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Monthly Archives: September 2013

Gravity Movie Review (spoiler-free)

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20130913-003420.jpgLet me start by disclaiming “spoiler free” – I assume you have seen a preview or read at least enough to know the most basic premise of the film. If you truly have no idea what it’s about, well, I make references to content used in the trailers. But seriously, if this does describe you, why are you even click to get this far?

I had a chance to see an early screener of the movie tonight, and felt like doing a little writing about it. In all candor, I’m more negative than positive on it personally, but I think there are a lot of reasons to go see it in theaters (if you are going to see it at all). Gravity might well define the “must see in theater” experience far more than any action movie ever would.

The Good:

  • Beautiful, amazing, breathtakingly phenomenal cinematography. I honestly feel closer to having an idea of what being in space might be like as a result of the way this was shot.
  • Solid acting. I felt the characters were genuine, and Clooney/Bullock fit their roles quite well – in fact I’m surprised at any negativity toward the acting on IMDB message boards or other spots.
  • Suspenseful. Cuaron did a great job keeping the audience on the edge of their seat, and had a solid balance between slowly built, drawn out sequences and other “gotcha” kind of moments.
  • Dialogue and characters. Great blends of comic and serious, deep and light, etc moments. Very well put together from that end.

    • The Bad:

  • Repetitive events. You know that scene in the preview where someone is grabbing on to some space ship part for dear life, and it appears that if they miss it they will be lost in space forever? Yeah, I’ve now seen that moment a few dozen times, to the point where I’d predict a Gravity Drinking Game around it. It’s just too much, and while I get it that that’s a big part of the premise, it becomes nearly comical after the first few times it occurs.
  • Too many crises. If you’ve read the trivia around Apollo 13, you’ve probably noticed they deliberately removed some of the events that transpired in real life from the film, mostly because they didn’t think the audience would find it believable. In Gravity, I felt that the cascading series of mishaps were just too many from start to finish. I think numerous moments could’ve been reduced or removed completely and the end result would’ve been more gripping. Instead, I kept getting that feeling where my suspension of disbelief was being taxed.
  • Too many “last possible moment” sequences. To avoid spoiling anything, just imagine a caper movie where the bomb is set to go off, and after a ton of action, the bomb is defused with less than a second to go. Now do it 3 or more (I’ve lost count) times in the same movie. It certainly builds up tension, but also increased the “okay, now they are just messing with me” effect.
  • The trailer. While I’d say it’s a tossup between Drive and Hancock as to “worst expectation setting for a movie, EVER,” I’d say Gravity’s trailer is on thin ice. If you’ve paid too much attention to it, it’s pretty ridden with spoilers (thankfully I had not seen it more than once before going into the movie). But if you also just saw it once or twice, you’d probably be thinking it’s a non-stop space action flick. It isn’t, and if you are unfamiliar with the director’s other works, you should definitely pay them some attention first. The movie paces really well actually, but it’s a much more drawn-out film than I think a lot of people will expect.
  • Annoying 3D. I wish I’d seen the IMAX 3D version, maybe that would change my feelings here. As it is, I didn’t, and other than 2-3 “really cool” uses of 3D, it was pretty superfluous to the movie.

    • Overall, I have negative feelings about Gravity. Per the above, it was wonderfully put together, but ultimately I felt the movie spent more time trying to manipulate me with unnecessary tension. I think the basic premise was suspenseful and dramatic enough, but had several too many “and now we’ll find a way for *another* crazy bad thing to happen” moments for me. I wish that weren’t the case, as I really did want to like it, but I’ve spent the past few hours picking it apart, not sitting around stunned at its beauty

    What a Next-Gen Apple TV Could Bring

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    While I’m not as bullish as others that the following tweet should be taken as gospel, I’ve been thinking a lot recently on what a new version of an Apple TV product could look like.

    So, in no particular order… “why update the Apple TV?”

    • 4K video
      I wouldn’t bet on this, at all, since there’s virtually no content available today, and probably won’t be much in the next 24-36 months.  If 4K looks promising, they can rev again in the future.  Further, Apple has historically *not* led in this category, and I’d be surprised to see them do it this time.
    • Rich SDK
      Yes, there are plenty of apps available for Apple TV today, but access is limited and granted in an ad-hoc fashion to selected content providers.  Many folks assume one day they’ll open this up to a wider developer network -as in, all developers.  I know very little about the programmability/guts of the Apple TV, but I have to assume the current one simply wasn’t designed to be uber-expandable.  As a sub-point, I *could* see an argument for an extension of iOS here, but I’d hope it’d be a differentiated offering to relate to the different UI mechanisms.
    • HDMI Passthrough
      For the literal heaps of things Google TV has done wrong, HDMI passthrough was smart.  Enabling the Apple TV to sit on Input 1 at all times enables no-input switching for any connected experience.  But even better than that, it’s not a stretch to see a version of AirPlay with a, wait for it, transparent layer.  What does that mean?  Imagine every cool thing about Interactive TV you’ve ever heard or thought of, minus all the lame stuff, now have it actually work, powered by your iPhone/iPad.  Awesome.
    • Gaming
      Many of us already believe the next generation of consoles is doomed, but what if the Apple TV came with an optional joystick and as much gaming horsepower as an iPad or Xbox 360, and stayed at the $99 price point?  It’s the exact opposite strategy Microsoft is taking with their platform (gaming first, everything else second), but since about 1998 that’s pretty much a winning approach.

    And that’s it – which is telling in its own way.  There’s no other “basic” TV/streaming need to upgrade the current hardware, and Apple certainly isn’t going to put out a new version without a very specific reason.  Perhaps I’m missing something (comment please!), but I am at a loss to come up with any other drivers for new hardware.   Oh, and yes, I’m ruling out Siri, physical motion gestures, cameras, etc – while any could certainly come at some point, they aren’t going to exist without one of the above as well.

    Which leaves me with the following: if you do not think the above reasons are compelling, and you can’t come up with a better one, I think you can pretty much write off a new piece of hardware.  Further, I have strong convictions that the only truly viable option above is adding a Rich SDK/open developers kit, so if we don’t see that next week, I don’t think we see any new device show up either.

    6 Reasons Why Apple Won’t Announce NFC Payments

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    stuffed-costanza-wallet

    DisCo-Stan-Za

    Disclosure: This is a Guest-contributed Post

    In the early part of the last decade, when everyone was carrying blackberries and phones, the big buzzword was “convergence.”  We couldn’t wait to have our phone mashup with our email device and carry just one electronic gadget that did both.  The iPhone launched and, though Blackberrys had added phone capabilities, this was true convergence as you could do email, browse the web, make phone calls (sometimes depending on AT&T), and listen to music.  This was the first widely adopted and functional “SmartPhone”.

    We’re still looking for that great convergence of your Smart Phone with our wallets and every Apple release is preceded by rumors of Near Field Communication (NFC) and mobile wallet.  Here are the reasons why as much as I’d love to ditch my George Costanza-sized wallet for one device, this isn’t going to happen this year:

    1. Stores don’t take NFC

    Sure there are some stores that have NFC terminals, but those account for about 2% of all terminals world-wide.  For those drugstores like CVS and Duane Reade that do have NFC, it’s painful to watch a clerk try to be helpful when they have no idea how the technology works.  Apple won’t ship a phone with NFC payments that only works in some stores, some of the time.

    2. It’s not Globally Equivalent

    When Apple ships a product it generally is the same product around the globe.  There aren’t iPhone 4x’s in Singapore and iPhone4z’s in Germany.  The world gets the same platform with a few modifications to radio frequencies.  Sure, they add currencies and countries to iTunes over time, but a core capability always ships around the globe within months.

    3. Apple isn’t first to market

    Remember the Creative Nomad Jukebox.  Most of you won’t, but this was one of the many MP3 players that launched before the iPod . How about the Treo mobile phone and email device. Apple is notorious for not being the first to market with a piece of hardware, but when they launch getting it so right that it blows everyone away.  There are plenty of people trying to do NFC like ISIS – the consortium of carriers, MCX – the consortium of merchants, Google – the consortium of Google.  Apple is happy to wait and watch how they fail, let them educate the market and spend to “terminalize” stores and then swoop in many years later with an updated PassBook that you’ve been using to go to concerts, movies, board airplanes, etc.

    4. Payments is messy

    Payments is a complicated beast that has so many hands in the cookie jar of a transaction taking their crumbs that it’s hard to distinguish from beltway politics.  When you think of where apple would fit in the ecosystem, they closest you get is a PayPal solution for online, where they can set the merchant discount rate.  At the store, unless they became their own payment mark (not happening in 2 weeks), then they’d be riding on someone elses “rails” (Visa, MasterCard, Discover, Amex).   Sharing in this transaction with a partner upon whom they’d be reliant is not a very Apple thing to do.  They own customers and ecosystems.  They don’t share so well.  Also, payments is a high-touch, customer complaint wellspring.  Without accruing a lot of value to Apple, it doesn’t seem likely they would work to add this without nailing all the other promotional goodness that would yield benefit.

    5. Apple isn’t an advertising company

    The real money is in promotions and advertising where you don’t take .05% of a transaction,but get to take a bigger chunk by delivering a lead or changing customer behaviour. In previous efforts around advertising, Apple hasn’t had the stomach for these messy and high touch endeavors.  Look at iAd and why you don’t see Apple competing, seriously, with Google or even Facebook on that front.  They make software and hardware.  They generally aren’t great at services.

    6. Swipe isn’t broken

    Finally, Apple likes to create step-change in consumer experiences.  Swipe isn’t broken, nor does tap add that much ease of use and simplicity.  Anytime I’ve stood behind someone trying to pay with their mobile phone, I watch as customers get mad while they try and open the payments app, enter the pin code, and wait for the clerk to understand what’s happened because they didn’t hand over a credit card or cash.

    So, while Apple may launch a neat way to share songs or photos using BlueTooth LE or NFC, or greater enhancements to their ecosystem of entertainment like a more robust remote for your apple TV, I don’t see payments coming anytime soon for physical world transactions.