Movies this week
Feb. 16th, 2004 10:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trocheeThanks to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
exterra for dragging me out of the lab to see Bedwin Hacker -- an excellent daylight-cyberpunk movie. Manages to pull off a real sense of hacking as something done by ordinary people. And it gets better -- the star and her nemesis are both women and both hackers; they fence their way through a fairly believable hacking duel. I might quibble with some of the technical details -- but that's just it -- quibbling. It's a believable portrayal of what a real hacker duel might look like -- one of them in a scruffy little outpost on the Moroccan/Algerian border, another in a dumpy little office in downtown Paris, over several days. The male characters in this movie -- and there are several, believe it or not -- are alternately buffoons, smart-asses, and trophies, (== window dressing) which makes a nice change from "traditional" cyberpunk.
Nevertheless, Bedwin Hacker throws in references to the regular cyberpunk themes: at one point, for example, the anti-colonialist hacker gang spends the night in the desert and are awoken by police, who ask the rockstar among them to sign an autograph. Sounds like something out of Mona LisaSmile Overdrive except without the misogyny. It's fast, it's fun, it's got kickass girl hackers, it's got good music. I'm thinking of buying a copy.
Also -- tonight -- I went to see Les Triplettes de Belleville, a bizarre French animation about a Tour de France racer who is abducted, and his grandma's trip to Belleville (New York, in extreme parody) to rescue him. Sounds like a dark movie, but it's not. Unless you feel bad about hunting frogs --no, not frogs like the ethnic slur, just frogs. The car chase at the end is a top-form parody of Hollywood action flicks, and Madame Souza's trip across the Atlantic in a rented paddlewheel is a classy piece of animation. Suspend your disbelief like a caramel from a string and go enjoy this movie.
exterra for dragging me out of the lab to see Bedwin Hacker -- an excellent daylight-cyberpunk movie. Manages to pull off a real sense of hacking as something done by ordinary people. And it gets better -- the star and her nemesis are both women and both hackers; they fence their way through a fairly believable hacking duel. I might quibble with some of the technical details -- but that's just it -- quibbling. It's a believable portrayal of what a real hacker duel might look like -- one of them in a scruffy little outpost on the Moroccan/Algerian border, another in a dumpy little office in downtown Paris, over several days. The male characters in this movie -- and there are several, believe it or not -- are alternately buffoons, smart-asses, and trophies, (== window dressing) which makes a nice change from "traditional" cyberpunk.Nevertheless, Bedwin Hacker throws in references to the regular cyberpunk themes: at one point, for example, the anti-colonialist hacker gang spends the night in the desert and are awoken by police, who ask the rockstar among them to sign an autograph. Sounds like something out of Mona Lisa
Also -- tonight -- I went to see Les Triplettes de Belleville, a bizarre French animation about a Tour de France racer who is abducted, and his grandma's trip to Belleville (New York, in extreme parody) to rescue him. Sounds like a dark movie, but it's not. Unless you feel bad about hunting frogs --no, not frogs like the ethnic slur, just frogs. The car chase at the end is a top-form parody of Hollywood action flicks, and Madame Souza's trip across the Atlantic in a rented paddlewheel is a classy piece of animation. Suspend your disbelief like a caramel from a string and go enjoy this movie.
