Supposedly the latest format war is all but over.  Warner Bros. has aligned itself with Blu-Ray, leaving only three studios releasing exclusively in HD-DVD. While Toshiba, the main backer of HD-DVD, says they will go on, the writing is on the wall.  

 I don’t have a dog in this fight. Oddly I haven’t really been paying much attention, so I really have no opinion of which format is technically better. But I will say that as someone who once made his living from selling home theater products Blu-Ray winning is a headache.  

I’ve sold nearly every time of consumer electronics there is to sell. A large part of sales, at least in my experience, is educating the customer. “Why would I want one of these?” “Why is x better than y?” etc. This is why Blu-Ray is a frustrating branding, and it will hurt the adoption of the new format.  

You would be hard pressed to find a person who does not know what a DVD is. Digital Video Disc. DVD was one of the fastest adopted consumer technologies ever. While not as universal, a very large percentage of the population knows what High Definition or HD is. So slap together HD-DVD and no explanation is needed. It is clear what it is, and what its benefit is over normal DVD. Compare that to Blu-Ray. “Blue” isn’t even spelled correctly. And why as a consumer should I care about the color of the laser? “Blu-Ray” tells me nothing, as a comparison shopper.  

I am not saying this is a a major problem or something that can not be overcome. It is just frustrating that after years of educating consumers what these terms means, that Sony throws them out the window for some rather silly brand name.  

Today, which directors are making films that are consistent with those concerns?

Not as many as I might like, although I hesitate to make sweeping statements, because I don’t see everything. It seems to me that one of problems today is that there’s a lack of film culture. Films are not constructed as well they used to be. There’s a lot of technical expertise on display, but with some exceptions, the storytelling is less effective, and it seems that what used to be thought of as B pictures are now A pictures.  I don’t want to suggest that there’s no value in B pictures, because I love B pictures.

But when you look back on pictures like How Green Was My Valley or The Grapes of Wrath or The Best Years of Our Lives or From Here to Eternity, they’re intelligent, well-constructed, sophisticated movies about people. And at one time, movies like that didn’t just come out in the last couple of months of the year. They came out regularly, a lot of them were modestly scaled, and people went out and saw them and talked about them, and they were made by the major studios. The only people routinely making pictures like that today are the so-called independents.

Look at The Lives of Others. It’s the kind of picture Hollywood used to be able to make. On a basic level it works as a very suspenseful thriller. On the highest level, it works as an indictment of totalitarianism. And on a kind of middle level, it works as a human drama. Hollywood used to make those sorts of pictures all the time—pictures that worked on multiple levels, but were made for a wide audience, not a limited audience.

Is this a permanent condition?

I don’t know, but it’s a pretty depressing situation.

Time Out New York: Hitchcock–eyed

Apparenlty Vanity Fair is reporting in its June issue that Bruce Willis is disappointed that the fourth (and final?) Die Hard movie will be editied as to get a ‘PG-13′ rating rather than a ‘R’ rating. AICN’s Vern has this response:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought the movie was called LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD. But from what Vanity Fair is saying here, it sounds more like LIVE FREE OR DIE– WELL, LET’S NOT DIE TOO HARD, THERE ARE CHILDREN PRESENT. Which, in my opinion, is not as good of a title.

If you make this PG-13, you might get your opening weekend, it might be as big as if it was R. On the other hand, people might say “What? A new DIE HARD? Where he’s bald? And the title is funny? And the Macintosh guy is in it? And fucking Silent Bob? And it’s PG-13? I don’t want to see that shit!” Or, “Bruce Willis said it was supposed to be R-rated, and he was really disappointed, I’ll just wait until the real, actual adult version of the movie is available for free, illegal, non-Fox-money-giving download after some pissed off studio employee leaks it.”

Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!

Ain’t It Cool News: Vern has some words for you about the pansy-assing of the 4th DIE FLACCID movie.

High praise from Variety:

“Knocked Up” is uproarious. Line for line, minute to minute, writer-director Judd Apatow’s latest effort is more explosively funny, more frequently, than nearly any other major studio release in recent memory. Indeed, even more than the filmmaker’s smash-hit sleeper “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” his new pic is bound to generate repeat business among ticketbuyers who’ll want to savor certain scenes and situations again and again, if only to memorize punchlines worth sharing with buddies. Currently set for a June 1 release, this hugely commercial comedy likely will remain in megaplexes throughout the summer and, possibly, into the fall.

Variety: Knocked Up

Rodriguez’s film, like most of its kind, is about fear and survival. Tarantino’s gives us death turned to triumph. Planet Terror, you might say, is the Old Testament; Death Proof (what better title?) the New. If the combined elements of cinematic self-reflexiveness and Christian symbolism have always been present in Tarantino’s work, nowhere are they so clear as here. And that’s why the elegiac aspects of Grindhouse end up as something of cheerful illusion. Cinema of the ’70s may be dead, we sense, but through audacious uses of celluloid (not CGI!) like that in Death Proof, cinema itself is endlessly reborn.

And you thought it was mere coincidence that this movie hit theaters at Easter?

Independent Weekly: Grindhouse aims to resurrect movies, not bury them

To watch [Aqua Teen Hunger Force] is to give up entirely on linear narrative and just sort of groove on the sudden shifts of pop-cultural reality. ATHF can seem brilliantly deconstructive one moment and stupefyingly boring the next — or to provide a more accurate ratio, it can follow five brilliant seconds with five straight minutes of boredom.

Slate Magazine: Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie reviewed