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Star Wreck Released as Download 239

Arto Rantala writes "After seven years of production, Star Wreck: In The Pirkinning, the Finnish Star Trek / Babylon 5 parody movie, was finally released on DVD a month ago and is now available for download. In spite of its practically zero budget, the film has a hilariously captivating story, top notch CGI and even a couple of performances from professional actors. Download it now and buy the DVD if you like it! I know I did. You can also obtain it directly from the .torrent"
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Star Wreck Released as Download

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01, 2005 @03:07PM (#13694540)
    Please use http://www.starwreck.com/torrent/star_wreck_itp_su btitled_xvid.torrent [starwreck.com] to get the torrent. That will serve the file from the fastest server depending on load and your location.
    • I couldn't get that one to work, so I'm using this one: http://www.slotorrent.net/tor_f49511ffa0ab7560d6fb 6538a52b5fc7287dce8f.html [slotorrent.net]

      It seems to be ok. YMMV.

    • Ask Slashdot (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Stavr0 ( 35032 )
      Is there an Azureus plugin that would automatically block peers that aren't in my side of the pond? Seems to me that it's ridiculous for the packets to start in Finland, cross the Atlantic, then back to other european countries. Perhaps not as drastic as block, but at least traffic shape/prioritize by physical proximity. (Yes I STFGoogle)
      • Instead of blocking peers based on proximity, wouldn't prioritizing them be best?
      • Re:Ask Slashdot (Score:2, Interesting)

        by aevan ( 903814 )
        Couldn't you reverse the IP filter under Options, set it to 'allow', and then just insert networks that are in your area? Or barring that, set it to deny and set it to block major foreign networks.

        It wouldn't be 100% perfect unless you were extremely thorough, but could get a majority blocked that way.

        I'm not entirely sure if this is a built-in feature, or a result of using the SafePeer plugin for Azureus. If so, SafePeer allows you to customise you list (just turn off the default 'periodic update',
      • Why would you want to block a peer? Having 2 peers, one of which is on a dial-up connection, is still faster than having just the one other peer.
    • MIRROR (Score:3, Informative)

      by Gubbe ( 705219 )
    • I see I have ten seeds in 30 peers. My DSL connection is typcially rated at 650Kb.sec up 280Kb.sec down. I'm seeing about 6 to 14KiB/sec torrent download rate with an average near 9KiB, and 12 to 50 KiB/sec upload rate with an average near 39KiB.

      when I look at my internet connection's packets I see lower values: 3 to 8 KB/sev and 8 to 50KB/sec

      I'm about 30 minutes into what looks like a 13 hours download.

      is that good for the download rate? I would have expected more upload rate, higher than or at least o
  • Please note that movie is released under Creative Commons license [wikipedia.org]. I wonder if they will release it in US ? May be not. different copyright laws etc
    • Which one? Creative Commons License means nothing - or worse, it may mean that sharing is prohibited (CC Sampling License says that).
       
    • The movie was originally going to be released on DVD in the US, but they had to cancel all the US orders at the last minute due to unspecified legal issues.

      BTW, I've seen the movie and I have to say, DAMN IS THAT EVER FUNNY! :-)

      One word sums it up: FUUUUUKKKKKKOOOOOOVVVVV!!! :-P
  • by JoeLinux ( 20366 ) <joelinux@ g m a i l . c om> on Saturday October 01, 2005 @03:10PM (#13694556)
    Bit Torrent makes for a very strange comment: "Hey! Cool! This link is slashdotted!"
  • by dorkygeek ( 898295 ) on Saturday October 01, 2005 @03:12PM (#13694573) Journal
    Plot Summary for
    Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning (2005) (V)

    The future looks bleak for Captain Pirk. Originally from the far future, he traveled back to save the world, but was shipwrecked on the 21st century. The world of the past is a dangerous place and he is finding it difficult to convince the ladies he is, in fact, an intergalactic space hero from the future. To make things right Pirk comes up with a questionable plan to save mankind's future...
  • Seeds: 22 Connected (708 in Swarm)
    • 530 seeds and over 2000 peers here - but give it a coupla hours to hit it's peak. Mark my words: 2500 people is peanuts for this swarm. ;)
      • Agreed. I picked it up before it hit the torrents, and download from their site was only 14kbs. Normally I'll torrent something and share it for a couple hours, but I think I'll contribute my mediocre bandwidth for the weekend. It's worth it, if for no better reason than to inspire others to offer their talents and skills in a similar way.
  • by arivanov ( 12034 ) on Saturday October 01, 2005 @03:15PM (#13694581) Homepage
    Gotta see it to believe it. Unless the creators of the movie are the only finns with a sense of humour in all Finland or members of their Swedish minority...
    • Having seen it some time ago I can vouch it has its moments. (note: I am dutch, I don't know how that influences things)

      Blunt, not subtle (hey, it's Finnish), it still manages to make fun of both ST and B5 and geeks in general in a good way, and the special effects do not completely suck and at times the carnage is quite impressive. YMMV of course but I had a good time.
    • I heard a Finnish guy on IMDb having seen this saying it was maybe even among the best Finnish movies made, which is saying... nothing. :-s
  • Mirrors (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01, 2005 @03:17PM (#13694584)
    The movie is released under Creative Commons, as you can see from the site itself.

    So if you can, mirrors would be greatly appreciated. We have a fast setup, but there are a lot of people downloading the movie.

    -Rigi, the Star Wreck webmonkey.
  • All I read looks like pure Star Trek spoofage, except it the Slashdot article.

    Tell me I'm not downloading this for nothing...
    • The screenshots show an omega class destroyer being blown up into bits by a wing of Enterpise V class starships. None of which are too scale. Either the destroyer is 10 times bigger then it should be or the ships are 10 times smaller then they should be. Further to that there are two screenshots that look like spoofs of the Babylon 5. One looks like the opening "C&C window" shot and another one looks like a spoof of the Ivanova "Mayday" message with the twist that Ivanova looks like Ozzie. Looking at th
    • It has plenty of Babylon 5 factors in it as well. It's basically a Star Trek (Emperor James B. Pirk) vs Babylon 5 (Captain Sherrypie) movie. I found it to be a great movie, with some hilarious cracks and very nice space battles.
      • First- yes solid B5 in the movie.

        My one geeky disappointment is that the starfleet didn't take advantage of their superior maneuverability and the B5 heavy ships limitations (B5 big ships are japanese-like and have "BIG GUNS" that fire forward only.) It would have been nice for them to take advantage of that weakness.

    • All I read looks like pure Star Trek spoofage, except it the Slashdot article. Tell me I'm not downloading this for nothing...

      Not to worry. You could almost say there's more B5 spoofage in this movie than any Trek-related stuff. (The previous installments of the Star Wreck series have been pure Trek spoofage, though.)

  • In Pirk's words... (Score:5, Informative)

    by WWWWolf ( 2428 ) <wwwwolf@iki.fi> on Saturday October 01, 2005 @03:30PM (#13694633) Homepage

    "Did that ever take a *damned* long time." People have waited this movie for years, it was out in the midnight local time and Slashdot publishes an article full 23 hours later. Is this still News for Nerds? Get some priorities! =)

    Anyways, enjoy the movie - I pre-ordered the DVD and I've only watched it three and half times, but even based on such flimsy conclusions I can say I seriously think this thing just rules, one of the best scifi special effect movies I've seen, parody or not.

    What I find it interesting is that the website also has the .srt subtitles *and* a fairly detailed explanation from the translator on the intricacies of the translation - I sure hope this will make fan-provided translations a little bit better. Right now, I'm waiting for them to release the kind-of-promised SW:ITP soundtrack. This movie has some damn good music.

    • You know... if you used the srt files to change some "twinklers", etc. the result could kick ass.
      ---
      There were a couple rough spots in the subtitles that need correcting.

    • "Did that ever take a *damned* long time." People have waited this movie for years, it was out in the midnight local time and Slashdot publishes an article full 23 hours later. Is this still News for Nerds? Get some priorities! =)

      I submitted the story at 10 in the morning (local time) and got it promptly rejected. A more paranoid person might think that Slashdot (or at least some of the editors) had been paid to make sure there was no other sci-fi movie stories near the one announcing Serenity's opening

    • Slashdot publishes an article full 23 hours later. Is this still News for Nerds? Get some priorities! =)

      even Groklaw got it hours before slashdot... ;)

  • by Maxo-Texas ( 864189 ) on Saturday October 01, 2005 @03:30PM (#13694635)
    Overall rating a 6 (8 if you are familiar with Startrek AND Babylon 5).

    Technically the movie was very good. The sound quality was good and the special effects were solid. There were a few spots I think could use polish- for example with the ship takes off the first time it goes straight up- I think a little tilt would have been used in the real series. But the quality was pro level in my opinion- "B" movie, not "A" movie- but pro.

    Costumes. The costumes were pretty solid but one of the lower parts of the movie. This makes sense and you have to spend -real- money to buy fabric. This is probably one of the limiting factors of non-big budget productions going forward. You can simulate the sets, you can get actors cheap, but you have to spend real money on things like costumes, chairs, etc.

    Production Quality. It was decent but suffered from having a small cast. You would see scores of starships but then only 20-30 people. I think some crowd scenes could be digitally multiplied to make them more effect.

    Tone. This is where the movie is uneven. It can't decide if it wants to be serious with humor or outright parody. Some parts are excellent, tense, serious and then it will veer sharply into stupid things that would not happen in real life. On the other hand- a lot of other scenes were much more like what WOULD happen in real life than you typically see in movies. The tone may be required to avoid lawsuits since parody is protected.

    Acting. To be honest- there is a lot higher quality acting than you might expect. Some of it is that the actors already know the character they are playing so they don't have to make it up. I think some actors play multiple roles. There are at least a dozen major characters in the movie and ALL are distinct and stand out (which is quite a feat in a 2 hour film). None of it felt "wooden". A fair amount of it was a bit overblown.

    Makeup. The costuming for Dwarf was a bit weak- and the costuming for a non alien was cheesy (a choice they made for a nose joke I think). Info was well done. General costumes are solid. The females looked pretty hot in some cases (but tall thin in a short black leather skirt is going to work in most cases).

    Action Scenes. These were very weak. Probably the weakest part of the film. I guess hollywood stuntpersons deserve a lot more credit than they get. I can understand- actors just can't hit and be hit without hurting themselves or getting hurt. Stuntpeople mitigate injury through training and they still get hurt.

    In Jokes. This is where SW rules. They really have a lot of fun poking jokes at the characters- even to the point of using them to advance the plot. Some are dead on, some are stupid, some misfire. But a lot more hits than misses.

    Plot. The plot is very well thought out- much better than many "A" hollywood movies. It has plenty of twists and turns. You don't know what to expect at any given time. I won't give much away but it is NOT just about a bunch of CGI ships flying around fighting- they ADVANCE the plot with those battles, but the plot is about characters and character conflict.

    Ending. The ending was solid- and well I won't say more but apparently there are some mistaken data assumptions.

    ---
    There are MANY hollywood films out that I would not watch for free. This movie, I would have happily paid 6 bucks to see (maybe 7).
  • Please use the torrent file for maximized download. The servers are a bit crowded at the moment. There are several servers in New York, London and in Finland servicing the website and the direct downloads. However those servers typically have only a FE-network interface (100mbps) so it gets pretty crowded in an instant.

    However right now at the time of this post it's almost midnight in local Finnish time (EET) so downloading from the Finnish servers might be the fastest direct download link ATM. Lots of fins
  • Using the torrent linked in the article, I'm pumping outbound at over 30k/sec, but my inbound is less than 1k/sec. Seed up, people!
  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 01, 2005 @04:16PM (#13694789)
    P2P software allows small artists to cheaply and easily distribute their work worldwide. RIAA/MPAA fears that some day people will realize that there is a lot of high quality entertaiment outside Hollywood.
    • Take a major motion picture. Rip it. Add a "preview" feature that lets you watch the first 20 minutes of the film for free. At a tense moment, redirect the viewer to a website to unlock the rest of the content. Distributers bypassed, developers make money. MPAA makes money.

      Yes, I said the MPAA makes money. While we're not talking about controlling traditional retail channels, there is no reason why they couldn't control online distribution. Get the members to agree, rework MPAA.com into the rental de
      • While we're not talking about controlling traditional retail channels, there is no reason why they couldn't control online distribution.

        Is there any reason why they should?

        Traditional channels are expensive, that's why you need someone with a lot of cash to make the initial investment, and that's why the MPAA has free reign to fuck over both the consumers and the content producers.

        Online distribution, on the other hand, costs next to nothing - what purpose would these people serve?

  • Sorry, the only Finnish Star Trek parody worth spending time on is the Internet classic "DAMN YOU PIRARD [astral.net]". Anything else pales in comparison.
  • Get the DVD (Score:3, Insightful)

    by squoozer ( 730327 ) on Saturday October 01, 2005 @04:45PM (#13694919)

    but not via a download. Come on, give us a 4GB iso that can be burnt to a DVD and watched like a regular DVD. Sigh. It's not like it's costing them that much in the way of bandwidth as it's torrented. I imagine that it will probably cost more (bandwidth wise) if they decide to release a full DVD version for download in the future because their won't be so many peers.

    • If you want a DVD, burn it in Nero VisionExpress. You don't need to re-encode or anything, it transcodes it as its being burnt. If you're using OSX or Linux, well, I haven't had the need to fiddle with burners for those yet, and I don't know if K3B or Toast can handle that.
  • Seed it! (Score:2, Informative)

    It's funny, and it's legal: don't be greedy and share it. If you have some kind of hosting with pre-paid bandwidth in excess, just use it. I'll be seeding it at 512KB/s (that's 4Mbps) for one week :-D
  • I can't find on the web site what software they used for the bridge modeling, though I'm sure someone here knows. What about the ship drawings? It has a 3D Studio Max feel to it.

    But given what they had to work with...fantastic.

    • Lightwave (Score:3, Informative)

      by MachDelta ( 704883 )
      From what I found poking around on their forums, I believe they used Lightwave for their (extensive) special effects.
  • Who says? Do they? Or do others? Most of these fanfilms suffer from totally patheticly inept acting. The graphics are have reached a point where they are usually cool, but the acting is terrible (someone should do a fan movie where R2D2 is the lead!) - and quite often the editing is also awful - it needs to be much tighter - but ooh, its granma/dad/the cute guy next door/the dog who is on and we can't cut here. YES YOU CAN.
  • by Dwonis ( 52652 ) * on Saturday October 01, 2005 @05:55PM (#13695182)
    Heh. Slashdot has an interesting effect on BitTorrent downloads:
    | status: finishing in 5:54:58 (2.7%)
    | speed: 25.8 K/s down - 104.6 K/s up
    | totals: 6.4 M down - 26.1 M up
  • by Kizor ( 863772 ) on Saturday October 01, 2005 @09:13PM (#13696014)
    As a Finn myself I'm still skeptical about the international appeal. The film has received very good reviews and feedback, but it's all domestic. Speaking with the authoritative voice of a person who hasn't actually seen it yet, the fact is that In The Pirkinning makes extensive use of its Finnishness.

    The subtitles of the previous installments don't seem to be there for allowing English-speakers to comprehend what's going on as much as compounding the funniness inherent in Star Trek in Finnish. They certainly don't work half as well on their own. Not only are a lot of nuances lost when converting Finno-Ugric speech into terse Latin-influenced Germanic writing, but someone relying on subtitles won't even notice the overtranslations - replacements for words that usually are just lifted from English - and has to skip a crucial part of the constant wordplay. Calling 'warp' 'twist' isn't funny. Calling 'warp' a Finnish word that can mean 'warp' 'twist' or 'perversion' while simultaneously displaying an English translation calling it 'twist' to an audience that fully well knows that it's 'warp'... that is funny precisely in the way that good jokes mess with your head. If you can't see why, that likely was my point.

    As TNG episode "Darmok" tells us, even universal translators wouldn't guarantee full understanding, unless they were superadvanced subspace translators that interfaced directly with their users' brains feeding them required knowledge, but I digress. Even if the language barrier was removed the average outlander would hardly notice that Info's named after a bookstore chain, much less that his motto is from the old advertisements of said chain. He likely wouldn't have the right misconceptions about the Russian Mafia (even, or in fact especially, if he was actually Russian). Even if I was explaining the hilarious multi-faceted pun that is Garibaldi-equivalent's name I wouldn't know how. Juxtapositions are kinda lost on those who aren't familiar with both of the juxtees, too. And these things go on throughout the movie!

    Don't get me started on the onslaught of sight gags or how much is conveyed by tone of voice.
  • Funny thing about torrents: you get too many people and you connect with your settings too low and those you are connected to arent uploading very fast.... = slow.
    • I gave up on disc 1 season 1 of Lost from Netflix (perpetually listed as Very Long Wait), and am downloading the three episodes from the disc via bittorrents. Man, it's taking a day for each episode.
  • by MachDelta ( 704883 ) on Sunday October 02, 2005 @12:31AM (#13696785)
    ...about this movie wasn't the decent-to-good acting of the main characters, or the humorous yet interesting story, the hillarious gags, or even the totally awesome special effects.

    No, I think the most suprising thing about this movie is just how many good looking girls they managed to convince to participate in a complete geek-fest of a film. (Hellloooo Bridge-Girls!)

    I dunno about the rest of you, but if there's really that many hot girls in Finland who like nerdy stuff, i'm packing my bags! ;)
  • by superhoe ( 736800 ) on Sunday October 02, 2005 @12:44AM (#13696838) Homepage
    When reading the reviews, I just can't resist saying this:

    Star Wreck is a fan movie. It's basically zero-budget. There is simply no other fan movie coming even close to it. I think it is quite interesting to notice that unlike on most fan films, people always start (intentionally or intentionally) comparing SW to real movies like Hollywood stuff. That never happens on discussions about fan films.

    Somebody below this even said 'this shows that Hollywood still rules' and 'at least George Lucas can direct professional actors'. Yeah, and does he do that in his bedroom? :D

    Hollywood never produces anything like this, because a term Hollywood movie means at least some $$$ put into it by default. Even the worst of the worst have some budget. The reviews which compare SW to Hollywood stuff are a massive victory to the makers of this movie.

    They just show that the flick is so neat for a fan flick that people can't treat it as such anymore :D

    • by Anonymous Coward
      You said: They just show that the flick is so neat for a fan flick that people can't treat it as such anymore :D

      My answer: This is so true. The final testament to the perceived quality of the film is that it has already been available for a while as a Russian pirate version. Reference: http://www.film-dvd.ru/index.php?a=2&id=3024 [film-dvd.ru]

      The Russian cover says the name of the movie is: "Zvezdnaya avarija na parkovke" and continues to define it as "Parodiya na seryaly Star Trek I Vavilon 5." Also of note is "Rezh
  • Awesome :-D
  • Well having watched that I think it's excellent and just as entertaining as Galaxy Quest ! And really this just shows what can be acheived without a bunch of focus groups and marketing mediocretins dumbing everything down to please the lowest common denominator.

    So much kudos to those involved and I think a DVD order will be forthcoming (if only to see those delightful bridge girls in better resolution :)

    But I think this is best summed up in the manner of the Norwegian football commentator Bjørge Lille [wikipedia.org]
  • It sounds like a good idea until the creators of Star Trek and Babylon 5 send lawyers after them. Even parody is no longer considered "fair use" anymore due to new copyright and trademark laws.

    Still I watched half of it, and it was quite funny, but has a twisted view of history that favors the Russians/CCCP/Soviet Union, etc. I think that it is the "Mirror Mirror" version of Pirk in this movie, the real Pirk would be appearing on commercials for Dotcom companies and trying to take off his singing career if

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