#Mike lazaridis

[yoko-goto]

Holy shit guys I just finished my first draft of my BlackBerry fanfic (over 32,000 words!)

I am giddy with excitement. I cannot believe I finished something long like this, the last time I finished a first draft that was long was like back in 2021. I'm so excited guys holy shit

[buthappysoverrated]

【Blackberry | Jim Balsillie/Mike Lazaridis】 100 Stories

[unforeseen-idiot]

Glad he’s getting work

Saw this dude in Blackberry, glad he’s still acting.

[cinefilesreviews]

BlackBerry (2023) Movie Review

Sandwiched between the releases of two massive Summer blockbusters, Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3 and Fast X, were a meager selection of smaller films. There’s the hypnosis crime thriller from Robert Rodriguez starring Ben Affleck. There’s the sequel to the quiet, soft hit Book Club. There’s also Sony’s shabby looking live-action anime adaptation Knights of the Zodiac. Then, there’s…

[doyouknowthisactor]

By "roles" I mean playing a different character; someone playing one character across a franchise only counts as one thing for the purposes of this poll

Below are some of this actor's roles. Please only check after voting!

How to Train Your Dragon films as Hiccup (voice role)

Man Seeking Woman as Josh Greenberg

She's Out of My League as Kirk

BlackBerry as Mike Lazaridis

[woosh-floosh]

TBH I really don’t want to give the impression that I’m suggesting Matt Johnson (the real guy) is autistic, I don’t know the guy and I think that’s a really invasive thing to do! This is just how I related to his show and movies and my own personal interpretation. You don’t have to agree with me and I even think a queer theory reading of both of them would be pretty easy. However, Blackberry begins and ends with Mike Lazaridis frantically disassembling electronics to fix a buzzing noise no one else can hear. He spends the first half of the movie so meek he needs his friend to speak for him and go with him to meetings (including having him write a detailed script for how to do a business dealing over the phone). When asked to make a quick prototype of what would become the Blackberry he says he'd only do it if he could do it perfectly. C’mon, that's the autism.

I didn’t like this one as much as the other two, I think because I have no attachment to Blackberry phones (the first iPhone was released when I was five). And it’s shot and written more like a “professional” movie, compared to the improv and “found footage” approach of the first two movies (and NTBTS) (though the shooting style is still reminiscent of the Zapruder Films style!). Glenn Howerton is in it but I did not recognize him on the poster because they shaved him bald for real. I thought it was cheesy that Lazaridis slicked back his hair after a time skip to signify that he is business evil now. SungWon Cho is there.

IIt’s a crazy bold move for Matt Johnson to play pretty much the same character as the one he plays in Nirvanna the Band the Show (which in turn is based on himself) in The Dirties, a movie where he plays a SCHOOL SHOOTER.

TBH I ended up relating a lot to Matt’s character, so much so that I ended up frantically searching up if my thought patterns are “normal” (at one point in the film Owen admonishes Matt for “always acting” and “always being conscious of yourself” and that’s like the curse afflicted by autism masking innit?).  But relating to the characters even though you know they’re gonna commit unspeakable violence is kinda the point of the movie, yeah? It maps pretty closely to a classical tragedy, doesn’t it? The whole thinking to myself “He isn’t really gonna do it! He can’t! He’s too much like me! He’ll get help!” but he does do it, and I knew he would because I read the blurb of the movie.

I guess there is something to be said about how autistic traits are often used as shorthand for someone being creepy, violent, or dangerous. Always “acting,” socially isolated, unable to connect with peers, only communicating with others through the lens of an “obsession,” strange body language, dressing strangely, being socially and developmentally “behind” their peers… 

During my school days the shy quiet kids that did nothing but get their work done and go home were often called ‘school shooters’ behind their backs. It's a strange feeling knowing that people would probably say the same thing about me if only I fit the profile a bit better.

Something else about the movie obsession as well and wanting to make a movie that is “real” speaks to me as well.

Well first that is another bit of strange self awareness by the director. Matt Johnson has said that early in his career he only wanted to film “real life” because people who do not know they are being filmed make the best actors. That’s why many of his projects use the real reactions of the public and loose scripts for characters to fill with improv! Maybe if he was more fucked up he would be more like Matt (the character)....

(Of course we could probably sit here and name many directors who turned abusive on set to capture “realness,” though none of them used the public!)

It’s easy why as a kid I picked up what was shown in movies and TV as being the “ideal.” I guess that’s normal, how things are portrayed in movies is an endless discussion that affects how people think. People like to romanticize their life as if it was a movie. But it’s different for me in some ways, most people don’t take movies and TV as gospel on how to communicate with other people. It’s one of the questions on the CAT-Q after all. Once in high school, I said about some event (don’t remember what) happening “feeling just like it does in high schools on TV.” My friend gave me a funny look and asked what I meant by that.

At the bonfire Matt describes his “cake plan” to a girl with a tone best described as “oblivious to her disinterest.” The girl responds that it’s probably not a good idea, it’s too over the top and it’s something that would happen in a movie, it wouldn’t work in real life. Matt responds with “Yeah, but what happens in movies works…”

Zooming out a bit I think there is something to be said about many Matt characters (the Dirties, NTBTS, Matt and Bird Break Loose, and Operation Avalanche to an extent) relying heavily on “plans.” Matt in the Dirties helps Owen concoct plans in order to win over Chrissy, and writes down a shooting schedule in much more detail than is probably expected for a school project. (I think Matt’s plans for Owen are supposed to be a parallel to the type of thorough planning needed for making movies, which is a bit ironic considering the loose improved shooting of the ACTUAL movie). Matt in NTBTS is constantly making plans in order to get a show at the Rivoli and often gets frustrated with Jay when he doesn’t follow through with plans or tries to change them halfway. This culminates in a scene in the final episode in season 2 where, stuck on a roof, Matt uses spray paint to write out a new numbered plan on a wall (a plan that only involves breaking the AC unit and then waiting for the repair person to arrive to sneak out the locked door). Almost as if he can’t possibly keep a plan straight in his head without it being concretely written down. When I opened commissions for the first time last summer I was so stressed that I wrote a detailed planning sheet in order to predict how every interaction would go. Only by writing it down did this plan feel real.

But going back through some interviews I was surprised to learn how much Matt Johnson (the character in the Dirties) is based on Matt Johnson’s (the director) actual experience in high school (the sweatpants story was real!!). I guess it’s just weird to watch a movie that is empathetic towards the school shooter (while still accurately capturing the horror of violence)! One of things that inspired him to make this movie was how ascribing “evil” to someone ends conversations, strips people of their humanity. It’s scary to think about how anyone is theoretically capable of doing this, how it could be us as well. It’s not uncommon for autism (or previously aspergers) to be pointed at by the news media as a “reason” for why people do these things.

Towards the end of the film Matt reads the definition of a psychopath from Dave Cullen’s Columbine book. (Paraphrasing here) Emotions, body language, facial expressions, and voice modulations can all be mimicked on cue. His life is a con, a personality fabricated with the purpose of deceiving people. Matt turns to Owen and asks him if that reminds him of anyone.

[peytons-depression-land]

With BlackBerry, Matt Johnson continues to show no other director has a better understanding of our modern, media-molded minds

For those unfamiliar, Matt Johnson is a 37-year-old Canadian indie filmmaker, whose new film BlackBerry, which he co-wrote, directed, and co-stars in, was released this past week. BlackBerry charts the rise and fall of the Canadian creators and company behind the once ubiquitous “BlackBerry” smart phone, a device that’s now a relic to the pre-iphone aughts. The film chronicles the triumphs and tribulations of the phone’s creators, underdog nerds Mike Lazaridis and Dough Fregin, and cutthroat businessman and Blackberry co-CEO Jim Balsillie, who both launched the phone to its successes and helped destroy all they created. Johnson’s previous features are The Dirties, a found footage dark comedy/drama about the lives of two film obsessed high schoolers leading up to a school shooting, and Operation Avalanche, a period thriller about low level CIA agents faking the moon landing – a film in which said agents con their way into NASA, which Johnson and his crew actually did in real life when making the low budget indie film. However, Johnson’s most iconic work, and most beloved by many, is his mockumentary comedy series, which started as a web series and was later adapted to TV, Nirvanna the Band the Show. The series details the misadventures and schemes of a fictionalized version of Johnson and his friend, musician Jay McCarrol, as they try to get their band – Nirvanna the Band – a show at the Toronto restaurant and music venue “The Rivoli.” You might know this series from the now famous "Update Day" clip in which the duo sing along to the Wii shop music. In 2021, Johnson and McCarrol even made a three-episode animated children’s spin off of Nirvanna the Band, titled Matt and Bird Break Loose. A unifying aspect of much of Johnson's work is his narrative documentary style of filmmaking, often employing real people in Sacha Baron Cohen-style moments.

Something about me: I'm kind of a Matt Johnson obsessive. Any time I meet someone from Canada under the age of 40, I ask them if they've heard of Matt Johnson or Nirvanna the Band the Show. I have multiple back-up hard drives with the complete web series and TV seasons of Nirvanna the Band because it's impossible to get/find now in the US. Anytime I'm in a large media store that sells 2nd hand movies (like Amoeba Records), I religiously spend time searching to see if, by some small chance, they have one of the physical copies of The Dirties (the ones with the variant covers that look like Criterion Collection covers) - it's kinda my physical media holy grail. My DVD of Operation Avalanche is one of my most prized possessions. Hell, I’ve even tried my hand at replicating Johnson’s style numerous times, a short film I made while at film school abroad in France being the main example. So, suffice to say: I was very excited for Blackberry.

With BlackBerry Johnson is making significant stylistic and scale leaps from his previous works, “making it to the big leagues” as someone more confident than me with sports metaphors might say. It’s a bigger movie than he’s made before, getting a limited national release here in the US, by a major indie distributor (IFC), starring two sizeable, well-known actors (It’s Always Sunny in Philidelphia’s Glenn Howerton and comedy mainstay Jay Baruchel). All this far from the rag-tag, small scale, underground nature of his previous works, where the cast was the filmmakers and the biggest names involved were Vice (and its since defunct TV network) and Kevin Smith whose company distributed The Dirties. Stylistically, BlackBerry makes the jump from Johnson’s previous found footage/mockumentary movie (both terms sounding far more derisive to the idiosyncratic style of Johnson’s films than I’d like) to a fully “traditional” narrative feature. With both The Dirties and Operation Avalanche, as well as NTBTS, the characters are involved in the actual act of filmmaking, for one reason or another, and aware of the camera filming them, the cameramen being acknowledged entities. The footage you’re watching is filmed, edited, and staring the characters on screen. But, with BlackBerry, besides a fun visual gag from Glenn Howerton at the beginning of the film, the cameras exist as they would in any normal movie – invisible watchers of the events.

What makes BlackBerry and Johnson’s filmmaking so great though is that he doesn’t just abandon all semblance of his style and aesthetic, becoming some bland gun for hire, like so many indie directors plucked from festival success to helm the next cinematic toy line for Marvel. Instead, he finds ways to work his style into this more traditional film in compelling ways. While the camera is no longer literally in the story, it still hovers around the characters, with longtime Johnson DP Jared Raab often shooting through the obstruction of windows, from far away, and with the back of heads in the foreground. The camera zooms and focuses in and out of different characters and things in the moment, cinema verité style, Johnson describing in a Q&A for the film having been influenced by documentaries like Pennebaker and Hegedus’ The War Room. The looming, documentary-like camera works perfectly for this constantly manic story of slap dash, neurotic tech wizzes and on edge CEO sociopaths, the camera matching the characters nature. For this story of greed, corporate malignancy, and the loss of ideals, the camera’s living style also feels like what you’re watching is covert, hacked CCTV footage. It makes the viewer feel like they’re seeing what actually happened: secret footage from inside the office, fly on the wall stuff, intimate to these people and these conflicts.

True to the overarching motif in Johnson’s work of media’s permanent place in our cultural language and experience, Blackberry is filled visual references to other movies: from a non-diegetic montage of famous sci-fi technology over the opening credits, to scenes of the lovable band of “Research in Motion” nerds enjoying movie nights of Raiders of the Lost Ark and They Live, to movie posters lining the walls of the RIM offices and featured on Doug’s t-shirts. Johnson perfectly described how necessary referencing other media was to his film when he explained “Pop culture that we think of as just nerdy ephemera, I believe sincerely, winds up dictating what technologists create that will become the future.” Well timed needle drops help ground the work in its specific world of a nerds 1996, 2003, and 2007, and frequent Johnson collaborator (and aforementioned co-star of Nirvanna the Band) Jay McCarrol brings a pumping synth score, not too dissimilar to Trent Reznor’s work in The Social Network, but with a uniquely quirkier, lo-fi essence that fits perfectly with the indie feel of both the film itself and its subject matter.

Thankfully we’re not entirely deprived of Johnson’s charismatic, comedic screen presence in BlackBerry. While not the Orson Wells-style leading man both in front of and behind the camera he was in his previous works, he still features in Blackberry as the third of our main 3 characters, Doug Fregin, co-engineer/creator of the famous phone, who acts in a way as the film’s audience surrogate. Despite Doug being a “goof” as Balsillie describes him, he’s the heart of the main three characters, the moral center to which we compare Balsillie’s shrewd cunning, lies, and manipulations, and Lazaridis’s tragic moral downfall from tech idealist to bottom-line businessman. Doug is undoubtedly a character in the typical “Johnsonian mold” - a movie quoting, John Carpenter t-shirt and sweatband wearing, ninja turtle loving hyperactive who uses Star Wars references in business meetings. In fact, the character seems molded in the film more on Johnson than the real man, given that, as Johnson explained, he’s a “true cipher… has never done a taped interview,” leaving Johnson with room for interpretation.

However, while Johnson delivers a more lighthearted, comedy performance, as a director he pulls some impressive dramatic performances from Howerton and Baruchel. It’s true that the movie is, at its core, a dark comedy, so there’s some great comedy in the lead performances, Howerton delivering that trademark snark and unhinged rage his Always Sunny character has become known for and Baruchel with his awkward nerdiness. I have no doubt Howerton’s scene in which he, in a rage, screams “I’m from Waterloooooo! Where the vampires hang out!” - in a moment that must be seen to be believed - will become a quoted classic before long. But the characters aren’t just farce Social Network parodies, they have depth and drama to them, a credit to Johnson’s directing and Howerton and Baruchel’s acting. You feel Balsillie’s underlying insecurity and attraction to power that drives him. You hurt seeing Lazaridis slowly turning into what he once stood against and the tragedy of him reaching his ethical “point of no return” when he agrees to the BlackBerry touchscreen phone being manufactured overseas, in order to meet budget and deadline. We also get some delightful supporting performances from the likes of Saul Rubinek, Rich Sommer, Cary Elwes, and Michael Ironside as an imposing, rotund, bolo tie wearing, hard ass COO.

BlackBerry is a tragic tale of ambition and passion succumbing to ego and greed, and in so it’s not only a movie about the tech sector, but also about the struggle of making art. Lazaridis struggles, and ultimately fails, to maintain integrity while creating a technology he loves and believes in against a world run by people like Balsillie who only seek profit and status, quality be damned as long as it sells. Anyone who makes art, especially films, is up against the same problem. There will always be Mike Lazaridis and Matt Johnson’s, there will always be Jim Balsillie’s and David Zaslav’s, and there will always be a struggle between the two: art and commerce. The tragedy comes when the creator, like Lazaridis, loses their principles, and begins creating not for the love of it, but out of obligation and out of profit. The triumphs come when the creator finds a way to take what they love, what they’re good at, and what is meaningful to them, - their vision - and deliver it to the masses with the heart intact, as Johnson has done throughout his career, now with BlackBerry more than ever. It’s up to the creator to stand fast and endure to create their meaningful works, as oftentimes the sharks will get along either way, as we see in the end credits with Balsillie, who avoided any jail time for his stock fraud committed while co-CEO of BlackBerry.

While I don’t think they're for everybody, Matt Johnson's works capture the modern media deluged culture that we all exist in better than any other modern artist or filmmaker. His movies are always about movies, whether they narratively are or not, just as our lives have become subsumed by media consumption, regurgitation, and reinterpretation. We now live in a world where almost every movie and TV show is at our fingertips 24/7 - a religion, the upgrade to dreaming, the codex we classify our existence on - and his film-making style and characters reflect that. The characters, especially the characters Johnson portray, speak in a lingua franca of movies quotes. His camera is alive and involved in the action, often literally, just as our cameras and screens are every day. His editing blends the real world with the movie world, blurring the lines. His movies are not documentaries, but they’re certainly not just fiction, something in between, a dreamlike blend for our media-soaked minds. I’ve never been one good at the rigid definitions of “modernism” and “post modernism” in art, but I have to believe Johnson is the cutting edge of whatever “post-post-post…Modern” stage we’re at currently. The Dirties is about media’s role in the lives of a youth more connected but also alienated than ever before. Operation Avalanche takes the uniquely western art form of film and uses it to represent how governments often use media to manufacture their own fictions to control the public narrative. Nirvanna the Band the Show shows how media influences our everyday lives, friendships, personalities, and dreams. And now BlackBerry serves as a cautionary tale for the fate an artist can fall to if they let their work become a product instead of a passion and art. As we drift further into the oblivion of inevitable ecological, political, social collapse, media becoming the God of our reality, Matt Johnson is our guru, beaming our media-soaked psyche back on to the screen, creating innovative, funny, compelling stories of life through the lens of a movie-fed world.

[filmjoyreviews]

BLACKBERRY: Matt Johnson Isn't Afraid to Make a Hilarious Biopic -- and Glenn Howerton's Rage is at its Finest

Matt Johnson's BlackBerry is a constantly engaging and often hilarious exploration of capitalist corruption and the way media forms our world through telling the story of the rise and fall of the Blackberry--a phone that was once the status symbol and beginning of the smartphone conversation and is now largely forgotten.

BlackBerry's Impressive Pace

From the first frame, Blackberry is an engrossing experience, setting the stage by quickly introducing the characters, especially highlighting their unique personalities, predicting the clashes that are bound to come.

Research In Motion co-founders Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel) and Doug Fregin (Matt Johnson) want to bring a groundbreaking product into the market, but their major concern is maintaining their friendship and making sure to never forget when it's movie night.

The nerdy and wholesome energy of Doug and Mike is in quick direct contrast with Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton), who enters the room like a shark constantly on the hunt for more power.

From this initial moment, BlackBerry never stops. The film flows perfectly from moment to moment, crafting scenes showcasing the different morals of Mike and Doug and their newfound partner Jim through well-placed and perfectly delivered darkly comedic beats.

Glenn Howerton, Jay Baruchel, and Matt Johnson's Memorable Performances

BlackBerry gives us Jay Baruchel's best performance to date as he captures the unease of a character slowly losing his morality over time, in the pursuit of money and relevance. Baruchel's performance makes the audience feel sympathetic for Mike, wishing we could save him as be drifts further and further away from the kindhearted, nerdy tech genius he once was.

Glenn Howerton's award-worthy performance shows the depth of Jim Ballsillie, especially his underlying insecurity and desire to present confidence, even when it isn't fulfilled--hidden behind layers of rage and sarcasm.

Howerton balances the moments where pure, unadulterated rage will best show Jim's emotions with the moments that need a quiet intensity.

Throughout BlackBerry, there are many powerful moments where Howerton shows Ballsillie's insecurity and anger through pursed lips, trying to hide anything bubbling to the surface.

His rage-filled scream of "I'm from Waterloo, where the vampires hang out" will replay over and over inside your head. The different ways Howerton displays Ballsillie's rage make for a layered and engrossing performance.

We want to know more about this man and what makes him tick. The character feels real through this stellar performance guiding us into knowing more about Ballsillie's internal life and tireless pursuit of the capitalistic dream of wanting more and more until nothing is ever good enough.

Matt Johnson's role as Doug is the moral center of BlackBerry, showing us how money and success have corrupted those around him. Mike's fall wouldn't hit quite as hard if we didn't have Doug on the sidelines, showing how much Mike has changed.

Seeing Doug trying to find his friend inside the shell of a person he doesn't recognize pushes forward the film's themes of corruption. This change is shown most powerfully as Mike leaves his integrity behind as he makes a decision directly going against everything he once stood for.

Technical Triumphs

Matt Johnson's directing and writing showcases our cultures connections with media, especially technological advances.

BlackBerry is filled with well-placed pop culture references from a montage of tech in movies/tv, glimpses of iconic movie posters like the Japanese Army of Darkness poster, scenes from the RIM movie nights, and energizing needle drops.

The movement and aesthetic of BlackBerry brings forward the nostalgia of outdated media making us feel how much and how little time has passed since the time of keyboards and trackpads on smartphones.

BlackBerry brings each time period--no matter how close together they seem--to life with unique production design by Adam Belanger and the use of specific needle drops combined with footage symbolic to the era.

In addition to this, the passing of time and how much or little our main characters have changed comes across with purposeful costume design by Hanna Puley.

Doug--who is the least impacted by the corruption of success-- barely changes, wearing his pop culture shirts and sweatbands throughout. As Mike leaves some of his morals behind, he relates more closely to Jim than Doug.

Jay McCarrol's wonderful score perfectly captures the tone of BlackBerry, using synth to tell a unique, character-driven story built around technology and how it pulls us in various directions.

Conclusion

BlackBerry is a funny character-driven exploration of the rise and fall of a company and its two very different CEOs brought to life through powerful performances from Glenn Howerton and Jay Baruchel.

[laresearchette]

Thursday, November 09, 2023 Canadian TV Listings (Times Eastern)

WHERE CAN I FIND THOSE PREMIERES?: COLIN FROM ACCOUNTS (City TV +) MYSTERY ON MISTLETOE LANE (W Network) 8:00pm RAP SH!T (Crave) 10:00pm

WHAT IS NOT PREMIERING IN CANADA TONIGHT: THE CROODS: FAMILY TREE (Premiering on November 11 on YTV at 10:30am) MOUNTAIN MEN (TBD - History Channel Canada) MURDER RUNS IN THE FAMILY (TBD - Lifetime Canada)

NEW TO AMAZON PRIME CANADA/CBC GEM/CRAVE TV/DISNEY + STAR/NETFLIX CANADA:

AMAZON PRIME CANADA BTS: YET TO COME TO CINEMAS COMEDY ISLAND (Season 1)

CBC GEM BLACKBERRY (all three episodes streaming)

CRAVE TV RAP SH!T (Season 2, Episodes 1-2)

NETFLIX CANADA AKUMA KUN (JP) TEMPLE OF FILM: 100 YEARS OF THE EGYPTIAN THEATRE

BILLIE JEAN KING CUP (SN1) 10:00am: Canada vs. Poland

GRAND SLAM OF CURLING (SN) 11:00am: National - Draw 10 (SN) 3:00pm: National - Draw 11 (SN1) 7:00pm: National - Draw 12

NHL HOCKEY (SN) 7:00pm: Islanders vs. Bruins (SNPacific/TSN5) 7:00pm: Canucks vs. Sens (TSN2) 7:00pm: Habs vs. Red Wings (TSN3) 8:00pm: Predators vs. Jets (SN/SN1) 10:30pm: Penguins vs. Kings (SNWest) 10:30pm: Oilers vs. Sharks

DRAGONS' DEN (CBC) 8:00pm

NFL FOOTBALL (TSN/TSN4) 8:15pm: Panthers vs. Bears

BLACKBERRY: THE LIMITED SERIES (CBC) 9:00pm (PREMIERE): Mike Lazaridis and Doug Fregin pitch their idea of combining a computer with a cellphone to Jim Balsillie; Jim comes on board, and they try to sell their idea.

AUSSIE GOLD HUNTERS (Discovery Canada) 9:00pm: In flooded Victoria, the Poseidon Crew are forced back onto an old lease; Shane and Kate call in some vintage help in Western Australia; Jacqui and Andrew get separated at night in far north Queensland.

KILLING IT (Showcase) 9:00pm (SEASON PREMIERE): Craig and Jillian prepare for the farm's first shipment of saw palmetto berries, but a series of unexpected visitors puts everything they've worked for in jeopardy; a new employee is a thorn in their side. In Episode Two, the Boones make their demands; Craig tries to reconnect with Isaiah; Jillian must decide whether to sacrifice her prized possession to save the farm.

HEARTLAND DOCS, DVM (Nat Geo Canada) 10:00pm (SEASON PREMIERE): The Schroeders reel in an unexpected catch during a family boating trip.

OUTBACK OPAL HUNTERS (Discovery Canada) 10:00pm: The Bushmen find a hidden shaft by falling into it and the Blacklighters brand-new investment is dead in the water; a busted jackhammer forces JC and the Young Guns to make emergency repairs halfway down the mine shaft.

CANADIAN REFLECTIONS (CBC) 11:30pm: Play It Again; Hall of Mirrors

[agentnico]

BlackBerry (2023) Review

I have never owned a BlackBerry myself. Instead I had the enjoyment of having a Vodafone phone - a cheap rip-off that looked, felt and played like a BlackBerry only for less money. Turns out, I saved a heck of a lot as that phone lasted me all through my sixth-form and university days. Less can be said about the reliability of the BlackBerry evidently.

Plot:  A company that toppled global giants before succumbing to the ruthlessly competitive forces of Silicon Valley. This is not a conventional tale of modern business failure by fraud and greed. The rise and fall of BlackBerry reveals the dangerous speed at which innovators race along the information superhighway.

We’ve had plenty of techy origin film come and go, and many good ones at that such as The Social Network and Steve Jobs, and even the recent Tetris lent itself more to be a solid commentary on the communist regime of the Soviet Union and a study into the legal drama behind the game rather than some cheesy parody featuring tetrominoes in the style of The Emoji Movie. So I went into BlackBerry with a very open mind, as even though I’m aware of the phone’s existence, I never really knew the story behind how this popular mobile device all of a sudden vanished from the public eye so quickly. Back in the 2000s this device was all the rave, and all the kids at school would go out of their way to persuade their parents to get them one so that they can show it off to their classmates as if they were some rich businessmen. Now however this phone is all but forgotten. I checked prior to writing this review and in fact you can still purchase some models from Amazon, so if you’re feeling strangely nostalgic about your school days, feel free to waste your money. Anyway, back to the movie...

BlackBerry is a perfectly acceptable history lesson. It’s very informative and plays out more so like a visual guide of a Wikipedia page. You’re given the detailed journey of how the company Research In Motion came to create such an iconic device, and then there eventual downfall. We’ve seen this kind of tale of fraud and greed many times before, however if you’ve enjoyed similar movies before, BlackBerry is an easy watch, and again, if you’ve ever been interested in the mobile phone’s backstory, you have it here loud and clear.

Main highlight of this film are the two central performances, both of whom are very much outside their comfort zones. It’s nice to see Jay Baruchel in a serious role, taking a break from training dragons, as Mike Lazaridis, the main creative mind behind the creation of the titular device. Baruchel is very good at portraying socially-awkward personas, however in previous films he did this for comedic purposes, however as Mike he manages to find the depth in the character as a tech genius who knows his craft and is being forced to speed run his creations when in reality he wants to take his time to create the best product. Glenn Howerton, who thus far has only been known as the narcissistic self-absorbed Dennis from It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, is Jim Balsillie, the guy who takes over Mike’s company for his greedy means. Howerton definitely gets the more showy performance, and does a solid job at being constantly angry with everyone. Howerton also decided to go full bald for this role and you got to give the guy props for the dedication.

I’d say the primary negative I have for this film is its cinematography and direction. Director Matt Johnson evidently seems to have been inspired by Adam McKay’s The Big Short, as he chooses to have the camera repeatedly pan left and right quickly as if all the events are being captured by a hidden camera, however this effect of chaotic shaky-cam can come as very jarring and dizzying, and overall was very distracting. Characters would be having some serious discussion about technology yet I’d be busy wondering if the cameraman’s been spooked by Blair fricking Witch. But overall BlackBerry tells an interesting story behind the scenes of the phone drama, and if anything else I came out of it having learnt something. Kind of feels like being back at school when in class the teacher would stick some film on for educational purposes and then afterwards I may have learnt something, but have never had the motivation to want to see that movie again.

Overall score: 6/10

[yoko-goto]

Congrats to the zero (0) people who asked for it, I am coming out with a king/court jester medieval times fanfic of Jim and Mike, something I'm sure no one wants but me

[glenngaylord]

R.I.M. Job - Film Review: BlackBerry ★★★★

Have you noticed the glut of films about innovators? Those real life dramas have met with varying degrees of success in recent years with such titles as Air, The Social Network, Tetris, The Big Short, and The Founder. We seem fascinated by the process when that spark of genius  ignites or when hubris takes over. Enter BlackBerry, the distinctly Canadian entry in this list of cautionary true stories, this time about a generation-defining invention told in a very smart, highly engaging way.

Think Silicon Valley meets The Office with harsher overhead lighting and you’ll get the picture. It’s 1996 in sleepy Waterloo, Ontario, where young Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel) heads up a small software company called Research In Motion, abbreviated R.I.M., which deliciously never merits a single comment nor should it for the humor of that to pay dividends for the film’s entire running time. Mike, a quintessential tech nerd, has a terribly incompetent yet loyal right hand man Doug (Matt Johnson, who directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Matthew Miller based on the novel Losing The Signal), and together they are running their company into the ground due to their terrible business sense. Lucky for them, they have invented the world’s first smartphone and just need someone who can sell it.

Enter Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton), the meanest corporate raider you will ever encounter and just the man for the R.I.M. job, if only Mike can come up with a prototype in time. Little do they know that Jim was fired from his last gig, hasn’t met a phone he hasn’t smashed, and figuratively is the poster child for toxic masculinity years before that word was ever coined. It’s a business deal and a contract forged in hell, but as a piece of movie entertainment, it’s made in heaven.

Jim, all suits, gold watches, and expensive cars, strong-arms himself into a Co-C.E.O. position, bulldozes his way into Mike’s world of overgrown children who have grown accustomed to movie nights, toys and other childish ways and brings in people who can make their business work. Chief among them is Purdy, a gloriously intimidating Michael Ironside, as their new C.O.O., who can emasculate anyone before ever uttering a single word. Jim, however, doesn’t understand the tech of it all, leaving that up to Mike, but his failing is that he’s also not the most scrupulous of businessmen either, making less than legal decisions along the way as their BlackBerry starts to dominate the market.

It’s fun to revisit that time in the early 2000s when the world marveled at this phone with it’s clickety-clackety keyboard and small screen and thought that nothing could surpass it. It’s fun to watch Cary Elwes as a rival Palm Pilot executive attempt a hostile takeover, especially when we know the fates of both technologies. Remember those unwieldy stylos? You also never forget that the iPhone is just over the horizon waiting to tear this whole thing down.

Though it all, we get a trio of fantastic performances.  Baruchel finds a touching vulnerability in Mike, a genius with a great idea, a man obsessed with the details who lacks the confidence to communicate his vision. He has a heart and you feel his struggle when it comes time to make cutthroat decisions such as leaving his friend out of an important pitch meeting. It’s a stunning, humane performance.  Johnson, who with his cinematographer, Jared Saab, keep things loose and handheld, often adopting an observational stance. His performance, however, is of the comic powerhouse variety one typically associates with Seth Rogen. He’s the stooge who clearly will never outgrow his headband but will always, always, always have his pal’s best interests in mind. We all need a Doug in our lives, but sometimes the Mikes of the world just can’t or don’t see it.

Finally, Howerton, best known for It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, is the real revelation here. Almost unrecognizable with his shaved head and thousand yard stare, he gives a galvanizing performance as the kind of guy you you want in your corner as long as that corner is actually nowhere near your actual corner. He’s the scariest movie monster since Freddie Krueger yet doesn’t draw a drop of blood. He’s the type of character who’s scary because he simply lingers on in your imagination long after the memory of its title handheld device fades away. He, like BlackBerry itself, is, if I may invent a new word, funnerving.

[espeliculando]

Puntuación: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ de 5

Blackberry

El empeño por el "clic" les llevó al fracaso.

Por mgarsos

Una comedia dramática a la que le cuesta arrancar, pero una vez que consigue iniciarse, nos regala un buen desarrollo para volver a apagarse en el final.

Cuenta la típica historia de éxito empresarial, basada en hechos reales, es cronológica pero muy fácil de seguir. Y aunque los Estados Unidos siguen siendo ese país que tan bien relata sus grandes logros, Canadá, en este caso, tampoco se queda atrás.

Su guión es generalmente simplón aunque solvente. Tiene momentos en los que la profundidad no es necesaria y otros en los que sí lo es y no la hay. Casi todos los "gags" están donde deben y funcionan.

Jay Baruchel no termina de convencer con su actuación de (Mike Lazaridis), quien sí lo hace es Glenn Howerton (Jim Balsillie) y aunque al principio se muestre un tanto payaso pretencioso Matt Johnson (Doug Fregin) resulta ser toda una sorpresa y el gran contrapunto tanto dramático como cómico.

Visualmente protocolaria, con una fotografía estándar donde nada destaca. El montaje, con los recursos de archivo, aporta algo de interés y con los gráficos, presenta cierta gracia.

La música en este caso pasa sin pena ni gloria.

En Resumen esta cinta es narrativamente fiel reflejo de su historia real, empieza tímida, con pocas posibilidades de interesar, continúa y se desarrolla con soltura y éxito hasta que desemboca en un atropellado y estrepitoso final.

[lehtipalo]

Builders vs Sellers

The movie Blackberry has two scenes that perfectly captures the tension and co-dependency between builders and sellers in technology businesses. I’ve experienced this tension first hand. Getting the balance right can yield tremendous success - getting it wrong can lead to business and sometimes real life tragedies. Builders of the best product sometimes go bankrupt because they miss the market opportunity or fail to explain what’s so great about what they built. Sellers who oversell the capabilities of their technology or push builders to take too many shortcuts sometimes go to jail for fraud or endangering the lives of their customers.

Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie who ran Research in Motion that built and marketed the Blackberry could just as well have been Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. A tech savant and a ruthless businessman with a flair for what sells builds a massive company together. At its peak in 2010 37% of all Smartphones in the United States was a BlackBerry. Ironically Apples introduction of the iPhone in 2007 was the beginning of the end for Blackberry as a phone maker.

In the first scene Jim wants Mike to build a cheap prototype of his innovative phone. When Mike refuses to build anything less than perfect Jim reminds him of the saying that “perfect is the enemy of the good”. Mike counters by saying that “good enough is the enemy of humanity”. When Jim manages to push Mike into building a cheap prototype anyway it turns out that it was just what was needed to get the fledgling company off the ground.

Builders naturally don’t want to commit to doing something until they know that it can be done and you don’t really know for sure that something can be done until you’ve done it. Good builders also want to do things right. However sometimes the impossible is in fact possible and sometimes good enough now is worth a lot more than perfect later. That’s why some sellers have a habit of asking for the impossible now. Sometimes that pays off and sometimes it leads to disaster.

Boeing started out as an engineering driven company that built things right. At some point the hunger for more profits turned it into a sales driven company. Maybe that was needed in the beginning. As competition heated up perhaps perfect was indeed the enemy of the good. However at some point the engineers who cared about building things right gave up or were replaced by engineers who no longer cared. In hindsight it’s easy to see the results: several crashes, close calls and quality problems that has sullied Boeings reputation as a reliable airline manufacturer.

BlackBerry seems to have gone through a similar journey. It started out as an engineering driven company where the builders were in charge. They got a much needed push when Jim Balsillie joined and saved them from bankruptcy. However the seeds of their demise was sown at their peak when they started to take too many shortcuts and their fate was sealed by their response to the introduction of the iPhone in 2007. The Blackberry Playbook was rushed to market in an incomplete state and sold poorly. Outsourcing manufacturing lead to massive quality problems and recalls.

In another scene Mike and his engineers has just managed to send an encrypted text message between two of their devices. When Mike excitedly shows Jim the message and tells him about the end to end encryption Jim could not care less and exclaims “it’s just a text message, who cares - the phone company charges 10 cents a message”. It turns out that Mike has completely buried the lede. When he explains that the message is sent as data and completely bypasses the phone company Jim realizes that Mikes invention means that they can offer “unlimited text messages”. That’s s unique feature that will sell more devices.

I’ve witnessed this dynamic first hand many times. It’s not uncommon for innovations to start out as an experiment driven by curiosity and a purely technical challenge. However in order to sell the end result you have to figure out why someone who isn’t interested in technology for its own sake would care for it. That is often hard and requires a mutual respect between builders and sellers. Unfortunately builders sometimes think that anything they build can be sold and sellers sometimes think that anything that they sell can be built.

[danishentertain]

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coordinated by Matt Johnson from a content by Johnson and maker Matthew Mill operator. It was loosely[5][6] adjusted from Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff's book Losing the Sign: backBerryThe Untold Story Behind the Unprecedented Ascent and Terrific Fall of BlackBerry. The film is a fictional[7][8] record of formation of the BlackBerry line of cell phone by prime supporters Douglas Fregin and Mike Lazaridis, and financial backer Jim Balsillie. Lazaridis is depicted by Jay Baruchel, Balsillie is depicted by Glenn Howerton, and Fregin is depicted by Johnson. It likewise stars Rich Sommer, Michael Ironside, Martin Donovan, Michelle Giroux, SungWon Cho, Imprint Critch, Saul Rubinek, and Cary Elwes in supporting jobs.

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[shusant]

 Founded in 1984 under the name Research in Motion (RIM) by Mike Lazaridis and Douglas Friggin.