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It’s so easy for people to get all ranty and unbalanced about the MPAA, movie piracy, and copyright issues…Derek has a refreshingly clear and steady take on the issues involved and how the industry middlemen are making things hard for everyone but themselves.
Bitter disappointing rant from Brokeback Mountain author Annie Proulx about the Oscars. How can you trash the Oscars and then be totally pissed when you lose? Sour grapes indeed.
Report from Etech on Jeff Han’s demo of a “multi-touch user interface”. Be sure to watch the videos linked to at the end…it’s the interface from Minority Report in action.
Critics pan some Academy Award-winning films. Said Slate’s David Edelstein of Life is Beautiful: “Benigni’s movie made me want to throw up.”
I’m surprised Crash won the Best Picture Oscar last night, but Time’s Richard Corliss thinks it makes sense, given that the movie was about LA. I really liked Crash when I saw it back in June, so I’m not disappointed.
Movie trailer mash-up: Toy Story 2 + Requiem for a Dream.
Quick interview with Nick Park about Wallace and Gromit. I’m testing an experimental Salon feature where if you click through to an article from kottke.org, you don’t have to apply for a Day Pass to read it…let’s see if it works.
Update: Didn’t quite work for me…clicking the link took me to Salon’s front page, not to the article. I clicked the back button and tried again and it worked the second time. Anyone else have a problem with it?
Update #2: Other people are having the same problem and Salon is looking into it.
The fashion industry doesn’t try to control its creativity the way that the music and film industries do. “The fashion world recognizes that creativity cannot be bridled and controlled and that obsessive quests to do so will only diminish its vitality. Other content industries would do well to heed this wisdom.”
Fun analysis of a moviegoer’s six years of ticket stubs. You can see the ticket prices rise over the years, but what’s really interesting is the correspondence between the ticket price and his opinion of the movie…he ended up paying more for the movies he really liked.
New trailer for A Scanner Darkly, Richard Linklater’s adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s novel. (via rw)
The Brokeback Mountain humor industry is in full swing these days, but I thought this one was pretty funny: Weekly Grocery Lists for Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist, Summer 1962. (via lia)
Now that Lasseter’s on the job, Disney may be bringing back their 2-D animation tradition.
Blockbuster films are getting more expensive and accounting for less of Hollywood’s box office take…is Hollywood’s emphasis on big movies nearing its end? I’ve always thought it was dumb that the movie industry put so many of its eggs in so few baskets. (ps. Chris Anderson’s Long Tail book is available for preorder on Amazon.)
In an age of media fragmentation, here are ten cultural events that are still shared collective experiences among US citizens, including the Super Bowl, Harry Potter, and The Da Vinci Code.
Now that Oscar season is in full-on in-your-face mode, check out this list of the critics’ favorite films for 2005. Love the info design on the summary at the bottom.
Some of the worst selling DVDs on Amazon. Looks like the Hammy the Hamster DVD series isn’t doing so well. See also books and music. (thx, josh)
An account of how Pixar came about that goes back a little further (Xerox PARC, circa 1973) than the one I linked to a few days ago.
Things Meg said while we were watching Spiderman 2 the other day. She has a small problem with the suspension of disbelief sometimes.
These are the times that try men’s souls.
In Meet the Fockers, the sign on a terminal at the O’Hare airport is typeset in Chicago, an old Macintosh system font. Har har. (via mark)
Caterina tagged me and it’s Friday, so what the hell?
Four jobs I’ve had:
1. Minimum wage worker, green bean canning factory
2. Tutor, in college physics
3. Web designer, for about 6 different companies
4. Blogger, kottke.org
Four movies I can watch over and over:
1. Ocean’s Eleven
2. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
3. The Day After Tomorrow
4. Finding Nemo
Four places I’ve lived:
1. Minneapolis
2. Rolla, MO
3. New York
4. San Francisco
Four TV shows I love:
1. Six Feet Under
2. Doctor Who (the original series)
3. Family Guy
4. Oh gosh, I dunno
Ten highly regarded and recommended TV shows that I’ve never watched a single minute of:[1]
1. 24
2. Lost
3. The Sopranos
4. Any reality TV show
5. Arrested Development
6. Battlestar Galactica
7. My Name is Earl
8. Deadwood
9. Desperate Housewives
10. The Wire
Four places I’ve vacationed:
1. Kauai, HI
2. Beijing
3. Paris
4. Rapid City, SD
Four of my favorite dishes:
1. Bologna sandwich
2. Soup dumplings
3. Cinnamon ice cream
4. Just about anything on a tasting menu
Four sites I visit daily:
1. google.com
2. flickr.com
3. robotwisdom.com
4. waxy.org
Four places I would rather be right now:
1. In a bathtub
2. On the beach
3. In space
4. Paris
Four bloggers I am tagging (but who won’t do it because they’re too old school…how’s that for a taunt?):
1. Meg Hourihan
2. Matt Haughey
3. Paul Bausch
4. Anil Dash
[1] I added this question because I was thinking about it the other day. I know, such a bad-ass rule-breaker.
A list of films that have the most Star Wars actors in a non-Star Wars film. Flash Gordon and Labyrinth each have 17 Star Wars actors in them. (via cd)
The delicate marketing of Brokeback Mountain. In Manhattan for example, analysis of the city’s various social microclimates was used to select the opening theaters to de-emphasize the art-house aspect of the film. (via dj)
The new Pixar overlords at Disney Animation wasted no time in cancelling Toy Story 3. “Sequels should only be made if there is a really great story that demands it, and should be the domain of those who created the original film.” Could this be the end of Disney’s straight-to-video animated crap-o-ramas?
Some player names I observed while playing Fastr (a multiplayer game based on guessing tags for a selection of Flickr images) last night for about 15 minutes under my usual online nickname “jkottke”:
jkottkesucks
kottkesucks
jkottkesucksass
ihatekottke
yes no one likes kottke
For some reason, this reminds me of one of my favorite scenes from Being John Malkovich where he’s just popped out of his own head and onto the side of the New Jersey Turnpike and a passenger in a passing car says, “Hey Malkovich, think fast!” and pegs him in the head with a beer can.
In the spirit of the reimagined trailer for The Shining, here’s Brokeback Top Gun and Sleepless in Seattle.
Online tshirt commerce is so easy now; individuals can even offer a new tshirt design every single day. My favorite shirt of the day is this scarlet/Scarlett fiddle-dee-dee one from yesterday.
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