'the internet went down for three hours this morning, plunging the nation into productivity..'
(Len Cariou, The Onion Movie)

The Matrix Reloaded

FeardotCom, deadend.com, Murder.com, FinalCut.com, cinematographically claimed domain names so far don't offer a very cheerful view on the biggest invention since human speech, something we won't need anymore soon by the way. Role reversal pedophile gameplay in Hard Candy, loneliness solving cannibalism in Grimm Love, obesity service in Feed, a wide variety of awesome family activities are initiated on the internet these days, now where's the downside? It can't be the violence in Doom: the first person shooter segment everyone is waiting for (also because the rest of the movie sucks) is actually quite cool. Maybe it's Tim Robbins sort of playing Bill Gates in Antitrust aka Conspiracy.com, after all Microsoft is the devil, but its leading ex-nerd is kinda funny and friendly. No, the only bad thing about the internet is its crazy amount of oponions everywhere: professionals, fanboys, bloggers and trolls all taking turns bashing art and each other. Forums, that's where true evil plants it roots. Try typing a message longer than two sentences and with proper punctuation, you'll get banned! A while ago I decided to start avoiding those places, or to only go there to read. My life has become much more relaxed since. General public lacking empathy is just as annoying as endless commercial popups.
 

Anti-piracy measures are predestined to fail. Sure, every now and then a big fish goes down, or a smaller one is arrested to scare all others, but in the end it won't make any difference. In fact, the discussion on copyright and morality has become such a terrible bore that I'd rather spend my time downloading more, just to piss off rich people. Of course this is all theoretically, as I would never ever ever download an avi via a Rapidshare forum, playable on my fully compatible Philips DVP5980 with practical USB-support, one of the best purchases ever. Internet has enabled me and you and everyone we know to get in touch with directors way easier than before. Whenever someone whose film I praised by e-mail, writes back in under an hour, I become very tempted to buy the dvd, no matter how hard it is to track down. Best example of this is lovely indie Zooey (no, not that one), by unknown Sherman Lau. 'Thank you for your kind words!' was the immediate reply. I would never have seen it without the internet, but now I proudly own a copy, bought legally and digitally overseas. Lau probably still is poor. If the whole production company system chokes and dies, art will not disappear. And recent polls have taught us that if capitalism somehow manages to vanish, only 20% of world population cares.

Watching complete movies on YouTube.. Are these people for real, are you kidding me? Of course I'm not talking about the technology next year, by then it's probably entirely possible to stream Blu-ray quality there. I actually had someone asking me to upload an entire film, when I published a small scene (for which I almost got banned by the way, I'm such a dirty criminal) to illustrate my love for it, embedded in a very decent article I might add. So I redirected him or her to Amazon, where the dvd was on sale for $1.99 or less. Reaction in return was a little unfriendlier repeat of the request, followed by another lovely user who threatened to report me for copyright infringement with this low quality clip. I want my internet back. Fifteen years ago, when only geeks inhabited this funny place, flame wars were much more civilized. For quite some time I have been pondering whether I should explain/defend my new website's sober layout, without any flash, scripts and other overrated techniques. But hey, I was here first. It's not even text only, lots of pretty pictures!

Tron Legacy

What will the future bring? Lots of unnecessary and awful remakes of course, an increasing amount of cutie Asian films about little girls with webcams, communities exploding with anger at the thought of more Matrix sequels, a real Y2K no one expected and beaming ourselves up towards more love than any of the sceptic real life people could ever imagine! How lovely it would have been had You've Got Mail been released two years later, then this definition of internet dating the right way was fit for major praise here. Apart from In Search of a Midnight Kiss (2007, Alex Holdridge), which starts with an online ad and then immediately moves outside, not a single comparable romance released this decade comes to mind, it's quite shocking! I can tell dozens of great personal stories, so if any screenplay writer out there is looking for a new smash hit, feel free to e-mail. None of them include dating in a clichéd way though, I guess lifelong friendships with soulmates of the same sex are less interesting from a commercial point of view. And gay porn is too widely available.

'we met in a chatroom, now our love can fully bloom..'
(Aaron Ruell, Napoleon Dynamite)
 

It's a well known fact that life imitates art. However, sometimes virtual life imitates cinema, how's that for a remarkable event. I've been playing World of Warcraft for over two years now, mainly promoting social contact, sucking at combat. Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games (MMORPGs) are a global revolution, personally as well. I have collected a lot of screenshots that remind me of movie scenes and the overall feeling is always one of actively participating in your own film. Now that millions and millions of people worldwide are entering amazing new, shapeshifting worlds like this, it's no surprise to see the phenomenon popping up in movies as well. Mostly they're about a slightly uncomfortable way out of loneliness, like prime example Ben X (2007, Nic Balthazar), a sad but fine Belgian film in which a stereotypical bullied autistic boy flees into something uninitiated people call a game, causing real and virtual life to blend beyond repair. Also interesting are several documentaries about the subject, trying to cover all areas, from people who met online and got married eventually, to addicts who lost everything. Rounding off with Chinese goldfarming (if you don't know what that is, you should really get in more) and expansion release madness, docs like Cyberkoelies and Second Skin make for great entertainment. If you do it right, internet enriches everything, hikikomori all the way! Now go google that one.   /tickle

'I love this internet.. it's part fantasy, part community, and you get to pay your bills naked..'
(Stockard Channing, Must Love Dogs)
 

(Menni, untamed.nl 2009)