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Reviews
The Forecaster (2014)
Not a documentary
An incoherent mess. This so called "documentary" does not present any coherent, logical reasons to believe Mr. Armstrong is anything but the runner of a Ponzi scheme. However, this is not how the story is presented to the viewer, instead all kinds of conspiracies (and incoherent predictions) are suggested. Almost all of the people being interviewed appear to be somehow involved in the scheme. Any Ponzi huckster needs to be able to BS his way to the top, and to cover his BS with even greater BS. If Mr. Armstrong made valid predictions, they should review a set of verifiably published predictions, not allow the people to pick and describe what predictions they made and how uncannily accurate they were.
In every Ponzi scheme, a lot of people did not believe it actually was a Ponzi scheme even after it was revealed to be such. There are a great number of Ponzi schemes involving algorithms purportedly predicting the market. Using the value of pi to predict markets is a ridiculous concept. In every Ponzi scheme, one essential question is that if somebody can predict the market, why would that person share this information with anybody? If the predictions become common knowledge, the market adjusts to these predictions, and there are no gains to be had.
Interstellar (2014)
Holy convenience, Batman!
Interstellar gets some things right, such as the mood and visuals. However, the plot is a complete mess, as it is in many Christopher Nolan films.
SPOILERS!
Some of the problems with the plot are the following: The characters spend a lot of time explaining things, but it is never explained how they know those things. (Five dimensional beings, etc.) There is logically no reason they could know those things. The characters land on a planet very close to the black hole, even though it should have been obvious that the previous astronaut could only have spent a couple of hours on the planet due to time dilation. The trip was only a plot device to make the characters move forward in time. Why would the daughter blame her father? She was as old as her father was when he left. Moreover, the daughter had spent years working with NASA, whereas the father had left soon after meeting them. Why would she still think that her dad knew something she did not? How did the main character know suddenly that the beings were people from the future? And, as the beings had clearly survived and existed in the future, why would they want to communicate with their ancestors? What was their message? "Remember love!"? Give me a break. And why couldn't they communicate more clearly? It is all an irritating plot device. And if it was somehow clear to the NASA people that the beings had "chosen" the main character, why would nobody study more closely the room through which they had communicated? Why would the character calmly fall into the black hole, and then start to panic about how he must tell himself in the past that he should not be allowed to go? If you've already accepted your death, that emotional state was a bit non sequitur. How did the daughter suddenly know that it was her father that was trying to communicate with her? That conclusion was not sane.
It is, of course, very difficult to make a logically consistent science fiction plot, and Interstellar did not even try, making the plot unintentionally humorous. When they hit a weak plot point, the music swells, begging the audience not to think at that moment. But in the end, I did not hate the movie. I certainly liked it more than Inception, which had many similar plot problems.
Che: Part One (2008)
Skim the fat, please
This movie left me with the impression that Steven Soderbergh decided to make two two hour long movies before the screenplay was written and didn't critically examine the decision afterwards. This first part mostly consists of the rebels wandering in the forests with no clear story arc or development. One could have radically rearranged the scenes in the middle part of the movie without affecting anything. Or added or deleted scenes. There are many scenes which consist of only a single line, followed by another scene that consists of a single line. (And the lines are mostly about the rebel code, or other vacuous topics that leave no imprint in your memory.) The story tightens somewhat near the battle scene at the end, but overall the movie left me with the impression that this probably should have been a single two-and-a-half hour movie instead of two movies. And this first part is not a very good advertisement for the second part.
But the movie does seems like a labor of love. And if you're in love, a little fat doesn't matter, eh?
RiP: A Remix Manifesto (2008)
Preaching to the choir, or I (heart) Girl Talk
This documentary (indeed, manifesto is correct) misses its intended point. On the one hand its arguing for the rights of remixers, on the other hand for the right to share and use, even when the point isn't to make something new out of it. If you really want to effectively argue the first, you shouldn't only try the "throw everything out" argument. If some artist wants to give their work away for free, more power to them (it's their choice). But that is a far cry from arguing that everybody should do that, and that the only allowable business model is charging for live performances.
The makers of the documentary should then have asked how the model could be changed so that you keep the good parts of it, while stopping the more egregious overreaches. (Even if it would eventually argue that it is not possible.) Even while Walt Disney used other's ideas, he didn't take their drawings, stories, dialogue etc. as is. So is there a fruitful way to draw a line? But the documentary makes no effort in that direction, and there is little reason to believe anyone on the other side is listening or even starts to think.
The makers should have tried to present their arguments to someone (intelligent) who doesn't share their viewpoint, and asked for their rebuttal (with sufficient time to prepare their argument). That's like sharing ideas, man. Like totally not what the movie is about.
The point of this documentary isn't helped the fact (IMO) that all the remixes and mash ups in it are pretty awful. And what is good in them could have been achieved without recycling beats and samples. And it is very clear from the documentary that the artists understand that they shouldn't be doing what they are doing under current laws, but no tough questions are asked from them, like why they still think its necessary or better to break them. (The argument is presented as "because I want to, I should be able to.") IMO, The artists involved should stop whining and make a creative commons collection of samples from which to build mash ups, remixes and whatever. Allowing others to make remixes of this documentary is a starting point. (But, again, kinda not the point presented in the movie, which is an argument against the ownership rights of artists and copyright holders.)