Planet B-Boy teaser trailer

Represent!

Appleseed

Following the footstep of Ghost in the Shell, the celebrated manga artist, Masamune Shirow's another work, Appleseed, became a gorgeous 3D animated feature. But it's plagued with flaws that mark the decline of anime quality in recent years: the story, the characters, the script.

I haven't read the original manga, but the screenwriter only borrowed the basic storyline and characters, ditched whatever layers of story elements in the text, made into generic action flick that a high school kid could've written. And not even a bright kid at that.

Long on exposition and surprisingly lack on action, you can't help marvel if the writers and director didn't care to reference the venerable GiTS or other great anime movies but lavished their attention on futuristic techno stuff. They spent more time explaining how robots function rather than how this utopia managed to function despite there was a world war waging for years.

I know why people never talked about this gorgeous looking anime since it was released despite its high production look and Masamune Shirow's material. Bad movies like this gives me a hope that I can actually do better, given a chance. (Yes. I can.)

Unboxing Amazon

Amazon's direct download video service, aka Amazon Unbox launched today, stealing Apple's thunder due next week.

I got no time to try the service, but I'm struck by the space they designed, with an email address, inviting "content creators" to use to their service as the digital distribution platform. I use Amazon to sell my used stuff and quite satisfied with them. I wonder what kind of 'deals' would they offer? I know iTunes is quite popular with podcasts and video podcasts, but what of original videos? features and shorts and everything between? I applaude Amazon for trying something different.

Who knew an Internet bookstore would turn to sell digital video service, on top of everything else? Technology, once again, enables more than you planned.

Piracy and Beyond

netribution: Torrents, piracy and beyond: will the film industry survive? "I’ll say that again. 2.5% of music downloaded on the internet is paid for. The other 97.5% is ‘illegal’. Shift this across to the world of film and you may get a glimpse of quite how things are changing, and why some people in the industry are - to put it mildly - concerned.

'So the guys who started this business all cheated somebody to get there, and now they're being cheated, perhaps, by all these crazy, geeky people all over the internet. I must say, my anguish level is not great.'

What we may be witnessing is a massive shift in the way the media industry operates from a relationship between creative people and consumers that is mediated by large multinational business, to one which is mediated as transparently as possible by technology, by the web. In other words, producers communicating with and selling directly to audiences."

Another Side of Netflix

Wired: Netflix Presents. "This isn't philanthropy. We're not 'supporting the arts.' This is a market-based solution using technology." Yup. Netflix has been playing a mini-studio in small indie market. With the race of provide digital content over the net as well as the snail mail, the distribution market is ripe for make-over.

My only concern is that if the increasing venues of distribution good for the content creators? I bet on solid "yes" for now.