Category Archives: Movies

Just give us the disk and we’ll give you your life back

Builders of the CHUM mega-hospital (that's the French one) were showing off a prototype of their state-of-the-art patient rooms last week. They include the latest in accessibility and technology:

It will also feature an electronic gadget to read the bar code on a patient's identification bracelet and automatically dispense appropriate medication.

"The bar code is to distinguish among three people (for example) all named Claude Gagnon on the same floor," Leclerc said.

"The medicine dose will be prepared by a robot. The patient's charts will be filed electronically in the computer."

The electronic gadget will be connected to the hospital's mainframe, which will be connected to the Net, but both will be protected from unwanted intrusions by Gatekeeper security software by Gregg Microsystems. So your medicine dispensing will be perfectly secure and 100% accurate, unless you're friends with Angela Bennett.

(In case you don't get the obscure movie reference, the previous paragraph is fiction.)

Montreal Geography Trivia No. 3

Name the metro stations featured in this short film (YouTube version, QuickTime version).

No more no more late fees

Hey, remember No Late Fees? Yeah, not so much anymore. Turns out economic reality still requires a financial incentive for a high turnover of new releases, otherwise video rental outlets would have to have huge stocks of these films and then get rid of them after a couple of weeks.

It makes sense. How many people really need to rent a movie for seven days? It's better to pay a set price per day (or even per hour) and leave it at that.

Personally, I don't remember the last time I rented a movie.

Guzzo patron caught camera-handed

Jean-Michel Vanasse reports someone has actually been caught allegedly filming a movie at a Guzzo theatre, and arrested for copyright infringement.

I wonder why he wasn't searched for the camera before entering the theatre.

YASTGB: FNC

I'm not a cinema buff, but since I've announced all the other blogs The Gazette has launched recently, I shouldn't ignore this one.

The Festival du nouveau cinéma blog (2007) is getting contributions from Gazette researcher Liz Ferguson, film critic John Griffin, freelancer Al Kratina, columnists Brendan Kelly and Bill Brownstein, and editor Basem Boshra.

YASTGB: World Film Festival

No posts yet, but the Gazoo is starting a new short-term blog about this year's World Film Festival, with contributions from six different staffers.

The worst of Québécois film and television for your viewing pleasure

A friend pointed out to me today that he was planning to pop his Fantasia cherry by going to an interesting showing this evening. One mention of the words "Total Crap" and I knew exactly what he was talking about.

For those who don't know, Total Crap is the brainchild of Simon Lacroix, who has for some reason taken it upon himself to collect the worst of Quebec television, from dancing lessons for overweight baby-boomers, to local wrestling previews, cheesy commercials and, every now and then, an appearance by Celine Dion. This is a pretty good example, but there's much better.

Now, you might think "wow, that's a really weird hobby", and you would be wrong. You see, there's someone else in town who's doing the same thing. DJ XL5 (Myspace link, sorry) is also a local practitioner of what they call "zapping" and showing awful clips to eager audiences.

Last fall, someone had the brilliant idea to have them square off against each other. On Halloween at Club Soda, they did battle. The audience couldn't decide between them, and there was no winner declared, but they did agree they wanted more.

So today at 7 p.m. at Concordia's DB Clarke Theatre (Hall Building, 1455 de Maisonneuve W., corner Mackay), comes DJ XL5 versus Total Crap: La revanche. Here's the teaser.

Next Friday afternoon, DJ XL5 returns solo with a showing of some pretty insane shorts with DJ XL5's Kaleidoscopic Zappin' Party (Teaser).

Tickets to both are $7.50, which you can get at Admission or on-site. (Bell Mobility is running a promotion with $5 tickets if you want to play their cellphone games)

What’s the opposite of d’oh?

Yeah, I know this is stupid PR-driven non-news advertising crap, but go Vermont! And nice video. Maybe I'll come visit someday.

Guzzo is doing searches

The federal government's new law against recording video inside movie theatres has come to its inevitable conclusion: Cinema Guzzo is now searching people who enter its theatres and seizing any type of camera, whether it takes video or not.

As you might expect, some people are not happy about this.

Guzzo can't really be blamed for this. The law makes the cinema owner just as responsible if the law is broken, so they're just looking after their own asses. But the idea that so much is contraband -- food, drink, bags, cameras -- inside a room where all they're doing is projecting an image onto a screen kind of boggles the mind. Even aircraft luggage doesn't get this kind of treatment.

Of course, it goes without saying that, other than proving the U.S. movie industry has our government by the ballsack, this bill doesn't do anything. Michael Geist (whose blog should be on everyone's reading list) has a roundup of its problems (and a cool video about it too), to which I will only add this: Movies recorded in a crowded movie theatre are of such bad quality that I'm surprised anyone actually does it.

Take this badly-camcorded Family Guy / Star Wars bit. It includes a laugh track, viewer commentary, a partially obscured, darkened, oblong screen (that the camera pans away from every now and then) and a barely-discernable original audio track. Is this kind of stuff the world's greatest threat to the movie industry?

Who needs rights when press junkets are at stake?

Remember that decision by Warner Brothers to cancel advance screenings of its films this summer? Yeah, Ottawa caved. So now it'll be illegal to record films, even if you have no intention of doing anything illegal with it.

Guilty until proven innocent, just because it's so difficult to prove guilt.