Movies
Thursday, March 20th, 2008
by Jeff
From DirectTV’s website:
“Effective April 15, 2008, DVR recordings of PPV movies will be available for 24 hours of unlimited viewing after purchase. Major movie studios have required that satellite and cable providers alike may no longer allow their customers to view these recordings for longer than 24 hours. During the 24 hour viewing period, you will continue to enjoy all of your DVR features such as pause and rewind.”
So I pay $3.99 for a pay per view movie and the clock starts ticking. Better watch that thing within 24 hours or it’s stolen from the hard drive of your DVR and you have to pay for it again if you want to watch it. It’s not even 24 hours from when I start watching the movie, it’s from the second I order it. Idiots.
When will the movie companies learn the lesson that the record companies are finally learning? The more restrictions you put on content the more you encourage piracy. The record companies have finally begun selling music in high quality with no copy protection, and I’m buying more music than ever before.
We time shift everything these days. As I write this, Lost has started on ABC. I plan to watch it tomorrow or this weekend, because I work early in the morning and will be going to bed as soon as I post this. Imagine if I had only 24 hours to watch Lost, and that clock started as soon as I began recording. The studios seem to want to model our behavior to fit them, not the other way around. What other business treats its customers like this?
The MPAA continually moans about piracy and how it costs them billions of dollars every year. Yet rather than make their content readily and easily available for the customers in the ways that are convenient to them, they place restriction after restriction on them, which then encourages the very thing they want to prevent.
I just bought the DVD of I Am Legend which comes with a digital copy. That’s great, but I can’t put it on my iPhone, I have to have a Windows machine to watch it, and I need to have an Internet connection to unlock it. Thanks for nothing. Instead, consumers will break the copy protection and then do whatever they want with it.
I’m just hoping that the movie and television industry will learn the lesson, that so many media outlets aren’t getting. We live in a new technological world now, and you have to adapt to it in order to survive. Customers should be number one, and when you tell them what they can and can’t do with the things that they pay you money for, they’ll continue to rob you blind.
Recording PPV Titles To Your DVR
Sunday, January 20th, 2008
by Jeff
I got this email from Andrea off the radio station website:
I never write but…I turned down the volume when movie mom talked about “Clover Field” (while you left the room thinking it would be fun) and then went to see the movie on Sat. knwing nothing w/ my husband…and we HATED it!! It was such a rip off…it was a cross between Godzilla, War of the Worlds, World Trade Center, & Blair Witch Project…Cover Field was so unoriginal, predictable & a huge disappointment…I had a headache when I left & am getting another one just thinking about it again…that movie sucked so bad & it was a huge waste of $$$ Tell Lori & Meredith not to see it, they’d hate it too. Have a nice day:-)
I expected some reaction like this. It’s a movie that a select few really get. Oh well. I’m sure there’ll be a Dodgeball 2 someday.
Saturday, January 19th, 2008
by Jeff
WARNING: If you haven’t seen “Cloverfield” yet, I recommend you come back and read this after you do. You’ll thank me.
I’m not one to usually avoid spoilers on movies. With all three Star Wars prequels I was on every single spoiler site I could find. When I saw the teaser trailer for “Cloverfield” over the summer, I knew this was a movie I wanted to know nothing about. I even went so far as to leave the studio when we did our weekly movie review segment with Movie Mom on The Q Morning Show. I was taking this seriously. Seeing how the creative mind of J.J. Abrams works with “Lost,” I knew that if I found out too much about this movie, the experience he wanted to create for his audience would be lost on me. It wasn’t easy, but I managed to pull it off and saw “Cloverfield” spoiler free. I am so glad I did.
Let me say before all else, if you have a tendency for motion sickness, you might want to take some Dramamine before going to see this. I was fine, but my wife felt pretty sick after it was over. “Cloverfield” is shot as if it were all done with a camcorder, a la “Blair Witch Project” but rather then running with a camera to avoid a witch, these people are running from some sort of monster that is attacking Manhattan.
The movie begins with a message from the U.S. Government telling us what we are about to see is from a videotape found in the area formerly known as Central Park. The tape is non-linear since we later find out scenes are intercut because the tape has been recorded over in several places. It’s an ingenious way to tell backstories. After establishing a mid-twenties guy named Rob having a relationship with a woman, it jumps ahead several months to a going away party for Rob, who is taking a job in Japan. Subtle. Japan, the land of Godzilla. The party is interrupted when a massive earthquake type event hits Manhattan, followed by a huge explosion downtown. Everyone flees to the streets where an object flies through the air, crash landing in the street. It’s the head of the Statue of Liberty in the scene that became the viral marketing campaign on You Tube this summer. From there all hell breaks loose.
Rob is separated from the girl he is in love with and of course had a major fight with just before the star of the show started tearing buildings down. He convinces the people he is fleeing with that he must find this girl by going right into monster ground zero. He is so determined at one point that he starts to get annoying. Why exactly are these people so intent on following him? He’d only been seeing this girl for six months and she’ll probably be dead by the time he gets there anyway. I would be getting the hell out of there.
One of the scariest scenes of the movie happens in the subway tunnels as the military is fighting the monster above. Our fearless Rob is leading everyone through pitch black darkness trying to find a save place to exit when they notice things moving under their feet. After turning the light on the video camera on, they discover hundreds of rats moving away from…something. That something is behind them and making some sort of evil noise. After turning around activating the night vision on the camcorder, they discover they are being followed by creepy crawly crab/fish like things that are on the ground and the ceiling. Then they attack. Intense scene! if you have every played Half Life, picture the head crabs on steroids. Everyone manages to escape with their lives from the attack, but one woman is bitten by the crab/fish things. She eventually dies from it in a very cool way.
Rob and what’s left of his gang manage to climb to the 45th floor of the apartment building of Rob’s girl to rescue her. Oh did I mention this apartment building is tipped on its side leaning against another building? This is where I would have said “screw you guys, I’m going home,” but everyone follows crazy Rob without much question.
At the end of the movie at lot of questions go unanswered: Where did the monster come from? Does the monster die? What’s left of Manhattan? Why is the movie called “Cloverfield?” Leaving an audience to answer questions on their own is the style of J.J. Abrams. Apparently it’s a style the audience I was with didn’t like very much, based on the groans I heard when the lights came up and one punk kid shouting “That sucked!” Thanks kid. And thanks for text messaging with your bright phone display shining in my eyes for the entire movie too.
“Cloverfield” breaks all the rules of the typical movie. It is a very immersive experience. The superb special effects, the excellent sound effects, and the amazing photography make you feel like you are running away from this monster with these characters. This movie for me wasn’t so much about trying to sympathize with the characters as wanting to find out what was going on with this monster. That is what makes this your no-so-everyday monster movie, because you aren’t watching a movie. You’re watching a videotape that was found after a devastating attack on New York that documents the events, and are left to draw your own conclusions as to what happened. That’s right people, you aren’t going to be spoon fed anymore. You have to do a little brain work. It should make for good water cooler talk on Monday.
Sunday, December 9th, 2007
by Jeff
They haven’t gone postal yet, but the US Postal Service doesn’t like those nifty Netflix envelopes that have closed down so many video rental stores. They claim the mailers have cost them over $41 million in extra labor fees because they can’t run them through machines. The Post Office says Netflix needs to redesign the envelope or face a 17 cent surcharge on each envelope. Let’s do the math. 6.7 million subscribers x an average of five movies a month x two trips per envelope = 12 jillion million dollars. Pretty sure they’re going to redesign that bad boy PDQ.
Techdirt: Is The Post Office About To Kill Netflix’s Business Model?
Tuesday, November 20th, 2007
by Jeff
It’s the movie I’m most excited for during holiday blockbuster season, and the trailer has just been released on Apple Trailers. Go check out the trailer now, and afterwards take a look at the teaser trailer too taking note of the head of the Statue of Liberty that lands in the street. Notice the difference between the two? Clearly when they put the teaser out they were still working on the CGI. The newer trailer looks 100% better.
Even after seeing the trailer, there’s still so much that they don’t tell you about this movie which makes me want to see it even more. That’s a nice change from the trailers that give away all the major plot points or all the funny jokes.
I’ll be in line on 1-18-08 for this one. Better let the in-laws know they’ll be babysitting.
Apple – Trailers – 01-18-08
Thursday, November 8th, 2007
by Jeff
All six Rocky movies in (roughly) five seconds. Hi-Larious!
Friday, November 2nd, 2007
by Jeff
I can’t wait until January 18th! That’s when J.J. Abrams, who is the genius behind Lost, releases his latest movie. There’s no official title yet, but the rumors are it will be called Cloverfield. I have no idea what that title means, and really don’t have much information on what it’s about. Therein lies the genius of J.J. Abrams!
Lost always has you guessing, and J.J. is doing the same thing with this movie. It’s frustrating as hell, but it only makes me want to see this movie more! Just check out the official website for it and you’ll see what I mean.
The marketing for this movie is pure genius. A trailer shows up on You Tube for a movie that shows 20-somethings having a party for a friend. It gets interrupted by a horrific noise and a huge explosion in downtown Manhattan, followed by the head of the Statue of Liberty landing in a street. I’m hooked!
(EDIT: I’m having a hell of a time getting the youtube video to embed here in the page, so just click here to see the trailer)
The original trailer on You Tube appeared to be shot with a camcorder in a theater, but has since been taken down. I’m pretty sure this was all set up by the studio to start this viral marketing campaign. For the weeks that followed, this trailer was the hottest buzz on every movie blog on the net. Now the teaser poster has been released which is just adding fuel to the fire.It appears to be a monster destroys New York movie. New York can’t catch a break in the movies. It was destroyed in Independence Day, Deep Impact, The Day After Tomorrow, Godzilla and that really bad made for TV movie Aftershock: Earthquake in New York. Those are just the ones I can think of! I suppose destroying Lubic, Texas just doesn’t make for good movies.
A lot of my movie viewing experience in the next few years is riding on J.J. Abrams. Transformers was very good, Cloverfield looks fantastic, and he’s about to start shooting the next Star Trek movie which hopes to revive the franchise. I certainly hope so! Don’t disappoint me with these movies J.J. I’ve watched Star Trek 1 through 6 so many times I can practically recite the script from beginning to end. Time for new material.
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