The Sorcerer of Sony
The hottest properties in cyberspace are virtual worlds. Meet the man who's making magic -- and millions of dollars each month -- by developing the Net's newest boomtowns.
The hottest properties in cyberspace are virtual worlds. Meet the man who's making magic -- and millions of dollars each month -- by developing the Net's newest boomtowns.
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This fantastic film by Fritz Lang has been restored to a reasonable facsimile of the original version. Not a bad job, considering a good chunk of the film was destroyed or lost after being drastically cut three weeks after its 1927 German release. In this release, lost scenes are replaced with a description of what would have been there, with the underlying music continuing through the missing sections. The original 1927 orchestral score is also present, and effectively punctuates the dramatic scenes (and unfortunately, may lull you to sleep in the quieter scenes).
Thinly veiled attempt by the National Cattlemen's Beef Association to get little girls to eat more beef. It says it caters to girls aged 8-12, although I suspect it insults the intelligence of most 8-year-olds.
What are they "keeping real" anyway?
(To continue the Films Cochons topic, check this out. Bet you never thought there was such a thing as Canuxploitation...)
Although they are often discussed with uneasiness by critics, B-movies and cult films map out an alternative history of cinema. Even Canada's relatively young feature film industry has a rich heritage of forgotten "trash" and low budget gems, hastily swept under the carpet by embarrassed critics and confused audiences alike. Together they present us with a film legacy entirely different from our traditional understanding of Canadian movies as either languid art films or happy tales of Prairie life. It is this seedy underbelly of Canadian movies that is the phenomenon known as "Canuxploitation".
In the truest sense of the term, Canadian exploitation films are simply low-budget genre films which were made in Canada. But they are much more as well. Because exploitation films are designed to play on the fears and desires of an audience, looking at the way Canada's genre films have changed throughout the years can reveal more about how Canadians interpret themselves than any "art film." And, as opposed to most of today's Canadian films which seem intended for film festival audiences, Canuxploitation can actually be entertaining.
![[canadian_flag.jpg]](http://www.zuckervati.com/archives/images/canadian_flag.jpg)
While many Quebec filmmakers looked to the French "cin�ma direct" movement and directors like Goddard and Truffaut for inspiration, entrepreneurs like Denis H�roux and Claude Fournier did not. Through simply being in the right place and the right time and possessing a profound ability to exploit their audience, H�roux and Fournier created a popular boom of sex films at a critical time in the history of Quebec cinema.
The demise of censorship in Quebec finally took place in 1967, when Quebec's censorship bureau was replaced by more conventional film ratings. Coincidentally, the Canadian Film Development Corporation was established the following year, a crown corporation which offered loans and financing to Canadian film productions. Stepping in at this critical point were directors Denis H�roux and Claude Fournier, who knew that when you added up free love and free government money, the result could be a successful mix of comedy, nationalism, and nudity.
![[initiation.jpg]](http://www.zuckervati.com/archives/images/initiation.jpg)
This is a great journal, written by a clerk in a video store. It reminds me of the days I used to work at Surplus:
"If you don't count rousting teenagers out of the porn section, I have only driven away two and a half customers.
The only one I'm proud of happened pretty recently. I was ringing up a sale and I heard a crash from downstairs. My manager was out, so I couldn't leave the register to go down and see what happened. I glanced at the security monitor and saw a guy downstairs calmly flipping through the DVD section. He had knocked down three entire shelves. Instead of picking them up or coming to get me or even shoving them over into a pile and then continuing his porn shopping, he was just standing in them and on them, flipping away.
...
Spent two hours today in some boring WSAD training class. Luckily, there was in installation of RoboCode on the training...
Advertisements urging parents to love their kids and keep them off drugs dot urban bus stops across America. Anti-drug commercials fill Channel One in the nation's schools and the commercial breaks of network TV -- most notably a comely, T-shirt-clad waif trashing her kitchen to demonstrate the dangers of heroin. We've come a long way from Nancy Reagan's clenched-teeth "Just Say No."
Few Americans, however, know of a hidden government effort to shoehorn anti-drug messages into the most pervasive and powerful billboard of all -- network television programming.
America's love affair with the J.R.R. Tolkien epic-fantasy saga Lord Of The Rings, a romance which has flowered ever since the 2001 release of the Fellowship Of The Ring film adaptation, has damaged the nation's long-term relationship with George Lucas' Star Wars saga, perhaps irreparably.
LucasArts will delay the inclusion of player-owned cities, vehicles, and Dark Jedi to some time after the April launch of the Star Wars online role-playing game.