The british-based TNS Research group found out that constantly checking Mails at work, writing SMS’ and stuff like that drops a workers’ IQ temporarily by 10. Smoking a Joint only lets the IQ drop by 4 for some time. Very interesting, indeed… ^_^

You can read the whole article over here at CNN.com.

After the last week of more or less chaotic planning, today we finally got to the first day of filming our current shortmovie, “Catch Mr. Parker”. Anyway we wanted to start shooting all our outside shots at 8 am, and finish at like 3 to 5 pm. Of course, what really happened was, shooting started at around 9 am, and we finished at half past 8 in the evening. Thing is, on such occasions you (or at least, I) plan ahead the day, like “smooth I can makeup lost hours of sleep from yesterday this evening if we finish early”. And then you hit home at 10 pm completely exhausted, and the next day will start at 8 am with shooting again.

Thank god I got a free monday after this weekend ^_^

But as hard and long as the day was, our pictures takes were smoothly done, and we finished all the work we planned for today at last. And when the team is good, reliable and nice to each other, working is half as exhausting and double the fun.
Well I guess it will be often if not always like then out in the movie industry after I finish my studies, but I can only hope that the teams are as comfortable as here then too. It’s really as the old saying goes, “hope dies last” ^_^

Good Music. Good Video. Good Animation. One Eyed Films’ “I love Death” tries to re-capture famous and not-so-famous memories of live and put them into a neat animation and a good song. Which I have to admit, it does very well.
Oh, and the music from the video is from the Helsinki-based band Lodger, their website with their songs from the debut album and other videos like this can be found at lodger.tv. This seems to be the bands official music video, but I don’t know if it runs on finnish television or is just made for the internet - but they should broadcast more alternative videos like this on MTViva rather than the standard band-is-playing-to-some-footage kind of videos.
I really love the way all their videos are completely politically incorrect though in a nice and witty way. But I hate that their website has a really aweful navigation where you have to spin a one armed bandit in order to get to the menu entries. So I will post here the actual links to the other videos or, where the website just wouldn’t show the actual link, a mirror site:

I love Death
Doorsteps
24 Hour Candy Machine
God has rejected the Western World

I found this little Flash animation very funny and entertaining. In its heart it is a advertisement for Hitachis new harddrive technology, but it is deliciously executed, and you even learn something about harddrive techniques in general!

World War II is one thing. Propaganda is another, although closely intervened with the former. Disney is a whole other thing, one should think at least. But Disney did a lot of really cliché propaganda flicks during the war, including most of their leading characters at the time. Also uncle Scrootch (Dagobert Duck for the german readers) was introduced at that era, as the cruel and (axis-) money-loving uncle to Donald.
Anyway, the 2 most popular (while still not really popular at all) warflicks I will review here. They aren’t, at least to my knowledge, anywhere available on the www, at least not hosted on a free site. You can get them thru various file sharing tools though, like Kazaa (Lite), EDonkey and others. So without much further ado, down to the reviews of the 2 shortmovies…

Just to make it clear from the beginning: I despise everything the nazis did in World War II. I did not, do not, and will never be attracted to anti-semitism or war in general. But neither do I like war-propaganda, from which source it may ever roam. All I want to try with this post is inform you about the propaganda the US made in the war - and how much they sometimes disturbed and clichéd their enemies to strenghten the loathe for those people in the own population.

“Der Fuehrer’s Face”

This one starts out with german soldiers walking the field making military music. They walk the now-forbidden scissor-stride (don’t know the exact english word for it, but you get the point from the pictures. They walk with their legs streched out, not bending their knees). Also everything in the landscape is swastika-shaped. Trees, windmills, bushes, fences, even houses. The “song” they sing is “Der Fuehrers Face”. Lyrics go like this: “When der Fuehrer says, he is the masterrace We ‘heil, heil’ right in der Fuehrers Face Not to love der Fuehrer is a great disgrace So we ‘heil, heil’ right in der Fuehrers Face When Herr Göbbel says, we own the world in space We ‘heil, heil’ right in Herr Göbbels Face When Herr Goring says, they never bomb this place We ‘heil, heil’ right in Herr Gorings Face Is he not a super-man? Aren’t you a super-man? Ja he is the super-man Super-duper-super-man! Is this nazi-land so good? Would you leave it if you could? Ja this nazi-land is good We wouldn’t leave it if we could!” Then the camera pans over to a little house in the land. Inside good-old Donald Duck is sleeping in his pyjamas, doing the Hitler greet asleep as the troops walk by. After greeting Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito, Donald puts on his brown uniform (at least now we realize he’s in the german army) and dunks a coffee-bean into a cup of water to make it taste like coffee-something. Together with a breeze of “Aroma of Bacon & Eggs” and a stone-hard piece of bread that makes up his breakfast. When the soldiers walk by his door, one steps in and suddenly makes him read from the book “Mein Kampf”. All the chapel soldiers walk in and take him outside with them - only to hit him and make him hold up one of the large instruments they are playing. The scene then fades into the shot of a smoking industry building, and a narrator speaks the following lines: “Workers of nazi-land The glorious priviledge is yours to be a nazi To work 48 hours a day for the Fuehrer When the Fuehrer says, we never will be slaves We ‘heil, heil’, but still we work like slaves While the Fuehrer frags, lies, rants, and raves We ‘heil, heil’, and work into our graves” Donald has to work at the assembly line in this building, assembling bullet shells. The various bullets fly by him faster and faster, always more. When he secretly mumbles something not-so-good against the Fuehrer, guns and bayonets come out from everywhere, yelling at him “Schweinehund, Heil Hitler”. After some more incidents like this, and a short vacation (that means, a background of the alps gets dropped behind him and he gets to do some gym workout for the Fuehrer) Donald freaks out completely. Suddenly the whole movie turns into a LSD-like horrortrip, with swastikas, bullets and Hitler-lookalikes flying around everywhere and the theme music going completely crazy! After the horrortrip reaches climax, Donald wakes up in his bed again, this time in his stars-and-stripes pyjamas. Spotting a human shadow with one arm up on the wall, he quickly rises to do the Hitler greet, only to realize at last that the shadows is not a nazi, but a miniature of the statue of liberty standing in his window. With the words “I am proud to be a citizen of the united states of America” he kisses and hugs her, and the movie fades out. But it’s got one scene still left, a comic-ish picture of Hitler with the theme song “Der Fuehrer’s Face” playing. A few rotten tomatoes get thrown and mashed at him, and “The End” appears onscreen.

“Spirit of ‘43″

Spirit of ‘43 starts out with a bell ringing the sweet sound of payday, and blowing little steam-powerered dollar signs into the air. The narrator voice tells us: “Yes, payday. Millions of dollars pouring into the hands of american workers. Though in the mind of the average worker live 2 separate personalities. One, the thrifty. And often idle money burns a hole into your pocket. This brings up the other personality, the spendthrift.” The thrifty is manifested through Uncle Scrootch, who made his first appearance in this movie. The spendthrift type is manifested through someone who looks like Donalds cousin, but could really be anyone in chic clothes. He tells Donald to spend his money for some dates in the girls club, or other good stuff. The thrifty tells him he has got some better deeds. We hear the narrator again speaking: “Important deeds too. Every american should pay his or her income tax gladly and proudly. This year, thanks to Hitler and Hirohito, taxes are higher than ever before. Will you have enough money on hands to meet your payments when they fall due?” The spendthrifty personality tells Donald “we can take care of that later, forget about it now”. Uncle Scrootch insists Donald to “not forget about our fighting men, do ye?” which he replies “No sir!”. So Donald is torn between those 2 suggestions, spending the dough because it is his, or saving it for income taxes. After a short brawl between the 2 personalities for Donald, they both get kicked away to either side. Then the narrator asks: “Now, what are you going to do? Spend for the axis? Or save for taxes? Just remember, every dollar you spend that you don’t need Is a dollar spent to help the axis!” Of course Donalds option is clear: He saves for taxes. Maybe he heard the narrator, too, telling us: “For it is your taxes, my taxes, our taxes that run the factories. American factories, working day and night. Factories making guns, machine guns, anti-tank guns, long range guns, guns, guns, all kinds of guns - to blast the aggressors from the seas! Taxes for american factories working full blast making planes, bombers, dive-bombers, flying fortresses, interceptors to stop the birds of prey that fly by night. Taxes to bury the axis! Taxes to keep them flying! Taxes to keep them rolling! Taxes to keep them coming! Taxes to beat to earth the evil destroyer of freedom and peace! This is our fight, the fight for freedom. Freedom of speech, of worship. Freedom from want, and fear. Taxes will keep democracy on the march!”

Closing comment: In war, every side does cruel things. Not all nazis were the flesh-eating berzerkers the propaganda displayed them like. And not every ally soldier was hospitable to german civilians. World War II had to be fought, at least from an allied point of view - Hitler had to be stopped. But the ones to suffered probably the most in the war were all the children, old and women in their bunkers, or working on the streets of even at Flaks in the last stage of the war. And now, to not let this end up in an endless rant, and to have a nice quote to think about, the very last sentence of this very long post:

“The only one who wins in war, is death himself.”

After like 3 month of advertising, today finally the first episode of the series “Lost” aired on german, and therefore austrian television. After all the hype the local broadcast station made about the show pre-release I set great expectations in it - and have to say, the show lived up to them!
To american readers this is sure old news, because the show is probably in the second season over there now. But anyway, for all who don’t know about the show yet, here is a quick synopsis:

Darkness. Pain. Then the shining sun. A bamboo forest. Smoke and screams.
Slowly Jack regains conciousness. And realizes the gritty truth - the plane he was in crashed into the jungle.

The surviving passangers are made up of families, friends, foes and strangers. Some do not lose hope that a rescue team will come and find them, therefore staying calm. But others freak out and show their very darkest sides in this exile.

But in order to survive, they have to work together. Because not only weather and the rough terrain of the island they are stranded on are their enemies, also there are bone-chilling sounds and screams all day and night. A deadly power - the island has its own gruesome secret.

So 48 people struggle to survive the horror.

What I really liked about the first episode is that you don’t really see the plane crash in the beginning of the show, rather it is shown in perspective of some characters in flashbacks - which makes it even more thrilling and dramatic. And what showed up in the first episode too, was that almost everyone of the survivors has some secret the others shouldn’t know about.
And of course another reason to watch the show, is that it’s got Dominic Monaghan. Who was absolutely brilliant in the role of Meriadoc “Merry” Brandybuck in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

So to finish this long post up, if you haven’t done yet, you should really check out this series, very well done, both actor- and director-wise. Pick your local station for airdates (in germany it’s on ProSieben every monday evening).

Edit: For those in germany or austria who missed the first episode, on next Sunday the first episode gets aired again, on 10-something in the evening, on ProSieben.