I SMELL A BOMB

I know it's only the end of February, but I'm predicting a huge flop of a film coming up this summer. The new Jerry Bruckheimer/Disney movie The Sorcerer's Apprentice will bomb at the boxoffice in the Summer of 2010. (Notice I didn't say the first flop or the only flop). Have you seen the trailer for this? Nicholas Cage is box office poison and it doesn't look like a kids film. Good luck with this one Rich Ross. Now we know why Dick Cook was let go:

http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/sorcerersapprentice/

Awful, even the cool effects can't distract from how bad this movie is.

In an entirely different category, FOX needs to recut the trailer for the Tina Fey/Steve Carell movie Date Night. This trailer has 2 really funny actors in a poorly edited, unfunny trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aspBKFz2dBI

Let's get it together Disney & FOX.

NEW ORLEANS IS BACK!

MARDI GRAS 2010!!!

I had not been to New Orleans since 2004. It was Labor Day weekend and I was living in Miami. I was actually hurricane dodging with a friend of mine. A hurricane was approaching Miami, and all the flights out of town were completely booked. At the last minute we decided to pack a bag and drive from Miami to New Orleans (at least a 13 hour drive). Personally, I didn't care about the drive (since I wasn't driving) and there was a massive traffic jam to get out of Miami anyway. But we made it to New Orleans for a weekend that is appropriately called Southern Decadence. We missed the hurricane, but I did have a decadent weekend. ;)

I first went to New Orleans when I was in my early 20's and I have been in love with the city ever since. New Orleans is a city unlike any other in the United States. It's French, Creole, Southern, corrupt and corrupting, all at the same sweet time. It has a rich cultural history and is just a beautiful city. I actually dated a guy there for about 6 months and did a lot of travelling back and forth, including seeing New Orleans on a "regular" weekend (and it is VERY different). I went to New Orleans for Halloween, which is huge holiday for the city. I have been to the World War 2 Museum and bypassed the Confederate Museum. Needless to say that I have always had a soft spot for New Orleans. The film that most shows the beauty of the city of New Orleans is Neil Jordan's Interview with the Vampire.

Like most Americans and people all over the world who have visited New Orleans, I watched the news in horror as Hurricane Katrina flooded the city I loved in August 2005. I watched in disbelief saying to myself, how can the United States of America treat its citizens like this? This wasn't some flood I was watching on CNN somewhere in Africa, this was in a city I had been to and loved. While the Bush Administration made many mistakes, the shoddy treatment of the poor people of New Orleans was among the most shameful.

I had not been back to New Orleans since 2004, so when a friend of mine suggested we go to Mardi Gras for his birthday I was in. Although I had been to Halloween and Southern Decadence, I had never been to the Big Easy for its biggest celebration. After 6 years, it was good to be back in New Orleans. It's just a fun town. Everyone is in the French Quarter to have a good time and get drunk. And those are my kind of people. It was truly a special time to be there because the underdog New Orleans Saints had just won their first Super Bowl during Mardi Gras a few days before we got there. Six years after Hurricane Katrina it was if the city was finally back where it belonged. And it felt like it. The city needed that win.

I could tell you a million stories about New Orleans, if only I could remember them, but here's a classic example: As my friends and I were getting directions to a restaurant from the concierge at the W Hotel, after he pointed out where to go, he offered this piece of advice, "Gentlemen, no matter what you do, always find a public restroom. Don't do your business on the street or the police will arrest you." That's a lot better than what I'm used to hearing from a concierge when I normally ask for directions to a restaurant, which is, "Can I get you a cab."

TURNS OUT THE TV IS THE BOX

WalMart is getting into the home video delivery business big time with this week's $100 million dollar purchase of Vudu. Vudu was a box maker in a crowded entertainment segment (Apple TV, Roku, Amazon, Boxee, XBox, PlayStation 3, Cinema Now, Blockbuster). And like all overcrowded market segments, the time has come for attrition. Today, Apple indicated that although Apple TV isn't a primary driver for the company, they are staying in the home entertainment delivery business. But Vudu got out of the box business and decided to go right to the OEMs and installed their hardware directly into the TVs.

Vudu has internet streaming, video on demand (rental or purchase), access to Flickr, YouTube, and Picassa, no subscription costs, the largest library of HD titles from every Hollywood studio, and new releases weekly the same day as DVD. And now WalMart, which has had 2 abortive attempts at the home entertainment business before, is trying to get into your home again. Only this time, the world's largest retailer may have finally gotten it right.

Everyone knows that the DVD is going away within the next 5 years. And 3 years after that Blu Ray is gone too. The problem with the Home Entertainment business is that it's a packaged goods business. People won't pay a premium (like the average cost of DVD) when what they're getting is a file. And the next iteration of entertainment delivery won't be a disc at all, it will be a download. And there's no "packaged good" as a download.

WalMart sells more televisions in the United States than any other retailer. And in between today's current TV, which were just upgraded for the digital transition, and 3DTV (10 years down the road), there will be an opening for a new category for TV's and that will be the internet enabled TV. What fascinates me from a television perspective is that we all thought that the battle for the living room is the battle for the box. Industry thinking was that whoever's single, stand alone box (Microsofts? Comcasts?) that provided the consumer with TV, cable channels, a gaming platform, and VOD would be one of the most profitable companies in the United States. The quest for any company was to be that box. Turns out no company is going to be "that box". The TV is going to be the ultimate convergence device with everything you need built right into your newly purchased TV from WalMart. No red, yellow, white, and blue wires, just plug in your TV, connect to your internet and watch anything you want any time you want.

A funny side note is that Vudu also offered porn, which of course, family friendly WalMart is shutting down. That's too bad too, because everyone knows that whoever can gett porn streamed easily into your household will also have a license to print money. Porn (take home movies) were what started the VHS business and jump started the transition to DVDs (with its smaller, more compact packaging). That's really how take home video business came into existence, with human beings paying to hide their perceived shame.

NEW BEST FRIEND/OLD BEST FRIEND

For me, the process of writing this blog is as much editing as it is writing. I have a list of topics and I try to pick the most interesting or relevant ones and see where the writing takes me. If it's not compelling, I try not to waste your time reading it and my time writing it.

Some items never make it onto the blog. One item that I have been sitting on for the last 6 months is that I need a new best friend. I've had a falling out with my 2 best friends (both of whom live in New York City) for different reasons, and I'm looking to fill that void since I've been without a best friend for about 3 years now.

This runs in tandem with a similar unwritten blog, that is the one thing I haven't done in LA is made any new friends. I can barely keep up with the 6 close friends I have here in LA (Dana, Tommy, Wade, Tim, Alan, Chad Michael), add onto that long working hours, working out and life in general (food shopping, paying bills, watching TV, going to the movies) and a long distance relationship and I don't know where I could carve out the time to make a new friend. The fact is I've also been holding back since I don't want to come off sounding like, "Poor me," when I have an amazing set of friends and a great life on top of that.

But sure enough, after months of sitting on the blog writing list and never making it, here it is. Why? Because for the first time in 3 years, I got an out of the blue text that turned into an very nice out of the blue 1 hour phone call from my best friend from college whom I've now know for 20 years. I won't go into the details, but suffice it to say that, just like my other best friend in New York who I randomly and literally ran into in the middle of New York Gay Pride on a crowded street corner this past summer, you never know when people will leave and re-enter your life. I'm glad Yoey's back in my life and I look forward to reconnecting with someone I have know known, loved and respected for over 2 decades.

THE NEXT STEP BEYOND MULTITOUCH

Now this is incredibly cool: http://vimeo.com/2229299

A spatial operating environment is an entirely new concept in operating systems and how we will interact with computers. It's called a gesture activated interface or Gspeak. This technology was first demonstrated in the movie Minority Report starring Tom Cruise (2002). News channels are already using something similar. And soon video game consoles, based on the success of the Wii will begin using gesture technology. NCIS LA began using it this season on their TV show.

I came upon this article today in the New York Times: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/15/you-too-can-soon-be-like-tom-cruise-in-minority-report/ Besides the miracle of the operating system itself, the man who designed the technology for the movie actually started his own company and made the technology actually happen. Talk about fully realizing a technology. This man is the new Steve Jobs or Bill Gates.

There is a similar application called Cool Iris: http://www.cooliris.com. What's interesting about Cool Iris is that it is the first truly visual search engine, but the GSpeak takes it to the next level. This will change collaborative interaction, movies, security (airport, police, fire, military), education, email, music, picture, and visual searches, weather, news, sports, and the list of industries goes on and on...And the next generation of workers in America, the digital natives, will be fully ready to use this technology for the next generation of companies.

MOVIES ABOUT GREEN

For the movie industry, Spring is the low season that falls in between the 2 most profitable times of the year, Winter and Summer. January is typically the dumping ground for all the bad movies studio don't know when to release any other time of year. February is the token Valentine's Day romantic comedy movie season (although still a profitable month). March is typically comedies and college films since its Spring Break and April is just the warm up to May when Summer begins and the cash registers start ringing again.

Stunningly enough, this year there are 2 movies that I'm really looking forward to in March and April. The Green Zone opens March 12th starrring one of my favorite actors (Matt Damon) and one of my Top 5 favorite directors (Paul Greengrass). Mr. Damon and Mr. Greengrass did the 2 best Bourne films and I really love Paul Greengrass' kinetic smash cut film style. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Directing for the equally gripping United 93.

The other movie opening in April is Wall Street Money Never Sleeps. Wall Street is one of my all time favorite films. No film better defined the decade that was the 1980's than Wall Street. And Michael Douglas ran away with the Academy Award for Best Actor for Gordon Gekko. Gordon Gekko is one of the most powerful film performances given by an actor in the last 25 years. I'm optimistic that with Oliver Stone directing and Michael Douglas reprising his Oscar winning role, that the film will at least live up to Wall Street.

UPDATE: Wall Street 2 has been pushed from April 23rd to September 24th. FOX wants the movie at Cannes in May.

THEY'RE NOT "FREE" PEOPLE

Every Monday night since the beginning of the year, I have been co-teaching a 3 hour graduate level lecture class at UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. It has been just as big of an education for me as I hope I have been able to provide theses graduate students. One of the more interesting points outside of the entertainment industry was this quote from a graduate student, "How can anyone compete with Google and Facebook when their business proposition is FREE?" (I'm paraphrasing, but you get the point). Kids, Google and Facebook are NOT Free.

Besides the stark differences between an MBA and an MFA program, what's wrong that statement is the illusion that educated consumers have that Google and Facebook are free. They're not free and just because you don't pay for something doesn't make it "free." Google is a public company that provides its users with many key services. Google gives you email, an online calendar, chat, maps, blogs, photos, videos, and on and on and on. While there is no financial transaction that occurs between the consumer and Google, and these services do not physically cost you anything, there is still an implicit contract inherit between the consumer and Google. What it costs you is your privacy. You don't own your email or calendar or photos. Google owns those digital assets, not you. For example, when the federal government was prosecuting Bears Stearns fund managers for lying to investors, of course the government subpoenaed the internal email accounts of the Bear Stearns fund managers. But the government also subpoenaed Google for the "personal" (not private) GMail accounts of the fund managers involved. The sneaky Bear Stearns fund managers had their GMail accounts deleted long before the subpoena, but guess what? Your GMail account is the digital property of Google. Google handed over every single email ever written from those accounts to the federal government: http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/chris-dannen/techwatch/gmail-records-show-bear-stearns-anticipated-blow Your email doesn't belong to you, it is the property of the Google corporation. Notice how in your GMail account if you start typing, "Dear John - Looking forward to seeing you in Vienna..." all of a sudden all the advertisements turn to Flights to Vienna, Hotels to Vienna, etc.

And I don't say this with any malice towards Google. I know exactly what I'm doing when I put any detail of my personal life on Google that is no longer my personal life. It is there for everyone to see or potentially be prosecuted for. I strongly believe in Google's vision of cloud computing as the future of technology, and much of my life (blog, videos, email, calendar) is completely with Google. I operate under a very simple philosophy, if you're not doing anything wrong you don't have anything to worry about. But Google owns every search you do too. And Google retains that information (since it's their property and they are legally liable for it), in perpetuity. Every search you've ever done. For 6 months that search is directly traceable to your IP address, which is you. After 6 months, the data is stripped of your personal information, but Google still keeps every search. I think it's great to catch and be able to prosecute child pornographers via their searches, but your searches are not private. Google CEO Eric Schmidt said it best: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

Facebook is another interesting company. First of all, what Mark Zuckerberg has really built is the most optimized advertising platform ever built in human history. They haven't figured out how to monetize it yet, but when they do, it's an advertising gold mine. As an advertiser, when I have you on Facebook, I know everything about you. I know what you read, what you watch, where you travel to, who your friends are, what your likes and dislikes are, and on and on. You tell Facebook via your wall, status update and photos everything about you. And that Facebook account doesn't belong to you. Even when you leave Facebook, they don't delete your account, they keep it - in perpetuity. You don't own you, Facebook, a PRIVATE company, owns everything about you.

My point is that old saying, "If it's too good to be true, it probably is." Free isn't free in the digital world. Google and Facebook cannot and do not operate on a "free" business model. Realize that nothing in life is free, especially online. While you are receiving a valuable service, what you're paying with your privacy, and that's not a "free" proposition.

CHAD MICHAEL, MITO & WHEATON

Chad Michael and his boyfriend Mito run their own successful small business in Los Angeles. They are both designers of high end window displays in upscale retail stores. I have known Chad Michael for the better part of 10 years and watched him start out as a cater waiter, and do a million other part time jobs until he really found his passion for creating window displays. He and his boyfriend Mito both live and went into business together, which can be difficult in any relationship, but somehow they make it work. Since I've been back in LA, we've become close friends. They throw this amazing pumpkin carving party every Halloween at their house in West Hollywood that I attended for the first time this year and had a blast at.

Chad Michael and Mito both love animals. Between the 2 of them they have a bird, a cat, a dog, a tarantula (!), and a large Galapagos size tortoise (WTF!). Despite their home zoo, they were always so nice about taking care of my African Grey parrot Wheaton whenever I would go away for a week or more on vacation. Chad Michael and Mito were always so good to him, paid him so much attention and took great care of him. Ever since I had moved back Chad Michael asked me if I could keep Wheaton's red tail feathers for him. I'm paraphrasing, but his quote was something like, "I don't know where or how I'm going to use them, but can you collect his red feathers and give them to me?" Fine by me, I always threw them out anyway, so I did.

Sadly over the holidays, Wheaton passed away after 20 years. It was really sad for me, he was my favorite pet ever. Wheaton was with me in Miami and I moved him across the U.S. with me when I moved to LA. Chad Michael and Mito were both sad too when they heard that he passed.

About a month later I got a text out of the blue from Chad Michael saying that they had used Wheaton's feathers in a Valentine's window display they had just completed. I really was so touched by that. It was a really sweet tribute. Wheaton's feathers are in the plume of the arrow.