Technology and the Music Industry: Part Two – Media Going Social

In 1996, I wrote a paper on internet-based music distribution, which I saw as the inevitable evolution of the recording industry. Unfortunately, not many record labels saw it that way at the time, but Apple was already making plans. The roadmap toward a digital appliance-based approach to computing began here. Upon Steve [...]

À Bout de Souffle (Breathless)

“After all, I’m a jerk,” says the heedless Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo). The film, regarded as a seminal work of the French New Wave of cinema, is a character study in misogynistic brutishness or, as Pauline Kael called it, “Indifference to human values.” Much has been made of director Jean-Luc Godard’s innovative pacing [...]

The Expendables

The idea is simple: The principal actors play members of an elite mercenary squad known only as “The Expendables.”  In execution, however, this means they’re a team of aging action stars trying to recapture the limelight, only ending up parodies of themselves—leather-clad, botox-faced yahoos on motorcycles looking like every affluent mid-life crisis this side of [...]

Dinner For Shmucks

Paul Rudd plays Tim, an analyst at an ailing financial services firm.  To survive, they need to woo an eccentric Swiss heir, Müeller (David Walliams doing Val Kilmer’s best Eurotrash impression from The Saint), in order to stay afloat.  Tim’s girlfriend, Julie (Stephanie Szostak), appears to be taking interest in yet another European eccentric, shock [...]

Salt

Salt is a Spy-Fi thriller so delightfully bad you can fly a 747 through its plot holes. As a bonus, the wonderful Andre Braugher is completely wasted in a cameo (as Secretary of Defense) so brief you’ll miss it if you blink. Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) is a covert CIA operative. [...]

Inception

Inception begins as one of the strongest science-fiction concepts to come along in some time, descends into action yet emerges out the other end an intriguing film. In this world, it’s possible to steal information from an individual’s dreams. This requires the skills of an “extractor” as talented as Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) [...]

Predators

Beating a dead horse is Hollywood’s mantra these days.  In what is now the fifth installment in the Predator franchise, director Nimród Antal attempts to revive the series which went stale after two big-screen mashups, Alien vs. Predator and Alien vs. Predator: Requiem.  This film is likewise given the non-numerical title treatment, as if [...]

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

The Inanity Triangle returns, in this follow-up to last November’s New Moon, the second installment in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga novels, adapted for the big screen.  Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson, resembling James Dean with a bad case of dysentery—hunched over and squinting throughout the better part of the film’s two hours.), Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart, reading [...]

Knight and Day

Guy meets girl.  Guy plants stuff on girl.  Girl gets through airport security an unwitting accomplice.  Guy kidnaps girl.  Girl gets hysterical.  Girl falls in love with guy anyway.  This is the Stockholm Syndrome plot of Knight and Day, and countless other action/rom-com/adventure flicks that treat the woman as the tag-a-long idiot, rather than a [...]

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