Orphan Films: The Dive / Dykket (1989)

Originally released by Virgin on VHS in North America, The Dive/Dykket was another trapped-underwatwer thriller produced to cash-in on the huge publicity around James Cameron's The Abyss.

Unlike George Cosmatos' Leviathan (Alien meets the Thing underwater) or Sean S. Cunningham's Deepstar Six (Alien underwater), Tristan DeVere Cole's The Dive is simple: two men trapped in a diving bell, and time is running out.

The melodrama is minimal, the underwater scenes chilling and suffocating in their loneliness, and the running time is compact and bereft of filler material.

Cole's film is apparently available on DVD in Norway, but this British-Norwegian co-production has yet to make its Region 1 release, and while that day will probably come, whatever label decides to undertake the release should think Special Edition, and include (at the very least) an edited commentary track with material from the director, the screenwriter, the producer, and the cast largely comprised of Nordic stage and screen stars, and Britisher Michael Kitchen, best known as the star of the popular Foyle's War series.

Until then, here's a review of this orphan film.



- MRH

Bloody Sweet Revenge

Eighties and nineties international action star Jean-Claude Van Damme was written-off as another casualty of direct-to-video hell, that awful place where once-popular theatrical actors and action stars (Wesley Snipes, Steven Seagal, Dolph Lundgren, Burt Reynolds) die slowly on video. I mean, one of his last films literally read 'Van Damme In Hell' and yet along comes JCVD, a clever little suspense drama that integrates the actor playing a persona of himself caught in a bungled bank heist.

The film isn't really a comedy nor action film, but it's a career high for Van Damme. Most of the scenes play quietly, but the man has two standout moments where he reveals genuine acting chops, something I never thought existed when you flash back to guilty-pleasure crapulence like Knock Off (1998).

JCVD (released by Kaboom in Canada / Peace Arch in the U.S.) rocks, and one really hopes Van Damme doesn't squander the opportunity to make more theatrical films. Of course, as the film arrives on DVD, Van Damme and Lundgren have reteamed for Univerdal Soldier 3, but the former is also helming The Eagle Path. Stay away from Hell, JCVD...

Whereas van Damme's revenge is critical - you have to give him some credit for a such a fine film - there's the more viceral revenge in Taken (Fox), the Luc Besson-Robert Mark Kamen scripted thriller released in February of 2008 in Europe, and in early 2009 in North America.

As Kamen states quite openly in the writer commentary track, Besson wanted to be the biggest film producer in France, and he probably is as bigwig of Europacorp, except most of the company's fodder is comrprised of sequels of exponential dullness (Transporter 3, Taxi 3 and 4, Crimson Rivers 2) and an odd collection of action comedies that have yet to be released here (Yamakazi, where art thou?) or films to which American studios hold the English language rights and refuse to allow the originals to exist on DVD. (Case in point: the original Taxi is only available as a French only DVD from Quebec's Crystal, whereas the garbage American remake is available from Fox. Disgraceful, although Besson signed the deal memo, so he's culpable, dammit.)

Taken is mean, and Liam Neeson carries the film as well as most of the stellar action work, and like JCVD, Taken is proof-positive that over-forty actors can deliver more gravitas and adrenaline than a baby-faced newbie with modest biceps and a teen youth following.

Unsurprising that it took a group of French filmakers to prove it to Hollywood.



- MRH

How to Kill the YoYo

*** Revised May 11/09 ***

You can’t kill it.

It’s too much of a headache, unless one is a supergeek, and that’s not the vast majority of PC users.

The YoYo virus is: an evil thing that corrupts the MBR (Master Book Record) and gums up the NTUSER files so you can’t even login.

What happens: as your computer goes through the boot sequence – you know, where it checks the A drive, then/or the CD-ROM, and then the master hard drive from where it starts to load everything the puter needs to launch – it stops as it attempts to read from the hard drive. Why? Because apparently it can’t find it, and all you see is the letter “Y” followed by the infinity symbol, followed by another “Y” and another infinity symbol.

You can’t bypass it, you can’t get into windows Safe Mode, you can’t do nothin'. Total system fubar, except your data is still safe, in its original file structure.

However, it can be passed on through a saved hard drive image if that image, unbeknownst to thee, has the bug somewhere inside - which is very much possible, because major anti-virus software like AVG nor Avast can see it, which means it sits and waits. You know when it makes itself known because your machine's speed starts to radically slow down, followed by a total system crash, and the only solution is to reboot or kill the power, thus enabling the reboot which won't complete due to the data that was likely being corrupted during that massive slow-down period.

If you have ERD Commander 2005, you can boot from that disc and move data onto another hard drive for safety. Unless you know what you’re looking for, I wouldn’t attempt to muck around with the registry and change anything. I tried a system restore the first time I had the bug (Xmas ’08), and it did nothing. Neither scanning for corrupted files or any crash info yielded results – everything seemed normal – so ERD lets you move data to a safe place, and that’s it.

(If you don’t have ERD, you can still dump data from the affected drive onto another using a second computer.)

I tried using the FIXMBR feature in the Windows XP installation disc (which is bootable), but while it does fix the MBR, the NTUSER files are still corrupted. All that happens – in standard, or in Windows Safe Mode – is as the XP Welcome screen appears, the system hangs because it can’t load the user data, let alone a login.

I had a clean image of the drive taken a month prior to the first assault back in November, and using Powerquest Drive Image 7, even extracting clean NTUSER files onto the corrupted versions using a second puter did nothing.

One post I read said copying/cloning the drive onto another, wiping the old, and copying the files back worked, but that seems to infer YoYo is a software glitch instead of a virus, unless it lives in the drive’s MBR outside of the operating system, and can only be killed through formatting.

The easiest solution (if the above cloning/wiping/copying back option fails), is to to a clean wipe and total reinstall, and create specific backup images that will minimize the wmost time-consuming stage of restoring the hard drive - the installation of Windows, followed by main programs, and then all the little programs that can easily be installed without extensive waves of update patches (as is often the case with Windows and other Bloatware).

Some message boards have affected PC users claiming secondary infections, as well as a theory where the bug is meant to hit at Xmas or New Year’s, although the dates of those posts vary from 2007 and 2008.

One thing is very, very clear now: come Christmas, I’m getting’ a Mac, and live in that strange neverland where an EXE file is as harmful as a gnat.



- MRH

Cool Docs

With the YoYo bug now gone (see next post as to how it was sent to Hell), here are the promised reviews of two documentaries with Cancon (Canadian Content for the unfamiliar):

- Died Young, Stayed Pretty (Warner Music Canada) – directed by Iranian/Canadian Eileen Yaghoobian, the film’s billed as a portrait of rock poster artists, but it’s so much more. Call it a snapshot of underground, punk, or culture kludge art that rebels against standard commercial campaigns, offends conservative minds, and yet functions as piercing, hyper-focused (dare one say it?) commercial art. Lots of interviews, including Tyler Stout, Art Chantry, Brian Chippendale, and Ron Liberti.

- Blue Gold (Mongrel Media) – based on the best-selling book by Canadian Maude Barlow and co-author Tony Clarke, Sam Bozzo’s doc follows in the footsteps of Flow (another doc about water control), but addresses the commodification of H2O by corporations to ensure revenues for the near future (er, forever). Not a pretty story, and none of the companies involved fare particularly well, including chocolate maker Nestle. It’s hard to call it anti-capitalist propaganda when small town Americans are fighting Nestle for their water rights, but it’s also sad that notice is being paid in the West because the issue of water control has reached our shores when it’s already upset developing countries.



- MRH

Fear the YoYo / Warner's Archive Collection

Back on May 1st, the main machine was hit with the YoYo virus, a headache bug that cripples the MBR (Master Boot Record) and gums up the NTUSER files to the point where, if ERD Commander is used (I know this is all gobbledeegook for 99.999% of the world, but bear with me), you can retrieve and copy files to another source, but loading into the affected hard drive is impossible during the normal boot-up.

Ergo, a few uploads are a wee bit behind (although when the problem is solved - as it's slowly being solved - I'll post another here's-how-I-solved-another-fine-mess so anyone who encounters YoYo has another set of options before reformatting everything, and spending a fair bit of time re-installing XP and all the little software and preferences you don't remember, because it was ages since you last dealt with them).

Reviews to be uploaded within the next 12 hours include Mongrel Media's great Blue Gold doc on the commodification of water, as well as Warner Canada's Died Young, Stayed Pretty, about underground music poster artists.

That brings me to a small blog on Warner Bros.' Archive Collection, which offers back catalogue titles on DVD. Like Criterion's Eclipse series, Warner's new brand is mean to put into circulation film titles for which the studio doesn't have the time to give a formal DVD release.

Warner's offerings are bare bones DVD-Rs featuring transfers from older video masters, if not the occasional recent transfer. Barrie Maxwell at The Digital Bits just published a good examination of the program, and speicifics on the available titles as culled by Peter York from posts in the Home Theater Forum (HTF).

Before you jump over to Maxwell's piece and check out the 70 titles tallied from the HTF, here's a few quick thoughts:

- in the case of Criterion's Eclipse series, while not cheap, the sets do feature rare films from a very broad spectrum (foreign, documentaries, experimental), and the films are basically new transfers lacking the fine restoration Criterion applies to their formal monthly special editions. Read: new/recent transfers, budget-styled pricing by Criterion standards.

- Warner's pricing starts out at $20 per disc, which is nuts. They're DVD-Rs of older transfers that arguably allow people 'to have' a film on disc even though some of the titles have apeared on TCM. Judging from the HTF comments, the DVD-R transfers are better than the compressed cable TV signals (in Ontario, TCM is still subjected to heavy, visible compression), but for that kind of pricing, I'd rather wait until TCM airs a film again and PVR the thing. I mean, some of the 'scope films aired on TCM aren't anamorphic, but they did air a gorgeous 2.0 Surround print of Boy on a Dolphin, which did not cost $20 + shipping/handling + duties.

My stance is perhaps more accepting of non-digital cable TV resolution simply because I grew up with VHS, Beta, laserdisc, and DVD, and in spite of the clear qualitative differences, there's wanting the best copy of your favourite film for the personal archive, and then there's just wanting to see a film, and sadly I'd settle for a blah cable TV signal because in the current economy, it seems foolish for Warner's to explect collectors are still willing to jump at every release with their VISA card.

- There's also small indie companies like Flicker Alley Films who invest all of their time and funds into creating higher-priced but notable special editions of rare films, and then there's a multinational entertainment behemoth like Warner's who made billions off The Dark Knight film, and can afford to sell old movies to a smaller fan base for true budget pricing. The transfers are extant, one can dub material with minimal real-time supervision, and replication costs with DVD-Rs probably hover around thirty-five cents, so $20 seems greedy.

You've got labels like Alpha Video and Passport dealing with public domain titles (film as well as TV), and releasing either boxed sets or individual films dirt cheap. If Alpha can sell DVDs of shopworn prints for under $5, paying an extra $15 for a studio equivalent is nuts.

Advice to Warners: price the films at $4.95 for standard feature-length movies (90-120 mins.), and $7.95 for 2-disc epics, and pack 'em in slim cases to reduce shiping charges.

If you want to sell more, the prices have to be competitive; if you want collectors to buy more, keeping the cases slim will save shelf space; and if you want more international sales, keeping the price low also saves on custom fees, if not brokerage fees from greedy companies like UPS.

(Canadians should NEVER use UPS for any international purchases - the brokerage fees are exorbitant and non-negotiable.) In Canada, anything valued at $20 U.S. can get slapped with duties; it might be as little as $1.25, but the post office will charge its $5 flat fee for brokering (which is still preferable to UPS' $20+).

The Archive Collection is a great idea, but not at the current price point, nor with the recent time-limited 2-for-one deal. They're old films and old transfers sitting on shelves that deserve lives, but the market is not as wealthy as it once was, and as more old films fall into public domain, Warner's may also find themselves competing against budget releases taken from collector prints whose quality is more than acceptible.

- MRH