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Movie Thoughts: BlackBerry
Getting out to the movies twice in a succession that would have been rapid for me years ago might have had an effect on me. I’d watched the trailers at both of those screenings with a thought or two about upcoming films I might also go to; when I noticed a movie I’d at least been aware of would be screening in theatres sooner than those possibilities, the thought of going to see it as well came to me in a hurry. I’ll admit to a certain feeling of “I’ve seen an animated movie made in Japan; I’ve seen a forty-year-old science fiction blockbuster; maybe now I can go to something a bit more ‘ordinary’ than either of them.” A movie “based on real events,” telling the tale of a particular kind of smartphone, did seem to fit that category.
The trailers in front of BlackBerry were almost all different from the ones I’d seen in my last two visits to the theatre. (I’d thought about going to a different one closer to me, but hadn’t quite got its online ticketing site to work; I wound up making the longer trip again.) Remembering many of those new trailers were for movies featuring older women, though, does leave me wondering if they quite matched the movie I saw either. There was a definite sense of the first engineers at Research In Motion being presented as “maladjusted and obsessed with a familiar, narrow band of pop culture.” On the other hand, Jim Balsillie, who became a “co-CEO” of the company, was presented with historic masks from around the world on the walls of his first office but also watching hockey at home. I’d noticed some comments about the actor who played Balsillie being impressive but hardly recognizable in the role; the only problem for me there was that I hadn’t recognized his name to begin with, one more warning, perhaps, that I’m only a bit more ambiguously conscious of being in just about the same place the engineers are presented as filling.
I did think a bit of a TV movie I’d seen in more mundane circumstances about some of the first British home computers, and of how I haven’t got around to seeing the somewhat more famous TV movie “Pirates of Silicon Valley.” There’s a familiar rise-and-fall arc to BlackBerry; it was sort of tempting to suppose Mike Lazaridis, the other “co-CEO,” was being presented in particular as “rising from the ranks of the awkward engineers but falling into a state of ‘phoniness,’” his wardrobe improved and hair restyled even as his one-time work buddy kept the same look. I also wondered about having been safely detached from that arc in real life; my brother had used RIM smartphones for quite some time, and had gone so far as to buy their “PlayBook” tablet, which the movie didn’t get to. (Right after he’d bought it, I’d gone to an Apple computer dealer and bought a used first-generation iPad with cellular hardware, which for quite a while filled what space a smaller smartphone might have.) I also had an ambiguous thought or two about how once upon a time the narrative of the iPhone as disruptive technology might have been supposed to be just another bump in the road given predictions of Android phones conquering the world, “because ‘open.’” For all of that and having read the book the movie was said to have been based on, I did enjoy going to it, remembering how every so often I’d go to a movie theatre because that was a bit more convenient than waiting for and tracking down home viewing options.
The trailers in front of BlackBerry were almost all different from the ones I’d seen in my last two visits to the theatre. (I’d thought about going to a different one closer to me, but hadn’t quite got its online ticketing site to work; I wound up making the longer trip again.) Remembering many of those new trailers were for movies featuring older women, though, does leave me wondering if they quite matched the movie I saw either. There was a definite sense of the first engineers at Research In Motion being presented as “maladjusted and obsessed with a familiar, narrow band of pop culture.” On the other hand, Jim Balsillie, who became a “co-CEO” of the company, was presented with historic masks from around the world on the walls of his first office but also watching hockey at home. I’d noticed some comments about the actor who played Balsillie being impressive but hardly recognizable in the role; the only problem for me there was that I hadn’t recognized his name to begin with, one more warning, perhaps, that I’m only a bit more ambiguously conscious of being in just about the same place the engineers are presented as filling.
I did think a bit of a TV movie I’d seen in more mundane circumstances about some of the first British home computers, and of how I haven’t got around to seeing the somewhat more famous TV movie “Pirates of Silicon Valley.” There’s a familiar rise-and-fall arc to BlackBerry; it was sort of tempting to suppose Mike Lazaridis, the other “co-CEO,” was being presented in particular as “rising from the ranks of the awkward engineers but falling into a state of ‘phoniness,’” his wardrobe improved and hair restyled even as his one-time work buddy kept the same look. I also wondered about having been safely detached from that arc in real life; my brother had used RIM smartphones for quite some time, and had gone so far as to buy their “PlayBook” tablet, which the movie didn’t get to. (Right after he’d bought it, I’d gone to an Apple computer dealer and bought a used first-generation iPad with cellular hardware, which for quite a while filled what space a smaller smartphone might have.) I also had an ambiguous thought or two about how once upon a time the narrative of the iPhone as disruptive technology might have been supposed to be just another bump in the road given predictions of Android phones conquering the world, “because ‘open.’” For all of that and having read the book the movie was said to have been based on, I did enjoy going to it, remembering how every so often I’d go to a movie theatre because that was a bit more convenient than waiting for and tracking down home viewing options.