The 11th hour change of my Father's Day movies

I watched four movies on Sunday, which was Australian Father's Day, but I had planned to watch a different four movies. 

Rather, I had planned to watch three different movies and a fourth that I did ultimately watch, but in a different format than I had planned to watch it.

I was all set to start with the 1999 adaptation of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, which would seem like a totally random selection for this mini Father's Day marathon except that I'd finished reading the book just the day before. In fact, I had planned to write here about my expected Benedict Cumberbatch double feature, as I was also going to watch this year's The Courier. No, Cumberbatch is not in Mansfield Park, though at 23 years old in 1999 he would have been the appropriate age to play one of the Bertram children. Actually, what happened was that when I was reading Mansfield Park, I pictured Cumberbatch in my mind for the character of Edmund Bertram. (The character is actually played by Johnny Lee Miller.)

I was also going to do this month's edition of my blog series I'm Thinking of Kaufman Things, that being Synecdoche, New York. 

The fourth movie was always going to be WarGames, and it still was -- actually the second movie, chronologically. This gets me into aforementioned format in which I had planned to watch it, which is really what I want to talk about today.

It turns out you can't watch iTunes movies through your projector. Not my projector, anyway.

I'm sure you are as surprised as I was. 

I kind of figured that as long as you had the projector hooked up to your computer, the projector would display whatever was on the computer screen. This is not the case. 

When I started Mansfield Park and could not see anything on screen, at first I attributed this to a very dim opening credits sequence. It was about 1:30 in the afternoon and the light was only imperfectly being blocked from getting in to our garage. Once the credits were over and the movie got into its unending succession of daytime scenes, I'd be fine. Or so I figured.

But I thought it was really curious that I could see absolutely nothing on screen, and when there was some daylight a minute later, the condition persisted.

Befuddled and more than a little bit annoyed, I googled it, and it appears that iTunes movies will not play on certain digital projectors. This flummoxed me. Certain older digital projectors, the article said. Mine is less than a year old but it is also not the most expensive version on the market (not by a long shot). Neither is it it the cheapest (not by a long shot). As hard as it was to believe that I had spent as much money on this projector as I had, in order for this to be one of its practical limitations, this was the only explanation that made any sense about why I couldn't see what I was expecting to see.

I can't even remember what the technical explanation for this was, and can't be bothered to google it again.

There was some lingering uncertainty about whether it might be just this one particular file having the issue, so just to be sure, I risked starting another. I say "risked" because once you start your rental, you are committing yourself to watching it within the next 48 hours if you don't want to let it expire. And since you paid for it, usually you don't. Through the Mansfield misstep, I'd already added a Monday night movie to my viewing schedule and I didn't want to add a second.

WarGames made the perfect sacrificial lamb.

My iTunes rental of WarGames represented what I believe is a personal first: Paying money to rent a movie that I already owned. Why would I do such a thing? Well I'll explain.

I had planned to have only my computer hooked up to the projector throughout the day, which also included five hours of baseball in the morning. Just seemed easier. I own WarGames on DVD, but it's an American DVD, meaning it requires a multi-regional DVD/BluRay player. Which we have, but it's the kind that's part of your home entertainment setup, not the kind that connects to a laptop. I do have such a USB DVD/BluRay player, but of course it is not region free. 

So even though we own WarGames, which I had already decided was my choice for a Father's Day family movie, I paid the $3.99 rental for the convenience of having it on iTunes. 

This of course also made it a good tester movie. Even if I started the 48-hour rental window, it didn't matter, because we own the movie anyway. 

Well, it didn't make a difference. The problem still existed.

Okay, time to call an audible. I did what I had previously considered such an inconvenience to do: brought my multi-regional DVD player out to the garage. Really, it was quite easy. Should have done it in the first place.

So three movies from my collection -- Wanderlust, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and This is Spinal Tap -- took the place of Mansfield Park, The Courier and Synecdoche, New York. It's just as well, as I had a half viewing of Star Trek IV about six years ago and it's nice to have made it all the way through this one. Plus I was surprised to note it had been more than eight years since my last Tap viewing -- quite a long time for a film in my top ten on Flickchart. Back then I watched it twice in two years, so I guess I still had a lingering impression that I'd seen it recently. (It had been only five years since my second viewing of Wanderlust. This was my third.)

Mansfield Park? It did get watched on Monday night. 

Disappointing. The book was much better. (Gee, what a surprise.) Having finished reading so recently, I was in a unique position to assess the changes they'd made in this adaptation, many of which had to do with tightening up a 470-page book. I get that you need to do that, but some of the choices really sacrificed the character depth, while certain characters that I thought were important had been excised entirely. Plus there were too many instances of taking something that might have been deep, deep subtext in Austen's book and turning it into text. I'd go into detail if I thought there were any chance you had read Mansfield Park, recently or ever.

Regarding the projector, it's really annoying to learn of these limitations, but I guess it's better to find out now than in a situation where it really matters: one of my Friday-to-Sunday marathons at a hotel, where I can't just pop over and get substitute DVDs from my collection. Last time I streamed most of the movies I watched, but what if the hotel WiFi is in the crapper? iTunes would have been my backup, and in that case, it would have been a poor backup indeed.

My last one of those was last November, and I usually do about one per year. I'd be due for another but the current lockdown is making that considerably less likely. 

So movies in my garage on Father's Day will have to do ... for now. 

An artificial intelligence echo

I watched four movies on a projector in my garage yesterday for Australian Father's Day, and I may be able to get two posts out of it. Actually three now that I think of it. Which is good, because I've been in a bit of a creative slump lately when it comes to this blog.

The first one has to do with a coincidence, and it's a lot more interesting of a coincidence than the coincidences I usually waste your time with.

How about a full half of the four movies containing a computer that asks someone how they feel?

The first one might not surprise you: John Badham's 1983 classic WarGames, which is currently #32 on my Flickchart. An obvious all-timer for me.

The second wouldn't have been something I even thought of until the moment in question actually occurred in the movie. That's Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, another top 100 film on Flickchart (#85) that I hadn't seen in way too long.

When David Lightman (Matthew Broderick) first finds the back door password to log into the WOPR, otherwise known as Joshua, the interaction begins with the question "How are you feeling today?"

It surprises Jennifer (Ally Sheedy), who asks how a computer can ask that. "It'll ask you whatever it's programmed to ask you," David offers helpfully.

The echo in Star Trek IV was kind of astounding. You may recall that before he leaves Vulcan following his rapid regrowth on the Genesis planet (events covered in Star Trek III), Spock (Leonard Nimoy) undergoes a computer assessment of his mental acuity. He nails the answers to such rapid-fire questions as "What is the molecular formula of yomium sulfide crystals?" and "What is the electronic configuration of gadolinium?", but this one stops him dead in his tracks:

"How do you feel?"

And then, because he doesn't respond:

"How do you feel? How do you feel?"

His (human) mother comes in to try to contextualize this part of the assessment that Spock cannot compute, and it leads to a discussion of how his crewmates acted in opposition to their own collective interests when they risked so much to retrieve him from Genesis. 

"Humans make illogical decisions," says Spock.

"They do indeed," says his mother.

The reason I include that last part is that it is also an echo of WarGames. When Joshua asks David, who has logged in under the profile of Stephen Falken, to offer an explanation for the reports it received that Falken was dead, David types in:

"People sometimes make mistakes."

Joshua, in his perfectly creepy synthetic voice, responds "Yes they do."

I'm glad to report that the viewings firmly reinforced these films' entrenched position in my top 100 of all time.

The movies shared some more minor things in common, like both involving U.S.-Russian relations regarding nuclear material, both ending on scenes of cheering control rooms, and even both featuring scenes involving spilled garbage cans. But I won't bore you with those today.

More on my Father's Day mini-marathon tomorrow.

Take my overstock, please!

We've all seen merchants trying to unload overstock DVDs wherever they can.

The discount bin at Target. That spot next to the TV Guides at the grocery store checkout. Even the 99 Cents store.

But the back of a cereal box? That's a first for me.

Yet that's what Kellogg's is doing with eight completely random titles right now. I discovered this strange little campaign on the back of my box of Raisin Bran Crunch.

All you have to do is collect five "tokens" from the back of their boxes of cereal, complete an official order form, and send it in before 3/31/11, and you get one of these great films!

Chain Reaction (1996, Andrew Davis)
Goosebumps: Attack of the Jack O'Lanterns (2009, various)
Ghoulies (1985, Luca Bercovici) & Ghoulies II (1987, Albert Band) (double feature)
High Crimes (2002, Carl Franklin)
Swamp Thing (1982, Wes Craven)
Swimfan (2002, John Polson)
WarGames (1982, John Badham)
When Good Ghouls Go Bad (2001, Patrick Read Johnson)

Listed in (almost) alphabetical order, for your convenience.

In case you were under the mistaken impression that this is the most random collection of movies you've ever seen, here is how Kellogg's tries to tie them all together:

"Catch your choice of (giant letters) THRILLS and CHILLS! Suspense, betrayal, revenge, cover-ups, surprise twists, chilling screams, scary creatures and edge-of-your-seat action - make it a thrilling movie night with your choice of crowd-pleasing films from FOX and MGM SELECTIONS!"

Um, okay. Yeah, that about covers it.

But wait, there's more! If you buy a copy of Aliens in the Attic at any store where DVDs are sold, you can complete the official $3 mail-in rebate from inside this package and send it in with your sales receipt!

I'm serious. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.

I'm not saying all these movies are bad -- in fact, I consider WarGames to be among my hundred favorite films of all time. But just the randomness of this group of movies ... it's astounding. I know, they're all connected by the fact that they were put out by either Fox or MGM, but those studios have put out a ton of movies over the years, so this particular selection is still suspect.

If anything, I think it makes the people at Kellogg's look darn silly. They're the ones putting this motley crew of titles on the back of their product, attempting to create a sense of urgency about them.

If they were at least movies that had been released in the last couple years, it would make sense as some kind of promotion of (relatively) recent releases. But only one of these DVDs was released since 2002, the combo pack of three episodes of Goosebumps. Which, as far as I can tell, is the only non-movie in the bunch.

Funny thing is, if I didn't already own WarGames on DVD, I might actually collect enough tokens to send in for that one. (Tokens which are green, and read, quite optimistically, "Movie Lovers Collection.") I mean, I'm probably going to keep buying a box of Raisin Bran Crunch about every month, so it's not like I'd really have to go out of my way. I have nearly ten months to do it, assuming they don't sell out before then (ha ha).

But to get Swimfan or Chain Reaction? I don't think so.

(And poor Morgan Freeman. He actually appears in two of these movies.)

I guess I should view it as some kind of tribute to my good taste that I've seen only two of these movies, WarGames and Swamp Thing (which, if I remember, actually has some B-movie charm).

I do see, however, that neither Ghoulies or Ghoulies II is currently reviewed on my site ... hmmm ...