The Village

I just watched M. Night Shyamalan's The Village on DVD. I am a fan of M. Night Shyamalan's work. I liked his first three movies a lot. I liked the way he approached the form with the Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs. I know that other people did not like these movies. I like how they are unlike most Hollywood films.

The Village is the story of an American community in the 1890's. The community is surrounded by an evil that lives in the forest. The members cannot venture into the forest less they upset the truce with the creatures. The story is about some of the younger members of the village who what to go through the forest to the benefit of the Village.

The Village shows M. Night Shamalan's strengths and weaknesses as a director. As is his strength the film is beautiful. It has an amazing performance from the actors. You get the feeling that you really know this place and these people. The moments of tension are amazing. Shamalan brings reality to the whole situation.

The problems are really around the story. The movie moves at an incredibly slow pace. You never get the sense that the danger is real. The characters are afraid of "Those who we do not speak of..." there is something about that fear that is not gripping.

I also have a problem with the way the way the Village is set up. They are supposed to be 19th century utopianists. The problem is that the character do not act like utopianists. It is not until too late into the movie that you realize that they have intentionally separated themselves from society. I think the conflict would be better served if you could see this.

Since this is a Shamalan movie, everyone knows there is going to be a big twist at the end. He does a better job of moving the twist from the very end of the movie. It happens a little earlier in the movie. It just is not satisfying. They give you an idea that something is being hidden, but by the time you find out what it is it feels minor. I thought the twist was going to be bigger.

I feel that Shamalan's weakness is that he is both writing and directing his own movies. The screenplay is where the weakness of this movie is. I would like to see what would happen if he would direct a movie written by someone else. Until he does that Shamalan will not make a movie as good as The Sixth Sense.

I am not saying that the Village is a bad movie, it is just fustrating because Shamalan is not making the most of his talent. He should be making better movies then this. It is a movie that is worth waiting for it to come to cable.

TV worth watching

If you are sports fan or not you should watch Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. Like all Ken Burns films it is about the way Jack Johnson relates to American history. This is history of race and sports in America. If you like American history you should watch this film.

This link will allow you to Record Unforgivable Blackness on your TiVo DVR.

Left of iTunes

or Read about you band on some local blog

Recently I have rejoined eMusic. People might remember back in 1998 eMusic started with an all you could download for a flat fee business model. eMusic changed ownership and restructured their business model back in 2003. I am not sure if it was because of bandwidth costs or because of paying the artists. For whatever reason they changed to a structure where the subscriber pays $9.99 a month for 40 downloads. After waiting a year for Emusic to go back to the all you can download price model I figured it was never going to happen. I ended up joining up again.

iTunes is still $.99 a song. It looks like that price point is not going to come down anytime soon. I know that if you buy per album the person song price comes down. I still think that the real sweet point for downloaded music is .$49 a song. I think at that price is becomes more expensive to download tracks from a peer-to-peer system then it does to just pay for the song. With Emusic you are playing $.25 a song. That is a business model that I want to encourage.

I will warn you now, if you only like America's Top 40 or the music that spills out of some Clearchannel owned radio station you should stay away from e-music. They have a catalog of over 500,000 song, but there is not a Beatles, Led Zepplin, Rolling Stones, or Pink Floyd song in the bunch. That is why I say that eMusic is left of iTunes. eMusic is living on the long tail. If you are looking for Jazz, Electroinca, Old Country, Indie Pop emusic is a good place for you.

Being an obsessive music fan, I tend to attact friends that are also obessive music fans. Anyone who is a real music fan can find a few months worth of music to download from eMusic. There are so many things here you can just take a chance on. For $9.99 a month is it worth taking the chance.

eMusic has a couple more cool features. You can make list of albums that you want to download later or to show other people what to listen to. I made a list to show everyone emusic is a Sad Salvation.

I am not telling people to quit using iTunes or other music services. I am saying that it is a great service to use along with iTunes. I know that there is much that I want that will never show up on eMusic, but that does not mean it is not a service worth paying for.

Thoughts on the iPod Shuffle

Over the last few days I have been thinking about the iPod Shuffle. I have been reading other people's reactions to it. I have read a lot of negative reactions to it, but from fans and from other MP3 makers. People's instant reaction is to not like it.

I have not seen it myself, but there are lots of good pictures of the iPod Shuffle on the web. I think I have a good idea about the design. I think that Apple has taken some bold steps with this product. In the end I think it is going to pay off for them. I think the nay-sayers will be proven wrong.

Lots of people do not like the fact that it has no display. There have been other products with no display before. Most of these products do not sell well. I think the iPod shuffle is so small that a display would not be usable. I think that size and battery life are the two most important things the iPod Shuffle. A display with ruin both of those.

I also hear people decry the fact that it does not have very many features. It is good that it does not have very many features. Most users want devices that do one job well. It is does a second job, that is fine. There are too many devices that have 100 features. I do not need my iPod to tell me what the weather is going to be like. I have other things for that. I think that simple is better in this case.

What I love about my iPod mini is using iTunes to manage it. I think this is the real key to why people love iPods. I have used lots of MP3 players. None of them has tools that are as good as iTunes. I think this will be the key to people using iPod shuffle. I think people will be hooked on how easy it will be to update and use.

There is one other thing to remember. Apple has been very good at updating the normal iPod. I have no doubt that they will be able to adjust the iPod Shuffle to fix little usability issues.

Growth of Music

For the last year I have been keeping track of my music collection on my computer. With iTunes it is really easy to keep track. It is no effort at all to obsess over my music collection. There are so many things you can keep track of. I will admit that I have engaged this obsession by making a spread sheet and updating it every month. It is interesting to see how and when my collection grows. Here are some of the state from last year.

Number of Songs Jan 1, 2004 - 28206
Number of Songs Jan 1, 2005 - 36026

Total Songs in GB '04 - 132.74
Total Songs in GB '05 - 158.99

Total Playtime of all songs '04 - 78 Days 4 Hours 31 Minutes 4 Seconds
Total playtime of all songs '05 - 99 Days 1 Hour 7 Minutes 27 Seconds

Songs 0 Play Count in iTunes '04 - 19390
Songs 0 Play Count in iTunes '05 - 24067

In the age of CDs all you could usefully know was how many CDs you had. It would take a lot of work to know what the total playtime of those CDs were or how many songs all of those CDs had. I think now there is a whole subculture that pays attention to these kinds of numbers. I know that I am not the only person paying attention to their collection in this way.

I do not think this kind of attention will change the music industry at large. It also will not change the average music fan. My bet is most of them will not pay any attention to these numbers at all. I do think it will effect the kind of people who are depicted in the book and movie High Fidelity. Right now, somewhere on Live Journal there is a thread about this very topic.

The Next Live Aid

Before Christmas Live Aid came out on DVD. Eric asked me why have no one done something like Live Aid since the 80s. Farm Aid and Comic Relief were all started as a spin off of Live Aid, but there has not been anything like this.

I guessed it was because the 90s was a jaded decade. In terms of Concerts the 90s were about Lollapalooza, Lilith Fair, and OzzFest. The 90's were not about saving the world. The 90s were about saving ourselves.

Today I see on the BBC news website that a group in might stage a Live Aid time even for tsunami relief. It looks like Live Aid might make a comeback 20 years after the first. Someone get Bob Geldof on the phone.