07.06.12 |
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Staff over at The A.V. Club discuss the plot devices and mistakes that take you out of a film’s story. I chuckled at this choice by Marah Eakin:
Mine’s super-petty, but here it is: I hate when a character drinks from or carelessly wields a clearly empty “hot” coffee cup in a movie or TV show. Most people would just be a little annoyed by this, but it makes me question the whole production. Couldn’t they bother to put some water in those cups? And if they aren’t paying attention to even middling details like that, then what else did they ignore? Are the characters developed? Are the sets how they should be? Did they edit the whole thing together well?
07.06.12 |
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Been enjoying this long-form feature over at Polygon giving perspective on where gaming is heading. It’s subdivided by major focus, with one major piece released each day this week. So far I’ve read about AAA games, indies, mobile, and how the demographic of gamers has changed.
It’s long, but if you have to cut down what you’re after, start with Russ Pitts’ piece on the AAA side of the industry. It’s scary breaking down Activision and Ubisoft’s numbers.
07.05.12 |
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Tim Grierson, writing for The A.V. Club:
Now he’s back with “Magic Mike,” which I think is a revelation in how it shows McConaughey playing with his persona and twisting it…buff and tan, McConaughey’s Dallas isn’t as young as his boy-toy dancers, and you can feel that conflict inside this aging man-child, who isn’t quite ready to admit that his time in the spotlight is fading. Like McConaughey’s characters in “Lincoln Lawyer” and “Bernie,” Dallas wants the attention, and in all three performances there’s a poignancy to that desire because none of them can see how faintly ridiculous their lives are.
Seriously, McConaughey was the best part of Magic Mike. He kept the film grounded and it was a blast seeing him jump into his part so readily. Hopefully, as author Grierson surmises, McConaughey will continue to evolve and take bigger risks.
07.05.12 |
film |
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I love Blu-rays. They’ve got great visual quality and serve as a counterpoint to the high prices, loud audiences and endless ads at mainstream theaters. But Blu-rays are dying in the rental market with à la carte streaming taking its place, a more limited and often inferior substitute.
I’m aware that a defense of any disc media can appear shortsighted as tech shifts to mobile and the cloud. Streams clearly have several big advantages, most notably their convenience. But for the cinephile in me, Blu-rays for now are an unparalleled experience. There’s fewer artifacts or compression and no visual stutter from a bump in your internet connection. Almost every Blu-ray soundtrack delivers 5.1 surround. Also Blu-ray color depth and saturation trounces the content I stream from Amazon and iTunes.
Yet Blu-rays feel virtually inaccessible for rental. Netflix queue times are laughably bad; I’m averaging about two months from the time a new release movie is available for download or Blu-ray purchase, and when I get it from Netflix. I live in New York, a worldwide film hub, yet most local video options are long gone. Nearby self-service boxes from Blockbuster and Redbox have little selection.
This no-win situation is probably exactly what studios want: pony up $20 or more for an outright Blu-ray buy or suffer inferior quality (and no special features) at $5 for a 24-hour download rental. We deserve better.
Unfortunately, there’s no signs of the trend changing course. The studios set the rules. Distribution patterns for physical media take forever to change. If anything I’d expect more unskippable trailers and less content on rental Blu-rays to make the situation even worse.
So Blu-ray as a rental format appears dead, but movie streams and downloads don’t have to suffer the same fate. Hollywood has the chance to prevent a lot of problems (while cutting piracy) with a few changes in its download and streaming content:
Provide higher end streaming options that offer less compression and more special feature tie-ins. When I have to play a guessing game or run Google searches to find out if your “1080p HD” version is butchered by artifacts or other shortcuts, I’m out the door. Even at a slightly higher cost, I’d happily pay a $1 or $2 premium for an enhanced stream.
All films get 5.1 surround where available. It’s true if you listen from your laptop or mobile device, this doesn’t change much. But home theater packages have bumped up their quality in recent years at lower price points. Surround tracks can make a huge difference, and not just with blockbuster action films (e.g. the atmospheric surround touches in “Mulholland Drive” are pretty masterful.)
Cut the price of HD back catalog titles by at least $1 or $2. Why is the classic comedy Planes, Trains and Automobiles only a buck less than a new release on iTunes? I know the “one simple price” mantra is popular for Blockbuster and the iTunes music store. But this is a very different market; a movie rental stream is a watch once, low investment impulse buy (just look at the popularity of Netflix’s instant streaming.) Tap into that by keeping the back catalog priced low.
Online delivery is clearly film’s future. Yet that medium, much like we’ve seen with music, has the ability to disrupt the Hollywood studio system. It won’t kill it, because they still hold most of the content (i.e. why the same few studios have ruled films for decades.) This, combined with growing frustration by consumers on increasing content restrictions along with pirated torrents being easier to access, can significantly harm Hollywood. If the studios don’t adapt and change, the market will force them to.
07.05.12 |
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The Cleartrip author makes some excellent points about Chrome for iOS, most notably this:
The mobile browser is redundant. Being able to change your default browser would’ve certainly been in Chrome’s favour but does Chrome even need to worry about that? Tons of mobile web traffic is generated by Twitter and Facebook — which means that it is rendered within the respective webviews of those apps. When was the last time you launched a browser to read an article that someone shared on your timeline. So in a sense, UIWebviews, Chrome’s great weakness may just work in their favour.
It is true how often I end up pulling up a UIWebview in apps like Instapaper or Pulp.
I’ve given Chrome for iOS a heavy run and like a lot of what it has to offer, most notably tab syncing and opening tabs in the background. But because Chrome can’t be set as my default browser, I suspect within a week I’ll be back to Mobile Safari full time.
07.04.12 |
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Really cool, very in depth history of puzzle classic Tetris and its evolution across platforms. Once again, The Verge and its sister gaming publication Polygon have published a compelling long form (two thousand word plus) feature article. It’s a nice break from the usual bite size reporting that dominates online journalism, and hopefully it’s a trend that will continue.
07.04.12 |
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Dalton Caldwell:
Perhaps you think that Twitter today is a really cool and powerful company. Well, it is. But that doesn’t mean that it couldn’t have been much, much more. I believe an API-centric Twitter could have enabled an ecosystem far more powerful than what Facebook is today. Perhaps you think that the API-centric model would have never worked, and that if the ad guys wouldn’t have won, Twitter would not be alive today. Maybe. But is the service we think of as Twitter today really the Twitter from a few years ago living up to its full potential?
Pretty damming. I’m not quite as bearish on Twitter; I suspect that too much API muzzling will deliver a significant enough backlash that the company will reverse course. Either way, it’s unquestionable Twitter is a very different, less progressive company than it was six months ago.
07.03.12 |
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Pretty fascinating breakdown of Diablo 3 addition. Author Alex Curelea asserts the game’s problems stem from its (real life currency based) auction house.
(While I can’t compare my addition level with a twelve year old game, Diablo 3 certainly has done something right; I log a few hours every week, a significant dent in my already busy schedule.)
07.03.12 |
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This is a slight departure from my usual tech/gaming/film coverage, but most developers and designers I know use headphones, at least occasionally. If you’re looking to buy a pair in the near future, check out this pdf guide. Admittedly it’s not for budget listeners – this tends to lean high end, anywhere from $90 all the way up to the thousands. Yet there’s great recommendations here, better on average than most tech blogs.
(For the record, I’ve used Sennheiser HD-25 IIs for years and been very satisfied.)
07.03.12 |
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Warning, spoilers below for TDNR:
I’ve read way too many reviews and breakdowns of the final entry in Nolan’s Batman trilogy, but Matt Rorie’s – former head writer at Screened.com – was one of the funniest and most astute with regard to the film’s many plot holes. A few real zingers:
“Hey, I know that we only have hours to stop Bane and find the bomb, but I took a while to rappel off this bridge and paint a big Batman sign with gasoline on it. Because of hope and stuff. Oh, and that thin ice that has been the death of everyone who’s been exiled from the city? Why don’t you go ahead and set that on fire while we’re all standing on it.”
or:
Why do people have guns if no one ever wishes to shoot them? The entire film is filled with people with perfectly fine firearms who instead choose to run at each other and use said guns as blunt instruments. I mean, the entire police force is armed and ready to take on Bane’s army…and then they just rush them and get into a fistfight?