Archive for the 'Shameless' Category

Babies are us?

As someone who studies the zeitgeist maybea bit too much, I’m always looking for something “black.” It changes each season… For a while everyone talked about pink but gay is pretty boring these days. Then orange was okay. And my personal favorite was: Black is the new black! Now it seems BABIES are so in. See them inside Juno, see them within Nickelodeon shows, see them on every magazine covers, and now they pop up Friday night on Gilmore Girls’ Amy Palladino’s new Fox vehicle, “Return to Jezebel James,” where girl makes sister have baby. Then weeks later at Tribeca Festival when Fey hires a “Baby Mama” (Amy Poehler, no less) to do it for cash.

And may we speak about Angelina Jolie, Gwen Stefani, Jessica Alba, Halle Berry, Nicole Kidman, and maybe even you? Even one of the Kates is pregnant–who knows which one. Besides all being A-list actresses, these are all pregnant A-listers–except you. And the only thing better then being a Real Hot actress in Hollywood is being a pregnant Talk About in Hollywood.

The media worship such stories. They are the easiest news pegs known to man. The country is headed into economic recession (let’s just say IN an economic recession), we’re in a war in Iraq and Afghanistan, yet Jennifer Lopez is getting paid $6 million for exclusive photos of her babies? I mean, she’s married to a skeleton!

A sort of funny part of the story is that this deal was contingent on the magazine’s promise to stop referring to the actress/singer/dancer/mother as J.Lo. For 6 million they can call your ass anything they want, you know, bitch?

Breathe deep, Richard.

J.Lo (waiting for my cut) is not al. Lots of stars are making bank off babies—and sometimes it’s just news wealth (”keeping me out there”). See, “stars” like Kidman, after eight bombs in a row, need something to keep her alive in the tabs. All the celebrities do it, from X-tina to Nicole Ritchie, who is undoubtedly the ugliest person to ever a People magazine with a, ahem, glow.

You know what, we’re all guilty. Everyone watches for showings. The Oscars was more about the baby bumps than clothes; the awards were a second point—the dresses hardly one. Instead of ogling the jewels or hair, the focus was on what’s sticking ut. I’m still not quite sure what the glow of pregnancy looks like, but I’m sure Hollywood stylists are busy trying to develop a spray-on version.

Then there’s Kate Hudson, who would be an extra if it were not for her Mom. She’s not pregnant but talks about it a lot—meaning the fact she isn’t. And on that note: DId anyone see “Fool’s Gold? Which is the better story?

Lisa Marie Presley. No one cared about her when she was Elvis’ daughter (he’s been dead 21 years) and yet she needed to announce she’s pregnant because a tabloid said it was that or she’s fat! Chubby is sinful when you have no career.

Th one real trendsetter in all this is Ms. Jolie. The Brangelina adopts and even conceives their own – a serious double threat. The J-Pitts traded in their entourage for a FAMTEROUGE (like it?) and have only reached greater heights of notoriety with the brood.

Brava/o!

Ah, yes. The news story. Pregnancy is confirmed with an announcement from a publicist or with a bump premier at a high-end baby store or a home that’s prearranged for baby comings. Here they feign indignation about invasion of privacy. We wonder why they didn’t just shop online!

So while they keep us guessing, coyly wearing flowing frocks while issuing non-denial denials—a thread you Punks hear here all the time—they get the word out, faces on covers, doctor appointments scrutinized like Zapruder. They ensure their careers as celebrities endure regardless of their “work.” And if you’re not sold, ask yourself… Can you name the two movies that J.Lo (”Jennifer”) was in during 2007? How about her TWO released albums? But you know the saga of her twins, doncha. Kinda smart…kinda Punk. Now all she has to do is something artful—or she can keep having kids?

Final analysis is in: Overdoing it is the new black.

“Does Movie Violence Decrease Violent Crime?” was some freaky talk of the town last week. This is the most Punk idea I’ve seen yet. A study that inspired an article in the NY Times that says, and don’t laugh, “Economists Say Movie Violence Might Temper the Real Thing” and was conducted by two economists; it isn’t a psychiatric or medical study. Not too juicy in the end. But it is pretty funny! And it goes to show that any major corporation (moviemakers in this case) can lobby any real science into helping them prove a bizarre, albeit farfetched and stretched-to-the-limit, point.

Bottom line – some geniuses are using the new freakonomics (a word now…) to prove that yes, if you are a bad person who watches killings and rapes and muggings and the like, you will calm yourself from doing them – at least for a while. Really now.

“Economists Say Movie Violence Might Temper the Real Thing” (Pieces Of The Article)

The study’s authors acknowledge that their research does not refute and in fact lends credence to the findings of laboratory studies. Neither does it address the long-term effects of exposure to violent media, an influence they view as pernicious.

Rather, the research uses a decade of national crime reports, cinema ratings and movie audience data to examine what has happened to rates of violent crime during and immediately after violent films are shown.

Though such films may indeed stimulate a greater tendency toward aggression in audiences, the bigtime economist offers a rejoinder much favored by economists: Compared to what?

Young men are the most likely to commit violent crimes. In opting to see a movie — even one featuring, say, gang rape or chain-saw amputation — they forgo activities that have a greater tendency to encourage mayhem, like drinking and drug use.

“Economics is about choice,” he said. “What would these people have done if they had not chosen to go and see a movie? Whatever they would have done would have had a greater tendency to involve alcohol. If you can incapacitate a large group of potentially violent people, that’s a good thing.”

“It’s not as if these people watching violent movies would otherwise be home reading a book.”
Their entire study is super long, but I cut out a few choice snippets:

In this paper, we provide causal evidence on the short-run effect of media violence on violent crime. We exploit the natural experiment induced by time-series variation in the violence of movies shown in the theater. As in the psychology experiments, we estimate the short-run effect of exposure to violence, but unlike in the experiments, the outcome variable is violent crime rather than aggressiveness. Importantly, the laboratory and field setups also differ due to self-selection and to the context of violent media exposure. Using a violence rating system from kids-in-mind.com and daily revenue data, we generate a daily measure of box office audience for strongly violent (e.g., “Hannibal”), mildly violent (e.g., “Spider-Man”), and non-violent movies (e.g., “Runaway Bride”). Since blockbuster movies differ significantly in violence rating, and movie sales are concentrated in the initial weekends after release, there is substantial variation in exposure to movie violence over time.

The audience for strongly violent and mildly violent movies, respectively, is as high as 12 million and 25 million people on some weekends, and is close to zero on others (see Figures 1a-1b). We use crime data from the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) and measure violent crime on a given day as the sum of reported assaults (simple or aggravated) and intimidation. We find no evidence that exposure to media violence increases violent behavior in the short-run.

After controlling flexibly for seasonality, we find that, on days with a high audience for violent movies, violent crime is lower. To rule out unobserved factors that contemporaneously increase movie attendance and decrease violence, such as rainy weather, we use two strategies.

First, we add controls for weather and days with high TV viewership. Second, and most importantly, we instrument for movie audience using the predicted movie audience based on the following weekend’s audience. This instrumental variable strategy exploits the predictability of the weekly decrease in attendance. Adding in controls and instrumenting, the correlation between movie violence and violent crime becomes more negative and remains statistically significant.

The estimated effect of exposure to violent movies is small in the morning or afternoon hours (6AM-6PM), when movie attendance is minimal. In the evening hours (6PM-12AM), instead, we detect a significant negative effect on crime. For each million people watching a strongly or mildly violent movie, respectively, violent crimes decrease by 1.3 and 1.1 percent. The effect is smaller and statistically insignificant for non-violent movies. In the nighttime hours following the movie showing (12AM-6AM), the delayed effect of exposure to movie violence is even more negative. For each million people watching a strongly or mildly violent movie, respectively, violent crime decreases by 1.9 and 2.1 percent. Non-violent movies have no statistically significant impact. Unlike in the psychology experiments, therefore, media violence appears to decrease violent behavior in the immediate aftermath of exposure, with large aggregate effects. The total net effect of violent movies is to decrease assaults by roughly 1,000 occurrences per weekend, for an annual total of about 52,000 weekend assaults prevented.

We also examine the delayed impact of exposure to movie violence on violent crime. While our research design (like the laboratory designs) cannot test for a long-run impact, we can examine the medium-run impact in the days and weeks following exposure. We find no impact on violent crime on Monday and Tuesday following weekend movie exposure. We also find no impact one, two, and three weeks after initial exposure, controlling for current exposure. This implies that the same-day decrease in crime is unlikely to be due to intertemporal substitution of crime from the following days.

While reading about the studies, I learned there’s actually a DVD player that automatically deletes all the juicy bits of movies. It’s a Mormon device.

It was invented four years ago, I read online yesterday–a trend I had no idea about: “What the world really needs now is more uptight little companies from Utah that will help us all block out the random messy naked blood n’ guts of the world. Companies that will, without anyone asking them to, protect us from media evildoers and exposed flesh and scary exploding things and that part in ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ wherein the universe is blessed, for the briefest of moments, with … Kate Winslet’s nipples.

…Utah-based ClearPlay, a shrill little corporation that has taken it upon itself to sit around the cube farm all day and watch countless Hollywood flicks and zap out any and all icky violent suggestive material in, say, “Lost In Translation.” For your protection. How kind.”

What is ClearPlay?

Great question! ClearPlay is a fancy DVD Player that can play regular DVD movies — but without profanity, violence and nudity.

Wow! How does that work?

It’s really quite ingenious. We create filtering information on a movie by movie basis, and then put those “filters” into the DVD player. This way, the DVD player knows when to skip or mute while the movie is playing.

But isn’t it choppy?

Nope. That’s the great thing about the ClearPlay service. We love movies just as much as you do, so we take great care to maintain the presentation quality of the movie– the only thing gone is “that one scene” you wish the kids never saw.

What about new movies?

Another great question! If you sign up for a ClearPlay Membership then we provide constant updates for your DVD player. This way ClearPlay works with new movies as they come out. It is really just that simple (and cool!).

Me again. The above was from their site. I’m wondering if parents do anything for their kids anymore. Besides cut their meat, of course.

Have you heard nuff? Go out and watch some gorey movies, kids, and I’ll see you on the street.

Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, that brilliant and precocious 23 year-old who has grown the social networking website to a paper value of $15biilion, posted on his blog yesterday an apology to Facebook users for the way its advertising program, Beacon, was clumsily introduced.

He writes: “About a month ago, we released a new feature called Beacon to try to help people share information with their friends about things they do on the web. We’ve made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but we’ve made even more with how we’ve handled them. We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it.”

The mistakes he is referring were that Beacon alerted Facebook users’ network of friends when they bought something on other websites, such as Overstock.com and Fandango.com, without giving them an easy way to opt out. The idea behind Beacon is interesting - that people learning what their friends are buying acts as an implicit recommendation for those items - but the fact that it was being done for them by someone else without their involvement, wasn’t so cool. It’s like me fishing in your trash can for your store receipts (you haven’t spotted me yet have you?) and then telling other people what you’ve bought. Not illegal, but certainly a bit creepy.

Mr. Zuckerberg had to be reminded by Facebook users that they didn’t want their privacy abused in this way before he did anything about it, but now he’s contrite so I guess that’s all fine. But, how much damage has he done to the reputation of Facebook as an “open platform,” I wonder? And next time the website is valued, how much less might it be worth as a result?

Poor box office on opening weekend for new Ben Stiller movie, ‘The Heartbreak Kid,’ is being blamed on the huge success of Halo 3, the third in the series of Halo video games by Microsoft Corp’s video game division.

Halo 3 sold $170 million in its first 24 hours of sales when it was launched on September 26, beating out previous record-holder movie Spiderman 3 for the title as biggest entertainment launch ever (of course Spidey 3 was a piece of crap, so it was just a matter of time). This shows how so NOT niche video games now are - they are going head to head with more traditional (read ‘dull’) forms of entertainment competing for the attention and pocket money of the fickle youths. And winning.

‘The Heartbreak Kid’ made $14million in its opening weekend, versus an expected $20-25million. And overall, box office receipts in October is down down down - it’s lowest level since 1999. Studio execs have been wondering aloud whether the success of Halo 3 can be blamed for the lackluster performance.

But we think there might be another explanation. Crap movies. Yes, Stiller’s movie (a project from the Farrelly brothers who worked with him on ‘Something Sticky About Mary’) just isn’t that good. The critics have panned it. If it was a good movie, the video game could wait a few hours. And there’s not much else out there to lure someone into the theater to kill a couple of hours on a Friday or Saturday night.
It’s all about content. And Bungie Studios, the newly independent studio that created the Halo series, got it right, while Dreamworks, the studio that produced the Stiller stinker, just didn’t .

So, movie men, ad people and anybody else in the content business, stop blaming external factors for your failures and start raising your quality standards. Then the people will come flooding back.

Dell is a dying brand. It has lost the point of difference that made it a success story and is now running on fumes. If you don’t believe me, go through the steps of buying (or almost buying) a computer from them, as I did yesterday.

I’m a Mac user but need to buy a PC to run a certain software program. I looked up online what Dell had to offer but quickly found their site is not Mac friendly and freezes when you try to get product details. As a computer manufacturer, this doesn’t set very high expectations of their products.

But I didn’t give up there. I called their sales people and told them I was interested in a cheap, basic laptop and gave them the model number I wanted to know more about. The sales rep was over-friendly and asked me a bunch of questions that seemed irrelevent and intrusive (home address, phone number and email address). She said the basic package I saw on their website would’t do it. I should upgrade processor speed and memory. Oh, and I need to get their 3-year warranty because, while “our computers are built to last forever” you never can tell. This stuff I was told I needed added another $300 to the price.

I said I wasn’t ready to make a purchase and was asked why. I said the price. She asked what the problem with it was. I said how big it was. She said oh. I said goodbye and was left with the impression of a company in desperate need of an overhaul. Here’s how:
1. Don’t pretend Mac users don’t exist. Woo them and try and convert them.
2. Enough of the complicated phone options and poor voice recognition. You don’t have any stores (although you’re about to become like every other computer manufactuer by starting to sell in Wal-Mart) so make the direct to customer experience amazing.
3. Don’t try and get me to upgrade before I’ve even decided I’m interested. In fact don’t get me to upgrade at all. If the package you’re touting on your website isn’t good enough, don’t feature it.
4. Don’t ask me for lots of personal details. We’re not even dating yet, so stop stalking me.
5. Don’t ask stupid questions about why I’m not completing an order today when it’s damned obvious. Makes you look desperate and dumb.

I’d love to get my hands on Dell to make it stand out once again as a great brave brand, not what it’s become. You can almost taste the failure. Consumers sense that and will leave (are leaving) in their droves. To buy a Mac, for instance.

Now if only I could that software to work on my trusty, sexy Mac…