I’m going into NYC today to catch a bit of the Satoshi Kon program at the Walter Reade. I’ve seen all this stuff before, of course, but Mr. Kon himself is going to be there, so I can’t miss that!
Category: movies
Tribeca Film Festival
The film guide for the Tribeca Film Festival is up. I’m going to try to get into the city and catch a few films this year. I caught a few good ones last year, and I’m looking forward to finding a few interesting movies again this year. Here’s a list of some possibilities:
- Idiots and Angels: a new Bill Plympton film. I saw some of this (in rough form) at a Plympton panel last year in San Diego (I think). It looks like a lot of fun; the usual Plympton weirdness.
- The Caller: Frank Langella and Elliot Gould in a “neo-noir thriller.” It could be good.
- Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon: Historical Chinese epic. Sounds like it should have some nice battle scenes. And it’s got Sammo Hung!
- Terra: This appears to be a computer-animated SF movie. I don’t know much about it, but it looks interesting.
And that’s all just from a quick look. I’m going to have to get organized, figure out what’s showing when and where, and then see about getting tickets and getting into the city.
Peerflix is dead
I got an e-mail today indicating that Peerflix will be (mostly) shut down on April 23. They’re basically shutting down DVD trading, but leaving the web site up. I guess they think they can turn it into some kind of news portal, or a competitor to IMDB, or something like that. I got a fair number of DVDs through Peerflix, and traded away a fair number too. Not a lot, maybe a couple of dozen discs total. I always found the service to be a bit of a kludge, but it worked out fine for the most part.
LaLa, which is a similar site for CD trading, still seems to be somewhat active. I haven’t had any of my CDs requested in a while, so *I’m* not doing much on it, but it looks like other people are still getting something out of it.
I guess you could go with the assumption that on-demand movie downloads from places like Amazon and iTunes killed Peerflix, but I don’t know if that would be quite right. That’s probably part of it though. There’s really no way to make a lot of money just off the service fees on a DVD-trading site. If it’s really well-managed, you could probably make a small profit, but it’s not going to make anybody rich. Whoever was investing in Peerflix probably just figured that out.
This all plays into the general trend away from physical products and towards just pushing bits, whether it’s music, movies, software, or books. I still think physical products, in certain areas, are going to be important for some time to come. I think people are still going to buy books and DVDs, but I think we’re moving away from renting movies in physical form, and I think we’re eventually going to move away from “renting” hard copy books. We’ll eventually get some system set up where we can “borrow” e-books from our libraries, and check them out onto a Kindle or something similar. And I think Amazon will eventually allow for paid book rental on the Kindle — maybe it’ll cost $10 to buy a book, or $4 to rent it for a month. (Feel free to come back and read this post again in five years, and laugh at how wrong I am!)
HD-DVD stuff
When I bought my HD-DVD player back in November, there was a mail-in offer for 5 free discs. I’d mostly forgotten about it, but when I came home from work today, there was a bag outside my door with five HD-DVDs in it. The list of discs that you could pick from wasn’t great, but I did wind up with a few decent titles, and a couple of OK ones: Full Metal Jacket, The Thing, Darkman, The Frighteners, and The Italian Job. I don’t know if I’ll bother buying many more (or *any* more) HD-DVDs, since the format seems to be getting deader every day. Maybe if I find all the Harry Potter movies on sale at some point, I’ll pick those up, just to have a compete set.
Happy New Year
I didn’t do much today, aside from watching football. I’m not making any major resolutions this year either. I did make all the arrangements to go to WonderCon today though. As usual, I wasn’t really sure I wanted to go this year, but a few things convinced me to go again. Basically, a good guest lineup, plus a general desire to get out of New Jersey for a few days. And a chance to see the Chinese New Year Parade again!
I haven’t really done much reflection on 2007. Normally, I would get kind of reflective on New Year’s Day, but I haven’t really been in that frame of mind. Well, just for the heck of it, here are some things I’ve done in 2007:
Books and comics I’ve read and liked:
- Absolute Watchmen
- Nextwave
- David Allen’s Getting Things Done and Ready for Anything (though I haven’t finished RFA yet)
- the first two Jasper Fforde “Thursday Next” novels
- a couple of Jim Butcher “Harry Dresden” novels
Movies & TV shows I’ve enjoyed:
- Paprika (my favorite movie of the year, for whatever that’s worth)
- Once
- Ratatouille
- The Simpsons Movie
- Rise: Blood Hunter (okay, not exactly high-brow, but fun)
- Torchwood
- Life on Mars
- Heroes
Music I’ve liked:
- Wilco – Sky Blue Sky
- Ryan Adams – Easy Tiger
- Paul McCartney – Memory Almost Full
- Pizzicato Five – Made in USA (from 1994, but I’d never heard it until this year)
- Derek and the Dominoes – Layla (I only just got around to buying this CD in 2007)
Pointless stuff I’ve spent money on:
- new couch
- iPod Touch
- TomTom One LE GPS
- Dell Inspiron laptop
- MacBook
- Microsoft Office 2007
- Motorola SLVR
- 19″ widescreen LG monitor
- Toshiba HD-DVD player
Things I didn’t get around to doing:
- buying a new car (the old one’s still working, but maybe not for much longer)
- checking out the new Greek and Roman galleries at the Met
- visiting the new Morimoto restaurant in NYC
Well, that’s just a bunch of random lists off the top of my head. I guess the two big things that happened in 2007 for me were the office move my company did (from Edison to Somerset), and my mostly successful implementation of GTD.
Diva
Looks like one of my favorite films, Diva, is playing at the Film Forum soon. I haven’t seen this one in quite a while. I’m not sure why I like this movie so much, but it’s really great. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it on a big screen either; just on TV.
Airplane!
This is pretty much how I feel this week.
Once
I went into NYC and saw Once today. It’s really good. It’s a shame it’s not in more theaters. I haven’t listened to The Frames recently, but this film reminded me of how good they are. I may need to pull out a couple of old Frames CDs now, and/or pick up the Once soundtrack.
Bond
Film Forum is running a series of old James Bond films, starting at the end of this month. I’ve never seen any of the old ones on a big screen, so this might be fun. (I’ve seen them all a dozen times or more, I’d guess, but usually on TBS, or whichever cable channel happens to have the rights at the time.)
Hare Today, Gone Tomorrow
Here’s a good article about the decline of Roger Rabbit at Disney. I loved the original “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” movie. I’m not sure I care that much about Roger as a theme-park attraction, but it’s interesting nonetheless.