A relative came to town. We apologize for the slow posting.
Our guest convinced the Stiftung to sit through 2012. It’s a mindless affair. You’ve probably already guessed. How Hollywood sees the U.S. in a dying future world. And at least according to Director Roland Emmerich (yes, he of abominable GINO ’98 fame), that world likes overlong death scenes: it’s 2 hours, 38 minutes long. The ten other detainees in the theater also surely felt every minute crawl by.
Bad acting, empty CGI – expected Hollywood staples. What’s unusual? In the near future, the powers of the world all select China to build the technological devices to save mankind. China’s technological ascendancy in pop culture here seems unique and a harbinger of things to come. When Jody Foster made Contact in 1997 Japan was the supreme technological power in pop culture’s eye. Then the Japanese covertly built (with U.S. approval) a super secret doorway through space. Now? No love. Japan doesn’t get a good cameo at the end of the world.
Hollywood oddly still finds the Russians as credible major players at the End. The taciturn Putin stand-in gets gravitas. A major but ultimately pointless narrative arc is devoted to a Russian klepto-billionaire. Either Emmerich et al. got covert Russian financing for PR or they are clueless that Londonistan and the major Russian money flowing through the British pop and society scene crested in 1999. Aside from the bow to Vlad, the movie sees the U.S. as largely a passive power — we offer the world moral suasion combining science with over-the-top platitudes that makes Chicago, November 4, 2008 look downright dour.
Perhaps 2012’s portrayal is truth in all its vacuity. When any of us open a new Apple product, do we not see immediately in huge letters ‘Designed in California’? Even though we all know where it’s made? Isn’t our president already largely an international motivational speaker? Didn’t Sony already outsource its top of the line television production to Taiwan? Hasn’t Hollywood itself outsourced so much production overseas?
Maybe the world will end not with a bang but a ‘Let’s play Hardball !” Maybe Emmerich is more perceptive than we know.
Comment says
Incidentally – Gonzales is in technical violation of the flag code with his flag theme umbrella.
Comment says
This video of Palin supporters is interesting to us not because the folks babble, but because they are a generally likable lot. They seem like nice folks even when offering up some nasty morsels.
This is very true of Palination types, imo. Lots of Daily Show bait, but overall its more like the Simpsons.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKKKgua7wQk&feature=player_embedded
Comment says
It’s refreshing to talk about things business-like and good like Apple – esp compared to this:
http://www.esquire.com/features/what-ive-learned/alberto-gonzales-torture-quotes-0110#ixzz0ZE1hofSN
Poor Gonz – he even sounds weird trying to explain the use of the word “cool.” He is obviously still in shock and denial. Seems not so bright, but that’s probably just because he has to be that way so as to maintain deniabilty.
Dr Leo Strauss says
When we peak it’s been a pretty good show. Solid writing.
Thanks for posting the Jobs items. We started and stopped an Apple-esque post at least 4 or 5 times the last couple of weeks (including this morning most lately). It’s a nice break from the daily ground truth around here.
Comment says
Guess it was around this time Newt started namechecking Deming to show he was not a rube.
Comment says
The Newsweek article has an interesting sidebit about Jobs paying homage to Japanese robotics as he planned his assembly line.
Comment says
Of course – to mortals like Comment – Jobs, Dell, McNealy, and Gates et al are fiery warriors doing battle in the clouds while we just peak about to see the show.
Comment says
We still have some OS X shwag unopened – as a gift from a relative who went to one of the trade shows. Thanks for the history Leo – we were hoping our nugget would provoke some more backround info.
DrLeoStrauss says
Jobs was ahead of his time in so many ways. He first understood technological realities in his market dictate one must control the software as well as sculpted commodity hardware. Only together could one give a consumer an experience as a business. iTunes and the software crushed Sony more than the iPod per se. Apps and the iPhone. A truth many fumble towards in 2009.
The Next box still has some history to it. It was the first web server in the world. Tim Berners-Lee at CERN used one to develop html. It’s perhaps not an accident that Gates had never heard of the Internet until 1995 and after Windows ’95 was gold disc. To his credit, he did the famous turn on a dime.
We were CP/M – MS DOS shop in the early 1980s (some 6502 machines around for goofing around) and got 2 Macs in early 1984 before they hit market. In early 1984 we were using mostly a Morrow Micro Decision – a Z-80, 64k, 2 5 1/4 drives and Wordstar. So then we walk into a room and see a Mac. It probably remains the single most ‘oh wow’ consumer tech experience we’ve had. MacPaint and MacWrite were magic. No wonder even Gates at that time was calling them SAM – ‘Steve’s Amazing Machines’.
Job’s rejection of Gates’ pleading to mass license the OS to everyone (MSFT would stick to applications) and Sculley and Gassee’s stupid pricing gave billions to MSFT. People rightfully mock Vista but in the 1990s Apple couldn’t write an OS to save literally it’s life.
When in 1997 Gates tossed Jobs $250 million in pocket change as a loan he probably thought it a write-off. Reality is remorseless. Just last month, however, Gates admitted on CNBC that Apple’s purchase of Next and its design team brought with it OS X (at the time far more stable than Windows because it is UNIX-based), etc. And OS X has kicked Microsoft to the curb ever since. (To the point that Alchin, in charge of developing Vista, recommended to Gates and Ballmer that Vista be scrapped and MSFT license OS X instead).
Others thought Next was dumb, too. Dell thought the OS was irrelevant. They would crush Apple by shoveling low cost boxes out the door. Apple could never control just-in-time manufacturing. So how funny to see Micheal Dell barrage Jobs, begging to license OS X to him as Dell plunged.
Sony thought they could make prettier hardware and crush the upstart as an after thought. It was in 1998 or so Jobs said at a conference in Tokyo ‘We’re coming after you, Sony’. And all the Japanese press was about the rude (nearly bankrupt) gaijin showing disrespect to mighty Sony. Now, Howard Stringer would be flattered if Jobs bothered to mention Sony even in a men’s room.
Having said all that, Windows 7 in not a total air ball. It’s a decent Vista. Both Windows and Snow Leapard allow tapping into graphical processor units for extra cycles.
The new iMac i7 quad core is a beautiful machine with a uniquely spectacular 11 lb. LG LED IPS monitor. A ‘beige box’ i7 with a 1 terabyte drive and 8 gigs and Windows 7 goes for around $900. The iMac has to be ordered (and possibly damaged in the mail) for around $2,300 with less memory.
That’s a big premium when the OS gap is narrowing. The new 2010 Mac Pros will be even more (naturally).
The bunker, as readers know, is a temple to arrested development re electronic gizmos. We’d like to think there is a street named after the bunker in Chengdu. But for the first time since we saw the Mac in early 1984, we honestly don’t have a clear cut preference for our next wealth-transfer-to-China-impulse purchase.
Comment says
Gates was dismissive of the neat box – calling it a “48 rpm record” “just a microprocessor in a box”, but Jobs did manage to persuade “Texas billionar” Ross Perot to kick in 20 mil and sit on the board so as to bring “respectability.” He inked a deal with IBM for a friendly GUI and then paid Paul Rand 100k for a snazzy logo.
Comment says
Esther Dyson called it a “neat neat box” – 6500 was considerd cheap with a university discount.
Just some fun history as the speculate about student budgets and oncoming competition from workstations.
Comment says
Here’s what NeXT was offering for 6,500 dollars in 1988.
– Hi Res Black and White monitor shows exactly what the laser printer will print.
– Motorola chip – sound with CD fidelity. Can record and playback music
– removable erasable optical drive that can store hundreds of books
– unix, word processor, dbase,
– dictionary. thesuarus. and complete shakespeare.
Comment says
Interesting – some of what Jobs touts in ’88 with NeXT is a computer that can show photos and hold a library of classic books and play music.
Comment says
Just flipping thru old mags – Newsweek 10-24-88 – “Steve Jobs Comes Back” — annoucing the most exciting new thing (NeXt) – at age 33.
Comment says
We hear Emmerich is now making a movie suggesting the Earl of Oxford wrote Shakespeare – This is one of the more upscale conspiracy theories.
OT – we think a medicare buy in is better than a bad public option – a good public option can always be added down the road as part of a concerted effort against insurance companies.
Dr Leo Strauss says
Emmerich gets the last laugh laugh. He will take home over $100 million for this junk.
http://www.thewrap.com/ind-column/‘2012’-director-pocket-100-million-profit-11424
The only surprise is TARP didn’t pay for it.
Comment says
One recent example of the conservative imagination at work is how Weekly Standard writers have simply erased from memory the fact Bush released a number of individuals from gitmo – They hold Bushh blameless for this – and still assuming those released are terrorists,, they blame the then out of power Obama.
Comment says
We would ammend the above comment regarding historical figures in relation to Colbert and the conservates need to coopt against all evidence to the contrary – What makes it so absurd is the fact that no one has any idea how someone in the past would be today. It’s just guesswork. Especially since so many biographical aspects of distant figures are debatable.
Comment says
The biggest cultural trick waas Dubya erasing his New England heritage and buying a pig farm and convincing his followers (and also many in the media from an ironically misplaced condescencion) that he was a Texas rancher. This was a fraud conducted in real time – Far more absurd than anything Gore may have done/said. The boomer culture wars.
Comment says
Btw – we keep hearing Republican complain Obama wants to cut Medicare – last time we checked, most Republicans, want to get rid of Medicare (or as Newt said ‘let it whither on the vine’)
So the Dems are truly hopeless if they let them get away with this – In fact, they should be claiming any GOP reference to socialism is a reference to Medicare (as opposed to Obama’s corporare bonanza plan).
Comment says
Continetti’s “Persecution” of Palin is part of neocon genre – adopting pet red stater for future tutalage
Comment says
The wingers and pop culture — a very interesting subject. We know one guy was devasted when we told him that High Noon (as well as some of his other favorite movies) was penned by a blacklisted red. We know others that insist that Shakespeare was a red state conservative.
We also know those who think Colbert is one ofthem – We think Colbert pulls this trick off by still going to church (but in a somewhat more plausible way that Teddy K or Kerry) and that, like many in show biz, he has lots of old fashioned sentimental conservatism about him.
Colbert also hails from S. carolina.
Yes, and many conservatives thought Gekko was a hero and the guys who said “You can’t handle the truth” was a hero.
This is sort of related to the conservative need to think everyone on an oil painting is one of them – Instead of throwing away hard cases like the Voltaire loving, slave screwing, intellectual genius Jefferson – They have to insist – all evidence to the contrary – that he was a pious man etc
Dr Leo Strauss says
And Salon now is coining Chinawood.
http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/beyond_the_multiplex/feature/2009/11/18/john_woo/index.html
Comment says
And so the first shall be last, and verily I say unto thee , Palin will be persecuted and Dubya will be “bullied” (ht R. Cohen) by comedians ..
Dr Leo Strauss says
Colbert’s fascinating in the ring wing imagination. We’ve spent time talking Colbert with wingers who are on the tube, cross post on ‘progressive’ blogs and red meat sites, etc. They’re huge Colbert fans.
Even in 2009 they keep insisting Colbert is secretly one of them. ‘He’s the dude playing a dude disguised as another dude.’ Their rationalizing is hilarious. Telling facts that he has kids (thus by definition, he must be threatened by the Village and can not abide the ‘gay flu’ – as we all know). Then they insist he went to Church growing up. So that also means Colbert must loathe the secularists at Comedy Central as they do. And the clincher – no one could do that level of parody without secretly loving and wanting to be it for real. And so on.
Bullying Bush was part of his ‘cover’ by some or really secretly bigging Bush up ala dog whistles. The need for the fringe to be secretly cutting edge pop culture wise has been well documented. When Republican Party flacks like Cliff May heap praise on Jon Stewart (and even Sean Hannity accepts Stewart’s technical foul call) they are paying homage to the demo and all it represents. Remember the Fox cable comedy show bombing.
Dr Leo Strauss says
Stop him before he says ‘action!’ again —
http://hollywoodinsider.ew.com/2009/11/04/2012-tv-planned