to a specific area or monument and see what’s most appealing in there.

Right now, I’ve only got this running on my local computer, but I’ll be trying to get this up and available online. In the meantime, I’ll be posting stuff to my Flickr account, so feel free to check it out there.

Problems with Italian Cities

This month’s Monocle includes their 2009 list of the world’s top 25 most liveable cities (link goes to a frankly terrifying and ominous video run-down of the list). In the magazine, they start with an interesting article about why not one Italian city features in the top 25 cities. Here are the bits that resonated with me:

Though attractive spots for 48 hours of sightseeing or shopping, more needs to be done for their residents. Take public transport. Poorly funded and chronically late, the number of commuters on buses and trams actually fell in 2008. With most people behind the wheel, city centres are gridlocked and pavements used as makeshift car parks. Rome alone notches up 70 cars for every 100 inhabitants - Paris has just 26.

Shopping hours also need to be liberalised in the country’s financial centre - people queue outside the few food stores open on Sundays.

In their favour, Italy’s metropolises rank high for their food and cafe culture, enviable climate and wealth of cultural offerings. With more nimble public services and a better infrastructure, a few could soon make the grade.

“Enviable climate” aside (during the day it gets so unbearably hot I can barely think straight), this goes some way to describing why I have found Rome such a difficult place to live. It gets a lot of things right, but at the same time, it gets so many little things so completely, head-slappingly wrong.

For example, the post office is still the only place to pay bills and it closes at 1pm. I’ve been in my local post office a few times and heard tourists being told that, no, the post office does not sell stamps (stupid tourists!). For stamps, they must go out and around the corner to another post office. But the post office around the corner is actually the same post office. It’s just a different door.

This is the 21st century. We are literally months away from the year 2010. We are actually, demonstrably living in the future. I mean, I’ve got a computer in my pocket that plays music, plays movies, takes calls, can connect to the fucking internet, but you’re telling me I can’t buy a bottle of milk at 3pm on a Sunday? It’s time to move on.

Sardinia

Aaaaaand we’re back.

We somehow managed to survive seven days in the July heat of Sardinia. In a tent.

Looking back, this was probably a bit of a cavalier adventure. I mean, something you learn very quickly is that the best way to survive a Roman summer is by spending all day under an air conditioner and only moving when you absolutely have to. What did we think we were doing, going somewhere even hotter than Rome?

Our first night was painful. We pitched our tent in the last spot in the campsite. We realised why this was the only available spot - it had absolutely no shade. We got everything set up, inflated our air matresses and headed off. Except - and here’s something we’ve learned - when air matresses are in near-direct sunlight all day, those things get hot. And they’re designed to release this heat slowly. So that was, by far, one of the worst night’s sleeps we have ever had.

Did I mention that Sardinia was also suffering from a freak heatwave?

The next day, we got up completely drenched in sweat, having gotten a total of about fifteen minutes of uninterrupted sleep. We felt sorry for ourselves, had a bit of a whinge, asked ourselves “What would Ray Mears do?” (“Kill himself,” was the response. “This would be too much even for him.”) Then we set about reorganizing our camp. There was still no other pitch for our tent, so we went to the supermarket and bought a load of string and pegs. We ripped out all the bedsheets and blankets we’d brought and, with the tarp that we had intended as a groundsheet, built a badass bedouin-style tent camp. It was all very impressive.

The camp, too, was impressive. We were staying in Porto Sosalinos, which seems to be run by ex-hippies. Their restaurant is all vegan this and organic that. And the whole thing is much more community-focused than other campsites I’ve been to, with communal fridges and freezers to keep your food in and a huge ‘common area’ with free wi-fi and a load of plug points where you can sit and relax while charging your electronics.

Oh, and I didn’t finish either Infinite Jest or Anathem, but I did manage to finish Foucault’s Pendulum, a book I only threw into my bag at the last minute. Go figure.

Anyway, normal programming resumes now.

We're All Going On A Summer Holiday

We finally picked up our new car yesterday. A Fiat 500, naturally. so today we’re grabbing a ferry and heading across to Sardinia (a place that is actually closer to Africa than it is to Italy, trivia fans).

We have absolutely nothing planned except to chill on beaches and maybe do a little snorkeling. And since we’ve got a car and I won’t be breaking my back carrying luggage, I’m bringing all those huge doorstep books that have been clogging up my “to read” list, like Anathem and Infinite Jest. If I don’t manage to finish at least one of those, it’s God’s way of telling me I was never meant to read them.

Back in a week. Peace out, suckers.