Having been a long time complusive music, movie, and book consumer, my new job at a used book store continues to educate on the ways of the buying public. While some of my co-workers and I enjoy the hunt, most of our customers want their copy of Eat, Pray, Love, that moment and more shockingly most don’t understand the how to go about looking for a book themselves if left to it.
We don’t order things. We don’t have to, and it helps business, because everybody always thinks they’ll be able to find a better deal somewhere. Who, though really wants to order from a store? It’s unnecessary. It’s a pain in the ass to order from a store. The internet allows for much more immediate gratification. Piracy is just the obvious byproduct of a generation with a short attention and enough technological knowhow to get what they want.
Hearing studios and record labels whine about losing money due to piracy only gets funnier when taken into consideration the number of critics who sell their promo swag to our store. We greet, with open arm the critics who come, loaded to the brim with advanced proofs, unopened cds, dvds, and boxed sets—some weeks before their street date.
There are no fools in these transactions.
The critics only have so much time and their periodicals or television or radio station gigs only give them so much space to discuss their views on this stuff. It’s not like they’re renting the products. We on the other hand are more than happy to buy the unopened Family Ties Third Season, that for whatever fucking reason Paramount thought this needed a critic’s attention2. Any attention it might receive is probably cheaper than creating an advertising campaign, but money is money and they’re they’re giving their product away. Should it make a difference if it’s Family Ties or an Arcade Fire album?Studios and labels exchange the chance at free publicity for the risk that their cherished product might get passed along to many people’s hands for free.
If someone was really that concerned about policing piracy and leakage why would screeners of There Will Be Blood be floating around and it would take nothing more than entering a few words into a Google to access it?
Also consider, as a critic, you’ve already sat through a press screening of say, Gone Baby Gone. You liked it enough. You wrote the review. Job done. Three months later it’s scheduled to be released on dvd. Padded envelope arrives, unsolicited, in your mail from the studio. Your media outlet doesn’t care to spare the space to revisit it or review the dvd. What do you do with it? Might as well make some money or gift it.
”The albums and videos and movies come quickly; they’re thoroughly checked by the community, they’re well organized, they have standards of quality, and they’re free. To beat that, you need to offer content that’s just as fast, just as good, just as organized, and then give something extra to compensate for the “free” part: higher quality bitrates, extra digital content, extra physical content (shirts, concert tickets, coupons). You can’t miss out any of these elements because your content will ultimately be worse than the stuff on Mininova or The Pirate Bay.
The industry stabs itself in the foot. They add those annoying “piracy is a crime” trailers to DVDs which you can’t skip and which just make you go and download the XviD version. They add DRM and rootkits to their media which makes pirated content, well, a 100 times better than theirs simply because it’s annoyance-free. They often have crappy online shops and support some weird media formats instead of using what most people use. Their content, simply put, sucks compared to pirated content.”
If studios and label wanted to put a dent into piracy they would be more accountable with their marketing and they’d take more attempts to secure their product.
This is more of an optimistic assertion than a gut feeling.[back]
and, without any bonus features beyond a gag reel and episodic promos who among us, who isn’t a M.J.F Fan or a Family Ties completist doesn’t feel cheated?[back]
The Coens have been all over the place with their last few movies, No Country for Old Men looks to be more in the vein of Miller Crossing, Fargo, and the Man Who Wasn’t There than some of their broader stuff. Thankfully a wider audience be exposed to Cormac McCarthy’s work and Javier Bardem, who looks like he’s taking this role and knocking it out of the park.
Looks just badass.
Next:
The Cusack family reunites in a pitch black political comedy that looks like a Grosse Pointe Blank sequel or at least a karmatic cousin. Makes no matter to me how the pieces come together, it looks to be the making of another Cusack flick that will spend a lot of time in my DVD player.
Remeber in school often once a year they’d have Career Day?
People’s relatives might come in and discuss what a lawyer does. What it’s like to be a firefighter or nurse.
Memory doesn’t serve me, if any journalists or writers ever spoke. There’s only one adult that I knew that wrote fiction and worked at a newspaper, and that never paid her well enough to make it a full time gig.
The big advice given to us kids was “Do what you love. And, you’ll never work a day in your life,” or some cheesey smile variation.
Figuring out what to do with career advice, especially nuggets of wisdom like the one above has been a struggle for me the last few years.
Considering this information from a study Para Publishing.com that struggle may not ever get easier.
1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
42% of college graduates never read another book after college.
80% of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.
70% of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
57% of new books are not read to completion.
70% of books published do not earn back their advance or make a profit.
The late great John D. MacDonald wrote in the forward to Stephen King’s Night Shift how he approached his compulison to write.
“I am often given big smiling handshakes at parties (which I try to avoid attending whenever possible) by someone who then with an air of gleeful conspiracy, will say, “You know, I’ve always wanted to write.”
I used to try to be polite.
These days I reply with the same jublient excitement: “You know I’ve always wanted to be a brian surgeon.”
They look puzzled. It doesn’t matter. There are a lot of puzzled people wandering around lately.
If you want to write, you write.”
Makes me wish John D. MacDonald could have spoken at one of those Career Days, but at least his advice can still be sought. Just remebering to keep at it, even if the odds are against you.
Our favorite meathead Marky “the Academy Award nominee” Mark Wahlberg is starring in the same movie Keenan Ivory Wayans did, that another marble mouthed lunk-head Dolph Lundgren did , that you guess it, Wesley Snipes is going to be making too.
Hopefully he savored those precious moments before they said: “...And the Oscar goes to—Alan Arkin!”, because that’s as close as Mark Wahlberg will be getting to an Oscar.
The Shooter(1995)
Dolph Lundgren stars as a CIA who agent gets caught up in political intrigue after he gets brought in to solve the murder of a Cuban ambassador.
Tag Line: “Seduction is a deadly weapon!”
What the critics said: “While Jean-Claude Van Damme, his erstwhile rival in the Euro Action Hero stakes, ploughs on in A-picture productions, Dolph Lundgren, who showed greater acting range when they were paired in Universal Soldier, gets stuck in dreck like this.”—from Time Out London
Most Wanted (1997)
When the first lady is assassinated, an honored soldier becomes a hunted fugitive.
Tag line: “Sometimes the most patriotic thing a Marine can do… is disobey orders. From most honored to Most Wanted.”
What the critics said: “Most Wanted, opening today at Bay Area movie theaters, is idiotic entertainment done with skill. The action thriller packs a lot of fun into 99 minutes, with star Keenen Ivory Wayans cutting an impressive path as a sharpshooting hero.”—-Peter Stack, San Francisco Chronicle
“Most Wanted is an overly familiar B-grade action flick, written by and starring Keenen Ivory Wayans.”—- Jack Garner Democrat and Chronicle.
Shooter (March 23,2007)
A marksman (Mark Wahlberg) living in exile is coaxed back into action after learning of a plot to kill the president. Ultimately double-crossed and framed for the attempt, he goes on the run to track the real killer and find out who exactly set him up, and why.
Tag line: “Yesterday was about honor. Today is about justice.
“What the critics say: Manohla Dargis, The New York Times: “A natural screen presence, Mr. Wahlberg is charmingly sincere (he’s like a cruder, more street Matt Damon), though when he sheds his clothes, the glint in his eyes is as knowing as that of an old Vegas stripper.”
Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: “Oscar-nominated for The Departed, Wahlberg is a brooding, convincing actor who seems to gain confidence and improve with every role. With Shooter, he is called on to carry the picture while adding enough conviction to make its numerous Mission: Impossible implausibilities seem reasonable. He does it and makes it look easy.”
Coming to a theater later this year: The Shooter.
A marksman (Wesley Snipes) living on his ranch in Montana is coaxed back into action to kill a terrorist who he missed killing while on duty. After succeeding in killing Jahar he is ultimately double-crossed and framed for killing a high ranking policeman (Charles Dance). He then goes into hiding and befriends a young 12 year (Bennet) old girls helps him.
Let’s not and say we did.Departed director Martin Scorsese and screenwriter William Monahan work on extending the francise.
The cast for the new Aaron Sorkin play, The Farnsworth Invention, has been announced for the La Jolla Playhouse workshop.
Keeping it Real.Real stupid. Bradley Tech and Bay View fans can’t act like civilized human beings and just watch a fucking basketball game without acting like a bunch of low class assholes. Good job, and thanks again for ruining things for everyone else.
The Onion A.V. has two great interviews with people I admire: Ricky Gervais and Ed Norton.
The last few weeks, I’ve been pouring over the work of Ed Brubaker, current writer of Marvel’s Captain America, X-Men, and Daredevil. For at least a year, everyone I know who loves crime comics screams Brubaker’s name whenever they’re stuck listening to me complain about having nothing good to read. Sleeper, GothamCentral, Scenes of a Crime, and a few issues of Catwoman have sat untouched mostly because I had trouble getting into Point Blank, a noir prequel to Sleeper, that requires finishing in one sitting to truly appreciate what Brubaker was attempting to do with the circular plot structure.Fishing around on eBay, enabled me to get copies of Accidental Death and The Fall two stories that hark back to the noir traditions of David Goodis, James M. Cain, and Jim Thompson’s America and well worth the effort to track down.
Brubaker’s two most talked about current books at Marvel Captain America and Daredevil each comes with it’s own unique challenges and baggage. Captain America, an iconic masthead of Marvel’s comics for 60 years has always been a bland one dimensional poster boy. Brubaker breathed some life into Cap. by tearing open old wounds and twisting plot lines enough to give him more dimensions. Having never been a fan of Captain America myself, Brubaker’s injection of more espionage and corruption make Cap interesting enough to forgive the fact that he manages to take down scores of armed terrorists with only a shield with boomerang like qualities and his heightened strength.
Following Brian Bendis’ legendary five year shake-up of Daredevil, Brubaker and penciler Michael Lark’s hit the ground running, never missing a beat with their first arch “The Devil In Cell Block D”. Writers tend to be at their best when they’re putting their characters through hell and so far Brubaker’s take on Daredevil continues to surprise and tantalize with every issue.
Prime example—Daredevil #86, which page for page stands as twenty-two of the best pages I’ve read so far this year because of Brubaker’s obsession with putting Matt Murdock in the worst possible situation.
Later this October, Brubaker returns to more of a traditional crime comic with Criminal.
As Ed told Newsarama.com about Criminal, “So, you say, “Yeah, Daredevil’s okay, and I like Captain America, but I really dug Ed Brubaker’s crime stuff. In fact, the stuff he did when Sean Phillips illustrated, like in Sleeper... man, if only he’d do another book like that.”
That time has come. Brubaker and Phillips sound like they’re going to have a field day crafting a very distinct new entry into the crime genre and I can’t wait.
Forget St. Bono and all of U2, their five phonograph shaped statues, rewarded for their most mediocre and undeserving album of their iconic career.
Forget Gwen Stefani, nothing but eye candy without her bandmates, even if someone told her she could be a “solo artist”.
Forget Kelly Clarkson and her mass produced pile of shit that beat out an album Fiona Apple put more time into crafting each individual song than all of Clarkson’s entire album combinded.
That’s the Grammys for you and that’s why nobody much remembers who wins anyways.
Their album had been all over the Fat Possum site, and the good folk there haven’t steered me wrong yet with their artists. I bought the album and enjoyed it. Seeing them play at Club Tavern in Madison, with the Heartless Bastards really put me over the top.
