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Overdue Reviews: 'Strange Days'

by Matthew Zuras on April 6, 2011 at 01:40 PM

'strange days'
Overdue Reviews takes a critical look at tech-centric films that are well-loved, well-loathed or eye-rollingly obscure.

When Kathryn Bigelow's 'Strange Days' was released in 1995, it didn't even break $8 million at the box office; with a production budget of $42 million, it was by all accounts a commercial disaster. Even the critically panned 'Johnny Mnemonic' pulled in $19 million, and cinematic abortion 'The Net' snagged over $50 million. (Both were released in the same year.) Unlike those films, however, 'Strange Days' starred two Oscar nominees and one Oscar winner, and boasted a script co-written by James Cameron. What went wrong?

Many observers have noted that the racial violence depicted in the film directly echoed the 1991 Rodney King ordeal, which saw its 20th anniversary last month. Were filmgoers just not ready to deal with depictions hitting so close to home? And why has the film -- a hodgepodge of cyberpunk, action, and psychological-erotic thriller genres -- since gone on to become a cult favorite for sci-fi fans? Is it because it's a film that mirrors our own addiction to images, from the '90s obsession with virtual reality to our current love affair with YouTube?

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TweetForger: Your Lawsuit-Attracting Impersonation Site of the Day

by Matthew Zuras on April 4, 2011 at 11:05 AM

TweetForger does exactly what it sounds like. Enter your mark's handle and some lulz-worthy copy, and blammo: You're all set up with a fake tweet. Not that anyone with a basic grasp of Photoshop couldn't already do this, but it's a good time-waster to kick off the week. (Apologies to both Sarah Palin and polar bears.) ...
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Oops: YouTube's April Fools' Button Also Makes Horrible Things More Horrible

by Matthew Zuras on April 1, 2011 at 03:46 PM

youtube '1911'
YouTube's April Fools' gag -- a "1911" button that turns any video into an old-timey silent film, complete with syncopated piano and sepia tone -- maybe isn't so hilarious for all videos. Gawker points to 9/11 footage, the Rodney King beating, WikiLeaks' infamous Apache helicopter footage and newscasts of the Japanese tusnami as examples of video not exactly benefiting from YouTube's knee-slapping antics.

Will this be the day's meme? Find the saddest video on YouTube and make it even sadder with a ragtime soundtrack? We have a few ideas:
You get the idea. And now we're going to cry.
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Bronx Zoo Cobra Allegedly Caught, But We're Not Buying It

by Matthew Zuras on March 31, 2011 at 04:31 PM

@bronxzooscobraThe "real" Bronx Zoo cobra has apparently been found. Zoo officials claim that he "never left the House of Reptiles," but his Twitter account begs to differ. Seeing that he's been turned into a 200,000-follower-strong online celeb -- having lately been tweeted by Mayor Bloomberg, Ellen Degeneres and Jon Favreau -- we figure that the actual cobra is slurping mouse blood Mai Tais under a heat lamp at the Gramercy Park Hotel, already optioning his famous tweets.
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Google Denies Working on A Freaky Facial Recognition App

by Matthew Zuras on March 31, 2011 at 04:15 PM

cnn vs. google
Updated after the break.

Internet intrigue! A CNN story by Mark Milian reported that Google is working on a facial-recognition app that would be deployed in a manner similar to Google Goggles -- snap a picture of someone's face, and it leads back to their Google profile, more or less. We were all about to scream, "GOOGLE TO DESTROY LAST VESTIGES OF PRIVACY (AGAIN)" when suddenly we saw all of the retractions and updates screaming across our feeds: Google says much of the story is falsified.

An email from a Google spokesperson to Time's Techland reads thus:
I left you a voicemail about this, but saw your story based on CNN's speculative and inaccurate piece on a face recognition app and wanted to reach out -- your story is wrong because CNN's story is wrong. In fact, we are NOT "introducing a mobile application" (as the CNN piece claims) and as we've said for over a year, we would NOT add face recognition to any app like Goggles unless there was a strong privacy model in place. A number of items "reported" in the story, such as a potential app connecting phone numbers, email addresses and other information with a person's face, are purely speculative and are inventions of the reporter.

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Woodland Contraption Plays Bach, Peddles Phone

by Matthew Zuras on March 31, 2011 at 10:00 AM

This gorgeous commercial -- conceived by Morihiro Harano, the award-winning creative director of Drill, Inc. -- features a sort of sloping marimba, down which a wooden ball rolls, producing an unadorned rendition of Bach's Cantata 147. "We did not add any artificial music at all," Harano tells the New York Times. The things people do to sell a wood-encased phone! Are we philistines for kinda digging Kristen Schaal's Xperia PLAY spots more? (Answer: yes.)
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Sneaky, Supercilious Snake Taunts on Twitter, Laffs Ensue

by Matthew Zuras on March 29, 2011 at 10:40 AM

@bronxzooscobra tweet
Forget Time's list of Twitter's best. Our newest local celebrity, a king cobra snake who's lately gone missing from the Bronx Zoo, has just won Twitter. (Fine, it's likely a spoof ghostwriter, but don't crush the dream.) The "super venomous, but not poisonous" Egyptian cobra disappeared on Saturday from the Reptile House exhibit; according to his Twitter account, he's since gone on to gawk at Tina Fey and mock Charlie Sheen. "[Know] what's better than tiger's blood? Cobra venom. #winning #snakeonthetown Also I'm 20 inches long. Just sayin'."

Other herpetological hijinks after the break:

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Blast a Hole Through a Balloon Dog in 'Jeff Koons Must Die'

by Matthew Zuras on March 29, 2011 at 08:30 AM

Are you just sick to death of the assembly line production of big-name modern art? Does the fact that Jeff Koons employs an army of assistants to construct "his" work make you want to obliterate a Balloon Dog with a rocket launcher? Artist Hunter Jonakin understands how you feel. His 'Jeff Koons Must Die!!!' arcade cabinet lets the player wander a 3-D gallery space and destroy any of the Koons pieces displayed there, including works from his famous Balloon series and his infamous 'Made in Heaven' series. Writes Jonakin:

If nothing is destroyed the player is allowed to look around for a couple of minutes and then the game ends. However, if one or more pieces are destroyed, an animated model of Jeff Koons walks out and chastises the viewer for annihilating his art. He then sends guards to kill the player. If the player survives this round then he or she is afforded the ability to enter a room where waves of curators, lawyers, assistants, and guards spawn until the player is dead.

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Is Google Recipe Search the Sandra Lee of Online Cooking Resources?

by Matthew Zuras on March 28, 2011 at 03:00 PM

lasagna
When Google announced its new recipe search earlier this month, I didn't pay the news much mind. As the resident foodie here, I've got my stable of RSS feeds and recipe databases from which I regularly cull meal ideas. I knew that Google's results, which would be predicated on page views and SEO, probably wouldn't fit my needs. I don't care to read Paula Deen's fried chicken recipe just because it sports the most reviews; I like my own (actually, it's Thomas Keller's) just fine.

But I had the sneaking suspicion that Google's recipe algorithm, like any other recommendation algorithm, would end up reducing the tyranny of choice to a recipe monopoly by a few large sites, and start recommending hapless and distraction-prone new cooks to "semi-homemade"-style dishes à la Sandra Lee (e.g., the Kwanzaa cake, whatever the hell this is). Amanda Hesser, founder of Food 52 and food columnist for the New York Times, is also worried. By trying to make "good" recipes easier to find, Google "inadvertently stepped into the middle of the battle between the quick-and-easy faction and the cooking-matters group," she writes. (Check out her full post here.)

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Hooray for Mob Rule: Apple Boots 'Ex-Gay' App After 150K People Demand Tolerance

by Matthew Zuras on March 23, 2011 at 12:00 PM

exodus not found in itunes
Well, I was right. Change.org's petition to Apple to remove Exodus International's so-called "gay cure" app has reached 150,000 signatures, and now the app's no longer available. Apple hasn't yet released a statement on the matter.

As Cult of Mac points out: "The real issue [is that] Apple has no coherent policy about what kind of content gets approved and remains in iTunes." Indeed.

Gay Gamer took issue with my defense of the wingnut organization's app, but I think commenter SecretMoblin aptly clarifies one of the points I tried to make previously. "The folks behind Exodus are perfectly aware of the controversy this app would bring... Exodus wants pressure from gay and lesbian organizations to pull the app so it can prove its point about those mean intolerant gays shutting down anybody who gets in their way." Looks like they got their wish.
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Censorship Goes Both Ways: The Case for an Ex-Gay App

by Matthew Zuras on March 21, 2011 at 05:10 PM

Perhaps you've heard of this Exodus International iPhone app fracas? The leading organization behind the ex-gay movement (the belief that religious counseling can help LGBT people "struggling" with their sexualities to reorient themselves to heterosexuality) recently had its official app approved by Apple, and gay rights groups are now in an uproar. Surprise? Despite the fact that Apple deemed ... Read more »
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Read This: Does the Right to Be Forgotten Online Even Exist?

by Matthew Zuras on March 19, 2011 at 03:01 PM

Being forgotten might sound appealing for some, but making a right out of it degrades the concept of rights. Instead of being something that embodies the relationship between the individual and society, it pretends that relationship doesn't exist. The right to be forgotten is a figment of our imaginations. Are we talking semantics? The Guardian's Tessa Mayes opines that we don't have the ... Read more »
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EaTheremin's Noisy Forks: Because Utensils Weren't Already Annoying Enough

by Matthew Zuras on March 16, 2011 at 05:05 PM

Do you wonder if the urbane baritone who narrates those DigInfo News spots ever has to record multiple takes because he's laughing his (possibly) Australian ass off at those consistently wacky Japanese inventions? I do. Because I'm not sure I'd be able to say "chicken skin can generate vibrato effects" without breaking into some kind of fit of giggling burp-ups. Anyway, these are forks ... Read more »
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Lady Gaga to Answer 'WHY RU SO WIERD' And Other Fan Questions for Google

by Matthew Zuras on March 16, 2011 at 02:55 PM

Want to know Lady Gaga's favorite color, or if she likes a boy? Get ready to grill, because the Lady's taking fangirl and fanboy-submitted questions for Google. Squee! Submit a video or text question on Gaga's YouTube page, or tweet it with the hashtag #GoogleGoesGaga, until midnight on March 18th. She'll then respond to a selection of them in a YouTube video, probably while wearing a ... Read more »
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Riley Harmon's Bloody Game of 'Counter-Strike'

by Matthew Zuras on March 16, 2011 at 11:55 AM

We know that Riley Harmon's installation 'What It Is Without the Hand That Wields It' is from 2008, but we've just been too lazy to post about it. (That's our story and we're sticking to it.) Anyway, art is timeless, no? 'WIIWTHTWI' has apparently been a new media exhibition favorite; with its combination of video games and real fake blood, who could refuse its charms? Participants play a ... Read more »
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