“Taken” (the movie) and travel safety

by Brenda Yun on

Upon the suggestion of a family friend, my parents treated me to a $1 movie to see “Taken,” the new movie with Liam Neeson. My dad had told me his friend thought it would be relevant to my travels abroad, but after reading the synopsis, I kind of scoffed at the idea that the movie could have anything to do with me! After watching the movie, however, I can now see how it could in fact have to do with me, any solo female traveler, and travel safety in general.

The film’s plot is based on a real existing crime in Europe. In this case, an Albanian mafia group in Paris solicits information from female tourists, kidnaps them, gets them hooked on drugs, and then uses them in shady sex trade deals. Although this would appear to be a ridiculously convoluted storyline, the ease with which the mafia identifies and eventually captures these innocent girls is pretty easy to imagine. In the film, a man simply asks to share a cab into the city and then invites the girls to a party later that night. Suddenly, they’re taken.
Luckily, in the film, the father happens to be on the phone when his daughter is captured and also just happens to be a former spy. He single-handedly rescues his daughter from these dangerous and scary mafiosos. (Making matters worse, when he seeks the help from a former French spy, he discovers the mafia group is actually paying the government to keep its despicable operation running).

Unfortunately, not every girl can be so lucky. It was both funny and scary when, after the movie, my parents said to me, “Well, at least you know there’s no way we’ll be able to save you.” And it’s true. If I did find myself in that situation I would pretty much be at the mercy of the cruelty of my captors, which is not a very pleasant thought.

Females absolutely have to keep their wits about them more than men do — both at home and abroad. The first time I traveled to Colombia I was honestly scared of getting kidnapped. I was particularly wary of taking night buses. Fortunately, Colombia is a far safer place than people believe it to be, but it doesn’t mean that you can travel everywhere and anywhere to your heart’s content.

It’s a shady, shady world out there, so if you’re female and traveling alone, use really clear judgment:

  • NEVER get drunk or go to a party where you don’t know anyone (even if you’re going with another female travel companion).
  • Never hitchhike alone.
  • Always take a certified cab if you don’t feel safe walking back to your hotel at night.
  • Always do whatever is within your power/control to be safe even if it means staying in at night, taking a day bus, or not going somewhere altogether.

Undiscovered New York: A movie lover’s guide to New York

by Jeremy Kressmann on

Welcome to Gadling’s weekly series on the Big Apple, Undiscovered New York. If there’s one place outside of Hollywood or Bollywood that is inextricably connected to the movies, it is New York. From the city’s important role in the beginnings of the American movie industry in early 1900’s to its starring role in films like The French Connection and Ghost Busters, New York and the movies tend to go hand-in-hand.

Not only is New York a great place to discover the filming locations of the silver screen, it’s also a great city for people who love good movies. Whether it’s Hollywood’s latest blockbuster, the latest art-house indie film or a vintage classic, you’re bound to find a theater showing a copy sooner or later. And that’s nothing to say of New York’s great lineup of yearly film festivals, random movie-star sightings and fantastic stores catering specifically to rabid movie collectors.

Ever wonder where they filmed scenes for movies like Goodfellas or When Harry Met Sally? Looking to track down that vintage Casablanca movie poster or an obscure film-noir classic on DVD? Get comfortable, grab a bucket of popcorn and come along for Undiscovered New York’s guide to New York and the movies…
Famous Movie Locations
Perhaps the best part of movie culture in New York is that it is literally being remade, each and every day. New York is a living breathing film set. In addition to the numerous television shows and commercials that film in New York each year, there are countless movies. Over the course of any given day, there’s a good chance you might stumble upon a film crew setting up or even an well-known actor or actress preparing their lines.

If you tend to be the self-starting type, there’s a number of online guides that will take you on guided tours of some of the city’s most famous movie locations, allowing any visitor to quickly track down some of their favorite movie moments. A number of companies, like On Location Tours also offer guided tours of some of the city’s more memorable cinema spots.

Movie Theaters Galore
Given all movie-making that goes on around town, New Yorkers tend to be rather particular about their movies. This has led to one of the country’s most competitive and diverse theater markets, providing options for just about every taste. No matter what your preference, there’s a movie theater to suit you.

Chin-stroking cineastes tend to head to theaters like Manhattan’s Film Forum, which regularly screens the latest and greatest in non-Hollywood fare as well as long-lost classics. Other art-house movie theater favorites include the Angelika, the Sunshine Cinema and BAM Rose Cinemas in Brooklyn. Movie-goers looking to throw popcorn at the screen and whoop it up at the latest Hollywood action blockbuster should check out theaters like the Regal Union Square or AMC Empire 25 near Times Square. Make sure to yell at the screen, it’s a New York movie-watching tradition!

Film Festivals
Not only is New York spoiled for choice when it comes to movie theaters, the city is also the first to see some of the newest films at one of the city’s many annual film festivals. The events tend to bring out an eclectic cast of the movie industry elite’s biggest-name directors and actors, industry regulars and the plain curious.

The best part of New York’s film festivals is that many screenings are open to just about anyone who can get their hands on a ticket. Screenings not only include a first run viewing, they often also include Q&A’s and behind-the-scenes interviews with the cast and crew at the film’s conclusion. The Tribeca Film Festival in late April and the New York Film Festival in September/October are two of the biggest. Make sure to check out the festival websites as the start dates approach to get your hands on some passes.

Movie Memorabilia and More
Not only is New York a great city for watching movies, it’s also one of the best spots anywhere to pick up a piece of movie history. As you might expect in one of the world’s great shopping cities, it’s easy to find a movie-themed gift to please even the most finicky movie fan.

East Village institution Kim’s caters to the more eclectic end of the spectrum, stocking all manner of subtitled foreign films and obscure B-movie classics on DVD. Meanwhile Chelsea’s Chisholm Larsson Poster Gallery carries an incredible selection of rare original movie posters that’s sure to please even the most jaded movie fan.

I Ran Iran: a feel-good film project foiled by politics

by Jamie Rhein on

I’m wild about independent films with ultimately feel-good heart. Milk and Opium is a film that caught my attention in 2007. So did Binta’s Great Idea. Here’s another film project I’m excited about: I Ran Iran. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem, from what I’ve discovered, that the film has been completed. That’s too bad. The trailer and the story behind the film are intriguing. By the end of the trailer I was smiling and curious as to what happened to the project. Intrigue and smiles means two thumbs up by me.

Here’s the scoop. Tyler MacNiven who, along with his teammate B.J. Avril, won season 9 of the Amazing Race, set out to make I Ran Iran as a way to illustrate the warmth and hospitality of the Iranian people and the richness of their culture. To do so, MacNiven set out in 2006 with his best friend, Bobak Bakhtiari, an Iranian-American, to run the the 1000 miles or so between the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea. Some of Bakhtiari’s family still live in Iran so family visits were also in order.

Unfortunately, the two were stopped from completing their journey a few days after it started because Iranian officials were concerned that the purpose of the run was political. It wasn’t, but from what I read in MacNiven’s explanation in this Lonely Planet article, he made an off-handed comment about Iran’s ability to pursue nuclear energy to a reporter. That comment snowballed into a political statement, something MacNiven was horrified by.

Instead of finishing their run, MacNiven and Bakhtiari were told to leave Iran. About a week after starting, lickety split, they were in Amsterdam with memories of Iran still floating through their heads as they tried to wrap their minds around the unexpected scenery change.

I’m hoping this project is able to be completed and am wondering where it now stands. Perhaps there is a funding issue. Perhaps there are political issues. From what MacNiven wrote, it’s too bad if there are political issues because from what they found, there is a warmth towards Americans by many Iranian people.

If MacNiven and Bakhtiari are unable to complete the film as they intended, I’m hoping it shows up in a larger venue in another film about the trials and tribulations of making a film in another country. I feel as if I’ve been engrossed in a book and have reached the end, but the last two chapters are missing and the author has disappeared.

Reading this story is a reminder that when traveling in another country, off-handed comments and actions can have unintended consequences. It’s unfortunate that exuberance and curiosity can sometimes kill the cat, or at least curtail its efforts.

Here’s the trailer.

‘Workingman’s Death’ Film Review: Dirty jobs, global edition

by Jerry Guo on

Michael Glawogger’s “sequel” to Megacities (which I reviewed last week in two installments, part 1 and part 2), Workingman’s Death, also documents the plight of workers from around the globe. It is not meant of course, by any means, to be Megacities II.

His style has evolved in the last few years, from a more experimental approach in Megacities, with its exploration of staged shots, unorthodox soundtrack, and a complete lack of structure to a more traditional documentary approach in Workingman’s Death.

In Workingman’s Death, Glawogger hews a more traditional approach to documentary filmmaking than in Megacities. He rejects reenactments, but he also does not favor the shaky first-person style common to many documentaries. Rather, he crafts his images with close attention to traditional cinematic forms-composition, color, lighting, camera movement-which juxtaposes with the jumbled and often jarring sights within these alien workplaces. Even without reenactments of intimate moments-the dehumanizing striptease scene in Megacities, for example-Glawogger still conveys, through the contrast of time and place, a poignant sense of personal narrative.
In one scene, the camera looks out at the Ukrainian miners, who are having a picnic of sorts. They proceed to carry on a seemingly mundane conversation about their daughters. Only the viewer can appreciate the bizarre gaze of the situation-their picnic is in the crawlspace of a deadly abandoned mine buried deep beneath the barren land.

I think what makes these two films stand out is that they reject the more or less standard conventions of documentaries to rely on a “voice of God” narrator (see Michael Apted and his 7UP series). While Megacities is to some extent filmed in the interventional mode-due to the staging of certain scenes-this film, as well as Workingman’s Death, is very much in the observational spirit. Glawogger, stripped of his voice and presence, certainly still stamped his own editorial style on the two films, by overlaying found objects, such as background sounds, text, archival footage, and conversational recordings, to the recorded image.


Workingman’s Death relies more heavily on dialogue, which contributes to developing the characters that he encounters. Here, on-camera characters provide the narration. Glawogger shows rather than tells. We hear the dialogue between two Indonesian sulfur carriers: “I like the way she moves,” says one about his favorite prostitute. “Well, moves aren’t everything,” cracks the other. Such intimacy enable the viewer to develop empathy with the workers, who are humanized here.

One of the sulfur carrriers proceeds to narrate, through dialogue, his life outside the sulfur field. “I go down to Banyuwangi after weighing in. You have a little fun, you come back up here, climb the mountain, go back down, and have your load weighted,” he says with little expression. The backdrop, a moonscape set against a sky shrouded by the volcanic smoke, underscores the despondency of this situation. We realize these workers spend their precious earnings on prostitutes because it is the only happiness they can procure.

Workingman’s Death boasts of a substantially more tangible structure to Megacities, namely in the narrative arc that revolves around five distinct profiles which together trace the progression of a worker’s paradise from the past to present and the future. He begins in the figurative past, in a sequence titled “HEROES,” alluding to the Stakhanov worker’s mentality that grew from the Soviet communism movement.

Glawogger splices in footage from Enthusiasm (1932) that sets the paternal lineage between the two generations of miners. The next three sequences-GHOSTS, LIONS, and BROTHERS-all reference this Stakhanov sensibility, but places the gaze in the present, as Indonesian sulfur workers have to contend with Japanese tourists, Nigerian goat butchers fight for the heads and skins while the choice cuts are ferried far away, and Pakistani workers disassemble the ships that have made the international shipping business possible.

Through these workers, Glawogger gives the viewer a glimpse of the implications of globalization, although he shows rather than judges. These scenes, more so than the ones in Megacities, also show processes, which in itself give the film a skeleton of structure. For instance, we follow the sulfur carriers in an epic journey from the volcanic hell-hole to the weighing station miles away. We follow the butchers on a typical day’s work in the killing fields, in all its blood and glory.

The next sequence-FUTURE-brings the story to a hopeful resolution in China, where workers no longer toil in the death-defying conditions that their Ukrainian comrades must endure. Finally, he ends at a steelwork complex-turned-fairground, an epilogue that, by paralleling the abandoned heavy equipment at Duisburg with the Promethean struggles of the Stakhanov worker, elicits the nostalgia of a past era.

Unlike most filmmakers, Glawogger moved from a more experimental school of filmmaking, as seen in Megacities, to the more conventional mode in Workingman’s Death. But through both films, Glawogger has redrawn the limits of documentary filmmaking. His restaging of events in Megacities calls into question the axiographic nature of pursuing the truth and of imagining reality. His postmodern approach to narration in both films, and in particular the skillful use of alternative soundtracks, has introduced new possibilities of storytelling. And his minimalist structure in Megacities, and to a lesser extent Workingman’s Death, furthers his thesis that the world often cannot be reduced into simple narratives.

Through the Gadling Lens: apertures and shutters and ISOs, oh my!

by Karen Walrond on

So, so far, we’ve discussed two things: how to pick a camera and what kind of lenses you might want to take with you on your trip. Today, I thought we’d talk about the exciting world of apertures, and shutter speeds and ISO.

Wait, where are you going?

Okay, I know that for a majority of you, you couldn’t care less about these sorts of things — you’d rather just pick up your camera, set it on automatic, and go. And I promise, going forward, we’re going to talk about less dry subjects, like shooting techniques and using Photoshop and the like. But the truth is, understanding ISOs and apertures and shutter speeds can help give you a lot of power over your resulting shots. So trust me on this: it’ll be worth it, even though the sketches that follow are a travesty to art.
So, basically, your camera, regardless of brand, whether it’s a point-and-shoot or SLR, or how simple or complicated it is, works like this: light comes into your lens, and passes through an aperture, then through a shutter before it finally hits the film (or digital sensor and storage media), and then it magically turns into a photograph. Obviously, there’s a lot more physics to it than that, but dude, I’m not a physics major, and believing that it’s “magic” is a lot more interesting, so go with me on this.

Graphically speaking, and viewing your camera from the side, it looks somewhat like this:

Now, I could try to draw exactly what each of those items actually looks like, but as you’ve probably guessed by now, sketching isn’t my strong suit. Nonetheless, it turns out that you really don’t need to know what they look like, but it’s sort of important to understand what they do. And to help illustrate what they do, take a look at this image:

I know this looks kind of crazy, but stay with me:

Your aperture acts sort of like a curtain: it decides how much light in total you want going into your camera.

Your shutter acts like a door that quickly opens and shuts, limiting the amount of actual light that gets to the film/digital sensor, regardless of the total amount the aperture actually let into the camera in the first place. Think of it this way: remember, back in the day when you had a film camera, the biggest catastrophe that could occur on your vacation was that the back of your camera would open up, and all that light would get in and ruin the film, rendering all those great images of you doing tequila shots in Tijuana completely useless? That’s because too much light overexposes the image. The shutter opens and shuts really quickly, so that only the right amount of light gets in, and the image is correctly exposed.

And finally, the film (or digital sensor/memory card) captures the remaining light and uses magic to turn it into a photograph.

Now, the very cool thing about your camera (and what you may not have realized if you’ve just been shooting on automatic this entire time) is that in many cases, it allows you to control each of the aperture, shutter speed, and film/digital sensor capacity. It’s almost like there are tiny little people living in your camera, just waiting for your command:

At the risk of your believing that I’ve finally lost it, I’ll press on.

APERTURE

As I mentioned above, the aperture helps control how much total light goes into the camera. Now, if you’ve ever heard the term “f-stop” or seen weird numbers like “f/1.4” or “f/16” on your camera or next to an image online, those terms are referring to how open or closed the aperture (or in our case, the “curtain”) is, and therefore how much light is going into the camera. There are, of course, mathematical reasons for the number designations, but really, knowing that isn’t necessary. Here’s the only thing you need to remember:

If the aperture number (f-stop number) is large, then when you take a picture, you’ll have more detail in the background of your image (i.e., your background will be more detailed, a “large depth of field“).

If the aperture number (f-stop number) is small, then when you take a picture, you’ll have less detail in the depth of your image (i.e., your background will be less detailed, a “small depth of field“).

Some practical examples might help.

Say you’re taking a vacation in the American heartland, for the express purpose of capturing an image of those “amber waves of grain.” Or, perhaps instead, you’re in Houston, in my overgrown front garden. Here are a couple of images that you might get, when playing with the aperture on your camera:

I shot the image above at f/16, which is sort of a large aperture number. Notice how you can make out the detail of each of the little slats in the black shutters in the background, and the foliage in front is just a jumble of branches. Everything, pretty much, is in focus, or you would say that this image has a “large depth of field.”

Now contrast the above with the following image:

This image was shot at f/4.2, which is, in comparison to the above, a small aperture number — the lens is the same, I’m standing in the same spot, and I took the image at the same time of day. In this image, you can no longer really make out the detail of the black shutters, and in fact, the only thing in focus is the branch at the very front. Everything else is out of focus, and therefore this image has a “small depth of field.”

Does this sort of make sense? Therefore and ergo, going back to your vacation in the American heartland, back to those amber fields of grain, before you take the photograph, you can think to yourself, “Self, do I want to show how vast the amount of grain is in this field, and therefore use a high aperture setting, so that all of the grain is in focus? Or, Self, would I rather just focus on this one golden reed of grain, and blur all the others in the background, so I should use a small aperture setting?” Then you’d set your aperture, you’d aim, and you’d shoot. No Photoshop required.

SHUTTER

Remember, this is the part of the camera that acts like a door, opening and closing quickly, to moderate the amount of light that actually gets to the film/digi
tal sensor at the back of the camera, and thus creating the best exposure. I will be honest with you — I rarely, if ever, try to control the shutter speed of my camera. I’m far more likely to mess with my aperture settings (the “curtain guy”) to control my depth of field (how blurry I want my background to be, described above), or my ISO setting (the “light catchers,” which will be discussed below), and let the camera figure out which shutter speed would be most appropriate. That said, there’s one application where you might want to play with your shutter speed setting, and that’s to control movement.

Here’s what I mean: you’ll find shutter controls described in seconds, or fractions of a second, otherwise known as “exposure time.” With a long exposure time, the shutter will be open longer, and movement will look more blurry. With a shorter exposure time, the shutter will be open for a shorter time, and movement will look frozen in time.

For example, this shot …

… was taken at a shutter speed of 1/160th of a second — notice how the water looks like it’s rushing over the rocks. There’s movement, it conveys what it felt and sounded like to be there on that beach in Cozumel, Mexico.

But in this picture …

… the shutter speed was at 1/250th of a second — much faster, making the water coming out of my backyard hose look frozen, and therefore more refreshing on a hot summer day.

ISO

Remember back in the day when you were buying film, the box of film would have numbers on it like “100” or “400” or “1000”? That was the film’s ISO number. ISO stands for “International Organization for Standardization ” (I know that mixes up the initials, but I didn’t come up with acronym, so don’t blame me), and basically the ISO number has to do with the sensitivity of the film to light. Nowadays, with digital cameras, there are still ISO settings, and understanding how they work can help improve your images. To help me remember what the numbers mean, I like to think as the ISO number as the “number of light catchers” the camera needs to use:

In other words, remember this:

The lower the ISO number, the fewer light catchers you’ll be using to catch the light. Low ISOs work better in bright sunlight — no flash necessary.

The higher the ISO number, the more light catchers you’ll be using the catch the light. High ISOs work in overcast or low light — and again, no flash will be necessary.

For example — see that photograph of my garden hose, above? That was taking at an ISO setting of 200 — because it was taken in the middle of a hot summer day, there was TONS of available light. So I knew I only needed 200 light catchers to catch the light when the shutter (“door”) was open to let the light in. Contrast this with the following shot I took of my husband this past weekend:

This was taken just as the sun was dipping below the horizon. The light was low, so I knew I needed to employ as many light catchers as I could to grab any and all available light: this was shot at an ISO setting of 3200.

And finally, compare the above shot with this one:

This shot was taking at the same time, but this time the setting was at ISO 500. See how completely blurry and out of focus Marcus is? That’s because when I decided to shoot at 500, the Door-Opening Guy (the automatic shutter control) went, “SERIOUSLY? FIVE HUNDRED? In *this* nonexistent light? That’s so not enough Light Catchers. I’m going to have to keep the door open longer to let more light in, and expose the photograph properly.” So he did — the shutter was open for 2.5 seconds. The problem is that when the shutter is open for that long, the slightest movement — my hand holding the camera dipping ever slow slightly — causes blur in the resulting image.

Given all of this, it sounds like you’d never need a flash again, right? Just crank up that ISO setting, and bam! No flash needed! Well, not quite: the problem with using high ISOs is that while you might get the image you want, the image tends to be grainier then at low ISO settings (contrast the quality of the first image of Marcus with the image of the hose, above). So if you’re looking for a nice sharp image in low light, you might want to either (a) use a flash or (b) use a tripod with a low ISO setting — that way the camera (“Door-Opening Guy”) can keep the shutter open as long as necessary, without worrying about camera shake.

So that’s it — you’re now an expert (sort of) on apertures, shutters, and ISOs! Better still, that’s pretty much as technical as we’re going to get about the workings of your camera here at Through the Gadling Lens, so never fear. As it happens, I’m leaving at the end of this week for a two-week holiday to England, so for upcoming posts I’ll talk about planning for a trip, and executing photo shoot days. In the meantime, keep clicking those cameras!

Karen is a writer and photographer in Houston, Texas. You can see more of her work at her site, Chookooloonks.
And for more Through the Gadling Lens, click here.