Svensk Filmindustri and why I feel you fail

This is a rant about a very Swedish phenomenon. You have now been warned.


There has been a few times when I feel extra annoyed about SF (Svensk Filmindustri) and their actions and comments.


But let's start with a very basic point; All sorts of business will eventually die out. Yes, it's sad that the business your dad, granddad and his granddad all worked in will not be available for you, but if we were to follow the logic that all family business has to live on we'd be subsidizing pyramid building.


So, even if your dad and granddad had a fishing boat and you grew up on it, it doesn't automatically mean you have the right to fish out every cod or herring from the ocean because they did so. And just because your dad and granddad hunted wolves that were attacking their caribou it doesn't mean you can take a helicopter and sniper rifle to shoot the last 200 that are left. And just because people used to be forced to only view the movies you thought were good enough to import, it's not that an environment anymore.


A short while ago some cable companies wanted to make a deal with Swedish cinema and movie industry to be able to show blockbuster movies on demand only a week after international release.
This was to provide an alternative to people downloading the same movies but was met with a lot of skeptism and again the "movie lifecycle" was given as a reason not to provide this.
The movie lifecycle is in short how long periods should go between the different stages: Movie on cinema, movie on rental, movie for purchase and lastly, movie on TV.
This is of course as bright a plan as claiming you can commit murder if you later on buy a letter of indulgence. Hint, we stopped that practice some time ago...


But these points aren't so much how "SF" are failing as how they are clinging for all their might to a dying system. Cinema is entertainment, entertainment change. You don't see a ballet-stage in every mall and city and that is open every night of the week.


So, why do they fail?


First of all; They promote the wrong movies. I know, this isn't the fault of the cinema provider, it's the fault of the companies purchasing the movies. An excellent example comes from last summer:
Before the summer there was one very big "talky" on the Internet and two lesser ones. The big one being Inception (at least outside Twilight circles) and the two "smaller" ones Scott Pilgrim vs The World and The Expendables.
The movie that received most TV commercial time and space on billboards in Sweden was Knight and Day, some b-grade action with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz that nobody cared about. There was also some commercials for a Swedish copmovie parody, the kind of movie had it been made anywhere else you'd be lucky to find it under the cheap rental comedies or the "2 movies for 1" bargain bin.


So, where was Inception, Scott Pilgrim and Expendables? Well, Inception did get some talks and was scheduled long ahead for the international release. As for the other two, at first it wasn't certain they would even be shown on Swedish cinemas.
The Expendables came up two weeks after launch after much pressure from customers. Late July SF said they had no plans to show it in cinemas, on August 13th it had it's opening night.
Scott Pilgrim had it's opening 3 months after it premiered in the US. Which is a move so stupid it baffles me. A movie that so strongly caters to a computer savvy audience, people who in many cases have friends in all parts of the world, such a movie you either don't show in cinemas or you have it go up internationally. Need I say that Scott Pilgrim didn't do that good at the cinemas, despite that people who download are among the most frequent cinema goers(there are studies on this that come by all the time)?


But all of those were American movies (except for the cop parody). And here is another of my annoyances with SF. Show something else once in a while! Not everything is made in the US, there are movies from other parts of the world as well.


5 days ago they premiered Real Steel and commercials are still showing on TV. But, Rock'em - Sock'em robots was never that big a tabletop game in Sweden. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever seen it in a store.
What is big in Sweden and has been so for several years is anime and manga, and a lot of Swedes has watched Star Blazers, that is the strangely edited version of Space Battleship Yamato.
Why would I mention this? Because in 2010 a big budget live-action movie premiered in Japan based on that series. Will we ever get to see this movie in Sweden, even in DVD shape? Of course not.


And for another blog I will rant on Swedish voice "actors" and why Ghibli movies are only shown dubbed on Swedish cinema.


So, to conclude, if SF wants to be a part of entertainment Sweden they need to evolve. And the same of course goes for their suppliers. Take a dare once in a while, I'm not saying you should buy and try to show "Fish story" (even if it is the best movie ever) to the general public, but at least look at what's out there!
And Tom Cruise does not make a good movie.
1. Bad actor.
2. Bad director.
3. Low budget.
4. ???
5. No, it does not equal profit.

What's the story #guildwars ? - Chinwe, collector and airship inventor

Today we look at Chinwe On top of a high plateau in the Shattered Ravines stands a collector asking for Dusty Insect Carapaces. He needs these to create bellows for his balloon that will take him to the gates of Lion's Arch. All in all a good quest for someone stuck in the Desolation, but he does raise a few questions; First of all, why would a ghost need a balloon to take him so far away? Is it even possible for him to leave this place of his mortal remains? How would the citizens of Lions Arch respond when suddenly one day a ghost piloting a blimp (obscure Portal 2 reference is obscure) floats over their gates? I am sure there are a lot more questions to the current state of Chinwes plans, but there is an even bigger question for me, will he succeed? Guild Wars 2 is 250 years into the future, a length of time that for a ghost will seem like an instant. Will he succeed? Will we see a lone balloon floating high above? And most importantly, will he crash with Rata Sum? Again, Arena Net, I ask that you give this piece of lore the fleshing out it deserves. In fact, I believe Chinwe would be happy for any flesh at all as he is right now.

What's the story #guildwars ? - Lissah the Packleader

This will be a series of entries on different characters that appear in Guild Wars, that I feel should get some explanation or perhaps a follow up in Guild Wars 2.

My first entry will be about Lissah the Packleader.

In Bjora Marches, deep within Gursteig's cavern roams a pack of wolves, and in their midst is Lissah. What separates her from the others is the fact that she's an elemental with only the vague shape of a wolf. In fact she shares model with the shard wolves.
There is no explanation on why she leads the pack or why she feels a connection to them. Is she a shard wolf that's escaped the Fissure of Woe or is the resemblance to them just coincidence (and a resource saving use of an existing model)?

Is Lissah the failed experiment of a crazed Stone Summit mage that tried to create a pet?

Was she just a wolf that came too close when Svanir called upon the magic of Jormag?

I own a few novels written within the Elf Quest world and one of these tells the tale of magic gone bad. A small puddle of residual magic that through the ages has gone stale, and when a wolf entered it, it turned him into a monster. Did Lissah stumble upon some elementalist corpse that was lost and forgotten in the mountains?

Whatever Lissah is or how she became the packleader, there is a story there and it deserves to be told.