Some lucky SOB saw an early screening of the long-awaited Hitchihikers Guide to the Galaxy movie and is reporting on it – although the movie isn’t due to be released until May 6, 2005. Anyway, he teases us with a BBC video clip of a bit of the movie – the link is dead, site not found. Could be a slashdot effect, or the video was intentionally pulled. Whatever. He has a favorable review, although this bit about Zaphod’s second head in his freaking nostril is wacky. But perhaps more sensible for purposes of video.
Read his review here.
See recently released artists renderings here.
Official renderings here.
Poster Resurgence
The website of the Ephemera Society of America discusses the newly active American poster market, resurgent in the past ten years. The number of poster auctions conducted in the United States increased from two in 1990 to at least eight in 2002. There are now vintage poster fairs in several major U.S. cities, and collectors worldwide are seeing new value in American creations in this category, especially American posters produced between the two World Wars. World War pieces, such as Norman Rockwell’s patriotic World War II quartet shown in my mom’s poster retrospective at Savannah’s Telfair Museum in 2002, The Four Freedoms, fetches over $3,000. Read more here.
Future Media, 2014
Robin Sloan has published a Flash ‘documentary’ describing the downfall of the fourth estate and their replacement by the rise of Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Friendster (you had me until that last one). The vision is interesting, and potentially accurate on some points, but I think it underestimates the value and tenacity of ‘old media.’ The conclusion is that people get what they want – gossip and false trivia. To quote Ray Davies and the Kinks – Give the people what they want… We hope everybody gets what they deserve. Click here to see the animation – it’s a bit long (~8 minutes) – but well worth it.
The Long Tail Book Deal
In one of the most interesting articles to appear in WIRED in a long while, Chris Anderson explained the concept of ‘the long tail.’ Now, he has announced a book deal on his blog. This will be a must read for me. So, what is this concept, you ask? Chris explains it like this ‘Forget squeezing millions from a few megahits at the top of the charts. The future of entertainment is in the millions of niche markets at the shallow end of the bitstream.’ Basically, instead of the traditional bell curve to define interest – very little at either end of the graph, with most interest in the middle – the long tail of the digital age sees tremendous value (read revenue) in the tiny blips of niche interest. Check out his blog, and the WIRED story. It’s eye opening.