I was one of those who hated the Star Wars Prequels. Hated them. I refuse to buy the DVDs on principle, and I’m usually a completionist who love to collect books and DVDs I’ll never watch. I have multiple copies of the originals, and the books blah blah blah and so on, as if there’s a need to prove that I’m a legitimate, old timer fan. Old time fans represent, yo.

Anyway, back to my dislike for George Lucas. George Lucas changed Star Wars forever when he made the prequels. He threw out everything that had been done before so he could remake the Star Wars universe in his vision. Threw out the hard work that authors (like Timothy Zahn), game producers, artists and so on had done building on his work in a way that kept thousands (millions?) of fans like me interested, because they didn’t fit with his vision. And I remember reading an interview where he excused this by saying that Star Wars was his property, and he could change it as he saw fit. Which is all well and good except for the many long years he didn’t seem to want to do anything with it, and the many years in which his companies authorised these works which built a universe and fanbase for him. So he’s not only ungrateful, but a pretty incompetent leader, too.

And then, there was the quality of the Prequels themselves. I won’t even get into that, suffice to say that I find them laughably bad.

Read this for a pretty good analysis of the situation, that encapsulated much of my feeling. I don’t feel like Lucas has destroyed a valued part of my childhood (a common claim by old fans), or that the Originals were somehow ‘high cinema’ (they really weren’t, no matter what people claim). It’s just amazing how much Lucas has wasted - time, potential, acting talent, writing talent, intelligent storytelling, characterisation and so on, because he was so obsessed with doing it HIS way. This quote:

the more he was responsible for the larger concepts but left the actual construction to be distributed amongst others, the better the results were, while the more he asserted control and made the effort a solo project, the more the product fell apart.

So now, he’s produced The Clone Wars, for the movies. It’s a lead up to a new TV series, aimed at tweens and kids. As if Anakin wasn’t annoying enough as a sidekick for Obi-Wan, HE’s given an annoying sidekick. And there’s apparently a Hutt (related to Jabba the Hutt, who’s in the movie for some godforsaken reason) who was directly based/inspired by Truman Capote. Yep - a massive, worm shaped, flamboyant, Southern-sounding, lisping, gay stereotype.

What. The. Fuck. Not only is that ridiculously bizarre, unrealistic, and inappropriate, but…nope…my brain can’t process it anymore.

Don’t see it. Please. From all reviews, and the trailers, it looks pretty damned pathetic. Go watch somethig like High School Musical instead.

Yeah, a little late to the party in posting it, but I watched The Dark Knight on IMAX uh…2 weeks ago…now.

Wow. IMAX. Now that is one cool way to watch a movie. It really does fill up all your senses, far more effectively than those ‘3D’ movies that usually take up the IMAX schedule. When you need to actually tilt your head to see things on the screen? Awesome. Scenes like the initial Hong Kong panorama gave a slight feeling of vertigo becuase of the way they filled the screen. The scene in which Harvey Dent is being moved by armoured vehicle through the Gotham streets? Wonderful stuff.

IMAX really allows a movie maker to expand that visual palette - there’s so much more to work with, and the way it takes up the entire field of vision is spectacular. Colours are more vibrant, and the only drawback was the iffy sound. But I blame the theatre, not the movie itself. The IMAX theatre in Sydney has always had bad sound. I think it’s an effect of having such a short depth from front to back - sound doesn’t echo as effectively.

As you can tell, I enjoyed myself. Oh, the movie? Yeah, that rocked. Aaron Eckhart stole the show for me as Harvey Dent, although of course Heath Ledger was excellent - he really captured the essence of The Joker in all his chaotic, hilarious, anti-Batman glory, with a style that incorporated the best of every Joker before him - from voice to nervous ticks.

(read this article from WIRED for a very interesting examination of the technique and problems of IMAX)

Oh, and they showed the Watchment trailer beforehand. OH. MY. Now that’s another IMAX experience to behold.

Watchmen, one of the most influential graphic novels of all time, is being made into a movie. When I say ‘influential’, Watchmen is one of the first stories and presentations that made people realise that comic books had become, and could be, far more than children’s stories about a man dressed up like a bat and a sidekick dressed up like a circus acrobat (Batman and Robin, for those keeping score). Comic books could be, and had become, novels told in a very visual style. Graphic novels!

The story was well written, told about the Cold War, America’s obsession with perfection and power, and the growing class divide in a country built on equality.

For many years people have wanted to make it into a movie. Not an easy thing, for such a movie. Zack Snyder, director of 300 (also based on a graphic novel) took up the challenge.

And this is the first trailer.

Wow. It looks wonderful.

Last night, Andrew Denton interviewed Helen Thomas, the doyen of the White House Press Corps, as the site says, on his Enough Rope: Elders series. It’s quite interesting, as he interviews social elders - those over 65 - to see what their lifetime has given them, and their perception of today.

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/enoughrope/transcripts/s2296751.htm

Naturally, a lot of the talk was political. It was, of course, absolutely fascinating in many ways, but a couple of highlights were these:

ANDREW DENTON: Don’t most people expect their politicians not to tell the truth?

HELEN THOMAS: I don’t know most people and I don’t know what they expect but I don’t think they should have to expect lies.

A very important point - Thomas very smartly skirts the concept of “not telling the truth”, but draws a very important line. While it’s pretty expected these days that politicians, diplomats and so on do not tell the truth, this is not the same as expecting them to lie to us quite baldfacedly. They came to this part of the discussion because, earlier in 2008, she had a strong outburst at a White House Press event, after George Bush admitted that he knew about, and had condoned, torture (something he had vehemently denied on many occasions).

Thomas not only burst out, but was shocked when her fellow Press Corps, all respected journalists, did not back her up in demanding the truth. She discussed the culture of media complicity - media as Big Business, and in the business of being in the pocket of the government, and being a propaganda machine, rather than a journalistic outlet seeking to publish the truth.

This led to another fascinating part of the interview, the concept of the American standard.

ANDREW DENTON: Of course ah Saddam Hussein lied and ah Malarchi lied and ah Tony Blair lied. Why should why should America have standards that its rivals and opponents refused to adhere?

HELEN THOMAS: Because we’re better, we think, because we have higher standards and because we don’t expect the best of them but we do expect the best of ourselves. We have put ourselves on a pedestal. We have a halo. We’re supposed to represent the best of mankind, mankind striving for even higher heights. I think most Americans feel a certain shame in the very fact that they can hardly go anywhere in the world and not be, you know, feeling that they’ve done a wrong thing and they’ve been shunned.

It’s fascinating because of the intense love-hate relationship that the rest of the world has with America. When they are at their incredible, idealistic, heroic best, we acknowledge and applaud them for it. But any fall from grace brings about incredible condemnation because of the standards that America has set for itself. It’s hard to blame politicians in other countries from following that glorious standard, but woe betide them if the standard starts to tatter.

It also ties into the important argument of the American (and often Western) “me” culture. Americans don’t feel they’ve done anything wrong, except try to hold up a higher standard than anyone else. And yet they’ve been shunned. And domestically, their complaints are louder and more abrasive, because there is often a perception that they are “owed” a better life by their government. A government that is lying to them, screwing them around and fleecing them through its attitude.

As I said, fascinating discussion, as it leads in many directions.

Movie marketing has entered a new era. While the whole “online trailers” and so on have been going on for a while, it’s not pretty de rigeur that an upcoming movie will also be accompanied by a raft of viral marketing. None more so than superhero, scifi and fantasy movies.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army is one such example, which has released some rather odd, non-movie related clips, such as an interview with James Lipton, host of Inside the Actor’s Studio and these. They do nothing to show off the new movie, instead placing the hero inside slightly absurd, normal-life circumstances.

The upcoming Batman: The Dark Knight has been in marketing overdrive for a while now. It started buzzing last year when they officially released the picture of Batman’s new costume to the Net, for approval by the Net critics. Then they started releasing odd little puzzles online, which were swiftly decoded to reveal the new Joker (played by the late Heath Ledger). A public event was organised, where fans were asked to dress up as the Joker. One of them (probably an actor) was ‘kidnapped’ by the real Joker and ‘killed’ (his death was announced by fake copies of the Gotham News newspaper. The site Why So Serious premiered, and initially thought to be a fansite, until it became clear that it was another marketing tool. Through this site they premiered the trailer, new pics, and posters that will never see the side of a cinema. Blogs, short clips, everything. It’s everywhere in the Net’s nerd-osphere. Recently there was also Gotham Cable News.

That’s a LOT of marketing for a movie that everyone already knows about. It’s also a lot of potentially unnecessary marketing. Why? The people who are getting hit, and discussing it, are the same who have already decided that they’ll watch the movie. So what’s the point?

This is where the theory gets interesting. The “nerd” movie industry has come by leaps and bounds from decades ago. Neil Gaiman, the famous author and icon of fantasy, once wrote that the reason for the development was that the young nerds who read his stuff, had grown from Producers’ assistants, to the Producers and Executives. The same goes for Directors and moviemakers. You don’t see Spielberg or Lucas doing this, but guys like Guillermo Del Toro (who made Pan’s Labyrinth and Hellboy II) is notoriously excited about the fans, and making the movie bigger than the screen constraints.

This can also be seen in the increasing length of the movies. No longer is the superhero movie a sub-90 minute action spectacular. Iron Man was in the 2 hour range, and often they’re cut down from well over that. The movie makers have a big story to tell, and sometimes the Net is the best way to do that. By releasing all this extra scenes, they allow fans a way to see the movie that they wanted to make. The big picture, in which you can see more background on the Joker, Harvey Dent’s optimism, or get a better insight into Hellboy himself (to summarise: he’s the son of the Devil, but he really wants to lead as normal a life as possible, hence the slightly absurb situations of those short videos).

The other side of it is that all these events, and releases, are a gift - a present to the fans who have supported the filmmakers, and are eager to see the movie. Do they need to make them? No. The movies get a lot of marketing through normal methods. But this allows for the fans to get that something extra. That extra something. And if it happens to drum up more buzz about the movie, then all the better.

Now for the big “but” - does this mean that the final cinema cut is not as “good” as it should be? Does this result in a more irregular version of the movie in the cinema? Quite possibly. Releasing all this extra material weighs the experience towards those who watch everything, rather than the standard moviegoer, who has to judge the movie on the shortened experience in the cinema, and nothing else. I know that I enjoy many of the nerd movies more than my wife because I have the extra background on the movie, gleaned from the Net, while she sometimes finds them a bit disjointed.

Should a movie NEED all his extra stuff to get the “bigger” picture? I’d hope not. But sometimes, it’s starting to feel like it does. Something to ponder.

There was a time when Bill Gates was one of the most hated men on earth. Fabulously wealthy, incredibly intelligent but also extremely difficult to comprehend. He was notoriously difficult at meetings, a real ’shouter’, and his company was the big ‘gorilla’, using its might to beat competitors into submission, incurring anti-trust and anti-competitive lawsuits in the process, but just rolling on with their plans for world domination.

He had plans for the future of computing, and how it would affect society. A vision that he didn’t seem to elaborate on with the world. He saw a future where Windows would be the common denominator for everyone to interface with technology and communication. It’s a vision that I really liked, even though I didn’t like a lot of their methodology. What I mean by this is that - I love the concept of the ubiquity of technological communication, at a time when Apple Macintosh and Windows really didn’t play well together. It’s a vision that has gained ground, and we are now seeing some real convergence in the way these things operate. Microsoft has learned lessons from the Apple experience, and vice versa - Apple has learned things from Microsoft’s depth of operability and control. And Linux? Everyone learns from Linux.

But going back to the days of the Microsoft gorilla - something was changing behind the scenes. And something big has changed. Bill Gates is now the face of the Gates Foundation, the most philanthropic organisation in the world, which he will focus on now that he has drawn back from the operations of Microsoft. Bill Gates now gets excited discussing vaccinations, cures, disease, funding and quality of life. He’s moved on to a bigger scientific puzzle and vision - not just how to get everyone communicating at a common level, but bringing life, and cures, to everyone. The Gates Foundation gets funding from the Rockerfeller Foundation (the other massive privately funded philanthropic foundation), Warren Buffet and other sources.

The key to this entire puzzle - Melinda Gates, the woman he courted and married when Microsoft was developing into its most gorilla-like structure. At the time he was courting her, Bill Gates was the world’s richest man, about to build the world’s geekiest house. Rumours abounded about how technologically advanced the house would be. Plans that Melinda threw out, because she wanted to build a home. She became the human touch that Bill lacked, and brought out the human side of the uber-nerd. She’s also, apparently, the human touch that makes the Gates Foundation network so successful. While Bill specialises in the scientific vision, she is a great people person, approaching it with a real humanity.

She, along with Bill Gates and Bono, was Time’s “Person of the Year” a few years ago, and she continues to push the Foundation.

Wonderful stuff. And from geeky dudes everywhere, I’d like to congratulate her for helping make Bill Gates not only a human geek, but incredibly cool for becoming more philanthropic. The human side is often something that geeky, insular, data-minded people lack, as they don’t approach the world in the same way. On the flip side, charities often lack the data-thinking capabilities to approach problems in the same way as a big-thinking geek. I’ve read somewhere that Bill Gates still sees the problems of the world as numbers - code to be compared, and balanced. Get rid of the bugs in the system, and fix the code to make a better world. This is something the charities lack - an intense unifying vision. But it clearly lacks humanity. The Gates Foundation brings together both of these capabilities, and it seems much of that thanks should go to Melinda Gates.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/01/04/news/newsmakers/gates.fortune/index.htm

A profile of her, and the Gates’ relationship. This quote from the end encapsulates her thinking, I feel:

While he (Bill) and Melinda plan to give away 95% of their wealth in their lifetimes, they have not yet decided how much of what’s left will go to the children. Melinda says they will follow Warren Buffett’s philosophy: “A very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything, but not enough to do nothing.”

That 95% is estimated to amount to $100 billion.

OH JOY

Diablo 3 has been announced. One of the most addictive, well designed, and incredibly fun game series ever made is getting a long-awaited sequel. The series is developed by Blizzard, who also make the incredible money-spinner World of Warcraft. They’re one of the few game development companies who manage to balance massive success (Warcraft, World of Warcraft, Diablo and Starcraft are among the best selling games of all time) with loads of fan support due to a real commitment to their craft. Their games are very well made, very well designed (being a lot of fun to play) and have some really cool artwork.

The Diablo series is about the demon Diablo trying to take over the world with his legions of monsters, ghouls and evillness. Nothing new, but this isn’t about new stories - Diablo is about kitting out a character and fighting your way through thousands of monsters, developing some serious RSI on the way.

This is awesome news. AWESOME.