So, I actually saw this on Thursday night at 8 o'clock, so if I had been really motivated I would have written this up then. But, well, I got distracted by something else that is going to earn a post one of these days, so I'll talk about that then.
Anyways, just to put this in perspective, I knew nothing about Iron Man prior to seeing the trailers start airing sometime a little over a year ago. Literally, I knew nothing. I did not know he was a comic book character. I did not know he had a popular Saturday morning cartoon show. I did know the Black Sabbath song, from Guitar Hero. Even when I heard about this character, I didn't really know if they were actually related or if Ozzy just thought it was cool.
So, yeah, I could be pretty accurately described as a n00b on this one. However, I did know that Robert Downey Jr. is awesome. I'm not sure when I learned that, exactly, but it feels like I've known that for more or less my whole life. Oddly enough, because I don't really pay attention to tabloids unless they have flattering pictures of starlets on the covers (and these days, it seems like they never do), so I honestly didn't know about Robert Downey Jr.'s forays into fun things like drug abuse and alcoholism, nor his many trips to and from rehab. I'm still not totally clear about why this is relevant to EVERY SINGLE FREAKING REVIEW OF IRON MAN THAT I'VE READ, but apparently it is.
So, be warned, I'm clearly incapable of giving a proper review of this movie because I didn't know enough about the character or the actor. But, luckily, I've been bombarded with this information for the past two weeks or so, so I could probably just lie about already knowing it and move on. But, I'd like to do this differently than everyone else. I won't talk about how Robert Downey Jr.'s past makes him the perfect actor to portray Tony Stark, because it's not. Dammit, I am going to talk about it. Never mind, on to my thoughts, just remember that I don't actually know Tony Stark's past, nor do I particularly know Robert Downey Jr.'s past, so when I talk about these things, I'm making shit up (hardly unusual).
Anyways, let's start with the experience. Clearly, it was awesome. Everyone and their brother, mother, grandmother could tell you that. Even the trailers ahead of the movie were awesome. There weren't too many but they were: a new Batman trailer (hell, yes), a new Indiana Jones trailer (OMFG!), and an Incredible Hulk trailer (okay, they can't all be as awesome as the first two) and that was it. Yep, just three trailers. Nice. Briefly, I would just like to say that I'm quite happy with the switch in Batman from Katie Holmes to Maggie Gyllenhaal, because Jake's sister is awesome and hot and Katie Holmes is not awesome and just pretty. On the other hand, the switch from Jennifer Connelly to Liv Tyler in the Incredible Hulk sequel is not welcome. Jennifer Connelly is an amazing actress that adds credibility to the project and is also really, really hot when playing a scientist (I will reserve judgment on Liv Tyler's hotness when playing a scientist, but I didn't even like her that much when she was playing an elf, which should be easy). At the same time, I imagine that the switch from Eric Bana to Edward Norton could be very good (not that I don't like Eric Bana, but, man, Edward Norton, you can't really argue with that).
Okay, obviously, that wasn't the experience. That was irrelevant. But, that's how the experience started, with awesome trailers. It continued with both well done action sequences (that had some shaky cam, but typically only during explosions, which I'm pretty sure has been considered fair since at least the original Star Trek, so no complaints there) and some hilarious quotable lines, entirely from Mr. Downey Jr. There were these nearly perfect special effects and a focus on characters that is highly reminiscent of that Spiderman sequel, as well as Batman Begins.
Clearly, this was an origin story, and so the focus was on his origins. We spend a lot of time in that cave, but only after taking some time to find out what he was like merely a day before his world came crashing down on him (and he ended up in that cave). And, well, he was a comic book character living large. He believed his own BS and lived it every day. But, and here's why I don't think Robert Downey Jr.'s past is relevant to his portrayal of Tony Stark, his vices don't rule him. He is in control of himself from the beginning. He just doesn't care about the world around him, because he's billionaire genius Tony Stark.
And, well, why should he? He's the head of a massive and massively successful weapons research and manufacturer. He believes he's doing good by keeping the army safe and well armed for its wars. That's all he needs to soothe his conscience and do whatever he wants. And even then, it's clear from his home that whatever he wants is hardly even that bad. Yes he drinks and only talks to/sleeps with beautiful women, and well, we don't know if he does drugs since this is PG-13, so they probably don't want to push the limits more than necessary, but otherwise his house is filled with the types of toys anybody would dream of. Classic cars (okay, I'm not into that, but I can still respect it, especially since it's clear he spends time working on them himself), cool robots and other electric gadgets (with cute/clever personalities too), and a machine/design shop that can produce something as awesome as his Iron Man suit in a matter of hours.
Those are the toys of someone who is wasting his life playing games, not someone who necessarily has problems or needs anything like rehab. It's easy to imagine how his home came to be. He slowly filled it with his heart's desires. And note that they weren't vices; they were toys. Because he's a bored genius looking for entertainment and finding it by giving himself the power to exercise his genius at will.
But, really, the moment he realizes that his work is not doing the good that he believed it was, he changed. He invented multiple amazing things, immediately (partly out of motivation to survive, but whatever, and I wish they had put in some dialogue during that cave sequence notifying the audience that he was creating something spectacular with that little round light source, because I had assumed it was some old invention of his that he was remaking from scratch, not the awesome creation that would allow Iron Man to exist). His conscience is no longer soothed and he realizes that if he wants to do good, he, himself, has to actually do good. And so therefore he does.
That's what I got from the movie, at least. Maybe the comics present a different story. But from what I could tell, all of his "vices, largely public in nature" simply arose from the fact that he didn't care what the world thought of him since he believed he was amazing. Once he stopped thinking he was amazing, he decided the world needed to think he was amazing, and so of course he relishes telling the whole world: "I am Iron Man".
So, yes, Robert Downey Jr. did a great job portraying Tony Stark, because Robert Downey Jr. is an incredibly versatile actor. He has almost all the fun lines in the movie, and part of the reason is because he can deliver them perfectly. He can pull off hilarious and cocky and he can also be so intelligent that those around him are confused and uncomfortable. And, well, that's what makes Tony Stark such a fun character, and that's why I knew Robert Downey Jr. could do it right. It's not because of his past, it's because of his awesomeness.
The other actors I was pretty indifferent to. I've never been a huge fan of Jeff Bridges, although I really like his voice. I kind of wish it felt like he had more of a plan than he did. I mean, he's the bad guy, and I totally like the start of his plan: you know, kill Tony Stark to wrest control of the company from him. But, well, he doesn't seem to improvise well. He tries to legally gain control of the company, which is a fine back up, but then he becomes obsessed with the Iron Man suit. And, well, let's be honest. What's he going to do with it? Sell it. Okay, sure, that should be fine. But he's going to have tons of legal struggles in any situation with that plan.
I mean, seriously, there's going to be tons of proof that the first inventor was Tony Stark. I mean, he's going to have to secretly kill a lot of people to hide the fact that he stole a working prototype of the little round light source, as well as designs for the Iron Man suit from Tony Stark. In fact, even if Tony had died when Jeff Bridges (sorry, I didn't really like the name Obidiah Stane, so we're calling him Jeff Bridges) physically took the thing out of his chest, there's going to be a ton of evidence that it was Jeff who did it (including the well known fact that the little round light source was keeping Tony alive and, oh, would you look at that, it's now being used to power an Iron Man suit, I bet Tony sacrificed his life for that Iron Man suit, yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense).
So, yeah, I wish his plan went farther than simply obtaining the giant freaking suit. Yeah, I know he feels invincible in it, but I imagine that, as the head of the company once Stark is dead, it's not in his best interest to go to war with his primary customer. I mean, that's just a guess, but it seems reasonable.
Let's see, then there was Terrence Howard, who basically had nothing to do. So, yeah, I'm pretty indifferent to him to. I guess we'll probably see him suit up in the sequel, although I'm curious where the little round light source is going to go since Terrence Howard's character (whose name I never caught) doesn't have that convenient hole in his chest that Tony does.
And then there's Gwyneth Paltrow. We don't see her in stuff much, so I guess it's exciting just to see her in a major movie, and, well, she certainly is beautiful. I guess, I kind of feel like her performance was hit or miss at times, and it seemed to always miss during the most important conversations. Her entrance is perfect. She's sending some young slut home after a hot night with Tony Stark (Christine Everhart is the character's name, I didn't recognize the actress, and I'm kind of hoping she's a recurring character...also, I was a little confused about how Tony and her ended up in Malibu, considering they started the night in Vegas, but I'm sure that's not important). She conveys this perfect amount of indignation and haughtiness, with just a tinge of jealousy, as she lets the girl know just what Tony thinks of her (or, rather, that he's already forgotten her, which you can clearly see on the girl's face when she talks to Tony again, later in the movie, and he basically doesn't remember her at all...so, yes, this is why I want her to be a recurring character).
But after that perfect entrance, her interactions with Tony often times just don't feel quite right. Multiple times it sounds like she's...blubbering (I feel like that should only be used when talking about pirates). She doesn't know what to say when he asks her to stick her hand inside his chest and so she just talks, and talks. Again, when he asks her to dance and then has a drink with her outside, she's just awkwardly talking when it's clear that's not really what he wants her doing. Maybe that's what Pepper Potts (yeah, I'm not a fan of that name) is like in the comics, but it doesn't feel right. They present her as the assistant whose job is to make Tony's life function even as Tony is consistently sabotaging those efforts just by being himself. She should be eminently competent, especially in the weird and uncomfortable situations that Stark's shenanigans create. And they illustrate this perfectly with her entrance.
But, then we don't really get to see it ever again. It's like for the rest of movie she's out of her element and unprepared (which could be reasonable considering she was hired at sometime in the past to keep his life together, not to infiltrate the company and steal secrets, or fall in love with him, but you'd hope that the requirements for keeping his life together would include dealing with situations like these, you know, just in case). So, yeah, this inherently felt wrong to me. But, it could be just me.
Also, and this is a big complaint, when they're out there on the balcony together, she totally leans in to kiss him. Now, once again, maybe something very much like this happened somewhere in the comics (and in any case, this isn't Gwyneth Paltrow's fault, so I'm not blaming her), but I cannot possibly imagine that's how it should be. Seriously. Tony Stark's the one who just saw her looking stunningly attractive and she's still his employee. He should be making that advance and she's the one that should be pulling away because she's not comfortable with it. It's pretty clear that he's comfortable with it (and why shouldn't he be?), so it doesn't really make sense that she leans in, but then he pulls away.
Okay, on to special effects. This one is pretty short since the special effect were just about note perfect the entire movie. The suit building apparatus thing was incredibly well done and got extra points for that scene where he can't seem to get the suit off (which I assume was done with real plastic, instead of CG, but just helped to maintain the reality of it all). The suit itself looked great too. The closest comparison is Spiderman, and it looked a lot better. When flying, it didn't have nearly as much of a CG feel to it, and when he's walking around, it didn't have that man-in-a-suit feel to it, so it wins on both counts.
I have two complaints, though. The first one is with the very first Iron Man suit he creates. For the majority of the battle, it's walking around very machine-like. The movements are all stilted and slow and just what you'd expect. But, suddenly it because highly maneuverable and we see him do some ducks and maybe even a roll, which just looked completely out of place. Also, and this is being nit-picky with the design more than the special effects, but I didn't like the decision to make Jeff Bridge's Iron Man suit fly using rockets on the bottom of the feet. I understand that they didn't have Tony's designs, so they'd have to improvise on the flying, but that just didn't feel right. All that smoke coming off in order to gain lift just felt out of place in the otherwise pristine flying that the Iron Man suits pull off. But, I guess I'm willing to forgive it, since that's clearly a decision made to help make the evil Iron Man suit feel out of place. Since it doesn't belong and it shouldn't exist (because it pollutes), the audience has even more incentive to root for Iron Man.
In summary, the movie was awesome. I can easily imagine looking for excuses to see it again (for example, aww, darn, Speed Racer is sold out...well, how about seeing Iron Man again?). Reviews that call it better than Spiderman 2 or Batman Begins are exaggerating, but it's still very good. It's truly a great way to start the summer movie season.
That is all.
Francis
Showing posts with label Pirates. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pirates. Show all posts
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Digital Distribution
So, I've been kind of kicking this around in the back of my head for a while, and it seemed like a good time to finally get around to writing it down (I think I first started contemplating this in, like, mid-October, or something). Anyways, all I hear in the tech press is how someday (in the near, but not too near, future) we're going to be moving away from physical media and digital distribution is going to be the way of the future. Now, personally, I think this is crap.
Before I begin, I would like to point out that I am in no way whatsoever qualified to make any sort of judgment about this at all, so feel free to take this with a couple grains of salt (of course, I'm not sure I've written a post that I was qualified to pass any sort of judgment on, so that should probably be a general tip for reading this blog, but back to the subject at hand). The only reason I can provide for why my opinion is worth listening to is that I'm one of the people who is actually going to be buying this content, so I might have something to say about what I'd want to be buying.
In case you haven't noticed, I'm kind of an entertainment whore. I go through multiple Netflix DVDs and Blu-ray discs a week. I bought a PS3 and am averaging a new game purchase every 2-3 weeks. I even buy additional content through the little Playstation store thing. I thought the iPod was the coolest thing I'd ever heard of from the moment Steve Jobs announced it (but I didn't convince my dad to buy me one until the 3rd generation...obviously, it took a significant amount of bugging him). I've downloaded music both legally and illegally, while the vast majority of the music on my iPod is content I ripped off of CDs I've bought. I've copied movies and TV shows to my iPod illegally and I've bought music and TV shows from the iTunes store (and I've even downloaded a legal copy of Night of the Living Dead to my iPod since it isn't protected by copyright). I regularly download anime fansubs, but I also buy anime DVDs and I also rent them from Netflix (both on Blu-ray and on DVD). I watch TV shows when they play on TV and I'll go to the network websites to catch up on episodes I've missed (but I don't illegally download those). I buy trade paperbacks of comics and I also read webcomics online (and I've even bought trade paperback versions of webcomics I read online).
In other words, I'm a major consumer of this industry. I absorb media in a huge variety of forms and I am willing and able to do it both physically and digitally, as well as legally and illegally (although I try to prefer the legal strategy whenever possible). So, the important thing to recognize is that whatever the future of entertainment distribution turns out to be, it will be people like me who have to be sold on it. And, right now, I'm not really seeing how people are going to sell me on digital distribution.
Most argument about digital distribution are simple: it's already happening to music and sort of starting to happen with TV shows and so therefore it will eventually translate into similar models for movies and video games. End of story.
If they want to make it sound extra-convincing they'll talk about the cost reduction of not having to product physical media and eliminating the middle man like GameStop and Best Buy or WalMart or whatever.
But, I don't think video games and movies are necessarily going to go the way of music, and it's not even clear that TV shows necessarily are going to truly go that way, either. Music is very well-suited for digital distribution. For one, the buyer is likely intending to experience this media many times in a variety of situations (as background music around the apartment, while jogging, in the car, at work, whatever). So, not having to carry around a physical version of this media is useful (I really noticed this when I went to college with my entire music collection in my pocket).
Compare this to movies and video games which are typically going to be experienced at a limited number of places (your TV, or the TV of someone you know). They don't need to travel conveniently, and they especially don't need to travel together (if I'm taking a copy of Serenity over to a friend's place to convince him that Firefly is amazing, I don't need to bring everything else with me).
In the future, this will supposedly be dealt with by providing a set-top box on the TV, much like an Xbox360, or PS3, or AppleTV. Since the media is very nearly stationary, having a stationary box for it (as opposed to the transportable iPod) should be an effective compromise.
But, this solution creates a new problem: space. Movies and video games take up a lot more space than music. A compressed music file takes up not much more than a megabyte per minute of music. A dvd quality movie takes up closer to 30 megabytes per minute of video. For those counting, that's an order of magnitude more space. Of course, a high definition movie costs closer to 600 megabytes per minute of video (note that this is another order of magnitude).
Now, clearly, the files can be compressed some, but we're still dealing with a situation where I will need two orders of magnitude more space for growing my video collection than my music collection. For comparison, my music collection on my iPod only takes up about 15 gigabytes, which in this day and age is not much more than spare change. On the other hand, I just counted and I own over 100 DVDs (most of these are collections, and over half of them are due to the fact that I own the entire X-Files TV Series). So, we can estimate that as costing about 500 gigabytes of space. Now, these days 500 gigabytes is nothing to scream about, but that is starting to create some storage concerns. Here's where it starts getting scary, though. Since I bought the PS3, not much more than 2 months ago, I've bought 5 games for it. Assuming 50 gigabytes per disc, that's 250 gigabytes of storage. In less than 3 months.
As for PS2 games, just for comparison purposes, I own approximately 20, but that's my collection on a student's budget. I wouldn't be surprised if I had bought well over 30 games for my PS3 by the end of it's life cycle (if not 50...hopefully not 100, because that would be a lot of money spent on video games). So, in short, if I wanted to store the video I currently own in a standard definition format on my set-top box connected to TV, I would probably want a minimum of 1 terabyte, but more likely I'd prefer more than 2 terabytes, unless the cost was completely unreasonable. And that's standard definition.
Now, as a consumer of said future digital media, there is no way I would even consider buying something in standard definition. It would be a waste of my time. I spent a significant amount of money on a glorious 42 inch TV. My purchasing decision is pretty much HD or bust (and, admittedly, due to the cost of HD stuff, I often opt for bust, but that is neither here nor there...or rather, that's what Netflix is for). And, if I wanted to store a digital collection of content in high definition, I would probably need a set-top box with storage capacity closer to 10-20 terabytes at minimum (and assuming there's some major compression going on).
Now, there's two ways to deal with this problem. The first solution is to say: well, large scale digital distribution won't be feasible for at least 5 or 10 or 15 years, so by that time we'll be knee-deep in terabytes and people will be talking about exabytes or whatever and it won't be an issue anymore since a typical hard-drive will have more than enough space for all the movies and video games you could ever want to download. The second solution is to say: we'll store it on the server side and either stream it to the users on demand or allow them to download it at will and watch it and delete it at their convenience.
Both of these solutions provide the next point of challenge: getting the content to the consumer. We're talking about distributing file sizes that are in the 10s of gigabytes. Currently, I'm ecstatic when I'm pulling down just 1 megabyte per second on my broadband line (at that rate, I can download 1 gigabyte in just over 15 minutes). So, downloading a dvd quality movie is going to take about 4 times that long, or about an hour, which is long, but not unreasonable. Now multiply that by 10. That should be closer to the file size for the high definition version. For the record, 10 hours is getting to be a long time to download something.
Obviously, this can be remedied by speeding up internet connections (if we can get average transfer rates up to 10 megabytes per second in 5 or 10 or 15 years, than the high definition version won't take any more than an hour). However, how exactly do you go about speeding up internet connections? You do that by convincing ISPs that they want to build out new connection technologies with faster data transfer rates. Maybe in 15 years somebody'll make that happen, but it's not going to happen fast. That kind of extensive build out is costly as all get out, and there isn't really a clear way for the ISPs to benefit from it (besides attracting additional customers...and then price gouging them, which I'm not necessarily a supporter of, by the way).
Also, content providers will have to actually create, support, and maintain the infrastructure to maintain servers to distribute the content to the consumers, long after the customer has purchased the content. This is the case for both instances of digital distribution, but it will be much more intense if the second solution is used (that is, if we don't continue along the exponential growth curve for hard drive size and so people can't obtain multiple terabyte hard drives in a couple of years down the road, and I'll admit that it's a toss up for whether we can actually maintain the growth rate for hard drives, but I imagine there must be a limit sometime). The second solution puts a huge amount of burden on the servers to be able to serve all the customers their content on demand, which would probably necessitate it to become a subscription service, rather than a single payment (think of Xbox Live, where you're paying for the service and the content). Now, personally, I'm not interested in a subscription service, and don't really intend to ever be (aside from Netflix, which is kind of a special case...and digital cable, I guess I subscribe to that as well...and, well, I guess I'm an internet subscriber too, but that's totally not the point).
In any case, I don't really like the idea of paying someone to store my stuff. I especially don't like the idea that if I stop paying them, I won't get to keep my stuff (which is the same reason I'm not interested in subscribing to any music services). That second strategy for digital distribution sounds a little bit too much like that kind of future, and I can't imagine that this would succeed. There's too many people who are like me and want to be sure that they own what they bought, and they don't just own the right to download it so long as the service is running.
So, that's the situation. In order for digital distribution to really be feasible, there needs to be major progress in two industries that don't have much of anything to directly benefit from changing between physical and digital media (aside from selling more of their services if digital distribution becomes the norm, of course, which is hardly nothing).
On the other hand, I see little reason why Blu-ray discs shouldn't be the culmination of physical media for video, kind of like how CDs are for music. CDs contain the uncompressed audio in detail that far surpasses the human ear's capabilities to distinguish. We can compress the files significantly (as in down to mp3) and most people still can't hear the difference, but the trained ear can (to at least some extent...note that I'm hardly one of those trained ears). Similarly, unless TVs start getting a whole lot bigger (which I'm kind of doubtful they'll do), 1080p is pretty much the limit that the human eye is going to be able to distinguish the details from as well. So, there should be no reason for us to ever need higher definition video, but once we've seen HD video, it's very hard for us to go back to standard definition.
So, I think Blu-ray discs are going to be hanging around for a long while. At least as long as CDs hung around before digital distribution kicked them to the curbside (although I still prefer to buy a CD and rip it to my iPod over downloading the CD from iTunes directly). And, well, maybe I'll even buy one someday (and stop just renting them). Also, for the record, the idea of renting HD videos, which would eliminate both the ownership challenge as well as the client-side space problem still faces the download time/infrastructure challenge. Admittedly, right now I'm waiting two days between rentals of my Netflix movies, so if they were to find a cost effective way to provide HD digital rentals, it's possible I might start sniffing around (considering that 10 hours is already a lot less time than 2 days). The challenge, though, is that it would have to be no more expensive than Netflix (but, it would be okay for it to be a subscription service...I guess).
That is all.
Francis
Before I begin, I would like to point out that I am in no way whatsoever qualified to make any sort of judgment about this at all, so feel free to take this with a couple grains of salt (of course, I'm not sure I've written a post that I was qualified to pass any sort of judgment on, so that should probably be a general tip for reading this blog, but back to the subject at hand). The only reason I can provide for why my opinion is worth listening to is that I'm one of the people who is actually going to be buying this content, so I might have something to say about what I'd want to be buying.
In case you haven't noticed, I'm kind of an entertainment whore. I go through multiple Netflix DVDs and Blu-ray discs a week. I bought a PS3 and am averaging a new game purchase every 2-3 weeks. I even buy additional content through the little Playstation store thing. I thought the iPod was the coolest thing I'd ever heard of from the moment Steve Jobs announced it (but I didn't convince my dad to buy me one until the 3rd generation...obviously, it took a significant amount of bugging him). I've downloaded music both legally and illegally, while the vast majority of the music on my iPod is content I ripped off of CDs I've bought. I've copied movies and TV shows to my iPod illegally and I've bought music and TV shows from the iTunes store (and I've even downloaded a legal copy of Night of the Living Dead to my iPod since it isn't protected by copyright). I regularly download anime fansubs, but I also buy anime DVDs and I also rent them from Netflix (both on Blu-ray and on DVD). I watch TV shows when they play on TV and I'll go to the network websites to catch up on episodes I've missed (but I don't illegally download those). I buy trade paperbacks of comics and I also read webcomics online (and I've even bought trade paperback versions of webcomics I read online).
In other words, I'm a major consumer of this industry. I absorb media in a huge variety of forms and I am willing and able to do it both physically and digitally, as well as legally and illegally (although I try to prefer the legal strategy whenever possible). So, the important thing to recognize is that whatever the future of entertainment distribution turns out to be, it will be people like me who have to be sold on it. And, right now, I'm not really seeing how people are going to sell me on digital distribution.
Most argument about digital distribution are simple: it's already happening to music and sort of starting to happen with TV shows and so therefore it will eventually translate into similar models for movies and video games. End of story.
If they want to make it sound extra-convincing they'll talk about the cost reduction of not having to product physical media and eliminating the middle man like GameStop and Best Buy or WalMart or whatever.
But, I don't think video games and movies are necessarily going to go the way of music, and it's not even clear that TV shows necessarily are going to truly go that way, either. Music is very well-suited for digital distribution. For one, the buyer is likely intending to experience this media many times in a variety of situations (as background music around the apartment, while jogging, in the car, at work, whatever). So, not having to carry around a physical version of this media is useful (I really noticed this when I went to college with my entire music collection in my pocket).
Compare this to movies and video games which are typically going to be experienced at a limited number of places (your TV, or the TV of someone you know). They don't need to travel conveniently, and they especially don't need to travel together (if I'm taking a copy of Serenity over to a friend's place to convince him that Firefly is amazing, I don't need to bring everything else with me).
In the future, this will supposedly be dealt with by providing a set-top box on the TV, much like an Xbox360, or PS3, or AppleTV. Since the media is very nearly stationary, having a stationary box for it (as opposed to the transportable iPod) should be an effective compromise.
But, this solution creates a new problem: space. Movies and video games take up a lot more space than music. A compressed music file takes up not much more than a megabyte per minute of music. A dvd quality movie takes up closer to 30 megabytes per minute of video. For those counting, that's an order of magnitude more space. Of course, a high definition movie costs closer to 600 megabytes per minute of video (note that this is another order of magnitude).
Now, clearly, the files can be compressed some, but we're still dealing with a situation where I will need two orders of magnitude more space for growing my video collection than my music collection. For comparison, my music collection on my iPod only takes up about 15 gigabytes, which in this day and age is not much more than spare change. On the other hand, I just counted and I own over 100 DVDs (most of these are collections, and over half of them are due to the fact that I own the entire X-Files TV Series). So, we can estimate that as costing about 500 gigabytes of space. Now, these days 500 gigabytes is nothing to scream about, but that is starting to create some storage concerns. Here's where it starts getting scary, though. Since I bought the PS3, not much more than 2 months ago, I've bought 5 games for it. Assuming 50 gigabytes per disc, that's 250 gigabytes of storage. In less than 3 months.
As for PS2 games, just for comparison purposes, I own approximately 20, but that's my collection on a student's budget. I wouldn't be surprised if I had bought well over 30 games for my PS3 by the end of it's life cycle (if not 50...hopefully not 100, because that would be a lot of money spent on video games). So, in short, if I wanted to store the video I currently own in a standard definition format on my set-top box connected to TV, I would probably want a minimum of 1 terabyte, but more likely I'd prefer more than 2 terabytes, unless the cost was completely unreasonable. And that's standard definition.
Now, as a consumer of said future digital media, there is no way I would even consider buying something in standard definition. It would be a waste of my time. I spent a significant amount of money on a glorious 42 inch TV. My purchasing decision is pretty much HD or bust (and, admittedly, due to the cost of HD stuff, I often opt for bust, but that is neither here nor there...or rather, that's what Netflix is for). And, if I wanted to store a digital collection of content in high definition, I would probably need a set-top box with storage capacity closer to 10-20 terabytes at minimum (and assuming there's some major compression going on).
Now, there's two ways to deal with this problem. The first solution is to say: well, large scale digital distribution won't be feasible for at least 5 or 10 or 15 years, so by that time we'll be knee-deep in terabytes and people will be talking about exabytes or whatever and it won't be an issue anymore since a typical hard-drive will have more than enough space for all the movies and video games you could ever want to download. The second solution is to say: we'll store it on the server side and either stream it to the users on demand or allow them to download it at will and watch it and delete it at their convenience.
Both of these solutions provide the next point of challenge: getting the content to the consumer. We're talking about distributing file sizes that are in the 10s of gigabytes. Currently, I'm ecstatic when I'm pulling down just 1 megabyte per second on my broadband line (at that rate, I can download 1 gigabyte in just over 15 minutes). So, downloading a dvd quality movie is going to take about 4 times that long, or about an hour, which is long, but not unreasonable. Now multiply that by 10. That should be closer to the file size for the high definition version. For the record, 10 hours is getting to be a long time to download something.
Obviously, this can be remedied by speeding up internet connections (if we can get average transfer rates up to 10 megabytes per second in 5 or 10 or 15 years, than the high definition version won't take any more than an hour). However, how exactly do you go about speeding up internet connections? You do that by convincing ISPs that they want to build out new connection technologies with faster data transfer rates. Maybe in 15 years somebody'll make that happen, but it's not going to happen fast. That kind of extensive build out is costly as all get out, and there isn't really a clear way for the ISPs to benefit from it (besides attracting additional customers...and then price gouging them, which I'm not necessarily a supporter of, by the way).
Also, content providers will have to actually create, support, and maintain the infrastructure to maintain servers to distribute the content to the consumers, long after the customer has purchased the content. This is the case for both instances of digital distribution, but it will be much more intense if the second solution is used (that is, if we don't continue along the exponential growth curve for hard drive size and so people can't obtain multiple terabyte hard drives in a couple of years down the road, and I'll admit that it's a toss up for whether we can actually maintain the growth rate for hard drives, but I imagine there must be a limit sometime). The second solution puts a huge amount of burden on the servers to be able to serve all the customers their content on demand, which would probably necessitate it to become a subscription service, rather than a single payment (think of Xbox Live, where you're paying for the service and the content). Now, personally, I'm not interested in a subscription service, and don't really intend to ever be (aside from Netflix, which is kind of a special case...and digital cable, I guess I subscribe to that as well...and, well, I guess I'm an internet subscriber too, but that's totally not the point).
In any case, I don't really like the idea of paying someone to store my stuff. I especially don't like the idea that if I stop paying them, I won't get to keep my stuff (which is the same reason I'm not interested in subscribing to any music services). That second strategy for digital distribution sounds a little bit too much like that kind of future, and I can't imagine that this would succeed. There's too many people who are like me and want to be sure that they own what they bought, and they don't just own the right to download it so long as the service is running.
So, that's the situation. In order for digital distribution to really be feasible, there needs to be major progress in two industries that don't have much of anything to directly benefit from changing between physical and digital media (aside from selling more of their services if digital distribution becomes the norm, of course, which is hardly nothing).
On the other hand, I see little reason why Blu-ray discs shouldn't be the culmination of physical media for video, kind of like how CDs are for music. CDs contain the uncompressed audio in detail that far surpasses the human ear's capabilities to distinguish. We can compress the files significantly (as in down to mp3) and most people still can't hear the difference, but the trained ear can (to at least some extent...note that I'm hardly one of those trained ears). Similarly, unless TVs start getting a whole lot bigger (which I'm kind of doubtful they'll do), 1080p is pretty much the limit that the human eye is going to be able to distinguish the details from as well. So, there should be no reason for us to ever need higher definition video, but once we've seen HD video, it's very hard for us to go back to standard definition.
So, I think Blu-ray discs are going to be hanging around for a long while. At least as long as CDs hung around before digital distribution kicked them to the curbside (although I still prefer to buy a CD and rip it to my iPod over downloading the CD from iTunes directly). And, well, maybe I'll even buy one someday (and stop just renting them). Also, for the record, the idea of renting HD videos, which would eliminate both the ownership challenge as well as the client-side space problem still faces the download time/infrastructure challenge. Admittedly, right now I'm waiting two days between rentals of my Netflix movies, so if they were to find a cost effective way to provide HD digital rentals, it's possible I might start sniffing around (considering that 10 hours is already a lot less time than 2 days). The challenge, though, is that it would have to be no more expensive than Netflix (but, it would be okay for it to be a subscription service...I guess).
That is all.
Francis
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Couple Random Topics
So, the internet meme of the day was this website called Garfield Minus Garfield. This was a very impressive meme, considering that I think 3 of my daily addictions linked it (and considering that one is an Apple blog, one is a web comic, and one is a movie news blog, that's pretty impressive).
Anyways, I agree with them. This is something amazing and special. I have to admit I'm not sure I totally appreciate the little foreword, but that would be my only complaint. Actually, I think my other complaint might be that the author does a little too much filtering (I'm okay with some of the comics completely not making sense or having anything even resembling a punchline).
In any case, this is something special. I know nothing about art, but this could easily be one of the most intelligent and funny internet creations I've seen. It might almost qualify as art.
I love the amount of empty space that it is forced to utilize. I love that this forces the reader to fill in a story. It's so interesting to me to look at these empty spaces and realize that they're actually providing more context than whatever was originally there. With Garfield gone, these empty spaces are typically the peace that Jon disturbs with his antics, and the peace that returns once he leaves. The repeated frames become moments of introspection or simply the depressing lack of motivation to actually do something. Both are funny.
Well, either way, it's really amazing. It is way funnier than the original comic could ever hope to be. It's also significantly more depressing (reminding of Peanuts in its prime, in the best cases).
Next up is this game Rogue Galaxy. I know it's a PS2 game and I should be playing PS3 games, but there's an explanation for this. The situation was that I had gotten to the last boss in this game a long while ago, but my ancient PS2 stopped being able to read the disc (although the disc was fine).
In fact, for some reason it simply lost the ability to read any games published by Sony, which I thought was a little disappointing (although it made the decision not to buy God of War 2 quite a bit easier).
So, now that I have a PS3, I used that as an opportunity to finish the game (after getting around to buying a little USB adapter for the memory card so that I could start from that point).
Anyways, the game is just okay all around, but decently fun. I like these more action-based battle systems, and this one certainly kept me on my toes. It also helped that some of the random battles would have random challenges, with rewards, which kept battling from getting totally repetitive. It helped that the voice acting didn't suck, too. As a whole, though, this was a very generic RPG.
However, I really didn't like the end of this game. It was frustrating to me that they managed to do so much wrong, right there at the end. First, let's look at the final boss battle.
Throughout the game, the rule has been that if your entire party dies, it's game over, start at the last save point. So, anyways, players are basically taught that having their character die is completely inconsequential, since another party member can bring them back to life immediately (at full health, too). In this final battle, there are 8 (one for each party member) single boss battles. For all of these, the party size is one, so if your character dies, it's immediately game over. What's worse is that these are boss battles and the boss can easily knock off a third of your maximum life per hit (and sometimes hit's 3 times at a time).
The result was a really frustrating time, because the game hadn't actually taught me how to properly engage in a one on one fight, because that's not what the game had been about. Plus, even a single mistake forced me to start all over from the beginning of an hour long battle (which sucked, especially when the boss managed to one shot me a couple times in the very last battle).
My other complaint is that the ending is stupid. So, the cute girl who was totally into the main character and stuff leaves to become the queen of some planet or other (who cares). Anyways, good byes are said and while the credits are rolling, the party realize that they miss her and they don't want to lose her to that stupid planet. So, they decide that since they're space pirates they should go steal her back (fair enough).
And that's where it ends! We don't watch them do it. We don't control them doing it. Nothing actually happens. They just decide to do it. This can safely be called a "poor decision". This could have been a fun cool scene or it could have been a neat post-game challenge. Instead, it's just nothing. That's stupid.
Anyways, none of that really matters, since the dudes behind Persona 3 are releasing an expansion type extra thing in April. Yes, I have to get it. Yes, I have literally no other choice. So, yeah, I'm glad I got Rogue Galaxy out of the way so that I'll be prepared for Persona 3: Fes when it comes out.
Completely unrelated, I forgot to mention that I found it slightly depressing that I could kind of relate to Jon in Garfield Minus Garfield. That's probably a bad thing.
That is all.
Francis
Anyways, I agree with them. This is something amazing and special. I have to admit I'm not sure I totally appreciate the little foreword, but that would be my only complaint. Actually, I think my other complaint might be that the author does a little too much filtering (I'm okay with some of the comics completely not making sense or having anything even resembling a punchline).
In any case, this is something special. I know nothing about art, but this could easily be one of the most intelligent and funny internet creations I've seen. It might almost qualify as art.
I love the amount of empty space that it is forced to utilize. I love that this forces the reader to fill in a story. It's so interesting to me to look at these empty spaces and realize that they're actually providing more context than whatever was originally there. With Garfield gone, these empty spaces are typically the peace that Jon disturbs with his antics, and the peace that returns once he leaves. The repeated frames become moments of introspection or simply the depressing lack of motivation to actually do something. Both are funny.
Well, either way, it's really amazing. It is way funnier than the original comic could ever hope to be. It's also significantly more depressing (reminding of Peanuts in its prime, in the best cases).
Next up is this game Rogue Galaxy. I know it's a PS2 game and I should be playing PS3 games, but there's an explanation for this. The situation was that I had gotten to the last boss in this game a long while ago, but my ancient PS2 stopped being able to read the disc (although the disc was fine).
In fact, for some reason it simply lost the ability to read any games published by Sony, which I thought was a little disappointing (although it made the decision not to buy God of War 2 quite a bit easier).
So, now that I have a PS3, I used that as an opportunity to finish the game (after getting around to buying a little USB adapter for the memory card so that I could start from that point).
Anyways, the game is just okay all around, but decently fun. I like these more action-based battle systems, and this one certainly kept me on my toes. It also helped that some of the random battles would have random challenges, with rewards, which kept battling from getting totally repetitive. It helped that the voice acting didn't suck, too. As a whole, though, this was a very generic RPG.
However, I really didn't like the end of this game. It was frustrating to me that they managed to do so much wrong, right there at the end. First, let's look at the final boss battle.
Throughout the game, the rule has been that if your entire party dies, it's game over, start at the last save point. So, anyways, players are basically taught that having their character die is completely inconsequential, since another party member can bring them back to life immediately (at full health, too). In this final battle, there are 8 (one for each party member) single boss battles. For all of these, the party size is one, so if your character dies, it's immediately game over. What's worse is that these are boss battles and the boss can easily knock off a third of your maximum life per hit (and sometimes hit's 3 times at a time).
The result was a really frustrating time, because the game hadn't actually taught me how to properly engage in a one on one fight, because that's not what the game had been about. Plus, even a single mistake forced me to start all over from the beginning of an hour long battle (which sucked, especially when the boss managed to one shot me a couple times in the very last battle).
My other complaint is that the ending is stupid. So, the cute girl who was totally into the main character and stuff leaves to become the queen of some planet or other (who cares). Anyways, good byes are said and while the credits are rolling, the party realize that they miss her and they don't want to lose her to that stupid planet. So, they decide that since they're space pirates they should go steal her back (fair enough).
And that's where it ends! We don't watch them do it. We don't control them doing it. Nothing actually happens. They just decide to do it. This can safely be called a "poor decision". This could have been a fun cool scene or it could have been a neat post-game challenge. Instead, it's just nothing. That's stupid.
Anyways, none of that really matters, since the dudes behind Persona 3 are releasing an expansion type extra thing in April. Yes, I have to get it. Yes, I have literally no other choice. So, yeah, I'm glad I got Rogue Galaxy out of the way so that I'll be prepared for Persona 3: Fes when it comes out.
Completely unrelated, I forgot to mention that I found it slightly depressing that I could kind of relate to Jon in Garfield Minus Garfield. That's probably a bad thing.
That is all.
Francis
Sunday, November 4, 2007
I Am Legend, Trailer 2
So, maybe I'm a little obsessive. It's not my fault. Anyways, a day or two after I wrote about 30 Days of Night and proceeded to pin all of my hopes for the future of awesome vampires movies on I Am Legend, they released a new trailer for it. This trailer was a little unusual in that it basically gave the entire plot of the movie from start to finish. For this reason, I'm not going to link it in case you didn't want to know what was going to happen.
Besides, it's like the second hit on Google, so if you want to, you can find it easily enough (although you have to click an additional link if you want to watch it in HD instead of crappy Flash Player).
Anyways, this trailer surprised me. A lot. It took me more than a week to organize my thoughts about all this.
So, before I go any further, I want to just throw out one of those SPOILER WARNINGS things (although you ought to be pretty well warned, considering I'm talking about something I've already described as full of spoilers). However, you should probably take these spoilers with a grain of salt, since I haven't seen the movie yet (I've only read the book). But then again, I've seen the trailer, and you might not have yet.
So, if you haven't bothered to go watch the trailer, now would probably be a good time, since that's what I'm going to be talking about. But if you want to go into the movie fresh, stop reading this post and don't go find the trailer on Google and don't go see any upcoming Warner Brothers movies or horror movies in general because you might be exposed to the spoiler filled trailer against your will. Upcoming Warner Brothers movies are: Fred Claus, August Rush and One Missed Call (which is also a horror movie, so that one's almost certain to have the trailer ahead of it). Current Warner Brothers movies that might have the trailer on it are Michael Clayton and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Also, probably don't accidentally read I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, which can be found new at Amazon for 7.99.
So, now I'm actually getting to the post.
First of all, the trailer is kind enough to finally show us the vampires. This is a good thing, since we all really wanted to know how they were going to turn out. Personally, I had been ever-so-secretly hoping for the vampires to all be wearing white make up, like in The Omega Man, just so that it would be the last black against a world taken over by whites. I would have found that awesome. I'm not sure what anyone else would think.
But, well, these vampires aren't just people wearing white make up, which is probably actually a good thing. These babies are definitely scary looking. I appreciate the naked, hairless, veiny, but-still-wearing-pants look. I also like that they all seem to look well over 6 feet tall in the trailer. That's totally cool. The sheer massive number of them that we see is nice as well.
On a side note, at Comic Con this past summer, Warner Brothers was distributing a free little comic book collection of short events leading up to the events of I Am Legend (primarily during the society crashing down part). One of them was even written by Richard Matheson. Anyways, I guess that gave me my first glimpse of what the vampires were going to look like, so their reveal wasn't as big to me as it possibly could have been.
On a barely even related side note, if you didn't happen to go to Comic Con and pick up this free little collection, Apple Trailers has animated versions of at least one of them (listed as I Am Legend: The Awakening). This is done in that same cheap, flash animated style as a pseudo-internet sensation that nobody's ever heard of called Broken Saints. Personally, I hate that style, because it's incredibly boring. You can literally read the entire little free comic book in about the same amount of time it takes them to do the single selection they picked. This isn't surprising because reading the comic books doesn't take very long, but slowly moving little paper cut-out looking characters and narrating it apparently takes forever. But, whatever. Feel free to check it out and agree with me. In either case, the original little free comic book was actually pretty good. Broken Saints and stuff that's done in the same style pretty much isn't.
Okay, back on track. So, they show us the vampires. Awesome. And we like, them. Cool. But, really, did they have to show us the dog dying? I mean, really, that's totally unnecessary. Obviously, we knew the dog was going to die (what else is going to get him to start changing his pattern after three years? Unless, they're actually keeping the girl he meets in the book, and they've just been keeping it a surprise). But, why show it? It's not going to make me want to see it more (like that's possible). It'll probably even turn some people off because some people like watching people die more than watching animals die (but at least the animal is getting well-mourned). So, yeah, unnecessary.
Lastly, and I'm serious on this one, why show him captured by the vampires? I mean, we're talking last 5-10 pages of the book here. It really feels like they decided to just give me the entire movie in that trailer. I mean, I totally still want to see it, but that was still too much. Just the scene of the mass of vampires in the distance coming at his car would have been good enough to make me start thinking about it all the time and planning my December schedule around the release date.
So, instead, now I'm in a similar situation as I was in a couple of summers ago as War of the Worlds was approaching. I was excited and stuff and I thought it would totally be cool. But, I got even more excited when I read an interview saying that they were really excited about the ending because it was totally different from the book and blah, blah, blah. So, I came into the movie really excited because I wanted to see just how it would end (the end of the book was totally cool and clever back when HG Wells wrote it, but that was a while ago, and it needed a fresh perspective). And, well, apparently quoting the end of the book as you use the same ending is considered a totally different ending than the book (I mean, the book can't quote itself, that would be way too meta to even contemplate). So, yeah, I was disappointed with the end. I thought the movie was pretty good, but the end really let me down.
So, flash forward to I Am Legend. Technically, I don't know how the movie is going to end. But here's the situation, the trailer is basically yelling out: "We're following the book!" The title is also shouting to everyone who can read: "This one is going to be like the book!" But then the question becomes: do they have the balls to follow through with that promise? And, well, I'm not sure they do.
I mean, Francis Lawrence is directing it. And, well, I'm willing to put a fair amount of faith in his first name, but not everything. And I actually liked Constantine, but he totally wussed out of letting Constantine die (admittedly, that's at least probably because he was hoping to turn that into a franchise, and franchises don't usually work when the title character dies...Pirates of the Caribbean doesn't count because Jack Sparrow's name isn't in the title and, besides, Jack can do whatever he wants in my book). So, that's what we've got. I'm pinning my hopes on the balls of a former music video director named Francis (admittedly, things could be worse, but they're definitely not good enough).
I've also been more than a little confused by selection of the release date. It's kind of hard to make sense of that choice. Less than two weeks before Christmas, they're releasing a "Will Smith against the vampires" movie, and it's not supposed to end well. I guess they want it to be this year's King Kong, but that doesn't seem like the best goal (I was always under the impression that it under-performed...and was just okay anyways). But, I guess December might give it better odds of not taking the easy, and by easy, I mean stupid, crowd-pleasing, ridiculous, way out compared to being released in July (where humanity is required to win, no matter the odds, and it better be at least as patriotic and uplifting as Independence Day). But, whatever, I just want it to come out sooner (I hear October is a good month for horror movies, even ones whose titles don't start with Saw and end with a number...and well, November probably isn't too shabby either).
So, yeah, I'm excited and so I'm thinking about this way too much. That is all.
Francis
PS - SPOILER WARNING: I didn't want to go into the ending in case you hadn't finished accidentally reading I Am Legend over the course of the post, but by this point, I've probably gone on long enough for you to catch up, assuming it was accidentally purchased with one-day shipping. The question I can't help but ask is whether, after being captured by the vampires, Will Smith is going to find out that they have started building their own society and that they consider themselves to be the humans and him to be the monster. Every morning, they go to sleep afraid that he might find and kill them, even as he goes to sleep each night afraid that they will do the same. Equally important, is the question of how he is going to come to this realization and bravely face them and their execution, knowing that he will be immortalized in their fear and loathing of him (the book concludes with this realization and the very last line is, in fact, "I am legend", which is why I'm excited they're actually using the title).
Unlike with War of the Worlds, I don't want this ending to be modernized. I would love it if it finishes by quoting the book.
Okay, that really is all.
Besides, it's like the second hit on Google, so if you want to, you can find it easily enough (although you have to click an additional link if you want to watch it in HD instead of crappy Flash Player).
Anyways, this trailer surprised me. A lot. It took me more than a week to organize my thoughts about all this.
So, before I go any further, I want to just throw out one of those SPOILER WARNINGS things (although you ought to be pretty well warned, considering I'm talking about something I've already described as full of spoilers). However, you should probably take these spoilers with a grain of salt, since I haven't seen the movie yet (I've only read the book). But then again, I've seen the trailer, and you might not have yet.
So, if you haven't bothered to go watch the trailer, now would probably be a good time, since that's what I'm going to be talking about. But if you want to go into the movie fresh, stop reading this post and don't go find the trailer on Google and don't go see any upcoming Warner Brothers movies or horror movies in general because you might be exposed to the spoiler filled trailer against your will. Upcoming Warner Brothers movies are: Fred Claus, August Rush and One Missed Call (which is also a horror movie, so that one's almost certain to have the trailer ahead of it). Current Warner Brothers movies that might have the trailer on it are Michael Clayton and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Also, probably don't accidentally read I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, which can be found new at Amazon for 7.99.
So, now I'm actually getting to the post.
First of all, the trailer is kind enough to finally show us the vampires. This is a good thing, since we all really wanted to know how they were going to turn out. Personally, I had been ever-so-secretly hoping for the vampires to all be wearing white make up, like in The Omega Man, just so that it would be the last black against a world taken over by whites. I would have found that awesome. I'm not sure what anyone else would think.
But, well, these vampires aren't just people wearing white make up, which is probably actually a good thing. These babies are definitely scary looking. I appreciate the naked, hairless, veiny, but-still-wearing-pants look. I also like that they all seem to look well over 6 feet tall in the trailer. That's totally cool. The sheer massive number of them that we see is nice as well.
On a side note, at Comic Con this past summer, Warner Brothers was distributing a free little comic book collection of short events leading up to the events of I Am Legend (primarily during the society crashing down part). One of them was even written by Richard Matheson. Anyways, I guess that gave me my first glimpse of what the vampires were going to look like, so their reveal wasn't as big to me as it possibly could have been.
On a barely even related side note, if you didn't happen to go to Comic Con and pick up this free little collection, Apple Trailers has animated versions of at least one of them (listed as I Am Legend: The Awakening). This is done in that same cheap, flash animated style as a pseudo-internet sensation that nobody's ever heard of called Broken Saints. Personally, I hate that style, because it's incredibly boring. You can literally read the entire little free comic book in about the same amount of time it takes them to do the single selection they picked. This isn't surprising because reading the comic books doesn't take very long, but slowly moving little paper cut-out looking characters and narrating it apparently takes forever. But, whatever. Feel free to check it out and agree with me. In either case, the original little free comic book was actually pretty good. Broken Saints and stuff that's done in the same style pretty much isn't.
Okay, back on track. So, they show us the vampires. Awesome. And we like, them. Cool. But, really, did they have to show us the dog dying? I mean, really, that's totally unnecessary. Obviously, we knew the dog was going to die (what else is going to get him to start changing his pattern after three years? Unless, they're actually keeping the girl he meets in the book, and they've just been keeping it a surprise). But, why show it? It's not going to make me want to see it more (like that's possible). It'll probably even turn some people off because some people like watching people die more than watching animals die (but at least the animal is getting well-mourned). So, yeah, unnecessary.
Lastly, and I'm serious on this one, why show him captured by the vampires? I mean, we're talking last 5-10 pages of the book here. It really feels like they decided to just give me the entire movie in that trailer. I mean, I totally still want to see it, but that was still too much. Just the scene of the mass of vampires in the distance coming at his car would have been good enough to make me start thinking about it all the time and planning my December schedule around the release date.
So, instead, now I'm in a similar situation as I was in a couple of summers ago as War of the Worlds was approaching. I was excited and stuff and I thought it would totally be cool. But, I got even more excited when I read an interview saying that they were really excited about the ending because it was totally different from the book and blah, blah, blah. So, I came into the movie really excited because I wanted to see just how it would end (the end of the book was totally cool and clever back when HG Wells wrote it, but that was a while ago, and it needed a fresh perspective). And, well, apparently quoting the end of the book as you use the same ending is considered a totally different ending than the book (I mean, the book can't quote itself, that would be way too meta to even contemplate). So, yeah, I was disappointed with the end. I thought the movie was pretty good, but the end really let me down.
So, flash forward to I Am Legend. Technically, I don't know how the movie is going to end. But here's the situation, the trailer is basically yelling out: "We're following the book!" The title is also shouting to everyone who can read: "This one is going to be like the book!" But then the question becomes: do they have the balls to follow through with that promise? And, well, I'm not sure they do.
I mean, Francis Lawrence is directing it. And, well, I'm willing to put a fair amount of faith in his first name, but not everything. And I actually liked Constantine, but he totally wussed out of letting Constantine die (admittedly, that's at least probably because he was hoping to turn that into a franchise, and franchises don't usually work when the title character dies...Pirates of the Caribbean doesn't count because Jack Sparrow's name isn't in the title and, besides, Jack can do whatever he wants in my book). So, that's what we've got. I'm pinning my hopes on the balls of a former music video director named Francis (admittedly, things could be worse, but they're definitely not good enough).
I've also been more than a little confused by selection of the release date. It's kind of hard to make sense of that choice. Less than two weeks before Christmas, they're releasing a "Will Smith against the vampires" movie, and it's not supposed to end well. I guess they want it to be this year's King Kong, but that doesn't seem like the best goal (I was always under the impression that it under-performed...and was just okay anyways). But, I guess December might give it better odds of not taking the easy, and by easy, I mean stupid, crowd-pleasing, ridiculous, way out compared to being released in July (where humanity is required to win, no matter the odds, and it better be at least as patriotic and uplifting as Independence Day). But, whatever, I just want it to come out sooner (I hear October is a good month for horror movies, even ones whose titles don't start with Saw and end with a number...and well, November probably isn't too shabby either).
So, yeah, I'm excited and so I'm thinking about this way too much. That is all.
Francis
PS - SPOILER WARNING: I didn't want to go into the ending in case you hadn't finished accidentally reading I Am Legend over the course of the post, but by this point, I've probably gone on long enough for you to catch up, assuming it was accidentally purchased with one-day shipping. The question I can't help but ask is whether, after being captured by the vampires, Will Smith is going to find out that they have started building their own society and that they consider themselves to be the humans and him to be the monster. Every morning, they go to sleep afraid that he might find and kill them, even as he goes to sleep each night afraid that they will do the same. Equally important, is the question of how he is going to come to this realization and bravely face them and their execution, knowing that he will be immortalized in their fear and loathing of him (the book concludes with this realization and the very last line is, in fact, "I am legend", which is why I'm excited they're actually using the title).
Unlike with War of the Worlds, I don't want this ending to be modernized. I would love it if it finishes by quoting the book.
Okay, that really is all.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
NBC Online
So, a couple months ago, NBC announced that Apple sucks and that they were going to be doing their own thing with digital media, specifically movies and TV shows. I thought this was a little stupid at the time, because NBC shows have been a huge success on iTunes and I would assume that NBC would want to at least keep that in place until they already had an alternative in place that was doing well. But, well, apparently they weren't happy with the money they were making from selling shows on iTunes and so just wrote it all off while working out their own online strategy.
Their new strategy has two key parts, of which I've only used one (the other is in a private beta right now). The part I haven't used is called Hulu and it's a joint venture with Fox to create a YouTube competitor. This seems pretty inherently stupid and I assume it will suck in a major way (largely because I can't really imagine it being any good). Obviously, the plan is to give it a leg up on Youtube by populating it with much of their own original content, which they are working hard to keep off of YouTube. They'll make lots of money by populating their original content with ads (and I'm sure they'll be plenty of other ads on the webspace as well). They'll even try to create an online community and allow users to share videos, and it'll probably be quite interesting to see how they decide to protect their content (as well as other IP owners content) within that ecosystem. But, so yeah, there doesn't look to be any real reason for Hulu to ever become relevant. Also, it's called Hulu for goodness sake. I don't even want to know how or why they picked that name.
The second part of their strategy is to allow the viewing of recent episodes on their official, NBC.com webspace, via an ad-supported Flash player. Due to the fires in southern California, I missed much of my recent NBC watching, so I've been using that to catch up. The experience is...interesting. When it's working, it's not a terrible way to watch a TV episode. They break the episode up into bits at the same points where there would be ads if you were watching it on TV anyways (which I think is fair). The main difference, and the only thing I like, is that during these ads there's a countdown letting me know when the show is going to come back on. This is really convenient, because it means you can be working on a blog entry and just be checking the countdown until it's time to come back. Very nice. It would be awesome if they were able to implement something like that on general television as well.
The rest of the experience, however, pretty much sucks. Well, actually, I should be nicer than that. It's hardly the worst way to watch TV. I imagine that watching TV in black and white on a 6" screen would be worse. I'm sure watching TV when the power is out is worse (because then you can't even be working on a blog entry).
Here's what it was like, for me. I find NBC's website. No problem. I struggle to navigate this busy and complicated website, but find the link for watching full episodes of Chuck, so I click it. This instead takes me to their Chuck website, which is also busy and complicated. There's many different things that say "Watch a full episode of Chuck online!", but I'm struggling to actually find that precious link that takes me to these full episodes. Soon, though, I figure it out and I'm watching Chuck. I quickly notice that the video quality sucks. This is not especially hard to notice, unless you're not looking at the screen. But, hey, the load time was pretty much nonexistent, so it would hardly be fair to complain (this is kind of the mindset you need going in: I will make excuses for all the things that suck about this because it's free).
Then we get to an action sequence. Now, the frame rate drops to nonexistent. Luckily the dialogue is still going, except this action sequence featured characters speaking Chinese, which I'm not capable of understanding without the aid of subtitles, which, as it happens, tend to be more viewable when you're seeing each frame you're supposed to see, instead of every 24th. But, whatever, the action ends and things get back to normal (and I don't even complain because action sequences in Chuck are stupid anyways...see more excuses). Now, though, I'm onto a new problem. The newest episode seems to crash at the same point every time I try to watch it. This is disappointing, because I don't really appreciate having my browser crash, over and over again.
Another complaint would be that the ads must be significantly larger files, because they basically start and stop and junk around a lot (which means that watching ads is actually more painful than normal, even when they're happening in the background while I'm writing a blog entry).
And, well, the list of complaints goes on. Maybe it's just slow today, but I finally gave up on watching the newest Heroes online (crashing starts to get old after a little while). I know someone who lives about 25 minutes away and TiVos Heroes. I think it'll be faster to just drive over there and watch it with them (in HD, by the way).
So, yeah, we'll just have to wait and see when I get around to doing another NBC Mondays post, but catching up is apparently harder than I would have liked.
That is all.
Francis
Their new strategy has two key parts, of which I've only used one (the other is in a private beta right now). The part I haven't used is called Hulu and it's a joint venture with Fox to create a YouTube competitor. This seems pretty inherently stupid and I assume it will suck in a major way (largely because I can't really imagine it being any good). Obviously, the plan is to give it a leg up on Youtube by populating it with much of their own original content, which they are working hard to keep off of YouTube. They'll make lots of money by populating their original content with ads (and I'm sure they'll be plenty of other ads on the webspace as well). They'll even try to create an online community and allow users to share videos, and it'll probably be quite interesting to see how they decide to protect their content (as well as other IP owners content) within that ecosystem. But, so yeah, there doesn't look to be any real reason for Hulu to ever become relevant. Also, it's called Hulu for goodness sake. I don't even want to know how or why they picked that name.
The second part of their strategy is to allow the viewing of recent episodes on their official, NBC.com webspace, via an ad-supported Flash player. Due to the fires in southern California, I missed much of my recent NBC watching, so I've been using that to catch up. The experience is...interesting. When it's working, it's not a terrible way to watch a TV episode. They break the episode up into bits at the same points where there would be ads if you were watching it on TV anyways (which I think is fair). The main difference, and the only thing I like, is that during these ads there's a countdown letting me know when the show is going to come back on. This is really convenient, because it means you can be working on a blog entry and just be checking the countdown until it's time to come back. Very nice. It would be awesome if they were able to implement something like that on general television as well.
The rest of the experience, however, pretty much sucks. Well, actually, I should be nicer than that. It's hardly the worst way to watch TV. I imagine that watching TV in black and white on a 6" screen would be worse. I'm sure watching TV when the power is out is worse (because then you can't even be working on a blog entry).
Here's what it was like, for me. I find NBC's website. No problem. I struggle to navigate this busy and complicated website, but find the link for watching full episodes of Chuck, so I click it. This instead takes me to their Chuck website, which is also busy and complicated. There's many different things that say "Watch a full episode of Chuck online!", but I'm struggling to actually find that precious link that takes me to these full episodes. Soon, though, I figure it out and I'm watching Chuck. I quickly notice that the video quality sucks. This is not especially hard to notice, unless you're not looking at the screen. But, hey, the load time was pretty much nonexistent, so it would hardly be fair to complain (this is kind of the mindset you need going in: I will make excuses for all the things that suck about this because it's free).
Then we get to an action sequence. Now, the frame rate drops to nonexistent. Luckily the dialogue is still going, except this action sequence featured characters speaking Chinese, which I'm not capable of understanding without the aid of subtitles, which, as it happens, tend to be more viewable when you're seeing each frame you're supposed to see, instead of every 24th. But, whatever, the action ends and things get back to normal (and I don't even complain because action sequences in Chuck are stupid anyways...see more excuses). Now, though, I'm onto a new problem. The newest episode seems to crash at the same point every time I try to watch it. This is disappointing, because I don't really appreciate having my browser crash, over and over again.
Another complaint would be that the ads must be significantly larger files, because they basically start and stop and junk around a lot (which means that watching ads is actually more painful than normal, even when they're happening in the background while I'm writing a blog entry).
And, well, the list of complaints goes on. Maybe it's just slow today, but I finally gave up on watching the newest Heroes online (crashing starts to get old after a little while). I know someone who lives about 25 minutes away and TiVos Heroes. I think it'll be faster to just drive over there and watch it with them (in HD, by the way).
So, yeah, we'll just have to wait and see when I get around to doing another NBC Mondays post, but catching up is apparently harder than I would have liked.
That is all.
Francis
Monday, September 24, 2007
NBC Mondays
So, I watched all three of NBC's big shows this evening. That would be Chuck, Heroes, and Journeyman. Personally, I had very low expectations for Chuck, fairly high expectations for Heroes, and somewhere in between for Journeyman. So, my thoughts:
Chuck was at least a bit better than I expected. This might be because I am totally biased by the fact that the main character went to Stanford and actually manages to talk about his experience for a good three seconds or so, believably. I did not know this was actually possible. I'm going to assume that there is someone involved with the show who actually went to Stanford, and so made it possible. That is the only explanation I can come up with. So, I have to give the show extra points for employing someone from Stanford.
Oh, it also gets lots of extra points for employing a former member of the cast of Firefly (that would be Adam Baldwin, playing a slightly more evil, and possibly less stupid, version of Jayne).
Hmm, otherwise, there's not too much going for it. The girl is decently hot, I guess. She looks a lot like Christine Taylor (Ben Stiller's wife, who can be seen in Zoolander and Dodgeball).
I guess my main problem with the show is that I think it's better when there isn't violence. Chuck helping people while working at this take-off of Best Buy could probably be pretty funny all on its own, without pointless action with a hot babe (but, some could argue, what's the point if there isn't a hot babe?).
I can imagine some alternate version of Chuck, that's more like House, only for the geek audience. With people coming in with stupid problems while him and the rest of the Nerd Herd solve bigger problems, typically involving video games. Okay, fine that probably wouldn't be any better. But, hey, it probably wouldn't be worse either. Besides, poor customer service is totally funnier when it isn't coming from someone who's supposed to be saving your life.
In conclusion, yeah, I might watch it again next week. We'll see. It depends how much time they spend being stupid at work versus how much time they spend being stupid with violence. Also, completely unrelated, why is the current explanation for the story that the people from the NSA and the people from the CIA are on such poor terms that they're okay with killing and fighting each other? Couldn't they come up with a situation that doesn't just hurt my brain with the stupidity of it all?
I'm praying that there's going to be a twist mid-season where we find out that somebody' boss (either Jayne's or Christine Taylor look-alike's, or even both!) has actually gone rogue and so the former roommate that got Chuck into this mess was actually not turning against his country, but instead was thwarting said evil boss. On the other hand, if that doesn't happen, I probably won't mind because I'll have given up on the show by then.
Moving on to Heroes...
So, facing the classic problem of not really knowing what to do or where to go, the writers apparently have decided to use the classic "add more characters to an already bloated show" strategy to continue the story. Luckily, they backed this up with the equally classic strategy of "kill off popular, cameo type side-characters to reduce clutter". Admittedly, this combination doesn't work as well when you add like six characters and only kill one off, but, whatever. They've still got time to kill off the others.
I do have to admit, I'm glad to see everyone again. Mohinder is still mixing it up with the wrong people. Hiro is still a ridiculously awesome control freak. I think I'm going to enjoy watching him try to write (or would it be rewrite?) history so that things happen the way he was told they did, hundreds of years later. I'm sorry for Matt, that his marriage was unable to work out (it sucks that it didn't work out in either the bad timeline or the current timeline). And Peter... Oh, how I heart him. It's good to see him alive and kicking (well, telekinetically kicking, at least). Also, why is Nathan still alive? I was totally counting on him to die. But, whatever.
And, of course, we can't forget about Claire, can we? I swear she's cuter. Although, I liked last season's boy a lot more. Admittedly, at least this one's a special person (is it frustrating that they are basically doing X-Men, but refuse to call themselves Mutants, or use any other simple noun to define themselves?). On the other hand, this guy has the same power as Claire's father. Somehow, if they were to get together, that would seem really incestuous to me. But, whatever. Also, her new high school looks just like the high school in that movie Orange County (which also talked about Stanford, but not nearly as well as Chuck did).
So, yeah, they were quick to keep pushing this scary dude that young Molly's afraid of. I'm not sure how many lone wolf, evil guys with crazy powers the show really needs, but it looks like they're shooting for at least one more. Otherwise, it's hard to really tell where they're planning on going with this. I'm surprised that we don't see anything about people reacting to the fact that a nuclear bomb went off in the sky above the New York City. I was kind of expecting that to be a source of tension in this new timeline. But, whatever.
Also, I'm not passing judgement on the people traveling to find Mohinder just yet. Although, I can't help but be curious about what foreign language we'll have regular characters speaking in next.
Lastly, Journeyman.
Personally, I thought this could be good. I actually read that book, The Time Traveler's Wife, which is a semi-obvious inspiration for the show. Admittedly, I kind of regretted reading the book, but that's not the point. I didn't like it because it paid too much attention to the wife, instead of the time traveler (which it had given me fair warning about, considering the title). This show looked like it was going to be paying more attention to the time traveler, himself, so that should be a non-issue.
Anyways, it was kind of a letdown. I want to give it another chance. I really do. But, well, ouch. I'm not sure I really appreciate this whole idea that over the course of the episode, he figures out what he has to do when he goes back in time. It's just very contrived. I mean, I knew it was going to be contrived, but it was still very contrived. I think I like that word (contrived, I mean).
It is funny to see him interact with his former fiancee when he goes back in time. Although, it is REALLY weird to see him interact with a time traveling version of her to explain what the heck is going on. This just feels like really lazy writing. It's like the writers were like, "We need someone to tell him what's going on, because he's never going to figure out why we're doing this to him on his own. So, let's get his dead fiancee to do it, since he'll listen to her."
I mean, wow. It just feels lame. I think I'm going to try to force myself to give it another chance, because I was really hoping for the best for this thing. I mean, NBC put it after Heroes, so they must have high hopes, right?
So, yeah, that's the review. Too bad these are pretty much all the shows I wanted to check out. At least it was convenient.
That is all.
Francis
Chuck was at least a bit better than I expected. This might be because I am totally biased by the fact that the main character went to Stanford and actually manages to talk about his experience for a good three seconds or so, believably. I did not know this was actually possible. I'm going to assume that there is someone involved with the show who actually went to Stanford, and so made it possible. That is the only explanation I can come up with. So, I have to give the show extra points for employing someone from Stanford.
Oh, it also gets lots of extra points for employing a former member of the cast of Firefly (that would be Adam Baldwin, playing a slightly more evil, and possibly less stupid, version of Jayne).
Hmm, otherwise, there's not too much going for it. The girl is decently hot, I guess. She looks a lot like Christine Taylor (Ben Stiller's wife, who can be seen in Zoolander and Dodgeball).
I guess my main problem with the show is that I think it's better when there isn't violence. Chuck helping people while working at this take-off of Best Buy could probably be pretty funny all on its own, without pointless action with a hot babe (but, some could argue, what's the point if there isn't a hot babe?).
I can imagine some alternate version of Chuck, that's more like House, only for the geek audience. With people coming in with stupid problems while him and the rest of the Nerd Herd solve bigger problems, typically involving video games. Okay, fine that probably wouldn't be any better. But, hey, it probably wouldn't be worse either. Besides, poor customer service is totally funnier when it isn't coming from someone who's supposed to be saving your life.
In conclusion, yeah, I might watch it again next week. We'll see. It depends how much time they spend being stupid at work versus how much time they spend being stupid with violence. Also, completely unrelated, why is the current explanation for the story that the people from the NSA and the people from the CIA are on such poor terms that they're okay with killing and fighting each other? Couldn't they come up with a situation that doesn't just hurt my brain with the stupidity of it all?
I'm praying that there's going to be a twist mid-season where we find out that somebody' boss (either Jayne's or Christine Taylor look-alike's, or even both!) has actually gone rogue and so the former roommate that got Chuck into this mess was actually not turning against his country, but instead was thwarting said evil boss. On the other hand, if that doesn't happen, I probably won't mind because I'll have given up on the show by then.
Moving on to Heroes...
So, facing the classic problem of not really knowing what to do or where to go, the writers apparently have decided to use the classic "add more characters to an already bloated show" strategy to continue the story. Luckily, they backed this up with the equally classic strategy of "kill off popular, cameo type side-characters to reduce clutter". Admittedly, this combination doesn't work as well when you add like six characters and only kill one off, but, whatever. They've still got time to kill off the others.
I do have to admit, I'm glad to see everyone again. Mohinder is still mixing it up with the wrong people. Hiro is still a ridiculously awesome control freak. I think I'm going to enjoy watching him try to write (or would it be rewrite?) history so that things happen the way he was told they did, hundreds of years later. I'm sorry for Matt, that his marriage was unable to work out (it sucks that it didn't work out in either the bad timeline or the current timeline). And Peter... Oh, how I heart him. It's good to see him alive and kicking (well, telekinetically kicking, at least). Also, why is Nathan still alive? I was totally counting on him to die. But, whatever.
And, of course, we can't forget about Claire, can we? I swear she's cuter. Although, I liked last season's boy a lot more. Admittedly, at least this one's a special person (is it frustrating that they are basically doing X-Men, but refuse to call themselves Mutants, or use any other simple noun to define themselves?). On the other hand, this guy has the same power as Claire's father. Somehow, if they were to get together, that would seem really incestuous to me. But, whatever. Also, her new high school looks just like the high school in that movie Orange County (which also talked about Stanford, but not nearly as well as Chuck did).
So, yeah, they were quick to keep pushing this scary dude that young Molly's afraid of. I'm not sure how many lone wolf, evil guys with crazy powers the show really needs, but it looks like they're shooting for at least one more. Otherwise, it's hard to really tell where they're planning on going with this. I'm surprised that we don't see anything about people reacting to the fact that a nuclear bomb went off in the sky above the New York City. I was kind of expecting that to be a source of tension in this new timeline. But, whatever.
Also, I'm not passing judgement on the people traveling to find Mohinder just yet. Although, I can't help but be curious about what foreign language we'll have regular characters speaking in next.
Lastly, Journeyman.
Personally, I thought this could be good. I actually read that book, The Time Traveler's Wife, which is a semi-obvious inspiration for the show. Admittedly, I kind of regretted reading the book, but that's not the point. I didn't like it because it paid too much attention to the wife, instead of the time traveler (which it had given me fair warning about, considering the title). This show looked like it was going to be paying more attention to the time traveler, himself, so that should be a non-issue.
Anyways, it was kind of a letdown. I want to give it another chance. I really do. But, well, ouch. I'm not sure I really appreciate this whole idea that over the course of the episode, he figures out what he has to do when he goes back in time. It's just very contrived. I mean, I knew it was going to be contrived, but it was still very contrived. I think I like that word (contrived, I mean).
It is funny to see him interact with his former fiancee when he goes back in time. Although, it is REALLY weird to see him interact with a time traveling version of her to explain what the heck is going on. This just feels like really lazy writing. It's like the writers were like, "We need someone to tell him what's going on, because he's never going to figure out why we're doing this to him on his own. So, let's get his dead fiancee to do it, since he'll listen to her."
I mean, wow. It just feels lame. I think I'm going to try to force myself to give it another chance, because I was really hoping for the best for this thing. I mean, NBC put it after Heroes, so they must have high hopes, right?
So, yeah, that's the review. Too bad these are pretty much all the shows I wanted to check out. At least it was convenient.
That is all.
Francis
Monday, August 20, 2007
Captain Malcolm Reynolds
So, I'm something of a fan of Firefly/Serenity. Admittedly, basically everyone is these days, so that does little to make me cool (or uncool, for that matter, phew). There are many things I like about the show, but the thing I like the most is most definitely our dear Captain Reynolds.
In the same way that Jack Sparrow made it so that Pirates of the Caribbean could never be an ensemble cast, so does Malcolm Reynolds treat Firefly. There may be eight other people on the ship, but they're only there to interact with the Captain and provide insight into his character. As far as I'm concerned.
Firefly and Serenity are truly about Mal's redemptive journey. The opening scenes of the pilot to Firefly show his world and everything he believed in crumbling apart. He is forced to not only witness the end of the war, but experience it as well. Even as him and his men are doing everything they need to do, the situation is hopeless.
And then we hear the song. The love song to Serenity and everything it represents to Mal. We just watched him lose everything, but with the help of Serenity, he believes there is still something they can never take, even if his hope is already gone.
And so the show begins. Mal is cynical and still hopeless. He's just another guy with a ship and a crew trying to get by. He's already starting to realize that maybe he's wrong, the sky is starting to get smaller and it's not really his anymore.
And so he takes on passengers. And meets the Tams.
They inspire both the best and worst in him. Simon represents everything he doesn't trust about the system and he abuses him for it. But River, she means something else entirely.
She's like him. She's been wounded deeply, but she still has the spirit he lost ages ago. So he has no choice but to agree to help them. He can never explain to the others why he does it, but he sticks by them.
Every other good deed he ever does, he finds a way to justify as meeting some self-serving ends. But these never mean anything because there is always this blatant, and wholly self-less act defining him to the others.
He helps them purely because River represents something he lost forever ago. It was for people like her that he was willing to fight a war forever ago and in the movie, he is finally able to return to being the hero that he once was. All because of her.
I love watching the journey he takes. He starts out broken, but eventually becomes whole again, because he is given a cause. He may have a song about how the only thing he needs is the freedom he can provide himself, but he truly needs so much more. And I was glad to see him get it. Can't stop the signal, indeed.
That is all.
Francis
In the same way that Jack Sparrow made it so that Pirates of the Caribbean could never be an ensemble cast, so does Malcolm Reynolds treat Firefly. There may be eight other people on the ship, but they're only there to interact with the Captain and provide insight into his character. As far as I'm concerned.
Firefly and Serenity are truly about Mal's redemptive journey. The opening scenes of the pilot to Firefly show his world and everything he believed in crumbling apart. He is forced to not only witness the end of the war, but experience it as well. Even as him and his men are doing everything they need to do, the situation is hopeless.
And then we hear the song. The love song to Serenity and everything it represents to Mal. We just watched him lose everything, but with the help of Serenity, he believes there is still something they can never take, even if his hope is already gone.
And so the show begins. Mal is cynical and still hopeless. He's just another guy with a ship and a crew trying to get by. He's already starting to realize that maybe he's wrong, the sky is starting to get smaller and it's not really his anymore.
And so he takes on passengers. And meets the Tams.
They inspire both the best and worst in him. Simon represents everything he doesn't trust about the system and he abuses him for it. But River, she means something else entirely.
She's like him. She's been wounded deeply, but she still has the spirit he lost ages ago. So he has no choice but to agree to help them. He can never explain to the others why he does it, but he sticks by them.
Every other good deed he ever does, he finds a way to justify as meeting some self-serving ends. But these never mean anything because there is always this blatant, and wholly self-less act defining him to the others.
He helps them purely because River represents something he lost forever ago. It was for people like her that he was willing to fight a war forever ago and in the movie, he is finally able to return to being the hero that he once was. All because of her.
I love watching the journey he takes. He starts out broken, but eventually becomes whole again, because he is given a cause. He may have a song about how the only thing he needs is the freedom he can provide himself, but he truly needs so much more. And I was glad to see him get it. Can't stop the signal, indeed.
That is all.
Francis
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Those movies in May...
I was thinking I should probably write a positive post, sooner or later, just because. This is supposed to be it, although I make no promises.
So, in April, there were only two things on anyone's mind (okay, my mind, at least): Spiderman 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean 3. By June, it was generally agreed that May was a pretty disappointing month, with many people going so far as to say the above movies were bad. Personally, I think that's very harsh and though neither movie managed to be the best in their respective trilogies, neither movie was the worst, either.
Let's start by taking a look at Spiderman 3. Alright, everyone had really high expectations for this movie. When it came out, Spiderman 2 was almost undoubtedly the best comic book movie ever... until Batman Begins came out the following summer, of course. So, it had a lot to live up to. And, it most definitely didn't live up to it's successor. It was convoluted and long and busy and just very soap opera-ish. The dialogue was hokey and we had to tolerate an extended scene of Peter Parker being emo and thinking it made him cool. Really, there was a lot to be disappointed by.
But, does it really deserve to be derided? I don't think so. For one, it continued the tradition of having awesome villains, with a fun take on the Sandman, another great performance by James Franco, and Venom was undoubtedly cool (except when they did that stupid thing where we had to see Topher Grace's face instead of Venom's giant tongue). Also, Sam Raimi had just as interesting things to say in Spiderman 3 as Spiderman 2, even if they didn't come out as well, so at least it was aspiring to be something special, which is worth points in my book. On an unrelated note, it managed to prove that Bryce Dallas Howard is actually ridiculously hot, M. Night Shyamalan just wasn't treating her right. In short, I agree that it isn't Spiderman 2, but it has positives.
Compare that to the first Spiderman movie. If you remember really liking it, but you haven't seen it in a while, don't. Seriously, keep the happy memories because repeated viewings will destroy them. That movie is bad. It suffers from many of the same failings as Spiderman 3, but has none of the positives. All it has going for it is the excitement of discovering the powers. Everything else, from the cheesy dialogue to the silly acting and the lamest villain of the series (although Willem Dafoe is still awesome), pretty much sucks.
So, how about Pirates 3? Personally, I really liked this one. I know it's talky. But, hey, with Jack Sparrow, talky is way better than stupid action-y. To me, Dead Man's Chest is all about the most ridiculous action set pieces they could come up with, at the cost of completely destroy the mere appearance of a plot going forward. It's a little depressing to be watching a movie and realize you've already seen people going through a crowded forest hill in a rolling object. It's even more depressing when you remember that you thought it was kind of lame the first time. So much of that movie was a waste of time, I remember being so disappointed with the movie I was just stunned. It was like the people involved had no idea why everyone liked the first movie. We had to sit through so many pointless scenes of people who were not Jack Sparrow failing miserably at entertaining us, it was almost insulting.
And then they made the third movie and it made up for all those terrible short comings of the previous movie. This movie worshipped Jack Sparrow. He was crazy and that was not only okay, but absolutely necessary. And I loved it. I loved watching Jack talk, whip, eat, and kill himself. This movie totally recognized why we all loved the first movie and gave us exactly what we wanted: Jack Sparrow. In fact, it did even better. It got rid of the two pointless characters nobody cared about (that would be the Turner couple). I came out of that movie hoping, even wishing, they'd someday make a fourth movie to let us all bask in the glory of Jack Sparrow again.
And yet, so many people complain that At World's End isn't as good as the first movie. I don't know, but it never even occurred to me that it could be. That first movie was incredibly lucky. I mean, we're talking catching lightning in a bottle lucky. How do you go into a movie expecting that kind of luck, again? The first movie is unreproducible, and to get something just as good is hopeless. This movie was at least smart enough to recognize what made the first movie awesome and actually let us experience it some more. And, to be honest, that's definitely a fair deal.
That is all.
Francis
So, in April, there were only two things on anyone's mind (okay, my mind, at least): Spiderman 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean 3. By June, it was generally agreed that May was a pretty disappointing month, with many people going so far as to say the above movies were bad. Personally, I think that's very harsh and though neither movie managed to be the best in their respective trilogies, neither movie was the worst, either.
Let's start by taking a look at Spiderman 3. Alright, everyone had really high expectations for this movie. When it came out, Spiderman 2 was almost undoubtedly the best comic book movie ever... until Batman Begins came out the following summer, of course. So, it had a lot to live up to. And, it most definitely didn't live up to it's successor. It was convoluted and long and busy and just very soap opera-ish. The dialogue was hokey and we had to tolerate an extended scene of Peter Parker being emo and thinking it made him cool. Really, there was a lot to be disappointed by.
But, does it really deserve to be derided? I don't think so. For one, it continued the tradition of having awesome villains, with a fun take on the Sandman, another great performance by James Franco, and Venom was undoubtedly cool (except when they did that stupid thing where we had to see Topher Grace's face instead of Venom's giant tongue). Also, Sam Raimi had just as interesting things to say in Spiderman 3 as Spiderman 2, even if they didn't come out as well, so at least it was aspiring to be something special, which is worth points in my book. On an unrelated note, it managed to prove that Bryce Dallas Howard is actually ridiculously hot, M. Night Shyamalan just wasn't treating her right. In short, I agree that it isn't Spiderman 2, but it has positives.
Compare that to the first Spiderman movie. If you remember really liking it, but you haven't seen it in a while, don't. Seriously, keep the happy memories because repeated viewings will destroy them. That movie is bad. It suffers from many of the same failings as Spiderman 3, but has none of the positives. All it has going for it is the excitement of discovering the powers. Everything else, from the cheesy dialogue to the silly acting and the lamest villain of the series (although Willem Dafoe is still awesome), pretty much sucks.
So, how about Pirates 3? Personally, I really liked this one. I know it's talky. But, hey, with Jack Sparrow, talky is way better than stupid action-y. To me, Dead Man's Chest is all about the most ridiculous action set pieces they could come up with, at the cost of completely destroy the mere appearance of a plot going forward. It's a little depressing to be watching a movie and realize you've already seen people going through a crowded forest hill in a rolling object. It's even more depressing when you remember that you thought it was kind of lame the first time. So much of that movie was a waste of time, I remember being so disappointed with the movie I was just stunned. It was like the people involved had no idea why everyone liked the first movie. We had to sit through so many pointless scenes of people who were not Jack Sparrow failing miserably at entertaining us, it was almost insulting.
And then they made the third movie and it made up for all those terrible short comings of the previous movie. This movie worshipped Jack Sparrow. He was crazy and that was not only okay, but absolutely necessary. And I loved it. I loved watching Jack talk, whip, eat, and kill himself. This movie totally recognized why we all loved the first movie and gave us exactly what we wanted: Jack Sparrow. In fact, it did even better. It got rid of the two pointless characters nobody cared about (that would be the Turner couple). I came out of that movie hoping, even wishing, they'd someday make a fourth movie to let us all bask in the glory of Jack Sparrow again.
And yet, so many people complain that At World's End isn't as good as the first movie. I don't know, but it never even occurred to me that it could be. That first movie was incredibly lucky. I mean, we're talking catching lightning in a bottle lucky. How do you go into a movie expecting that kind of luck, again? The first movie is unreproducible, and to get something just as good is hopeless. This movie was at least smart enough to recognize what made the first movie awesome and actually let us experience it some more. And, to be honest, that's definitely a fair deal.
That is all.
Francis
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