Times Like These by Jack Johnson
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/jj2005-08-05.at931.shnf/jj2005-08-05d2t05_64kb.mp3]
So I saw Bee Movie tonight, and it is mostly entertaining. Definitely weird at times, but still, overall I came away with a good feeling. The only thing I found a little weird was the underlying capitalist propaganda, which may not have been intentional, but still jumped out at me. In the beginning, the bee stands out, and breaks the norm, challenging authority. And he wins, but we’re only halfway into the movie. Suddenly, everything goes to shit, and it turns out that change is bad, and ruining the way everyone lives. So they go back, and everything is well again. Moral? Be a cog.
Otherwise, this got us talking about the impending strike of the Writer’s Guild of America. As we walked down the corridor of the movie theater, we couldn’t see another movie out in theaters or any other movie advertised on the walls (soon to be released) worth seeing. And the strike hasn’t even begun yet. If it does turn out to be a longer strike than everyone would like it to be, we’ll be looking at a long winter, with even less worthwhile movies than normal.
Although obviously this has less of an effect on independent movies. The problem of course is that they can never quite make the jump to widespread release. At this point Eric brought up an idea I hadn’t considered: theaters could start showing independent movies in an attempt to draw audiences in. That would be a massive leap forward for independent film makers (and their fans). It would also be one more step towards the decentralization of media, simillar to what is happening in music right now. Less dependence on the big three (or is it four?) production studios, and more emphasis on the content. I would personally love to see something like this happen. It has been nothing but benificial for music so far (at least from the consumer’s perspective, the labels aren’t so happy).
So go on writers – strike!