Thank you, capitalism
Thanks to the 3D insurgence caused by shiteous recent movies such as Avatar and Alice in Wonderland, I really should have seen this coming.
3D DESIGNER GLASSES
You read right.
3D.
“Designer”.
Glasses.
…..I wish I had taken a photo of them but it was right on the counter and it would have been weird. Nevertheless, I stood there for a while, just staring in disbelief at the lengths all these movie corporations are going to to get more people to watch 3D movies at the cinemas.
Let me begin by saying, I hate most 3D films. I think it’s the most gimmicky thing since sliced bread. Not only is every movie corporation jumping on the 3D bandwagon since they’ve learned they can charge more for tickets and glasses, the crappy quality and use of programs such as After Effects to render film NOT filmed in real 3D into fake “3D” is pointless and stupid. Yet civilians STILL buy into this shit because apparently, viewing movies in 2D isn’t enough anymore. No we NEED the crappy 3D floating objects and blurry 3D pans and zooms because it’s just so, like, hi-tech and modern and technological and revolutionary and stuff. Not like 3D hasn’t been around for the past decade or anything.
I honestly don’t know how people can enjoy watching the fake 3D shit like Alice in Wonderland and Clash of the Titans – not only do the glasses make it seem like you actually are viewing the movie through sunglasses (hence darker screen), viewing 2D shapes in 3D form just seems wrong. I mean even with Avatar, which supposedly used ‘innovative’ 3D cameras and whatnot….the visuals were okay but not something to go WOWOMFGKDHSURSKDS MY LIFE WILL NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN. There are several 3D movies coming out this year now, including the Green Hornet and Pirahnas. Yes, PIRAHANAS. This revolution also means, you will soon be able to see Seth Rogen in 3D:
Yeah. I can tell you’re excited already. So very excited.
So why am I ranting about 3D? Asides from the fact that it is something I have been meaning to shit-blog for a while, I saw How to Train Your Dragon in 3D tonight and I have to say it was actually a lot more enjoyable than the other recent faux 3D movies I’ve seen. Perhaps it was just the animation or the fact that it was made for the 3D platform. It wasn’t Pixar quality but it was cute and well made and used the 3D effects well, especially with the pov shots of the dragon skimming the waves and clouds and ash raining down. I have to admit, I really enjoyed the movie and maybe that kind of dissuades my argument against 3D a bit but the fact remains….the people that made this movie knew how to use 3D to their advantage. And I have to admit I am very much looking forward to seeing Toy Story 3 in 3D.
On a tangentially related note however, I have definitely seen the difference in advertising alongside 3D films though, ie. CineAds. For those that haven’t been to the cinemas recently, CineAds has completely revamped their advertising for 3D films, and they even made their own 3D advertising spot, advertising…themselves. Only problem was, they either spent way too much on the ad or they just couldn’t get enough of it, because in the twenty minutes of ads we sat through, about 5 of those ads was the epic 3D spot for CineAds which they were very clearly proud to show off. 3D balls flying off the screen and everything. Yeah. Super lame and super tacky. But really, what do you expect when you’re watching a 3D movie these days?!
My problem with 3D is the fact that pretty much EVERY movie now is marketed in a 3D format, disregarding the fact of whether or not it was actually FILMED in 3D. It pisses me off when they try to market faux 3D films just so they can charge extra money for tickets.
See, in Perth, Event Cinemas is like the movie black hole of cinema-viewing. I go to the movies quite a bit and if you want to see a mainstream G rated movie, Event Cinemas is usually the place most convenient for me to go. Apparently it’s got the best chairs, the best screens, the most amount of theatres….but pretty much every year, without fail, the ticket prices will inevitably increase. They don’t even do cheap 3D tickets on Tuesdays because apparently 3D is just SO POPULAR.
So today, I find out that watching 3D movies now costs $21 which includes the 3D glasses. I could probably start a collection of these things because I have so many just lying around in my room..they’re not even worth 50 cents to me. But seriously. TWENTY ONE DOLLARS. For the record, I paid $20 to watch Alice in Wonderland and Avatar just a few months ago. And lo and behold, just as 3D movies are on the rise in popularity…BOOM. Time for a price check!!
SERIOUSLY CAPITALISM. FUCK YOU.
That’s not all though. Real 3D have come up with an even more brilliant plan to earn even more money. You know those designer 3D glasses I was talking about earlier? Well if you’re REALLY vain and self conscious, and care about what you look like when you’re watching a movie in a cinema IN THE DARK, you can now buy 3D Designer Glasses. Complete with a glasses case and everything.
Seriously. What….the hell. I don’t even have an expression to describe how I feel about this because it’s just so….utterly…ridiculous. I mean can you imagine the people in these corporate boardrooms?
- “So…..people keep downloading our movies and pirating our shit yo. This is bad; we’re losing money to bootleggers and we’re the laughing stock of the internet. Whatever shall we do?!”
- “James Cameron earned over a billion dollars by marketing Avatar in 3D. Surely this will work for every other movie we release too!”
- “GENIUS. While we’re at it, we can raise ticket prices for crappy plastic glasses, invent designer 3D glasses for uber rich kids with nothing better to spend their money on, and use After Effects to save money on real 3D cameras!”
- “WOW WE ARE SO CLEVER. You think civilians will buy 3D DVDs and 3D TV’s too? Oh man this could be revolutionary to the movie industry!”
- “Yeah just think what a favour we’re doing for the future generations of cinema. We’re at the forefront of technology and we’re still relevant! Yay we are awesome!! People will totally want to watch movies at the cinema now and pay more for something which has already been around for years!!! HI FIVE BOYS LET’S HIT THE PUB”
Yeah.
I don’t know. And WOW I’ve ranted a lot…..I can rant about just about anything that pisses me off and write a whole essay about it. I have to admit, I even amaze myself at how much verbal diarrhea I can spew about stuff that makes me angry. But c’mon, does anyone else not agree with me?!!? 3D movies have gotten to the point where its no longer a part of a movie, but rather a tacked on ploy to get people to pay more for the viewing pleasure of seeing it on a big 3D screen.
Gimmicky 3D movies makes me angry, and Event Cinemas makes me angry for unnecessarily raising prices to a ridiculous amount.
I still can’t get over how expensive it is….And not only that, they are now marketing designer 3D glasses.
I can’t wait for Michael Moore to make a documentary on this dastardly 3D revolution.
Coming soon in 2015….in 3D.
Jakki posted @ 12:51 am
Cheapo toys
Don’t know bout you, but seems to me like the kids toys these days are cheap plastic shit that breaks apart after two seconds. Not like happy meal toys were ever any good but seriously…have you noticed the way they hook kids into buying stuff these days is to put “FREE TOY INCLUDED” on the label? Everyone knows theyre cheap and plastic and mass produced in some factory in China, but people STILL buy it and hope its something cool. Which most of the time it aint. We have these kids snack packs at Ikea and they are marketed as coming with a ‘soft toy’…sounds cool until you actually look inside, and find something like this:
What is this you ask? Why it’s a headless goose! It is actually a really cheap finger puppet made from felt. So much for that ‘soft toy’. Perhaps I’m just jaded and really can’t enjoy these types of things anymore because all these toys have lost their shine since I grew out of playing farm animals etc. I recently have had this obsession with Kinder Surprises however, and seriously……..some of the toys are so disappointing. Myabe its the Happy Meal effect where you hopefor something good but know its going to be shit…but still. Why can they not produce decent toys that are functional/interesting?
I used to have quite a few Kinder Surprise toys ages ago, and I still have some…I collected those insects and cars they used to have which were pretty cool. Well nowadays its just mini jigsaw puzzles made from cardboard fit for a cereal box and weird plastic manta ray things which appear to fly on the piece of paper inside…but not in real life (I tried…it didn’t work).
I actually bought a Kinder Surprise bunny for easter, and totally expected a really cool toy because it was like 3 times the price of a regular egg. Instead, this is what I get:
I still don’t really get what exactly it’s for. Strangling little kiddie’s fingers I imagine. Either way….what is this shit.
AND THEN I was at the shops sometime last week, and saw these rip off Kinder Surprise eggs:
They were $2.20, 30 cents more than a Kinder Surprise so I figured they had to be good. Or at least, better than a Kinder Surprise in quality. Man WAS I WRONG.
Not only was the chocolate really gross and cheap AND a blatant rip off of Kinder Surprise, the toy inside was plastically stupid and didn’t even need any sort of assembling…making it even more lame:
(there are two toys in the photo because Cam and I got one each)…can you see the reflective shine off that chocolate? That means the chocolate is full of unhealthy vegetable fat and tastes gross. And the toys! Just look at them! The girl on the scooter didn’t even stand up properly and kept falling over sideways! Just look at the look of digust on Cam’s face:
Rofl…classic.
So yeah, just warning everyone contemplating buying cheap Kinder Surprise rip offs…they are even more of a disappointment than the real thing. HOWEVER, I did kind of come across a cool toy a few days ago with this in a Kinder Surprise:
The picture depicted some sort of space age race through Japan with anime-like characters which I can only imagine come with other Kinder Surprises….but I thought it looked cool because it looks like one of those tortoise shells in Mario kart. B) This toy also consisted of quite a few parts which must’ve taken quite some time to develop by all those toy engineers down in the Kinder Surprise factory…so maybe there is hope after all for the future of luring kids to buy stuff with the incentive of free plastic toy!
Does anyone remember those snoopy toys that used to come with Happy Meals ages ago? They were pretty cool…but maybe that’s coz it was SNOOPY and they also costed an extra dollar -_-
Anywho I think I have taken enough pictures and ranted enough about crappy plastic toys for today. Two blog posts in one night – go me! Just what everyone should be doing on a Saturday night……staying indoors and ranting about stuff that’s stupid. I will end this post with the coolest toy keyring ever:
…and Meeko’s last word on the matter.
Jakki posted @ 10:58 pm
UWA rant-age
So before I get right into my post on cheap toys aimed at kids, I just have to vent my frustration at UWA’s really lacking website and communication of info and facilities in general. I don’t usually log into WebCT or MyUWA but I have recently had to get a couple of forms online so I can pass my Arts Practicum and I have just realized how immensely slow and cluttered everything is. Not only did it take me ten minutes to completely log into my account on MyUWA, why does it seem like the one thing you want is the hardest thing to find on the page?!? I was looking for a link to my webmail everywhere and for some reason it just blends in with all the rambling text EVERYWHERE on the screen. Its just..confusing.
I know you can link your email to an external mail application, which is something I do, but honestly…it shouldn’t be this hard. It also seems to be incredibly hard to find the login/setup details for if you actually do want to connect your webmail to an application – I think it took me round half an hour to work out how to actually do it because when they changed the webmail to Gmail last year they also changed servers and stuff without telling ANYONE. -_-
Not only is navigating your way around myUWA’s homepage like walking through a minefield of pointless and useless junk, there’s no user intuivity WHATSOEVER. Hence why you have to click through a million bazillion links before ACTUALLY ACCESSING wherever you want to go.
I don’t know, perhaps I’m just not used to the rage-inducing facility that is MyUWA and WebCT because I don’t log into it a whole lot anymore. There is a reason for that however…and that is because it has ALWAYS been slow and frustrating. Hell, WebCT doesn’t even work properly on my laptop sometimes – it just freezes, says I am logged in twice when I’m not!, or just makes me log in over and over until it finally connects to the server -.- StudentConnect isn’t much better either, but at least they have their links ordered in a neat sidebar to the left.
Oh and that reminds me, I got a letter from UWA the other day. My group won the People’s Choice Award last year for our short film, and for the prize I got a cheque for $250. I was like “ohhhh yeah B)”. Fast forward 6 months later, and they’re now asking me for $225 back due to a clerical error. Yeah…..SIGH.
You gotta wonder where all the money UWA has actually goes to – their website sucks, their student services are crap and don’t even get me started on the food. I was pretty happy to learn they had a new science cafe with supposed ‘fresh and organic’ food…..turns out its just the same limp noodles you can find at the ref, and they use the word ‘organic’ wherever they can as an excuse to charge more. Seriously, 5 dollars for organic water?!?!?? What the HELL constitutes organic water?! Not only this, they used all this money to build a fancy cake fridge. Which either has one really generic lemon cheesecake in it which is at least a week old, or stale sandwiches with the most uninteresting fillings ever.
ARGHH. I could go on forever about the food at UWA. It’s just SO HORRIBLE.
And on the topic of funding and whatnot….I really think it’s about time UWA put some money and effort into revamping the arts/communications degrees they offer. Not only is the facilities second rate (seriously, even ECU has better equipment and software), I don’t understand how some international students can pass these units in English and Communications when they can’t even speak or write english PROPERLY. It makes me AN-GRY, primarily because I was put in a group of international students in first year, and I ended up doing all the work and retyping all their stuff because it was just so grammatically and syntactically incorrect.
Funny also how I had to use iMOVIE to edit our video clips for Digital Media in second year too. This was in 2008, by the way. It was only in 2009 which they rolled out Final Cut EXPRESS in the maclabs…is that not the saddest thing you’ve ever heard?! Not even Final Cut Pro….Final Cut Express. Yeah. I feel ripped off.
I really like UWA as a campus and the lecturers are mostly great, and there are some great things about studying at UWA…its just…foodwise, technologywise, artswise……these things could definitely be better. I’m not being entirely critical, I’m just saying, there are SO MANY THINGS UWA could improve on but probably won’t for a long time to come.
Edit by Cam: To add to this, UWA nearly messed up my entire enrollment back in ’08! I emailed this woman and it was like she could not understand what I had written (and I like to think I write fairly well).
That said, the computer science and mathematics departments at UWA are pretty rockin’
Jakki posted @ 8:37 pm
Work
I work at a retic shop (we sell sprinklers and pipes and stuff like that).
Don’t get me wrong, I like this job. But I hate when literally nothing is happening.
I’ve been here for about 2 hours (oh yes, that’s right, blogging from work) but it feels like DAYS. There is nothing to do. NOTHING I SAY!
My manager is aimlessly wandering around the store.
This is how excited we get when a customer shows up. (I drew this ages ago, when I had a beard).
Perception of time is horse shit!
…Come on 5:30!
Cam posted @ 10:48 am
What is wrong with society?!
Yeah, so internet is distracting, and I was going to sleep like an hour ago but…yeah. Goddammit!
Anyways, I am keeping up to date with everything to do with movies and tv shows…and apparently there is all this hype about the last episodes of Gossip Girl. If you’ve EVER watched an episode….you’ll know its contrived, lame and extremely overblown in its artificiality. But…I just saw this promo and could not help but roll my eyes and sigh REALLY LOUDLY:
I mean…seriously? This is POPULAR?!?!
I just….don’t get it. It’s so UGH. “I love you but I don’t love you, I want you but I don’t want you” Far out how do people find this entertaining?!?!??! It’s just like Greys Anatomy but WORSE. Yeah. I don’t get why this show gets so many fans, but honestly, is this not extremely boring to anyone else? How much of this can you take before you just want to tell them to STFU and get off the screen?
Also, I had the pleasure of witnessing a Justin Bieber clip firsthand the other day while eating Icey Ice and I was stunned. WHAT HAS SOCIETY COME TO!!??!? I have NO IDEA what song it was, but the clip features an Usher cameo and its of him at some party, trying to chat this girl up who is obviously wayyy older than him, and they are blowing bubbles. Of course, no alcohol is explicitly shown but its kinda implied with the setting and all. And he was singing about true love and other generic pop shit like that. But if you haven’t already heard of this pop sensation that is Justin Bieber…check this shit out:
Was your mind blown? Like this video right here….it disgusts me EVEN MORE SO than the BBP rave music video clip. I have to say though, the child exploitation in this whole money making scheme is ridiculous. Usher’s “child prodigy”? YEAH RIGHT. More like “ka-ching, ka-ching, KA-CHING”.
First of all, does anyone not think he sounds like a tweenage girl?! Second of all, what is he doing…at parties with 30 yr old dudes with bling and grillz…chatting up girls…when he’s like 12. Thirdly….what is he doing hanging out with USHER. WHAT A ROLE MODEL – NOT. Fourthly….what is he doing singing about “love” and “hooking up”. ITS SO WRONG. He’s so young, and innocent looking…and….so…NOT…gangster…..it’s just….WHY IS HE SO POPULAR. WHY DO SO MANY PEOPLE LIKE HIM. Not only is he the most talked about topic on Twitter, his album is actually selling OUT – like…its at the top of the charts or something, apparently.
See – I don’t get why shit like Justin Bieber and Gossip Girl are so popular. How do people see the appeal in these things that pretty much sum up what is wrong with society?! Gossip Girl pretty much worships money and superficiality and general bitchiness – but that’s ok! It’s entertaining and we like to watch rich kids in NYC battling for the most infamy, hook ups and bitchfights! It’s not setting a bad example for kids at all! It’s just teaching people the REAL values in life – money, fame and power!
And not to mention Justin freakin Bieber…..I mean…I don’t even know where to start with this one. Is this not child abuse?! He obviously doesn’t write his own songs, I mean does he even know how to add numbers yet? Like, its just these blatant contradictory values in society that piss me off: on one hand, we teach kids to just stay in school and be happy with what you got….BLAH BLAH BLAH. Then we have all these images in pop culture of vanity and self worth against your status and wealth, and popularity based on image ie. TAYLOR LAUTNER.
And seriously, while we’re on the topic of Taylor Lautner, why is it ok for middle aged mums to salivate wildly over this 17 year old dude? Why was Christ Weitz allowed to exploit him for the sake of the Twilight: New Moon movie? If you’ve seen that POS, it contains the most blatant exploitation of his body to get a reaction from tweenage girls and desperate housewives. I’m not even exaggerating. It was like Weitz was like “OKAY scene is getting boring – Taylor, TAKE OFF THAT SHIRT NOW.” Which was…pretty much every scene. Guess they needed some sot of decoy to throw people off the shit plot of the actual movie.
I don’t know. Perhaps I am just rambling like a madperson becacuse it is 5:30 in the morning and I have nothing better to do but whinge at the double standards which exist in relation to these things. I didn’t even start out to rant about double standards; I was just really disgusted with the Gossip Girl promo. But at the same time, its just common sense. Why does society allow this to happen? Does this not disturb anyone else? Because it really depresses me to think that the majority of people think its okay to promote all these ideas which we are also somewhat avidly against. That we have kids as young as 12 singing about being in love and chatting up girls in nightclubs? And shows on TV aimed at teenagers, validating measuring one’s self worth against sex, money and power? I don’t really know what else to say but…society is fucked.