Jason Clarke

If you have 11 spare minutes, I highly recommend you click over to Coudal Partners site to view their new short film, Copy Goes Here. It’s pretty darn good!

Okay, so some folks are suggesting that summer box office was down because the movies were bad. Bereft of proof until recently, they’re now claiming vindication because box office receipts are now up, in a time when “better” movies are traditionally released (the fall).

So…how to find out what’s really happening? There’s no absolute way to know without either polling every single American or perhaps qualifiying intangible factors such as theater quality, pricing, and etc. (again that may involve signifigantly complicated polling.)

But what about this if you’re looking for a way to see if movie quality really matters: Go to Rotten Tomatoes (or Metacritic) and tally up, then average the reviews of all movies released from May-August 2005. Then do the same for the same time period in 2004 (and perhaps even 2003). Then, compare the resulting years’ aggregate reviews with their box office numbers, and then you might have some fact to go with your conjecture.

My hypothesis? That movie quality and box office receipts are NOT corrollary. But hey, I could be wrong.

I just finished watching Empire Falls. My grade: F.

A school shooting? …a school shooting?

F, Russo.

F.

Going to see it tonight with my Dad.

UPDATE: Short review: It was pretty damn good. One thing that’s been bothering me over the past few weeks as I’ve been following all the reviews was the sheer extremity of the opinions. Some critics loved it, others hated it, and as time went on, I didn’t see much of a “middle space” evolve. I became convinced that both sides- the lovers and the haters- were simply over-reacting to their individual expectations, either met or failed.

After seeing it, I think my middleism was generally correct, with a slight tilt towards the lovers. You haters, back off and go home. It’s not fair to judge the film as a failure on your own set of unmet expectations. And to those who said it’s the best of the lot: whoah, nellie! Just because it’s the first good once since 1983 doesn’t mean we should start declaring it the best thing ever.

The ending was classic, the middle was damn good, and the dialogue was terrible. It was definitely a PG-13 movie though-there were at least two parts I thought went a bit far.

My rating: ***1/2

Today’s Tales from The Long Tail link is an interview with Peerflix co-founder Billy McNair by my closest-in-geography-blogger, F-Stop Blues‘ Tim Coyle. In the interview, Peerflix is explained (if you don’t know what it is, read the interview!), and its founder talks about the service’s bright future:

Currently people mail DVD’s to one another. Do you see a point where people might download digital copies of the movies instead of mailing them? It seems to me this service might be a great way to legalize P2P trading in some aspects.

While we think that the U.S. is still a few years away from the masses downloading digital movies, Peerflix is absolutely well positioned to take advantage of that opportunity when it arises. While early adopters will move to digital files of movies within the next couple years, the mainstream American consumer probably will not be at that point for at least 3-5 years. There are a number of factors in play to move to digital movies including, for example, integration of Internet connectivity/PC/television, as most people aren’t interested in watching movies on their PC. In addition, there are bandwidth and distribution limitations.

All that being said, Peerflix has the technology today to legally enable our members to trade digital movie files via the Internet. We are waiting for the right market opportunity in terms of technology adoption, consumer preferences and legal environment to deploy this technology to our user base.

But the best part of the interview came as McNair was taking about the advantages of Peerflix over more “traditional” models like Netflix. Here, I think McNair really hits the “long tail” moment of the interview:

Peeflix is a peer to peer network and, as such, Peerflix is able to keep overhead to a minimum. Peerflix has no regional distribution centers (in fact, every household in America is a Peerflix distribution center!) or other logistical overhead. As a result, Peerflix is able to save on these significant capital costs and pass this cost savings along to our members enabling them to receive DVDs that they’d like to watch for only $0.99 each!

Ouchie! The Professor reviews the new Star Wars movie, and let’s just say that he wasn’t a fan:

Actors’ words didn’t always sync perfectly with their lips, nobody even tried to capture room ambience to match the settings, and the lines often sounded dubbed — delivered as if into a microphone while reading hurriedly from a script, as they probably were. 90210 had more convincing acting.

The effects were great, but I couldn’t bring myself to care all that much. Really, nothing special, and, of course, drastically inferior to the original movies.

I’m planning to see it Tuesday night with my dad. I’m still holding out hope that my take is more in line with the many glowing reviews.

In this week’s Entertainment Weekly, one of my favorite writers, Stephen King, reviews the new Jimmy Fallon romantic sports comedy Fever Pitch- adapted for the screen from a book by another one of my favorite writers and directed by my favorite filmmakers.

The plot of the movie? It’s a chronicle of the highs and lows of following my favorite team.

Billy Bragg’s “”Must I Paint You A Picture“” (from Walking & Talking) is one of the best movie-ending-soundtrack-songs ever.

Sitting down to watch Die Another Day on special edition DVD, even though it doesn’t officially come out here in the US until tomorrow.

Thank you again, half.com.

On this desk that I’m sitting at, the left side of the slideout keyboard tray has been steadily detaching from the side of the desk for the past few days…every time I hear an ominous crack, the left side of the keyboard tilts down slighty to the left, leaving us typing on an ever-growing tilt.

Of course, I could easily take the time to slide out the tray, drill a new hole in the side of the desk, and put the tray back in right…but I think we all know that’s not happening until it breaks.

In better news, I picked up the new Die Another Day from our friends at Half.com. It’s got an entire disc of special features that look pretty amazing according to MI6, and besides, it’s the best Bond film to come along since Goldeneye, at least…