Category: Personal

I’m finally ready. I spent some time looking back, shocked to see I’ve seen almost 100 movies in all of 2005. When you think about it, a movie every 3.65 days is pretty damn frequent. And double-damn to B-dawg, who beat me to this by three weeks.

1. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
2. Bend It Like Beckham
3. The Station Agent
4. I Heart Huckabees
5. Kinsey
6. Serenity
7. Ray
8. Finding Neverland
9. Shaun of the Dead
10. Shaolin Soccer

And lest you think this was easy, the following also merited consideraiton on the list.

• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
• Mona Lisa Smile
• Garden State
• Collateral
• Maria Full of Grace
• Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events
• Before Sunrise
• Mystic River
• March of the Penguins
• Batman Begins
• The Pianist
• The Dreamers
• Jersey Girl
• Closer

The first of the Chronicles of Narnia adaptions was, much to my shock, a really well-done movie. It captured the same spirit and feel of the book without being either overbearing (something easy to do in an adaptation of these books) or superficial. The Station Agent was a curious piece of work, with an offbeat pacing and an ending that was a surprise in a world awash with movies where you can see what’s coming a mile down the track. Serenity is one that won’t make too many top 10 lists, but as a fan of the series FireFly it was a wonderful feeling to get closure on a TV series that tragically ended prematurely. Shaun of the Dead was a hillariously frightening take on the zombie theme, while Shaolin Soccer provided yet another take on the crazy-martial-arts-in-stylized-action genre, like Kung Fu Hustle. With soccer. Really, how could you go wrong?

I still find Natalie Portman adorable, which has as much to do with two of the movies considered as anything else. And Collateral was just a fun revenge flick with a whole host of violence that takes place south of the border, with Denzel Washington’s character finding his own form of redemption in the end. And while the latest Star Wars installment was the best out of Episodes 1 – 3, it paled in comparison to many of the good movies that I saw in 2005. Truthfully I only mention it because B-Dawg reminded me it came out in 2005. If you’re looking for action, Batman Begins is a much better movie, and Serenity was a much better Sci-Fi movie than Star Wars.

I couldn’t place Dodgeball or Napolean Dynamite on this list despite appreciating certain aspects of Napolean Dynamite. The horrible blandness of Napolean Dynamite, with its tediuous pacing, drove me up the wall as I watched it. Yet the same dysfunction was hillarious to observe.

I should do a top 10 list of the best shows cancelled before they reached their prime, but that would be too depressing. All I can say is Wonderfalls was actually a quirky show that would have been fantastic had it lasted.

Some recent articles combined with the tragic standing of the FireFly series had me thinking on money and the media (movies, mainly) lately. When you consider the source of most studio money no longer comes from the theatre box office, it becomes clear that the numbers reported and overhyped every Sunday evening/Monday about the #1 movie for the weekend is a load of hogwash. In all of 2004, theatre revenue totalled $7.4 billion. While not small change, that represented less than 17% of the revenue, with DVD sales along representing over $20 billion, nearly three times the theatre revenue. Theatre revenue may build buzz, but if we really wanted to find the #1 movie someone should give us the breakdown of DVD sales each week.

Which, as it turns out, is extremely difficult to find. After the release of Serenity on DVD, I did some searching to try to assess how the sales had progressed. Since DVD sales aren’t widely reported, I never did find the numbers for the disc. I was disappointed, to say the least, as any future movie opportunities are likely to rely not so much on the $40 million worldwide box office as the actual DVD sales result. If DVD sales were significant, expect another movie.

The real reason I was prompted to write this item was in response to this paragraph in a Slate article, from which I quote the following paragraph:

In October 2005, Google offered to provide a Wi-Fi service that would enable anyone in San Francisco to connect without charge to the Internet. Google would make its profit not from an access charge, but from the ad revenue an entire broadband-wired city would provide. If the experiment proves successful—and Google’s Wi-Fi platform proves stable—nothing will stop the company from rapidly extending this concept to other cities. Reportedly, Google has already lined up unused fiber-optic cable that spans the country. Such a free Wi-Fi network would mean that the Hollywood studios would no longer need to rely on cable operators—or even telephone companies—to have a two-way pipeline into homes. They could directly rent any movie to consumers and bill their credit card (like everything else is billed on the Internet) without paying a cut to cable operators or local televisions stations.

This may be the best experiment to date on my idea of a separation of the underlying network from the services being provided. That said network is both pervasive and free is more than I would have required.

Finally, for those series that can’t quite hack it on prime time but acquire dedicated, loyal followings. Why haven’t any of the studios given a thought to the iTunes TV model? Releasing episodes to a loyal fan base on the order of $2 – $5 each via iTunes may make the micro market possible. If an episode takes $1 million to procude, and $1 million individuals download it at $2 each, you’ve made $1 million. Shows like “Freaks and Geeks”, “FireFly” or “Arrested Development”, may have a home under this kind of model. If only there were some groups courageous enough (with deep enough pockets) to try this out.

I’ve been feeling a little under the weather this weekend, which should be no surprise since we had a long holiday weekend to mark Martin Luther King, Jr. These things tend to coincide well with time slated to be spent out of the office.

NPR’s On the Media included some of their favorite clips at the end of the January 6th broadcast, including this gem about the Justin Timberlake – Janet Jackson dust-up during the Superbowl.

KATYA ROGERS: I love this clip. Brooke’s speaking to reporter Pam Constable in Kabul about the controversial appearance of women on Afghan TV.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: You talk about an election season in Afghanistan. Of course we have one here, and we also have an argument over broadcast standards that won’t seem to go away. From where you stand, how does Janet Jackson’s little problem seem to you?

PAMELA CONSTABLE: You know, I’m sorry, Brooke, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: It’s been dominating the headlines here. During the halftime show at the Super Bowl, Justin Timberlake reached over and – [OVERTALK]

PAMELA CONSTABLE: Who is Justin Timberlake? I am in the mountains of Central Asia. Who is Justin? Who are these people? [LAUGHTER]

BROOKE GLADSTONE: [LAUGHS] I really envy you.

PAMELA CONSTABLE: [LAUGHS]

Ok, it’s not as funny as a transcript, but by all means check it out.

Anyone looking to cash in on the XBox 360 demand should pick up some consoles from Japan, where demand has been weak. It appears the Japanese aren’t too gung ho on the console or the games.

Take a look at the left menu at some point. I’ve added a photo albums link which will allow you to pick out a specific set of photos to look at, instead of reviewing all 961 currently posted.

The thrill of having completed all my photo updates quickly turned to the agony of defeat once I realized I stopped prepping and posting around the middle of 2004. So the additional couple thousand photos (narrowed down to a few hundred for online posting, of course) have yet to be rotated, cropped, and sized for the web.

So it looks like the elusive goal of being caught up slipped a little farther away.

Update: I just put the finishing touches on the last of the photo uploads. It’s now a fairly complete archive through my recent trip to Phoenix.

Happy New Year, everyone!

For those interested, even more photos have gone online. I’m now about halfway to having restored the photo collection.

One item to note – within a collection, the photos are coming back in a seemingly random order. Unfortunately there’s no quick way for me to fix this for the photos I have today, but I’ll be better about tagging them for the future.

Rutgers lost in to Arizona State in the Insight bowl tonight. While the 45-40 loss was disappointing, especially given our early lead, the ASU passing game was phenomenal to watch. Had we been better able to adjust and respond to stop it, we would have won the game.

The game itself was a fun time and the atmosphere was almost like a large carnival. I can’t wait for next year’s bowl game, so long as we play someplace warm again!