Over the last year I watched an interesting mini-social experiment play out: my sixty-something parents trying out Netflix.

The company’s now-famous little red envelopes first gained fame around the time the dot-com boom went bust in early 2000. Video rental behemoth Blockbuster, reeling from a catastrophic bleeding of market share to this wily challenger, entered the rent-by-mail fray in 2004, but it soon became apparent that they were going to get their hats handed to them. An even younger upstart, Redbox, began as a subsidiary of McDonald’s, and by 2007 its kiosks has spread across the fruited plains of America like wildfire, in the process putting the final nails in Blockbuster’s coffin.

My folks watch a lot of flicks, either at the theater or at home, so there’s always opportunities for improving the experience — the Great TiVo Immersion Program of 2005, masterminded and forced upon them by moi in the face of strenuous objections, turned out to be life changing. So after years of watching them drive out in the early evening to various video stores, I bought them a year-long Netflix subscription in Christmas 2009, and waited to see how it played out.

To my surprise, they hated it. For a year they bemoaned that Netflix never seemed to have the newest titles already available at the local rental shops. Even when using the service to queue older titles, they never got used to having to wait a day or two for DVDs that they could have in fifteen minutes by driving down the street. Eventually they settled in to using Netflix only for older or obscure films, things they otherwise wouldn’t have rented at all, and of course taking chances on such films was more of a hit-or-miss proposition than using Redbox to rent new movies they were jazzed to see. Meanwhile Netflix’s newest innovation, streaming to computers and TV, went entirely unused. (more…)

So in yet another chapter in the wondrous life of Naomi Campbell, she has apparently stormed off during an ABC News interview after they repeatedly asked her about a blood diamond given as a gift from former Liberian president Charles Taylor. This is just the latest in a string of supermodel violence, almost always involving electronics.

Here’s the tape:

What does she have against technology? Perhaps when she was young she was bullied by a blender.

No matter – here’s the lesson.

Naomi Campbell is what happens when a supermodel is no longer super. See, all your life, you were waited on hand and foot: you never had to think about paying bills, arranging travel, walking your tiny stupid dog, or wiping your mysteriously runny nose. You become, in the purest sense, a machine of entitlement. You live to receive, never to give. (more…)

“In fifteen minutes, everyone will be famous.” —Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol also spoke that jewel of wisdom, presumably demonstrating a sense of humor in referring to his most famous quote.  Or was it, perhaps, prescient, albeit unintended foreknowledge?  Pity he’s not around to toy with Twitter.

Bridge as visual metaphor, Media as bridge, Pittsburgh.

Looking back at Part 1, we considered a couple of insights into Andy’s Pop Life with the aim of solving some problems surrounding Mr. Breitbart’s incisive assertion that conservatives must come to terms with popular culture, and more, use it to advantage, or fail catastrophically in countering the negative effects of said culture and restoring public confidence in fundamental ideals.  Narcissism, amorality, and an attitude of entitlement, as examples, speak poorly to the future of democracy, while the virtues of valuing others, the practice of ethical discernment and choice, and the elevating ideas of individual liberty and self-reliance are greatly to be desired in the body politic, and traditionally set America apart from typical “statist” governments around the world.  Evidence abounds of the former set of attitudes in common currency as reflected in pop culture; the latter set, highly prized by conservatives, goes sorely wanting for attention in movies, TV, music, etc. (more…)

Hollywood used to proclaim that “Movies are still your best form of entertainment.” 

That it felt it necessary to do so was in reaction to its declining share of the entertainment market against the little box, television, where you could see things for free and in the comfort of one’s own home. 

Hollywood assumed an adversarial stance against television right from the beginning, doing everything from encouraging stars under its control to stay off TV to changing the aspect ratio of movies so that they no longer matched the dimensions of the television screens.  Yet think of how different things might have been, for television and for the Hollywood studio system, had the moguls of the 1950s decided that television represented not a threat, but a new outlet, a new source of profits in which everyone would have a chance to wet their beaks.  (more…)

 The world economy is a mess. Things are in flux. These are scary times. But part of that comes with change.

If you think things are scary now, imagine how people felt when World War I or World War II started. Both of those wars led to massive alterations in the world as we knew it up till then. WWI ended the age of the aristocracy. Dukes, earls, czars, even kings fell by the wayside and their fortunes and lives were ruined. WWII shifted world power structures, ending the European dominance over the developing world. Colonies were abandoned and left to find their independence. The US became a superpower after living in the shadow of Europe for so long.

But this site isn’t dedicated to geopolitics. It’s dedicated to the Big H. And that’s the subject of today’s discussion. The end of Hollywood as we know it. It’s already begun.

Entertainment is about to undergo a radical shift from old media to new media. And the rules of the game will be changed forever. (more…)