One to Watch: Super 8

Yea! A review not from The New York Times.

(Super 8)...'It's an expertly constructed thrill ride with wonderful atmosphere and tremendous good humor; if its heart of gold is artificial, that won't stop you from enjoying the heck out of it. This much-hyped collaboration between writer-director J.J. Abrams and producer Steven Spielberg, who have known each other since Abrams was a child, is such a meta-conscious movie-movie fugue state that it goes well beyond concepts like homage or tribute into realms like "demonic possession" or "priestly ritual."'

see "Super 8": J.J. Abrams' fake Spielberg movie is real fun

from Salon.com's Andrew O'Hehir

Northern City Nights

The New York Times recently ran two articles in their Travel section highlighting two cities in European countries that I consider to be in the Far North.

Most go there places. In summer of course!

Stockholm in Sweden  see 36 Hours in Stockholm

"STOCKHOLMERS revel in the long days of summer when the sun rises as early as 3:30 a.m. and doesn’t set until after 10 p.m. Many locals escape to their country houses, but those who remain in the city spend as much time as possible outdoors — an easy feat since water and parkland make up almost two-thirds of Stockholm."

And in St Petersburg in Russia see White Nights of St. Petersburg, Russia 

"In St. Petersburg, the grand city of the czars, they call them the “White Nights”: those 80 or so evenings, running from May to the end of July, when the city emerges from long months of cold and darkness and celebrates the brief return of nearly round-the-clock daylight."

FPS - First Person Shooter - For Real

"In real, modern combat, in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, some soldiers have cameras attached to their helmets."

from Gizmodo

see This is Real War, Viewed from the Call of Duty Camera Angle

Link to the video in The New York Times featured in the Gizmodo article


Combat in the First Person: Haruti

Other YouTube videos can be found here

Paywall vs Free: Forbes Says Free

“Even if you have a successful paywall, the revenue you get will not come close to matching what you’re going to get on the advertising side,” Forbes Media chairman and former presidential candidate Steve Forbes told paidContent:UK."

At least some publishers have got it right.

see Interview: Steve Forbes Says Pay Walls Can’t Pay The Way

from paidContent:UK

Bin Laden or Death in Plain Sight.

Image via WikipediaThe New York Times has this well written article on the hunt and execution of Bin Laden.

The best place to hide is always in full sight, and of course the someone in the Pakistan security apparatus knew all along where he was hiding. If you believe otherwise then you are just as naive as the Yanks.

see Behind the Hunt for Bin Laden

Movies: "Hanna" - An American Nikita - One to Watch.

"“Hanna,” energetically and at times hyperactively directed by Joe Wright, is about a girl raised not by wolves but the next best thing: a bearded and muscled Eric Bana draped in animal skins. He’s the resident mystery man, Erik, a warrior of some type who for initially unknown reasons lives with his daughter, Hanna, in rugged isolation in northern Finland. She’s the bigger puzzle."

So writes Manohla Dargis in The New York Times review of the movie.

Interesting but where are the comparisons to the original French Nikita directed by Luc Besson  in 1990?

Newspapers: Graphs of Past and Future Collapses.

SAI Business Insider has published two graphs about a week apart:

• One called "Why The Newspaper Industry Collapsed"
• And the other called "The New York Times' Delusional Digital Pricing Scheme

It's interesting to compare the two. 

 

Wonder what similar charts will look like in a year's time?

Online Digital Music - Pandora' Box

Image via CrunchBase"Pandora, the popular Internet radio service, filed for an initial public offering in February that would raise $100 million. Spotify, a highly lauded European service, is reportedly raising $100 million from private equity firms to help it come to the United States."


The New York Times notes that


"Since it emerged in the 1990s, digital music has been hugely popular with fans, but for online music companies and their investors it has almost never been profitable."


See


Investors Are Drawn Anew to Digital Music