The multicultural world
This evening I had another interview for a job with a bulge bracket American bank. (The financial markets are hiring - this is good). Of course, in this globalised world, it is remarkable how much you have in common with the people you encounter. The interviewer knew someone who had been studying for a Ph.D. in the same department at me in Cambridge at the same time. And as he was Indian, we had much in common. No doubt I could have talked cricket with him for hours.
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
Monday, May 31, 2004
The joys of copyright
Over in the comments section of Cathy Seipp's blog (where Cathy's daughter Cecile Dubois was guest blogging), I this afternoon found myself having a conversation with Tim Minear (who wrote many episodes of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer spinoff Angel) about the forthcoming DVDs of the recent television series Wonderfalls, which despite great reviews was cancelled after only a few episodes early this year. Apparently one obstacle to getting the DVDs out is some of the songs used in the television series: the producers do not have the rights to for the music as it applies to a DVD release, and obtaining it would be too expensive, so the music has to be removed from the television episodes and it has to be replaced with less expensive music.
Tim says that this is quite a common situation. Given the way in which music copyrights work, I can believe this. In particular recorded music is subject to two copyrights, one belonging to the composer and the other to the performer. The copyright of the performer (ie the record company) is much more restrictive than that of the composer (ie the publishing company), which means that the performer can charge whatever he wants to allow use of the song, and can prevent its use if he doesn't want to. The copyright of the composer is subject to compulsory license, however, which means that the composer cannot stop use of the song, and cannot choose how much to charge for it - this is set by the copyright laws. This is why you will sometimes hear a new version of a familiar song on a movie soundtrack - it means that the producers were unable to obtain rights to the music they wanted to use and therefore had someone else record a new version of the same song, which nobody can stop them doing but which can be much cheaper). And in many instances the copyright law that applies to the broadcast of music is not the same as that that applies to selling recordings of music.
Which reminds me of another, older, example of this. It applies to the radio rather than television, for which the rules are different again, so it's not quite the same kind of thing, although it's close.
Shortly after Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series was broadcast in the UK in 1978, the producers wanted to put the series out as an LP record. (The CD player existed in labs in Eindhoven at that point, but was not yet a consumer product). This was offered to BBC records, who in one of many acts of legendary cluelessness passed, but another record company picked it up.
Copyright law contains various provisions for the broadcast of music on the radio. In some instances it falls under fair use, and in other instances compulsory licences apply. In any event, it was relatively easy to use quite famous music for the radio series, but it was legally much harder if you were going to put it on a record. Resources were limited in terms of paying for the rights to use music on the record, and it thus wasn't possible to release recordings of the original radio series including the original music. Also, the original series had 29-30 minute episodes, and you can only fit 22-23 minutes on one side of an LP record. So the radio series was remixed with different music, cut in length, and substantially rerecorded for its release on LP. There are many mutually contradictory versions of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the LP records are one of the more obscure ones. They weren't especially obscure at the time - in fact they sold very well - but they are something of a collector's item now due to the fact that records are now an obsolete medium. The Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy was later released on CD, but this time actually by the BBC. This time round there was a lot more money, and it was possible to obtain the rights to all the music of the original radio series (and there is no difficulty fitting two 30 minute episodes on a CD, given that CDs fit a maximum of 74 minutes of recording). So the CDs were (and are) of the original radio series, not the remixed and rerecorded LP record version.
Most people would agree that this is for the best: the radio series was the original and in some ways definitive version after all. This is possibly true, but in a way it is also a shame that the LP versions have faded into obscurity (although they are something of a collector's item). For they are actually very good. The radio programs were a bit rushed, but for the LP versions there was time to fix a few things that had not been got right the first time. And in one or two places this shows. So if you are a serious Hitchhiker's collector (I'm not) you probably do need a set of the LPs.
And it really seems necessary to find a set of the LPs to listen to this version. Because although it is easy to find MP3s of the original radio series (ie ripped versions of the CDs) it is not for the LP versions. As programs that originally went out on vinyl records and which have never been released in digital format, they are a little hard for people to rip.
Update: A little further reading informs me that episode three of Hitchhikers released on CD does contain a brief cut due to the the difficulty of obtaining the rights to Shine On You Crazy Diamond by Pink Floyd and Rock and Roll Music by the Beatles. (I doubt that obtaining the rights to Also Sprach Zarathustra would be difficult, although this is also mentioned in the article).
Over in the comments section of Cathy Seipp's blog (where Cathy's daughter Cecile Dubois was guest blogging), I this afternoon found myself having a conversation with Tim Minear (who wrote many episodes of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer spinoff Angel) about the forthcoming DVDs of the recent television series Wonderfalls, which despite great reviews was cancelled after only a few episodes early this year. Apparently one obstacle to getting the DVDs out is some of the songs used in the television series: the producers do not have the rights to for the music as it applies to a DVD release, and obtaining it would be too expensive, so the music has to be removed from the television episodes and it has to be replaced with less expensive music.
Tim says that this is quite a common situation. Given the way in which music copyrights work, I can believe this. In particular recorded music is subject to two copyrights, one belonging to the composer and the other to the performer. The copyright of the performer (ie the record company) is much more restrictive than that of the composer (ie the publishing company), which means that the performer can charge whatever he wants to allow use of the song, and can prevent its use if he doesn't want to. The copyright of the composer is subject to compulsory license, however, which means that the composer cannot stop use of the song, and cannot choose how much to charge for it - this is set by the copyright laws. This is why you will sometimes hear a new version of a familiar song on a movie soundtrack - it means that the producers were unable to obtain rights to the music they wanted to use and therefore had someone else record a new version of the same song, which nobody can stop them doing but which can be much cheaper). And in many instances the copyright law that applies to the broadcast of music is not the same as that that applies to selling recordings of music.
Which reminds me of another, older, example of this. It applies to the radio rather than television, for which the rules are different again, so it's not quite the same kind of thing, although it's close.
Shortly after Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series was broadcast in the UK in 1978, the producers wanted to put the series out as an LP record. (The CD player existed in labs in Eindhoven at that point, but was not yet a consumer product). This was offered to BBC records, who in one of many acts of legendary cluelessness passed, but another record company picked it up.
Copyright law contains various provisions for the broadcast of music on the radio. In some instances it falls under fair use, and in other instances compulsory licences apply. In any event, it was relatively easy to use quite famous music for the radio series, but it was legally much harder if you were going to put it on a record. Resources were limited in terms of paying for the rights to use music on the record, and it thus wasn't possible to release recordings of the original radio series including the original music. Also, the original series had 29-30 minute episodes, and you can only fit 22-23 minutes on one side of an LP record. So the radio series was remixed with different music, cut in length, and substantially rerecorded for its release on LP. There are many mutually contradictory versions of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the LP records are one of the more obscure ones. They weren't especially obscure at the time - in fact they sold very well - but they are something of a collector's item now due to the fact that records are now an obsolete medium. The Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy was later released on CD, but this time actually by the BBC. This time round there was a lot more money, and it was possible to obtain the rights to all the music of the original radio series (and there is no difficulty fitting two 30 minute episodes on a CD, given that CDs fit a maximum of 74 minutes of recording). So the CDs were (and are) of the original radio series, not the remixed and rerecorded LP record version.
Most people would agree that this is for the best: the radio series was the original and in some ways definitive version after all. This is possibly true, but in a way it is also a shame that the LP versions have faded into obscurity (although they are something of a collector's item). For they are actually very good. The radio programs were a bit rushed, but for the LP versions there was time to fix a few things that had not been got right the first time. And in one or two places this shows. So if you are a serious Hitchhiker's collector (I'm not) you probably do need a set of the LPs.
And it really seems necessary to find a set of the LPs to listen to this version. Because although it is easy to find MP3s of the original radio series (ie ripped versions of the CDs) it is not for the LP versions. As programs that originally went out on vinyl records and which have never been released in digital format, they are a little hard for people to rip.
Update: A little further reading informs me that episode three of Hitchhikers released on CD does contain a brief cut due to the the difficulty of obtaining the rights to Shine On You Crazy Diamond by Pink Floyd and Rock and Roll Music by the Beatles. (I doubt that obtaining the rights to Also Sprach Zarathustra would be difficult, although this is also mentioned in the article).
Sunday, May 30, 2004
More breakfast blogging
Nominally Italian pancetta and parmesan sausages this week once again from the Sainsbury's luxury sausage line. Unsurprisingly they are less garlicky and more cheesy than the Tolouse sausages I had last week. (I would attempt to make some comment about how that describes the differences between Italy and France, but France is plenty cheesy too. The pancetta and parmesan sizzled a little more in the pan, perhaps mainly because of the cheese. In any event, they were quite delicious, even more so than the Tolouse sausages I think.
Nominally Italian pancetta and parmesan sausages this week once again from the Sainsbury's luxury sausage line. Unsurprisingly they are less garlicky and more cheesy than the Tolouse sausages I had last week. (I would attempt to make some comment about how that describes the differences between Italy and France, but France is plenty cheesy too. The pancetta and parmesan sizzled a little more in the pan, perhaps mainly because of the cheese. In any event, they were quite delicious, even more so than the Tolouse sausages I think.
Saturday, May 29, 2004
My new computer
Over the last six months, I have on two occasions hit problems due to the fact that my laptop computer has died. The first time the machine was a complete writeoff, and I had to simply buy a new one. The second time my new laptop had problems with its screen, and I was without it for several weeks while it was being repaired by Dell. For me, being without a computer is disastrous, as most of the things I do in my life require one to really function. I decided I needed a second computer to act as a backup in such situations. I had never built a computer out of a motherboard and other parts before, and I decided that it would be fun to try. And as it happens, a great many computer people have old computer parts lying around, and by asking nicely you can get most of the parts for a new computer for free.
In particular, I discovered that the best kinds of friends to have are hard core gamers - people who must have the latest and greatest computer at all times, and who are likely to throw out or give away computer hardware that seems perfectly good and reasonably up to date to the rest of us.
In the end, I managed to get people to give me almost an entire computer. As far as hardware is concerned, I only ended up paying for a new toolkit (which doesn't really count and which I needed anyway and which in any event only cost me £7.49), a set of screws, a new keyboard, and a new hard drive. (My mother gave me a keyboard when I was in Australia, but I left it out as I was carrying a bit too much luggage. I could undoubtedly have scrounged one off someone else, but when I saw that Maplin Electonics were selling brand new keyboards for £4.68, it simply didn't seem worth bothering). As far as hard drives are concerned, I discovered that second hand ones are harder to come by than most other components (as hard drives fail more often than virtually any other component, and there is thus more demand for them than for anything else) and also because hard drives are the part of the computer that is more subject to Moore's law than any other. Three or four year old hard drives only tend to be 5-10 gigabytes, and this isn't really enough for people with large music collections. (Mine is presently 14GB, which is medium sized but too much for a 10GB hard drive). On top of that, I might well do something like install a TV card and turn this computer into a Personal Video Recorder (PVR) at some point, in which case lots of hard drive space will be useful.
So although it might have been possible to scrounge a small second hand hard drive from someone (or I could have got an adaptor and used the 5Gb hard drive from my old laptop) I didn't think it was worth it. And once you have made the decision to buy a new hard drive, it turns out that 160GB costs less than double the cost of 40GB. So, the new computer has a 160GB hard drive. (I am told that the drive has a capacity of 164,686,520,320 bytes out of which I am presently using 3,781,287,936, so I have mere 160,905,232,384 bytes of space remaining).
Everything else was given to me by people who weren't using it. And I have been able to convert this
into this
.
In any event I now have a computer with an AMD Athlon 1GHz CPU, 512MB of RAM, a 160GB 7200rpm hard drive, a 128Mb NVIDIA GeoForce4 Ti 4200 Graphics card (although this is being slowed down a little by the fact that the motherboard only has a 4X AGP slot, and the graphics card supports 8X), 10/100 Ethernet, on board sound, and a CD-ROM drive. There's no modem and no floppy, not because I would have had any trouble getting them but because I don't need them right now. (On the other hand if someone wants to give me a modem for free, I might take it, because it is useful to have one on board in case the DSL fails. That said, I do have one in the laptop, so to be in a bad way I would have to lose both the DSL and the laptop would have to have a separate problem, which isn't that likely).
And the computer is in an enormous case. Gamers like those I believe. I might install some front USB ports in one of the bays at some point, and an internal card reader might be nice, too.
Just using it now, to me the new box feels like a nice computer. The least state of the art thing about it is probably the CPU. I think the 1.0GHz Athlon precedes AMD's use of the "Athlon 1700+" notation, but I according to benchmarks a 1.0GHz Athlon is likely to run at about 2/3 of the speed of the 1.4GHz Pentium M in my laptop, and about 10% slower than a 1.3GHz Pentium 4. So the CPU is not state of the art, but is more than acceptable for most uses. And with 512MB of RAM, it isn't going to have to do much swapping. The one thing that is lacking is a DVD drive of any kind or a CD writer. I don't expect I am going to want to watch DVDs on this computer anyway (I have a standalone DVD player on the other side of the room) whereas a DVD player on a laptop is really useful for watching DVDs in places where one doesn't otherwise have a player) but it somehow feels incomplete. Perhaps I should have bought another of those $A25 DVD-ROM drives in Australia when I had the chance.
In actual fact I will add a DVD+/-RW drive when I have a little more money. At that point I will have a really nice computer, I think, and it really has cost not much at all.
Over the last six months, I have on two occasions hit problems due to the fact that my laptop computer has died. The first time the machine was a complete writeoff, and I had to simply buy a new one. The second time my new laptop had problems with its screen, and I was without it for several weeks while it was being repaired by Dell. For me, being without a computer is disastrous, as most of the things I do in my life require one to really function. I decided I needed a second computer to act as a backup in such situations. I had never built a computer out of a motherboard and other parts before, and I decided that it would be fun to try. And as it happens, a great many computer people have old computer parts lying around, and by asking nicely you can get most of the parts for a new computer for free.
In particular, I discovered that the best kinds of friends to have are hard core gamers - people who must have the latest and greatest computer at all times, and who are likely to throw out or give away computer hardware that seems perfectly good and reasonably up to date to the rest of us.
In the end, I managed to get people to give me almost an entire computer. As far as hardware is concerned, I only ended up paying for a new toolkit (which doesn't really count and which I needed anyway and which in any event only cost me £7.49), a set of screws, a new keyboard, and a new hard drive. (My mother gave me a keyboard when I was in Australia, but I left it out as I was carrying a bit too much luggage. I could undoubtedly have scrounged one off someone else, but when I saw that Maplin Electonics were selling brand new keyboards for £4.68, it simply didn't seem worth bothering). As far as hard drives are concerned, I discovered that second hand ones are harder to come by than most other components (as hard drives fail more often than virtually any other component, and there is thus more demand for them than for anything else) and also because hard drives are the part of the computer that is more subject to Moore's law than any other. Three or four year old hard drives only tend to be 5-10 gigabytes, and this isn't really enough for people with large music collections. (Mine is presently 14GB, which is medium sized but too much for a 10GB hard drive). On top of that, I might well do something like install a TV card and turn this computer into a Personal Video Recorder (PVR) at some point, in which case lots of hard drive space will be useful.
So although it might have been possible to scrounge a small second hand hard drive from someone (or I could have got an adaptor and used the 5Gb hard drive from my old laptop) I didn't think it was worth it. And once you have made the decision to buy a new hard drive, it turns out that 160GB costs less than double the cost of 40GB. So, the new computer has a 160GB hard drive. (I am told that the drive has a capacity of 164,686,520,320 bytes out of which I am presently using 3,781,287,936, so I have mere 160,905,232,384 bytes of space remaining).
Everything else was given to me by people who weren't using it. And I have been able to convert this
into this
.
In any event I now have a computer with an AMD Athlon 1GHz CPU, 512MB of RAM, a 160GB 7200rpm hard drive, a 128Mb NVIDIA GeoForce4 Ti 4200 Graphics card (although this is being slowed down a little by the fact that the motherboard only has a 4X AGP slot, and the graphics card supports 8X), 10/100 Ethernet, on board sound, and a CD-ROM drive. There's no modem and no floppy, not because I would have had any trouble getting them but because I don't need them right now. (On the other hand if someone wants to give me a modem for free, I might take it, because it is useful to have one on board in case the DSL fails. That said, I do have one in the laptop, so to be in a bad way I would have to lose both the DSL and the laptop would have to have a separate problem, which isn't that likely).
And the computer is in an enormous case. Gamers like those I believe. I might install some front USB ports in one of the bays at some point, and an internal card reader might be nice, too.
Just using it now, to me the new box feels like a nice computer. The least state of the art thing about it is probably the CPU. I think the 1.0GHz Athlon precedes AMD's use of the "Athlon 1700+" notation, but I according to benchmarks a 1.0GHz Athlon is likely to run at about 2/3 of the speed of the 1.4GHz Pentium M in my laptop, and about 10% slower than a 1.3GHz Pentium 4. So the CPU is not state of the art, but is more than acceptable for most uses. And with 512MB of RAM, it isn't going to have to do much swapping. The one thing that is lacking is a DVD drive of any kind or a CD writer. I don't expect I am going to want to watch DVDs on this computer anyway (I have a standalone DVD player on the other side of the room) whereas a DVD player on a laptop is really useful for watching DVDs in places where one doesn't otherwise have a player) but it somehow feels incomplete. Perhaps I should have bought another of those $A25 DVD-ROM drives in Australia when I had the chance.
In actual fact I will add a DVD+/-RW drive when I have a little more money. At that point I will have a really nice computer, I think, and it really has cost not much at all.
Thursday, May 27, 2004
How to cheer oneself up in stressful times
Roast Duck with plum sauce. Mmmmmm. Duck.
I love ducks. They are such cute birds. I love the way they sort of glide across the water, and it looks so elegant, but you watch them go underneath you when you are standing in a bridge and you then see this circular paddling motion with their back legs. (Not that birds have front legs of course). Also, they are delicious.
Roast Duck with plum sauce. Mmmmmm. Duck.
I love ducks. They are such cute birds. I love the way they sort of glide across the water, and it looks so elegant, but you watch them go underneath you when you are standing in a bridge and you then see this circular paddling motion with their back legs. (Not that birds have front legs of course). Also, they are delicious.
Redirection
I have a piece on Porto's victory in the European Champions League over at ubersportingpundit.
I have a piece on Porto's victory in the European Champions League over at ubersportingpundit.
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
Wednesday Evening Song Lyrics
Thank you for Hearing Me, from Sinead O'Connor's 1999 album Universal Mother.
(I've been listening to O'Connor's Best of album, and I am stunned by just how wonderful it is. O'Connor became famous briefly more than a decade back for her heartbreaking cover version of Prince's Nothing Compares 2 U, but then didn't become the huge star that she should have become, possibly because of her overwhelming urge to repeatedly denounce the Pope, and other fairly bizarre behaviour. But she really can sing like an angel).
Thank you for hearing me
Thank you for loving me
Thank you for seeing me
And for not leaving me
Thank you for staying with me
Thanks for not hurting me
You are gentle with me
Thanks for silence with me
Thank you for holding me
And saying "I could be"
Thank you for saying "Baby"
Thank you for holding me
Thank you for helping me
Thank you, thank you for helping me
Thank you for breaking my heart
Thank you for tearing me apart
Now I've a strong, strong heart
Thank you for breaking my heart
Thank you for Hearing Me, from Sinead O'Connor's 1999 album Universal Mother.
(I've been listening to O'Connor's Best of album, and I am stunned by just how wonderful it is. O'Connor became famous briefly more than a decade back for her heartbreaking cover version of Prince's Nothing Compares 2 U, but then didn't become the huge star that she should have become, possibly because of her overwhelming urge to repeatedly denounce the Pope, and other fairly bizarre behaviour. But she really can sing like an angel).
Tuesday, May 25, 2004
The multicultural world
This evening I had a telephone interview for a job with a bulge bracket American bank. Although the job would likely be in London, the person interviewing me was in New York. And of course, in this globalised world, it is remarkable how different from you the people you encounter are. Whereas I was from New South Wales and studied at the Universities of Sydney and Cambridge, he was from Victoria and had studied at the University of Melbourne and MIT. I mean, what an extraordinary lack of cultural reference points we had. We wouldn't even use mean the same thing when we used the word "football"
This evening I had a telephone interview for a job with a bulge bracket American bank. Although the job would likely be in London, the person interviewing me was in New York. And of course, in this globalised world, it is remarkable how different from you the people you encounter are. Whereas I was from New South Wales and studied at the Universities of Sydney and Cambridge, he was from Victoria and had studied at the University of Melbourne and MIT. I mean, what an extraordinary lack of cultural reference points we had. We wouldn't even use mean the same thing when we used the word "football"
Monday, May 24, 2004
Yowee
Shrek 2 grossed $104.3 million (including estimates and projections - for several reasons I am not going into here I expect the final number to be higher) over the weekend in North America. That's the second largest three day gross of any film ever (after Spiderman two years ago, which managed $114.8). After two lacklustre and very expensive films (Van Helsing and Troy) over the last two weeks and after ordinary looking grosses for Shrek 2 on Wednesday and Thursday, it looked like the summer wasn't going so well and that perhaps the "DVDs are cannibalising theatrical grosses" theory was getting more evidence. However, this is enormous. If the ludicrous "Global warming causes the ice caps to melt, the Gulf Stream to stop, and an ice age to occur, and all by next Wednesday" film The Day After Tomorrow turns out to be the fun guilty pleasure I expect next weekend, and the third Harry Potter film the week after is as good as advance word says it is, it may be that in two weeks time everybody has forgotten the box office decline theory and Hollywood is talking about a record summer, and by a big margin. For what it is worth, it probably will be a record summer (at least in nominal terms) but I do not expect the margin to be all that great. Summers have a history of petering out when the Olympic Games are on - this was not such an issue in 2000 because the games were held late due to being in the southern hemisphere, but it was a very big issue in 1992 and 1996. I expect that this will happen this year too, although if the Greeks completely screw up, and the games are cancelled, that would be great for Hollywood. (Things may slow down in Europe due to the European football championship, too, so it may not be as big a box office summer internationally as in the US).
I have a longer article on all this in preparation for Samizdata.
Update: As I predicted (I rock), with the Sunday estimates the gross has been revised upwards to $106.7m. (What "estimates" means in this case is that we have Sunday numbers based on most theatres having reported in - including virtually all large theatres. The previous number included "projections" for Sunday - that is numbers based on what it was believed the Sunday gross would be given the Friday and Saturday grosses). Blimey this is a big hit, particularly given that it cost less than half as much (and perhaps a lot less than half as much) as either Van Helsing or Troy to make, and that family films make substantially more money on VHS and DVD than any other genre. We are talking something like a billion dollar profit on a hundred million dollar investment here.
Further Update: The final number is $108.0m, so we really aren't all that far behind Spiderman. That of course ended up with a total gross of just over $400m.
Shrek 2 grossed $104.3 million (including estimates and projections - for several reasons I am not going into here I expect the final number to be higher) over the weekend in North America. That's the second largest three day gross of any film ever (after Spiderman two years ago, which managed $114.8). After two lacklustre and very expensive films (Van Helsing and Troy) over the last two weeks and after ordinary looking grosses for Shrek 2 on Wednesday and Thursday, it looked like the summer wasn't going so well and that perhaps the "DVDs are cannibalising theatrical grosses" theory was getting more evidence. However, this is enormous. If the ludicrous "Global warming causes the ice caps to melt, the Gulf Stream to stop, and an ice age to occur, and all by next Wednesday" film The Day After Tomorrow turns out to be the fun guilty pleasure I expect next weekend, and the third Harry Potter film the week after is as good as advance word says it is, it may be that in two weeks time everybody has forgotten the box office decline theory and Hollywood is talking about a record summer, and by a big margin. For what it is worth, it probably will be a record summer (at least in nominal terms) but I do not expect the margin to be all that great. Summers have a history of petering out when the Olympic Games are on - this was not such an issue in 2000 because the games were held late due to being in the southern hemisphere, but it was a very big issue in 1992 and 1996. I expect that this will happen this year too, although if the Greeks completely screw up, and the games are cancelled, that would be great for Hollywood. (Things may slow down in Europe due to the European football championship, too, so it may not be as big a box office summer internationally as in the US).
I have a longer article on all this in preparation for Samizdata.
Update: As I predicted (I rock), with the Sunday estimates the gross has been revised upwards to $106.7m. (What "estimates" means in this case is that we have Sunday numbers based on most theatres having reported in - including virtually all large theatres. The previous number included "projections" for Sunday - that is numbers based on what it was believed the Sunday gross would be given the Friday and Saturday grosses). Blimey this is a big hit, particularly given that it cost less than half as much (and perhaps a lot less than half as much) as either Van Helsing or Troy to make, and that family films make substantially more money on VHS and DVD than any other genre. We are talking something like a billion dollar profit on a hundred million dollar investment here.
Further Update: The final number is $108.0m, so we really aren't all that far behind Spiderman. That of course ended up with a total gross of just over $400m.
Sunday, May 23, 2004
Splendid
Well, it seems that after immense effort, the holy grail of the blue rose has just about been perfected. What I want to know is whether Gallium Nitride was used anywhere in its development.
Well, it seems that after immense effort, the holy grail of the blue rose has just about been perfected. What I want to know is whether Gallium Nitride was used anywhere in its development.
Redirection
I have a piece on the ongoing cricket test between England and New Zealand, with reference to a peculiar incident involving a cricket ball and a pint of beer, over at ubersportingpundit.
I have a piece on the ongoing cricket test between England and New Zealand, with reference to a peculiar incident involving a cricket ball and a pint of beer, over at ubersportingpundit.
Friday, May 21, 2004
"Pigeon research will not stand still; if we do not experiment, other powers will."
Apparently, MI14 was entirely serious
Apparently, MI14 was entirely serious
Redirection
I have a piece on the latest developments in the Zimbabwean cricket farce over at ubersportingpundit.
I have a piece on the latest developments in the Zimbabwean cricket farce over at ubersportingpundit.
None of the present offers are good enough
It seems some people are willing to offer quite a bit in return for a gmail account. As it happens I have one of my own, and Google have given me the power to grant gmail accounts to two other people. Any good offers? (In fact, I think I am willing to give them to the first two people who ask me, to tell the truth).
Update: Well, that was a quick way to discover it I had any readers. The gmail accounts are gone.
It seems some people are willing to offer quite a bit in return for a gmail account. As it happens I have one of my own, and Google have given me the power to grant gmail accounts to two other people. Any good offers? (In fact, I think I am willing to give them to the first two people who ask me, to tell the truth).
Update: Well, that was a quick way to discover it I had any readers. The gmail accounts are gone.
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
Wednesday Evening Song Lyrics
-- Fallen for You, by Sheila Nicholls, from the soundtrack of Stephen Frears' film adaptation of Nick Hornby's High Fidelity
Falling for you
Did you ever see me,
Watching from periphery?
I was playing another game
I hoped you catch on all the same.
Falling from view
Did you ever touch me,
Floating through your potpourri?
I thought I felt your fingers once
After waiting all these months
But I was wrong, so wrong
That was just another song you wrote, for another girl
And I hoped the day could be
When you'd write a song for me
But it never came,
I thank you all the same,
But I'll go now, so you won't know how much I've
Fallen for you,
Pointless trying to be a man
Boy, you don't know if you can
I thought I knew you well enough
But your walls are still too tough
But I was wrong, so wrong
That was just another song you wrote, for another girl
And I hoped the day could be
When you'd write a song for me
But it never came,
I thank you all the same,
But I'll go now, so you won't know how much I
Thought about you all the time,
Walking round, the Guggenheim.
Like a rhyme, in my mind,
There you are, in my car,
But we don't drive very far.
To the beach, out of reach
Next to me... my fantasy
Falling for you
Did you ever see me,
Watching from periphery?
I was playing another game
I hoped you catch on all the same.
-- Fallen for You, by Sheila Nicholls, from the soundtrack of Stephen Frears' film adaptation of Nick Hornby's High Fidelity
Tuesday, May 18, 2004
High expectations
The summer movie season in the US used to start on the Memorial Day holiday, and the box office statistics until recently reflected this fact. However, ever since Twister was a big hit when released two weeks before Memorial Day in 1996, the studios have started rolling out their big summer movies starting from two weeks before Memorial Day. A couple of years ago, the box office statistics compiled by AC Nielsen EDI were adjusted to reflect this fact.
This year the first big summer movie was released three weeks before Memorial Day. (This may be a one off thing. Memorial Day is late in the month this year. EDI tweaked the definition of summer again to take this into account). That first move was Universal's Van Helsing. This movie really sucked, and after two weekends it has limped to $85 million in North America after two weekends. This is perceived as not especially good, given that the film cost at least $160m to make, but the studios are making so much money from DVDs these days that the film will probably make money.
That film was followed this weekend by Troy, which managed a middling $47 million gross. Warner Bros are admitting to a $150m budget for this film, but it is rumoured to be much higher. I have heard $250 mentioned, and although I don't think I believe this that would make it the most expensive film of all time, in nominal dollars at least. On that budget a $47 million opening gross is disappointing, although the DVD factor again comes into play and the film will make money in the end. (One thing Warners will take heart in is that the film gross on Sunday of its first weekend was substantially better than expected. This is normally a sign that audiences like a film and the film's grosses are going to hold up well in subsequent weeks, so the film's final gross could still be quite good).
But still, the summer has started in a rather lackluster fashion. Rather worse than last year in fact, when the summer started really well with the X-Men sequel. Things will probably perk up this weekend, with Dreamworks' Shrek 2, followed by The Day After Tomorrow on the Memorial Day weekend (which is apparently a very spectacular and exciting movie, however ludicrous its science) and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkhaban a week after that (which also has extremely positive advance word).
What has changed thid summer is that more and more movies are now getting simultaneous releases around the world. There are two reasons for this. One is more frequently stated, which is that this is a way to fight piracy. Hollywood is frightened of illicit (or even legal) DVDs hitting the streets in countries before films are released theatrically, and releasing them in lots of other countries simultaneously makes this much harder. The second reason is that it is impossible to keep publicity campaigns from crossing national borders these days. A US publicity campaign gets attention all round the world, and the way to take advantage all round the world is to have the movie showing there too. So the summer movie season is now starting everywhere at the same time, whereas it used to start in the US earlier than everywhere else. Also, the two big summer movies so far have been released in Britain the same weekend as in the US, so I have seen them.
Van Helsing did, as I said, suck. Troy was somewhat better, but it has the same problem as any movie based on that story. This is that the part of Helen is impossible to cast. Virtually anyone is going to get the response of "A thousand ships?. Her. Give me a break". It is a truly thankless role for anyone to play, and this one is the same. Diane Kruger is perfectly attractive, but she doesn't strike me as greatly remarkable. She doesn't manage to be this great idealised beauty. Or at least not to me. It's a nighmare role for casting directors and actors, because nobody can possibly live up to the ideal.
Oddly, I observed a similar state of affairs in real life once. I was in the US in 2000, and an attempted meeting with a friend had not worked out, so I somehow found myself driving through the towns along the Connecticut coast looking for something to do. On the map, I saw the town of Mystic, once one of many cod fishing ports of New England, but today a town largely catering to tourists and day trippers from New York. I drove into town.
Mystic was familiar to me, as a movie set in the town named Mystic Pizza had been made a few years earlier. This told the story of three young women (played by Lili Taylor, Annabeth Gish, and the then unknown Julia Roberts) who worked as waitresses in a local pizza restaurant named "Mystic Pizza". As I drove into town I discovered that the pizza restaurant in which the film had been set was perfectly real, right down to the "A Slice of heaven" slogan on the pizza boxes. I parked the car, went in and ordered a slice of pizza a beer. The waitress who served me was about the same age as the three women in the movie, and was perfectly nice and perfectly attractive, but I kind of felt sorry for her. Because clearly a substantial portion of the people who walked into the restaurant came in and the first thing that went through their minds was that she was no doubt quite attractive, but was not the 21 year old Julia Roberts. And that would be a fairly hard ideal to live up to.
The summer movie season in the US used to start on the Memorial Day holiday, and the box office statistics until recently reflected this fact. However, ever since Twister was a big hit when released two weeks before Memorial Day in 1996, the studios have started rolling out their big summer movies starting from two weeks before Memorial Day. A couple of years ago, the box office statistics compiled by AC Nielsen EDI were adjusted to reflect this fact.
This year the first big summer movie was released three weeks before Memorial Day. (This may be a one off thing. Memorial Day is late in the month this year. EDI tweaked the definition of summer again to take this into account). That first move was Universal's Van Helsing. This movie really sucked, and after two weekends it has limped to $85 million in North America after two weekends. This is perceived as not especially good, given that the film cost at least $160m to make, but the studios are making so much money from DVDs these days that the film will probably make money.
That film was followed this weekend by Troy, which managed a middling $47 million gross. Warner Bros are admitting to a $150m budget for this film, but it is rumoured to be much higher. I have heard $250 mentioned, and although I don't think I believe this that would make it the most expensive film of all time, in nominal dollars at least. On that budget a $47 million opening gross is disappointing, although the DVD factor again comes into play and the film will make money in the end. (One thing Warners will take heart in is that the film gross on Sunday of its first weekend was substantially better than expected. This is normally a sign that audiences like a film and the film's grosses are going to hold up well in subsequent weeks, so the film's final gross could still be quite good).
But still, the summer has started in a rather lackluster fashion. Rather worse than last year in fact, when the summer started really well with the X-Men sequel. Things will probably perk up this weekend, with Dreamworks' Shrek 2, followed by The Day After Tomorrow on the Memorial Day weekend (which is apparently a very spectacular and exciting movie, however ludicrous its science) and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkhaban a week after that (which also has extremely positive advance word).
What has changed thid summer is that more and more movies are now getting simultaneous releases around the world. There are two reasons for this. One is more frequently stated, which is that this is a way to fight piracy. Hollywood is frightened of illicit (or even legal) DVDs hitting the streets in countries before films are released theatrically, and releasing them in lots of other countries simultaneously makes this much harder. The second reason is that it is impossible to keep publicity campaigns from crossing national borders these days. A US publicity campaign gets attention all round the world, and the way to take advantage all round the world is to have the movie showing there too. So the summer movie season is now starting everywhere at the same time, whereas it used to start in the US earlier than everywhere else. Also, the two big summer movies so far have been released in Britain the same weekend as in the US, so I have seen them.
Van Helsing did, as I said, suck. Troy was somewhat better, but it has the same problem as any movie based on that story. This is that the part of Helen is impossible to cast. Virtually anyone is going to get the response of "A thousand ships?. Her. Give me a break". It is a truly thankless role for anyone to play, and this one is the same. Diane Kruger is perfectly attractive, but she doesn't strike me as greatly remarkable. She doesn't manage to be this great idealised beauty. Or at least not to me. It's a nighmare role for casting directors and actors, because nobody can possibly live up to the ideal.
Oddly, I observed a similar state of affairs in real life once. I was in the US in 2000, and an attempted meeting with a friend had not worked out, so I somehow found myself driving through the towns along the Connecticut coast looking for something to do. On the map, I saw the town of Mystic, once one of many cod fishing ports of New England, but today a town largely catering to tourists and day trippers from New York. I drove into town.
Mystic was familiar to me, as a movie set in the town named Mystic Pizza had been made a few years earlier. This told the story of three young women (played by Lili Taylor, Annabeth Gish, and the then unknown Julia Roberts) who worked as waitresses in a local pizza restaurant named "Mystic Pizza". As I drove into town I discovered that the pizza restaurant in which the film had been set was perfectly real, right down to the "A Slice of heaven" slogan on the pizza boxes. I parked the car, went in and ordered a slice of pizza a beer. The waitress who served me was about the same age as the three women in the movie, and was perfectly nice and perfectly attractive, but I kind of felt sorry for her. Because clearly a substantial portion of the people who walked into the restaurant came in and the first thing that went through their minds was that she was no doubt quite attractive, but was not the 21 year old Julia Roberts. And that would be a fairly hard ideal to live up to.
Monday, May 17, 2004
My annual television viewing experience
As I do on the appropriate evening most years, on Saturday evening I sat down to watch the Eurovision song contest, this year live from Istanbul. (The Turks won it last year, and the winner gets to host the event the next year. This policy almost sent the Irish national television company bankrupt when Ireland won the constest three years in a row in the 1990s, but I digress). Istanbul is a good place to host it, if only because it is amongst the most stunningly beautiful cities in the world, and this at least provides from pretty pre-filmed interstitial sequences between the acts.
In a move to demonstrate solidarity with Britain's European partners, I opened a can of German beer and turned on the television. I only paid vague attention to the actual performances of the songs, because as a general rule the songs aren't very good. One is occasionally distracted by some particularly ludicrous outfits, or by some particularly creative way in which the performers take most of their clothes off at the end of a song, or by somebody playing a nose flute, but nothing on the song contest was really up to the Buffy episodes that I was watching on DVD at the same time. Nothing as good as the glorious Alf Poier of Austria who sung about his homepage (and who I actually voted for last year.
However, once the singing stops, it gets fun. We get a half-time performance that attempts to convey some of the local colour of the home city while people are voting, and then we get down to the serious stuff - the voting. Since the end of the Cold War, the number of countries who can participate in the contest has increased dramatically, and many of these somewhat obscure eastern countries are quite exciting by anothing that draws attention to their country, including Eurovision contests. So there are now lots of entrants. When this problem came along a decade or so ago, relegation was introduced and the countries that get the lowest scores were excluded from the competition for the next year, but got to come back automatically the year after that. However, this year there was a new innovation, which was the instituation of a semi-final round. Those countries that did not get enough points last year and those that had been left out last year participated in a separate contest (shown only on cable and satellite television in the UK) a few days earlier. The countries that got the most points in that competition went through to the main contest. (United Kingdom, Spain, France, and Germany) get automatic selection to the main contest, on the basis that they are the countries that pay for the European Broadcasting Union).
Why am I telling you this? Well, because it affected the format of the main contest. Whereas in the past only the participating countries in the main contest got to vote, in the new format all countries that entered got to vote. So although only 24 countries got performers to sing songs, viewers in all 36 countries got to vote. And as I mentioned, the voting is the fun part. As in football, the effects of two thousand years of history can be seen in the outcome of the voting. And the more countries that vote, the merrier. Certain countries traditionally vote for one another. The most extreme example is Greece and Cyprus, which invariably give one another the maximum 12 points. There is no way this will not happen. The universe will end first. And traditionally the Nordic countries give points to one another (with the possible exception of Norway) although this did not happen so much this year because most of the Nordic countries didn't make it past the semi-final round.
And there is what may be called the ethnic minority issue. Germany always gives lots of points to Turkey, not perhaps so much because the Germans are huge funs of the Turkish people as that there are a huge number of ethnically Turkish people living in Germany. And the same perhaps goes for the Mecedonians giving maximum points to the Albanians.
Which leads to a curious fact: which is Balkan bloc voting. Virtually all the countries in the Balkans: Greece, Macedonia, Albania, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Bulgaria etc gave lots of points to one another. This strikes me as perhaps more curious than Nordic bloc voting. Denmark and Sweden are on pretty good terms with one another on the whole, but the people of the various countries of the Balkans have spent much of the last 15 years killing one another, which makes it kind of curious that they now vote for one another. For instance, when Croatia gives the maximum 12 points to Serbia, as actually happened on Saturday, there is not so much I can say other than what the fuck? (One thing that does mean is that most of the Balkan countries will be back next year, as they managed to give one another enough points to avoid any of them being relegated, I think.
But it did lead to an interesting possibility on Saturday night. As the voting got underway, it was pretty clear before long that it was a two way race between Serbia and Montenegro (whose song did feature the nose flute) and the Ukraine (whose "song" was more about dancing than singing, and which featured a troupe of leather clad Xena Warrior Princess impersonators. Serbia and Montenegro took an early lead, suggesting the very surreal prospect of the contest going to Belgrade next year. That would have been interesting - perhaps we could have had Ceca, the world's most evil pop star, as the half time act, but it would have made a lot of the media contingent relatively nervous, I suspect. In the end though the Ukrainian leather fetishests won out, and by about the three quarter mark in the voting it was clear that Terry Wogan was going to Kiev next year. Which will be interesting in itself. I fear that Kiev is a fairly drab place as (a) I don't think that I have ever seen a picture of the city and (b) 80 years of communism will do that to you. I suspect that means that next year we will not have glorious scenic shots as in Istanbul, which is kind of a shame.
And there is of course one final thing that needs reporting on when discussing the Eurovision contest, which is whether anyone managed "nul points", as it is normally put. (There are two major events in the world which operate on the old diplomatic tradition of French and English: the Olympic Games and the Eurovision Song Contest). It is actually quite difficult to score no points at all in the Eurovision Song Contest, as there have always been more than 20 other countries to vote for you, and each gets to give points to ten other countries. In most years everybody picks up at least a couple of points from someone. However, Nordic bloc voting notwithstanding, there is something of a tradition of Norwegians ending up with the dreaded nul. (One or two Norwegians have actually become famous on this achievement, to the limited extent that Norwegians can become famous). However, last year something happened for the first time: which was that the British entrant managed nul points. This was quite shocking, but it didn't lead to relegation, as Britain are one of the four countries that cannot be relegated. This year's British entrant was not in any way a contender, but managed to pick up enough points here or there to finish in the lower half of the middle of the table. However, one other thing did almost happen. With 36 countries voting, it should be even harder to manage to score no points, but with just a few votes to come in, it looked just like old times. The Norwegian entrant was the last entrant sitting there on nul, for a long long time. But sadly, in a belated piece of trans-Nordic voting, the Swedes gave three points to the Norwegians. This was deeply sad, and the Norwegian entrant ended up with an unremarkable three points, rather than one of the legendary nuls. Oh well.
However, with the semi-final stage there is always next year. In recent years the 3 points would have meant Norwegian relegation, but it is possible that they qualify for the main event next year. And then all nuls are possible.
As I do on the appropriate evening most years, on Saturday evening I sat down to watch the Eurovision song contest, this year live from Istanbul. (The Turks won it last year, and the winner gets to host the event the next year. This policy almost sent the Irish national television company bankrupt when Ireland won the constest three years in a row in the 1990s, but I digress). Istanbul is a good place to host it, if only because it is amongst the most stunningly beautiful cities in the world, and this at least provides from pretty pre-filmed interstitial sequences between the acts.
In a move to demonstrate solidarity with Britain's European partners, I opened a can of German beer and turned on the television. I only paid vague attention to the actual performances of the songs, because as a general rule the songs aren't very good. One is occasionally distracted by some particularly ludicrous outfits, or by some particularly creative way in which the performers take most of their clothes off at the end of a song, or by somebody playing a nose flute, but nothing on the song contest was really up to the Buffy episodes that I was watching on DVD at the same time. Nothing as good as the glorious Alf Poier of Austria who sung about his homepage (and who I actually voted for last year.
However, once the singing stops, it gets fun. We get a half-time performance that attempts to convey some of the local colour of the home city while people are voting, and then we get down to the serious stuff - the voting. Since the end of the Cold War, the number of countries who can participate in the contest has increased dramatically, and many of these somewhat obscure eastern countries are quite exciting by anothing that draws attention to their country, including Eurovision contests. So there are now lots of entrants. When this problem came along a decade or so ago, relegation was introduced and the countries that get the lowest scores were excluded from the competition for the next year, but got to come back automatically the year after that. However, this year there was a new innovation, which was the instituation of a semi-final round. Those countries that did not get enough points last year and those that had been left out last year participated in a separate contest (shown only on cable and satellite television in the UK) a few days earlier. The countries that got the most points in that competition went through to the main contest. (United Kingdom, Spain, France, and Germany) get automatic selection to the main contest, on the basis that they are the countries that pay for the European Broadcasting Union).
Why am I telling you this? Well, because it affected the format of the main contest. Whereas in the past only the participating countries in the main contest got to vote, in the new format all countries that entered got to vote. So although only 24 countries got performers to sing songs, viewers in all 36 countries got to vote. And as I mentioned, the voting is the fun part. As in football, the effects of two thousand years of history can be seen in the outcome of the voting. And the more countries that vote, the merrier. Certain countries traditionally vote for one another. The most extreme example is Greece and Cyprus, which invariably give one another the maximum 12 points. There is no way this will not happen. The universe will end first. And traditionally the Nordic countries give points to one another (with the possible exception of Norway) although this did not happen so much this year because most of the Nordic countries didn't make it past the semi-final round.
And there is what may be called the ethnic minority issue. Germany always gives lots of points to Turkey, not perhaps so much because the Germans are huge funs of the Turkish people as that there are a huge number of ethnically Turkish people living in Germany. And the same perhaps goes for the Mecedonians giving maximum points to the Albanians.
Which leads to a curious fact: which is Balkan bloc voting. Virtually all the countries in the Balkans: Greece, Macedonia, Albania, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Bulgaria etc gave lots of points to one another. This strikes me as perhaps more curious than Nordic bloc voting. Denmark and Sweden are on pretty good terms with one another on the whole, but the people of the various countries of the Balkans have spent much of the last 15 years killing one another, which makes it kind of curious that they now vote for one another. For instance, when Croatia gives the maximum 12 points to Serbia, as actually happened on Saturday, there is not so much I can say other than what the fuck? (One thing that does mean is that most of the Balkan countries will be back next year, as they managed to give one another enough points to avoid any of them being relegated, I think.
But it did lead to an interesting possibility on Saturday night. As the voting got underway, it was pretty clear before long that it was a two way race between Serbia and Montenegro (whose song did feature the nose flute) and the Ukraine (whose "song" was more about dancing than singing, and which featured a troupe of leather clad Xena Warrior Princess impersonators. Serbia and Montenegro took an early lead, suggesting the very surreal prospect of the contest going to Belgrade next year. That would have been interesting - perhaps we could have had Ceca, the world's most evil pop star, as the half time act, but it would have made a lot of the media contingent relatively nervous, I suspect. In the end though the Ukrainian leather fetishests won out, and by about the three quarter mark in the voting it was clear that Terry Wogan was going to Kiev next year. Which will be interesting in itself. I fear that Kiev is a fairly drab place as (a) I don't think that I have ever seen a picture of the city and (b) 80 years of communism will do that to you. I suspect that means that next year we will not have glorious scenic shots as in Istanbul, which is kind of a shame.
And there is of course one final thing that needs reporting on when discussing the Eurovision contest, which is whether anyone managed "nul points", as it is normally put. (There are two major events in the world which operate on the old diplomatic tradition of French and English: the Olympic Games and the Eurovision Song Contest). It is actually quite difficult to score no points at all in the Eurovision Song Contest, as there have always been more than 20 other countries to vote for you, and each gets to give points to ten other countries. In most years everybody picks up at least a couple of points from someone. However, Nordic bloc voting notwithstanding, there is something of a tradition of Norwegians ending up with the dreaded nul. (One or two Norwegians have actually become famous on this achievement, to the limited extent that Norwegians can become famous). However, last year something happened for the first time: which was that the British entrant managed nul points. This was quite shocking, but it didn't lead to relegation, as Britain are one of the four countries that cannot be relegated. This year's British entrant was not in any way a contender, but managed to pick up enough points here or there to finish in the lower half of the middle of the table. However, one other thing did almost happen. With 36 countries voting, it should be even harder to manage to score no points, but with just a few votes to come in, it looked just like old times. The Norwegian entrant was the last entrant sitting there on nul, for a long long time. But sadly, in a belated piece of trans-Nordic voting, the Swedes gave three points to the Norwegians. This was deeply sad, and the Norwegian entrant ended up with an unremarkable three points, rather than one of the legendary nuls. Oh well.
However, with the semi-final stage there is always next year. In recent years the 3 points would have meant Norwegian relegation, but it is possible that they qualify for the main event next year. And then all nuls are possible.
Sunday, May 16, 2004
Redirection
I have a piece on the Bangladesh cricket team in general, and in particular on their present one day series with the West Indies, over at ubersportingpundit.
I have a piece on the Bangladesh cricket team in general, and in particular on their present one day series with the West Indies, over at ubersportingpundit.
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