Today is the Day Against DRM, the official day assigned to oppose Digital Rights Managment. DRM is a technology designed to stop you from reading, listening, and watching books, articles, magazines, newspapers, DVDs, movies, videos, TV, radio, and music. A few corporate groups are strong-arming your government into trying to change the law so that DRM is required in all media, and to make it a crime punishable with jail-time to avoid DRM.

DRM provides you with no value. It doesn’t help you read the newspaper online; it makes it harder to read. It doesn’t make it easier or more enjoyable to watch a movie; it makes it harder or in some cases impossible to watch a movie that you have PAID for. It doesn’t help you listen to music you have purchased; in fact it may require you to pay over-and-over again to keep listening to a single song that you have purchased.

DRM doens’t help artists either. It makes it harder for them to get their work out to an receptive audience. It makes it more expensive for them to publish their work.

Lobby groups for companies that buy the licensing rights for books, music, and movies from the artists that create content are fighting hard to make DRM part of your life. Maybe you want to fight back? Maybe you don’t? Here are a few things you can do either way:

• Don’t use iTunes, don’t buy an iPod, and don’t buy form the iTunes store. The files you get from iTunes can be “turned off” by Apple anytime they want. If they want to make a few extra bucks off you next year, they just have to change the system so that your files won’t play anymore unless you pay for an “upgrade.” There are plenty of places that sell plain-old MP3s.
• Check out MusicIP Mixer from musicip.com. Not only will it play regular old MP3s, but it will play Ogg Vorbis file. Ogg Vorbis files give you better quality for the same size file, AND the format isn’t owned by any company… you will always be able to play your Ogg music… forever and ever.

For more information visit Ten Things for OCT3

The animated “documentary” titled Ryan, was shown at the Edmonton Public Library’s theatre on September 25, along with Alter Egos which is about the making of Ryan. I highly recommend seeing these films! However, not at all for the reason’s EPL describes:

Winner of the Oscar for best animated short, director Chris Landreth’s Ryan is an “animated documentary” based on the life of artist Ryan Larkin. Once one of Canada’s most influential animators, Larkin now lives on welfare and begs for money on the streets of Montreal. Employing stunning visual effects, the film traces Larkin’s descent into mental illness and addiction. Ryan will be shown along with the documentary Alter Egos – which gives further insight into Larkin’s struggles and examines the complex relationship between him and Landreth.

I have previously written about Ryan and I disagree with EPL’s description of the two films. Ryan is not based on the life of Ryan Larkin. It is based on an interview with Ryan Larkin. The visuals are interesting, certainly deceptive, but not stunning. The film does not trace Larkin’s descent into mental illness though it does attempt to blame him for not overcoming his mental illness and implies a false causal relationship between Larkin’s substance abuse and his illness/situation. I am not convinced that Landreth was as interested in having Larkin as the subject of the “documentary” as he was interested in becoming a part of Larkin’s life.

Ryan should not be seen without seeing the documentary “Alter Egos.” Alter Egos is about the making of Ryan and while it does not attempt to explain Larkin’s descent to the streets, it manages to provide more explanation than Ryan does. Alter Egos exposes Landreth for what he became by making Ryan and is a much more potent film.

You can get Ryan/Alter Egos from Edmonton Public Library. I was able to rent it at my local Blockbuster and you can order it directly from the National Film Board.

I love the Ghost in the Shell movies and television series. I have been buying the Stand Alone Complex special edition DVDs as soon as they come out. When I order these DVDs I never really know what I am getting because the place I buy them from does not provide adequate descriptions. I buy whatever is the most expensive, guessing that it is probably the “special edition.” My most recent order was more expensive than normal (about CA$6 more than usual) and I had been wondering why and if it was worth it.

Well, today Volume 7 arrived in the mail. I have to say, this proves that there is a little bit of shameless fanboy in me. I was giggling with delight as I realized that inside was a Laughing Man logo t-shirt! Volume 7 comes in a silver tin-can box (big deal) and comes with one of those cheap ID cards that have come in previous special editions (who cares… I may be a fanboy but I’m not a 9 year old fan-boy). The t-shirt was worth the extra few bucks. I think I might convert the tin-box into a lunch box… it also has the laughing man logo on it.

There is a DVD available titled “Ryan” that contains two documentaries about a famous Canadian animator, Ryan Larkin. The secondary documentary is about the making of the first. The first is not, in my opinion, a documentary but exploitation at worst and animated ethnography at best.

A young animator got some money to make a new type of documentary where he interviews some subjects and then blends the audio and video with computer generated animation. Essentially, the video is replaced with computer generated animation to create a new fictional work that includes the audio with some heavily distorted video of the subjects. In this case the subject is a famous animator who has some serious problems. The documentary heavily focuses on the documentary-makers ideas about the subject. This animated documentary was offensive to me but it was really interesting to see the contrast between this experimental documentary and the real documentary included on the DVD.

The “real” documentary is about the making of the animated documentary. The film maker uses conventional documentary mechanisms and does an effective job. The flaws of the animated documentary and its maker are revealed through candid scenes and interviews and the presentation seems balanced and non-judgemental.

This is really worth seeing. I love documentary, and seeing these two pieces together back to back was impressive. Ryan is from the National Film Board of Canada and I believe I rented it from Blockbuster.

In the past month I have seen a number of movies worth noting. Closer is about infidelity and love triangles (parallelogram maybe?), Suspect Zero is a really really bad movie about a remote viewer who kills child killers, Thomas in Love is an incredible French film about a shut-in forced to use the Internet for dates by his insurance company, The Village is a simple and effective horror/mystery with delightfully slow pace.

Don’t bother seeing suspect zero unless you are obsessed with child killers. Even then, you probably get your fix watching Law and Order: Icky Crimes Unit. It stars Ben Kingsley as a remote viewer from the CIA who has gone insane and is obsessed with killing child killers. How on earth did they get Ben Kingsley for this movie?

Closer is surprisingly interesting. Films about infidelity can attempt to whitewash the consequences of cheating on relationships and people (High Fidelity is an example of a whitewash) and that annoys me. This film made no such attempts and avoided all the cliches and traps I thought were awaiting me. The film kept me interested and thinking and entertained. It prompted reaction without promoting premature judgement. The film is about two couples who marry and all have affairs with each other and the how their relationships evolve. The actors give good performances. I cannot stand Julia Roberts but she was good in this roll.

Thomas in Love is a gem. The premise is that Thomas is agoraphobic and never leaves his apartment. He made a lot of money designing some high-tech stuff and turned it all over to a health insurance company who pays for his disability needs. All of Thomas’ interactions take place over a video-phone and we see only what Thomas sees on screen; the entire story is told with the audience seeing only what the protagonist sees. The movie is funny and enjoyable.

I expect The Village to be tedious and predictable as hollywood horror tends to be. It wasn’t very predictable and had a satisfying ending. Not an outstanding film but entertaining. It was really well paced, and by that I mean that most people will find it slow. I thought Unbreakable, from the same film maker, was a bit slow paced but effectively slow. This is not as slow but if you were bored by Unbreakable this might seem slow (though perhaps more bearably). I really thought at about four places a really bad ending was about to be revealed but it never happened. The sense of tension and is not overly high but it is maintained right until the end.