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« Older Entries | Newer Entries »What Will Replace The “Dead Tree Edition”?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on June 2, 2010 by admin in Popular Media
Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010While the continuing demise of major print news sources is inevitable, what will replace them?
The fact that the term “dead-tree edition” even exists is a clear expression of the state of newspapers today. It’s clear that big changes are afoot, and it’s even clearer that no-one knows where those changes will take us. While Steve Jobs is talking about his fear of America turning into a nation of bloggers, Yahoo News is banking on exactly that as a big moneymaker. And while Rupert Murdoch loves the iPad – which is being touted as “being to news what the iPod was to music” – he has also lost billions on his takeover of the Wall Street Journal, while not ruining it in the ways everyone expected. And though people have been arguing for a while that Google has somehow contributed to the demise of print news, this piece in The Atlantic not only points out that Google CEO Eric Schmidt wants to help print news (and ironically said so in a December 2009 Op-Ed piece in the WSJ), it also points to some of the real causes of the newspapers’ demise – mostly loss of ad revenue. And mostly in forms you wouldn’t imagine, like classified ads, which with many papers generated as much as 30% of their income. I’m personally excited to see where it all goes, as long as the Huffington Post doesn’t become the leading on line news source as some expect, and as long as Google doesn’t become the world’s news filter, with their search portal dominance dictating which news Web sites we can find. Oops! We forgot that the new AP Style guide says it’s “website”, not “Web site”. Not that the AP has quite the nearly-biblical influence it used to; even their net income is down 65%, and their very identity is being parodied daily by crappily edited sites that wantonly violate half their guidelines with almost every sentence.
Fetal Distraction: Splice The Movie
[ Comments Off ]Posted on May 27, 2010 by admin in Popular Media
Thursday, May 27th, 2010In theaters June 4th, Vincenzo Natali’s “Splice”, starring Oscar winner Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley, promises to be the best bad movie of the summer.
It is with a moderate amount of shame that I admit that the next film release that intrigues me is Splice, which will be in theaters June 4. The film looks like it falls comfortably into a genre that I for reasons beyond my comprehension am fascinated with, the slickly-produced film that may be really bad but knows that it is, and is therefore exceptional in a twisted sort of way. I have a long list of these that I’ll share someday (it would be very different from Rotten Tomatoes’ list based on the same idea), but recent examples would be Teeth or Hissss. The recent Repo Men should have made it into this realm, but failed, for reasons that I can’t quite put my finger on. In any case, Splice’s premise is from the familiar territory of Frankenstein-meets-egotistical-gene-splicing-scientist stuff, but apparently director Vincenzo Natali (The Cube
Google Wants Your TV
[ Comments Off ]Posted on May 21, 2010 by admin in Popular Media
Friday, May 21st, 2010Google TV is coming. Are you intrigued, or repulsed by the idea of Google reaching its tendrils even further into your daily life?
 Yeah, yeah. Bad joke, but unavoidable. |
Google TV’s pitch is “TV meets web. Web meets TV”. But wait. Didn’t this already happen back in 1997? Hard to believe that it’s been over ten years since Microsoft sunk $425,000,000 into this idea, and failed so miserably. Although they’re still around. Sort of. Obviously the availability of broadband and Google’s brawn and brains can bring something new to this realm, right? We all know the future holds some kind of convergence of your computer screen and your TV screen; it’s just a matter of who can pull the partnerships together. Or is it? This PC World piece asks some good questions, including “how probable is that you’ll want to use your television for Twitter or Instant messenger chats?” and then goes on to answer one of the only problems I see with Internet on the telly, by suggesting that maybe you could turn your Nexus One, iPhone, or even iPad into a visual remote. It will be interesting to see where this all goes, given the corporate partnerships with Intel, Sony, and Best Buy, among others. I personally won’t be too enthused if the service is dependent on a cable or satellite subscription. I’ve been happy without that much TV for years. None of the partners are talking dates for a launch yet, saying that would be premature, but Google wouldn’t be pitching it if they didn’t have SOME idea what they’re planning. Or is it a HOAX? If you haven’t tried watching TV on the web before and don’t want to wait until BoobTube is launched, you could check out our Best Sites For Watching TV On Line piece from last fall. How about you though – are you intrigued, or repulsed by the idea of Google reaching its tendrils even further into your daily life? Read the rest of this entry »
Lawyers Gonna Put You In The Hurt Locker
[ Comments Off ]Posted on May 16, 2010 by admin in Popular Media
Sunday, May 16th, 2010Makers of The Hurt Locker are causing more casualties in the War On Piracy. Didn’t they hear about the cease fire?
While the Iraq War has claimed at least 100,000 casualties, it looks like the makers of the Oscar-winning film about it are getting ready to claim another 20,000 or more. Only in this case, the lawyers will be doing all the shooting, and the casualties will be internet users like you and me who are nerdy enough to use Bittorents. It appears no-one at Voltage Pictures (the backers of Hurt Locker ) got the memo about how stupid it is to sue your customers, and so they’ve contracted US Copyright Group (who apparently didn’t get the memo about updating their vintage web site) to go after every one of the filthy pirates that swiped their movie . Don’t they know that even the MPAA has decided that Anti-piracy is passé and that it’s now to be called “content protection”? You may remember the relatively short-lived You Can Click But You Can’t Hide campaign (our parody below) by the MPAA a few years ago, which was a little different, and not nearly as insane as the practice of suing consumers en masse, which even the music industry has come to realize is absurd . Who knows when these industries will ever figure out that they’re fighting an assymetrical war (ironically, much like the one that the film is about) and that their “enemy” is the future and their inability to understand it, not the consumer. Just ask British entertainer Peter Serafinowicz, who expains in this Gawker piece why he’s going to have to sue himself for piracy. Do the Hurt Locker folks ( and me) a favor and buy their dang film through this link
Film Industry Is Only FCCing Itself With New Regulations
[ Comments Off ]Posted on May 10, 2010 by admin in Popular Media
Monday, May 10th, 2010How the film industry’s latest victory in its battle to control how you watch your movies may actually contribute to its demise.
It is with mixed feelings that I bid adieu to the MPAA and the major motion picture companies of America, because although some of the epic films that came out of….oh hell. Who am I kidding. I’m already planning a party. The desperate land grab for your hard-earned CD’s and song files that the RIAA and the established music industry attempted with the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and DRM has spawned one of the most creative decades in pop music, and put more money in more artists’ pockets than ever before. Although smart pop media influencers like Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing are in a tizzy about the admittedly insane new “Selectable Output Control” power that the FCC is handing the film industry, the development should come as no surprise; I can only guess that the reason Cory is so upset is that he must be a cable subscriber. As an avid film lover, this will have little impact for me personally. As just one of the more glaring examples of why this should come as no surprise, one of the people who more recently spun through DC’s revolving doors was Catherine Bohigian, chief of the office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis at the FCC, who left in 2008 to take a job with the cable giant Cablevision. To me the most shocking thing about this recent round of nuttiness being promulgated by the in-some-ways shadowy MPAA is that it’s taking so darn long for the movie industry to undermine itself the way the music industry did. It shouldn’t take too long though; although the studios haven’t been aggressively suing their customers on a regular basis like the record companies, they do have a pretty batshit-insane shopping list for how to protect their market. And after witnessing the indy music industry explosion of the last decade, I personally don’t see any reason why this couldn’t happen with film. The film industry is doing exactly the same thing the record companies did; they’re routinely annoying their best customers, and sticking it to a key distribution channel in their maniacal grab for control of intellectual property. The RIAA did it with radio, the MPAA is doing it to theaters. And they’re doing this at a time when professional-quality production and distibution tools are within the reach of just about anyone. In my opinion there would be nothing cooler than a massive movement comprised of small-house indy film venues showing nothing but indy film in intimate settings using HD technology. I say go ahead and FCC yourself, MPAA.