Author: Jason

The Screening Secret Handshake

Random Thoughts

Once upon a time, I thought that in order to see an advance screening of a movie certain things had to occur.  A) You had to live in LA/Hollywood.  Or 2) You had to know someone on the inside.  Or D) You had to be lucky.

In my younger days, I’d only ever seen “Stay & See” screenings.  That’s where you’d pay to see one movie and then be allowed to stay and see a screening of a not yet released film, or you’d pay to see a screening of a soon to be released film and then get to stay and see some movie that’s already been out a couple of weeks.  The last of these I went to was in 1993, and it was Son In Law (yeah, the Pauly Shore movie) coupled with either Life With Mikey or For Love Or Money (both Michael J. Fox movies).  I can’t remember which was the screening and which was the released film.  But it doesn’t matter.  Anyway, a few years ago, I finally realized number 2 from above and met someone on the inside, someone who worked for a movie promotion company.  Through them I got to see a few movies, but there were times they couldn’t get passes, or couldn’t get enough for everyone.  But at some of these screenings, I met people who let me know that while number 2 was good, D was better and you could minimize the luck part of the equation.

People have asked me, in person, in email and on message board, “How do you to see so many movie screenings?”  Partly because I just want to, and partly because of the FTC ruling, I’ll tell you.  The answer is… I Googled.  Obviously, I don’t use Google to find passes anymore, but it is where I started.  “free screenings” was what I searched for and it lead me to a number of really awful websites and blogs, but by doing the legwork and looking through many of those facades, I found a few places, legitimate places, to acquire passes to free movie screenings.

Before I go on, keep in mind that I live in Atlanta, and these sites are the ones that best service me as someone who lives in Atlanta.  If you Google and search yourself, you can probably find other sites that better service where you live.

Further, if you do get passes to movie screenings, remember, you are a guest and are getting to see a movie for free.  So, don’t be an asshole.  Always put your phone on silent, don’t answer it, don’t text.  Don’t talk during the movies.  Don’t cut in line.  Don’t let twenty friends cut in line with you in front of the people behind you who managed to get there on time (you know, letting one or two people join you in line is fine, but when you have to ask the line to move back and make room, you’ve gone overboard).  Be kind, be courteous, and enjoy your free movie.

That said…

My current favorite place is Shakefire.  They do reviews for movies, music, TV and video games.  They also have columnists who occasionally talk about other stuff.  They have a community built around their forums.  And of course, they give out passes for movie screenings.  You have to join their site to have a chance, and they seem to favor people who participate in the forums over people who are just there to leech passes.  But hey, if you are there for the passes, the least you can do is go post about movies you’ve seen and what you thought.  The whole point of screenings is to get the word out anyway, so, get the word out.

CHUD is another place on the net for reviews and such, and they also give out passes and do other contests, but you’ll have to work a little more for these as they usually ask a question or two you need to answer in order to enter.

Film Metro is a good site for screenings, but they don’t give them out.  Instead you have to keep an eye out for when they become available and claim them.  Sometimes you get to know when, sometimes it just happens.

Another big player is GoFoBo.  This is a site actually run by a couple of movie promotion companies.  With them, sometimes screening just open up and you can grab a pass or two.  Mostly, however, you need a reservation code.  Codes are given to various websites or radio stations or newspapers or other outlets as part of promotions intended to drive traffic.  People used to post GoFoBo codes all over the internet, but GoFoBo has been cracking down lately and convincing people to post links to the partner websites instead.  Finding links for these partners is sort of hit and miss searching, but one place that seems to get a steady flow of them is this thread over at FatWallet.  The FatWallet thread is also a good place to find out which radio stations or other websites in your area give out movie passes.  That link will always take you to the last post in the thread, so you may have to read back to see anything recent you may have missed.  Do them a favor, and make sure you actually visit partner sites and look around, the codes are meant to drive traffic, and a couple minutes of your time is worth the free movie pass you just got.  GoFoBo also runs groups on Facebook, just search there for screenings or gofobo.

Also don’t forget to check out local publications like Creative Loafing or other print media who often have pass pickups at their offices, or will post ads about pass pickups at local businesses.

Anyway, there you have it.  I check those sites about once a day, maybe twice, and in general I end up seeing a screening a week (though sometimes there are weeks with none, and sometimes there are weeks with three or four or more).  To me, the key here is that if you go to see screenings, make sure you tell people about the movies you saw.  Tell friends, post on message boards, write a blog.  The screenings are meant to get the word out about the movie, so, get the word out.

Movie Round-Up: October 9th, 2009

Reviews

This is going to be short…

Couples Retreat:

The only movie opening this weekend and I did not get a chance to see a screening.  I’ve seen the trailer, and it looks like it might be funny, but there is no way I’d spend $10 to go see this in the theater.  But the moment it drops on DVD or Netflix, I’m sure I’ll see it.

The Value of Bad Press

Gaming

I first heard about it back in June.  But apparently it has recently been ruled on by the FTC that bloggers must disclose when they get free stuff.  Personally, I’ve never gotten a free game, and while I’ve gotten free movie passes they’ve never been sent to me specifically for review, I obtain them in other ways (more on that tomorrow).  But, other bloggers do get free games sometimes, or at least offers of free games, so there has been some discussion on the subject.

Being that free games are often sent out by marketing departments, and the goal of marketing departments is to try and get favorable review out in the wild where potential buyers can see them, the concern is that bloggers given free games might give a undeserved favorable review in order to continue getting free games.  Sadly, in part, this is why most game review magazines and sites tend to use the “7 to 9” scale of rating, reserving 10’s for truly astounding games and anything less than 7 for unmitigated pieces of crap, letting even a mildly entertaining game with numerous flaws still get a 7 out of 10.  Of course, the reality is that these places are actually reviewing on a 5 point scale: 6 or less, 7, 8, 9, and 10.  So getting a 7 there is kinda like getting a 2 out of 5.  Do you normally go see movies that get 2 out of 5 stars?

Now, while no game company really wants to get poor ratings, not all poor ratings are created equal.  Rather than trying to seek out favorable ratings, what they should be seeking is “fair” reviews.  By fair I simply mean that the game will be reviewed on its own merits, in detail, and then given a score intended to reflect the value of the game to that reviewer.  THEN companies should encourage people to read reviews instead of just viewing ratings.  Metacritic is the devil because it does the opposite, placing all the focus on the score and the reasons behind the score disappear.  The result is publishers pushing for higher ratings when what they should be pushing for is the abolishment of numerical ratings.  But players seem to demand “at a glance” ratings systems because its easier on them, even though in the end they are mostly being lied to.  Its all counter-intuitive and somehow self-reinforcing at the same time.

Personally, when I am trying to decide if I want to purchase something, I actually seek out poor reviews.  For example, on Amazon.com I may skim through the 5 star reviews, but I will read every single word of every 1 and 2 star review.  The reason is simple: people tend to more specifically describe their dislike of something than they do their like of something.  I’ve written about this before.  The main reason for this is that the only thing I can guarantee about a reviewer is that they are not me.

Take movie reviews for example.  Let’s say I was going to review Zombieland.  On a 10 point scale, I’d give the movie a 9, on a 5 star scale it would get a 4.5 or maybe even a 5 (I’m not a fan of the .5 in a rating scale).  But if you were looking for a movie to go see, the fact that I gave the movie a 9 out of 10 is less important than if you like zombie movies, gory movies, or comedies.  Even if you like zombie movies, Zombieland isn’t Dawn of the Dead, it is more like Shaun of the Dead, and that’s more important than my rating.  On the flip side, suppose I had given Zombieland a 2 out 10 and said, “This movie was just as dumb as Shaun of the Dead. If you liked that piece of crap, I guess you’ll like this too.”  And if you loved Shaun of the Dead, then despite my rating of a 2, you should probably see Zombieland.  When I get in to the idea of the value of bad press, well, I’ve already seen many dozens of reviews for Zombieland that were little more than “This was awesome! Must see!”  But all the negative reviews I’ve read have been very descriptive, and I think would actually be more helpful to people not sure about the film decide whether the film is something they’d enjoy or not.

In the end, though, I suppose I do agree with the FTC that people should disclose if they have gotten freebies, especially if they are going to comment on the value, like saying a game is or isn’t worth the $60 box price.  I’m not sure it should be a law with fines though.  At the same time, I don’t think people should discount a review just because the reviewer got a free copy, and I think marketing departments should push for quality reviews and not worry so much about just getting favorable ones.  They should reward reviewers who clearly spend time with the games and write well, not just those who blow smoke and tell them what they want to hear.

Here We Remain & What We Become

Reviews

After the devastation of volume 8 of The Walking Dead, I wondered where exactly the story would turn.  Here We Remain answers that as we follow Rick and his son on their own.  Of course, they don’t stay that way for long, and it turns out that not all of our old friends are dead.  But Rick still lost his wife and baby, and after all he’s been through it isn’t surprising that he might finally be going a little nuts.  We also meet some new people here, one of whom is a scientist who thinks he might be able to do something about all the damn zombies.

What We Become takes our group on the road to Washington D.C. where the new scientist friend says he needs to go.  Everyone is a little more frazzled and rattled having left the prison, left the ranch, and hit the road with many of them riding in the back of a truck.

Hands down, The Walking Dead is the best set of zombie stories I’ve ever read.  I continue looking forward to more.

White Night

Reviews

Nine months after reading the eighth book in the series, I finally got around to reading book number nine of the Dresden Files.  By now, it should be fairly clear that I love these books.  They aren’t “High Art” (whatever the hell that is supposed to mean), but damn it if they aren’t fun.

White Night doesn’t mess with the formula that works as Dresden gets dragged in to trouble, this time helping out an old flame look into the deaths of some lesser talented practitioners and protect those that are still alive.  We also get to see that Harry has been training Molly, and he’s been continuing his work as a Warden of the White Council and fight in the war with the vampires.  But the kicker here is that someone has been trying to make it look like a Warden has been killing off the little witches, while some other reports put Harry’s half brother, a vampire of the White Court, at the scene of the crime.

While this book doesn’t have quite as many knock down drag out fights as the last couple in the series it certainly doesn’t lack action.  Plus, I don’t mind spending time getting to know more about the characters.

As always, I enjoyed my trip to Butcher’s Chicago.

30 Days of Game: Elements

Gaming

About two months ago, a friend sent me a link to Elements.  I played around with it for a few days to see if it would be something I was interested in, and it was.  So I backed away from it and then came at it fresh for 30 days.

If you’ve ever played and enjoyed collectible card games like Magic: The Gathering, then this is probably right up your alley.  When you begin you pick an element from Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Light, Darkness, Entropy, Gravity, Time, Aether, Life and Death.  Don’t worry about picking wrong, you can change later if you like, or just make a new account.  You’ll be given a starter deck and your first Quest: to defeat a Level 0 foe.  This first quest works like a tutorial, explaining how to play the game.  A coin is flipped to see who goes first, on your turn, if you aren’t first you draw a card, then you can play any resource cards you have and any cards you have the resources to play, and then you end your turn where any monsters you have will attack, any effects you have will process, and you’ll collect a round of resources.  The goal is to reduce your opponent to zero hit points before he does the same to you.

There are too many cards to spend any time talking about there here, but you can go to the bazaar and see them all.  You’ll earn money from winning duels, and sometimes even win cards in bonus spins after a win which you can use or sell, and you buy cards to continue constructing your deck.  If you are worried about spending money on the wrong cards, go play in the trainer that lets you have unlimited money but you can’t save your deck.

I started the game with a Death deck, built mostly on poisons and infections and boneyards (that produce skeletons when monsters die).  If you can survive long enough with this deck, you can kill just about anyone… its the surviving that is the trick.  After a while, I switched to playing Darkness, which I enjoyed more as it was definitely more active.  Basing the deck around Drains (a card that sucks life out of the opponent and gives it to you) I started regularly ending matches with 100 health and earning double the winnings.  I really ended up liking this slim deadly deck, but I felt I should also try out some others.  I played in the trainer and eventually I decided to build a deck based entirely on quantum pillars/towers (random 3 resources instead of 1 specific) and drawn resources (1 of each resource), and even went so far as to look up the ultimate god killing deck which was similar to but much better constructed than my rainbow deck.  Now I take turns playing my god killer for cash and my darkness for fun.

To be honest, this would never be a game that I played “seriously”, as in “for hours straight a day”.  But it is a very nice throwaway game to keep running in the background while you work (if your work doesn’t mind you playing games and they don’t block the site).  As a programmer, I know I occasionally need a momentary distraction from work in order to let my brain wander away from a problem so I can approach it from a new angle later, and Elements is perfect for that.  The only negative I would say exists in the game is that it is very grindy in that it takes quite a lot of time to be able to upgrade cards and build a better deck unless you play a certain way (Google “elements god killing deck”).  One “would be nice” thing is I would love to be able to build multiple decks and switch them out easily instead of having to rebuild them every time.

Overall, the game is very well constructed, it doesn’t appear to have any game breaking balance issues, and since it is free to play there is no harm in giving it a shot.  And if you enjoy playing it, feel free to throw a few dollars at the developers via their PayPal donation link.

The Station

Writing

3979765871_f5e0676fedAs his foot crunched in the gravel between the tracks, Edward stopped and waited.  It had been more than six months since he’d seen another living soul, but he’d run into one of them just a few days before.  He kept his weight steady.  His right palm gripped against the stock of the rifle started to sweat.  He eyed the windows of the building, looking for movement.  Nothing moved.

He quickly took two more crunching steps and stopped again.  Edward was tempted to call out, but voices carried and there was no sense alerting anything that hadn’t already heard his footsteps.  Still nothing moved, so he finished crossing the tracks to the cement walkway.

Everything looked clear and dry.  He carefully leaned the rifle against one of the roof supports and slipped off his shoes.  After tying the laces together, he hung them over his shoulder and picked the rifle back up.  He momentarily juggled it from hand to hand, taking the opportunity to dry his palms on his pants.

The light was beginning to fade and he needed to find a room, preferably without windows and a single door he could lock and barricade, before night fell.  Edward approached the nearest door in sock feet, as silent as he could manage.

It was dark inside.  Electricity had first started failing within days after everything went to hell.  Some places, powered by hydroelectric had managed months of power before their mechanisms began to fail.  The last of Edward’s own working batteries had died out weeks ago, and he hadn’t been able to find any more.  Entering the building took several long minutes as he stepped forward into shadow and then waited for his eyes to adjust.  By the time he was a few feet inside, it wasn’t so dark anymore.

Most of the windows had been boarded up on the inside, which meant that someone had secured it at some point.  But the door had been wide open, so unless that someone had retreated to and was holding up in some deeper room, it wasn’t likely that any living person was inside.

Safety was important, but he didn’t have time to check the whole station.  He made his way down the first hallway and found a supply closet.  It wasn’t big, but he could see a small rectangular shape high up on the far wall he guessed was an air vent, and the wire shelves on the left and right would provide good support for barricading the door.  Opposite his closet was a boarded window, and if he needed he could use the shotgun on his back to blast a way out. He stared into the room for a minute, occasionally looking left and right down the hall in either direction.  Edward shifted his weight to his right foot, then patted his left foot on the floor a couple times.

Nothing moved.

He slipped into the closet, turned and very slowly shut the door.  Carefully he knelt down and placed his rifle on the floor, then unslung his pack from his back.  Reaching in with his left hand he quietly rummaged around for a candle and a lighter.  At this point his flash light was little more than a club, but he’d found a box of fifty disposable lighters long ago and had kept them.

Producing a candle and a lighter, he flicked the lighter to life and lit the candle.  On his left was a shelf of cleaning and janitorial supplies.  Quickly his inventoried it in his head, taking note of there was nothing to eat or drink, but there was a bottle of plain Clorox he could use to clean some water later and number of other chemicals.  There were buckets on the bottom shelf he might make use of tomorrow, and in the corner were three mops he could use to bar the door.  He found a stack of paper cups, possibly for a dispenser next to a drinking fountain somewhere in the station, and took one to use as a candle holder, which he did and set it on the same shelf at chest height.

On the right was a shelf of office supplies.  Some pens, a couple pads of paper, a stapler.  Nothing he could really use.

He looked up and saw the dark rectangle on the wall opposite the door had indeed been an air vent.  There wouldn’t be any heat or air conditioning, but it made him feel better about locking himself in a room if it wasn’t air tight.

Edward grabbed up the mops and wedged them into the wire shelves across the door.  It probably wouldn’t hold long if trouble came, but the noise should wake him up.  With that done, he moved his candle down to a lower shelf, moved his rifle into the corner the mops had occupied, and pulled his sawed off shotgun from his pack and placed it on the shelf with the stapler.

He sat on the floor and leaned against the back wall of the closet, then went searching through his pack for something to eat.  Edward came up with a water bottle still half full and one mostly full that represented the last of his clean water.  He also discovered a granola bar at the bottom, which was a surprise since he thought he’d run out last week.  He unwrapped and ate the bar, as well as a small bag of peanuts, and drank the half full bottle of water.

Less hungry than he had been, Edward blew out the candle and settled on the floor curled in a fetal position.  Using a t-shirt from his pack as a pillow, he closed his eyes and tried not to think too much about tomorrow’s trip in to town for supplies.  For now, he was safe in the station. Still he spent a long hour listening for noises in the night before drifting off into a fitful sleep.

Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/gali_367/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

A New Project for Myself

Random Thoughts

Not so long ago I started up a project here where I would post doodles.  I did it for a few weeks and then stopped.  I’ve still been doodling, but work and other things have kept me from it more often than not and I’ve found if I don’t get right into doodling early on Saturday mornings, then I don’t produce anything worth posting.  If I start late, I end up just screwing around and trying to learn some of the functions of GIMP and not actually drawing anything.  I’ll still keep doing it when I can, but I’ve missed enough weeks to realize that I’m not going to be regular about it.

Plus, I still can’t draw for shit, so while I’m working at it, I don’t impress myself very often.  I’m more apt to delete an image than share it.  I’m working on not doing that.

Anyway, I decided that I also wanted to start something to work on writing.  So, today, in just a few minutes I’m going to post the first in what I hope to be a long series of posts.  This new project will involve me going to one of the many places on the Internet where you can find photos that people take and allow to be used by others (here is a list of places to look), and finding one that inspires something in me.  I’ll then write what I’m inspired to write and post it with the accompanying photo (and a link to where I got the photo so that credit is given along with whatever text they require for use).  I hope this works out well… if not… well, then I only hope I don’t get sued.

Movie Round-Up: October 2nd, 2009

Reviews

Whip It:

One of my guilty pleasures a few years ago was Rollergirls on A&E.  There is something about people trying to get a sport off the ground, a sport they clearly enjoy and they want to impart that joy to others.  I got that same feeling watching the movie Leatherheads a while back about how professional football wasn’t originally taken seriously.  Anyway, this movie really captures the sport well, and the way many people probably look at the girls who decide to pursue it.  It was fun and funny, and even exciting during the bouts.  Definitely a thumbs up from me.

The Invention of Lying:

If you’ve seen the trailer, you know the premise of the film is it takes place in a world where no one has ever told a lie.  One thing to keep in mind before you go see it is that a lie isn’t just what most people consider lies, like telling your boss you are sick when you aren’t or pretending you have a job you don’t to impress a girl.  Every fiction book ever written is a lie.  Every exaggeration of the truth is a lie.  So now, imagine a world without fiction, without storytelling as we know it, without any stretching of the truth.  This is the world of The Invention of Lying.  A world where people go to the movies to see a man in a comfy chair narrate the factual events of historical periods.  I found this movie to be incredibly funny, and Ricky Gervais pulls off the whole thing really well.  However, I can easily see how some people wouldn’t like it, especially religious folks, because, you see, unless you believe that the Bible is a 100% factually accurate depiction of events exactly as they happened, that make it fiction, and fiction is lying, and lying doesn’t exist until Ricky’s character invents it…

Zombieland:

The only movie opening this week I didn’t see a screening of.  I had the opportunity (Thanks Greg and Neil!) but decided to see Whip It instead because, frankly, I’ll always pay to see zombies.  And this is the latest George Romero “I want to make comments on society and don’t care if my movie is boring or stupid” zombie film.  This is going to be funny, and disgusting, and a blast to watch, I can just tell.  So this weekend, Zombieland will be earning my $10.

Cable TV & Me

Random Thoughts

If you frequent my blog, you may have read about my war with Comcast.  The end result of everything is that I built my father a PVR using digital tuners, and he’s able to record six programs at a time on the channels broadcast in the clear (essentially 2 thru 78 plus a handful of other random channels, plus the HD versions of all the local channels), while I, not able to afford to replace my PVR, canceled cable TV in favor of various streaming sources.  With Hulu, network websites, Netflix, and the occasional torrent, I can watch pretty much every show I care to watch.  Yeah, it is always a day late, but I was recording and watching most of them a day late anyway.

The main reason behind this decision wasn’t just to save the $60 a month that cable TV cost me, although that is nice, but mostly in that cable TV isn’t serving me properly as a consumer.  To me, the single most important thing is to be able to watch the shows on my schedule.  Since networks insist on putting good shows on opposite each other, and I don’t want to not watch good shows, recording shows has always been something I needed to do.  And while recording shows for later viewing meant I could fast forward through commercials, that was always a side effect and never the point.  Time shifting was the point.  Right now, if for that same $60 a month, Comcast were to offer me the ability to watch any program at any time, even if I was forced to watch the commercials and couldn’t skip them, I’d do it.

On Demand programming is where the future is, and networks need to catch up.  And charging me $3 or $5 per episode in addition to my cable bill just to watch it without commercials isn’t the answer.  Leave the commercials in and let me watch it for free, just like when it is broadcast, but on my own schedule.

I want to watch your shows.  I even want to watch your commercials (they help me discover more shows and sometimes even products to buy).  But I just can’t do it on your schedule.

Either the networks need to jump on On Demand, or the cable companies need to invent the 10 tuner DVR that works with ALL their channels  so people can create their own On Demand.