Storytelling (Or, Why I loved Forbrydelsen – The Killing)

Posted on September 27, 2011 by Antonio Vantaggiato

ForbrydelsenMaking remakes of successful movies is certainly an art. Some are even better than the original, many are not. It is nevertheless a treat and a hazardous business at the same time for the newer version’s director and crew.

Sometimes, however, the original is not widely known, as it is the case of the Danish series Forbrydelsen, a superb thriller with pathos and drama set in 2007 Copenhagen and written by Søren Sveistrup. Forbrydelsen has a very special ambient northern light, often low, often broken by rain, by lots of rain. It is the story of a crime set within the political world of a mayoral election. The police investigation takes 20 days, and so does the complete first series. Also, it has a very special face, the police woman Sarah Lund as portrayed by splendid actress Sophie Gråbøl. Forbrydelsen was shown in many European countries, and in England, where the BBC subtitled it, was an enormous success, and it spawned the second season, already aired in Denmark and about to be broadcast in Britain, and the production of a third series, which will be aired by fall 2012.

The US remake was quick to come: in 2011 AMC aired the beautifully rendered The Killing, which is an almost exact replica of Forbrydelsen, but shot in Seattle (with similar light quality and rain).

I am saddened though that people have not enjoyed the original series, which I invite to watch for its incredible story, plot and dialogues. In particular, I still remember I was fascinated by the very first episode, in which the crime is committed (but not seen) and almost all characters are masterfully presented. What storytelling! Watch the trailer here.

Same story with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a Swedish movie taken from the same novel exploit by writer Stieg Larsson. The original has a great rhythm and the characters of the slim, tattooed, non-smiling Lisbeth Salander and reporter Mikael Blomkvist are stupendously portrayed by two great faces and actors: respectively Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist, who completed the trilogy with the other two titles.

Now, the US remake is about to come. We have seen the trailer, and it seems a replica of the original. In the remake Blomqvist’s role is taken by 007 Daniel Craig (a credible face, after all), and Lisbeth’s by Rooney Mara, who renders the famous hacker with brilliant make-up. It will be hopefully good, but please, go watch the original first.

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delicious Zeitgeist 26 Sep 2011

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Antonio Vantaggiato

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Decline of an Empire

Posted on September 25, 2011 by Antonio Vantaggiato

The recent reporters “discovery” of Amazon’s third-world human-labor practices in the civilized USA prompted a lot of disdain. The New York Times wrote about The Fraying of a Nation’s Decency, issuing the thesis that the US is at a low-point of decline.

Tim O’Reilly, from his vantage observing point agrees:

On the road to high and glorious things, Americans have somehow lost sight of their bonds of empathy, decency and common purpose.

On the other hand, Jeff Jarvis notes that it’s wrong to

take one episode and use it to map the road to Hell in a handbasket. Yes, I, too, am disappointed in Amazon’s behavior — as a customer, admirer, and stockholder. But I think it is extrapolation to the nth to find America’s decline in that.

I tend to agree with the NYTimes and with O’Reilly, and I find like them that the US is losing its innovation spark over other and very different cultures.

The cultural and social decline seems pretty evident to me. After 9/11 the wars and crazy spending of its government has spread poverty of means and knowledge everywhere. The most right-wind have surfaced and now enjoy a top form and popularity, specially among the new poor, the people who most suffered from the wrong decisions of Washington.

And the people still feel so little self-confident they need to add hyperbolas to their beliefs on their country: the most powerful, the richest, the most free, and the most innovative.

In a moment rife with talk of American decline, my Amazon experiences provide fleeting mood boosts. They remind me that, for now at least, this remains the most innovative society on earth.

The most innovative? We are at a point of no return: The US is losing market power against China and India. The reckless capitalist practices here have no use against powerhouses such as China, who diligently have bought the US debt over the last ten years or so. Citizens’ houses are practically owned by the Chinese, with total disinterest from the US government.

The greatest innovation companies in the US (they all operate in the Web) are locking us down within their respective universes, with lesser and lesser possible cross contamination possible. They, together with hardware manufacturers are eliminating the open browser from the equation, thus leaving the user as a consumer, no longer a producer of knowledge, but just a passive consumer of such splendid, colorful and passive Web TV apps that are destroying the open Web.

Innovation? In the land of the Tea Party? Then we must change our definition of innovation. When quality of life is challenged by such forces, I call it decline.

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The Closed Web

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Antonio Vantaggiato
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Amen. The Closed Web is here. I don’t want to sound apocalyptic, because the situation is not dire yet and because there are efforts to keep and sustain the real, open Web.

When Robert Scoble, an enthusiast Web observer, wrote yesterday (Two apps that show the depth of what Facebook shipped today) that he loves a new Social Newsreader app from the Washington Post, and that it wil change the way we read because this app allows friends to share with each other their reading material, I said unto myself: what’s the news? Google Reader can do that, right? Feedly can do that, and so does Reeder, et al. There’s nothing new in people being able to know what friends are reading and share that. It must be the way this is done that is so innovative, then. Yet, he was absolutely right in using the word “depth” about the Facebook move.

So I go and see the video, and read the post, and understand. It is an app that sits on Facebook. That is, you can use the WaPo app *only* within Facebook. Yes, it has an appeal and a good way to share articles with friends. It’s a good app in itself.

Except it works only within Facebook. Instead of, say, work an app around RSS, so that the app would sit on iOS os Android. No, they chose the closed web. And others are following, like the Guardian, etc. Thus, they pretend we consume their news and limit ourselves at it. We went back into being only readers, not coproducers any longer. Remember “We Are The Web”? Well, they do not believe it. They are the Web. It actually is such a greater reader experience to share the news openly with an open RSS-based newsreader. With it, I can read the WaPo, the NYT, the Guardian, and other non-English (yes, they do exist) news sources, blogs and tweets. Why should I want to lock myself down with only the Washington Post? Even if I chose to lock myself down to using Facebook as my media & news center?

I’ll tell why. If Facebook succeeds in becoming *The Social Operating System* of the Internets, well, we’ll have no choice. This is worse than Apple’s lockdown with iOS. At least, even within the limitless control Apple has over what apps get published, I have *some* control on what I choose to install, and I do have a full browser and full newsreaders working. Not within Facebook. The risk is losing the Web altogether, do you see? Like it is happening with TV sets and the apps they run. There’s no browser!

This is the worst a publisher can do, and I do hope the experiment fails. Sincerely. We were so happy with the (Open) Web. In it, a dream was made true. The dream of sharing without limits, without needs of proprietary software or hardware.

Faced with an abysmal crisis, newspaper publishers are choosing the only road they know: that of closure, without recognizing the potential of the open. If the Open indeed triggered some turmoil in their business, it actually provides a great opportunity to explore new venues, real innovation, a new business model. But no, they are closing the Web.

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Amours Imaginaires – Bang Bang

Posted on September 18, 2011 by Antonio Vantaggiato

Tonight I happened to watch the movie Heartbeats (Les Amours Imaginaires), a Canadian film by Xavier Dolan (2010).

I was immediately taken by the use of slow motion, color and interview dialogues. Then, the song “Bang Bang”, over a slow walk of the main woman character made bang bang in my mind! Kill Bill, I said to myself!

Yes, soon I YouTubed it and found the first scene of Tarantino’s Kil Bill Vol1, in which credits go by just after the Bride has been shot by Bill.

Only here the song is performed by Dalida in Italian, and it’s more or less the same period of the version used by Tarantino (sung by Nancy Sinatra). The original one was performed by Cher in 1966.

Enjoy the voluptuous scene in its glory (it’s a triangle love story, BTW):

And this is the first colored scene, in passion-red out of calm sensuality, with Bach’s cello: it’s so erotic and powerful, it screams. There are two other “colored” scenes like this, in blue and yellow.

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