It was only a matter of time, really; we’ve got FDR fighting werewolves and Abe Lincoln staking vampires , why not resurrect Osama bin Laden from the dead so Western heroes can kill him off again? This time around it’s a bunch of soldiers — excuse me, hunky, apparently manscaped soldiers — hunting the zombified bin Laden as he leads an army of flesh-eating terrorists towards a zombie apocalypse in Osombie . Yep, someone went there. Too soon? Nah, who are we kidding — I’m betting the world is ready to eat this stuff up. Also betting on that are director John Lyde and the makers of Osombie , who have put together a teaser reel of footage full of zombie decapitations and love scenes (of course!) to garner finishing funds for their indie production, which shot Utah for Afghanistan last fall. The synopsis of Osombie , as if you needed to know anything more: The story follows Dusty, a yoga instructor from Colorado, who is on a desperate rescue mission to save her crazy brother Derek, a conspiracy theorist who is convinced Osama Bin Laden is still alive, despite having been buried at sea. In Afghanistan, Dusty falls in with a team of NATO Special Forces on a secret assignment. Turns out Derek is not so crazy after all, and that Osama has returned from his watery grave and is making an army of zombie terrorists. When the group crashes headlong into the growing zombie apocalypse, Dusty and the troops must find and destroy the root of the zombie insurgency before it infests the rest of the world. More info on Osombie and its Kickstarter campaign here . All in all, the Osama hook should give Osombie a bit more exposure than your average B-movie independent genre flick, but still expect it to fare best on DVD. Even so, it raises an interesting question: With other dramatic retellings of bin Laden’s death in the works, are we ready to see the al-Quada leader come back to life in the movies — at least, with comedy paving the way first? [via MSNBC ]
Films about geniuses are so numerous that they almost constitute their own genre. One seems to pop up every few years, always with a few distinct markers. We usually see a brilliant character whose ideas are a little crazy, a couple of “normal” characters against whom the genius’s difference can be easily identified, and a Very Important Project that puts those crazy ideas to the test and ultimately validates the lead character’s oddball behavior. Most informed movie-goers can set their watches by these plot developments, but to me, even the worst ones have a certain appeal. Watching great ideas brought to life is thrilling, and the really good ones, like The Social Network or Good Will Hunting , seem to tap into something universal. One could argue that, rather than a genre unto itself, films about genius can be categorized as a sub-genre of the biopic; there is a lot of cross-over between them (see Pollock or Amadeus or Surviving Picasso ), even though it probably has roots in more conventional mad-scientist genre films, like Frankenstein . However, their most important aspect, more than their supposed biographical integrity, is how prominently ideas figure in the story. Rather than merely a large amount of screen-time for geniuses, like in the many Sherlock Holmes films or like Doc Brown in the Back to the Future series, films about genius humanize difficult concepts. Because another defining characteristic is that, as opposed to superheroes with mental powers that are very obviously beyond human capabilities, like Professor X, whose telekinesis is basically supernatural, the sort of film genius I’m talking about is grounded in plausibility. Their abilities are mythical but not supernaturally so. Film geniuses do what everyone else does, using recognizable materials, only they do it much, much better. Still, after a point somewhere off in the horizon, that which distinguishes the genius from the rest of us isn’t a measure of degree, but of type. These films take great pains to “other” their subjects, or make them seem different even above and beyond their achievement. It isn’t enough that they can think better or create more beautiful things. They have to be kind of weird, too. It’s no wonder that, while we have films about total non-geniuses like Abbie Hoffman, or genius peripherals like Edie Sedgwick, Hollywood has yet to produce an Oscar-winning film about someone like, say, Jonas Salk. Because while Salk was no doubt a genius, he also seems to have been a fairly nice, conventional person in his everyday life and, thus, not great fodder for the Hollywood machine. Nobody wants to watch a movie about someone who goes to work and pays his taxes and gives exact change at the grocery store. This will happen. The rules for portraying difficult ideas on film, which seem to profit from a certain graphical fleshing out for the general moviegoing public, don’t really apply to the construction of a compelling character arc, which thrives in danger and conflict. For example, in one film about genius, A Beautiful Mind , we see the concept of governing dynamics explained very succinctly and transparently by way of a scene about a bunch of guys hitting on a girl in a bar. (Visually, it’s a good scene, though the dialogue sounds like everyone’s reading straight from Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations .) However, when director Ron Howard employs a similarly graphical rendering of the schizophrenic delusions of the genius main character, mathematician John Nash, by revealing that people he had been interacting with throughout the film were actually only in his head, the technique seems totally inappropriate. A helpful graphic as filmic teaching moment for a difficult concept, sure. But a descent into madness, or in this case the retrospective unveiling of a madness into which one has already long descended, require a somewhat more emotionally charged visual than the director indicating, “Shucks, those guys aren’t actually there…” In contrast to such transparently clear filmic infographs, a character whose personality is meant to fill the screen and hold interest should be sort of messed up, harder to figure out, and certainly not party to the kind of M. Night Shyamalan-ian reveal employed in A Beautiful Mind . That said, I still liked the film — in part because of how it portrays the descent into madness as an actual hindrance to the production of important ideas. A lot of other movies merely portray such pesky foibles of personality as inevitable side effects of genius itself, easily overcome with a few cathartic moments and liberally applied theme music. Obviously, some of this just has to do with biographical information where applicable, because the particular genius in question actually experienced schizophrenia’s debilitating effect and, lo and behold, wasn’t helped along in his career by having it. But judging by the middle section of the Venn diagram for most films about geniuses and biopics, where the stories are roughly “based on a true story,” one could easily conclude that social ineptitude or mental instability are prerequisites to having great ideas. Never mind that there are quite a lot of brilliant people who don’t display any kind of odd behavior at all. And so the biggest flaw in the films about genius genre seems to be a sort of lopsidedness in execution concerning the relationship between a genius and his or her ideas, despite the fact that formal guidelines would seem to dictate that these two aspects be treated with equal attention. One film that gets this relationship right is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas , in which the visuals very closely relate to the ideas of the subject, writer Hunter S. Thompson. * Director Terry Gilliam inhabits the perspective of Thompson in relating the story of his drug-fueled ride through the Nevada desert, and we see the world through the lens of Thompson’s inimitable manner and, thus, understand what his ideas amount to, in spite of the fact that no helpful infographs are provided. There is only one scene in which the Thompson character actually explains anything — where he gives context to his nihilistic fervor as cast against the idealism of the ’60s peace movement — and this is probably the least successful scene in the whole film. Hearing Benicio Del Toro’s Dr. Gonzo scream the lyrics to “One Toke Over the Line” while driving through the desert, his face a grotesque mask in Gilliam’s skewed frame, is pretty much all the audience needs to understand the point. One lesser example of the genre is Pollock , a film about the artist Jackson Pollock, which doesn’t really treat the actual art with enough care. The performance by Ed Harris in the central role is excellent, and the story is actually pretty interesting: We see the most fruitful period of Pollock’s life, his relationship with artist Lee Krasner, his problems with mental illness and alcoholism, and, most interestingly, him at work in his studio. But the problem is that getting an up-close view of how Pollock’s art is made sort of deflates the effect it’s supposed to produce. Much of the fascination people have with Pollock’s art is wrapped up in what those paint splatters don’t represent. One would want a portrayal of Pollock that grows in mystery as it grows in scope, but the “un-abstracting” of how the paintings were made in this film, even by way of a story about a fairly abstract human being, seems to detract from the artist’s original vision, if only because it employs a representational aesthetic. This is an example where learning the backstory of the ideas actually detracts directly from the ideas themselves. The problem isn’t that films about genius tend to highlight people with world-changing ideas who have no power to change their own complicated, messed up lives. Basically all strong characters start at this point, whether a genius or not; that’s the basis of a character arc, a problem that initially seems unsolvable. The real issue is that a lot of filmmakers don’t seem to get that, while a conventional plot might necessarily rely upon a messed up, complicated central character, that character’s viability relies on whether or not his or her ideas are actually interesting independent of that complication. And oftentimes, if there is a conflict of interest between the portrayal of a brilliant character and that character’s world-shattering idea, the idea gets short shrift for the purposes of “character development,” and the whole structure falls. And so, the real mark of quality for these movies has to do with inhabiting difficult ideas through aesthetic forms, like in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas , as opposed to the popularization of difficult ideas in favor of a less interesting biographical story, like in A Beautiful Mind and Pollock . Good films about genius embed the relevant concepts within the film medium itself, allowing them to animate the filmmaker’s own aesthetic impulses. Less good ones tend to water down the ideas and focus on important biographical stuff like how geniuses have a hard time talking to people at parties. In any case, it must be a very difficult thing to make a film about a person whose achievements are more important that can really be expressed creatively, and many times, which are actually more important than the film — or any film — itself. * I’m not interested in arguing whether Thompson was actually a genius. He was portrayed as such in the movie, and that’s all that matters. [ Back ] Nathan Pensky is an associate editor at PopMatters and a contributor at Forbes , among various other outlets. He can be found on Tumblr and Twitter as well.
I’ll admit it: I groaned a bit when word first broke that Steve Carell and Keira Knightley were set to play opposite each other in a romantic comedy set against the end of the world. Knightley, I dreaded, would be reduced to playing May-December arm candy to Carell in her first non-heavy project since Bend it Like Beckham . But as the first trailer for Lorene Scafaria ‘s Seeking a Friend for the End of the World demonstrates, maybe I shouldn’t have worried so much. Maybe . Carell and Knightley play neighbors who set out on a road trip to find their respective loved ones before the world ends after an asteroid is discovering hurtling towards Earth. Scafaria, who penned the zingy hipster romance Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist , makes her directorial debut working from her own script, and from the looks of things this could offer unexpected sorts of laughs, not to mention the rare comic turn by Knightley. That said, Carell seems to be pulling his straightlaced shtick yet again, and Knightley’s afghan-wearing Brit veers dangerously toward manic pixie dream girl territory; will her carefree ways open up his stuffy world view? Will she help him find his way to his high school sweetheart’s arms, only to find she’s fallen in love with him? I hope not. I hope End of the World surprises me. At least we’ll get Melanie Lynskey, Patton Oswalt and Gillian Jacobs to add some colorful bits along the way. Verdict: Tentatively going along for the ride. [via Yahoo ]
Quick quiz: If you were made to wait two months in order to rent say, Final Destination 5 , are you going to be more likely to purchase the DVD, or is it more likely you will forget it was on the saturated home-video market? An easy enough answer, maybe, but not for some of Hollywood’s major studios. They continue banking on the former scenario, despite your continued insistence on renting movies at affordable rates. As it turns out, a number of Hollywood’s companies are trying to revitalize their revenues and expand their scope — but those plans are getting screwed up by your viewing and spending habits. Let’s first reflect back to last fall, when Netflix announced the concept of Qwikster — the home-viewing giant’s infamous and short-lived plan to split the company into services (and prices) for DVD rentals and streaming video. The inspiration for that debacle was their forecast of dwindling DVD demand. The result? Vilification, ridicule, mass subscriber exodus, and a plummeting stock price. What a difference a few months makes. The company recently announced a surging final quarter , recovering swiftly from its folly and managing to replace a majority of those subscribers lost during the split-up proposal. More surprising was the news that Netflix’s main rival, the DVD-kiosk operator Redbox, took over as the number-one renter of DVDs and Blu-ray discs. Expect the company to maintain that top position, as this week it announced the purchase of 10,000 kiosk machines operating under the Blockbuster Express banner from rival company RCR. All of this is due to a simple market fact: Demand for affordable DVD rentals remains strong. Meanwhile, studios cling to the evaporating segment of DVD sales — and some are fiercely digging in under the delusion that if you have to wait longer to rent at low prices, then you will become motivated to purchase New Year’s Eve . Right. On the one hand, Hollywood is hardly wrong to anticipate movie fans’ demand-shift with content — and not just with the wait-to-rent audience that sat out the worst filmgoing year since 1992 . The popularity of streaming proves it to be the future of content delivery, but companies seem intent on leaving their customers behind. Anybody with a Netflix Instant subscription and a Roku box can attest to streaming’s fertile future, and from the studios’ own multi-platform content outlet Ultraviolet to Redbox’s just-announced streaming deal with Verizon, the major players are staking out their territory. On the other hand, all of this energy is channeled around the enduring demand to rent new DVDs at affordable rates. Redbox’s ascension speaks for itself, but the fiscal reality at Netflix is that even with twice the streaming subscribers, the DVD-by-mail division provides 50 percent of its gross (streaming thus far only manages 11 percent). “The discrepancy underscores an inconvenient truth for Netflix,” noted industry trade publication Home Media, “namely that while the future may belong to streaming, the present still is very much a disc-driven business, no matter how much management wants to spin it otherwise.” Yet as we drift from DVD purchases, the studios are reacting all too desperately to retain those sales numbers. Disney recently announced its intention to join Fox, Universal and Warner Bros. in invoking a 28-day waiting-period to rent new releases on DVD — news that followed Warners’ own decision last week to extend its own rental waiting period for new titles to 56 days. This despite the facts that these windows accompanied a continued plunge in DVD sales in 2011; in the fourth quarter of last year, more market revenue came in from DVD rentals than sales — the first time that has occurred since 1998. Those sales are likely to drop even further, in no small part due to the poorly received cinema titles of last year coming onto the home market. How have the rental companies responded to the call for longer delays? Mostly with a shrug: Netflix decided to simply go along with Warners’ new eight-week window. Redbox, meanwhile, pledged that if it cannot get titles from the studio, then it would seek alternative wholesale outlets for discs. It’s costlier, sure, but when the company raised its base rental price to $1.20 per title, up from 99 cents, it only went on to become number one in the marketplace. Consumers’ obvious preference for low-cost rentals means Redbox flourished as the one company with the continued confidence (or competence) to follow the money. In order to keep that strategy going, it needs to supply a diverse catalog one way or another. Predictably, Warner Bros. has become only more defensive, now leaning on wholesalers to restrict the number of copies sold to any vendor, hoping to limit the amount Redbox can acquire. And even when the studio gets its way — as when Netflix acquiesced to the extended waiting period — it remains unhappy. To wit, when these titles are not instantly on hand via DVD, Netflix subscribers wait it out by placing the titles in their rental queues until they are available. That’s not acceptable to Warners, which now forbids renters from so much as reserving one of its titles in their queues before the eventual rental date. Time Warner claimed last fall that this waiting-game strategy has been successful for them, but factoring in the continuing slide in disc sales would mean that Warner’s on-demand and brand new Ultraviolet titles would have to grow appreciably to compensate for both that drop and its widened rental window. We can reasonably call his bluff, however, especially with content providers like Warners remaining notoriously secretive about VOD numbers and applying persistent pressure upon discount renters in an effort to curtail their proven desires for affordable rates. The whole condition makes for a curious economic scenario: Studios looking back to an era of vibrant DVD sales, vendors looking forward to the streaming era and a majority of consumers left squarely in the middle. But one fundamental factor never changes: The companies need us more than we need them. And as long as we vote with our wallets, we’ll be heard. [Photo: Getty Images]
The Proust Questionnaire — the renowned personal inquisition perhaps best known around these parts for concluding issues of Vanity Fair and episodes of Inside the Actors Studio — has finally found its way to the dogs. Or at least to the dog. Trust me, you’ve heard of him. None other than Uggie, the Artist wonder dog, is the subject of the questionnaire featured in the latest edition of TheWrap ‘s awards-season print edition. There’s even a question for the haters! (“How does Uggie wish to die?”) They thought of everything! I mean, I guess Proust actually thought of everything, but the Weinsteins thought of this . Take that, Blackie. [ TheWrap ]
There are no new ideas in Hollywood, hence a Bourne franchise reboot whose first trailer — just released via Apple — borrows somewhat heavily from the opening titles of Psycho . (At least they’re both Universal films, right? Score one for synergy!) But that’s immaterial here after a certain point, probably around the time when Stacy Keach is all WHO IS HE? or when a house blows up or simply when Jeremy Renner’s Aaron Cross is revealed in all his rifle-toting, tree-hopping glory. Who can resist? Anyway, the whole gang’s here: Joan Allen, David Strathairn and Albert Finney from the original series; Keach, Rachel Weisz and Edward Norton from the new generation… everyone but Matt Damon, I guess. Oh, and who’s missing the nauseating promise of more shaky-cam stylings from director Paul Greengrass, replaced here by Bourne screenwriting vet Tony Gilroy? Good, me neither. VERDICT : Sold! [via Apple ] Follow S.T. VanAirsdale on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Between the rise of digital media and the shortcuts many theaters have taken to alleviate waning profits – forgoing film rigs for digital projectors , replacing projectionists with button-pushers, lowering projection-bulb levels to cut replacement costs – many filmmakers are concerned about the state of their industry. Visual effects veteran and filmmaker Douglas Trumbull ( 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters, The Tree of Life ), for one, is doing something about it: He hopes to bring back the spectacle of the theater-going experience – and revitalize the industry in the process — with a project he’s shooting at 120 frames per second, in 3-D, to be projected at seven times the luminosity often seen in theaters today. Trumbull rocked the visual effects community with his big ideas for change while accepting the Georges Méliès Award at the annual Visual Effects Society Awards last night in Beverly Hills. Named after the cinema pioneer whose groundbreaking work in motion-picture art was celebrated in Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-nominated Hugo (which, incidentally, took home top honors for Supporting Visual Effects), the Méliès Award “honors a special individual who has pioneered a significant and lasting contribution to the art and science of the visual effects industry.” Trumbull, who collaborated with Steven Spielberg on Close Encounters of the Third Kind , Ridley Scott on Blade Runner , and most recently contributed mesmerizing effects to Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life , pointed to his work on Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey as the kind of moviegoing experience he hopes to recreate with his 120 FPS, 3-D project. The key, however, and the element that makes many a filmmaker cringe when their product is released into the world, is the substandard light level at which many theaters project 3-D films, which Trumbull argues diminishes the power of a movie and the often amazing visual effects work that created it. While the industry standard recommended luminosity for a projected film is 16 foot-lamberts for 2-D projection, many theaters wind up projecting 3-D at much dimmer levels , as low as four foot-lamberts, and Trumbull suggests this has led to diminishing appeal for moviegoers. Trumbull has nearly twice the ideal standard — 30 foot-lamberts — in mind for his new project. Add in the 120 fps frame rate Trumbull is working with and that’s one helluva recipe for mind-blowing visual presentation; standard films use a frame rate of 24 frames per second, but a few filmmakers have recently begun exploring filming at a higher than standard rate for increased picture clarity and smoothness, especially with 3-D. Peter Jackson is currently filming The Hobbit at 48 fps ; James Cameron was considering either 48 fps or 60 fps for his Avatar sequels, explaining the choice thusly: “The 3D shows you a window into reality; the higher frame rate takes the glass out of the window. In fact, it is just reality.” So just imagine Trumbull’s movie projected in 3-D, brighter and more detailed at 30 foot-lamberts and 120 frames per second. If Cameron and Jackson think 48 fps and 60 fps will bring us this much closer to a perception of true reality at the movie theater, what will the Trumbull experience do to the way we see movies? From Trumbull’s VES Awards speech: “I am horrified when I go to a movie theater and I see any of our movies projected on four foot-lamberts or less. This is bad. The mission that I’ve been on ever since I’ve had the really great pleasure and responsibility to work with Stanley Kubrick on 2001 was that that movie was shot and projected in Cinerama, on giant 90-foot-wide screens — which are unheard of today except in a few IMAX theaters — and it was an experience that went beyond normal cinematic conventions. It took you on an adventure to outer space, and it was a first-person experience, not necessarily a third-person experience. It didn’t have much in the way of drama, conflict, suspense, or action in the normal sense, but Kubrick wanted to get out of the way and let you go on this trip in outer space, and was enabled by this amazing giant screen movie process… and a lot of special effects. So I’m looking forward to a time that I think is achievable in the very near future with this mission that I’m personally on right now. I feel that I have to direct a film the way I want to see a film be made and to be seen. I’m experimenting right now, amazingly, at 120 frames a second in 3-D on giant screens, 30 foot-lamberts after polarization. And I have to tell you that the illusion is like a window unto reality. So it’s not just like going to a movie, it’s like going to a live Broadway show. It’s like Cirque du Soleil, a spectacle. It has potential to unleash the power of all of the work that you all do, to deliver to the audience incredible… if you’re going to spend $100, $150, $250 million on a movie that’s being throttled through a very narrow bandwidth of a 4:2:2 digital cinema package to go to a theater to get projected in four foot-lamberts, I think it’s unacceptable. So my job is to try to fix that for you. I don’t find anybody else working on it, strangely enough; Michael Bay talks about his frustrations with the brightness of his movies, as do other movie directors. I’m hoping I can make some progress and I’m hoping I can make a movie that actually demonstrates how this all works.” Meanwhile, Trumbull also has designs on improving the industry for the artists themselves — not the celebrity actors who already earn big bucks and hog the spotlight, or even the directors themselves, but the below-the-line talent, the technical artists who create movie magic by building the worlds that actors play in. “We are the most important players in the whole movie industry.,” Trumbull told the hundreds of Visual Effects Society members in attendance. “You guys do all the heavy lifting.” The biggest problem for technical artists, he said, is that they’re not compensated well enough for their contributions, especially since their CG work and effects arguably make possible the tentpoles and billion-dollar franchises that keep the studio system afloat. “We don’t get to participate in the profits, and this is a very big problem,” he declared. “I was very lucky in the early days when I was working with Steven Spielberg on Close Encounters ; I was able at that moment in history to negotiate a piece of the net profits on Close Encounters . I’m looking forward to a time in the hopeful near future where you will all receive residual checks for the work you do.” And Trumbull is willing to put his money where his mouth is; uniting both of his big ideas, he promised profit share for any VFX artists who come work on his movie. “If we want to bring people back into theaters and show them all the work that you did,” he said, “we’ve got to make the screens bigger, we’ve got to make theaters more spectacular, we’ve got to have showmanship in theaters like they did in the old days. We’ve got to bring people back in theaters because what you can get out of a movie theater is so different, so better, and so spectacular that you couldn’t possibly get it on your iPad.” Impressed as the VES Awards crowd seemed with Trumbull’s potential game-changer and his rousing cry for artist recognition, at least one effects professional I spoke with seemed skeptical of his plan. It’d be too risky and, he thought, too costly, to jump in with the visionary, profit-sharing or no. That said, Trumbull said he’s determined to see his 120 fps/3-D experiment come to life to show the world his vision for film’s potential. “Even if I can only show it in one movie theater, I will be happy to do that.” Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
The five-time Oscar-winning (and 47-time Oscar-nominated) composer and conductor John Williams was born 80 years ago today in Flushing, Queens. Somewhere a concertmaster is no doubt preparing a 100-piece orchestra for a rousing, booming rendition of “Happy Birthday,” but for now, we can send our own regards with a discussion of his finest composition for the screen. You only have, oh, 130-something projects to choose from. Williams will be back at the Oscars later this month, a double-nominee for both War Horse and The Adventures of Tintin — neither of which I’d put anywhere near the guy’s 10 best scores. Star Wars , Jaws , Superman and Raiders of the Lost Ark are iconic, obvious options for that distinction, though I’ll take Williams’s partnership with Oliver Stone to block — and the sweeping, churning, shocking and utterly evocative JFK for the win: Born on the Fourth of July is up there, too: Anyway, your turn! And happy 80th, Mr. Williams! Follow S.T. VanAirsdale on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Actor and multimedia DIYer Joseph Gordon-Levitt is set to make his directorial debut opposite fellow newbie director Scarlett Johansson in an untitled comedy co-produced under his own hitRecord Films banner. The pic, shooting in April, also stars JGL as a Don Juan-type ladykiller seeking to reform his ways; the actor-director also wrote the script. So yes, it’s time to face facts: That kid from Third Rock from the Sun is officially way, way more accomplished than you. [ Deadline ]
Grains of salt at the ready! Twitchfilm is reporting that Harrison Ford is in “early talks” to join Ridley Scott’s proposed Blade Runner follow-up — you know, the one that will probably settle into the same limbo as every other rumored Ridley Scott film and which was previously described by its producer as a reboot, not a sequel. Nevertheless, let’s assume for a second that this is a movie that is actually in some phase of development with the nearly 70-year-old actor considering his involvement. And then let’s take all the gossip around a rumored fifth Indiana Jones film starring Ford at face value. I know it’s difficult, but play along: Which movie would you want less? “Neither” is not an option! These matters are too important to leave up to anything but democracy, so let’s put it to a vote: Which rumored Harrison Ford project do you want less?
