Month: April 2019

  • Record Store Day 2019

    Record Store Day 2019

    Record Store Day 2019 redux. Record Store Day has moved away from its origins, to drive music fans into independent record stores and support independent record labels in a time of iTunes and Spotify. For various reasons I didn’t do any any vinyl shopping but used The Vinyl Store to compile a list of what I would have considered buying if I had been in a position to.

    My picks from Record Store Day UK 2019

    A few things:

    • Madonna’s True Blue single was one of her classic 12 inch singles. I am less convinced by the fake ‘obi’
    • Cloud One were a studio-based disco production team
    • Jazzanova’s Heatwave was given a 1980s makeover which sounds amazing
    • Lonnie Liston Smith – Space Princess is a great disco cut from the man that brought you Expansions

    Online consumer behaviour

    danah boyd on the current state of play of participatory media. I first met danah back in 2005 at the Yahoo! Campus in Sunnyvale with Bradley Horowitz. She was working on a project for Yahoo! Research back then and has kept close to youth and ‘social’ media since then.

    Design

    Even if you don’t know eBoy, you’ll recognise their work and its distinctive style. They’re doing a collaboration in customised Swatch watches. The video talks about how they work together, which is an interesting process in and of itself.

    Korea

    Asian Boss have done a collaboration with a documentary maker to bring Crossroads to YouTube. Crossroads is a documentary that shows how the Sewol Ferry disaster shaped modern Korean culture and politics. It was as big as the Poll Tax riots or the Brexit vote in the UK. It pressed the reset button on the Korean public’s relationship with the government captured by chaebol which was business as usual.

    Japan

    And Tomy’s range of mini retro consumer electronics are amazing. I presume that these are all aimed at adults. The level of detail is impressive. More related posts here.

  • Dragged Across Concrete

    In sharp contrast to the wall-to-wall kinetic-driven nature of action films in general; Dragged Across Concrete is a well-paced crime film.

    The role of smartphone shot video dragged it kicking and screaming into the modern day via Rodney King.

    The film reminded me of a number of others:

    • The Usual Suspects and Magnolia for its multi-threaded plot. It was interesting to see how the director managed to drop some threads sooner than others
    • Quentin Tarantino for his emphasis on dialogue, even to the point of awkwardness. And the resurrection of Don Johnson as a film star – which worked really well in this film
    • Michael Mann’s Heat for the meticulous planning of the crime and the way Gibson’s character continuously weighed up his options in terms of probability. It was kind of like being inside the head of the DeNiro character in Heat

    Dragged Across Concrete owes a lot to Spaghetti Westerns with its stand offs pacing and anti-heroes. All action comes with consequences which is very unlike the fireworks of Hollywood. It owes more to the realism of Sergio Corbucci‘s action films.

    There are odd moments like the gimp masked thug who finances the robbery van by robbing a pawn shop and convenience store. More film reviews here.

  • Hellboy reboot and flawed superhero films

    I got to see the Hellboy reboot. Make no mistake it’s flawed. It doesn’t have the synchronicity with the source material of Guillermo del Toro’s adaptations. It was great to see Daniel Dae Kim on film, but his English accent wasn’t great. It was right up there with Dick Van Dyk. There was an ensemble of supporting actors and the amazing Ian McShane. David Harbour does a good job filling Ron Perlman’s shoes as the title character.

    The cinematography was really nicely done. There was something about the CGI that was both ambitious and felt cheap at the same time. I was reminded of Russian films like Guardians.

    The script showed a great love for the comic source and at the same time the pacing, the dialogue was a bit punchier than del Toro, but the pacing didn’t feel right. But that doesn’t mean that it deserves the kicking that it has received in the media. Part of this is down to the fact Hellboy is going head-to-head in the box office with Shazam. Shazam is DC’s answer to Guardians of The Galaxy. A confection with the right degree of surrealism, humour and action.

    Hellboy is darker and misses del Toro’s deft stylistic touch.

    I quite like a number of flawed superhero films. I really enjoyed Ang Lee’s reboot of Hulk with Eric Bana and Nick Nolte. Yes it was artistic, but I could see why your average superhero film wouldn’t appreciate its symbolism.

    Lexi Alexander’s Punisher: War Zone‘s problem wasn’t that it was a poor film but that reviewers couldn’t handle an accurate rendition of the Garth Ennis story in film. My favourite has to be the supposedly unfilmable Spawn. Amazing effects, the underrated Michael Jai White and Charlie Sheen hamming it up like his life depended on it. I am sure Hellboy will grace their number too. More related content here.

  • RESIST + more things

    RESIST – counter disinformation tool – published by UK government. There needs to be more done beyond this document however. Secondly, much of the disinformation in the UK is from within the country supporting anti-vaccination, Islamic fundementalism, Islamophobia, the far left and the far right. RESIST feels like a start rather than a solution. This brings up a whole range of issues from security to wider societal ethics. (PDF)

    15 Months of Fresh Hell Inside Facebook | WIRED – interesting read on the cultural issues and business decisions inside Facebook as it faced criticism externally. The world has changed, Facebook’s culture hasn’t. The comparison between Facebook and Microsoft under Gates and Ballmer is a valid one. This time the stakes are much higher (paywall). More on Facebook here.

    I was gobsmacked when Leica dropped The Hunt. Chinese netizens are notoriously nationalistic, taking offence at any perceived slight. Chinese consumers are a big market for Leica and this was way beyond what even Dolce & Gabbana did in China. Like the NBA, Leica will still have diehard fans amongst the camera community in China. It also screws their partner Huawei who make a big deal of their top-of-the-range smartphones using ‘Leica’ cameras. But that maybe the idea given how toxic the Huawei brand is becoming.

    More on The Hunt reaction in China from the South China Morning Post.

    YouTube flags Notre-Dame Cathedral fire as 9/11 conspiracy | AdAge – machine learning isn’t the be all and end all yet (paywall)

    Gen Z doesn’t want to buy your brand, they want to join it | AdAge – This group isn’t waiting for brands to lead on issues. Instead, they’re leading. Since movements rarely come with a business case or cost-benefit analysis, marketers must consider how they can partner with Gen Z to become more involved and deliver on the promise of purpose (paywall)

    Mediatel: Newsline: Audi/BBH limbo; P&G puts down a(nother) marker – interesting points on P&G media platform pronouncements

    Apple App Store downloads went into decline, Morgan Stanley says – Business Insider – which indicates a ceiling to services

  • The Apple – Qualcomm deal post

    The Apple and Qualcomm deal ceased legal hostilities and lots of people have kicked around theories. But no one seems to definitively know what happened. And what the implications are for Apple.

    • If Apple was on such a sticky wicket, why didn’t it make a deal with Qualcomm earlier? A judge had asked them to sit down right at the beginning and they got nowhere
    • Did Intel explain to Apple that it wasn’t going to hit its engineering targets on the 5G modem (a la IBM and the PowerPCs that used to power Macs)? Or did Apple cut Intel off at the knees?
    • What does this all mean for Intel processors and components in Macs? From CPUs to USB C connectivity Apple is dependent on Intel. Even if Apple decided to move to an ARM architecture they would still likely need Intel foundries and connectivity processors. Before you talk about the Mac now being a small part of the business. Consider what mobile apps and even the iOS is developed upon. Secondly a Mac user is far more likely to be an iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Apple TV customer
    • From a functional handset perspective I am not convinced about the benefit of 5G. But from a marketing perspective it could be very damaging to Apple eventually. How far behind would Apple developing a new 5G solution from scratch be? It would be reasonable to expect for Qualcomm to service other clients first and then only put under performing engineers on Apple as a punishment duty. Given that Qualcomm laid off engineering teams, engineers may only work on Apple grudgingly. Is it even viable for Apple to bother with 5G iPhone? If we look at history, the Qualcomm – Nokia IP deal was the beginning of the end for the Nokia handset business in 2007. Apple might lose money up front, but it would save on the kind of value destruction Nokia went through
    • What is the state of Apple’s relationships with the rest of its supply chain and can it expect a kicking?
    • Whilst mobile carriers wouldn’t be happy to have a single OS eco-system in smartphones, they’ve had zero success in championing other platforms (BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, WebOS and SailfishOS). All of this would make them even more beholden to Google. So would an alternative OS’ spring up to fill the iPhone gap?
    • Can Qualcomm use this to try and smother antitrust investigations outside the US?