| "Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computers all day!" |
Around the hurly-burly of the busy DVDnet offices, sometimes it’s easy to forget we aren’t all rats in cages being prodded constantly by the DVDnet Authorities to work harder and run that wheel ever faster. But here, in this dank underground of cubicles and partitions, of stale water coolers, molten coffee and crazy Pirate Costume Fridays, we as reviewers are reduced to just that. Rats on wheels.
‘Why don’t you leave?’ people say, ‘Get a better reviewer’s position in one of those upmarket DVD review places where reviewers are treated like the valuable human beings they are.’
I’ve heard of such places. Where reviewers receive a lunch hour and desks aren’t under dripping low wattage lightbulbs on frayed cords. Where DVDs don’t have to be rented from the employer, standing there with a receipt book in hand and a low warning to have it back on his desk first thing tomorrow morning... but I dunno.
My desk here at DVDnet is nice. I have a little potted palm that I can look at every so often during designated periods. I have a huge computer that doesn’t take all that long to warm up after I’ve hand cranked it. I get regular notes of appreciation from my fellow reviewers. Like this one, from Vince I got the other day;
“Hey you. Steal my ideas again and I’m gonna cut you. Signed, The Big F*cko Next Door.”
See? It’s a sweet life here. The pay’s great, the people are friendly (except maybe Dennis. He’s got problems) and the rewards are beneficial. Like, if I put a cartoon in a review, I don’t get punched this week. If I put a screen grab in, I don’t get punched twice.
As to the film I'm reviewing here... well, it's pretty funny and factual. It's about how life in an office sucks, the work blows and together they form a paradox of universal proportions. It's no wonder people go nuts. Like this dude Milton in this movie. This film is actually based on a series of Internet shorts featuring Milton and his thing for this sleak red stapler. This is exactly what I'm talking about, they push you until you focus all your remaining love on something, anything, to remain human. And the Authorities, they still pick at you and pick at you until you just can't take it anymore. Yet there's no way out. Not ever.
Vince says he’s got a plan to get out. I hear him whispering it to someone on the phone, but he’d never let me in on it, no way. I don’t like to ask about it because our friendship is a little fragile. And I don’t think he can trust me anyway. I mean, I’d just cave if I had to act all normal and everything. The minute the DVDnet Authorities saw me they’d know something was up and then, well... I’d just wreck it for everyone. And Vince. Poor beautiful Vince, he’d never get free of this dripping crypt.
And take that endlessly yapping puppy with him.
So, it’s back to work. I watch something, I type something about it. The more words I use, the better the rewards. But what they don’t know is, I’ve got my own plans to get out. I figured it out – if I write certain words in certain places then get people to read them in a certain order, they spell out a message. And that message is simply this:
Please send help. Cash donations to:
Jules Faber's Sad Escape Bid
c/-DVDnet
PO Box 40
Malvern
Victoria 3144Watching a movie down here is difficult at the best of times. Someone (I’m not sure who, but I have my suspicions) tends to fire wadded up paper at me when I’m studiously watching a film. The TV faces the room, so I have to turn my back on the office and that’s the whole problem. However, I did manage to make some notes about the film I’m currently reviewing, which is Office Space. The picture quality is superb and just ever-so-slightly off razor sharp. Everything looks great in it with no glitches at all. Even the layer change is undetectable. It’s delivered in the screen ratio of 1.85:1 with anamorphic steroids number 16:9. As noted, the film is based on a series of animated shorts by Mike Judge (Beavis and Butthead, King of the Hill) and while it is nothing like a cartoon, it does manage to capture the cloying atmosphere of the partitioned office very nicely.
It looks nice and clean though and doesn’t have any growing piles of festering paper cups and half eaten doughnuts on my side of Vince’s cubicle.
When one guy in the office (way up near the lit end) plays his radio loud, we’re lucky to hear anything down our end because of the echo in the septic pipes that terminate beyond my desk. (Thankfully they’ve almost fixed the leak too). But today, he was away so I could hear the kickin’ hip-hop gangsta soundtrack pretty well. It appears in all surrounds of the Dolby 5.1 setup and while the surrounds sleep (but for the music) for most of the film, the subwoofer stays alert and rumbling away to itself for the duration. Dialogue is all fairly clear, if a teensy bit muffled at times by soft-spokenness, but otherwise no troubles.
John Frizzell’s score is even suitable, lending practically invisible support, if such a thing can be said.
It’s about life in the office this film, and it has all those annoying and irritating quirks that are both funny and intensely sad. Cubicle life has been captured in a very Hollywood style office compared to the stinking tomb we at DVDnet work in, and really sets a goal to work toward. Man, their offices look sweet.
(JULES! My office, NOW! - Ed.)
