Movies

I originally said this on Engadget HD, but it bears repeating:

Warner has seemed to have created a landside of Blu-ray exclusivity announcements in the market lately due to their announcement that they will be dropping the HD-DVD format soon, and I believe this is all about the overall marketing of the high-definition formats.

The truth is that the average consumer is perfectly fine with DVDs, or for that matter, upscaling DVD players. That’s what the industry is finding.

Blu-ray, however, is being successfully perceived to be a videophile format. Like Laserdisc, it’s been received well by the minority of users who are interested in high-definition discs as a new format for movies.

HD-DVD however is not. It is being perceived as an incremental successor to DVD, a resolution and format that many people exceedingly comfortable with right now (see also RoughlyDrafted article on Why Low Def Is The New HD). It also persists the perception of a compatibility issue that doesn’t even really exist — A Blu-ray player can play normal DVDs just as well as an HD-DVD player can play normal DVDs. But the name itself, seems to imply a level of support that just isn’t there. Whenever I’ve been asked about the HD disc, this is one of the very first questions: Can I play HD DVDs on my regular DVD player?

Regarding price, HD-DVD’s strength is that it speaks best to an audience which is still showing complete indifference to the format, since current DVD players offer the best price and best selection. As one clever commenter pointed out, the idea that HD-DVD would win handily over Blu-ray has a lot to do with the perceived victory of VHS over Beta. Back then, there was nothing else to choose from, so whichever format provided the content that everyone wanted was the one that won. However, DVDs are as plentiful as a format can get, and with the right DVD players, still look great on an HD television.

Blu-ray represents a new market, made up of people who don’t care about the old DVD name. HD-DVD is one that is trying to upgrade an existing market, one that is resisting pretty strongly right now. And in the studios’ minds there’s no point in continuing a war between two camps if one of them seems to actually confuse consumers & compete with the healthy DVD format. This way, they can streamline disc manufacturing, have a clearer marketing message for videophiles vs. the average Joe, and can spend that extra energy figuring out this whole “online distribution” thing that is the true DVD format successor.

Just a quick summary/review of V for Vendetta (2006) from a fan of the original graphic novel:

Alan Moore’s graphic novel is about human nature, and how the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The movie, on the other hand, is much more deliberate about manipulation. Where the resolution of both the novel and of the movie is about people waking up from a nightmare and taking back control, the movie is quite literal about this in the political sense.

Is the movie a good movie? Absolutely. And by providing a clear antagonist and elements of conspiracy, it does help give a certain focus to the film that allows it to be enjoyed, well, like an action movie that gives you a hero to cheer and root for, and a villain to wish downfall on.

Moore, I believe, struggled hard to keep his novel from being entirely political. His story is about freedom from fear in the purest sense, and not simply the kind of fear implanted by a fascist government, and so in the novel he gets to comment on just how people can convince themselves they want a fascist government. Understanding this, I can see why he’d react so strongly against this version. V is anarchist in his novel not because he wants chaos, but because he doesn’t want leaders: he wants people to lead themselves.

So do yourself a favor—see the movie AND read the graphic novel as well, and you will see the story of V in so much more depth.

If you’re going to launch a site with RSS, and it’s mostly “Coming Soon” content—it’s a movie site, and most movie sites follow this pattern of post-the-teaser-trailer-then-do-a-big-launch-later—then for god’s sake, don’t make the RSS feed one of the Coming Soon items. That’s the main purpose of RSS: to be alerted when there is more content on the site.

[Spoilers ahead]

The biggest hurdle Spielberg’s War of the Worlds had is our audience’s insatiable urge for everything to make sense.

When Superman was created, it was enough to say that he was an alien and in Earth’s environment he had powers. Today’s Superman? Well, he’s a huge solar collector, absorbing power from the radioactive waves of yellow stars blah blah blah…I don’t care. Why do people need so much realism in their escapism?

Via Hacking Netflix, via Scripting News…:

Ultimately, though, the worst thing that ever happened to movies happened when audiences began treating theaters like their living rooms. Their chatter destroyed the essential thrill of sitting in the dark sampling the Zeitgeist with hundreds of other people.

So here’s a message to Hollywood: You want us back? Bring back the usher. Not clueless, giggling teenagers but real ones, scary ones, like the chap in the picture above. The meaner the better, too, with full powers to evict talkers and other noisemakers. With an army of ushers, who will need roadblocks?

—Wall Street Journal

When we saw Batman Begins? A sea of cell phones and babies. So yeah, I’m agreeing with the WSJ.

[Edited 2005-07-19] Gothamist’s got its own bit of movie-goer fun joy to share. Not to dig up the usual are-a-parent/aren’t-a-parent clashes, but it certainly seems like most parents don’t know how to handle their crying children in public spaces these days…

And Pac-Mac is eating it. Well, not specifically Pac-Man, but the gaming industry in general.

Last weekend I went to see Revenge of the Sith. During the opening ads, at least 50% of the ads shown were for video games. Two of them were even presented movie-trailer style, like the spot for Forza Motorsports, the most polished of the bunch.

Now, I followed E3 on TV this year—thanks to Cablevision who seems to be the only carrier of G4 in the New York City area—and the main thing I took away from the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 demos was that Hollywood is in a lot of trouble. And I was reminded of this as I watched this Xbox Live experience on the big screen.

Yes, this isn’t a new statement. No, this isn’t something we haven’t already seen unfold in retail and the box office. But it’s a new shift in the trends framing that activity. Just take a look at the effects shown in the next-generation console demos and decide how long the big Hollywood blockbuster can last, especially when you consider some key points: