ZOMG!!!1!!!!!1!!

I've just had 2 zomg1!1!!! experiences. The first is that while checking my webcomics I noticed that someone left a comment about going to see Land of the Dead on Friday afternoon. It is finally finished. Drool. It'll probably be 2 years before if finally gets to South Africa, but I'm planning a costumed trip to Canal Walk when it does. Anybody gonna join me?

The second was when my boss brung in an apple pamphlet with nifty new gadgets. The best is not the new iPod Photo, which has 60GB storage, plays songs, stores, displays and edits photos, but the cable that attaches DIRECTLY to your digicam and allows you to download the pictures onto the unit. The cable is just a standard USB thing, this means that I can have a portable HDD that supports USB mass storage devices, how cool is that. The iPod costs R3999 and the cable R299, but I can dream can't I. I did wonder how they'd power the USB but then I thought most cameras need to be powered up before transferring pictures.

Also for those of you who appreciate good music here is how to play an awesome Johnny Cash tune on a Ukulele, thanks to Yirmurmah. Also on their site you can get a really bad cover of the artist (uke) and writer (vocals) doing "search and Destroy" by the Stooges. They’ve run a series of strips covering a ukulele tutorial.

I watched Van Helsing last night. Some of the CG sucked, it looked cartoonish, but most of it was really cool. It had a few plot holes, but overall I really enjoyed the movie. The problem I had was that it could have been better, and I think I've nailed down why: the film makers weren't in love with the movie (or maybe movie making), it was just a business deal or a job to them, it lacked passion. This is kinda an epiphany for me. There are some movies that were filmed with low budgets, bad actors and terrible special effects that still manage to be totally rocking, I'd even go as far as saying that as kick-ass movies go, there is a higher proportion of low budget to high budget. Think about it, if you're an investor (in the film industry "producer") you stick your cash in the flick with the lowest risk vs reward ratio. This means that you can hardly choose the ones that make you feel tingly inside. I've got nothing against making a buck, in fact this practice makes perfect business sense. Many of the really cool ideas end up plugging and loosing money for all involved, this is probably because the ideas didn't appeal to a wide enough audience. The other problem is that if someone really loves a concept and you give them a huge budget they may just go overboard, eg David Lynch with Dune. No Producer wants a movie that is really brilliant but that only 12 people on earth will go see. Instead they'd prefer a movie that vaguely resembles the ideas and concepts in Dune, that can showcase the latest special effects, star big names like orlando bloom, Bendover Arseflick or Colonic Irrigation Farrel and can be marketed like wrinkle-cream in an old folks home. These measures will place butts in seats and bring them the highest possible return on investment, and if they can't afford all that stuff well then the first thing to go is the vague reference to something called a book by this guy frank herbert.

Now don't get me wrong, this rant is about the movie industry in general and not specifically Van Helsing. Van Helsing was cool, it was interesting and novel, I enjoyed it. However the above business logic applies to everything in the entertainment industry, that's why cool tv shows like firefly and Now and Again get cancelled while eighteen wheels of justice gets 5 seasons, this makes schpat sad. People are scared to put their money into what they love. To make this point a little more personal, if you are not passionate about what you do think about doing something different, or you may find that you're filming "the phantom menace".

I don't want to leave this post on a downer so I'm just gonna remind you about the shiny at the top. MMmmmm, iPod. Drooolll Land of the Dead!

schpat out.

PS: I'm trying to popularise "brung". It's shorter, snapper and easier to spell than brought.