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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.)
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?
Wonderful takedown of Ridley Scott’s sci-fi epic. Writer Julian Sanchez really hits all the major screenplay problems, from the inept scientists to Guy Pearce in bad makeup. Bonus points for referencing “Space Captain Stringer Bell”, which made me laugh every time I read it.
A.O. Scott writing for The New York Times on the growing slate of superhero movies:
And yet … I have to say that the hegemony of the superheroes leaves an increasingly sour taste in my mouth, and that their commercial ascendance has produced, with a few exceptions, diminishing creative returns. The scrappy underdogs and pulpy tales have turned into something else, and I wonder if some of the fun, and much of the soul, has been lost.
Apple will bring more iOS-inspired features to OS X. Or perhaps they will add OS X functionalities to iOS. The point is, in doing so, I have no doubt Apple will consider the unique traits of each platform, and they will develop the features accordingly. But splitting OS X in two just for the sake of easy profits (“It’s an iPad laptop!”) sounds like a step backwards and one towards fragmentation.
Agreed. There’s way too much speculation out there on the “merging” of iOS and Mac OS X. Yet they truly are two different markets with different use cases. Apple is too smart to move in the “one OS” direction that Microsoft has bet on. Both on a technology and consumer expectations level, we’re just not there yet.