guttervomit

46

Of Failed Startups

30 May 2008

Octales was in the news today, kind of:

After several failed attempts to create a compelling social networking service in the past, a co-founder of a Philippines-based software startup is finally attracting several local investors to bet on a relatively new idea: a real-time, collaborative storytelling social service.

Not exactly the most flattering portrayal (of what is invariably the truth, so it’s not like I’m denying it or anything), but I suppose beggars can’t be choosers, as they say. Interestingly, one of the old-school highfiber members . I suppose if it were possible to evaluate success solely on the rabid nature of a website’s visitors, then yeah, HF was pretty successful. On the other hand, its charm was mostly because of the fact that it felt really underground and obscure, so “unbridled success” just wasn’t in its DNA.

Also, I always find it strange when people refer to me by my last name, e.g.:

Buenaventura said Octales hopes to differentiate itself because it is more interactive than rival social networking services.

Maybe I should come up with a shorter, catchier name like “Bono” or “Cher.”

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4

5 Things I Absolutely Hated About Indiana Jones IV

24 May 2008
So I’m now on my 3rd summer movie from my list of 15, and thus far the only one I’ve really enjoyed is Iron Man. Speed Racer was total crap, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull – the film I had such high hopes for – was only marginally better. The following is my attempt to itemize the various creative and conceptual issues I had with this fourth installment, and to build the case that this was overall the worst of the series. (If you haven’t seen Indy IV yet, you will probably want to skip the rest of this article, although to be very honest, I think I’d be doing you a favor if I spoiled it.)
1. The Whole Ancient Aliens Premise. Here’s the thing guys. We’re living in a post-X-Files world. We’ve seen Stargate and its various TV offspring. If you’re going to decide that you want to tell us a story about prehistoric alien settlers, you’re gonna have to get a writer who’s a lot less burned-out than George Lucas, and ideally, does a little bit more research on what other people have already said and done in this crowded sub-genre. For crying out loud, they used that ancient-aliens plot in AVP!
2. Shia, King of the Apes. Remember that sequence in Spider-man 3, where Tobey Maguire dons emo threads and ? Well, Shia’s jungle-vine swinging sequence felt a lot like that. It was so jarringly unbelievable that, had this been a perfectly decent movie, it would have singlehandedly ruined the whole thing. (Of course, it turns out that Indy IV was positively riddled with issues, so it’s hardly unique in that regard.)
3. Warriors popping out of the temple walls. Wait … we saw this trick in The Mummy Returns 6 years ago, didn’t we? Lucas should know. His company created the visual effects for it.
4. Underground city of gold fills up with water. And I’m pretty sure we saw this exact same sequence in National Treasure 2 less than a year ago as well.
5. Our treasure is … knowledge! And believe it or not, we’ve seen this humdinger as well, 14 years ago in a made-for-TV movie called MacGyver: Lost Treasure of Atlantis. I’ve been hunting around for the precise quote, but it doesn’t appear to be anywhere online. A number of other reviewers have made the MacGyver-Indy connection here and here though.
Now, I’ve been a fan of Indiana Jones for as long as I can remember. I’ve often argued that these newer high-adventure movies – National Treasure, The Mummy, Sahara, Fool’s Gold, etc. – are just feeble attempts at recreating the magic of the original Indy trilogy. Nicholas Cage, Brendan Fraser and Matthew McConaughey’s characters in those movies are just facets of Harrison Ford’s, who still plays the reckless, intelligent, wry adventurer better than all of these other hacks put together.

The biggest disappointment to me is that this fourth installment saw what was once the pinnacle of the genre, cribbing notes from its lesser brethren. It’s interesting to note that the parts that made me smile or laugh or sigh were the bits that directly referenced the first three films, e.g., Shia chuckling at the end of a motorcycle chase, and Indy shaking his head disapprovingly – an allusion to a similar scene in The Last Crusade with Indy and his father. If you watch at Star Wars Episodes I through III, you’ll notice a very similar style of pseudo-parodical humor throughout that set of films as well. Lucas, it seems, has lost his ability to come up with anything new, and has fallen back on cheap, self-referential jokes to pander to the fans.

I wonder if he realizes that he is slowly ruining every movie I loved as a child? If Lucas announces a Willow 2, I am going to kill myself.
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2

Summer Movies 2008

15 May 2008

RottenTomatoes recently came out with a very nice feature on the upcoming feature films for the period of May to August 2008 (referred to as “summer” in other countries, although it’s decidedly a bit more wet than that here). The article linked above is a lot more comprehensive than this one, but I’m a busy guy and I’m assuming that the people that read this blog will not have the time to watch every single summer movie coming out this year. So below is my list of must- and will-probably-see movies over the next four months, compressed to suit my tastes and summarized to fit your available time:

Iron Man, May 2nd.

Not much to say about this one other than it was a high watermark for superhero movies, and kicked off the season with an arc-reactor-powered bang.

Speed Racer, May 9th.

The only reason why I even mention this movie is because I thought I’d give the Wachowskis another chance and saw Speedy on his opening night. This movie is about as bad as it gets — cliche-ridden (or I should say, driven) plot, seriously bizarre production design, camera work that tries to be funky and just ends up clunky … the list goes on. The races themselves are alright, but I can’t say they’re any more or less memorable than your average Fast and the Furious fare.

Prince Caspian, May 16th.

The sequel to Narnia has been thus far getting some pretty good reviews, and although I didn’t love the first picture, I’m willing to give this one a shot. (Note that the Philippines will be getting this movie a few weeks late; possibly after Indy IV.)

Indiana Jones IV, May 22nd.

I have already made up my mind that I will love Indy IV, and I am counting mostly on Steven Spielberg to bring this one home. (George Lucas, you better not screw me again.)

Postal, May 22nd (likely sometime in mid-June over here).

I’ll see this one if I can drag some friends along with me. I played the video game for all of 30 minutes before getting tired of the tongue-in-cheek political-incorrectness but maybe Uwe Boll can come up with something witty and compelling. Or, more likely, something totally insipid and obtuse, and I’ll laugh my ass off watching it.

The Happening, June 13th.

M. Night Shyamalan’s latest twist-fest should be interesting to see. Say what you will about his recent self-indulgences (The Village and Lady in the Water were twisty piles of crap), but all Shyamalan movies consistently have really great acting and really stellar cinematography. Sometimes, it’s enough.

Incredible Hulk, June 13th.

Please, oh please, Edward Norton, don’t let me down.

Wall-E, June 27th.Pixar makes a sci-fi. How can I not love this?

Wanted, June 27th.

Angelina Jolie as an evil Lara Croft. Well, not exactly, but she holds her guns exactly the same way. The comic this was based on was a brilliant piece of nihilist writing, but I don’t really expect any of that to translate to the movie. Mostly you’ll watch this for the stunts and some snarky dialogue between Jolie and James McAvoy.

Hellboy 2, July 11th (probably on the 16th or 23rd here).

Director del Toro has been churning out some real gems since the first Hellboy (he directed Pan’s Labyrinth in 2006 and produced The Orphanage in 2007) so I’m expecting this sequel to top the first. Mignola’s comic books have always been a bit of a strange brew and del Toro shouldn’t find himself bereft of weird story material to throw at us.

The Dark Knight, July 18th.

There are a couple of things I was hoping for with Chris Nolan’s sequel: 1) Better action sequences (you could tell that Nolan had never previously directed fight scenes in Batman Begins), and 2) No more Katie Holmes. I already got the latter.

X-Files 2, July 25th (probably in early August here).

I remember watching the pilot episode of X-Files on RPN 9 back when I was in grade school (this was in 1993), and it scared the living crap out of me. I followed the show for about 4 seasons before it started to really meander, but I dutifully watched the movie like any loyal fan when it came out in 1998. Now it’s 2008, a whole decade later, and Mulder and Scully have returned. I am awed more by the passage of time than anything else, which is why I’ll see this movie no matter what.

Midnight Meat Train, August 1st (probably on the 6th here, if this ever makes it past the MTRCB)

Clive Barker’s serial killer short story is brought to the screen by Ryuhei Kitamura (known to geekboys as the director of Versus). A match made in heaven? We’ll see. Personally, I’m happy to see this as an uncut, extended bittorrent edition if the local movie review board blocks it.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars, August 15th.

There are a couple of reasons to watch this movie, and I’m going to completely avoid the obvious “Because It’s Star Wars, Stupid.” The first is that I seriously love Kilian Plunkett’s character design (I first noticed his work on the graphic novel back in 98, and again in in 2004). The second reason is that the Clone Wars movie is essentially a 90-minute commercial for the animated TV series starting in October this year, which will be followed by a live-action TV series in 2010. Hey, and we like commercials right?

The International, August 15th (probably on the 20th or 27th here).

Clive Owen as an international secret agent. Naomi Watts as his damsel-in-distress. Seems like a winning combination to me.

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13

Zero Barrier

5 May 2008

I had an interesting micro-debate with on twitter yesterday that got me thinking about blogs and their rather sordid relationship with mainstream media. At the heart of the discussion was this article involving writer Luis Teodoro’s comments about how journalists need to set an example for bloggers to follow. Specifically: many bloggers tend to be irresponsible with the way they write about news. Now, naturally this is the kind of statement that would invariably incense the blogging community, although I am of the opinion that Teodoro was mostly correct.

I will bet any amount of cash that upwards of 99% of all bloggers will never double-check any of their facts beyond looking at Google or Wikipedia for some external site to link to (preferably another blog, as there’s a greater chance of a linkback). “99%” sounds pretty close to “many” to me.

But this lack of proper, accurate reportage in the blogosphere is a subset of a much larger condition, i.e., the Internet itself. When people salivate about how the Internet has “lowered the barriers” for everyone, they focus mostly on the good side of said barrier-lowering, which is that people now have (mostly) free access to copious amounts of information. There is a less good side though, in that people are now able to generate copious amounts of information as well. The Internet has lowered the barriers of information exchange to the point where everyone can participate. And when I say “everyone,” I actually mean “anyone.” Even those people whose work should never see the light of day are able to publish themselves online, and the overall level of quality is invariably decreased by the amount of unbridled crap that is generated. Mainstream media, on the other hand, has a much higher barrier to entry (e.g., you have to go to J-school, must be accepted by a large, established organization, must answer to several levels of editorship and an ombudsman, etc.). Because the quality control is more stringent, the product is almost always of a higher-grade.

We talk about this in relation with blogs because they’re an easy target, but generally speaking, everything the web touches experiences this phenomenon of Explosive Crap Growth. Think about web design, for instance, a personal pet peeve of mine. “Web design” as a profession has lost much of its gravitas because it’s so easy to get into. So easy that literally anyone can do it, and, as of this writing, it really does look as if everyone has. Look, I don’t care how many hundred Wordpress skins you’ve designed — if you can’t tell the difference between a DOM element that hasLayout turned off or on, then you’re not a web designer, capische?

But I digress. The point I’m trying to make is this: I do not begrudge anyone their grammatically-challenged, horribly-written detailing-my-last-shampoo-purchase train-wreck-of-a-blog. This is your God-given right as someone who (probably) pays for Internet access. However, we shouldn’t sell it like it’s the cure for cancer either. We need to accept the fact that the Internet - particularly the part of it that’s user-generated - is full of crap. It’s filled to the brim and everyday the container overflows and splashes everyone in the face with crap. And we shouldn’t wonder why people on the other side of the fence look at us and shake their heads, saying, “Wow, look at those people doing backflips into that giant pool of feces.”

But that doesn’t mean we should give up on it either. There are gems in that big pile of shit after all; the question is, how long are you willing to sit there and dig.

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Of Failed Startups

5 Things I Absolutely Hated About Indiana Jones IV

Summer Movies 2008

Zero Barrier

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