October 25, 2021

Sintel and Scales, a dark animated short about losing and finding your dragon

Filed under: Film by Branko Collin @ 5:06 pm

This 12 minute short film follows a young woman called Sintel as she tries to track down the creature that abducted her pet dragon, Scales.

The indie was produced in 2011 in order to showcase the possibilities of free and open source software Blender, and was funded using financial support from the Netherlands Film Fund and from hundreds of private sponsors.

The film was directed by Colin Levy after a screen play by Esther Wouda, in turn inspired by a concept by Martin Lodewijk. The characters of Sintel and the shaman were voiced by Halina Reijn and Thom Hoffman respectively and the music was composed by Jan Morgenstern.

Every year the Blender Foundation creates a so-called ‘open movie’ to show what can be made with the current version of its software.

(Illustration: crop of the video, YouTube / Blender Foundation)

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January 16, 2021

Sailing from Rotterdam to Amsterdam (time-lapse video)

Filed under: Architecture,Film,History,Nature,Photography by Branko Collin @ 4:22 pm

In 2013 Shell had to transport an eight-story metal building from Rotterdam to Amsterdam.

They hired a company called The Timewriters to create a time-lapse video of the transport, which has now been released in glorious 4K format on YouTube, accompanied by a beautiful, if somewhat ill-fitting Dvořák piece.

The day-long journey begins on the Nieuwe Maas river near the Feijenoord neighbourhood in Rotterdam, then goes past Gouda, Alphen aan de Rijn and Schiphol Airport to end in Amsterdam. If it hadn’t been dark by then, you might even have been able to see my house at 9:14.

This is worth watching for the bridges alone.

And then you come back a second time for the places you know and a third time to figure out how and why the Dutch created their environment the way they did.

Also check out the comments on YouTube, lots of insights from people who recognise certain types of trains, planes and places.

(Source: YouTube / The Timewriters)

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December 9, 2020

Dutch film ‘Accused’ sold to the US

Filed under: Film by Orangemaster @ 6:00 am

Directed by Paula van der Oest and written by Moniek Kramer, Dutch thriller ‘Accused’ from 2014 (in Dutch ‘Lucia de B.’, named after the main character and real-life accused Lucia de Berk – Dutch tradition only allows a last name initial in the press) has been sold to American interests, according to Dutch broadcaster Omroep West. The film is scheduled to be released early next year in North America, according to Rinkel Film. ‘Accused’ was selected as the Dutch entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 87th Academy Awards, making the January Shortlist.

In 2001, Lucia de Berk a licensed paediatric nurse from The Hague was accused of having murdered dozens of patients. Most of her guilt was determined by statistics: she had been near the victims at the time of their deaths, and although a direct link with her in the form of a confession or evidence could not be established, the court found that the statistical likelihood of her being near all these victims at the time of death was so minute, she must have done it.

According to Wikipedia, in 2003, she was sentenced to life imprisonment (for which no parole is possible under Dutch law) for four murders and three attempted murders of patients in her care. After an appeal in 2004 she was convicted of seven murders and three attempts. Her conviction was controversial in the media and among scientists, and was questioned by investigative reporter Peter R. de Vries. In October 2008, the case was reopened by the Supreme Court of the Netherlands, as new facts had been uncovered that undermined the previous verdicts. De Berk was freed, and her case was re-tried; she was exonerated in April 2010.

At this time it’s unclear whether the film will hit movies theatres due to the health crisis, but it will be available as video on demand (VOD).

(Link: denhaagfm.nl, Photo of Lucia de Berk by Carole Edrich. Some rights reserved)

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November 10, 2020

Leiden University prints a micro-sized Star Trek starship

Filed under: Film,Science,Technology by Orangemaster @ 11:59 am

According to CNN and BoingBoing on Twitter, while developing methods to 3D print synthetic micro-swimmers, microscopic devices that can propel themselves by interacting with the chemicals in their surrounding environment, researchers at Leiden University printed a model of Star Trek’s USS Voyager that’s just 15 micrometers long. As a comparison, a human hair is around 75 micrometers in diameter.

By studying synthetic micro-swimmers, we would like to understand biological micro-swimmers,” Samia Ouhajji, one of the study’s authors, told CNN. This understanding could aid in developing new drug delivery vehicles; for example, microrobots that swim autonomously and deliver drugs at the desired location in the human body.

Why did they go for Star Trek and why one of the franchise’s later starships? Jonas Hoecht, one of the study’s co-authors, claims to be a big Star Trek fan and was told he could print anything he wanted. Of course, I still want to know why he opted for Voyager and not a version of the Enterprise, but it’s still extremely cool.

(Link boingboing.net, image ealclearscience.com)

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October 13, 2020

Facebook blocks Lebowski quote search engine by mistake

Filed under: Film,IT,Online by Orangemaster @ 3:05 pm

According to British-Canadian journalist and author Cory Doctorow on Twitter, Dutch digital rights activist Hans De Zwart, who used to head up digital rights organisation Bits of freedom in Amsterdam, created the search engine thebiglebow.ski that generates fun quotes from 1998 American cult classic ‘The Big Lebowski’.

Right from the start, the site had the rug pulled out from under it, as it was blocked by Facebook (and Instagram) with the message “Your message couldn’t be sent because it includes content that other people on Facebook have reported as abusive.” De Zwart wanted to complain to Facebook, but without a Facebook account, he couldn’t. As a digital rights activist, he doesn’t use social media, but he joined Facebook just to be able to file a complaint. He was also annoyed at the fact that he couldn’t spell his Dutch last name correctly, de Zwart with a lower case d. He was basically told ‘thanks for the feedback’, which is big tech speak for f*** you.

About a month later, De Zwart bought a five euro Facebook advert in order to be able to communicate with the tech giant. His advert was rejected with “This ad contains or refers to content that has been blocked by our security systems (#1885260)”. This error code means nothing to mortals, so he tried to complain. First, he had to agree to “four sets of legal terms”, after which he was told “Thanks for helping us improve!” He was down five euro and still didn’t have an answer. “It appears that Facebook will only look at problems if they realise that it might cost them too much political or media capital if they continue to ignore them”, he explained.

A few days after the author of the article below presented the case to a Facebook PR person, the problem was magically solved. Nobody had reported thebiglebow.ski for abusive material: it had simply been incorrectly labelled by Facebook’s automated tools as spam.

Now either watch the movie if you have not seen it and pour yourself a White Russian when you do, if that’s your thing.

(Link: medium.com, image thebiglebow.ski)

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September 28, 2019

Dutch touch on Amazon’s ‘Undone’ by Amsterdam’s Hisko Hulsing

Filed under: Comics,Film by Orangemaster @ 12:51 pm

Versatile artist Hisko Hulsing from Amsterdam, known on this blog and from Rotterdam-based comic magazine Zone 5300, has directed ‘Undone’, co-created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg (creator of Bojack Horseman) and Kate Purdy (a writer on Bojack), released by Amazon Studios and co-produced by Michael Eisner’s company Tornante, Submarine Productions Amsterdam, and Minnow Mountain Texas. It premiered on 13 September.

Exploring the elastic nature of reality, the series centers around Alma (Rosa Salazar), a 28-year-old living in San Antonio, Texas, who discovers she has a new relationship to time after nearly dying in a car accident. She learns to harness this new ability in order to find out the truth about the death of her father (Bob Odenkirk).

For Undone, Hulsing used rotoscoping together with actual oil-painted backgrounds giving the animation an old school cinematic feel – a fresh change from all of you bored to tears with the Cal Arts style dominating the last decade of animation.

Here’s the trailer:

(Link: dutchcultureusa.com, Image: Hisko Hulsing)

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September 12, 2019

Dutch are official test market for Disney+

Filed under: Dutch first,Film,Online,Technology by Orangemaster @ 1:04 pm

As of today, The Netherlands has become the exclusive test market for the new Disney streaming service, unadventurously called Disney+. The country will be able to enjoy the new service for free until November 11, after which ‘The House of Mouse’ will charge 6,99 euro a month for it. On November 12, it will also be made available in the United States and will have more productions added to it. Other countries in North America, Europe and the rest of the world will surely follow.

People in The Netherlands can also watch their Disney favourites on Android and iOS devices as well as PS4 and Xbox One. According to the screenshots we’ve seen on Twitter (see screenshot), Disney+ is offering Marvel films (Avengers’ Endgame will only be available in December), Star Wars (all the films including Solo and The Last Jedi – a big deal because the first films are not Disney productions), Pixar and National Geographic.

Although all in English, some of the productions also have Dutch audio. No other languages are available yet. By testing Disney+ first in the Netherlands, Disney wanted to weed out issues, which sounds more like beta testing. According to one Dutch journalist on Twitter, the search function does not work, and I agree after having seen the screenshot of random suggestions, based on two or three letters, not even in the right order.

Reactions are mixed, but quite positive, ranging from ‘Why do I have to pay for another streaming service?’ [you don’t, but North Americans pay for many services for the same shows we all get on Netflix], ‘If I buy this for my youngest son for his birthday, I’ll be spending more money on him than my other two kids and that’s a dilemma’ to ‘I don’t need a bunch of remakes’ and ‘it’s all Disney princesses anyway’.

Free is always nice, but the true test is who will stay on after it’s no longer free.

(Link: nu.nl)

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August 15, 2019

From Ghetto to Parliament: Dutch documentary features Bobi Wine’s Uganda

Filed under: Dutch first,Film by Orangemaster @ 11:33 am

From Ghetto to Parliament, directed by Dutchman Thimaud de Driesen which premiered in March of this year, is a documentary film about Robert Kyagulanyi, also known as Bobi Wine, a successful reggae artist and Ugandan freedom fighter.

Wine worked his way up from the ghetto to become an elected representative of parliament, where his outspokenness makes him stand out and gets him into trouble, as in he is regularly arrested in an attempt to stop him from protesting. In a country where corruption, violence and intimidation are rife, the journey of Bobi Wine had been receiving international media coverage as he posts uplifting messages on social media aimed at his supporters.

As De Driesen says in this trailer, the story is not just about Bobi Wine, it’s the story of Uganda. Have a look at the trailer:

(Link: Movies That Matter; photo: Enca)

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July 25, 2019

Dutch actor Rutger Hauer dies at age 75

Filed under: Film by Orangemaster @ 12:14 pm

Although only announced on 24 July, Dutch film and television actor and Hollywood regular Rutger Hauer passed away on Friday, July 19th at the age of 75. He is probably best known for his role as renegade replicant Roy Batty in Ridley Scott’s 1982 classic sci-fi film Blade Runner where he delivers the famous monologue that ends with “All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.” Hauer added ‘like tears in the rain’ himself because he thought it was poetic. In the 1980s, he also played Captain Etienne Navarre in Ladyhawke by Richard Donner; and John Ryder in The Hitcher by Robert Harmon, as well as many other roles in an acting career that would have spanned 50 years this October.

Hauer was one of the best and most prolific Dutch actors who, together with fellow Dutchman director Paul Verhoeven, made it to Hollywood. After many historical roles in Dutch, German and English, his leading role in the 1973 Dutch film Turkish Delight directed by Verhoeven still remains the top grossing Dutch film of all time. Hauer’s first appearance in a Hollywood film was alongside Sylvester Stallone in Nighthawks by Bruce Malmuth in 1981, and won a Golden Globe in 1988 for best supporting actor as Lieutenant Alexander Pechersky for Escape from Sobibor, the only Dutch actor ever to win a Golden Globe to this day. Verhoeven, who worked with Hauer on five occasions, told the Dutch press today that “he had lost his alter ego”.

This post was read on the Midnight’s Edge After Dark podcast on YouTube (1:20, see time stamp)

(Links: parool., indiewire, wikipedia.org, Photo of Rutger Hauer on Wikipedia as a screenshot of television show some rights reserved)

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July 15, 2019

Broek op Langedijk featured in latest Spider-Man movie

Filed under: Film,Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 1:37 pm

The quaint town of Broek op Langedijk near Amsterdam was featured in 2019’s Spider-Man: Far From Home, but the town had no clue until people saw the movie. In 2016 Marvel asked the Netherlands Film Commission for a filming location, but had heard nothing back. All of a sudden Broek op Langedijk was depicted in the film, although the scenes were filmed in Prague, according to an interview with Spider-Man himself, actor Tom Holland on Dutch entertainment show RTL Boulevard.

Apparently, the difficult to pronounce name of the village was more important than its actual location – it is a nice village, I’ve worked there. According to Dutch newspaper NRC, they got the cabbage shot right in the film, although there’s no windmills or tulips fields close by. They also got the Dutch hooligans right, complete with orange garb and red, white and blue makeup. Dutch actors Jeroen van Koningsbrugge also told RTL Boulevard that his agent knew that Marvel was looking for Dutch hooligans. “They asked me if I spoke good English and then told me they wanted me to speak with the thickest Dutch accent possible for the role”.

The local museum in Broek op Langedijk, the Broekerveiling, quickly noticed the increase in American traffic to their website, which besides Dutch is also in English and German. Now they are trying to figure out how to cash in on the fame. For almost a year now the museum has had a huge cabbage in front of it for people to take their selfies. Maybe they need to put a Spider-Man somewhere now, too.

(Link: nrc.nl, Painting from Historiek.net says)

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