I don’t consider myself a huge Queen or Freddie Mercury fan – I was unfortunately too young in the 80’s for that. But I do love their music! I don’t think there’s any other band that have more songs that I love than Queen, not even ABBA. And I love 80’s music in general. So when there was talks about a Freddie Mercury / Queen movie I loved the idea of it but I was always sceptical any actor would be able to do a good Freddie. And when Rami Malek, who is awesome in Mr. Robot, was cast I was even more sceptical. Then the movie came out with all kinds of great reviews. But it took me this long to actually take the time away from work and everything in life to go and see it.
And I liked it. I liked it a lot! I even liked Rami as Freddie, he obviously did a lot of research on the moves and Freddie’s style. And with the sunglasses it was actually a very good resemblance. And since I’m not that big a fan that I know all stories and band-moments it’s difficult to know how much of the movie is factually correct but since both Roger Taylor and Brian May were credited as producers (and yes I even spotted their cameos) I guess it can’t be too far off the truth. And I know they took a lot of liberties with the timeline so they could build up the Live Aid show as the movie’s crescendo and Freddie’s redemption, I’m all ok with that. I mean I love Braveheart even though it has more holes than Al Powell’s car at Christmas.
So what was my problem with it? Two words – “false” and “advertisement”.
In the press material for the movie and on the poster there is this image:
And that is indeed an iconic photograph of Freddie at Wembley. But it was taken at their concert in July 1986 – a concert I happen to think is one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen (even though I’ve only seen it on DVD), even including the concerts I’ve actually seen live this one takes the gold. But as I wrote – the movie’s crescendo and ending is the Live Aid concert in 1985, one year earlier. So this poster is for an event that happened after the movie’s ending and never appears in the film! That’s most definitely false advertisement.
But if you know me, if that is my only gripe with the movie, then it’s a pretty damn good movie 🙂
I’m a huge fan of Luc Besson. Big fan! “LĂ©on” is one of my favorite movies of all time! “Fifth Element” is right up there too. “Metro” is a classic, Nikita, Taxi, Big Blue, Transporter, Taken, Jean D’Arc, so many damn great movies! But he’s also done a few that I wasn’t a big fan of but can’t blame him for that 🙂
So when I saw the first trailer for “Valerian” I got really stoked! I mean really stoked. Like so stoked that I can’t even talk myself out of it, which I usually do because I hate going out of the movies disappointed.
I was not disappointed. It was awesome! I would like to give it all 5 elements but there were two things that put me off. 1) The translation to Sweden was bad. Yeah I know, I can’t hold Luc Besson responsible for that but I do hold the movie company responsible! Not that I need Swedish subtitles – but if you’re going to do it do it right, because this was terrible. 2) Dane DeHaan that plays the lead character didn’t feel right for the role. The character was supposed to have been in the military and seen stuff, like Korben Dallas in Fifth Element. Instead he looks and even acts like he’s the one that makes the other guys say “was I that young when I joined”! But apart from that – awesome! And yeah, SF Filmstaden Scandinavia delivers in VIP again!
What I was mostly impressed with was the CG and the visuals! They were absolutely amazing! It even got to the point were I didn’t know if it’s computer generated or if it was makeup or what was going on, I love that! Music was awesome, although missing that kick ass diva song!
So here’s hoping for more and judging by the amount of source material that shouldn’t be too hard 🙂
I finally did it! I finally saw “Star Wars Rogue One”. Or “Star Wars Episode 3.9” as I’d call it! As a huge fan of the original triology I was definitely looking forward to seeing it but for one reason or another (one being my son’s refusal to see a movie he wasn’t allowed by the authorities to see!) it never happened when it was playing in the cinemas. And I certainly didn’t want to see a low quality “grabbed from the internet” version of the movie.
First off – spoiler warning! There are some spoilers below so don’t go there unless you’ve already seen the movie or don’t care about having it spoilt!
All in all – I was positively surprised at how good it was! I don’t know why but my expectations weren’t that great, probably because Episode VII was such a disappointment. But this one was really, really good.
And if you know me well enough you know one thing I love is continuity! Screwing up, or even ignoring continuity, can get me to dislike an otherwise good movie or TV show. Or in the case of Babylon 5 absolutely love a TV show that really isn’t that great once you remove the 5 story arc. And in this case most continuity I felt was acceptable, as expected there were tons of great references to Episode IV – one of the smaller ones being Bail Organa saying he’s going back to Alderaan and I spontaneously scream “don’t do it!!”. The other thing being the lengths they went to to have Tarkin and Leia in this movie when neither was actually in it! (there were ofcourse other characters that were “brought back” from the original triology, like Mon Mothma)
But another pitfall of trying to adhere to continuity is you can’t create characters or major plots without.. well, killing them before the end of the movie. And I’m sorry if this spoils it for the people that haven’t seen it but when they have a rebel meeting about wether to extract the Death Stars plan you can just go around the table and you know, based on who’s in Episode IV, who’s going to make it back alive! So in that way you kind of knew how the ending was going to be. And to my surprise they did the un-Hollywoodian (is that even a word!) thing and stuck with it!
And regarding Tarkin and Leia who were both computer generated faces superimposed on other actors.. I don’t know why the brain is so god damn good at it but you definitely saw that there some something “off” about their faces. Most notably Leia, even though it was just a few seconds and one line you saw that it wasn’t quite right. Great that they tried but it seems like an impossible task because the brain is just too good at face recognition for it to work.
Now – Darth Vader… well what can you say about Darth Vader… the problem with this movie is that the “original trilogy Darth Vader” was tall, imposing but not one for the front lines and certainly not a killing machine. That would have been more a Darth Vader from Episode 3.2 or something. But this movie ends a few days, maybe even hours, ahead of the first scene in Episode IV. But the original Darth Vader sent in his troops and never went in first himself, both the boarding in Episode IV and invasion of Hoth showed that. So ending it with a Darth Vader killing machine, even though it was cool as hell, didn’t really line up with the first scene of Episode IV. And it felt just .. misplaced somehow. But even though I’m a sucker for continuity I have to say that it was so damn cool that I’m gonna forgive that because sometimes rule of cool wins 🙂
I really like the BBC show “Sherlock”, you know the one with Benedict. Somehow I had completely missed the 4th “season” that came out in January! I type “season” in quotes since it’s just 3 episodes! I don’t know why I had no clue but by the time I found out it was available on Amazon so ordered it right away. So far only seen the first episode – really like it! They still have that special cinematography going on that I love! I can’t really decide if I want them to make more episodes or keep it to 3-4 every second year since that makes it kind of “special” when new episodes do come out? The other Sherlock show, “Elementary” with Jonny Lee Miller, is pretty damn good too but they make 25 episodes per year so they don’t feel so special!
Also saw “The Arrival” the other day. I missed it when it was on the big screen so had to make do with my TV at home. I expected a really good sci-fi movie about first contact with another species. Instead I got a really good sci-fi movie about .. well I can’t really tell you that but it’s a funny idea and a good twist! I really do love it when sci-fi movies are able to make the sci-fi take the backseat and the human heart & spirit in focus like this! Really well done! Can really recommend this one!
Also saw “The Girl on the Train”. That movie was sooooo very slow that it was hard to stay awake at times and it wasn’t that “different” than any other movie where guys are assholes. But the one great thing about this was Emily Blunt that was absolutely fantastic! Haven’t really seen her in anything that made me go “wow” before but in this role it was definitely “wow!”. So if you want to see good acting, see it. If not, don’t.
As you probably know I have a home cinema in a, almost, dedicated room for the purpose of showing movies on a big screen with good audio. But I still like going out to the movies. The contrasts between the two are ofcourse that going out is about going out, it’s an event, an occasion. And you’ll take the long queues in to the movie, the bad service, the cramped space, trying to carry popcorn & soda while getting the tickets ready, the people talking, the queuing to get out and all of those bad things. When watching a movie at home you don’t have to put up with that – but all of a sudden it’s not so special anymore.
But the new VIP theaters at Mall of Scandinavia in Stockholm puts a completely new spin to it all!! Firstly you’ll get to a restaurant so you can eat actually good, cooked food! Not the food courts of Heron or Kista. You can then order in all the snacks and drinks you want for the movie and it’ll be delivered in a nice basket – even have a beer if you want. Then you go into the movie theater without the queues since it only fits about 40 people! And “why does it only fit 40 people” you ask? – because of the amazing personal space you get! Not only do you get to sit in a comfy recliner chair, you also have more leg space than you’ll need plus a good 30cm of space either side to put your snacks and drinks! Forget about people talking, you’re so far away from each other you can’t really talk when the movie is playing! Then after the movie is done you just calmly leave and go back to the restaurant for some beverage or whatever you like. Yeah, it was expensive but you’ll have to go there alot to make up for all the $$$ that goes into building and maintaining a home cinema.
It’s almost all of the pro’s of watching a movie at home but actually “going out to the movies”! The other con’s against going to the movies (1 – the time to get there 2 – the fact you actually have to drive so one person has to be sober and 3 – the lack of a pause button for bathroom breaks) well I guess there’s really nothing to do against them is it? I mean, scheduling a 5 minute break in the movie for people to do their things might work, but the chances of the building one close enough to me so we can walk are slim to none.
So basically I think this is as far to perfect as a movie experience can get!!
I rarely do movie reviews. Simply because I don’t feel that my taste can be applied to anyone else and also… everyone has an opinion, mine is no more special.
But last summer I saw the trailer for the movie “Guardians of the Galaxy”. Both me and the wife kinda scoffed at is as kinda rediculous waste of time seeing that movie. We rarely have time to see movies so when we do they better be good. And the other day I saw it. And it was rediculously fun!!! It had the right amount of everything – right amound of action, right amount of humor, right amount of scifi, right amount of villain – everything was right (or “lagom” to use the famous Swedish word). It’s really great when you have low expections of a movie and end up loving it! Kinda like “Gravity” last year. And exactly like “Gravity” last year I went straight ahead and ordered the 3D Bluray. Not only because it was a good movie but because Sam is going to love it in a few years! I also loved the music in it but I feel like they should’ve have amped it up a bit – I mean “Hooked on a feeling” in a home cinema should really feel more than it did.
So no, it wasn’t a waste of time at all.
I doubt you’ve read this article : http://torrentfreak.com/uk-users-need-27-services-to-get-most-popular-films-report-finds-141208/ . What it basically says is “if you want to watch the most popular movies the legal way online you have to have 27 subscriptions”. It doesn’t say how much they cost but in my case that is irrelevant. Or you can have one subscription to a good Torrent/Usenet site and get it that way.
It’s the same issue with having physical purchased Blurays versus digtal media files. With the digital media file you simply double click and the movie starts. With buying a physical purchased Bluray you insert the disc and sit through adverts, commercial, trailers, discailmers, copyright notices, sound checks and animated menus that fly back and forth and then the movie actually starts!
That’s why filesharing won’t go away – because it’s a way more convinient way of consuming media today! I’ve started using more of online webservices like Netflix & Viasat which are great but still some issues. They don’t have deals with all studios so they can’t have all the movies & TV series. And the TV shows don’t have the latest episodes shown in the states. So as long as the entertainment industry is set in their ways and don’t want us in Sweden to see the latest episodes/TV series, as long as they have their distribution strategies and insist on showing us trailers, disclaimers and stuff on our discs when all we want is to watch a movie then filesharing won’t go away. I’d gladly pay $50-$100 per month for a service where I could see -> everything <-. But I don't want to pay $10 per service per month and still not get the latest stuff. That's what I think...
I’m no expert at religion. Far from it. I did go through that enter confirmation thing when I was a teenager but that’s pretty much it. But I am a big moviebuff. And alot of times when religion have been shown in movies it’s usually done pretty well. Some stuff, like Star Trek, try to stay clear of it and when they do deal with it it’s an alien religion. Then we have movies like “Schindler’s List” which really didn’t have the Jewish faith in the center of the story but it was still present. And it didn’t bug me.
What did bug me was when I recently saw “Mom’s Night Out”. I was under the impression it was a movie about a mother who just wanted a night out with the girls and it all went comically to hell (no pun intended). And that’s what a good 99% of the movie was about. And those 99% were pretty funny and got some laughs. But unfortunately it’s that 1 remaining percent that I’ll remember this movie for. How Christianity had helped some characters stay on the right path in their lifes and deal with life’s challenged. And that bugged me – alot! In my opinion it’s you who chose to stay on the right path and you that deal with life’s challenges, God or Jesus doesn’t have anything to do with it. It may be that your faith is keeping you strong but that’s still you! Don’t go giving someone else credit! This movie went very far from just having “faith” somewhere in the story to it being downright Christianity propoganda. ANd I hated that. Not because I hate Christianity, not all. But I hate propoganda like that, especially that cheesy. But if you can take that 1% I’d recommend that movie because it has so many “I totally do that!”-moments of being a parent!
I remember when “Matrix” came out and pretty much everyone was blown away by the special effects in it and the “bullet-time” filming and kung-fu action sequences. Some of us were also very impressed by the story.
Well last weekend I had some time home alone and after seeing “Gravity” on bluray I noticed I hadn’t even take the plastic off of my “Matrix Trilogy” bluray pack. So I though “what tha hell” and saw them all in one sitting. And even though the story still holds, the special effects… well they really haven’t aged well!! Some of them look like a college project, atleast next to “Gravity”. It really didn’t look good at all and I think that bluray actually hurts them. For example the brawl scene in Matrix 2 where Neo fights off a thousand Smiths, in bluray it’s pretty silly when you clearly see how computer animated it is. Then you compare that to “Gravity” where they faked pretty much everything you see in the movie, except the faces (they even digitally removed and recreated a leg for Bullock during the “rebirth” scene in the airlock). I know it’s not a fair comparison given the 14 years between them, but still compare it to Contact that also faked alot of the stuff you see. The trademark of good special effects are the ones you never even see. But somehow when it comes to the “Matrix” I actually think they wanted you to see them because they were so obvious and fake.
We saw Oblivion the other day. I didn’t know much about the movie more than Tom Cruises was in it, it was sci-fi and post apocalyptic and most of my friends liked it. Even though I’m no fan of Cruise I gave it a shot. And like the last update – I’m happy I did ’cause it was really good! The story was ok but had some holes in it, the acting was good and I always like a short casting list. But one thing I loved was the special effects. Not of the cool explosions kind, but rather the ones you might not see. Like the background when they were at their place in the skies, they had some beautiful shots there. And when I watched that I was thinking “how that hell did they do that?”. ‘Cause normal blue/greenscreen wasn’t it ’cause the reflections on everything was too perfect. As always IMDB holds the answer 🙂
So, good movie, go and see it!
Now for some spoilers. This will give away the big thing in the movie so don’t read unless you really really want to know. Or if you’ve already seen it!
Ready?
Here I go ..
So as I’m watching the first 10 minutes of this I’m trying to make sense of the plot so far and quickly say to my wife – “the scavs are the humans the the tet are the bad aliens”. The big giveaway to this, and I’m assuming this is 100% delibirate is that if mankind was facing extinnction and the Earth was turned to rubbles and we all had to make an exodus to a distant moon … how did we find the resources, time and energy to build their place in the clouds that looks like it was designed by Apple? Complete with luxury pool and everything, that part didn’t make sense. Humans wouldn’t do that. It’d be a minimalistic “this is what you need” approach. So that gave it away for me.
It’s been a while since I threw crap on the “evil corporation” trying to stop piracy on the internet. A few weeks ago it looked like we had made a bit of a breakthrough because one studio exec actually said that they should look at the piracy seen to learn what the consumers want and adapt.
And today? Well today we know that was just talk and a smokescreen. Because yesterday the Swedish anti piracy organization fixed a raid against a Swedish site. Not a torrent site. Not an FTP site or anything like that that supplies people with movies. No, this site was a source of subtitles!! Seriously – subtitles !! Apparently Henrik Ponten missed being in the spotlight so he went for a site serving up subtitles! And I’d get it if the charge was “aiding copyright violations” like they used to get the Piratebay guys, because they kinda are (although not more so than Winrar!). No, they played the “dialogue is copyrighted too”-card. Which is really great because this isn’t a gray area at all!!
I get how dialogue is copyrighted, but if a person sits down, takes his time to go through a movie and translates it to his tongue, makes his own interpretation of the dialogue and the gives it away for free, is that really copyright violation? If you just write the dialogue in the same language as the movie, word for word, than yea, I can get how that’d be problematic. But I know just how much interpretation goes into translating movies. When I was last tasked with translating a movie we actually had to read the notes that came with the preview to know exactly what they meant in some specific cases. So does a interpretation & translation fall under copyright of the movie? If so .. then I’d say they owe me some money, because that’s exactly what I did for them for free not too long ago and noone told me what we did there was going under any copyright protection?
This’ll be fun to see how it goes. If they end up with the same judges as the piratebay guys they don’t stand a chance if there’s a gray area. I just hope some defense lawyer makes it black and white.
So how was that weekend you wonder?
To start off, meeting up with my trekking buddies for a beer and burger, great! Always a pleasure. Then came the movie… well I don’t know why I still bother going to the movies actually. First I had to pay extra for the 3d glasses! They should also have offered earplugs because the sound was way too loud. And not “I can hear this through concrete walls”-loud because that I can enjoy. This was loud as in sharp hurting my tinnitus-ear, so I spent half the movie covering an ear. And who needs an AC when you have a thousand people watching a movie when we can make them sweat?! Why do I bother!?
Afterwards I went home (which took longer than it should) and spent a few hours playing computer games until I was tired enough to fall asleep. And I thought I’d be enjoying lying in bed and just not do nothing without having a son yelling at me to get up. But I didn’t, got up at 8 again and watched some TV, movies, Formula 1 and whatnot and playing games, just like I planned. What wasn’t a part of the plan was a phone call telling me that an acquaintance passed away during the night. He’s a guy I met every month at our Star Trek gatherings, a really nice and all around righteous dude. So that pretty much ended that day on a downer. On Sunday it was back to the same stuff and the F1 race from Barcelona with another Ferrari win! And by now the family was back home so it was back to normal life again.
So yeah, it could’ve been better, definitely. But it was still pretty good!
Right after I write that they are on the right path of giving us better digital alternatives with Netflix and HBO, then I read a story like this. Basically, Warner Brothers wants to have their own service that they want me to pay another $10 per month for … and that’s not going to work really. If I can pay $10 per month for VIP membership on a bittorrent site I have free access to any movie I want, regardless of studio or licensing. Then why should I pay $10 for netflix and $10 for HBO and $10 for Warner Brothers, and the grapevine says Viacom (which owns Paramount among other things) is considering terminating their partnership with Netflix.
So much for being on the right path ..
I saw the movie “AFK” last weekend. I say movie although it tries to be a documentary. But 99% of the film is following the 3 people on trial for running the Pirate Bay and allowing them to talk freely without any opposition and very limited fact check.
But still .. some things in that entire thing is very disturbing. As is the latest twist Peter Sunde is blogging about. In short … if you’re up for digital copyright violation charges in Sweden you are in for a very very tough uphill battle. Not only is the prosecutor very “Hollywood”-friendly, so is the judge, the jury, the police and the court of appeals and as it turns out the European court as well. It’s pretty scary!
But what strikes me as the most upsetting thing in the entire story is that no one with judicial or political power is taking them seriously. There have been some serious integrity breaches and legal procedures never followed and bias that you’d think that some politician with real power would say “this entire thing was handled wrong!”. But no one is even listening to them. It’s like they hear “pirate bay” and just turn on ignore mode. Which is really sad and makes me embarrassed to be Swedish to be honest.
I can’t argue much for their innocence since they are guilty as shit of “assisting copyright violations”, but even so, a fair trial is the least they deserve.
And here we are, 3 years later and what has happened on that front? Well we have Netflix and HBO has just started in Scandinavia (albeit with very limited selection) but other than that we’re still pretty much screwed. If I wanna see a movie in HD the legal way I either have to go to the cinema, which is an entire project now that I have a kid. Or I can buy the bluray for $30 (which either involves taking a trip into Stockholm or order on te web and wait 3-4 days) and sit through commercials and advertisements and disclaimers and copyright warnings and a menu that takes forever to load because it connects to the internet and then I can finally press play. Compare that to the illegal way of “what movie do I wanna see? this one, ok, download, go make popcorn and poor up drinks, unpack, go to the bathroom, and the press play. They really should offer more legal ways of doing it because I’d pay for it! Valve realized a long long time ago that the best way to fight piracy is offering a convenient alternative and every game I’ve played for the past 8 years I’ve actually purchased.
Having so much to do that I’ve forgotten this little place a bit. But a month, that’s just too long!
Been busy attending a SQL 2012 course and now studying for the exam. And while doing that I’m toying around with Sharepoint 2013 both “on premise” but also the cloud version that Microsoft offers. So yeah, keeping busy!
But I really should’ve posted something when Ferrari won the Chinese GP because that was a helluva good feeling! The race was good but the great feeling of having a Ferrari come in first, and not by a few meters but by actually a big margin. And sipping some Peroni while watching it felt extra sweet!!
Also saw a movie that I can’t talk about. Yet 🙂
We have some more piracy stuff going on here in Sweden. Our big ISP’s are more interested in expanding internationally than care about the free speech on the internet, which has made it difficult for the Pirate Bay to find an ISP. But our political Pirate Party supplied them with internet access because .. well why not really, everyone has the right to be online if they want right?
Well not according to the anti-pirate corporation here in Sweden, you know the one that dragged on the Pirate Bay-court for years and years and are backed by an army of lawyers (fortunately none that I worked with) and every studio in Hollywood. They sent them an ultimatum to cut off the internet access to pirate bay bu feb 26th “or else we’ll sue the individuals in charge of the party”. And the pirate party isn’t a big party, doesn’t have much funds and the ones in charge of it aren’t wealthy either. So they knew they couldn’t defend themselves in a lenghty trial and “fight the good fight” even if there is no law or court order to support the anti-pirate corporations threat. So the pirate bay went to Norway and Spain and someone the anti-pirate corporation thinks of this as a win for them. And I don’t see how?
First of all – the pirate party just got atleast one new member and voter, so good going there. Secondly the pirate bay is still online. Thirdly, instead of going to court against the pirate party they’ll be going to court explaining what gives them the authority to demand this in the first place. Which I for one hope ends up like it did in Norway.
But don’t get me wrong – I’m not rooting for or even using Pirate Bay and not a big supporter of people who thinks “copyrights are the devils work” and the anarchy label that comes with it. It’s more that I’m against how the Hollywood studios are going about this and what their idea of how distribution should look like which I’ve said many times is so inconvenient and counter productive for the customer that I can’t possibly support it – something I’ve said for years since that Moby “18” CD fail a few years back!
Also saw “Flight” during the weekend. And there we go with those expectations again! When I hear the name Robert Zemeckis I’m thinking “epic”, “grandiose”, “visually awesome”, “visual f/x you never even see” and “deep”. Like “Back to the Future”, those were pretty damn epic, the score was grandiose, the visual f/x in especially the second one are just awesome! And then you have “Forrest Gump” and “Contact”, both of which had more special f/x than anyone could count, both epic and grandiose in scale. So “new Robert Zemeckis movie” = “I have to see it!”.
Had anyone else done this movie I would probably have thought it was good movie. But with the expectations I had, and insisting we see it in our home theater, well then it was pretty much a disappointment. Don’t get me wrong, the story is good, the acting is top notch. But it wasn’t epic or grandiose, or visually awesome (granted, crashing a plane is always visually awesome but that was only 5 minutes of the movie!), maybe there were a gazillion visual f/x I never saw (I missed most of them in “Contact” which is the highest praise you can give to the visual f/x guys!) .. and it was kinda “we’ve seen this before” kinda thing with two broken characters with demons find each other, it’s all been done before. I expected more. But still don’t consider it a waste of time though.
Saw “Brave” this weekend. The wife had decided we needed a little family “just sit back, relax and enjoy a movie and popcorn”-session. And since our son has a thing for Pixar movies it was time for their latest creation “Brave”. I didn’t expect much, the normal Pixar stuff really. But I was pleasantly surprised! If we disregard the story which was mediocre (chick flic?), I absolutely enjoyed that movie and would recommend it to anyone! I’ve dabbled in 3D rendering myself about a decade ago so I kinda have a feel for the work that goes into animating stuff like this and on that level this has to be one of Pixars finest work ever! They managed to capture and render that awesome atmosphere and environment so beautifully, and I joked to the wife that “the animators must’ve loved hearing the amount of hair on the lead character!” because hair and water are some of the worst stuff to try to animate. And they didn’t tackle that problem much in Toy Story or Cars but they did now and did it fantastically! Then there was the music which really put the cream on this semla!
As a matter of fact I’m gonna try to watch this movie in English some day to take that Scottish feeling one step further, cause swedish dubbing just doesn’t do it justice!!
Read the other day that movie box offices in Hollywood broke the 10.7 billion dollar mark for 2012 which is a new record. Also broke the record of amount of movie premieres (655) for one year. And that’s while claiming illegal file sharing are killing them.
And I’m pretty sure when I say this – the problem is lack of options! In Sweden HBO Nordic just started up, but only after first opening up to people who have the “right” ISP and bought the “right” TV – that kinda thing would never happen with a file sharing site, now would it? And the fact that HBO Nordics list of movies and TV shows are seriously lacking anything I’m interested in. Ok they had Back to the Future, but what about new movies? And the new TV shows they were supposed to have? We also have Netflix who has a pretty good lineup so I’m still paying monthly for that.
But one suggestion I’d like to make to Hollywood is to think a little outside the box. When I watched a movie the other day called “Giant Mechanical Man” (great movie by the way!) I though it was one of the best movies I’ve seen for quite some time. And there is no way I would have seen it had it not been for the way I got it. But I felt bad afterwards because it was so good I wanted to pay for it. The thing is there is no way for me to pay for it. And that’s when it hit me.
How about starting a donation site to a movie for people like me, that see the movie and feels it was so good I really do wanna pay for! I think that most people would think that a donation of say 5-6 would be ok for a movie they thought was worthwile watching! This would hugely increase the revenue for these small movies that never make it to the theaters in sweden and that “only” made $5 million in the box office in the states. I’m damn sure that would double if we had the oportunity to pay for it online somehow. Because right now my best way to pay for it is to actually pay CDON $5 for renting it online. And I’ll do that only because it’s the only way I know how to give money back for it. Unfortunately there is no way the writer/producer is going to see that revenue!
Speaking of which – I wonder what the creative force behind that movie would think. Is he or she or them ok with as many people as possible watching the movie regardless of how we obtain it, or are they pissed that I saw it and liked it and gave it a good review at IMDB and want to give my money to them for it, if only there was a way??
This weekend it was time for Father’s Day. Since Sam is only 2 3/4 he has no clue what that means so it’s as usual up to us to fix things. Usually we don’t really make that big a deal, but this time my wife had decided that yes we were going to make a big deal. But on Saturday she made us dinner and set a very romantic mood but was very secretive about her plans for the evening. And at 7 pm we got into the car and drove off. I had no idea where but soon realised we were going to her mother’s place. Reason for that was to drop off Sam for the night so we could go out to the movies and basically have a date night. Yeah, that’s pretty ironic, her “father’s day” arrangement had Sam staying at his grandmother, how about that 🙂
After we’d dropped him off as we were driving to Kista we kinda looked at each other, remembering the last time we tried to go there to see a movie, and decided to just go home instead, stopping by Willys for some treats and then got comfortable in our home cinema and watched “Ted”. Then we went to bed and we woke up at 10 am! I have no idea how long ago it was that I woke up that late! I mean I may “get up” at 10 but not actually waking up! That’s exactly what the doctor ordered!
Then we were off to pick up him and do the grocery shopping for the week and resume our normal lifes as homeowner and doing the last bits of tweaking in the garden before calling off the season.