Okay, I think the Times Online is going a wee bit too far. The UK news operation kicks off a story about the MTV Video Music Awards with the very leading, “Green Day, the anti-war punk […]
Category: Media
My MTV Music Awards Videos
By chance, I visited the MTV site this afternoon, where there is a preview of all the nominees for this year’s Video Music Awards, which airs later tonight. Great promotion and bigger than postage-stamp-size videos, too. I just couldn’t resist watching and handicapping some vids.
Backyard Butterfly
I shot these pics with a Canon EOS 20D with Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM lens. By no means exceptional photography, but I’m backyard amateur beating off mosquitoes. Lousy excuse, I know.
The Wrong Lesson
My wife is prepping my daughter for home school. She was surprised that my daughter couldn’t identify one U.S. state. “We were supposed to learn last year in social studies,” my daughter said. Apparently, the teacher couldn’t get to it. While I am largely satisfied with what the public school teachers taught my daughter, the incident reminded me of something that happened late in the school year.
One Friday, my daughter asked about Napster. She knows that I have gotten songs from Napster and wanted to know about stealing music. Problem: Her confusion over the original Napster filing-sharing site and Napster 2.0, which sells music or offers it on subscription basis. Her fifth grade teacher was source of the confusion.
Icon: Biography or Fiction?
I just finished reading book iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business, which I bought at my local Borders Book store. I just about never buy hardcover books, but this one piqued my interest. After all, Steve Jobs banned all the publisher’s books from Apple retail stores.
I understand why the strong reaction from Apple’s founder. One undercurrent focuses on Steve Jobs’ charisma and claims of his taking claim for others’ work. The theme adds second meaning to the title, as in “I con”.
Journalist’s Trust is Inviolate
This week, I saw the movie “Shattered Glass” on cable for the second time in a week. The film unravels the deceptions of Stephen Glass, the former New Republic writer who made up quotes and even whole stories. If I correctly recall, the magazine found problems with 27 of the 41 stories he wrote while working there.
The film got me to thinking a whole lot about ethics, the temptations journalists sometime encounter and dangerous deceptions. When a reporter for CNET News.com I worked out of a home office for four years, which meant only modest supervision. If I had ever wanted to fabricate anything, probably no one would have noticed. I never did, of course, or else you wouldn’t be reading this post.
The Director’s Effect
Last night, I watched “The Butterfly Effect: The Director’s Cut” on DVD. Wow. I had seen the theatrical release, which I regarded as an A-class B movie. But, still, a B movie. The Director’s Cut adds seven minutes and a new ending that work quite well. The movie still operates outside believable reality, but I’m not sure it’s meant to be believable. The movie—well, the Director’s Cut, anyway—works well as pure fantasy.
I often wonder at the forces that shape movies during final production, as the influence of studio chiefs and test audiences come to bear. In this case, their impact was negative. The Director’s Cut adds more depth to the main characters, appropriately drawing out the mother-son relationship before the wicked alternate—and I assume original—ending. And I found the new ending to be much more satisfying and poetic. Were the previous two still births the same fate as Evan’s?
Small-minded American News
I am in one of my ticked-off moods at the U.S. news media. This morning’s seaquake off the coast of Indonesia has wreaked untold devastation, not that you would know anything from U.S. news outlets. Kudos to BBC for taking charge in delivering painstaking, breathtaking coverage.
My fear is that sometime during the next 12 hours that someone will figure out there are probably a bunch of U.S. tourists missing or found dead. Then, suddenly the story will tick off some headlines, but I’m sure nothing like the 24-7 coverage that followed 9/11. Right now, the estimated death toll—in six countries!—is more than 10,000, or more than three times the horrific loss from the attack on the twin towers. But, of course, America the small-minded country pays no mind.
Gothic Punk
Late this afternoon, my daughter and I hauled down to Tysons Corner Center in McLean, Va., shopping for jackets at L.L. Bean. Next shop is Apple Store numero uno, being the first of the retail […]
The SpongeBob Movie
I took my 10 year-old and her friend to see the “SpongeBob SquarePants Movie” the other night. My daughter didn’t think much of the cartoon feature, nor did I. Disappointing more, because we’re both big SpongeBob fans, and we saw the movie with a big crowd of kids quick to laugh. Sigh.
The problem: Timing. What’s the saying about comedy and timing being everything? SpongeBob episodes have good timing, and they have to. Episodes can’t be much more than 10 or 12 minutes long. Pace is fast moving and the laughs going rat-tat-tat. For 90 minutes there has to be a script capable of sustaining nine times the typical SpongeBob segment. Instead, the movie felt like one episode stretched and stretched and stretched.
Small Superman in ‘Smallville’
The school year opened with my booting our TV and accompanying entertainment center—unaffectionally called “the shrine”—from the living room. In its place, there is a Windows XP Media Center 2005 PC. The dual TV tuner offers more recording capability than TiVo, which I put to good use. The timing meant I could start recording “Smallville,” which, for the new TV season, started running from episode one on the ABC Family channel.
Before I diss “Smallville,” I should say that I generally really like the show. It’s not exceptional TV the way, say, “Alias” or “Sopranos” might be. But “Smallville” moves along, even if watching requires some serious reality suspension.
Why Offensive ‘Team America’ Rocks
Without question, movie “Team America: World Police” is one of the most offensive pieces of filmmaking to be released in a couple of decades—and what a delightful offense, too. The movie had me crying to tears within the first 30 seconds, and laughing and crying and laughing for the next hour and a half. I’m waiting for the news story that some poor movie goer either laughed or was offended to death. Either is likely.
I could see the aftermath audience reaction as the lights lifted in the theatre. A group of young black men whopped, “America, Fuck Yeah!”; from the movie’s theme song. About 10 rows behind them, several older, black and white couples sat immobile. Stunned I think, because they were so offended by the movie’s philosophical conclusion.