Julie Powell Fan Fiction

The best moment, for me, in the movie Julie & Julia happened when Julie Powell, powerless bureaucrat turned famous blogger, finds out that her idol and inspiration, Julia Child, is unwilling to spare a kind word for the work that she inspired. Apparently, Child has less than flattering things to say regarding Powell’s blog, which is about Powells’ own efforts to cook her way through Childs’ famous cookbook.

“Julia hates me,” says Amy-Adams-as-Powell to her husband, and he gently assures her that this is not literally true, and that anyway, it doesn’t matter.

I have nothing against Powell, who impressed me enough with the article, artfully laden with subtext, that she wrote about the movie’s portrayal of her cat, that I plan to read her book, which surely has merits not explored by the film. But this painful moment was my favorite part of the movie because it was also the part that was the most real. Read the rest of this entry »

Kari Farrell Escapes, Revealed As TOK Series Terminator

Kari Farrell, recently taken into custody, has broken out of the Philadelphia jail that held her. According to several witnesses, she punched through a wall with her bare fists and tossed aside guards “like they were made of paper mache.” Photos from bystanders also reveal that in the melee, part of Farrell’s face was blown off, revealing an adamantine endoskeleton.

This is really interesting, for several reasons.

This might not be Kari at all. As we’ve seen in the recently-cancelled TV show, TOK series Terminators are often modeled on specific humans. This unit might have already killed Kari and assumed her identity. If that’s the case, then who knows how long ago the world lost the “real” Kari?

Many people from Kari’s past (including myself) have noted a profound difference in her attitude towards other people between then and now. What happened? Well, maybe it’s because she’s been replaced by a cybernetic killing machine from the future. Read the rest of this entry »

What Is Hollywood’s Business Model?

For a while they tried what’s become known in the industry as the “theater” model. It was based on the way that stage plays used to make money. Basically, you only show the movie in one physical location at a time, and you don’t allow people to go there unless they first pay ‘admission.’

But This fell apart rather quickly. Nobody likes to be forced to go anywhere to buy a product, let alone consume it.

I have a few suggestions:

• An ad-based model, in which the user implicitly agrees to accept a certain amount of “product placement” in exchange for free content. The products in question might appear as props within the movie itself, or in the form of a 300×250 that would float near the main character’s face until clicked upon. Each scene in the movie could represent one ad impression, and the studio could price according to act (I, II, or III), whether the ad appears before or after the climax, a happy or sad part of the movie, etc.
• An “extras” model, where the content is given away for free, but if you pay for it, then you get something special, like a T-shirt with the name of the movie on it. It might even be a production crew t-shirt, as if to suggest that you sort of helped make the movie retroactively.
• A premium level of viewership. At the free level, the resolution of the movie is lower quality, and gets interrupted periodically with a nag screen. At any point, you can choose to upgrade, and then watch the rest of the movie in peace.

This last option may also be tested out with different types of “lower quality” films. The screenwriter can lower the quality of the story by softening character motivation, inserting obvious anachronisms, and cheapening the dialog with references to pop culture. Viewers can watch this version first, and then decide whether they want to upgrade to the premium version, which would have strong arcs, a solid mis en scene, and witty repartee.

image by tiseb

Movie Trailer Review: Is Anybody There?

@TheJames recently tweeted that content is a commodity, which got me thinking: cliches and retreads in fiction are just variations on commodities.

When you say “I feel like seeing a movie,” you are really saying that you feel like consuming a piece of content, and you probably have an idea of what type of content you want to consume. You may say you want something “original,” but that’s really like saying that when you buy bread at the bakery, you want it to be fresh. It’s true that if you get served something that tastes like it was baked a long time ago, you’re dissatisfied. But that doesn’t change the fact that what you really wanted was bread. And you already know what bread tastes like… that’s why you wanted it.

There was an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, where Scotty comes back from techno-purgatory and teaches LaForge how to be swarthy. The idea is that death is okay, because old people still have value, and that value is to teach what they know to the young, and so on. It’s a worthwhile story, but it’s not very new, so I’m just going to go ahead and use this image instead of an image from the movie I’m reviewing.

Here’s the Quicktime trailer for Is Anybody There?

Movie Trailer Friday: Easy Virtue

This is the wrong time to peddle a movie built on the idea that brash, declassé Americans are going to break down those stodgy old European walls and set the people free from prisons of their own making, etc. Even if the stodgy people in question are another Imperial power.

I watch this, and I think, how nice it would be too hang out on that elegant country estate, as long as that annoying bitch on the motorcycle wasn’t there to mess it all up.

Quicktime trailer for Easy Virtue.