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Star Trek Spoof Top Finnish Movie 242

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the local-club-accounts-for-2.8-million dept.
Dotnaught writes to tell us Reuters is reporting that the science fiction spoof "Star Wreck: in the Pirkinning" has become Finland's most viewed movie. From the article: " [...] relying on free distribution over the Internet to reach more than 3 million viewers in less than two months. "Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning" is a full-length feature in Finnish with English subtitles. It was made by a group of students and other amateur film makers with a bare-bones budget and a few home computers to create elaborate special effects."
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Star Trek Spoof Top Finnish Movie More

Star Trek Spoof Top Finnish Movie

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  • Reuters forgot to mention (Score:3, Funny)

    by rubycodez ( 864176 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @12:35AM (#14097988)
    it is also the only Finnish movie

    • Avoiding the infamous Klingon Copyright (Score:5, Funny)

      by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @01:16AM (#14098171) Journal
      it is also the only Finnish movie

      I thought it was some newly invented star trek language, to get around the copyrights on Klingon.

      Klingon is copyrighted, yes?

      although this is still a good tactic.

    • Re:Reuters forgot to mention (Score:5, Informative)

      by Coryoth ( 254751 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @01:32AM (#14098227) Homepage Journal
      Finland has a reasonably strong cinematic history. Probably the most notable film for non-Finns recently would The Man Without a Past [imdb.com] which was nominated for best foreign film at the Academy awards, and won the grand jury prize at Cannes, among numerous other awards [imdb.com].

      If you don't stoop to watching foreign film and hence never heard of that, you could always try the Hollywood films from Finnish director Renny Harlin [imdb.com] which includes wonderful schlock such as Die Hard 2, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Deep Blue Sea, and The Exorcist: The Beginning.

      Jedidiah.
      • Finland has a reasonably strong cinematic history. Probably the most notable film for non-Finns recently would The Man Without a Past...

        How could you not mention Aki's greatest work, "Leningrad Cowboys Go America" ?
        It was a big hit as far away as Australia, where the band actually did a concert tour - I swear!
        It didn't hurt its popularity that the movie was mostly in English. Well worth watching, if you like twisted humour.

        • It didn't hurt its popularity that the movie was mostly in English.

          Well, the movie was mostly in angsty, awkward silences, as befits any good Scandinavian movie production. :)

          I agree with the poster, though; it's hard not to put Leningrad Cowboys somewhere in the top three of Finnish movies. Of course, the Kaurismäki brothers would probably fill the other two slots as well...
      • "The man without a past"? absolutely dreadful movie, not from an artistic point of view, but from a content point of view.

        Today's cinematographers have forgotten how to tell a meaningful story. All they want is to convey their own feelings to the public.

        • "The man without a past"? absolutely dreadful movie, not from an artistic point of view, but from a content point of view.

          Today's cinematographers have forgotten how to tell a meaningful story. All they want is to convey their own feelings to the public.

          I would like you to be a bit more elaborate on why you think The man without a past lacks content and has a meaningless story. I thought it was a great film with critique of the society and sharp observation about the human nature. It was about Life.

        • youre american, right?
      • Finnish director? Does he live in Finland? Was he working in Finland at the time those films were made? Was he even born in Finland? I don't know, but I'll bet at least a couple of those are "no"...

        Ok, so I feel like nit picking today. :)

  • Great movie (Score:4, Insightful)

    by updatelee ( 244571 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @12:35AM (#14097992) Homepage
    its worth the watch, its quite good.
    • To be honest, I didn't think it was that good.
      The movie has some great special effects, especially considering the budget, but lacks a good story.
      It's supposed to be a spoof on Star Trek and Babylon 5 but fails to deliver any truely funny moments (finnish humor?). The best you can expect is a mild grin, but that's about as amusing as it gets.
      Still, it's nice to see it, just to see what they did.

  • Torrent (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @12:37AM (#14098004)
    From their website:

    http://www-uk.starwreck.com/torrent/star_wreck_itp _subtitled_xvid.torrent [starwreck.com]

    • Re:Torrent (Score:2, Informative)

      by tortap-0 ( 306464 )
      Torrent is good and all but you probably will get better speed with the direct downloads from the mirrors. 15 kb/sec vs 1500 kb/sec. Your choice.
    • Version with the burned-in subtitles has crappy quality, or so I'm told. You can get the subtitles as a separate .sub file which most media players can handle without problems.

  • Star Wreck... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Donniedarkness ( 895066 ) <Donniedarkness@g ... BSDcom minus bsd> on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @12:39AM (#14098017) Homepage
    It's quite good, I'm told. I've not got access to broadband, but I hear that it will be coming to DVD (not that anyone expects to make any money off of it). I'll be getting it, and from what I've heard it's one of those movies that I would buy on DVD even if I DID have access to broadband. I encourage anyone who has any intrest in it to check it out.

    • Re:Star Wreck... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Icedman ( 933302 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @12:50AM (#14098061) Homepage
      The DVD has been for sale from August. The order form is on the main site. One thing about the DVD: It's in PAL format. IIRC, they were making an NTSC version of the DVD. So all of you who don't own a DVD-player which can play PAL DVDs, I recommend you wait for the NTSC version.

      Here's the link for their Foreign orders page: http://www-us.starwreck.com/dvd/index_e.html [starwreck.com]

      • So all of you who don't own a DVD-player which can play PAL DVDs, I recommend you get a DVD-player which can play PAL DVDs. :-)

      • So all of you who don't own a DVD-player which can play PAL DVDs...
        ...AND either a display that can show PAL or a transcoder that can turn it into NTSC...

        PAL has more data fed at a different refresh rate than NTSC. It's not just a matter of the player - which will spit out a PAL signal - the display also has to be able to handle it.
      • Only you can't buy it from US. They don't want to spend 20x movie budget on Paramount attack lawyer's fees. So even if they make NTSC DVD, you can't buy it :-)

    •   If you're only on dialup, then get it with one of the download apps with resume capabilities. It's really not that huge, and it's well worth the pain (believe me, I know, I was on dialup until just a couple years ago).

        It being freely distributed, AND good, means you have a lot of different routes to find it and get it, even on dialup.

        Just make sure to burn it to CD right away so you don't have to go thru the pain again ;)

      SB
    • Likely their site will /. soon....
      Torrent Link! [starwreck.com]
    • It'll probably only take you 2-3 days to download. It's 541 mb, and BitTorrent downloads are resumable. You can also try having a friend download and burn it to CD.
    • I've got the DVD and it it The First movie that I did watch the making-of's ! You should see the "computer farm" used for rendering. Four old PC's in the kitchen corner...

  • Light Balls? I thought you said "Light Beers?" (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ... and who could possibly forget the awesomely powerful weapon ...

    The Twinklers!!!

  • well done (Score:2, Funny)

    by NoGuffCheck ( 746638 )
    It amazes me to see what can happen when corporations and communities embrace these sort of online ditribution methods. If it were in america you'd have who ever produce Star Trek screaming about pirates stealing the food out of their mouths and the shirts off their backs..

    Well done, this can only lead to more free entertainment.

    • Re:well done (Score:5, Informative)

      by stubear ( 130454 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @01:03AM (#14098109)
      Actually, Roddenberry's son, the guy who owns the rights to the Star Treck franchise, allows fan films to exist as long as they do not make ANY money from them. I don't think this is unreasonable at all, in fact I think it's pretty damn generous. There's an article in the recent issue of Wired that discusses another Star Trek fan project. Personally I find it sad that far too much attention is paid to fan films and music mixes instead of the the truly inspiring original works such as the shorts on AnimWatch [animwatch.com], the stuff done by studios like , or the music from thousands of small bands too numerous to list here. [blur.com]

      • Re:well done (Score:4, Informative)

        by www.sorehands.com ( 142825 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @01:25AM (#14098206) Homepage
        Spoofs and such can't be prevented by the rights owner. For example, the Barbiegirl song, in Mattel v. MCA Records.
        • Obviously you're not up to date on copyright practices.

          Old practice: Freedom of the press belongs to those who can afford one.

          New practice: Freedom of the press belongs to those who can afford lawyers.

          By the time an ordinary person has paid for a semi-competent lawyer to go through the motions of getting the case laughed out of court, it runs into life changing amounts of money for most folks. The worst case is if the other guy has a point to prove. Then you'll end up in court, and strategically speakin
        • In fact its probably the best Star Trek to come along in quite some time(despite some of the low budget special effects). Id put the two episodes above the first three seasons of enterprise and anything from Voyager(mind you thats not saying much)

      • Re:well done (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Golias ( 176380 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:01AM (#14098468)
        Personally I find it sad that far too much attention is paid to fan films and music mixes instead of the the truly inspiring original works...

        An easy sentiment to applaud, but if said original works were so darn inspiring, wouldn't they manage to, oh I don't know, inspire more attention?

        The flash-based Strongbad letters on homestarrunner.com managed to carve a niche mostly through word of mouth, as have various on-line comics such as Penny Arcade, Megatokyo, and Order of the Stick.

        Now, the vast majority of people doing that sort of thing don't really manage to make any money (though Piro managed to quit his day job and live of t-shirt sales and book deals), but if something deserves attention in this content-starved age, it usually gets it.

        Besides, spoof, fan-fiction, "shipper" stories, doujinshi, etc., are an art form in and of themselves. Some would argue that they are a more pure art from than the stories they are derived from, since they were motivated entirely by love of the subject matter and the desire to create, rather than to meet some TV station's shooting deadline and get a paycheck.

        I'm not saying I'd rather read an erotic "Spuffy" fan fic than watch the final episode of Season 6, I'm just saying that there's really nothing that makes such a composition any better or worse, culturally speaking, than some starving writer's attempt at a first novel.

  • Slashdot timeline (Score:3, Informative)

    by karvind ( 833059 ) <karvind.gmail@com> on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @12:45AM (#14098043) Journal
    Star Wreck Trailer [slashdot.org] (December 12th, 2003)

    Star Wreck 6 Finally Complete [slashdot.org] (August 22nd, 2005)

    Star Wreck Released as Download [slashdot.org] (October 1st, 2005)

    • So what you're really saying is that this story is a dupe?

      Just for all the "OMG ITS A DOOP" crowd, The /. editors have been known to repost stories that didn't get enough attention the first time around.

      For example, I didn't see this when it was first posted, but now its in my bittorrent queue.

      rock on /. eds

  • VERBS (Score:5, Insightful)

    by smart.id ( 264791 ) <jbd@jd8[ ]om ['7.c' in gap]> on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @12:50AM (#14098058) Homepage
    USE VERBS IN YOUR HEADLINES! Where is the verb? Star Trek Spoof is Top Finnish Movie! Does this piss anyone else off?
    • Yes, it really pissed off the grammar nazis - to the extreme.

    • Re:VERBS (Score:2, Funny)

      by Supurcell ( 834022 )
      I thought "Finnish" was the verb and something called "Star Trek Spoof Top" was the subject.
      • Actually, I thought "top" was the verb, like "Star Trek spoof tops [beats] Finnish movie." This is why newspaper-style headlines are retarded and worthless. Is it really so much more difficult to write "Star Trek spoof is the top Finnish movie?" Or hell, this is Slashdot, we can probably assume most people know the name of the spoof: "In the Pirkinning is the top Finnish movie."

        Although these micro-headlines do give us such gems as these, lifted from James Taranto [opinionjournal.com]:

        • "Black Faces Day in Chicago Court"-
      • I thought it meant there was only one Finnish movie in existance and some Star Trek Spoof had topped it.
    • Not really. Is it so hard to decode a headline? There is a whole article explaining it anyway. You did read the article, did you?
    • terl us about "sprit infinitives" next grammah resson...

      No, it not piss off me.
    • ``USE VERBS IN YOUR HEADLINES! Where is the verb? Star Trek Spoof is Top Finnish Movie! Does this piss anyone else off?''

      No, and I don't think it should, either. This headline is perfectly comprehensible without the verb, and I think in a headline, this omission doesn't even make it sound wrong. Not more wrong than "Star Trek Spoof To Become Top Finnish Movie", anyway, and that's a very common form for headlines to take.
      • Remember that "spoof" is used in verb form, too, and many people (me included) read
        subject(star trek) verb(spoof) object(top finn movie)
        instead of
        subject(star trek spoof) predicative(top finn movie)
        at first glance.

    • Re:VERBS (Score:4, Funny)

      by jc42 ( 318812 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @12:24PM (#14101015) Homepage Journal
      USE VERBS IN YOUR HEADLINES!

      Ah, but part of the fun of English-language headlines is that so many words can be misread as verbs. As others have already pointed out, both "spoof" and "top" can be verbs in this headline (though an 's' should probably be added if you're American). Also, "Finnish" can be read as a mistyping of "finish" and treated as a verb, which is a standard pun in some circles.

      One of my favorites, from around 15 years ago, was the newspaper headline "American Ships Head to Gulf". I just did a check, by googling for "Ships Head to Gulf", and found that at least one Australian and one Russian have also shipped their heads to the Gulf.

      Or maybe I'm misreading them, and these three people shipped someone else's head to the Gulf ...

  • woohoo (Score:3, Funny)

    by nemik ( 909434 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @12:58AM (#14098091) Homepage
    can't wait for the slashdot effect on the torrent...it is rather sluggish.

    • Re:woohoo (Score:2, Informative)

      by juventasone ( 517959 )
      I watched the movie when it was released, enjoyed it, and have been seeding it ever since in hopes it'd help more people watch it. At this moment there's actually more seeds than peers. I say bring on the slashdot effect, this is what torrents were created for after all.

  • Not JUST a Star Trek spoof (Score:4, Informative)

    by Phroggy ( 441 ) * <slashdot3@@@phroggy...com> on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @01:05AM (#14098119) Homepage
    To be fair, they also spoofed Babylon 5.
  • For that that would like to watch, it is subtitled (or at least the version I saw was) and also quite good. There's a little lost sometimes in the translation, but the overall plot is interesting, FX are decent (and quite good in some places) and there are a lot of funny additions/quirks.

  • Don't bother ordering if you're in the US (Score:4, Informative)

    by psi42 ( 747491 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @01:50AM (#14098276)
    Unfortunately, they wouldn't sell me a disc, citing "legal reasons." Oh well, maybe I'll buy a t-shirt or something.
  • From the Seanbaby video review: [thewavemag.com]

    "In the original Star Trek, Captain Kirk was all that is man. He'd tear his shirt off and fight a lizard monster from a space couch covered in green alien sluts. In Turkish Star Trek, reverse all of that. The movie starts with Kaptan Kirk practically prancing over to his chair to sit down cross-legged and daintily lisp out orders...."

  • Periode 1 - A German Trek Parody (Score:3, Interesting)

    by OzPhIsH ( 560038 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @02:07AM (#14098333) Journal
    There was a German Star Trek parody that came out last year called (T)Raumschiff Surprise - Periode 1. I haven't seen it, but I saw ads on television for it when I was in Germany last year, and it looked pretty goofy. Raumschiff is the German word for spaceship, but Traumschiff would be like "dreamship". So it's like a dual meaning. Periode is Period. 1 is 1. Has anyone seen this movie? Is it worth watching? My German is only so-so, but my Trek is pretty good:) Will I be able to understand enough of this movie without a universal translator? Cause I'd really like to see it.
    • I've seen it; but honestly I don't think it's worth seeing, unless you think that the 602nd gay joke is just as funny as the 601st.
      "Kirk" and "Spock" in this movie are a gay copule, and almost all supposed-to-be-funny scenes bear on that.
    • I'm surprised that they got away for it. Pro-7, a major German network was behind it with various merchandising too. The whole thing started as a regular spoof in a German comedy show, and then someone decided to spin it out into a movie, this was perhaps a little too far. I speak and understand German but it was funny for about 15 minutes and definitely not after the advertising campaign.
    • "Periode is Period"
      Well, not in the "at the end of the sentence", but the "menstruation" sense, which is a nod to the gay main characters.

  • I watched it a couple weeks ago (Score:3, Insightful)

    by saskboy ( 600063 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @02:10AM (#14098341) Homepage Journal
    If you keep in mind that it's a comedy first, and a drama second, then you won't be disapointed. It's not supposed to be Star Trek, it's Star Wreck, another universe, so don't be whining about how it doesn't match Star Trek canon.

    The ending kinda disapointed me, but mostly because I wanted more! So overall I think I gave it a [5/10] because for an amateur production it's 10/10, but up against real actors and writers it's more like a 3/10. The special effects are top drawer though, in any league.

    For other Star Trek spinoffs, look up http://www.newvoyages.com/ [newvoyages.com] they have two episodes of original Trek available for free by torrent. A third is on the way soon and features Star Trek TOS and Babylon 5 actor Walter Koenig [spelling?] - Chekov / Bester.
    • So overall I think I gave it a [5/10] because for an amateur production it's 10/10

      I don't think it's really quite fair to make that comparison. I've seen "professional" films that weren't this good, and they weren't even subtitled! This is one of those films that it pays to watch a second or third time to catch the little things. It's really quite funny. It also helps catching everything watching over because it is subtitled, after all.

      There is a lot of humor here, including a lot of concept gags. The
    • So overall I think I gave it a [5/10] because for an amateur production it's 10/10, but up against real actors and writers it's more like a 3/10.
      The fact that you even felt compelled to rate it in comparison to the efforts of "real actors and writers" should say a lot about the quality of work that was put into this fan-made film.

      Although, still, that's an arguable comparison, since you haven't qualified what you consider to be "real actors and writers".

  • More Realistic (Score:4, Insightful)

    by miyako ( 632510 ) <miyako AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @02:28AM (#14098378) Homepage Journal
    Amature films, as these guys have shown, are all the time becomming more realistc. With the computer power and high availability of digital camcorders any group of friends can write, film and star in a full length movie. With the open source Cinipaint and Blender special effects can even be done on a home computer that can rival a lot of the best special effects of movies from the mid to late 90's, and in some cases even very recent movies.
    I've been working on just such a project, doing special effects for a fantasy film that's going to be shot in greece. The entire group consists of the writer/director, a camera/lighting guy, a makeup artist/costume designer, a set guy, 3 actors, an actress, 1 guy doing editing and postprocessing, and myself, doing CGI. That's 10 people, working on a budget of about 12,000. [shamless self-promotion] The script is quite a bit better than most of the dreck that comes out of hollywood- without having the pretentious or preachy feel that people (wrongly) associate with independent films. The makeup effects and costumes are top notch considering the budget (the makeup artist studied with Tom Savini of Night of the Living Dead fame), and the special effects are comming on quite nicely- there is a scene we affectionatley call "Helms Deep" with over 200 creatures that should be one of the main story arcs that I've been working on for about a month.
    The movie is going to be released free on the net, with DVD sales hopefully making up for the financing that's come out of pocket from a lot of the people who've been working with the project.
    I think this is the reason the MPAA is afraid of Peer to Peer networks, and the internet in general. People now have the ability to make and distribute movies all across the globe for less than the catering budget of most big hollywood movies. It's not that they are afraid that people are going to pirate their movies, it's that they are afraid people are going to make the obsolete.

    • Is there a website with more information? I tried your profile home page address but it's busted.

    • Re:More Realistic (Score:3, Insightful)

      by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 )
      ``It's not that they are afraid that people are going to pirate their movies, it's that they are afraid people are going to make the obsolete.''

      I'm pretty sure this goes for the RIAA. It's probably true that the spreading of music that P2P has brought about increases the popularity of the music, and it's not hard to imagine this would lead to increased sales of RIAA-endorsed media.

      However, movies are different. A movie costs much more to make than a song, and ends up being watched far less often than most s

      • Re:More Realistic (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Maxo-Texas ( 864189 )
        A large part of the reason movies are so expensive is what people in california cost.
        In fact, I'd guess that over 60% of your 100 million dollar budget is not spent on physical consumables.

        So... doing the math... thinking about how hollywood folks are different than skilled programmers... I can't see why outsourcing is not a severe threat to them too. There are millions of talented people who can make increasingly high quality entertainment for less and less money every day. At the very least, I can't see
  • Bah, everyone is saying this is a star trek spoof - it also parodies B5 quite a bit too (and, IMHO, a bit better)
    If you haven't seen it, do. CGI is pretty damn good for a project with basically no budget.
    The subtitles are kind of bad, but in a funny kind of way.

  • Previous top movie (Score:3, Informative)

    by emakinen ( 875208 ) on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @03:59AM (#14098615)
    Before Star Wreck previous top movie was made 1955, and in 50 years it has gathered an audience of 2,8 million. The movie is called Unknown soldier (Tuntematon sotilas), and it is based on novel by Väinö Linna. Basically it's a story of a finnish army unit in second world war, and it's point is to tear down the myth of clean and heroic finnish soldier.

    About Star Wreck being the most popular: can you really compare a strictly finnish audience with a potentially global audience? Excluding Aki Kaurismäki's Man without past, this is one of the few finnish movies, that have ever got any international distribution.

    • "Basically it's a story of a finnish army unit in second world war, and it's point is to tear down the myth of clean and heroic finnish soldier."

      I haven't seen the movie, but the book does have its fair share of heroes despite not being idealized.

      "About Star Wreck being the most popular: can you really compare a strictly finnish audience with a potentially global audience? Excluding Aki Kaurismäki's Man without past, this is one of the few finnish movies, that have ever got any international distr

  • ...who's the babe in the leather gear? I can't find her mentioned
    anywhere on the site.
    • I do agree totally, but of course I'm sure the reason her name does not appear is because I'm the only one who needs her name and phone number :-).
      (Now I wonder why I didn't get it yet, must be all that spam clogging down the Internet.)

        Cheers ;-)
  • Well worth the time.
    Got quite a few laughs from a tough critic I know.

    Also it is inspirational to see a small group with basically no budget or resources produce something so epic.
  • http://www.magenta.net/public/ [magenta.net]

    01.10.2005
    Magenta hosts one of the biggest online-movie distributions in the Internet history
    Read more [magenta.net]

    08.10.2005
    Star Wreck goes over 1M downloads
    Read more [magenta.net]

    21.11.2005
    Star Wreck takes the lead as the most watched finnish film of all time!
    Read more [magenta.net]

    Today [21.11.2005] Magenta has distributed 2.948.462 copies of Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning globally. ... Magenta estimates that the total number of downloads is already past the 3.5 million mark (probably closer to 4.0 million). This es

  • i watched the trailer (Score:3, Informative)

    by circletimessquare ( 444983 ) <circletimessquar ... m minus language> on Wednesday November 23, 2005 @10:22AM (#14099937) Homepage Journal
    all i can say is i didn't know i would be learning the finnish word for "fragfest" today, but there you go

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