movies category archive

Peach! (Free Software, Free Movies)

Originally published 18 September 2007 in Free Software Magazine.

Apparently I’ve been living under a rock, because I only recently found out about the Blender project’s free and open source short movie, Elephants Dream, when I happened across Terry Hancock’s review of it last year at Free Software Magazine.

The motivation behind the project was to create a great movie short using only free and open source tools, while at the same time finding ways to improve the quality of those tools and free software projects in general.

Elephants Dream

The artists primarily used the excellent 3D modeling and animation software, Blender, along with many other free software programs, including The GIMP, CinePaint, and Inkscape. The credits …

Introducing: Minimalist Reviews

I like reading reviews, usually of books and movies. I like it when the reviewer has some insight about the item being reviewed that helps me see things I missed, educates me, or clarifies my own feeble thinking.

Does that sound like I’m reading the review after the fact? Aren’t reviews supposed to help us make decisions on what to read or watch? Well, I use them sometimes for that purpose, but as often as not I want to read a review after finishing a book or movie, being curious what other people think.

Movies

Rotten Tomatoes is a good place to get a sprinkling of opinions on a movie, although I don’t think I’ve ever seen them link to my favorite movie reviewer: …