James Cameron doesn’t do anything small. Just about every motion picture he directs turns into a major blockbuster: Terminator, Aliens, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, The Abyss, and the highest grossing movie of all time Titanic. (Let’s just pretend Piranha Part Two: The Spawning never happened okay?)
With a track record like that, it’s hard for a movie studio to say no when he comes along and asks for $300 million to make a movie. Lucky for us. After watching Avatar you can clearly see that $300 million went all over the screen in dazzling three dimensions.
Avatar is quite simply ground breaking cinema. As the theater experience gets better and better at home, it gets harder and harder to get people to leave the house to see a movie. Why not just wait for it on Blu-Ray and watch it at home on your 60″ plasma with 7.1 Dolby Digital surround sound? The movie studios needed to kick it up a notch and make movie going an experience again. The entire movie industry should be thanking James Cameron right now for doing just that.
What Avatar does is what Star Wars did in 1977 when you saw the Imperial Star Destroyer fill the movie screen and give you a sense of size unmatched in cinema. Avatar immerses you in a world that you know does not exist, yet feels so real as you watch it that you almost forget it’s all created with microprocessors.
Oh and there’s a plot too.
In 2154 humans are colonizing the planet Pandora, an exotic jungle like world with an atmosphere toxic to humans. The 10 foot tall blue skinned native life forms called the Na’vi are viewed by the humans much like the native Americans were viewed by the European colonists of North America. Humans want to drive the Na’vi out of their land to take precious minerals from the ground which are suppose to fix the energy crisis that had overtaken Earth.
To interact with the Na’vi in the deadly-to-human atmosphere, humans connect with a genetically engineered human-Na’vi hybrid called an Avatar. The human stays safely at a base while they control and feel all the sensory input from their Avatar.
The plot has a very predictable anti-war/save the planet message, but it’s no less enjoyable because of it. Even though you can guess what’s going to happen, you still can’t wait to see it play out on the screen because every scene dazzles the senses.
Motion capture technology has been around for a long time, but James Cameron takes it one step further. Not only are the actors movements captured and translated to a computer generated character, their emotions are captured as well. It’s the one thing that has always been lacking with CGI characters. Sure they can walk, jump, fly and look like and do things like no human can, but they just can’t act. Their faces always look like puppets.
Not so with Avatar. You see something in these characters eyes. You see emotions you never thought possible. You see love, anger, worry, hatred, sorrow. You can connect with these characters and think that they are actually real. Zoe Saldaña should get an Oscar nomination for her performance even though she’s never physically on camera.
The same feelings occur with the planet Pandora and everything on it. It’s a lush, vibrant colorful world, so exotic you know it’s not real, yet you’re still surprised when its animal life does something you never expected but seems perfectly natural here.
Avatar is an event you must experience at a theater, and preferably in IMAX 3D if you can. It’s worth the extra ticket price for the experience. As great as your home theater set up is, a lot of Avatar will be lost in a home viewing. If you never saw Star Wars in a theater you missed out on a similar experience. Here’s your chance to make up for it. Go buy your ticket now!
If you were a child of the 80’s like me, there were a lot of TV shows you have fond memories of. Shows like Knight Rider, Diff’rent Strokes and Family Ties are familiar to most people, but there were quite a few shows that I remember from the 80’s that aren’t as memorable because they never made it past the first season. Here’s my top 5 list of shows from the 80’s I loved that never made it past one season. If you know me at all you’ll see how these shows made me pretty much into who I am today. Do you remember any of these?
5. Whiz Kids (1983-1984)
Inspired by the 1983 film WarGames, Whiz Kids focused on a group of teenage computer geeks who solved mysteries that seemed to baffle the police. The head geek, Richie, is pretty much me, except I was writing programs that would flash words on the screen with my TI-99/4A rather than solving police crimes with the millions of dollars of computer equipment given to me by my dad. Richie also had friends, so come to think of it I was nothing like him.
4. Mr. Merlin (1981-1982)
What if the medieval wizard Merlin were still alive in 1981 San Francisco working as an auto mechanic? And what if a teenage kid comes along and pulls Merlin’s crowbar out of a bucket of cement becoming his apprentice? Comedy gold! Well Mr. Merlin was comedy gold if you were 10 years old anyway.
3. It’s Your Move (1984-1985)
Jason Bateman starred in another witty sitcom before Arrested Development. At the age of 15 he played Matthew Burton in It’s Your Move. He was a teenage scam artist with a sarcastic wit and ability to lie through his teeth. He met his match when someone equally as clever moves into the apartment next door and starts to take an interest in his mom. Like Arrested Development, I think this show was ahead of its time. The intro and theme to the show however was pure 1984.
2. Voyagers! (1982-1983)
I love time travel! Throw a hidden educational spin on it and how could Voyagers! not be a hit with kids and adults in 1982? In Voyagers!, a kid named Jeffrey runs into Phineas Bogg, who travels through time to correct things that have gone wrong in the past through the use of his very cool looking device called the Omni. If the light flashes red, then something is wrong in history and they have to find out how to correct it so they can get a green light. Jeffrey is important because his best subject in school is history and Bogg seems to have zero knowledge of it except how to be a womanizer in any time period. If I couldn’t have a time traveling Delorean in the 80’s, my second choice was an Omni. Of the shows I’ve listed here, Voyagers! is the only one available on DVD.
1. Automan (1983-1984)
This show was almost as cool as Knight Rider for me. If you were a police officer named Walter who was also a computer programmer, wouldn’t you create a holographic super hero and name him Automan since he was an Automatic Man? 26 years later and I still haven’t been able to pull that trick off. Automan was a total rip off of TRON and should have actually gotten his name from the cool car he could make with the help of his sidekick “Cursor.” In reality it was a Lamborghini, but looked cooler all TRON’d out. My brother and I would literally ROFL every time Automan would take a turn in his car at a 90 degree angle, slamming Walter into the inside walls of the car. (No seat belt laws in 1983) Two videos for you on this one. The first is the opening which features a famous poster of Heather Locklear that I had hanging in my bedroom. The second shows Automan taking Walter for his first ride in his tricked out car and has some amusing dialogue about other characters Automan knows that turn at 90 degree angles.
This is all kinds of awesome! Got this press release today from Fox 23:
It’s an “Homarge” to The Simpsons!
In anticipation of the famous family’s 20th Anniversary, FOX is launching
The SimpsonsScavenger Hunt.
Alert your listeners: this November, they’ll see an unprecedented campaign in FOX prime. Never before have so many shows participated in this kind of cross-promotion.
From November 9th-15th, look for clues and character references from The Simpsons to appear in everything from Bones to House (and a ton of shows in between). Guest stars, names, faces, places… all that you love about Springfield will be scattered throughout each night.
Viewers will then get the chance to say what they saw on www.thesimpsons.com. Instant winners will be chosen daily and at the end of the week, one lucky viewer will win the grand prize. Now that’s something fans can really get into.
Here’s a comment left on my Facebook page after I let people know that we would be having Jesse Connolly, the campaign manager of No On 1 Maine on The Q Morning Show. Pretty much says it all I think.
ASKING YOUR PERMISSION TO MARRY
My parents divorced when I was 10 years old; combined, our immediate families have experienced eight divorces. Yet, somehow, without strong marital role models, I was blessed to meet the man with which I will spend the rest of my life. This coming July, Paul & I will be celebrating 20 years of our loving, monogamous life together.
A life that includes volunteering for the community, neighborhood activism, serving on boards and committees, and advocating for those in need. We are godparents to nieces and nephews, and have a loving and supportive circle of family, friends, and neighbors. We aren’t rich; we are struggling middle class like most Mainers, but we have what many others do not…a loving partner in life. The only thing we don’t have is a marriage license.
Why does this matter? It matters because I’m not able to be on his insurance; I’m not able to receive his Social Security benefits; even though we have legal documents granting power of attorney, I may not be recognized as his “family” for important decisions such as being able to carry out his wishes for his final resting place. In the eyes of the law, even after 20 years, I am nothing.
I didn’t ask to be gay; it’s the way GOD made me. But I am so very grateful that HE blessed me with true love. I wish I didn’t have to ask my fellow Mainers for permission to marry and receive the protections and benefits that many other loving couples receive; but, because of this Question One Peoples’ Veto funded mostly by out-of-staters, I do.
So, please, on Nov. 3rd, open your heart, welcome love, and Vote NO on 1! GOD bless you and thank you.
When Rich Brooks from Flyte New Media asked be to be a part of the Social Media FTW conference as a speaker I was surprised. I’m a humble radio DJ who has eaten cat food on my show. Not exactly who you’d expect to be lumped into a group of speakers with a vast knowledge of social media.
I accepted though and was glad I did. How much useful information I gave at the Social Media and Traditional Media panel with the Portland Press Herald’s Justin Ellis is debatable, but the experience was fantastic.
If you couldn’t make the Social Media FTW conference or were in one of the other great concurrent sessions, let me fill you in on what I shared about how Q97.9 radio uses social media.
One of the first social media tools we began to use was podcasting. People use DVR’s to time shift when they watch their favorite TV shows, so why not the same with radio. We post the Q Morning Show in its entirety minus the music and commercials, and publish it on wjbq.com where people can download or listen to in their browser, and on iTunes where they can subscribe to automatically receive new episodes that they can sync to their iPods or iPhone to listen on the go. This gave us another avenue for sponsorship within the podcast and on the podcast page on the website.
We began to use You Tube as a great way for our listeners to get a behind the scenes look at what we do on the radio that up until video on the web, was only heard. We created our own channel on You Tube and embedded our videos on wjbq.com. We also use it to in conjunction with our clients for value added to their advertising campaigns like this video in conjunction with Funtown/Splashtown USA.
Using a free website called UStream we started running a live web cam from our studio during The Q Morning Show. UStream lets anyone with a webcam and an Internet connection easily send live video to the web. This let our listeners get an even greater behind the scenes look during our show. In addition to live streaming, UStream also lets you save video that can be embedded on other websites. When Senator Susan Collins was on our show shortly after John Edwards announced he had an affair and questions arose about his paternity to a child, Senator Collins addressed it by saying “Don’t you think he is the father of the child?” We struck gold. Our video made it to all three local television stations, The Portland Press Herald, ABCnews.com and even was featured on Fox News. Our brand went nationwide all because we thought to turn on a camera. If you want a viral video, always have a camera and shoot everything you think has the potential to be interesting. You never know.
We use Flickr, a free photo sharing website, that gives us the ability to upload pictures and video taken with cell phones. This allows us to instantly drive traffic to our website if we have anything interesting that our listeners might like to see, be it in the studio or on location
We have several Facebook fan pages to help us connect with our listeners. One for The Q Morning Show where we can announce things that people may have missed on the air, such as a discount on Kelly Clarkson tickets for one day only. It also lets us post pictures, video and our podcast that will show up on the Facebook pages of our fans. Facebook also provides a feature called insights which allows you to get a snapshot of who your fans are.
We just recently launched a station Twitter page, which is just another way to reach our listeners. Those same special deals an announcements can be tweeted, and for some show up instantly on their cell phones. Public conversations can take place with listeners and we can get instant feedback on what we’re doing.
Radio has always been interactive, but with social networking it takes that interactivity one step further. The same applies for any business. Using these free tools to connect and interact with your customers is just another piece of that marketing puzzle. Millions of people use social networking and they’re just waiting for you to reach out to them.
If you’d like to learn more about Twitter, check out my Word On The Tweet Podcast that I produce with Fred Abaroa. Each week we gather people together who use Twitter to talk about what’s new and what’s interesting about it. And we have a lot of fun too. Our most recent show features Rich Brooks and Jacia Kinsman from Social Media FTW.
A big thanks to Rich, Jacia, Chrystie for inviting me to be a part of Social Media FTW. It was a blast!
I hope @scarlettraces is ready for some new followers. Red Hood’s Robin-like sidekick tweeted what she was doing, which just so happened to be murdering.
Someone needs to tell Major League Baseball how the Internet works because they clearly don’t get it. I’ll try to be that person, but more than likely won’t get noticed by MLB. If I do get noticed by MLB, I’ll find out when I get their cease and desist letter for using their logo.
By now you’ve probably seen the adorable video of the little girl and her dad at the Philadelphia Phillies game. Dad makes a great catch of a foul ball and gives it to his little girl who promptly throws it back. Dad throws his arms up in the air, smiles, gives his daughter a big hug and all of Citizen’s Bank Park collectively awwwww’s. You can’t write a better commercial for Major League Baseball. Normally I’d embed a YouTube video of this for you to see yourself. Enter Major League Baseball’s ignorance.
The now classic MLB disclaimer comes into play here that you probably have memorized yourself by now: “Any rebroadcast, retransmission, or account of this game, without the express written consent of Major League Baseball, is prohibited.” The father and daughter foul ball moment happens to be an account of an MLB game and so like a dog that refuses to let go of its bone, MLB is removing videos of that heart warming moment as soon as they pop up on YouTube. You can see it if you want to, but ONLY at mlb.com.
Who got written permission? Television. Specifically the Today Show among others I’m sure. You however have no permission to share it with anyone, even though that’s kind of how the internet works. When word around the office spreads of something great that someone saw on TV last night, do people rush to their TV’s to catch it in case they missed it? If they do they’ll be lucky to see it again. Not so with the internet. It’s bound to be easily found on YouTube.
Most businesses would kill to have a video centered around their project go viral. It’s free advertising! Who would pass that up? Major League Baseball. They won’t even allow the “official” video on mlb.com to be embedded to at least give it a chance to go viral. They want one place and one place only to see it. That makes as much sense as McDonald’s opening one restaurant in the entire country. Want a Big Mac? Just travel to Dallas Texas.
It’s really time for companies to loosen the choke hold they have on their product and content. You have people who are willing to spread your message for free to the masses. If you owned a business why would you not take advantage of that? Swing and a miss MLB. Sit down.
It’s not very often I remember a dream, and even more rare when I remember it vividly. I watched Knowing this week so this must have been what prompted this one.
I was camping alone and watching TV on a beach when out across the water I saw a bright beam of light shoot out of the sky and hit the water as it made a high pitched noise. I looked down at my TV to see what the news said and it was just Sharon Rose reporting about another ATV rider somewhere in northern Maine who was killed.
Now suddenly I’m on the same beach, but it’s in South Portland and across the water I see a new beam hitting One City Center. The building isn’t destroyed, but somehow I know that everyone inside was vaporized.
Still nothing on the news about it yet and Sharon is now doing the intro to that segment where they show pictures of kids catching fish. I’m glad the beam hasn’t gotten her. I like her.
Now I’m in an abandoned building and suddenly the bright beam is right above me about to fire. So I grab my XBox controller in my pocket and move a blinking cursor next to the light and press A. Another blinking dot flies up into the air from right next to me and explodes next to it in a jagged pixel shape as I hear white noise. It takes out the beam and I’ve saved the world.
I look down at the TV that is still at my feet and Sharon is now doing a story about how I have saved the world with this graphic behind her.
Yep. I saved the world with my Atari 2600 Missile Command skills. Then I woke up. You’re welcome.
I was cleaning out some files the other day at work and forgot that I had dubbed this off of a cassette that I had made for my grandmother. This is from 1991, my very first job in radio working overnights at Oldies 95.7 WMJ in Ellsworth Maine. It was a different time in radio when you didn’t have computers that played all the music for you. You fired everything off yourself. Music, jingle, ID’s commercials. At the time 95% of it was on carts, which are similar looking to 8-track tapes and were used for their durability and continuous loop of tape that didn’t require rewinding. That was great unless some idiot pulled a cart out of the machine before it was done.
I worked Saturday at midnight and Sunday at 6AM when the least amount of people were listening. It’s a good thing too! Listening to this now it’s a wonder I was ever hired! I was terrible!!! Listen to that thick Maine accent.
18 years later the accent is gone and I’ve still managed to hold a job in radio, and at the same station for the past 13 years no less. Not an easy feat these days. Let’s hope that trend continues. Gotta keep that roof over my head.
Want a good laugh? Go ahead and listen.
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In his continuing 434 part series “Better Know A District”, Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report interviewed Maine’s 1st District Representative Chellie Pingree. By now, any representative that agrees to be interviewed in this series knows that Colbert is going to go right up one side of them and down the other.
Pingree handled this well, but it was very clear Colbert was the one driving the bus. I wouldn’t have it any other way though! I just wish I had a fraction of the comedic skills Stephen Colbert has.
The gem of this interview is when Colbert brings up the first district’s 0.1% black population.
I can’t wait until he comes back to tackle Mike Michaud.
And is it just me, or is there some lighting trick going on here to make Pingree more attractive than she really is?
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James Cameron doesn’t do anything small. Just about every motion picture he directs turns into a major blockbuster: Terminator, Aliens, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, The Abyss, and the highest grossing movie of all time Titanic. (Let’s just pretend Piranha Part Two: The Spawning never happened okay?)
This is all kinds of awesome! Got this press release today from 
Here’s a comment left on my 
When Rich Brooks from Flyte New Media asked be to be a part of the Social Media FTW conference as a speaker I was surprised. I’m a humble radio DJ who 
Someone needs to tell 
It’s not very often I remember a dream, and even more rare when I remember it vividly. I watched 
In his continuing 434 part series “Better Know A District”, Stephen Colbert of 