Adventures in Technology

Last night I watched my first ever VoD film. That abbreviation - which to my mind bears just a bit too striking a similarity to that of venereal disease to even sound cool in a "Wired" magazine kinda way - does not, surprisingly, denote some kind of Japanese porn involving strange uses of office equipment. No, what it means is "Video on Demand", a service that you can use to order audiovisual content such as movies and watch it on your TV or computer.

For a country priding itself so on blazing the trail of technological innovation, Finland seems surprisingly sluggish when it comes to adopting new technology. VoD films have been widely available in the States and the UK for many years now, but they are still mostly nowhere to be seen in Finland. The same is also true of other technology, such as TiVO and HDTV - the first of which is piggybacking itself into our homes with the switch to digital TV equipment, and the latter of which is only starting to land on our shores.


Thus it was only natural that it wasn't Finland's gingerly baby-stepping digital TV system that provided this new opportunity to me; it was the Internet. I was casually browsing my Internet service provider's customer magazine as I stumbled upon a feature on this new service. It appeared you only had to log in using your customer ID (and, obviously, sign an oath in blood with Beelzebub at full moon), and thousands of films would immediately be within your reach. At the click of a button. Lindsay Lohan dancing naked in the street couldn't have dragged me away. (If you were wondering about the gratuitous photo I managed to squeeze in this time around, that is Lindsay Lohan. Dancing in the street. Sort of.)


And so it was that I fired up my trusty old companion (I call it "Joe Rogan") and began scouring the film directories on my ISP's website. Somewhat to my surprise, there were actually decent films on hand. (This was surprising since, in the initial heady rush of actually getting online, I test drove some film sites, only to find out that the most presentable movie they offered was something with Rutger Hauer playing a doctor of botany.) In fact, I found some venerable titles that have yet to see a release in Finland, or that are at the very least hard to come by. These included the 2003 movie based on the semi-autobiographical comics of Harvey Pekar, American Splendor; Miranda July's lauded 2005 indie Me and You and Everyone We Know; and Kevin Smith's widely praised Clerks II. Lo and behold!

After much furrowing of the brow and meticulously poring over, I'd hazard to guess, each and every title in their not insubstantial library of movies, I finally settled on Clerks II, even though it was the one film of my front-running flick picks that had actually seen a limited DVD release in Finland.

Although I only have a 1 Mbps connection, the picture quality was okay, although sound remained only so-so even after rerouting it through my stereo speakers. I will not bore you with the details; suffice it to say that Clerks II itself was a rather limp affair, especially in contrast to the hoopla that surrounded its release. I know the whole point of the movie is to mirror the infantile fun of the first, ramshackle gem of an indie movie. The problem is, what was once cute is now cloying, what was once whip-smart now seems forced, and what was once ragged amateur charm now just feels unprofessional. It is amazing how little Smith has progressed as a filmmaker in the past 10+ years. Worse, in spite of the tagged-on irreverence and abundant swearing, at heart he is a sentimentalist to rival Walt Disney. The film had its moments though.

However, after successfully completing my first foray into the uncharted territories of VoD, I quickly forgot about it - as well as forgetting to finish this post and publish it. What had taken a vice-like grip on my attention was this other Internet thingy. Reading what is yet another attempt to market a men's "style" magazine to Finland's perpetually indifferent male population, Veli ("Brother"), I discovered that you can now actually stream full-length movies and TV series, you know, like free on the series of tubes that is not a big truck. Yowza, as Richie Cunningham might have put it. As I'm not one to support what might or might not be an illegal activity, I won't include the link here. Nor have I, of course, actually watched anything by what might or might not be illegal means; my interest in this phenomenon and all possible exhilaration over it are strictly academic in nature. (The name of one of these sites, however, might or might not contain the words "flick" and "peek".) God bless the series of tubes.