Monday, June 23, 2008
The Instinct
So this weekend Samsung released their new "Instinct", their computer-in-your-pocket answer to Apple's iPhone. They've had some amusing mock-trailers that have been running in movie theaters (which, between that and Honda's Navi commercials in theaters, is GPS the new Coke?). It's an entertaining spot: lots of explosions, and it manages to poke fun at movies, movie trailers, and product placement, all while explaining its features and instilling some name-recognition.
Problem is, it kept comparing itself to the iPhone. Rather than let it stand on it's merits, it essentially billed itself as "the other iPhone", and while there's nothing inherently wrong with that, it just goes to show who really owns the market for these sort of devices. Maybe if they'd only said it once.
Either way, seeing this commercial over the weekend while waiting for Get Smart to start has led me to one inevitable conclusion about Apple's next product line.
The iShoe.
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Problem is, it kept comparing itself to the iPhone. Rather than let it stand on it's merits, it essentially billed itself as "the other iPhone", and while there's nothing inherently wrong with that, it just goes to show who really owns the market for these sort of devices. Maybe if they'd only said it once.
Either way, seeing this commercial over the weekend while waiting for Get Smart to start has led me to one inevitable conclusion about Apple's next product line.
The iShoe.
FoxTrax GPS Fleet Tracking
Clever solutions for vehicle tracking
www.FoxTraxGPS.com
866-686-2780
Labels: humor, movies, technology
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Maybe I Just Like Wax Tadpoles
The other night I watched There Will Be Blood, the 2007 film by P.T. Anderson that was up for Best Picture at the last Oscars. It stars Daniel Day-Lewis as an independent oil man and is based loosely on the 1927 book Oil! by Upton Sinclair. Very loosely. In fact, it retains practically none of the story, characters, or socialist underpinnings that would have been found in the original novel.
But if you're looking for a 3-hour film about an oil magnate and his deaf son that is wonderfully acted and beautifully shot, then accept no substitute.
Curiously, out of the entire movie, the most memorable bit comes towards the end, in which Day-Lewis's character is explaining (screaming about) how a particular piece of land has no oil left, even though it hasn't been drilled, because it has been drained via nearby operations in the surrounding lands. This culminates with the thundering delivery of the film's best-remembered line "I drink your milkshake."
This was a revelation for me, because I'd seen a number of T-shirts and other merch across the web emblazoned with that four-word phrase that, by itself, sounds rather stupid, and for the life of me I couldn't figure out what it meant. If you type "I drink your milkshake" into Wikipedia, it takes you to the There Will Be Blood page, but it makes no effort to explain why unless you are willing to read through the entire plot synopsis.
So, while not a meme, per se, "IDYM" falls neatly into the category of Bizarre Redirects. It joins Blue Harvest, which was the covert shooting title of "Return of the Jedi". Consequently, if you go to www.blueharvest.com, you wind up at the official Star Wars website, which is downright confusing if you've heard something about "Blue Harvest" and are trying to find out more about it. The Wikipedia redirect used to be just as bad, but it's better now that there's a Family Guy special called "Blue Harvest," which clears a few things up.
"Bite the Wax Tadpole" is another great one. This refers to an extremely amusing story about the Coca-Cola company, which I'm not going to tell you. But if you have heard the phrase, which shows up in weird places every now and then (I think Dave Barry used it as a chapter heading once), and are curious about it, and enter that phrase into Wikipedia, you are re-directed to Coke without so much as a hint of what one has to do with the other. And the website bitethewaxtadpole.com brings up an Irish software firm (no help).
So, yeah, have fun figuring that one out over your lunch break!
But if you're looking for a 3-hour film about an oil magnate and his deaf son that is wonderfully acted and beautifully shot, then accept no substitute.
Curiously, out of the entire movie, the most memorable bit comes towards the end, in which Day-Lewis's character is explaining (screaming about) how a particular piece of land has no oil left, even though it hasn't been drilled, because it has been drained via nearby operations in the surrounding lands. This culminates with the thundering delivery of the film's best-remembered line "I drink your milkshake."
This was a revelation for me, because I'd seen a number of T-shirts and other merch across the web emblazoned with that four-word phrase that, by itself, sounds rather stupid, and for the life of me I couldn't figure out what it meant. If you type "I drink your milkshake" into Wikipedia, it takes you to the There Will Be Blood page, but it makes no effort to explain why unless you are willing to read through the entire plot synopsis.
So, while not a meme, per se, "IDYM" falls neatly into the category of Bizarre Redirects. It joins Blue Harvest, which was the covert shooting title of "Return of the Jedi". Consequently, if you go to www.blueharvest.com, you wind up at the official Star Wars website, which is downright confusing if you've heard something about "Blue Harvest" and are trying to find out more about it. The Wikipedia redirect used to be just as bad, but it's better now that there's a Family Guy special called "Blue Harvest," which clears a few things up.
"Bite the Wax Tadpole" is another great one. This refers to an extremely amusing story about the Coca-Cola company, which I'm not going to tell you. But if you have heard the phrase, which shows up in weird places every now and then (I think Dave Barry used it as a chapter heading once), and are curious about it, and enter that phrase into Wikipedia, you are re-directed to Coke without so much as a hint of what one has to do with the other. And the website bitethewaxtadpole.com brings up an Irish software firm (no help).
So, yeah, have fun figuring that one out over your lunch break!
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Indiana Jones and the Continuation of Franchise
So the new Indiana Jones movie is coming out later this week, and the critical responses are coming in mixed, but more good than bad. The consensus seems to be that it's entertaining, if a bit clunky, but better than than Temple of Doom and not nearly as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark. The other critical consensus is this: it doesn't matter what the critics say.
Now, as a modest film buff, I will typically read multiple reviews of highly anticipated films, and the four or five that I've personally scanned all say the same thing: it doesn't matter what we think, people are going to see it anyway. One review even cited The Da Vinci Code, which was universally panned (and not just by critics--I have yet to meet anyone who genuinely enjoyed it) but still grossed $750 million in the box office. That's not really what you would call a successful film. That's a colossally successful film, even after the tens of millions spent on advertising. It was the second-highest grossing film of 2006 (following behind Star Wars Episode III), which is pretty impressive for a flick that is... well... bad.
So there's little doubt that Indy 4 will win back it's budget. And, it seems, you could film three hours of Harrison Ford in a fedora playing chess with Norman Mailer and fans would fork over $8.75 to see it, because you can sell a movie on hype and ride the wave of the film's predecessors or sources, especially if you have a substantial advertising budget.
On the other hand, a dismal Indy 4 would certainly hamper attempts to make an Indy 5, or any other film with Harrison Ford or Steven Spielberg or George Lucas... or Norman Mailer.
So it all comes out in the wash, I guess.
Now, as a modest film buff, I will typically read multiple reviews of highly anticipated films, and the four or five that I've personally scanned all say the same thing: it doesn't matter what we think, people are going to see it anyway. One review even cited The Da Vinci Code, which was universally panned (and not just by critics--I have yet to meet anyone who genuinely enjoyed it) but still grossed $750 million in the box office. That's not really what you would call a successful film. That's a colossally successful film, even after the tens of millions spent on advertising. It was the second-highest grossing film of 2006 (following behind Star Wars Episode III), which is pretty impressive for a flick that is... well... bad.
So there's little doubt that Indy 4 will win back it's budget. And, it seems, you could film three hours of Harrison Ford in a fedora playing chess with Norman Mailer and fans would fork over $8.75 to see it, because you can sell a movie on hype and ride the wave of the film's predecessors or sources, especially if you have a substantial advertising budget.
On the other hand, a dismal Indy 4 would certainly hamper attempts to make an Indy 5, or any other film with Harrison Ford or Steven Spielberg or George Lucas... or Norman Mailer.
So it all comes out in the wash, I guess.
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