Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. | | | | “Hello Mr. Billionaire” is a Chinese remake of “Brewster’s Millions.”
(Alibaba Group) | | | | | | “Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.”
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| | rantnrave:// Let's talk about big movies. The biggest one last week? A battle between the new MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE and a Chinese remake of UNIVERSAL's 1984 comedy classic, BREWSTER'S MILLIONS. The film, HELLO MR. BILLIONAIRE, raked in $131 million... MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT is a 10. The real world is a tough place to sit around and watch lately. By contrast, watching this in IMAX was not tough. An almost perfect popcorn movie with every dollar spent right up there on the screen. The BOURNE series reinvented the international spy/action movie. From stunts to music to acting to style. That made BOND rethink itself for a new generation and some of them delivered. The last one, SPECTRE, did not. It had some cool sequences (and massive box office) but it was not a good movie. You could feel it trying to please the entire world while losing its soul. M.G. SIEGLER thinks Bond may have to go back to style and lose the big stunts/explosions given how good MI was. I used to be on the board of MGM STUDIOS and I'm familiar with the tenacity of Bond producers BARBARA BROCOLLI and MICHAEL WILSON. My bet is they will take the challenge rather than retreat. M:I - FALLOUT ups the game for the entire genre. Everything worked. The locales. The cast. The tech. The humor. The stakes. The stunts are phenomenal. It's long and yet moves like a supersonic jet. And for the first time, I thought: "Hey, where did Cruise get that suede jacket?" Some great clothes too. And it may or may not be a little poke at Bond as much of it is set in LONDON. I took my niece and nephew yesterday. They didn't tell me they saw it already on Saturday. I imagine this was a brilliant ploy for candy and popcorn. I respect a good and harmless devious child. The entire world seems to have seen it already, but if not, totally worth it for the fun, and the escape. It's a great feeling when you leave a movie really entertained... I'm pretty brand loyal. But I hold my brands to account. Even with movie theaters. I go less because TV and OTT services rock. But I still go. A lot more when I'm in LA. AMC THEATERS, LANDMARK and ARCLIGHT are my favorites. The theater business is, for the most part, not a super innovative one. They refurbish about every 15 years. The food is subpar vs. the mall it's in. And forget about healthy options. Treats are fine every so often. But the offering in most theaters is like COACHELLA for diabetes and obesity. Couldn't they find their way to invest in an air popper? I see at least 4 movies a month in theaters. Years ago, when MOVIEPASS came along offering a subscription package I was intrigued. But many chains fought them and the hoops you had to jump through were a pain in the ass. Innovation in these kinds of industries mostly comes from the outside. And that innovation is often fought like an infection, not a cure. And now the company is in trouble according to news reports. I like a cinema subscription model. Hope it's part of the future. So when I heard AMC Theaters was offering a new subscription package called A-LIST I signed up. Or tried to. Took me days before the service accepted a working credit card. Boggles the mind, given that is the core functionality besides picking a movie and seat. I build software, so I understand bugs. I let it slide and it finally worked. Yesterday, I tried to use the same stored credit card for my ticket pass plus tickets for the kids, and it didn't work. Now, of course, it works when they bill me monthly but not when I need to use it for tickets. This isn't a conspiracy. I know this. But this is an industry competing against the tide of OTT, phones, games, and the frustration of dealing with parking, standing in line for food, etc. I had to buy my tickets on FANDANGO which never failed in the decades I've been using it. When I contacted AMC customer service, I asked for a refund for the month or an extension of the subscription. They said they couldn't do that. Did not explain the issue or offer an ETA on a fix. They asked me to send them a copy of the ticket for the movie from FANDANGO and that service would issue a credit. Which they did promptly. I have to do this every time I want to go to the movies until they fix it. While I pay the subscription fee. Tell me, how is this better than MOVIEPASS right now? Not being a hater but don't launch a service until key functionalities work. Like getting tickets. It's AMAZON, stupid. It's their world. They sell what everyone else does. But their service? The best. And often services and products like movie theaters are undifferentiated. Customer service is the differentiator. Making consumers jump through hoops so they can use a service they pay for isn't customer service. I'm sticking with it and the theaters but they need to do better and communicate more. An "oops" message in an app doesn't cut it... Happy Birthday to MARK CUBAN, JASON RAPP, BEE SHAFFER, ADAM MILLER, JOANNE BRADFORD, BETSY FRANK, and CELESTE SUNDERLAND GOTTFRIED. | | | - Jason Hirschhorn, curator |
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| How demographic change is fracturing our politics. | | |
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| Keeping up with the growing volume of e-commerce will require delivery companies to disrupt their long-standing business model. | | |
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| In the aftermath of an assault, Matthew Miles Goodrich considers the effects of opioids on himself, the culture, and his musical hero, Prince. | | |
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| Unlike nuclear weapons, there is no clear protocol for when cyberwarfare should be used, or how to respond to an attack writes David Sanger, author of "The Perfect Weapon." | | |
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| The Brookings Institution |
| Following President Trump's disapproving tweet, Tom Wheeler examines the motivations for the FCC administrative review of the Sinclair-Tribune merger. | | |
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| How jokes became ammo during the social media platform’s shift from distraction to political warzone | | |
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| Astrid Holleeder secretly recorded her brother’s murderous confessions. Will he exact revenge? | | |
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| How two researchers paid a price for challenging a retracted study about violent video games. | | |
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| “When I joined [al-Shabab] I was 7 years old. I was not forced. I joined willingly,” Abdi told me. He paused for a moment as if hearing the absurdity of what he was saying. “After all these years, I now realize that I was brainwashed,” he added. | | |
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| Columbia Journalism Review |
| On a Saturday in late October, 2016, I started receiving odd messages: Total strangers were mentioning my name on social media; others were asking if I was a person named Hector Morenco; a few people emailed me about a suspicious account. That night, I got online, searched for Hector Morenco, and found a Twitter account--with my face. | | |
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| | | and run with the dogs tonight |
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| Decades of fearmongering almost got porn addiction added to the International Classification of Diseases. Thankfully, the WHO got it right. | | |
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| From board games to board rooms, the rise of Melody Hildebrandt to Global Chief Information Security Officer at 21st Century Fox has come at a time of great change and heightened risk in the media landscape. | | |
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| In more than a decade of arguing cases in court, I’ve witnessed the stubborn cultural biases female attorneys must navigate to simply do their jobs. | | |
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| The smart thermostat maker wants to remodel our houses for the digital age -- if Google’s Nest doesn’t squash it first. | | |
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| Lithium-ion batteries power everything from smartphones and laptops to electric cars and e-cigarettes. But, with lithium close to breaking point, researchers are scrambling for the next battery breakthrough. | | |
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| Long before Mike Trout became a superstar outfielder in Los Angeles, he was Jeff Trout's kid in Millville, New Jersey -- a baseball prodigy just waiting to be found. | | |
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| To understand why white supremacists back the president, we have to understand the books that define their worldview. | | |
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| New findings are fueling an old suspicion that fundamental particles and forces spring from strange eight-part numbers called “octonions.” | | |
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| "There is no Wirecutter for low-income individuals." Fiona Morgan and Jay Hamilton talk about their research into information ecosystems and the media market. | | |
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| Dreamland cities in the air, floating villages and forest-like structures were all envisioned by the forward-thinking ‘Metabolic’ architects of the past. | | |
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| How Britain beat the odds to independently achieve space flight, and then abandoned it on the very same day. | | |
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