movie

The da Vinci Code

Wednesday, February 21st, 2007 | Personal | No Comments

A good while ago this ‘spectacular’ movie came out, based on Dan Brown‘s novel. When it came out, most critics pretty much eviscerated it for its poor quality. Last week I watched it on DVD, and I have to say… the critics were pretty lenient on it. While the novel wasn’t exactly the pinnacle of literary craftmanship, it was leagues better than the movie. Now, if we neatly sidestep the whole anti-Christian bias in the novel and movie, there are still a great number of unfortunate changes from the novel.

Enter Langdon, the middle-aged bachelor university professor in religious symbolism. Hanks conveys the image of Langdon rather poorly in my opinion, but I’m sure others will disagree.

In the novel, Langdon is disturbed at his hotel room after giving a guest lecture on his latest book. In the movie we see the police officer show up in the middle of Langdon signing books and showing him a picture of Saunière (the guy who died, in case anyone is wondering) in the middle of it all. To the astonished gasps of the attendees. We quickly change the scene to the Louvre where Langdon is to be questioned by the chief investigator, Fachè, as his primary suspect.

In the middle of the investigation, the second main character shows up, the charming Sophie who is a member of the cryptography unit of the Paris police. She arrives with a faux phone message for Langdon telling him that he is in danger and she starts a ploy to ‘free’ him from Fachè. So far so good.

Now, once freed, they start discussing the fibonacci sequence that Saunière has written on the floor and Langdon suddenly guesses that it’s a key to the rest of the message that it’s an anagram for something else. Langdon, a professor in symbolism, sees this, not the female cryptographer who has spent ages learning about substitution ciphers, Vignière ciphers, elliptic curve cryptography and the Gods knows what else. Audrey Tautou is reduced to nothing more than a beautiful side-kick without the brains to go with a degree in mathematics. Pitiful.

Jumping a bit ahead, in the end of the movie, suddenly everything is revealed from Langdon glancing at a few newspaper clips that Sophie is actually of the Saint-Claire family and she is the sangreal. Then the whole Priory of Sion shows up in the church where this revelation takes place, and a woman tells Sophie that she is her grandmother. Now contrast this with the entire premise of the book: only four members of the Priory of Sion knows of the Sangreal: the three sénéchaux and the grand master, now the entire Priory shows up and says ‘by the way, hi, we’re here to protect you’. And then we close up the movie with a bit of philosophical meandering on whether Sophie revealing herself to the world would constitute the final breakdown of the Catholic church and restore the true gospel of Christ, or something to that effect. Honestly!

There is a host of changes from the novel to the movie, hardly any for the better, most for the worse. Wikipedia has a long list of differences for those who are interested in the finer details. I had low expectations for this movie, and even they were let down. The only relatively positive side to the movie was Sir Ian McKellen, as he successfully portrayed Sir Leigh Teabing to perfection.

Just pitiful.

Edit: Just to clarify then I am not regarding the book or movie as fact. I am also not demeaning the book. I am, however, saying that given whatever qualities the book may or may not have had, the movie loses any and all of them.

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Propagandising the audience

Sunday, June 11th, 2006 | Personal | No Comments

You may think of me as you please, but I have always been a fan of the Hollywood action movies like Die Hard, I, Robot, The Rock and Mr. and Mrs. Smith (the Pitt and Jolie version), to name a few. Tonight we were taking a break from our studies and put on Mr. and Mrs. Smith to watch, and what pops up first? A propaganda movie by the MPA(A). A propaganda movie that you cannot skip as it utilises the non-skip-able DVD setting (which was conveniently added to the format). Of course, there are players that allow me to skip past these things, but let us leave that for another time. Let us, rather, look at the contents of this rather educating production.

We are greeted with the message that You would not steal a purse, You would not steal a movie. And finally what this property theft appeal leads up to: Downloading a pirated movie is stealing. So they’re saying that copying a movie is the equivalent of stealing property from someone, rather than what it really is: copyright infringement. Now, copyright infringement is, according to the current laws in most places, of course, also illegal, but it is not the same thing as property theft. In property theft one party gains something and another one loses it. With copyright infringement one person has something, and now the other person has it too. It’s rather like ideas in that respect. Copyright protection is basically a protection of the collective ideas represented in your work. So what is this that the movie industry is trying to insinuate? That copyright infringement should be punished as property theft? What they’re doing is feeding us falsehood. Oh but it was only meant as an allegory would be a plausible defense on their part. An allegory indeed.

Over the past centuries these interest organisations have lobbied for longer and longer copyright periods. Copyright was originally An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned set down by the British in Statute of Anne and enacted from 1709/1710. This statute provided content providers (publishers in this case) 28 years protection of their works from being copied and thereafter the work would pass into what is known as the Public Domain. Since then content providers have lobbied governments to give them longer and longer copyright protection. So what started as 28 years is now up to (hold on to your hat and loose appendages) the lifetime of the author plus 70 years. The now more liberal Statute of Anne has allowed things like Project Gutenberg to exist. Imagine we would have to wait an average of 150 years until works become available for the encouragement of learning. All there is today is encouragement for companies to make money, unfortunately.

All this comes down to, of course, is whether the laws are made in the interest of the prosperity of the people, or in the interest of the prosperity of the corporate interests that donate money to our law-makers. The interest organisations for the music, software and movie industries are all trying to change the model of copyright, not into something we get (a CD, a program, etc.), but something we lease/rent from them. Something to which we have no rights. Something where we have to pay them money for each distinct place that we use it. This will, of course, be very interesting to these people as that will make them a lot of money. To make things a bit more concrete let us imagine that I want to buy the new Evanescence CD that is coming out in October. Now, I lease this once to be able to play it on my computer. But I also want to be able to listen to it at the stereo, so I have to pay again. Oh, and I’d like to put it on my MP3-player too, so I will have to pay again. This is the content provider’s dream. Imagine all the money they will get from those pesky consumers! The losers will, of course, become the consumers. The consumers would be you and me.

Now, I am not only saying this because I am a consumer and I think what the interest organisations are doing is immoral and against the benefit of society in general. I am also a content provider. I write books and papers. I have recorded music. I would get the same benefits. The difference is that I see no need to extort my fellow people of their every penny in order for them to be allowed to read my material. Imagine if publishers from 1710 had been given the right to lifetime plus 400 years. There would be no Project Guternberg. There would not be an encouragement of learning. The public domain would contain few of the great masterpieces of this world.

This made it into a fairly long post, which I had not intended, but I think society, and in particular our politicians, need to learn that copyright is a system that gives incitement for the content providers to invest money in providing content and at the same time, providing society with an enrichment of their culture, an encouragement of learning. There will be precious little new material for anyone to learn from for a long time with lifetime plus 70 years. We are hoarding our cultural legacy from ourselves by allowing these laws to be passed. I find it sad that interest organisations and politicians run free to ruin culture like this for some more money. Sad. Fortunately I am not alone in my perspective, in particular Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig is working hard in favour of returning to a copyright statute in spirit with the Statute of Anne. Limited protection for the content provider and cultural enrichment after this. Let us not sign away our culture to provide added revenue for a select group. Please?

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