Rockstar Economics

From the Times

The developer of the computer game Grand Theft Auto V — criticised for a graphic torture scene and sexual violence against women — is paying no UK corporation tax but claiming millions of pounds in public subsidy for the game’s contribution to British cultural life.

You could probably say the same about what the Welsh National Opera puts on. There's a torture scene in Tosca, and attempted rape in Don Giovanni. They also receive a whopping subsidy and I doubt they pay any corporation tax (as a charity). And somehow count towards British cultural life, when putting on operas in Italian set in European countries.

The "cultural life" thing is, if I recall, in the legislation, but actually a ruse. The simple reason we subsidise film, TV and video game production is that it isn't particularly location dependant. Game of Thrones, A Knight's Tale and Braveheart shot their olde worlde scenes of Westeros, England and Scotland in Northern Ireland, Czech Republic and Ireland respectfully. When it comes down to films shot on a soundstage, location matters even less.

OK, there's some restrictions. You can't go shooting Braveheart in Nepal or Saudi Arabia. Soundstages tend to be not too far from rail and air links. But there's lots of places that tick those boxes.

So, it's entirely reasonable for the UK government to offer some tax breaks for video games. If they don't, Rockstar will just have more developer jobs in Toronto. Do you want the jobs, the income tax, the extra money going into the economy, or do you want nothing?

It's called a subsidy, but it's really a correction to the problems of tax not taking account of mobility. We've had this for a long time, right back to Mrs Thatcher offering companies sweeteners to move their TV factories to Wales. So we have these blunt subsidies to correct the problem, when really, I think LVT would do it automatically: somewhere gets poor, land values fall, incentives appear to drive business towards them.

Watership Down

There's a few strange decisions that the BBFC have made. The End of the Affair being rated 18, for example. Or Gremlins as a 15. But none are quite so weird as Watership Down being rated U.

I remember pestering my mother to see it at the age of 9. I mean, this is the trailer:

It's bunnies, on an adventure. Something a bit like The Rescuers, right? Wrong. Watership Down is high octane nightmare fuel for kids. It's not just that it has bloody violence with rabbits tearing lumps off each other, there's a rabbit caught in barbed wire and even a suggestion of rape in there. Oh, and the visions that suggest rabbit Auschwitz on the horizon.

Now, I'm dead against censorship in cinema. But age ratings are a pretty good idea, especially with the younger ones. You want some drama. You need some villainy. You don't want Leporidae Goodfellas, though. And seriously, had no-one at Channel 5 seen this movie before deciding to put it on? I'd rather show Akira to little kids, which is rated 15 (no, don't show Akira to your 5 year old, although at 9, I'd have probably loved it). Akira is at least fantastic and cool, where Watership Down is just grim and depressing.

The BBFC are on record as saying that it wouldn't be a U today, but even when it was originally shown, it wasn't suitable for that rating. It should have been the old A rating (now PG).

Great Film (and free, sortof)

If you've got BBC iPlayer, there's a terrific film on there at the moment, a Norwegian film called Headhunters. It's about a recruitment headhunter who is also an art thief in his spare time. It's based on a Jo Nesbo novel, which makes me think I should read more of his stuff.

It's a brilliantly written thriller. Absolutely chuffing brilliant. I don't want to say too much - it's a thriller and wouldn't want to give away anything about it, but I will say that it's probably an 18 rating, so not for the little kids. And yes, it's got subtitles, but please don't let that put you off. I can get fed up with subtitles, but I wasn't bored for a second with this.

Is it my favourite Scandanavian movie? It'd definitely a close run thing with Let the Right One In.

Very Short List (Bond Edition)

Women named in songs about knives who appeared in a film with a knife

Clue: Spectre

Answer: Lotte Lenya who is named in the English version of Mack the Knife, who starred as Rosa Klebb in From Russia with Love. Lenya owned the rights to Mack the Knife having been married to Kurt Weill.

Movie Review: Knocked Up

I started watching this the other night and almost instantly felt like giving up on it. It's a film where a guy that looks like Seth Rogen:-



but without the fame and money of Seth Rogen (and actually a slacker) picks up a woman that looks like Katherine Heigl. And a successful TV person played by Katherine Heigl at that:-



and manages to have sex on the first date.

I wouldn't have even minded if it was a story about the nerdy, slightly overweight guy with hidden depths of bravery or skills. But he literally had nothing to offer a hot successful woman.

It wasn't even a great story and I only laboured through because of the charms of Heigl and Leslie Mann, and the odd moment where Jonah Hill made me laugh pretty hard. There weren't a lot of laughs and it finished in the most ridiculous fashion, where this stoner loser walked into a desk job in an internet company in LA and managed to afford a flat right away that was big enough for the two of them and a baby.

VW Accused of Cheating to Win Underdog Races

From the Mirror

Volkswagen is facing a criminal ­investigation over speed tests for one of its cars, it was reported last night.

The motor giant used software for a VW Beetle model that made it drive much faster than competitors were expecting as well as it allowing it to perform comical tricks and romantically bringing couples together.

The allegation could allow cartoonishly evil moustachoied competitors with a preponderance for cheating to claim thousands in lost prize money.

How to avoid cow attacks, the movie...

Bit Oversensitive, I'd Say

From the Guardian

The chairman of an organisation set up to honour the memories of the victims of the 7/7 terrorist strike on London has labelled a new trailer for the Hollywood disaster movie London Has Fallen “extremely insensitive”.

Babak Najafi’s film, a big budget sequel to 2013 action thriller Olympus Has Fallen, stars Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart and Morgan Freeman in the story of an attack on the capital. Chair of the Tavistock Square Memorial Trust, Philip Nelson, said the timing of the trailer’s release was wrong just a few days before the 10th anniversary of Britain’s worst terrorist strike of recent times.

So, how many days before should everyone not carry on with life? Does this also apply to things afterwards?

“This is not the first time that Hollywood has been insensitive,” he told the Mirror. “If the story is about terrorism then this is extremely insensitive. People have also recently died of a terrorist attack in Tunisia.

So, we shouldn't make any films involving terrorist plots, because someone will be offended?

“I have seen an image of Big Ben with the clock face blown out, that’s also insensitive. “[Our Trust] has had lots of help from America so I just think that these are the wrong images to portray. Is the summer the best time to be promoting this film anyway?”

Insensitive to who? Finn McMissile from Cars 2? Richard Hannay from the 39 Steps? Tim Burton for doing it first in Mars Attacks?

And, yes, the summer is the best time to be starting the promotion for this film. It's a teaser trailer. It's released months before to get people starting to talk about it.

The Interview

From the BBC

President Barack Obama has vowed a US response after North Korea's alleged cyber-attack on Sony Pictures.

The US leader also said the studio "made a mistake" in cancelling the Christmas release of The Interview, a satire depicting the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

...

Earlier on Friday, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation officially tied North Korea to the cyber-attack, linking the country to malware used in the incident.

Hackers had earlier issued a warning referring to the 11 September 2001 terror attacks, saying "the world will be full of fear" if the film was screened.

THIS WILL BE A LONG POST. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

Timeline
Let's try and get this story straight, going right back to the beginning. In fact, just before the beginning on 21st November, when an email was sent to various Sony executives demanding money. Nothing about North Korea, nothing about The Interview. Just money.

3 days later on the 24th November, across Sony screens, a message appears telling whoever is reading that "We've already warned you". Along with this, a number of files were released around the internet, mostly via bittorrent containing movies.

By the 28th, a new theory had arisen with "unknown sources" that this was the work of North Korea as one of the movies involved was The Interview, a comedy about two celebrity reporters who get an interview with Kim Jong-Un, but before they do, the CIA tries to rope them in for an assassination.

Various shocking revelations were leaked - film stars have egos, black actors bring in smaller audiences than white ones, actresses earn less than actors.

On the 16th December, a hacker group then release more files from Sony's servers, along with a threat regarding The Interview suggesting 9/11 level violence near cinemas showing it.

On 17th December, the majority of cinema chains pulled the film. At this point, Sony figured it was best to cancel the premiere and withdraw the film.

On the 19th December, the FBI announce that North Korea is responsible for the actions.

Analysing Motives
It may be that this is an attack by North Korea on Sony. But if it is, why did they start off talking about money? Yes, North Korea went to the UN to complain about The Interview back in May, but North Korea always go to the UN to complain about this sort of thing. They got pissed off about Team America: World Police, but did nothing about it.

There are various links being made in various places, such as the FBI referring to tools used in an attack on South Korean banks, which they declare as being caused by the North Koreans, despite that only being a suspicion because it was routed via Chinese IP addresses. The problem with things like routing is that if you can create an infected machine in China, the attack could have come from almost anywhere.

The focus on North Korea began after the media made it so. It's a better story to be talking about international cyber terrorism than to be talking about cyber blackmail. The media started the stoking, the hacker group then delivered on the threat.

The story was then that the theaters dropped the film. There was some puzzlement by authorities such as the Department of Homeland Security because there was "no credible threat". So, why did cinema chains cancel the film? Well, some people are going to get nervous anyway. And in a multiplex, they won't just get nervous if they're going to see The Interview, but also if they're going to see The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and the Interview is playing at the same multiplex. Bear in mind, this is not expected to be a huge film, and has some pretty lousy reviews. Are those multiplex companies going to risk losing Hunger Games and Hobbit money for the sake of a low income film.

Sony then cancelled the film. You don't want to run a huge marketing campaign for a few small theaters. They might even be thinking that they could release it another time, so let it all blow over.

The FBI then wanted in on it, writing an email about how they were certain it was North Korea, even though their links are very tenuous, and using that email to promote how they could help businesses, like an advertorial for their services.

Finally, Obama did his "standing up for rights" speech, blaming Sony for being chickens, promising to take action, but being completely non-specific about what he would do.

The whole thing is lies built on lies. In my opinion, it's a simple blackmail and shakedown job.

Movie Violence

From The Telegraph

Children’s films are rife with murder and mayhem and can contain more violence than gory gangster shoot-em-ups like Pulp Fiction, researchers have found.

Although cartoons like Finding Nemo, Bambi or Frozen may seem like gentle tales where good triumphs over evil and adversity is overcome, they are, in fact, riddled with death and destruction and can leave youngsters traumatised.

I obviously missed the unedited versions where Nemo shoots a shark for saying "what" one more time, where Bambi's mother accidentally snorts heroin and has to be resuscitated by having an injection of adreneline and where Olaf in Frozen gets gang raped by a couple of rednecks before Sven appears wielding a Samurai sword and stabbing them before promising to call a couple of homeboys with blowtorches and pliers to "get medieval on yo ass"?.

FFS, the Grimms' Fairy Tales are early 19th century and include all sorts of violence - witches trying to eat children, witches getting killed etc. The original stories are more violent than Disney versions, and kids didn't end up traumatised by them.

You must remember this...

From the New York Times

The letters of transit — “signed by General de Gaulle, cannot be rescinded, not even questioned” — were hidden under its unusual hinged lid. It is golden yellow with touches of green and gold, a surprise to people who know it only from its black-and-white adolescence. It has a wad of chewing gum in a place where a wad of chewing gum really should not be.

It is the stuff that dreams are made of.

It is one of the most famous pianos in the world, the piano Ingrid Bergman was close to when she delivered one of Hollywood’s unforgettable lines: “Play it, Sam. Play ‘As Time Goes By.’ ” It is the short little upright from Rick’s Café Américain in the movie “Casablanca.”

Signed by General de Gaulle? A Vichy France official would let someone through with papers signed by the leader of Free French Forces?

The line is "signed by General Weygand", who was a collaborator in the Vichy government, Took me about 1 minute on Google to find the clip of Peter Lorre saying it.

A Sci-Fi B Movie if Ever I Saw One

From ITV

A huge nest of rare super ants, known to feast on electric cables, has been found in the UK.

The insects, which have a fatal attraction to electricity, were found at a property in Hendon in north London.

The first sighting of the insects in the UK was at at Hidcote Manor Gloucestershire in 2009. This YouTube video shows their 'super' strength.

I'm not sure which direction you'd go from there. The ants become immune to the power of electricity and mankind gets sent back to the Victorian age as electricity is constantly under threat. Or do the ants feed off the electricity and become like batteries, swarming around humans and destroying them with a static charge before eating us.

Film Review: Now You See Me

Brief review: I did, and I wouldn't again.

Longer review: A smug, ludicrous film full of the sort of overcomplicated tricks that you could never pull off. OK, you can pull them off in a magic arena where you control everything, but out in the real world? And repeatedly? Like a team that somehow, mysteriously robs a bank and is going to do it again is going to be able to go anywhere without a police surveillance team trailing their every move.

Ocean's Eleven did this, but it only had one caper, and it was done with so much more style and wit than this. And the whole point was that it had 11 people, each of whom was a specialist in a particular field to make their caper work. And George Clooney and Brad Pitt are likeable in a way that Jesse Eisenberg isn't (this helped The Social Network to work).

Film Review: Rush

Many years ago, I was into F1 Grand Prix racing and got involved in crowd marshalling. And my memory of that is getting a headache because I forgot to put my earplugs in when marshalling next to the track as all those loud F1 cars came past.

Along with many other things, it's something that the film Rush gets really right - the sound of the cars. It also has two leads that do a very good job of playing Niki Lauda and James Hunt (Daniel Bruhl really gets Lauda right). The period detail is spot on. The racing sequences are brilliant - close-up racing shots, beautiful scenery shots - I could watch it again just for how great the film looks.

And while it does play up the rivalry more than what was really there, and Lauda's robot like manner, it does tell a really good story about rivalry and in the case of Niki Lauda, how far he was prepared to go to get back in a racing car to win.

It's available on Amazon Instant as well as Blu-Ray and DVD and I thoroughly recommend it. I don't think you even need to be an F1 fan.

A Sweet Deal for Streaming

I'd been considering getting one of these Chromecast devices - you can plug it into your TV and beam movies, YouTube, iPlayer other things from your Android phone or tablet.

Wuaki.tv, that are part of play.com (no idea where Wuaki comes from) have a deal where you can buy a series of Game of Thrones or The Sopranos for around £25 and get a Chromecast for free.

If anyone's interested, I'll post a Chromecast review in a few days when it arrives. I won't post a review of Game of Thrones as I'm the last person on the planet to have watched it.

Movies: D-Day Special

There's probably some other films out there about D-Day. You can tangentially include Where Eagles Dare where the mission is to rescue an army brigadier before he faces interrogation the invasion, but I can only think of two movies that are specifically about D-Day.

It's hard not to recommend both Saving Private Ryan and The Longest Day. Apart from both being really good films, they both tell the story of the events in different ways.

Saving Private Ryan is more personal. It's war from the perspective of the soldiers who fought and spares nothing trying to portray the hell of landing on those beaches and the lives of those men.

On the other hand, The Longest Day is more of a "big picture" film about D-Day, showing all the various people involved from British paratroopers, to GIs, to French civilians in the resistance and German generals.

Easter Opening Times

Just going to throw this out there for debate...

Generally, I'm against bank and public holidays because they're a classic case of Bastiat's broken window fallacy - that you get a "free" day off, when in reality, someone has to pay for that and it's going to be the employee, so giving people a public holiday means either that someone gets less money or more realistically that they take a day off at a time when they'd rather not and creates uneven demand for roads, beaches, zoos with all sorts of bad effects.

But I do think that there's something useful about Xmas Day and Boxing Day in that it's a time when families get together, most people participate in it, and so they don't have to muck around booking time off as you have it by default. Two days means one day with his family, one day with hers.

When it comes to Easter I don't think it has that for most people, though. Where Xmas has become a time of merriment, a time for family and pushed out nearly all the Christian aspect and become universal, Easter really is more something for the Christians, who represent a rather small percentage of the population. Today is just Sunday for me - bacon sandwiches, roast dinner with the family, play Minecraft with the kids, watch The Man in the White Suit. And for most of my extended family, the same is true. It's just like any other Sunday, except I can't go and buy some plants for the garden.

Film Review: Thor: The Dark World

I really liked the first Thor movie and heard good things about this, but I generally don't bother with sequels at the cinema. Which in this case was probably the wrong decision because Thor: The Dark World is a terrific sequel to the first film.

It's got most of the same ingredients of the first film. The sibling rivalry of Thor and Loki, the romance of Jane and Thor, it pokes fun of a guy with a cape mixed in with normal people and so forth. The action sequences are bigger and more impressive. Kat Dennings gets some better lines this time as Darcy.

Well worth the price of a rental (for which I used the new Amazon streaming service that seems to work as well as Blinkbox and Sky).

Film Review: Much Ado About Nothing (2012)

Much Ado About Nothing is a slightly strange film. It's shot in black and white, in modern costume, with a mostly American cast of the sort of people that appear in lots of Joss Whedon films and TV series (it was directed by Whedon). Having cast members from Firefly and The Avengers quoting Shakespeare is initially a bit strange.

Overall, I think it's a more difficult film to watch than Branagh's, but probably slightly more rewarding. Branagh's film is more sumptuous and pleasing to the eye, but the seriousness of the situation involving Hero and the surrounding characters has far greater weight in Whedon's film, which also makes the Beatrice and Benedict story more solid.

It's also, for me, better cast, mostly because I think Emma Thompson just doesn't bring out the character of Beatrice as well as Amy Acker does. Clark Gregg has the air of a powerful Governor in the way that Richard Briers doesn't. Nathan Fillion is funnier as Dogberry. And as the original had Keanu Reeves as Don John, that wasn't hard to top. On the other side, Kate Beckinsale was probably better as Hero.

In case anyone thinks I'm ill or something, reviewing romances is rare and two in a row is not a pattern, just coincidence. Normal service of superhero, gun and car chase movies will be resumed soon.

Film Review: Sunshine on Leith

It probably helps that I quite like the music of The Proclaimers, but I also rather liked the film Sunshine on Leith which is a "jukebox musical" including many of their songs.

Like most jukebox musicals (and there's nothing new about them, Singin in the Rain is almost entirely existing songs), there's a convoluted thing of creating a bit of plot that allows a song to fit (e.g. a character going to America prompts Letter from America).

But unlike most musicals, it doesn't feel like it skimped on making some good stories involving the characters, which feel more natural than most musicals. The performances by Peter Mullan and Jane Horrocks particularly stand out. And it's certainly "feel good", but where that normally is a term used to describe something schmaltzy and saccharine, it's more genuinely warm here.