Tag | film
It’s Time For Microsoft’s Second Inception
If you’ve watched television at all over the past two months, you’ve likely seen the trailer for Inception , the new film by Christopher Nolan. The trailer is great, and the film looks like it could be even better. In it, Leonardo DiCaprio plays Cobb, a special agent whose job it is to construct dreams in order to lure people inside and take their ideas — a tactic they call “inception”. “ An idea can transform the world and re-write all the rules. Which is why I have to steal it ,” Cobb teases at one point in the trailer. For whatever reason, the film and that premise got me thinking about Microsoft. More specifically, about some of the recent stories about yet more internal struggles at the company and the complete and utter failure of the Kin . It seems to me that Microsoft created one of these inceptions once in the 1980s. And it led to the company’s greatest success: Microsoft Windows. Now I think it’s time for a second inception. Before I get into that, a bit of history. For nearly 25 years now, the story has lingered that Microsoft stole the idea of Windows from Apple while working to develop software for the Lisa and Macintosh operating systems. The stories you hear generally seem to be a mixture of truth, urban legend, and fanboy fabrications at this point — but the fact is that Apple did sue Microsoft in 1988 for copyright infringement on the matter. After four years worth of arguments, Apple lost. They also lost the subsequent appeal (and they even tried to take it to the U.S. Supreme Court, but that was denied). But they didn’t lose because Windows wasn’t thought to be similar to Apple’s operating systems. They lost because the judge ruled that you couldn’t protect the concept of a graphical user interface or the desktop metaphor idea. And more specifically, Apple ran into problems because of a decision that then-CEO John Sculley made in 1985 to sign an agreement licensing certain parts of Apple’s GUI to Bill Gates for use in what would become Windows 1.0 (presumably without realizing exactly what he was doing). Yes, you could make a similar charge against Apple — that they stole several GUI components from Xerox’s PARC labs. (There was a subsequent lawsuit of Apple by Xerox on these grounds, but that was largely seen as a tactical
Trent Reznor To Score Facebook Movie. “It’s Really F*cking Good. And Dark!”
I’ve never been quite sure what to make of the upcoming Facebook movie, The Social Network . On one hand, the talent behind the camera is pretty amazing. The screenplay was written by Aaron Sorkin (of West Wing , and A Few Good Men fame). And it’s being directed by David Fincher (of Fight Club and Seven fame). On the other hand, it’s a movie about Facebook . And the trailer is a bit cheesy. But some news today may have put me over the edge towards being very intrigued by it. As he announces on the official Nine Inch Nails site, Trent Reznor will be doing the score for the film. It seems as if there’s entirely too much talent behind this movie now for it to fail — or at least, for it to be awful. Writes Reznor: I was planning on taking some time off after the continual waves of touring that ended last fall and spend this year experimenting around with what would become How To Destroy Angels and some new NIN. Well, that plan didn’t work out so well. David Fincher started inquiring about my interest in scoring his upcoming film, The Social Network. Yeah, the movie about the founding of Facebook. I’ve always loved David’s work but quite honestly I wondered what would draw him to tell that story. When I actually read the script and realized what he was up to, I said goodbye to that free time I had planned. Atticus Ross and I have been on a creative roll so I asked him if he wanted to work on this with me and we signed on. Reznor goes on to note that the score is just about complete now and that he “ couldn’t be happier with how it’s turned out. ” He hints that he and Ross may even release two records based on the scoring work they did for the film, and that they’ll release the music a couple weeks before the film’s October 1 release date. But back to the movie. Can it really be any good? “ It’s really fucking good. And dark! ,” writes Reznor. This from the guy who made the video for “Closer.” Sold. [photo: flickr/ Burns! ] CrunchBase Information Facebook Information provided by CrunchBase
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Trent Reznor To Score Facebook Movie. “It’s Really F*cking Good. And Dark!”
The Pirate Bay Couples With Meezoog Belowdecks To Launch Dating Site
In a bizarre move, The Pirate Bay , the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker, is partnering with social dating site Meezoog to launch an online dating site PirateDate.com, to take on Match.com, Zoosk and others. The Pirate Bay, which has had a tumultuous year , is launching a dating network around sharing. PirateDate will allow singles to share and assist their social connections in finding potential dates, while getting recommendations and referrals from their friends. Pirate Date is utilizing Meezoog’s technology to provide users with “social proximity” measurements, that allow people to efficiently filter their cyber connections. According to the site, personal information added by members is immediately visible to their friends (through Facebook connect), encouraging users to be honest with their information. Pirate Date’s ‘Social Radius’ technology exposes members to singles who are socially connected to them, as well as displays how they are connected. The site will also share users’ ‘Trust Paths’ to every member, showing people’s social graph. And the site’s ‘Social Proximity Gauge’, calculates how close you are to people you find interesting on Pirate Date. It’s unclear who would actually want to join this site considering the Pirate Bay’s brand. It seems more oriented towards men than women, considering the homepage of Pirate Date includes a picture of an attractive woman in a pirate’s costume. And why would you join this site over Match.com, E-Harmony or others that already have a considerable user base? While a dating site seems like an odd departure for a file sharing site, it makes sense that the Pirate Bay would want to focus on other verticals considering the legal troubles the site has been involved in with sharing content. A few weeks ago the site was shut down thanks to an injunction obtained by the film studios which halted bandwith to the site due to pirated content. The Pirate Bay just announced a new bandwith host , the Swedish Pirate Party. CrunchBase Information The Pirate Bay Meezoog Information provided by CrunchBase
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The Pirate Bay Couples With Meezoog Belowdecks To Launch Dating Site
Hitler Is Very Upset That Constantin Film Is Taking Down Hitler Parodies
For my money, memes on the Internet don’t get any better than the Hitler one. You know, the one in which you take some current event (the more mundane, the better) and shove it into the scene from the German film Downfall in which Hitler is told in his bunker that he cannot win the war. The key to these (assuming you don’t speak German, of course) is to replace the actual subtitles with ones of your choosing about a different topic. Facebook/FriendFeed , Twitter , MySpace — all solid gold stuff. In fact, just this past January, while reviewing the iPad version, Erick called it “ the meme that will never die .” But sadly, it looks like it may in fact die, at the hands of the studio behind it. Earlier today, someone attempted to upload a new version surrounding the massive iPhone 4G (or iPhone HD, whatever) news. Unfortunately, as you can see on YouTube, that video has already been removed with the message, “ This video contains content from Constantin Film, who has blocked it on copyright grounds. “ Constantin Film is the German film production and distribution company behind the film Downfall ( Der Untergang in German). The uploader of one of the Hilter parodies notes in the comments of his video that, “ Constatin Films has filed a copyright infringement claim against this video, right before it was about to reach 500,000 views! Even though it falls under Fair Use, I suspect this video will be taken down soon. Sad face. “ Sure enough, many of the other Hitler meme parodies have started disappearing as well ( Hitler on Xbox Live , for example). But as of right now, there are so many out there that are subtly different enough that plenty are still up. Still, you can probably expect YouTube’s smart content system to hunt down and find all of these clips sooner rather than later. Now may be the time to appeal to Constatin Film. Downfall is a great movie, but it’s also in German which sadly means that many people outside that country will never watch it. But I’d bet these clips have sparked an interest in the film beyond what any type of traditional marketing could have done. Mostly, I just really want to see Hitler’s reaction to the stolen iPhone 4G. Also, someone really needs to make a video about Hilter being upset that Constantin Film is DCMAing Hitler parodies. CrunchBase Information YouTube Information provided by CrunchBase
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Hitler Is Very Upset That Constantin Film Is Taking Down Hitler Parodies
Graffiti Icon Films – Banksy Film Debut Hits Sundance (VIDEO)
Banksy Film Debut Hits Sundance (VIDEO): The notorious British graffiti artist Banksy had his world premier as a film director with the film ‘Exit Through the G – Graffiti Icon Films.
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Graffiti Icon Films – Banksy Film Debut Hits Sundance (VIDEO)
Attention Readers: Just in Time for Your New iPad, Free Movies!
I’ve spent some 30-weeks in developing countries over the last year. It’s been a pretty brutal travel schedule, but it’s given me a rare vantage point to see the business, technology and cultural implications of the crushing urbanization, growth of a middle class and chaotic economic ascendancy that’s happening in several hot spots all at once. Spread across so many places, it’s a phenomenon that the modern economic world has never seen, yet the story can really only be told correctly country-by-country through local eyes. Now for those of you who don’t fancy the idea of spending 40-hours a month in a cramped coach seat, there’s a cool new way to witness this knife’s edge between increasing stability and instability without leaving your laptop. It’s called AsiaPacificFilms.com and it’s basically a Netflix for Asian Pacific indie filmmakers. The service was born out of founder Jeannette Hereniko’s experience organizing film festivals. Frequently attendees would write to her and ask where they could see a certain film again and the honest answer for most was “You can’t, sorry.” Finally, using deep connections in the Asian film world, she decided to create a place where you could. I met Hereniko on my recent swing through Hawaii, and was captivated by her descriptions of how the painful-yet-rewarding route to modernization was playing itself out in art across Asia. I convinced her to give our readers a free one-month trial. Go to AsiaPacificFilms.com and enter TechCrunch2010 to redeem it. The company has raised just $350,000 in angel funding to date, and is in the process of trying to raise more to help grow the site, acquire more content and build out some discovery and social-network-like features to help flummoxed new users find good films. Hereniko admittedly knows more about the film world than the Internet world, but from a content point of view, her timing couldn’t be better. We all know about the success of Bollywood—which now grosses more money than Hollywood—but experimentations with film, art and documentaries are sprouting up in a big way throughout the rest of the emerging world. Yes, even in China. There’s a complex tech-and-cultural cocktail of reasons why including the availability of cheaper film and editing equipment, availability to get an audience through non-traditional Internet means, and the whole globalization movement creating real ties between the West and the rest. And, says Hereniko, this very same angst, hopefulness, creation and destruction of national identity that emerging markets are going through gives endless content fodder. Urbanization, disparity between rich and poor and dramatic social change is the reoccurring theme in most of the films she’s seeing, across a host of countries. To get you started here are a few of Hereniko’s own suggestions. I plan on checking out each of these during my upcoming 20-plus hour flights, along with “ The Land Has Eyes ,” a film Hereniko and her husband (both pictured above) produced that was Fiji’s 2006 official submission to the Academy Awards. Black Snow , directed by Xie Fei, China (1990), follows the experience of a 24 year old man who comes out of a prison and finds the new Beijing, a city that has changed beyond his recognition. Women from the Lake of Scented Souls , directed by Xie Fei, China (1993), is about a female entrepreneur in rural China, who embraces the economic reforms, but still must deal with the age-old conservatism of rural China. Kaal (Our Time) directed by Bappaditya Bandopadhvay, India (2009), follows four women living in poverty in rural India who are lured by the promise of a financially prosperous life in the big city. Women Come Out of the House , directed by Manijeh Hekmat Iran, (2005) is a short (24 minutes) documentary from Iran featuring Shirin Ebadi who won the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize award for her efforts promoting human rights in Iran. It presents a realistic picture of shifting identities for Iranian women and the conflicts it brings. Act of War: The Overthrow of the Hawaiian Nation , directed by Joan Lander, Hawaii, (1993) tells the little-known history of how globalization and colonialism changed and continues to change the values and life style of the Hawaiian people.
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Attention Readers: Just in Time for Your New iPad, Free Movies!
