Recently back from watching the Dark Knight, I feel as though I must tell someone about it. Internet, here I come!
I had a friend in college who would watch movies on a screen to his left while he played video games. If you went into his room, there was a good chance that one of two things would be showing to his left: one of the Lord of the Rings movies, or an episode of Angel.
If I had an extra screen in my room, you would probably find Futurama, Firefly, and a few other movies with high re-watchability showing continuously on my wall. It's not hard to imagine Dark Knight being added to that short list.
Christian Bale was, of course, buff and badass.
Whatever you may think about Heath Ledger, the sensationalism surrounding his death does not change the fact that he WAS the Joker. Phenomenal casting there.
It was an epic story, and it was very well told. Christopher Nolan has been added to my list of Storytellers To Watch For - a hard list to make in my ADD addled brain.
I don't regret making Dark Knight the movie that I'll spend my $8/year theater budget on.
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
2008-07-18
2008-03-28
Piracy and the consumer
I get most of my movies and music from other individuals on the internet using bit torrent technology.
I don't do this as a statement against "the man" (as much as I do loathe him), or because I am so poor that I have no other options. I choose piracy as my primary means of acquiring media because it gives me the best return for my input.
There are 2 things I consider when spending money on entertainment (mostly music, movies, video games). How much enjoyment I get out of it (or think I will get out of it) and how much investment it will take to get that enjoyment.
Using this formula combined with my own personal constants of what things I generally enjoy and what resources I have at hand, many of the regular options for media consumption don't make the cut - watching a movie in theaters costs around $8 in my city now, not to mention the investment of time spent finding parking. Plus I can only watch a movie when the theater feels like showing it, and I can't drape myself across a couch while enjoying it.
Television programming also falls short - I'm not willing to invest 1/3 of my media-viewing time watching advertisements (which aren't even being targeted to me personally!).
Purchasing DVDs is a reasonable option once in a while, but very rarely. It is not very often that I expect to get full retail price worth of enjoyment from any DVD movie.
Now when I talk about enjoying a movie, it's not always all selfish gratification (honest!). I am motivated, as a capitalist consumer, to support those who produce high-quality products with my hard-earned dollar. But in Duff-Land, the "media I support" budget is pretty low compared to the amount of media I consume.
At this point in my life, I would be willing to donate around $20 a month to those whose works I had enjoyed that month. If I was paying full retail for price for all the movies I enjoyed, I would probably be paying closer to $100 a month.
So what are my options? As far as movies go, Netflix is a great option. Excellent selection of movies, and for your convenience, many films are now becoming available to stream over the internet and watch within minutes. For less than $20 a month, you have some solid options for watching movies.
When it comes to music, I'm harder to please. I would be willing to pay about $5 for an album I enjoyed - and I don't mean a 5-track album. iTunes is a popular option, but (besides being more than I would like to pay), I would want to be able to download higher-quality tracks (most of their tracks are 128kbps), and I will not pay money for anything infected with DRM (Digital Rights Management, designed to limit your use of the file).
Thus, in most cases, I turn to piracy. I download my movies and music (and the occasional video game) because nobody is willing to take what I'm willing to pay for their goods. It's not that I don't want to pay the fine actors and writers of the television series House, it's just that I'm not going to pay $120 for the right to watch the first 3 seasons at my own convenience.
Not long ago, Nine Inch Nails released the Ghosts I-IV, four volumes comprising an album. Instead of releasing their album in a traditional way, the first volume was released for free on torrent tracking sites such as thepiratebay.org. The entire album was available to purchase from the official website in several different formats. One of the formats was digital download - for $5.
Now, a newly released 36-track album for $5 is a heckuva deal by most media standards. Plus, the tracks were available in several different high quality audio formats (including lossless) without any DRM attached.
I loved the idea, and purchased the digital version. The download servers were completely swamped, and I ended up downloading the entire album using bittorrent anyway - but that wasn't the point. I was given the option to pay the artist for his work, without having to worry about a record label skimming off the top.
The album was pretty good, and makes its way onto my playlist reasonably often. But since then, I've noticed a change in how I think of music. I still download albums without a second thought, but now when I find one I really appreciate, my first instinct is to go to the artists web site and PayPal them some money to show my support.
It's pretty annoying, really. I have daydreams about running into my favorite artists at some generic bar and buying them a round of drinks to show my appreciation. I can't afford to buy albums from all of the artists I support, so I'm stuck with my daydreams for now.
Until artists start breaking away from the record labels wholesale and releasing albums in a way that gives their fans better options, piracy will remain the best option for the regular consumer of media in most cases.
I don't do this as a statement against "the man" (as much as I do loathe him), or because I am so poor that I have no other options. I choose piracy as my primary means of acquiring media because it gives me the best return for my input.
There are 2 things I consider when spending money on entertainment (mostly music, movies, video games). How much enjoyment I get out of it (or think I will get out of it) and how much investment it will take to get that enjoyment.
Using this formula combined with my own personal constants of what things I generally enjoy and what resources I have at hand, many of the regular options for media consumption don't make the cut - watching a movie in theaters costs around $8 in my city now, not to mention the investment of time spent finding parking. Plus I can only watch a movie when the theater feels like showing it, and I can't drape myself across a couch while enjoying it.
Television programming also falls short - I'm not willing to invest 1/3 of my media-viewing time watching advertisements (which aren't even being targeted to me personally!).
Purchasing DVDs is a reasonable option once in a while, but very rarely. It is not very often that I expect to get full retail price worth of enjoyment from any DVD movie.
Now when I talk about enjoying a movie, it's not always all selfish gratification (honest!). I am motivated, as a capitalist consumer, to support those who produce high-quality products with my hard-earned dollar. But in Duff-Land, the "media I support" budget is pretty low compared to the amount of media I consume.
At this point in my life, I would be willing to donate around $20 a month to those whose works I had enjoyed that month. If I was paying full retail for price for all the movies I enjoyed, I would probably be paying closer to $100 a month.
So what are my options? As far as movies go, Netflix is a great option. Excellent selection of movies, and for your convenience, many films are now becoming available to stream over the internet and watch within minutes. For less than $20 a month, you have some solid options for watching movies.
When it comes to music, I'm harder to please. I would be willing to pay about $5 for an album I enjoyed - and I don't mean a 5-track album. iTunes is a popular option, but (besides being more than I would like to pay), I would want to be able to download higher-quality tracks (most of their tracks are 128kbps), and I will not pay money for anything infected with DRM (Digital Rights Management, designed to limit your use of the file).
Thus, in most cases, I turn to piracy. I download my movies and music (and the occasional video game) because nobody is willing to take what I'm willing to pay for their goods. It's not that I don't want to pay the fine actors and writers of the television series House, it's just that I'm not going to pay $120 for the right to watch the first 3 seasons at my own convenience.
Not long ago, Nine Inch Nails released the Ghosts I-IV, four volumes comprising an album. Instead of releasing their album in a traditional way, the first volume was released for free on torrent tracking sites such as thepiratebay.org. The entire album was available to purchase from the official website in several different formats. One of the formats was digital download - for $5.
Now, a newly released 36-track album for $5 is a heckuva deal by most media standards. Plus, the tracks were available in several different high quality audio formats (including lossless) without any DRM attached.
I loved the idea, and purchased the digital version. The download servers were completely swamped, and I ended up downloading the entire album using bittorrent anyway - but that wasn't the point. I was given the option to pay the artist for his work, without having to worry about a record label skimming off the top.
The album was pretty good, and makes its way onto my playlist reasonably often. But since then, I've noticed a change in how I think of music. I still download albums without a second thought, but now when I find one I really appreciate, my first instinct is to go to the artists web site and PayPal them some money to show my support.
It's pretty annoying, really. I have daydreams about running into my favorite artists at some generic bar and buying them a round of drinks to show my appreciation. I can't afford to buy albums from all of the artists I support, so I'm stuck with my daydreams for now.
Until artists start breaking away from the record labels wholesale and releasing albums in a way that gives their fans better options, piracy will remain the best option for the regular consumer of media in most cases.
2006-05-08
It's (A short movie review of Hoodwinked)
It's another animated movie with Patrick Wartburton! Wartburton, AKA Kronk, AKA Joe Swanson, AKA Brock Samson, is as good a reason as any to see a movie. But this movie delivers on other levels, as well!
It's funny, yet clean enough to watch with the family. It's got characters you pretty much all know, without resorting to a rehash of old fairy tales or a straight-up irreverent spoof of their Disney equivalents (Shrek).
It's a quality children's movie, that manages to avoid fart jokes for an entire 80 minutes, and still remain cool enough to watch in the pad of some frat boy on a weekend.
I realize that this review gives no synopsis of the movie whatsoever, so if you want an idea of what it's like, check out the trailer on Apple's Page. This movie receives the Duff Seal of Approval.
It's funny, yet clean enough to watch with the family. It's got characters you pretty much all know, without resorting to a rehash of old fairy tales or a straight-up irreverent spoof of their Disney equivalents (Shrek).
It's a quality children's movie, that manages to avoid fart jokes for an entire 80 minutes, and still remain cool enough to watch in the pad of some frat boy on a weekend.
I realize that this review gives no synopsis of the movie whatsoever, so if you want an idea of what it's like, check out the trailer on Apple's Page. This movie receives the Duff Seal of Approval.
2006-05-04
Movie Review: Ultraviolet
Yes, I saw this movie.
It was directed by Kurt Wimmer, director of Equilibrium (one of my favorite movies)! It stars Milla Jovovich, who did a pretty good job playing an action-heroine in the Resident Evil movies. The trailers made it look good! Action and guns and swords and stuff... I was ready to pay $2 to see this one.
I really don't know what to say about the movie overall. There wasn't much dialogue, which is a plus, since the only lines were flat, worthless, and worse than predictable (I would have predicted less cheesy lines).
There were two basic fight scenes - in the first, a small army rushes in and surrounds her. She spins around somehow with a sword, and they all fall over dead at once. In the second, they run at her one at a time, and she slashes 'em down.
Either way, half the movie is taken up with those same two fight scenes played over and over again on mildly different sets.
Let's see, bad dialogue, bad fight scenes... those were really the defining points of this movie. It's hard to say too much about the acting, since the actors weren't really given much to work with, but they didn't appear to make much of an effort anyway.
There were some bad CG effects... shaky camera work... all those scenes where the picture was blurred to make up for a lack of effort in shooting... yeah, don't even get close to this one. If you ever feel tempted to check it out, go watch Equilibrium instead. There's a quality film.
It was directed by Kurt Wimmer, director of Equilibrium (one of my favorite movies)! It stars Milla Jovovich, who did a pretty good job playing an action-heroine in the Resident Evil movies. The trailers made it look good! Action and guns and swords and stuff... I was ready to pay $2 to see this one.
I really don't know what to say about the movie overall. There wasn't much dialogue, which is a plus, since the only lines were flat, worthless, and worse than predictable (I would have predicted less cheesy lines).
There were two basic fight scenes - in the first, a small army rushes in and surrounds her. She spins around somehow with a sword, and they all fall over dead at once. In the second, they run at her one at a time, and she slashes 'em down.
Either way, half the movie is taken up with those same two fight scenes played over and over again on mildly different sets.
Let's see, bad dialogue, bad fight scenes... those were really the defining points of this movie. It's hard to say too much about the acting, since the actors weren't really given much to work with, but they didn't appear to make much of an effort anyway.
There were some bad CG effects... shaky camera work... all those scenes where the picture was blurred to make up for a lack of effort in shooting... yeah, don't even get close to this one. If you ever feel tempted to check it out, go watch Equilibrium instead. There's a quality film.
2006-01-06
Movie review: King Kong
I don't usually pay full price to watch a movie in theatres, and King Kong reminded me of why this is.
Being a huge fan of the Lord of the Rings movies, how could I not be interested in watching Peter Jackson's latest production? I mean, it may have been based on a cheesy movie that I never cared enough about to bother watching, but still - I was willing to give Jackson the benefit of the doubt.
But not even an optimistically attitude could make this movie any more than a forgettable CG fest. Flanked fore and aft by half hours of corny tripe, the most interesting parts of the movie are the ones full of expensive looking computer generated dinosaurs and people getting crushed.
It turns out that the most interesting aspects of the movie are the details surrounding it, not the movie itself - the special effects were done by Weta Workshop, of Lord of the Rings (and Narnia!) fame, and they did look top-notch. The big monkey looked real, and the dinosaur/Kong battles were downright exciting. And yes, the bugs were creepy.
Apparently, I almost got to enjoy another Howard Shore soundtrack, but he had a falling out with Jackson a few months before the movie's release. The final soundtrack was composed by some guy named James Newton Howard, who's written soundtracks for other movies that are pretty well known (though perhaps not for their soundtracks, as LotR was).
I wanted to enjoy a Jackson movie between Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit - but it's starting to look like Hobbit might not get made in the near future after all. Peter Jackson's next two scheduled movies are The Lovely Bones and Halo - not Tolkien related at all! Maybe Peter Jackson is just good at remaking old stories. With lots of pretty CG.
He certainly had the budget to make it look all fancified and shiny - apparently, the film had a budget of $207 million. They've made about 75% of that back already. Jackson got paid $20 million in advance to direct the movie - setting a record, as well as emphasizing a Hollywood trend equating quantity with quality. Eh well, I should stop ragging on Jackson - I still owe him plenty of props for his big trilogy.
Being a huge fan of the Lord of the Rings movies, how could I not be interested in watching Peter Jackson's latest production? I mean, it may have been based on a cheesy movie that I never cared enough about to bother watching, but still - I was willing to give Jackson the benefit of the doubt.
But not even an optimistically attitude could make this movie any more than a forgettable CG fest. Flanked fore and aft by half hours of corny tripe, the most interesting parts of the movie are the ones full of expensive looking computer generated dinosaurs and people getting crushed.
It turns out that the most interesting aspects of the movie are the details surrounding it, not the movie itself - the special effects were done by Weta Workshop, of Lord of the Rings (and Narnia!) fame, and they did look top-notch. The big monkey looked real, and the dinosaur/Kong battles were downright exciting. And yes, the bugs were creepy.
Apparently, I almost got to enjoy another Howard Shore soundtrack, but he had a falling out with Jackson a few months before the movie's release. The final soundtrack was composed by some guy named James Newton Howard, who's written soundtracks for other movies that are pretty well known (though perhaps not for their soundtracks, as LotR was).
I wanted to enjoy a Jackson movie between Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit - but it's starting to look like Hobbit might not get made in the near future after all. Peter Jackson's next two scheduled movies are The Lovely Bones and Halo - not Tolkien related at all! Maybe Peter Jackson is just good at remaking old stories. With lots of pretty CG.
He certainly had the budget to make it look all fancified and shiny - apparently, the film had a budget of $207 million. They've made about 75% of that back already. Jackson got paid $20 million in advance to direct the movie - setting a record, as well as emphasizing a Hollywood trend equating quantity with quality. Eh well, I should stop ragging on Jackson - I still owe him plenty of props for his big trilogy.
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