'Irreverent' and 'Scrappy': Reactions to Trailer and Early Screening of Movie 'BlackBerry' (vulture.com) 31
"When we learned that a BlackBerry movie was in the works last year," writes Engadget, "we had no idea it would be something close to a comedy. But judging from the trailer, it's aiming to be a far lighter story than other recent films about tech."
Variety notes that the movie has already screened at both Berlin Film Festival and SXSW Film Festival. "The film has received favorable reviews so far, with Variety's Peter Debruge calling it "frantic, irreverent and endearingly scrappy."
That review also calls the film "surprisingly charitable to the parties involved, acknowledging that these visionaries, while making it up as they go along, still managed to change the way the world communicates.... The film, at least, feels fresh, making geek history more entertaining than it has any right to be." But there's also a message in there somewhere. Mashable calls it "a cautionary tale jolted with humor and heart," while Vulture describes it as "a very funny geek tragedy." The stories of tech founders continue to entertain and frustrate us in equal measure, and continue to give us more content to watch on the platforms and devices they created. Clearly, something about power-tripping nerds really speaks to something in our collective psyche.
Actor Jay Baruchel plays BlackBerry co-founder Mike Lazaridis — and even tells Vulture he'd kept using his own BlackBerry "until about three or four years ago..."
"I think there's something inherently tragic about these guys that are really significantly responsible, in a really significant way, for the way we all relate to each other. There's a direct line from how we all communicate now, back to what these nerds did in Waterloo in 1996."
The movie will be released on May 12.
Variety notes that the movie has already screened at both Berlin Film Festival and SXSW Film Festival. "The film has received favorable reviews so far, with Variety's Peter Debruge calling it "frantic, irreverent and endearingly scrappy."
That review also calls the film "surprisingly charitable to the parties involved, acknowledging that these visionaries, while making it up as they go along, still managed to change the way the world communicates.... The film, at least, feels fresh, making geek history more entertaining than it has any right to be." But there's also a message in there somewhere. Mashable calls it "a cautionary tale jolted with humor and heart," while Vulture describes it as "a very funny geek tragedy." The stories of tech founders continue to entertain and frustrate us in equal measure, and continue to give us more content to watch on the platforms and devices they created. Clearly, something about power-tripping nerds really speaks to something in our collective psyche.
Actor Jay Baruchel plays BlackBerry co-founder Mike Lazaridis — and even tells Vulture he'd kept using his own BlackBerry "until about three or four years ago..."
"I think there's something inherently tragic about these guys that are really significantly responsible, in a really significant way, for the way we all relate to each other. There's a direct line from how we all communicate now, back to what these nerds did in Waterloo in 1996."
The movie will be released on May 12.
Loius Rossmann involved? (Score:3)
Or wasn't this about his cat?
Re: (Score:2)
Have you talked to a doctor about your obsession with wokeness?
It's a theater release? (Score:2)
The bad decision-making around Blackberry continues, apparently.
Is anyone actually gonna pay to see this in a theater?
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93 Escort Wagon inquired:
Is anyone actually gonna pay to see this in a theater?
It all depends on how it's marketed, of course - and on the size of its marketing budget (also "of course," of course).
You never know. It could even turn out to be a hit ...
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Is anyone actually gonna pay to see this in a theater?
They're confident enough in a film about Nike Air Jordans to pay for Matt Damon, so probably yes.
That's right. They're making a film about shoes now.
Re: It's a theater release? (Score:3)
The tickets to this movie about shoes cost $300. Let's get em!
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Quick recap of the facts (Score:2)
Blackberry OS is still my favorite mobile OS (Score:2)
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The later Windows Phone also had its fans, who remember it fondly.
I wonder which of the more appreciated aspects of Blackberry OS and Windows Phone OS that have been copied by iOS and Android (variants), if any.
Never bring a feature phone to a smart phone fight (Score:1)
Re:Never bring a feature phone to a smart phone fi (Score:4, Interesting)
RIM seemed to me to be what happens when you let engineers have too much control over the product. I'm sure there was a lot more to their failure than that, but they seemed to have no trouble turning out awesome hardware that had an interface only the person who coded it could love.
And the management servers were a hundred times worse.
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It's way more complex than that. There's several threads that are often not talked about.
1. Yes, their main feature was email. But their technology was really something that was at best a stop-gap measure. They had their servers talking to your exchange/novell (but mainly exchange) server doing all kinds of integration work. Once Microsoft built in mobile into exchange, the main benefits of BlackBerry email were gone.
2. Similar to 1, they had their own private Blackberry server/network. Hence their cashcow
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Well, screw that one - I'd love my QWERTY back!
You can't beat the tactile feedback of a physical keyboard. Predictive typing and auto-correct are no substitute.
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Having been a Commodore guy back in the day, this is a familiar story to me. All the early tech pioneers were pure engineering houses that lacked vision and discipline, and were eventually [almost] forgotten over time. Hell, even most of the things they invented are eventually attributed to their successors.
I have to ask (Score:2)
Are they really running out of ideas in Hollywood? Is it really just reruns/rehashes/reboots/regurgitation of whatever classic or ... this?
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This movie idea already sounds far more original than whatever the plot for "Fast and Furious 11" or "Star Wars 12" will be.
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Generic Movie part 22, the quest for more money.
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Man ... (Score:5, Funny)
Blackberry changed the way humans communicate? (Score:2)
Waaay overestimates technologies that came before BB. FAX, teletype, radio, 2-way, command line, computing, monitors etc laid the abstractions through which humans leveraged thought-driven controls. RIM was first to see the Bells(Rogers) paging frequency as the biggest sandbox opportunity of a lifetime.
They stuck with that sandbox too long and too tightly clenched in their dying grip technologies that were very open. SteveJobs idiosyncratic perturbation at the BB keyboard key-fail rate inspired a competitor
It wasn't hard to see where the wind was blowing. (Score:2)
I knew that Blackberry was in trouble when I went to the webpage and their job opportunity section was under the hyperlink "RIM jobs".
(Not just made up for comedic effect, It's true.)
"kept using his own BlackBerry ..." (Score:2)
The book based on an article ... (Score:2)
The movie is based on the book by Sean Silcoff et. al. titled "Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry" (2015).
Here is the 2013 article that later was expanded into the book: How BlackBerry blew it: The inside story [theglobeandmail.com].
Comedy? (Score:2)
if it ain't broke, don't fix it (Score:2)