Dealing with the entertainment singularity

We are already at an entertainment singularity. Not only is there already more entertainment of every form (books, movies, TV, cat videos) than any one person could experience in a lifetime, but we are already producing far more of it than any person could hope to keep up with. What is the best way to deal with this flood? I have a system where I keep a very large list of items, carefully prioritised, and add anything new to the list so that it gets the same chance of washing up on my beach as anything else. It is, however, always getting longer, and will continue to do so for the rest of my life.

The only other way I can imagine dealing with it all is to learn to let go of the idea of doing the "best" things and just let absolutely everything wash over me all at once, doing whatever new thing I have time for right now and forgetting about the rest forever. Is there a new book coming out, but I'm reading another one? Too bad, new book. I guess I'll see you in Heaven. New TV show, but I have no time? Oh, well. I guess I'll never know what it was about.

That feels like giving up, to me. I know being the latest thing doesn't mean it's the greatest. I just can't let go like that.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I guess most other people are already at that last stage.
PPS - I might have a fear of missing out.

Cinderella is not an insulting name

With the movie "Cinderella" opening in Australian cinemas today, it seemed time to make this observation. To me, it's never made much sense, in the story of Cinderella, for her name to be an insult. I mean, I do understand that it's meant to refer to her menial household labour, especially cleaning the chimney, but from a purely linguistic point of view, "Cinderella" is a remarkably beautiful name. Flowing and feminine, and reminiscent of the common observation that "cellar door" is one of the most beautiful phrases in English. "Cinderella" and "cellar door" are just a couple of letters away from being anagrams of each other.

So, to me, using "Cinderella" as an insult name has the same kind of meaning as saying "We'll call you Rainbow McBeautifulface Sexybody Unicorn Glitter! Ha! See how you like that!" You know they're trying to be insulting, but it's just coming out all wrong.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If you want an insulting name, just go for "Poop".
PPS - It's not as creative, but there's no chance of confusion.

Learning actors' names

I make it a point to learn actors' names once I've known them in two or more performances I've enjoyed, or in one very significant one. This is why I know names like Christian Kane and Morena Baccarin. It's important to me to know them as a name rather than a vague collection of typecast roles, like "that guy who was a lawyer in Angel, then the tough guy in Leverage and also the Librarians".

I also sometimes deliberately learn the name of "the other guy" in famous movie duos. Like Keanu Reeves and that other guy in Bill and Ted. Even though Alex Winter hasn't worked much since then, I'd hate to be known as just "the other guy", so I do them the courtesy I'd expect for myself.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Now, if only I could be this good about the people I actually meet.
PPS - I've proven I can do it. I just need to focus.

Diversifying Hollywood

Hollywood may need to start doing more with less in the future. Putting all their eggs in very few baskets of the "traditional" Summer blockbuster is going to prove a more and more risky proposition until all we get year to year are endless Transformers sequels, cut and pasted from previous scripts. Sooner or later, someone will stumble onto the obvious idea of diversifying their portfolio, figuring out how to make better movies for less money or just making a wider variety of movies.

I think, in general, the days of the behemoth movie companies are numbered. When they collapse, there will be a lot of creative people with nothing to do, but a love of movies and visual entertainment. Those people will probably start making lots of smaller movies on shoestring budgets and putting them online.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - For some people, that's probably all they can do, and so they did.
PPS - And I'm glad for it.

How Netflix could affect Australian streaming entertainment for the better

It seems Netflix is gearing up for an Australian launch, perhaps at the beginning of 2015. This sounds like really good news for Australia, and it is, but it might not be quite what we were hoping for.

The Netflix name in the USA is associated with cheap streaming content for a very low, flat monthly fee. The closest thing we have so far in Australia is Quickflix, who favour a slightly different "Pay-N-Play-N-Pay" model where you pay a relatively cheap monthly fee for streaming access, then (typically) pay several dollars extra for each TV show episode or movie you want to watch. The other major player in this space is Foxtel, who now charge $25 per month for their basic package and offer similar content to your defunct local DVD rental place, but on their schedule, plus Game of Thrones.

Quickflix, so far, has a pretty disappointing range of titles. Movies are typically only available to "rent" for streaming as long as they are new-release DVDs and it's a pretty safe bet that the obscure old TV show you desperately want to watch isn't on there. Foxtel behaves about the same, when you think about it.

There are two ways Netflix could bring some much-needed disruption into this space. One, a vast library of content currently unavailable in any way, shape or form to Australians. Existing dinosaurian regional distribution deals mean this probably won't happen, because they were signed by crusty old rich white dudes to whom "internet" is that weird noise their grandkids keep making. The second possible disruption is price. If I were to guess, I'd say Netflix is likely to cost a flat fee of $15 per month in Australia because suck it, Australia, what are you gonna do, cry about it? If they aren't charging extra fees for the exact same content as Quickflix, that will pretty much force Quickflix to drop their streaming rental fees, too, or else lose all their customers. However, if Netflix are forced by distribution agreements to charge extra fees for new movie streaming, and they don't get extra content, there's very little reason to prefer them over Quickflix. We'll just have to wait and see, I guess.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - This is not the first we've heard news of Netflix Australia.
PPS - There are perpetual rumours.

Mockumentaries

There should be separate words for fake documentary films made for humour and fake documentary films made as pranks or for similar purposes. I'll lump in those made to show off video editing skills with that second group. Right now, the best word we have for them both is "mockumentary", and I don't feel that covers the second case very well.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - There's also "docufiction", but I struggle to see that one taking off.
PPS - Perhaps two words for such similar concepts would be confusing.

Movie/novel borderlines

If you were being kind of weird about it, you could try making a movie that was all text. Just frame after frame of words for the audience to read, like the Star Wars prefaces, but for the entire movie. At that point, would it still be considered a movie, or would it be more of a novel presented in video form?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Also, ebooks could easily contain video, so you could do the opposite.
PPS - A bit like this, from CollegeHumor: The Kindle 3.

Declining cinema attendance might not be a problem

Is declining movie theatre attendance a problem to be solved? Well, first of all, Hollywood continues to report record profits every year, so they probably have nothing to worry about for the forseeable future.

Declining cinema attendance is either a sign of change in the entertainment industry or an opportunity. Either you go with it and, basically, bank on streaming services for home use, or you produce a better cinema-centric experience that people can't get elsewhere. Not just a bigger screen and louder speakers, and definitely not 3D. Something fundamentally new to go in that space so recently vacated by all those cinema audiences. Think about what people will gleefully pay for in a public space like that, not what they will grudgingly pay for because it's the only way.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The answer is also probably not "vaudeville" or "musical theatre".
PPS - If I knew the answer, I'd be on my way to doing it already.

Hollywood should embrace crowdfunding

For any movie that Hollywood is afraid to fund themselves, they should use crowdsourced funding. Can't bring yourself to back a Wonder Woman or Black Widow movie? Ask the fans for the cash. Let them pre-pay their cinema ticket price or DVD purchase price and see if the idea has legs. Then, when you drown in all the money, just go ahead and make the movies, would you? Please?

Seriously, someone needs to start a whole movie studio based on the crowdfunding model. Imagine their website as just a list of potential projects, the required budget and the current funding level. Even the backer rewards would be pretty simple to set up. Cinema tickets, DVD/Blu-Ray discs, posters, autographed portraits of the stars or maybe, at very high investment levels, a share in the profits. It would look like any online shopping cart system, except either you don't get charged right away or the money goes into escrow until funding targets are met or the funding deadline falls through. Veronica Mars proved that crowdfunding works to make movies, but also that the existing movie studios are terrible at thinking of their customers as investors instead of wallets attached to eyeballs.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The old guard are still pulling record profits, though.
PPS - So maybe their way is working well enough for now.

Hugo Something

I am somehow constantly forgetting Hugo Weaving's name. I forget it for a while, go around in my head trying to remember it, usually bringing up "Hugh Jackman" as something similar and immediately discarding it, but the only other suggestion that ever seems to come to mind after that is "Jack Human", then "Something Hu-something" and white noise static. So I look it up, smack my forehead, vow to definitely, really remember it this time, only for it to come up a few days later and to draw a complete blank.

It's Hugo Weaving, brain. Hugo Weaving.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I very nearly typed "Hugh Jackman" again there.
PPS - Hugo.

Riddick

As much as I want to see Riddick, the third movie starring Vin Diesel as an escaped convict and murderer as anti-hero, I think someone lost track of what Pitch Black, the first movie, was about. Riddick was a big part of that story, but it was a story about redemption, forgiveness, trust and cooperation in the face of life-threatening danger. By contrast, the sequels are about Riddick being an amazing badass in the face of explosions. That's not a story at all.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm aware I missed it in cinemas.
PPS - Right now, I'm not too cut up about that.

Misleading documentary interviewees

How common and accepted is it in documentary circles to lie and mislead interviewees by telling them you have one goal while secretly pursuing another? I ask because it seems to be an accusation leveled at documentary filmmakers when they have managed to include a "hostile witness" or anyone who disagrees with the film's central idea. So do people making documentaries go in with that goal - to lie in order to get the interviews - or is the making of a documentary such fluid and uncertain work that you can barely pin it down before it is finished? That's the best benefit of the doubt I can assert here, and it sounds weak.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's also possible that interviewees misunderstand the situation.
PPS - But just as possible that this was the intended result.

Friday Writing Update - I've been doing it wrong again

When I stopped posting weekly flash fiction here, it was so that I would not be putting half-finished, dodgy work out in public and ruining a nascent reputation before it was formed.

I also pretty much stopped writing weekly flash fiction. I took away my deadline, and I stopped doing work. I kept editing for a second draft of my first novel, but that's not so much writing. It's writing out again some of what I wrote before, and it's not satisfying in the same way.

I don't know if there's a good solution to both of those issues at once, but I think I'd rather be writing than not, so I may have to start posting stories here again. We'll see next week.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I did, however, write those two entries for the PodCastle flash fiction contest.
PPS - And I've already started completely rewriting one of them, because it was all tell, no show.

Videotaping plutonium on Back to the Future

I had a thought while watching Back to the Future the other day. We see Marty with an 80s-era video camera filming Doc Brown inserting plutonium into the time machine's reactor. Both he and the Doc are wearing radiation suits, but the camera is not shielded. So here's my question: would the radiation from the plutonium have any effect on the magnetic recording heads in the camera? Judging by the thin suits Doc and Marty are wearing, I'd say it's likely the camera's case would be protection enough, but I'm not sure. If those suits are not accurate for the amount of plutonium being handled, then it might have an effect, right?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Obviously I can't test this myself.
PPS - I also can't find whether anyone else has tested it.

R.I.P.D.

Is R.I.P.D. a kind of extreme Ghostbusters reboot? It's almost the same premise, except instead of being a small group of underdogs trying to catch ghosts in the open, it's a massive supernatural organisation catching ghosts in secret. So, a bit, maybe, I guess? When I see it, I'll let you know, if I remember.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I also see shades of "Dead Like Me".
PPS - Which, in turn, was a loose adaptation of Piers Anthony's "On A Pale Horse".

My Do Not See movie list

I'm starting to find it useful to keep a "do not see" list for movies or, more accurately, directors, writers and producers. It's not big (in fact, it only has two entries on it) but it is based on recurrent disappointments that I can now avoid in the future. I'm not going to show the list, though, for two reasons. One, although it's helpful to me, it's a bit of negativity that I don't want to put out there. The people whose movies I choose not to see don't need that from me. Two, it reflect only my personal tastes. The fact that these people have made movies at all puts them far higher on the popularity ladder than me, and I'm just a consumer, not a producer. There are clearly people who like those movies, and the fact that I do not like them doesn't affect that judgement at all.

The list isn't foolproof, either. There's at least one movie that violates the list that I really enjoyed, and maybe others will appear in the future. I just think that it's useful to note which movies you did not enjoy seeing, and to note the reasons why or just the principal agents (writer, director, producer, actors). If some of those names keep coming up, it might be worth noting them so you don't waste time or money again.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'm going to go against my list at least once this year, I think.
PPS - The trailer for that movie looks like a different style than what I usually see from that production company.

We should gender-swap the next superhero movies

I think, just for kicks and balance, the next round of superhero movie reboots should be gender-swapped. Not the weak-sauce "distaff counterpart" characters, but real, from-scratch reimaginings. Not Batgirl. I want to see Batwoman, a kickass, strong, independent crime fighter. Bring on Patricia Parker, Clarice Kent and Beatrice Wayne!

Mokalus of Borg

PS - And Tanya Stark, while we're at it.
PPS - We really should try a female Doctor Who, too.

So much entertainment, so little time

There are so many books that I want to read, and so many new ones that will come out in the meantime, that I will probably never get through them all in my lifetime. The same goes for many other aspects of life. There are too many movies to see, too much TV to watch, too many articles to read, too many people to meet, too many careers to try. This is what I mean when I say that life is too short: the world is much too big to ever experience it all.

The upshot of all this is that, if there's not enough time to read all the books I want to read, I certainly don't have time to go back and read any over again. I don't have time to watch TV series a second time around, or to watch any of my movies again. So from that point of view, there's not much point collecting them. There's no reason to build a library of books or DVDs, because I can never afford the time to read or watch any of them again. Once I'm done with them, I have no reason to keep them. All my entertainment is disposable.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - A personal library is like a shrine to good memories.
PPS - In that way, it's a lot like photo albums. You can't go back there, but you can remember.

Watching movies on the train

Over the course of a week, I watched Christopher Nolan's Batman movies on the train to and from work with a small portable DVD player. The experience was not especially satisfying. The screen was small and the backlight poor, so half the time I was just imagining what was going on while I listened and watched a mostly-black screen. The very dark movies probably didn't help in this regard. The other unfortunate aspect of the screen was the resolution. The widescreen movies seemed to be squashed vertically somehow. Sound was adequate, through my headphones, and the player didn't struggle keeping the discs playing while the train jostled me around. So, on the whole, I only recommend this practice for well-lit movies that are low on action. Also, it would work better on 30-minute TV shows rather than 2-hour movies that have to be broken up into pieces.

For comparison, next I watched the Matrix trilogy on my netbook, which has a bigger, brighter, higher-resolution screen. They are similarly dark action movies, so the comparison should be valid. The results were much more satisfying, which proves that screen size and quality are a pretty important factor when watching video. But you already know that. To be completely fair, the weather during Batman Week had been very bright and sunny, while during the Matrix week it was overcast, so there wasn't as much direct sunlight to battle with the netbook screen. Sound on the Matrix movies was more of a problem, but that's a known issue with The Matrix anyway - quiet dialogue followed by loud action and music. Also, the netbook was slower to start up and shut down than the DVD player, which meant I got through slightly less of the movies on each trip.

The goal of this whole experiment was to find a good way to fit more movies into my life in the small pieces of spare time I have. I proved that I could do it on the train, if need be, but in the end, I started resenting the time it was taking away from my reading and writing. So I think, if I must, I will watch movies at lunchtime on my computer at work, instead of struggling with small screens on a loud, moving train.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If I had to do it again, I'd use the netbook.
PPS - But I don't have to.

Better spies than James Bond

To me, James Bond has never seemed very interesting as a character. What's interesting about Bond seems to be what happens around him. He's got a bunch of gadgets that come in handy at just the right moment, cool cars and fast women. The man himself doesn't even seem to matter very much to the story, except that he's there to set off his gadgets at the right time.

To me, a spy is most interesting when you take away all the gadgets, the resources and the backing of a government agency. The interesting part is their training that allows them to survive on their own, despite the odds. It's why Jason Bourne and Michael Westen appeal to me a lot more than James Bond. Before the reboot with Daniel Craig, Bond was all about gadgets, cars and women, over-the-top villains and ridiculous plots. What I liked about Casino Royale was that they took all of that stuff away from Bond - to such an extent that there wasn't even a Q in it - and made Bond work with much less. That, plus the opening parkour scene, made it the first memorable Bond movie I had ever seen.

Then, of course, they started bringing it all back and I lost interest again. And that's okay, as long as someone else keeps making spy movies that are about spies, not toys.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - From now on, I will refer to James Bond movies as "toy movies" instead of "spy movies".
PPS - It really sounds different like that.