Babe is a kids film. Toy Story 2 is a kids film. The Incredibles was a kids film. All of them were great, entertaining movies. I've heard that the Spy Kids series is pretty good too.
In 20 years time, I don't predict kids having nostalgia about EP1/2. I think people will be bidding on Ebay for Pixar and maybe Harry Potter stuff.
He should have got some really fired up directors to do the prequels like Bryan Singer, and got a bunch of good writers to work it all through.
History will count them as a wasted opportunity. I mean, presumably Lucas could have gone and done almost anything - the studios would have released Anakin Skywalker reading from a dictionary.
It's also part of the thing of "movie events". Movies get released in a big bang now, often to protect an investment. If a movie is cruddy, at least the opening weekend with recoup some of the cost.
In old days (eg 1977) movies got released in only a few places and then spread.
Yes, and a lot of the dialogue was pretty cruddy too.
But, they looked like nothing else around, had really, really cool things (like X-wings, TIE fighters, land speeders, R2D2, light sabres, death stars). An opening shot that was just like "Woooooowwww!", Darth Vader, Stormtroopers and all that. It really was like a galaxy far, far away.
Most of all, they were also good yarns with characters we cared about. Nothing about bloody trade wars and a bunch of stuff we don't need to know about midichlorians. I wonder how many kids have gone really nuts about these new movies.
If you want to think about film, think about "the stuff you don't know". One of the things that great filmmakers do - they realise that there are often details that you really don't need to know.
If you've seen Pulp Fiction, you'll know about the briefcase. Now, what's beautiful in the briefcase? You never find out. The point is that it matters, not a chunk of detail that would get in the way of the storytelling and the character motivations.
It also leaves it to your imagination (I've heard some interesting ideas).
A lot of great games came out of 8-bit machines because there was so little to work with.
One of the best strategy games I've ever played is Total Annihilation. It beats any of the C&C games in my book, regardless of whether they've got James Earl Jones in or not. TA is just the business in my book. Likewise, no-one has shown me a better space adventure game than Elite, even though that was made about 20 years ago and ran on a 32K machine.
I issue a lot of documents as OOo converted to pdf. I didn't know that this could be an issue (not sure whether the fonts used are native Windows/non-GPL fonts or other).
The trouble is, this sort of thing often has the backing of quite powerful groups.
Politicians don't say things about personal responsibility. Your kid gets fat on junk food, watches violent films or whatever... it's the government or a corporation's fault, not yours for being a bad parent.
Too many people are conditioned into a "the government should do something" way of thinking now, because governments have led them down that path. No-one will stand up to the numerous ninnies and say "that's not the job of government". In the US, I think the neocons republicans have shifted certain attitudes. It's now about who can give away the most stuff to the public.
They are the ones that employ the most people overall.
I might like to qualify what I said - that if someone is young and starting up a business, they may be more likely to opt for OpenOffice. An established small business may stick with MS Office.
Small businesses take much more interest in costs, because the people running them have put their own money in. A middle manager in a corporation will rarely take risks in the same way.
And the cost of MS Office may start to become more significant. Buy a bottom of the range Dell PC and add MS Office SBE, and you nearly double the price. You can get a PC in the UK for £240 and MS Office SBE will add £235.
I'm wondering about this WiMax thing. A lot of companies here in the UK paid billions for 3G networks and it looks like WiMax could come along and be a competitor at considerably lower cost.
I get fed up with my cellphone provider. The price they want for 3G data just takes the piss. 25mb/month (yes 25mb!) costs far more than 30 minutes in an internet cafe.
I'd like a phone/modem that runs on Wifi. Just tap in a phone number or IP address and just communicates via the internet. If I want to send data, just plug in my laptop to it.
It's fine if they can get it to work. The problem is, what if they can't?
I had a certain public service required recently, so I requested someone to come to my home to do it.
They missed the appointment due to sickness, didn't call and nor did their supervisor call to tell me that they wouldn't be coming. Then they did it again.
So, now I'm pissed off. What do I do to resolve this in a public sector market? Well, I can write to all sorts of people up the line who will all apologise and that's that.
Oh yeah, I can vote the people out in power sometime in the future (up to 4 years) except that I also have to consider the provision of service against hundreds of other things that they provide for me, and remember that I still have to use them if most other people are happy with them.
In a free market, I would have opted to have someone else deliver that service after treating me the way they did twice and choose someone to do the job better.
The danger of public wifi is that it risks damaging everyones service. The government service in effect gets a subsidy over private service because we all have to pay through our taxes. Government have an advantage, and this will stifle investment by providers who may have an improved way to do things over the government way.
In the UK we have a National Health Service, but if I want to go private I have to pay extra. Not a top up, but in effect, pay again. I therefore would have to pay for the NHS AND my private health, even though I would no longer be an NHS patient.
Because you can't have multiple traffic light systems in a town. It has to be co-ordinated as a monopoly. Therefore, it is best in the public sector. Fire fighting just make sense because its a great deal simpler to have a single fire service than people having to keep documentation etc. Everyone knows who to call.
However, if something reasonably can be run as a competitive service, I believe it should be. The benefits to consumers and the public are huge. Competition leads to improvements and better deals for customers as a rule.
Corporations bottom line is best served by providing customers with products better than the competition.
Personally, I prefer corporations to government for most things. Government give me no choice. They give me the option that is often made by someone else who belongs to a majority.
A lot of large businesses will fall for this. Ones staffed with middle managers more concerned for their pension than anything else.
I remember in the early 90s that companies were still buying PCs from their mainframe manufacturer at ludicrous prices compared to what Gateway and others were selling for. Basically, the middle manager had the budget to buy them, no benefit for buying cheaper (to him) and buying the alternative could put him at risk.
Where life is different is in small businesses/startups. I do work for some small companies, and a lot of the time, they want real cheap quotes for things. So, I've started to say "have you tried Open Office?". When you point out to someone in a small company that he can save about 30% on the laptop price by not having MS Office, but something that is very compatible (no problems here), they get pretty interested.
It may have been a kids film, but were kids nuts about it like the kids in the late 70s/early 80s?
Remember, Star Wars (ep4) was like nothing anyone had seen before. It was a very big deal to kids who saw it. For a whole summer, friends and I played almost nothing but Star Wars, I and 2 friends did a project about Star Wars. People bought novelisations and spin-off books, soundtracks, the lot.
The problem for the new Star Wars was that it broke no ground. It's just another space film, and actually quite a boring one. As a 10 year old, would you give a shit about trade wars? The originals were good vs evil stories. Nothing as cool as a tie fighter, a land speeder, an ATAT or a death star. By the time kids saw EP1-2, they'd seen it all before elsewhere. The really cool fantasy films of the last decade have been Lord of the Rings, Spider-Man and The Matrix (1st one only). Any Pixar release trounces any of the new Star Wars movies.
I wonder if the kids are a bit of a lost audience on this. Certainly, I doubt that there are the levels of interest that I and my friends had going to see ROTJ. So, who's left? The adult audience. Many of them thought the 1st two absolutely blew chunks (including me).
I still think this is going to blow whatever the rating. I'll see it, probably wait for rental DVD out of a little protest over the waste of money that was EP2.
I've reached the point now where my default setting is either DVDs (from a rent by post scheme) or the internet.
I now watch the TV I really want to. Living in the UK, this helps as there is quite a lot of great TV. But if there's nothing to watch, I'd rather get involved in a discussion or learn something.
The internet makes me far more informed than TV. I can read a number of indepth opinions on a political subject and get right into it. TV has a habit of reporting what the real story was about 10 years too late.
Have a read of what you wrote: Unlike many teenagers, I'm not constrained by peer pressure when it comes to buying stuff; I'm more likely to be swayed by other peoples' experiences than anything else.
Why would advertisers want to target you, then? Advertising is the anti-word-of-mouth. It's about making you feel emotionally associated with a product so you will trust it over a competitor. Word of mouth is about trusting the product based on the experience of others. Advertising is often about selling a product for more than its real value - a pair of sunglasses for 3 times the price of an unbranded pair, just because it has a logo on it, and therefore will impress people. Once you realise that the only people it impresses are shallow bastards you wouldn't want to know anyway, the only advertising that works on you is fact-based advertising.
Advertising prefers young people because they are more easily persuaded by flashy, gimmicky things that they think will make their lives better. And over time realise that they rarely do. Meet people of certain ages and check out their hi-fis - young people have things with loads of LEDs, older people have a simple but better performing amp.
You've also learnt how to deal with things like peer pressure and how to live your own life for your own happiness. That makes you much harder to sell overpriced junk to.
You want to know a real kicker for advertisers? The internet is making it that the people who write about products are a massive group of individuals now. The fight used to be small-scale word-of-mouth and the odd newspaper column about a product. Now, the factual information and personal opinion base is massive.
I'd say that more often than not, before buying something over $100, I hit the net for opinions and scour around. Occassionally, I find a manufacturing trick, or a cute bit of lock-in and I move to another product. People post their experiences - little annoyances and the like that never come out from advertising.
In the end, the bottom line question is always "does the movie work".
I've read books where the film felt quite different, or things were removed/added, but the film worked in its own way. The graphic violence of American Psycho was changed, but the movie worked in its own way.
Hitch Hikers doesn't need all the details. It's too surreal and doesn't really have a "plot" and it's not like a lot of stories where the characters develop and you learn about them as you go. It's a weird comedic trip to me.
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Babe is a kids film. Toy Story 2 is a kids film. The Incredibles was a kids film. All of them were great, entertaining movies. I've heard that the Spy Kids series is pretty good too.
In 20 years time, I don't predict kids having nostalgia about EP1/2. I think people will be bidding on Ebay for Pixar and maybe Harry Potter stuff.
He should have got some really fired up directors to do the prequels like Bryan Singer, and got a bunch of good writers to work it all through.
History will count them as a wasted opportunity. I mean, presumably Lucas could have gone and done almost anything - the studios would have released Anakin Skywalker reading from a dictionary.
In old days (eg 1977) movies got released in only a few places and then spread.
But, they looked like nothing else around, had really, really cool things (like X-wings, TIE fighters, land speeders, R2D2, light sabres, death stars). An opening shot that was just like "Woooooowwww!", Darth Vader, Stormtroopers and all that. It really was like a galaxy far, far away.
Most of all, they were also good yarns with characters we cared about. Nothing about bloody trade wars and a bunch of stuff we don't need to know about midichlorians. I wonder how many kids have gone really nuts about these new movies.
If you've seen Pulp Fiction, you'll know about the briefcase. Now, what's beautiful in the briefcase? You never find out. The point is that it matters, not a chunk of detail that would get in the way of the storytelling and the character motivations.
It also leaves it to your imagination (I've heard some interesting ideas).
A lot of great games came out of 8-bit machines because there was so little to work with.
One of the best strategy games I've ever played is Total Annihilation. It beats any of the C&C games in my book, regardless of whether they've got James Earl Jones in or not. TA is just the business in my book. Likewise, no-one has shown me a better space adventure game than Elite, even though that was made about 20 years ago and ran on a 32K machine.
Sounds mighty confusing...
Politicians don't say things about personal responsibility. Your kid gets fat on junk food, watches violent films or whatever... it's the government or a corporation's fault, not yours for being a bad parent.
Too many people are conditioned into a "the government should do something" way of thinking now, because governments have led them down that path. No-one will stand up to the numerous ninnies and say "that's not the job of government". In the US, I think the neocons republicans have shifted certain attitudes. It's now about who can give away the most stuff to the public.
I might like to qualify what I said - that if someone is young and starting up a business, they may be more likely to opt for OpenOffice. An established small business may stick with MS Office.
Small businesses take much more interest in costs, because the people running them have put their own money in. A middle manager in a corporation will rarely take risks in the same way.
And the cost of MS Office may start to become more significant. Buy a bottom of the range Dell PC and add MS Office SBE, and you nearly double the price. You can get a PC in the UK for £240 and MS Office SBE will add £235.
Any links for these?
Years ago, a movie would open in a few theatres and then as popularity grew, it would spread through word of mouth.
For a lot of movies now, there is a massive opening, and then the thing dies quite quick after. But, they've sometimes made enough from that.
Unlikely. The Telegraph doesn't normally shill.
I get fed up with my cellphone provider. The price they want for 3G data just takes the piss. 25mb/month (yes 25mb!) costs far more than 30 minutes in an internet cafe.
I'd like a phone/modem that runs on Wifi. Just tap in a phone number or IP address and just communicates via the internet. If I want to send data, just plug in my laptop to it.
I had a certain public service required recently, so I requested someone to come to my home to do it.
They missed the appointment due to sickness, didn't call and nor did their supervisor call to tell me that they wouldn't be coming. Then they did it again.
So, now I'm pissed off. What do I do to resolve this in a public sector market? Well, I can write to all sorts of people up the line who will all apologise and that's that.
Oh yeah, I can vote the people out in power sometime in the future (up to 4 years) except that I also have to consider the provision of service against hundreds of other things that they provide for me, and remember that I still have to use them if most other people are happy with them.
In a free market, I would have opted to have someone else deliver that service after treating me the way they did twice and choose someone to do the job better.
The danger of public wifi is that it risks damaging everyones service. The government service in effect gets a subsidy over private service because we all have to pay through our taxes. Government have an advantage, and this will stifle investment by providers who may have an improved way to do things over the government way.
In the UK we have a National Health Service, but if I want to go private I have to pay extra. Not a top up, but in effect, pay again. I therefore would have to pay for the NHS AND my private health, even though I would no longer be an NHS patient.
However, if something reasonably can be run as a competitive service, I believe it should be. The benefits to consumers and the public are huge. Competition leads to improvements and better deals for customers as a rule.
Do you have anything to back up your assertion about them being cheaper for the same service? Maybe a comparison of the two options?
Corporations bottom line is best served by providing customers with products better than the competition.
Personally, I prefer corporations to government for most things. Government give me no choice. They give me the option that is often made by someone else who belongs to a majority.
I remember in the early 90s that companies were still buying PCs from their mainframe manufacturer at ludicrous prices compared to what Gateway and others were selling for. Basically, the middle manager had the budget to buy them, no benefit for buying cheaper (to him) and buying the alternative could put him at risk.
Where life is different is in small businesses/startups. I do work for some small companies, and a lot of the time, they want real cheap quotes for things. So, I've started to say "have you tried Open Office?". When you point out to someone in a small company that he can save about 30% on the laptop price by not having MS Office, but something that is very compatible (no problems here), they get pretty interested.
He also has almost no baggage in terms of expectation.
Mary Tamm wakes up goes into the bathroom and sees Tom Baker taking a shower and realises that all the doctors after him were all just a dream?
Although him saying "Le Singe et Dans le TARDIS" would be cool.
Remember, Star Wars (ep4) was like nothing anyone had seen before. It was a very big deal to kids who saw it. For a whole summer, friends and I played almost nothing but Star Wars, I and 2 friends did a project about Star Wars. People bought novelisations and spin-off books, soundtracks, the lot.
The problem for the new Star Wars was that it broke no ground. It's just another space film, and actually quite a boring one. As a 10 year old, would you give a shit about trade wars? The originals were good vs evil stories. Nothing as cool as a tie fighter, a land speeder, an ATAT or a death star. By the time kids saw EP1-2, they'd seen it all before elsewhere. The really cool fantasy films of the last decade have been Lord of the Rings, Spider-Man and The Matrix (1st one only). Any Pixar release trounces any of the new Star Wars movies.
I wonder if the kids are a bit of a lost audience on this. Certainly, I doubt that there are the levels of interest that I and my friends had going to see ROTJ. So, who's left? The adult audience. Many of them thought the 1st two absolutely blew chunks (including me).
I still think this is going to blow whatever the rating. I'll see it, probably wait for rental DVD out of a little protest over the waste of money that was EP2.
I now watch the TV I really want to. Living in the UK, this helps as there is quite a lot of great TV. But if there's nothing to watch, I'd rather get involved in a discussion or learn something.
The internet makes me far more informed than TV. I can read a number of indepth opinions on a political subject and get right into it. TV has a habit of reporting what the real story was about 10 years too late.
Why would advertisers want to target you, then? Advertising is the anti-word-of-mouth. It's about making you feel emotionally associated with a product so you will trust it over a competitor. Word of mouth is about trusting the product based on the experience of others. Advertising is often about selling a product for more than its real value - a pair of sunglasses for 3 times the price of an unbranded pair, just because it has a logo on it, and therefore will impress people. Once you realise that the only people it impresses are shallow bastards you wouldn't want to know anyway, the only advertising that works on you is fact-based advertising.
Advertising prefers young people because they are more easily persuaded by flashy, gimmicky things that they think will make their lives better. And over time realise that they rarely do. Meet people of certain ages and check out their hi-fis - young people have things with loads of LEDs, older people have a simple but better performing amp.
You've also learnt how to deal with things like peer pressure and how to live your own life for your own happiness. That makes you much harder to sell overpriced junk to.
You want to know a real kicker for advertisers? The internet is making it that the people who write about products are a massive group of individuals now. The fight used to be small-scale word-of-mouth and the odd newspaper column about a product. Now, the factual information and personal opinion base is massive.
I'd say that more often than not, before buying something over $100, I hit the net for opinions and scour around. Occassionally, I find a manufacturing trick, or a cute bit of lock-in and I move to another product. People post their experiences - little annoyances and the like that never come out from advertising.
Look at an ad and ask "what are they trying to get me to feel". Once you've worked that out, you've won.
I've read books where the film felt quite different, or things were removed/added, but the film worked in its own way. The graphic violence of American Psycho was changed, but the movie worked in its own way.
Hitch Hikers doesn't need all the details. It's too surreal and doesn't really have a "plot" and it's not like a lot of stories where the characters develop and you learn about them as you go. It's a weird comedic trip to me.