Category: media-and-expression

Films you should have seen last year

Inception

I seriously don’t get it. There is no doubt Inception was one of the high lights of last year but the golden globes seemed to skip over inception.

Anyway, this is my list of films you should have seen (or look out for in 2011) in 2010,

  • Inception
    Need I say more?
  • The Social Network
    Didn’t really want to like it, but after seeing it I really liked it. Its certainly one of the best internet/tech to movie translations I’ve witnessed. The tone is just right throughout.
  • Scott Pilgrim vs the world
    This film is simply nuts. A whirlwind of modern film techniques wrapped up in a fantastic coming of age plot with like-able multi faceted characters.
  • Cash
    Simple plot with devastating results. A very heart felt to the characters who end up on the wrong side of this psychopath.
  • Takers
    Stylish heist movie in the vein of Inside man and Lucky number Sleven. Reminds me of Guy Richie’s Revolver crossed with Heat. Tasty stuff.
  • Catfish
    What on earth is going on with this movie? All I can say is its intriguing true or false.
  • Exit through the gift shop
    Like Catfish, a documentary style which could be true or false, don’t really care its just a intriguing tale.
  • Freakonomics: The Movie
    The film based on a few chapters from the famous and popular Freakonomics book. Well worth watching as a introduction to the books.
  • Flipped
    2 children growing up together and learning from each other how life can or should be. Each bit is told from each point of view which makes for a interesting story.
  • Monsters
    Imagine Cloverfield happened 5 years ago, Monsters is what would the future be like after a alien invasion. It is like District 9 in scenario but this is a very slow burning storyline which will lose lots of people expecting more
  • 4,3,2,1
    4 girls different storylines which over lap in places. Noel Clarke has once again outdone himself with this stylish and sometimes quite gritty drama
  • 127 hours
    I wanted to put in both 127hours and buried. But choose 127 hours because although there quite similar, 127 hours isn’t so focused on one scene. The flashbacks are a good break from what was going on.

It still shocks me when I hear people say they haven’t seen inception. I mean I can understand it if you haven’t because of time but the reason I usually hear is because they have heard its a bit of a mind screw.

In actual fact, its actually not that much of a mind screw. Yes you do have to pay attention and quite a lot does indeed happen but its not any more difficult to understand that Twelve monkeys. Put it this way, its nothing like Primer. and that crazy timeline of the film.

For goodness sake if you’ve not seen Inception, go rent it today!

Self distribution and why not?

I’m with Kevin Smith on telling Hollywood to go suck it.

Writer/Director Kevin Smith premiered his new film Red State at Sundance today—he’d led everyone to believe that after the showing, he’d publicly auction the distribution rights to the highest-bidding studio. Instead, he bought it himself and used the attention generated to note how broken the studio distribution system is (why spend $20 million on a film that cost $4 million to make) and how he was convinced he could a better job handling things on his own.

Just like the guys who setup Revision3 and Twit.TV, they used there familiarity and popularity from the now defunct subscribe only techtv cable channel, to launch there own much more sophisticated and effective projects to basically replace techtv. The result is light years ahead of the old techtv shows in every respect.

Kevin Smith would be crazy not to "cash in" on his followers and reputation in this space. Its actually begs the question why he had not done it earlier really? Heck and whats wrong with a little shouting at the hand that use to feed you…?

It cost Red State roughly $4 million to make, and Smith didn’t see any sense in spending $20 million (i.e. 5 times the amount it cost to make the film) just to advertise it. Smith also was tired of huge marketing expenditures whose efficacy would be determined within a period of three days.

It does raise the question what do you do, if you’ve not got that track record behind you and your looking to self publish or self distribute but I’m a firm believer that the best will rise to the top. It may take 10 years, but they will get there in the end.

TED Books? But will it share?

In my email today, a email from Chris Anderson of TED,

I’m delighted to share with you a significant new step in our efforts to promote "ideas worth spreading". We’re announcing today the launch of TED Books. TED Books are to Books as TED Talks are to lectures. They’re short, pithy, riveting. They’re designed to express a single big idea in a way that can be absorbed in a single sitting. A typical 18-minute TED Talk might be around 2000 words. A typical traditional book is at least 60,000 words. TED Books nicely fill the gap in between. They come in at 10,000-20,000 words. So they can be read and absorbed in an hour or two.

These books are designed for electronic distribution. We are launching with the Amazon Kindle Singles program which opened today. The Kindle platform allows books to be read on iPad, iPhone, Android phones, PC and Mac – as well as the dedicated Kindle readers. Each TED Book costs just $2.99 (but may cost more in international markets)

Interestingly me and Nicole were just talking about my Kindle and reading non-fiction books. I have quite a few non-fiction books like Malcolm Gladwell’s excellent tipping point. I regularly lend them out to friends and family.

I’ll be interested to see what permissions are attached to the these ebooks. Ideally it would be very open and easily sharable. But thats not going to happen… Wishful thinking on my behalf I think but its a shame because the authors seems to be publishing under the TED brand, so I imagine it wouldn’t be that hard to convince the authors to make there work freely available or at least with less restrictions. Oh well…

Rights holders take down on dj mixes

I got this in my email today from Soundcloud.com…

Hi cubicgarden,

Your upload "The pulse of a nation mix" may include content that is owned or licensed by Moist Music ("By Your Side (Martin Roth Rmx)" (The Thrillseekers;Gina Dootson)) and has been made inaccessible on SoundCloud by request of the rightsholder.

If you are certain that you have all necessary permissions from the rightsholder to upload and share this content, you can submit a claim here:

http://soundcloud.com/settings/disputes/

Thanks,

The SoundCloud team

Moist Music can get lost up there own ***** and have this one. I would fight this copyright take down (the very first one I’ve personally ever had) but since I’ve all but switched over to Mixcloud.com, its not worth fighting. Either way, it was interesting to see Martin Roth himself talking about Mixcloud and Soundcloud on his tumblr site. I might have to send him a link to this post and the mixcloud/soundcloud posts.

We are certainly much better off without these stuck in the mud middlemen.

I’ve now canceled my Soundcloud pro subscription, so all my mixes will be moving to mixcloud I’m sorry to announce. Nothing to do with Soundcloud, its just not the place for dj mixes and this latest event proves it.

What is it with White chicks and Gang signs?

Me and Sarah use to laugh our asses off at this video. Why because of the hilarity of the fact most white woman I know, when faced with a camera will pull some crazy pose and throw some kind of gesture with there hands. Why? Why oh why? Now to be fair not everyone does this but most do. Its like some kind of meme which has spread deeply in the consciousness of the woman of our little planet. To see the effects you need to breaks out a camera and ask to say cheese, bizarre!

The weird thing is, not many men know what I mean when I mention it. So for those men, here’s exactly what I mean.

I can’t work out if its a cultural thing either because I’ve known non-westernised woman to also throw a few signs when having themselves shot. What makes things even worst/sad is I’ve seen quite a few dating profiles pictures on Okcupid and many others (there’s plenty on plenty of fish, bad pun ignore me). One of the girls I’ve been out on a date with had all types of signs all over her profile pictures. I so wanted to ask her, so what the heck is with all the gang signs? Do you think its funny or something? Of course I never did, mainly because we had one date and never saw each other again (lucky escape I feel).

Of course this will be in my folder for geeks talk sexy part 2: The other half of population. Its very easy to imagine all men are weird (some more that others of course) but in actual fact woman are equally as weird. We’re a perfect fit for each other maybe? 🙂

If you want to see more of this type of thing and want to have your own say, sign up on the geeks talk sexy eventbrite page.

Verzion iPhone, the rest of the world yawns

At long last Verzion have got the iphone. So if your like me, your thinking "so what?" And to be honest you wouldn’t be wrong in your thinking. Either way, it was interesting to see the Daily Show’s take on the excitement from the states. Unfortunately Comedy Central don’t allow you to view or embed videos outside the states plus comedy central are well known for takedowns on youtube.

Ben Johnson’s crowd experienced art

Art talking place in front of a live audience. I like the idea but lets get it right, its not crowd sourced or even participatory art. Its more like watching a designer working on a piece of work. There is no input from the crowd, just watching and waiting…

If your in London, this is certainly worth checking out however its ending soon, so you’d better be quick.

The best advert of 2010: Old Spice vs Thinkbox

Interesting the differences and between the number one voted adverts of 2010 online and offline. For me the Old Spice advert was extremely clever and certainly does something very different while the Thinkbox advert is what you would expect from TV advertising, fun, entertaining but thats it. Of course I’ve also not included the follow up ads for old spice which made the whole thing so much more interesting for us all.

The best of the web advertising, The Old Spice Advert

The best of TV advertising, Every home needs a harvey Advert

Know your meme public message broadcast

I love know your meme and have been catching up with the episodes I’ve missed for a while but I love this almost like a public service message episode which is attached to downfall.

In response to Constantin’s attempted takedown of these satirical videos, the Institute for Internet Studies offers this helpful public service announcement explaining how to dispute a wrongful copyright claim on the grounds of Fair Use.

The future of publishing is writable

Newsweek book are not dead bezos

Imran posted a link on his facebook wall.

The future of publishing is writable, Trends of smaller, easier, and more personal content signal a shift away from read-only publishing.

There are three convergence trends in publishing that are already apparent.

One clear long-term trend is that smaller pieces of information are being published. Considering just modern digital forms of publishing, there is a roughly chronological progression toward smaller publications: emails, Usenet postings, web pages, blog posts, blog comments, tweets, tags.

A second trend is a reduction in friction. As access to easy-to-use and inexpensive publishing technology increases, it becomes economically feasible to publish smaller and less valuable pieces of content. We have reached the point where anyone with access to the Internet can easily and cheaply publish trivial, tiny pieces of information — even single words.

The third trend is the rise of publishing personal information. Our inescapable sociability is driving us to shape the Internet into a mechanism for publishing information about ourselves.

These three trends — smaller, easier, more personal — provide a framework to examine the development of online information publishing.

Absolutely…

In a session at BarCampManchester4 titled Ebooks, I was invited to talk about my Kindle ebook reader. I said I have never bought a book from the Amazon Kindle store and may never do.

So the obvious thing people thought was that I download ebooks from questionable sources. But in actual fact most of my ebook collection is either creative commons licensed ebooks such as cory doctorow’s books or there self published content formed from scraping websites using the much loved calibre and its scripts. Its scripts work with everything from standard sites, google reader, instapaper, readitlater, etc, etc.

I’m not saying I’m a self publisher but if you do look at the percentage of ebooks I’ve made/republished compared to the ones I’ve bought or downloaded. Its clear going by my own habits is we going towards a writable, self publishing future.

Kindle everywhere your ebooks everywhere…

Kindle everywhere

Amazon are really cornering the reader market. Not only do they have one of the best ebook readers, but its also one of the cheapest (using there ability to ship many of them). But what really smashed it for them has to be the app which pretty much runs on everything. From PC’s to Android phones. Windows phone 7 to the ipad. Now there launching a kindle for the web. This will optimise any browser into a ebook reader. Impressive stuff.

But I’m worried…

This all seems to be out of the same play book as Apple and there itunes music ecosystem. I can already imagine the special links being sent around social networks pointing into the kindle ecosystem. The only saving grace is the kindle for the web.

Hopefully Amazon will follow the Google approach with these things and leverage the web not fight against it.

If Amazon screw up, Google seem to be right behind with there own ebook store.

What does this mean for the Kindle device, well this is all good news for the Kindle. Kindle is a fantastic eink device but shouldn’t be the only place to see ebooks. Hopefully more people will make there way through ebooks on devices like their phones then make there way towards reading on a eink device. I use to read my ebooks on my PDA (compaq ipaq) and it was painful but I found myself getting use to it. Now I can’t imagine using a phone or anything LCD like to read large amounts of text. But thats just me…

Its great Kindle is everywhere, and people can choose how they want to view the ebooks, period. Choice is good!

Now if they can just sort out the ability to buy a book and ebook version at the same time that would be great.

Robert’s web? Another internet inspired show

Roberts Web

Robert’s web joins the long list of TV shows built around web based content. However this one is more a combination of Know your meme, Inst msgs and the digg reel. Got to say its certainly a lot more funny that Rude Tube and a lot more topical that the digg reel. Not quite up to the level of Rocketboom when it was still popular but it certainly works for a mainstream tv show.

For Sale: Escape Magazine the almost complete set

Escape: Issue: 2Escape: Issue: 3Escape issue: 4Escape issue: 5Escape issue: 6

Escape issue: 7Escape issue: 8Escape issue: 9 Escape issue: 10Escape issue: 11

Escape Magazine seems to have almost no history or mention. There’s my blog post written in April this year and the magforum which has this reference.

Short-lived title from Maxim publisher Dennis aiming to explore the World-Wide Web. The first issue was withdrawn for legal reasons. Jennifer Aniston was on the cover.

Obayifo left a comment he had issue one, the one which was withdrawn. It must be worth a lot of money now? I could really do with issue one to complete my collection but then again I am selling my collection, if anyones interested?

Once again, I really do think Escape was a head of its time. It was .net magazine crossed with loaded or maxim. Its slant towards Internet culture was great. Yes it was a men’s magazine but beyond the front cover it had some very interesting articles. For example in issue 2 beyond the half naked cover of Sandra Bullock you had,

  • Emails of the rich and famous
  • Better that Sex?
  • Skin up? (about Tattoos)
  • Xmas Goodies
  • Net Girls
  • From Watchmen to Soul Men
  • Your place or mine? (about swinging)
  • I don’t need this pressure, Ron (Rob Atkinson vs Championship manager 2)
  • Surfing for the board generation
  • This man is sick (about a guy selling a very dodgy cdrom)
  • Orgasmatron (interview with mike saenz, creator of Virtual Valerie)

Ok maybe thats not the best advert for the magazine… *smile*

Someone did point me to den of geek which I have to say is not quite as punchy as Escape’s writing staff but its not a bad substitute.

Now time to make a start on the rave flyers…

Inception the most pirated movie on Bittorrent for the last month

Inception cover

Inception has been the most pirated movie on Bittorrent for the last month now. 4, 3, 2, 1 week(s) ago. And its had some very strong challengers from Scott Pilgrim, The social network and Wall street: Money never sleeps.

I did notice that when the HD version of Inception did hit the scene, the pirate bay was overloaded for a good few hours.

I’m sure the chief’s hollywood are cursing the scene for being so well organized and getting a hd rip out before they could get the retail DVD out. I’ve personally had my Inception Blu-ray/DVD/itunes (Triple Play) on pre-order for about 2 months now. I’m sure when Amazon do send it out, it will sit on my DVD rack with great prominence (my first blu-ray). Now I need to get myself a inception movie poster because they are great.

Also great to see Inception is still in position 4 of IMDB’s top 250 of all time right behind Godfather part 2.

Hacked Kinect, welcome to the future

Hacked kinect brings futuristic user interface Found via Tdobson on twitter,

Microsoft’s Kinect is a marvelous piece of technology. However with Microsoft trying to lock it with only the Xbox while there could be several amazing uses for it, Adafruit announced a bounty for anyone who develop an opensource driver for it.

Hector Martin developed the driver and won the bounty. He also released the driver as libfreenect. Now we have the first application which use libfreenect to use Kinect as an input device.

Interesting stuffs await!

Amazing!!! Kudos to the hackers, I can’t wait to hear what’s next…