that Neill Blomkamp will be making his directorial debut for the that’s supposed to come out in 2008. We’ve noticed Blomkamp before, as director of the short “Alive in Joburg”. Blomkamp has extensive prior experience in .
Archive for the ‘Movies’ Category
Halo Director Announced
Thursday, August 10th, 2006The Long Tail
Thursday, July 13th, 2006Chris Anderson from his upcoming book, , in a recent issue of magazine. He argues that the era of the cultural mainstream and megahits is now over, to be replaced with many smaller works. (Wikipedia on the idea)
Microsoft to Buy Songs For You
Thursday, July 6th, 2006
Fulfilling
Microsoft is being helped out by media companies (Music, Television, etc.). Because Apple dominates the and markets, they are able to the content providers and set the prices. Music labels and other media providers would like to see a more balanced market to be able to gain more control over their pricing.
For those of you who don’t know, iTunes and Microsoft-backed stores sell their songs with . These restrictions on the files prevent them from being copied a certain number of times, or can even cause the songs to “expire”, and stop working when the music store owner chooses. This also prevents music downloaded from iTunes from playing on Microsoft “Plays for Sure” players, and music from most other stores working on iPods. So any music you have downloaded from the iTunes music store will probably never work on Microsoft’s new player.
Rather than forcing you to re-buy your iTunes music at their store, Microsoft is planning to , and pay for it, as well.
Would you be willing to switch to a new music player, if they re-bought all of your music for you? Will Microsoft be able to avoid previous traps and create a compelling product? I’m not betting on it, but if they throw as much money at it as they did for the XBox, there might be something that at least will have some presence.
Alive in Joburg
Thursday, June 22nd, 2006Everyone likes a good independent short film, right?
Well, here’s the best I’ve seen in a long time. Alive in Joburg is an interesting piece of work that I could write for hours about attempting to dissect it. Or- you could just . Awesome film directed by in association with .
WordPlay
Saturday, June 17th, 2006What do John Stewart, Bill Clinton, Ken Burns, Mike Mussina, Bob Dole, and The Indigo Girls all have in common? No- they aren’t all people who hate George Bush. In fact, they are part of the 50,000,000 people who actually enjoy doing the crossword in the newspaper.
Seems hard to believe, I know. But, a is trying to show audiences just why these people find it so intriguing filling letters into boxes. , the movie is an attempt to, “show this world to people who aren’t crossword people and try to explain to them why it’s so fun, and why it pulls you in every single day.”
This quirky film will focus on anything from specific celebrities (, anyone?) to the difference between . According to the , however, the film mainly focuses on the man most associated with crossword puzzles, .
Now, I’ve always been more of a fan myself- but this film might just change my mind.
On the set of Saw 3
Tuesday, June 13th, 2006The Toronto Star has , which is currently filming in Toronto. “We’re gonna push the envelope as far as we can this time.”
Who Killed the Electric Car?
Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006
Don’t you just love documentaries? I mean, we’ve got everything from , to , and even .
Well, a new has just hit the web for the new documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car? It seems yet film focused on blaming the giant car-manufacturer, .
The provides this small tagline to go with the movie: “In 1996 Electric cars began to appear on roads all over California. They were quiet and fast, produced no exhaust, and ran without gasoline. Who Killed the Electric Car?”
The movie will be hitting this summer. Stay tuned for details.
The Net In Movies
Monday, May 1st, 2006The Wall Street Journal has a funny collection of various over the past couple of decades. Commentary on and .
The Skeleton Key (Review)
Sunday, March 26th, 2006
“What’s this? A surprisngly good horror movie? Blasphemy! Those haven’t existed since the .”
This is the typical reaction I’m getting from people when I tell them that the Skeleton Key is actually a good movie. But it is. It really is.
First off, the story itself is actually unique. Oh sure, there’s a big old spooky house. But, rather then it being on the edge of town, it’s actually in the near New Orleans. Instead of this house being completely set apart, we see early on that the entire area is very desolate and home to some deformed people.
Caroline is a young Nurse-turned-Hospus-worker who goes to take care of an old man who is bed-ridden and has a paralyzed face (meaning he can’t speak- although it looks like he has a lot to say). Once in the house, Caroline also has to deal with the fact that the man has an annoyingly creepy wife and the fact that there are ghosts in the house.
The movie itself is a perfect mixture of learning about the past of the house, learning about magic, and watching Caroline slowly unravelling the mystery about how the husband became paralyzed. All of this escalades into one exciting climax with a very satisfying twist that people have compared to the and (don’t worry, she isn’t the ghost).
Enough out of me, go see it.
8.6/10