The Right IP Address

A few years ago, Verena Paravel and J.P. Sniadecki’s Foreign Parts got some critical love and was a must-see film. The documentary’s setting in the Queen’s auto parts lanes besides the New York Metz stadium was also the setting for Ramin Bahrani’s Chop Shop, a film which made it across Canada. However, Foreign Parts has remained foreign and not touched my local Canadian shores theatrically or rental DVD. Currently, Amazon.com streams the film for $2.99 (USD), a few weeks ago that price was $2.35. The website also sells a digital copy of the film for $9.99. But one can only rent or buy this digitial film if they live in the US. The only legal option for me to view Foreign Parts is to buy the film's DVD. Amazon.ca sells a DVD of Foreign Parts in Canada for $29.71 (CAD). Hardly a fair differential to view the same film but people in Canada are used to paying more for everything. Even Canadian oil is cheaper in the United States than in the Canadian spots that extract the crude variety out of the ground.

Often excuses of tariffs, taxes, population and currency disparity is used to explain the price difference. None of these excuses matter when it comes to a digital streaming file which does not have to travel across a physical border. In fact, the price difference feels worse when it comes to streaming a digital file from a remote server which may be located in one common location. For example, iTunes US rents most new releases for $3.99 (USD) while the same film costs $4.99 (CAD) in iTunes Canada. At the current currency rate, USD 3.99 = CAD 4.09. And this ignores the fact that for most of last year, the Canadian dollar was on par or above the American dollar.

Then there are the lack of legal streaming options in Canada compared to the US. Fandor and Hulu don’t stream in Canada while Netflix.com has almost 10,000 more titles than Netflix Canada. SundanceNOW also has more streaming films in the US than in Canada. Licensing rights are blamed for lack of film availability in Canada. But there are many titles that have no distributor or rights holder in Canada. To make matters worse, in a few cases Amazon.com won’t ship a DVD to a Canadian postal code even though there is no place in Canada that sells the DVD. I ran into this problem last year when Film Movement confirmed in an email that they don’t have legal rights to sell The Country Teacher in Canada. As a result, Film Movement and Amazon.com won’t ship a DVD of The Country Teacher to a Canadian postal address.

When seeking reasons for the lack of film title availabilities in Canada, some say it is due to the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) regulations. But the CRTC can’t be blamed in all cases. Regardless of who is to blame, the fact remains that many films remain unseen.

If one followed the legal path, then one won’t have access to most films. But if a computer has the right IP Address, an American one in this case, then one has access to a world of films. But if a computer has a Canadian IP Address, then one must continue to be frustrated and see the message that the film is not available.

Healthy Cinematic Nourishment

David Bordwell has written a perfect response in defense of slow & nourishing cinema. Bordwell's entire article is an essential read but the final line in this paragraph is a fact that most film critics and film magazines regularly ignore:

Still, Kois’ complaint touches on something important about film history. We have a polarized film culture: fast, aggressive cinema for the mass market and slow, more austere cinema for festivals and arthouses. That’s not to say that every foreign film is the seven-and-a-half hour Sátántangó, only that demanding works like Tarr’s find their homes in museums, cinematheques, and other specialized venues. Interestingly for Kois’ case, many of the most valuable movies in this vein don’t get any commercial distribution. The major works of Hou, Tarr, and others didn’t play the US theatre market. Sátántangó is just coming out on DVD here, nearly twenty years after its original appearance. Most of us can’t get access to the most vitamin-rich cultural vegetables, and they’re in no danger of overrunning our diet.

In New York on any given night a film lover has atleast half a dozen worthy healthy cinematic options but the average cinephile living outside of New York has limited access to seeing rich cinema in theaters. So it is not a surprize that a put down of slow cinema would originate in a New York publication. The rest of North America, including Canada, has mostly cinematic junk food options.

The foreign film theatrical & DVD rental options in Calgary have gotten worse in 2011 when compared to 2007-08. The city still has three art house cinemas but the selections are not as diverse as a few years ago. The three cinemas have to regularly program Hollywood fare as the foreign distribution of films in Canada appears to have slowed down, especially outside of Toronto. On top of that, Calgary now only has one DVD store (Casablanca Video) where one can rent foreign/indie films. A few years ago, there were 3 excellent DVD stores (Video & Sound, Bird Dog Video and Casablanca) which carried the newest foreign films from around the world. Also, VHQ (owned by Movie Gallery) carried some foreign films titles as did Blockbuster & Rogers Video. However, all VHQ stores shut down as of last year and a handful of Blockbuster & Rogers Video stores have closed as well. Elsewhere in Canada, things are not that optimistic for DVD rentals either. In Edmonton, Sneak Preview closed up shop after nearly 30 years in business and Vancouver's Videomatica also announced plans to close up at the end of summer. Videomatica is still one of the best DVD stores in Canada and their DVD mail rental service is exceptional (majority of my film spotlights from my 2007-08 were possibly only because of Videomatica). Plus, zip.ca's foreign DVD rental selection has drastically gone down in the last few months leading one to question how long they will be able to hold on.

However, there is no shortage of Hollywood films in any Canadian or American city. If one wanted to gorge on the latest robot transformation exercise, then one can stumble into a multiplex near one's residence. If the off chance that someone missed the theatrical release of this Hollywood film, then the DVD, special edition Blu-Ray, special special director's cut with more noise edition DVD/Blu-Ray combo of the film will be available in every big chain grocery story in every city. Basically, one can never be short of junk food. And one cannot go too long before someone defends the virtues of cinematic junk, both here in North America and in India as well. Last week's tragic news of Mani Kaul's passing brought out plenty of remarks from a few Indians who said Kaul's films were difficult to follow. In fact, the late Manmohan Desai, famous for his Bollywood action/revenge films with Amitabh Bachchan, once remarked that it was harder to make "masala films" (popular commercial films) but anyone cold make an art film like Mani Kaul's debut feature Uski Roti. A variation of those words were repeated online last week when some people defended the junk of Bollywood over Indian art cinema.

Too much junk food is not good for the human body. Neither is too much cinematic junk. But of course, the argument is that one person's junk is another person's sophisticated taste.

Slow cinema in two takes in everyday life

1) Man Shaving his face

No matter how many blades get added to a razor, shaving is an activity that cannot be done in an instant. Certain portions of a man's face (especially around the chin) require one to slow down and carefully shave lest one cut oneself. Shaving is also a boring task. I am sure no man wakes up every morning and looks forward to shaving his face. Yet, it is also an essential task. Some people do get tired of shaving and grow a beard or variations of a beard to avoid cutting their facial hair. However, the men that shave everyday are heroes in their own slow cinema.

2) Ultrasound

Every parent will talk of the thrill in watching their baby's ultrasound video. The images are not the clearest nor is there any sound but the black and white grainy video is one of the most riveting set of images that a parent can see. In fact, parents will be patient and watch carefully for the slightest movement of the baby. Sometimes, the baby moves and sometimes he/she does not. An ultrasound video might offer much slower images than any of Hou Hsiao-Hsien's or Béla Tarr's films but no parent will ever describe their baby's ultrasound in the following manner:

"It was boring. Too slow. There was not enough action. The baby just sat there not doing anything."

Emotional interest --> visual cues

So why are ultrasound videos so enchanting for parents? Because the parents have an emotional stake in the ultrasound video. They are emotionally hooked and they will automatically adjust their eyes to look only at the baby and nowhere else. They do not need any cues to help them through the video. The same can apply for cinema as well. If cinema viewers have an emotional interest in the film, they will be able to adjust their eyes automatically to pick up objects of interest. By default, most audience have no emotional interest in robots or ogres but Hollywood assists film viewers by tacking on an emotional layer to their stories. Hollywood wants audience to care for a CGI generated image so dialogues are carefully written to incite support and even some humor is added to give personality to non-humans. Bollywood is another example of cinema overloaded with emotional manipulation. On the other hand, art cinema does not generate artificial emotion so that can leave some viewers lost and they would have no idea where to look.

When tourists walk out on a foreign street for the first time, some have a map and check for directions while some just follow any path in front of them. Cinema can be tackled in the same manner, either with a map or a complete dive into the unknown. Some effort is required on behalf of the cinematic tourist but the rewards are worth it. The problem is access to foreign cinematic roads is getting limited each year and maybe in the future (say next year), the only way to access rich foreign cinematic paths might be through hidden underground portals, lurking underneath some treasure bay.

Abundant Limited Choices

Sometime in the future....

“What movie do you want to go see?”

“I don’t know. What’s playing?”

“Transformers VI 3D, Shrek 6 3D, Spider Man 5 3D”.

“That’s it?”

“Yup. That’s it. Every multiplex in the city is only playing these three movies”

“Hmm. What do the critics say about these films?”

“What do you mean by critics?”

“You know, those people who review a film and sometimes give a rating.  Their reviews are printed in the friday newspapers”

“Oh..You don’t remember, do you?”

“huh?”

“Well..I don’t know where to start. You see, there are no more newspapers and so there are no more film critics.”

“What!! When did this happen?”

“When was the last time you saw a movie or read a newspaper?”

“Oh, I guess it has been a long time now...”

“There have been no newspapers printed in this city for almost a year now and the same is true for all North American cities. Most film critics were laid off two years ago and there have been no film reviews of any film anywhere in North America, atleast not officially.”

“what does officially mean?”

“After the North American film critics were laid off, most of them quickly went off to Europe where they have had a thriving career because films are still appreciated in Europe. The few critics that remained started some underground web sites where they wrote critical analysis of films.”

“Why underground web sites?”

“The thing is most Hollywood studios did not want people to review or judge their films. A few years ago, Hollywood decided to rebrand their films as an entertainment experience and thus were not happy when people wrote negative comments about their films. Hollywood decided audiences should sit in their seats, put on their 3D goggles and just consume whatever they put on screen, be it talking animals or green alien creatures. In order to prevent any chatter about their films, they got the governments (both Canada and the US) to prevent any mention of their films on the internet. The newspapers were already in trouble, so it was easy to get the newspapers to remove the film critics.  And then, the biggest coup for Hollywood was to ban all non-Hollywood films from entering North American shores.  This was the real clincher.  Once Hollywood prevented films from outside North America (such as Europe, Asia, Latin America) to ever be shown in any Canadian or American cinema hall, it became easy to control things.  The independent/art house theaters quickly went out of business because they didn’t have any foreign films to show and they could not afford the expensive 3D Hollywood films and then only the multiplexes were left who took whatever film Hollywood provided without question.”

“I don’t remember any of this.”

“In a way, I should not be surprized. You got so busy in your life that you stopped watching any films and no matter how much I tried, you never had time. Eventually, I stopped talking to you about films as I had given up on you ever watching a film again.”

“I am sorry. I never thought this could happen.”

“It’s okay. Even if you had watched the foreign films, this was going to happen anyway.”

“So what now? What films do you watch?”

“I don’t watch too many Hollywood films. There are still a few talented directors working in the Hollywood system who make intelligent and artistic films and I try to catch their works but I have to be on my toes as their films are only shown for a few days before the multiplexes are cleared for the next Transformers or Avatar 3D film.”

“I did see that film, Avatar.”

“Yeah, the 4th film in the series is coming out next week.”

“I only remember seeing the first one. I didn’t know there were more than one”

“You did live under a rock then.  The second and third films were almost mandatory viewings.”

“How were they mandatory?”

“Every night on TV, they kept announcing that this is the MUST SEE movie of the century and every human being on the planet must see the film. The ads and announcements worked in a way as lot of people saw the movie.”

“Did you see the movies?”

“I saw the first and second one and that was too much for me.”

“So what other films do you see?”

“Oh I try to go to Europe or Asia 1-2 times a year and get my films from there. Europe and Asia still have film festivals so it is possible to catch some great films there. And then, sometimes if I am feeling brave, I smuggle some foreign films home.”

“Smuggle?”

“Oh yeah. Officially, we are not allowed to bring any films into North America. And if one is caught with a foreign language film, they are then sent to a “cinema rehabilitation camp” for a week.”

“I thought you were going to say jail or something.”

“No, jail would be considered getting off easy. The  “cinema rehabilitation camp” ensures that a person’s brain will be purged of any non-Hollywood film images and that one would not want to watch any foreign films ever.”

“Do you know what goes on in a “cinema rehabilitation camp”?”

“I have only heard rumours. Apparently they chain you in a seat and pry your eyes open and force you to watch 8-10 hours of 3D Hollywood films in a day, and then repeat that for a total of 7 days.”

“Are you serious?”

Silence.

Finally, a burst of laughter.

“No I am not serious. We live in a democracy after all and are free to make our choices.”

A sigh of relief.

“Good. So you been making all this up?”

“Well only the “cinema rehabilitation camp” part. We can bring in any foreign DVDs we want. But the rest is true, we can’t watch any non-Hollywood films in a North American theater and there are no newspapers or critics.”

“Oh.”

“Cheer up. We can stay home and watch this great film from Malaysia that I bought last year.”

“Oh. Wow. That sounds great.”

“I am just glad you finally want to watch a film.”

“I can’t wait...”

“Good. And if you like that, then I have some films from Romania, France, India, Thailand that you have to see as well.”