Pixar Live!

Blue Sky Disney has an article about Pixar's plans to produce live action films with Bard Bird's earthquake movie 1906 and with Andrew Stanton's Princess of Mars. He brings up a good point that I'll take even further. A lot of people have questioned the growth of Disney's studio division as it is a hit driven business and it has a smaller and fixed slate of 10-12 movies a year. I have always said that if Walt Disney Animation could start doing Pixar numbers, it would be worth another $400-$600M just at the box office per year. But this is another growth engine. If Pixar branches out into live action with 1-2 new movies per year and those movies are blockbusters of $200M or more, that could be very significant. While its a little scary not to have Brad Bird and Andrew Stanton on animated movies, I think Lasseter is a genius for finding a way to keep these great storytellers in the fold and evolve Pixar to the next level...just as Walt Disney did.

Its a world of tears..

Anyone in Disney Park fandom knows about the current controversy over the proposed changes for Its a Small World in Anaheim which would allegedly add Disney characters into the ride as well as replacing the rainforest scene with an America scene. The debate has been very raucous and indicative of a lot of the things I have said about Disney fandom of late.

2719 Hyperion, which is an excellent, well-written blog, has weighed in on all this, not with an opinion on the changes themselves, but more on the debate. It is an excellent piece that I won't quote here because you really should read it in its entirety.

I'm kind of stuck in the middle on this whole issue. I love It's a Small World. I think its a classic attraction with a terrific message and I initially recoil a little bit at the idea of changing it just because it seems at some level like fixing the crack in the Liberty Bell.

On the other hand, Its a Small World is kind of out of date - which is part of its charm - and many of the images it portrays are pretty stereotypical. I sometimes wonder how kids from around the world feel when they visit the attraction. Do they say "hey that's not me?" It probably wouldn't be a very interesting attraction if everyone was portrayed in contemporary garb ("its a world of osh kosh, a world of gap") but there probably has to be some updating of the attraction if its to remain relevant. At some point, the antiquatedness of the imagery undermines the theme of the attraction if its not brought somewhat up to date.

As for Disney characters in the attraction, if you look at what has been done for Hong Kong, its kind of cute. I just worry that it will become a "spot the characters" attraction and distract from the message, which is about the children. Also, you have Casey Jr and the boat ride sitting right across the street which are essentially the same thing, cruising through the world as told by Disney characters.

I think we should all withhold judgement and see what the Imagineers have come up with. I can't imagine John Lasseter would have let this go forward if he couldn't get behind it, so we just have to put our trust in these guys.

Philippe Starck says design is dead

Starck is saying that design is dead.

I was a producer of materiality and I am ashamed of this fact.Everything I designed was unnecessary. I will definitely give up in two years’ time. I want to do something else, but I don’t know what yet. I want to find a new way of expressing myself …design is a dreadful form of expression…. In future there will be no more designers. The designers of the future will be the personal coach, the gym trainer, the diet consultant.”

Whatever. Typical narcissistic boomer sentiment. "I'm getting old and want to retire, so after I'm gone, design is over." I think Starck's view that design equals materiality is the problem with a lot of his design. You can design things so that they don't have to be Earth killers.

Cardboard Tron

Tron
by freres-hueon

Very cool! Thanks The Disney Blog!

I'm Pissed at Directv

Know its been a while since I posted last. I've been very, very busy and just haven't had the energy to blog...until now.

Yesterday, I was forced by Directv to take their new DVR as they are cutting off MPEG-2 HD service so my Tivo HD box would no longer work. Readers of this blog know that I did not want to do this and was pissed that they were harassing me to switch. I put it off until the last possible second. But with the cutoff date on Monday, I had to do it this weekend.

I tried to be open minded, but this box is just a piece of shit. Its is much harder to use and I cannot figure out how to do simple things like watch live TV. But the biggest issue I have is season passes. On Tivo, I had 125. That may sound like a lot, but you have different programs in the summer than the winter and then I have 3 kids each with their favorite shows. And there's shows I like and my wife likes. So you can rack up the season passes much faster than you might think. On the Directv box, you are only allowed 50 shows. That's it.

So these idiots forced me to take this box I didn't want and get rid of Tivo which I was happy with all the with promise that I could get more channels with this new box, only to find out that I can't record them. WTF?

I feel like I have been raped. Like there is the house guest in my living room that I don't want who just won't go home. I don't know how long I can put up with this. I may have to switch to cable where at least the FCC has protected my right to have a Tivo.

The true meaning of the SDK

Apple released its SDK for iPhone and iPod Touch on Thursday and it is a pretty big deal. When you look at what the Cocoa Touch platform is capable of, its pretty impressive. Developers will be able to write some pretty impressive apps with all the advanced web, imagining, location, and other APIs available.

Apple has gone about as far as it can with audio and video on the iPod. Now its time to turn it into something else. Their strategy is to attack the 1B unit mobile phone market and become the must have portable device of the next decade. I think it will work. None of their competitors in the mobile phone space have this level of software expertise. They will all tell you that they have their own SDKs and have had for a long time. That's correct, but where are the killer apps? Apple is going to have thousands of sexy, easy to use, extremely powerful network aware applications. As John Doerr said, this is bigger than the PC.

What I am really excited about is games. The most compelling demo was Sega's Super Monkey Ball using the 3-axis accelerometer although the touchscreen demo of the space fighter game was cool too. The iPhone is now a gaming platform on par in terms of capabilities with the DS and even better in several ways. You could really see Apple start to put a hurt on the console guys if they finally get their shit together and do a good job of courting the game developer community.

Apple has a target of 10M iPhones by the end of this year. I think they will hit that. But there are 60M DSes out there. Apple is going to seriously need to get the numbers up to become as economical a platform as Nintendo.

This is very exciting stuff. They iPhone has nowhere to go but up.

What's going on at Apple?

Apple has announced a lot of new products and updates over the past several months. All new iPods in Fall, then updated Mac Pros, then Time Capsule, Apple TV Take 2, and MacBook Air, then refreshed Shuffles, and now updated MacBooks. So almost the entire line-up has been touched in the last 6 months. Its uncharacteristic for Apple to update so much in such a short period. So what do they have up their sleeve? They need a big wow thing for everyone to talk about at the end of the year. So what is it?

I think we are going to be looking at a new iPhone, possibly an iPhone Nano of some kind but definitely a 3G iPhone. I'm not sure what will happen on the iPod line. There seems little reason to touch the Touch other than capacity (more please) and the iPod Nano is pretty good where its at too. I could see a mid-sized iPod in there with a screen bigger than the Nano but smaller than Touch. I could also see a Nano with the multitouch screen and that may be their big play for the end of the year. I think Shuffle is what it is for a while. They also need something on the high end to bring the multi-touch screen to Classic. Classic has been selling better than expectations because of the capacity that Touch doesn't have.

The MP3 market is slowing down. Apple needs to push portable video and apps. To push apps, that means they need to get to a common aspect ratio on their products and a common interface, ie the touch screen, all compatible with the SDK. The future of iPod is apps, apps, apps. And so that if what they will have to pushing this year and it will impact the hardware by the end of the year. So the more I think about it, if they do a multi-touch Nano, they have to do a multi-touch Nano phone and I bet we will see both by the end of the year.

I think the rest of the product line is as is for the rest of the year...unless they enter some new category we haven't thought about.

Hillary's (gone) mad

Anyone who pays attention to politics may have noticed Hillary's crazy "shame on you" outburst this weekend followed by her mocking of Obama saying that he thinks that the clouds will open and the heavens will shine down on us and we will all be perfect. Its a big change of tone for someone who was so honored to be on stage with Barack only a few days ago. What gives?

Hillary not going to down without a fight. But is this really her best shot? Every week we have been subjected to a different crazy, angry rant from Hillary. I might be pissed if someone suggested I pimped out my daughter too, but there have been others - many others. Every time she does this, her negatives go through the roof because we are all reminded of what it will be like if she gets in the White House. Who wants this angry, crazy, foaming at the mouth, win at all costs stuff for 4 years? Does anyone want the national mother waging her finger and chewing our ass on a daily basis? Who does she think she's convincing with this stuff?

And by the way Hillary, Barack's not distorting your record. You were for NAFTA before you were against. That he's killing you with NAFTA, is that really his fault? True or false, did your husband sign NAFATA or not? You can't take credit for his administration and then not take credit for the failures too. And how exactly is Obama distorting your position on health care? You are for a mandate. You've said it yourself. You've said you'd go after the wages of people to get them on health care. You claim the strength of your plan is that 100% of people are covered and the way you are doing it is by compelling people to enroll. Really, what's the outrage about?

And then there's this business of running against hope and calling everyone who likes Obama naive. It hasn't worked so far and its not going to work. You really think running against change and hope is a platform for you?

Hillary, let me give you a few words of advice here. First, the math is not in your favor. You need to start thinking about your reputation and that of your husband. Is this really how you want to go out? Secondly, the ONLY shot you have is to convince people to vote FOR you because there is no anti-Barack Obama vote out there. This is an election where people are going to vote FOR someone and not against them. You have one week left.

I wonder which Hillary we will see tomorrow night?