Nochnoi Dozor

Almost in an effort to prove that vampiric tendencies and the battle between good and evil isn't just confined to Sunnydale or Los Angeles, the acclaimed Russian director, Timur Bekmambetov released Night Watch, a movie adaptation of the russian novel of the same name by Sergey Lukyanenko, and starring, amongst others, the popular russian actor, Konstantin Khabensky.

It is the first in a trilogy, the second in the series released in russian cinemas in early 2006, called Day Watch. However, it has not yet been released in the UK.

The plot goes something like this. Two types of "other" (vampires / shape-shifters etc. etc.) exist, the "lights" and the "darks", and a delicate truce exists between them (and has done for a while, blah blah). This truce is maintained by both the "night watch" and the "day watch", kind of good and bad police forces each ensuring the other side obeys the rules of the truce. However, the most powerful "other" ever conceived is born in Moscow, causing a flurry of activity to try and "recruit" this boy over to which ever side he chooses.

The film follows the exploits of a single member of the "night watch" (i.e. the "lights") as he tries to protect the boy from the various vampires and shape shifters that exist everywhere (as they do in reality of course).

The plot itself is definitely the "see the outcome coming a mile off" kind, but that doesn't detract. It's an excellent film, and one of those foreign films, like Crouching tiger, hidden dragon and House of flying daggers before it, that is better watched (and i've seen both versions now) with subtitles rather than the english language dubbing (unless you can speak fluent Russian of course, but I can't). That's not to say the dubbing is bad, however, it isn't.

All in all, an excellent addition to the vampire DVD collection, one which, I might add, only adds weight to my theory of "increased vampire attractiveness" (which I blogged about earlier), in this film, vampires are definitely stylish.

Beyond Cyberspace (aka Hollywood's interpretation of Computing)

I would like to put it on record that I like The Lawnmower Man, a 1992 film starring Pierce Brosnan and Jeff Fahey. Supposedly based on an original Stephen King short story (although, Stephen King does not recognise this, since he deems it too far away from the original source), the film wasn't actually that bad. Okay, so it suffered from the "Hollywood" idea of computing, i.e. big flashing red and yellow login pages with enormous "ACCESS DENIED" images, but the story itself
did carry it somewhat.

Now, there are many words in the english language but, however, not one of them can truly convey the absolute feeling of despair while watching the sequel, Lawnmower Man II. I think it would be grossly flattering if I called the film an absolutely pile of
horse manure. This incarnation starred Matt Frewer (yes, of Max Headroom fame, and more recently, Eureka) as Jobe (the eponymous "Lawnmower Man"), and Patrick Bergin as the good Doctor Benjamin Trace.

This is the plot (in a nutshell... it almost seems like a waste of blog ASCII going on too much about it) : Set about a minute after Lawnmower Man I, Jobe is resurrected and (again) is improved by Virtual Reality (VR) to be an absolute genius again. Enter Dr Benjamin Trace who invents a pyramidal chip which can (somehow) enable access to any computer system.

The rest is mind-numbingly obvious, blah blah blah... access to all systems, blah blah blah.. The £2.99 I paid at Morrisons for the DVD is about £3 too much.

But, what does fascinate me (and I suppose more so since I work in IT) is the public "face" of computing from a Hollywood point of view. I've come up with the following requirements for whenever a computer system is shown on a blockbuster film, it's always made to these specifications :

1. Login screens have to be in red or yellow with the words "PLEASE LOGIN" in bright green letters.


2. Failed login attempts should be met with a bright-red "ACCESS DENIED" page, and always with an accompanying female voice repeating it.


3. Once access has been granted (usually at the last possible second), then navigation through the computers "memory" (this term is intentionally kept woolly) should be either by a 3D city-scape, or via geometric shapes which only fit together in one way, thereby unlocking the information in the "file" (again, term kept intentionally vague), or indeed via green random ASCII characters falling down the screen on a black background.

Anyone who's even vaguely knowledgeable about computers are usually sat there wondering... "where do I get this software from?".

I'd therefore like to maintain a list of all films have computers which follow these specifications.

Here's some to start us off :

• Lawnmower Man (I and II)


• Wargames (and all done via acoustic dial up modem as well, cool....)


• Jurassic Park (the classic line, young girl navigating a 3D cityscape trying to find the "file" she's after, quotes the classic line "This is UNIX... I know this!". Honestly, love, you'll have to tell me what flavour of UNIX you're used to!


• Swordfish (ha ha ha, 'nuff said.)


• Matrix (original, "Reloaded" / "Remixed" / "Rejuvenated" (or whatever the hell the sequel's are called. (yes, I do know that they're called "Reloaded" and "Revolutions", I was being facetious)). Yeah, right, Cypher, you can see that text floating down the screen and understand it can you... clever boy.

Any more examples of complete computer related hollywood idiocy?