Posted on January 9, 2014 at 8:00 am
Indiewire’s weekly poll turns the critics on themselves, asking them to disclose what words they would ban from reviews. From “epic” to “game-changer” to “Oscar-worthy,” they tell us what terms are overused, under-specific, and just too easy. I admit to using some of these, and appreciate the reminder, but the fact is that some films are epic and some performances are Oscar-worthy.
Posted on January 6, 2014 at 3:59 pm
In its seventh week out, Disney’s animated musical treat “Frozen” tops the box office, leading off 2014 with another powerful reminder of the market for top quality family movies. The story of the sister princesses did not just beat out the only new release last weekend, the “Paranormal Activity” spin-off “The Marked Ones.” It made more money than high-profile (and R-rated) films featured in all of the year’s “best” lists, “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “American Hustle,” the R-rated comedy “Anchorman 2,” and the second installments of franchise series “Hunger Games” and “Hobbit.” I enjoyed all of those films, but I’m always very happy to see this kind of support for wonderful films that are family-friendly — meaning that they are just as enjoyable for every age. Hollywood, are you listening?
Posted on January 6, 2014 at 8:00 am
The closing of the last Blockbuster stores has led to some “end of an era” pontificating and even some meta “end of the era of end of the eras” commentary from Monica Hesse in the Washington Post. For me, it is a chance to think about the moment that got me started as The Movie Mom — watching parents at Blockbuster ask the teenaged clerks if an Adam Sandler movie was appropriate for kids.
I usually had a good idea of what I was looking for, but most of the patrons would stand glassy-eyed in front of the “new releases” shelf or possibly go straight to “action/adventure” or “comedy.” The five or six categories were not very helpful. There are lessons to learn from Blockbuster about the risks of disruptive new technologies. Why didn’t Blockbuster invent Netflix? The ease of ordering by mail and then, even easier, just hitting a button on the computer for immediate streaming could have kept Blockbuster expanding, possibly even into creating its own content, as Neftlix has. They could also have developed the extraordinarily precise and granular “micro-genres” that are a large part of what makes Netflix so user-friendly. Instead of “action/adventure” they have an almost Dewy Decimal-level of specificity, with hundreds of sub-categories so you can find action-classics, action-comedies, action-African American or action-Blaxplotation, action-superheroes, action-thrillers, action-disasters, action-military, etc. The Atlantic has a great story by Alexis C. Madrigal about how the algorithms for defining these micro-genres were developed.
If you use Netflix, you’ve probably wondered about the specific genres that it suggests to you. Some of them just seem so specific that it’s absurd. Emotional Fight-the-System Documentaries? Period Pieces About Royalty Based on Real Life? Foreign Satanic Stories from the 1980s?
If Netflix can show such tiny slices of cinema to any given user, and they have 40 million users, how vast did their set of “personalized genres” need to be to describe the entire Hollywood universe?
This idle wonder turned to rabid fascination when I realized that I could capture each and every microgenre that Netflix’s algorithm has ever created.
Through a combination of elbow grease and spam-level repetition, we discovered that Netflix possesses not several hundred genres, or even several thousand, but 76,897 unique ways to describe types of movies.
I love the list Madrigal provides of some of the best categories:
Emotional Independent Sports Movies
Spy Action & Adventure from the 1930s
Cult Evil Kid Horror Movies
Cult Sports Movies
Sentimental set in Europe Dramas from the 1970s
Visually-striking Foreign Nostalgic Dramas
Japanese Sports Movies
Gritty Discovery Channel Reality TV
Romantic Chinese Crime Movies
Mind-bending Cult Horror Movies from the 1980s
Dark Suspenseful Sci-Fi Horror Movies
Gritty Suspenseful Revenge Westerns
Violent Suspenseful Action & Adventure from the 1980s
Time Travel Movies starring William Hartnell
Romantic Indian Crime Dramas
Evil Kid Horror Movies
Visually-striking Goofy Action & Adventure
British set in Europe Sci-Fi & Fantasy from the 1960s
Dark Suspenseful Gangster Dramas
Critically-acclaimed Emotional Underdog Movies
NSA’s invasion of our privacy is minor compared to the information we cheerfully provide to corporations. This kind of customer-guided big data is just the tip of the iceberg from the kind of individually-tailored marketing we can expect — for good and for bad — in the coming years.
Posted on January 3, 2014 at 7:13 pm
Dreamworks is teaming up with Fuhu, the maker of tablets for children to create the first tablet in which the content provider controls what the user sees. In other words, it’s more like a television. While Amazon sensibly makes sure that its Kindle Fire line gives parents control over the content available to children — and lets them set daily time limits as well — Fuhu gives parents no control at all.
The partnership is a convergence of two business trends. With children as young as 2 or 3 now routinely using their parents’ iPads or smartphones — if the toddlers don’t already have their own — technology companies are racing to introduce gadgets made for smaller and smaller hands. Fuhu itself sold more than two million Nabis in 2013, and its tablets, which are primarily designed for children 6 to 11, now collectively deliver more than 20 million video streams a week.
Entertainment companies have been surprised at how speedily children have taken to tablets, sometimes forgoing TV sets altogether. As a result, DreamWorks, Disney and their competitors are searching for ways to make it easier for users to find their characters on portable devices.
According to the New York Times piece, “Nancy Bernstein, a movie producer who is in charge of creating what she calls ‘character moments’ for the DreamTab, insists that the effort is not simply an advertising opportunity for the studio.” That is absurd. Giving content providers control over the characters and images children see is advertising. Even if the penguins from Madagascar are not specifically promoting a new sequel or toy, they reinforce brand loyalty, which is the whole point of the arrangement. I’m not in favor of tablets for children to begin with, but this is really a new low.
Posted on December 20, 2013 at 4:10 pm
When you make an outspoken, irascible patriarch into a television star, he is going to say outspoken, irascible things. And so “Duck Dynasty” dad Phil Robertson gave his views on homosexuality as a sin in an interview with GQ, using plain, sometimes crude language. He also made some comments about race relations and poor people that many found offensive. A&E, which airs the hugely popular and lucrative television show, has removed him from the series and his family has said that they will not go on without him.
A lot of people have a lot to say about this. Fans of the show and supporters of Robertson’s view of the Bible are objecting. People who don’t like to let bigoted statements by people in the public eye go unresponded to are objecting to his remarks. Presidential hopefuls are speaking out in hopes of getting the support of evangelicals.
Let’s be clear. This has nothing to do with freedom of speech. The First Amendment prohibits government restrictions on speech. If a television personality makes an offensive remark, it is not offensive to point that out. If a corporate entity like a television network makes a business decision that the offensive comment has made the person who said it a liability that may result in the loss of advertisers or viewers, that is not censorship. It is the free exercise of business judgement and the exercise of free speech by the owners of the program and the network. Claiming a religious belief as the basis for one’s views does not grant automatic protection from criticism by others. Many beliefs grounded in religious views in the past, like segregation and slavery, are no longer considered acceptable. And I trust that Mr. Robertson, who also made some strong statements about other religions, recognizes that people who have different faiths — or no faith — are entitled to express their views on his remarks.
Mr. Robertson’s free speech has not been impinged on in any way. He can say whatever he likes. But freedom of speech does not carry with it either the right to make that speech on television or to avoid the consequences of the exercise of free speech by those of us who will express our objections to his homophobic and bigoted views.
If the Robertsons leave A&E and wish to continue to be on television, it is likely some other station will pick them up. With a net worth of $80 million, they can buy their own television time if they want to.
The worst possible outcome from this controversy is if people on any side conduct themselves with anything less than the utmost civility and respect. Those who wish to support Mr. Robertson’s right to express his views or agree with his interpretation of the Bible should remember that humility and grace better exemplify the teachings of Jesus than shrillness and invective. Those who are offended by his comments should remember that their side is not helped by shrillness and invective either. Insult is not argument. Hostility never persuaded anyone. I like this post from Chris Boeskool, where he says many wise things, including:
This is NOT religious persecution. I cannot stress this enough. He did not get suspended for his religious beliefs. He was suspended because what he said was completely offensive. There are plenty of Christians (many of my friends, in fact) who believe that being gay is a sin and marriage should only be between a man and a woman, yet they could have still answered those questions with love and humility. Someone might use Bible verses to claim that interracial relations are an abomination and say “Anyone who commits the sin of miscegenation is heading straight to Hell” and call it freedom of religion, but really…. It’s just old school hatred. Hatred is not a Biblical belief.
And lastly (and most importantly), imagine that there is a gay person reading the things you are writing. Because guess what…. There will be.Please don’t separate the ISSUE from the PEOPLE. Imagine that there is someone reading the words you are writing who is trying to get a sense of what this Jesus guy is all about. Imagine a person reading your words who is just as sure of their same-sex attraction as you are of your opposite-sex attraction. Imagine that person has only ever heard hatred coming from people who call themselves Christians, and he or she is just about ready to give up. Imagine looking into a person’s eyes and saying the hate-filled things you are getting ready to write, instead of looking into computer screen. Maybe even imagine one of your kids has come out to you, and he or she is reading your words. And then finally, think of a time that you have been wrong about something in the past, and imagine that this issue of “how sinful it is to be gay” might be one of those times.
The Robertsons have said that they will ponder this as they focus on loving their neighbor and on prayer. Good idea for all of us.
