Movie Trailers Found Accidentally

First up, a quite clearly very cheesy Kevin Kline movie, The Extra Man, but I like Kevin Kline and his character is driving a Buick Electra, which we used to have — a great car made out of solid steel:

Next, George Clooney is getting all serious as some sort of underworld spy/assassin/crook trying to leave the biz in The American:

Third, a totally unnecessary sequel to the Meet the Parents series — The Little Fockers. But hey, they’re adding people like Harvey Keitel:

Fourth, what happens when you stick Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, Mary Louise Parker and John Malkovich in a spy action movie based on a DC Comics publication, Red? Master class scenery chewing with guns:

Then we get Rob Reiner being very mushy with a period piece about teenage romance, Flipped:

And finally, a new trailer for the last two Harry Potter movies. It shows far too much of the ending of the second part, but is very cool nonetheless:

We will forgive them for sticking the thing in 3-D. I will not be watching the 3-D version. I’m done with 3-D.

The Reality of E-books

Legendary SFF author C.J. Cherryh is involved with some others in an interesting e-publishing venture, and she outlines the numerous steps that have to be done by people to put out e-books. And that’s just for a personal, self-publishing operation. Doing it on a wider scale is much worse and requires hiring or diverting personnel or hiring consultants. Which is why wide-scale e-publishing is expensive, not yet profitable and still in the infant stages and slow to put out titles. Eventually, it will be a larger market, with more profit and become more international, and become less expensive accordingly.  But to put out an e-book requires an investment in capital and people-power that is not required for print books, just as certain expenses for print books are not required for print books. But a lot of the print book costs are built in and can be done at bulk rates, requiring minimum personnel, and some of them only occur when a book is launched but aren’t a factor afterwards when the backlist brings in more profit. E-book conversion costs are front-list costs and can remain so if new formats are needed, require a lot of personnel, and can’t yet be done at bulk rates because the market isn’t big enough yet.

There is also still a lot of negotiation going on between authors and publishers over e-books, which slows titles coming out too. And no, the answer is not for all the authors to just do it themselves, because as Cherryh shows, that’s just as complicated. However, it may be very good for many authors’ backlists.

http://www.cherryh.com/WaveWithoutAShore/?p=1833

Topher Grace is the Deadliest Warrior on the Planet

I am fond of both Adrien Brody and Topher Grace, and I support their right to make action movies, but Predators? Really, Rodriguez? Lawrence Fishburne will eat them.

But Arnold likes it:

Finally, a Rap Song about Being Financially Prudent

From the group Abraham Linkin:

A New Visit in Spam Comment Advertising

Louis Vuitton himself is now complimenting my blog on how wonderful it is. They’ve dispensed with that other “person” to tell me about this great new site that sells Vuitton handbags and now just are sending the big cheese himself. I’m so honored. Also still think this is an enormous waste of money by advertiser scammers.

Anyway, having broken an entire dozen of eggs yesterday after having just bought them, it makes me feel better.

And Then It Made This For Me!

If we released actual bees on their heads, would they stop playing those things?

Look What the Internet Made For Me!

For OK Go and Muppet fans, while at the Webbies — they won! — the boys had a staring contest between Dan, the band’s drummer, and Animal, the Muppets’ drummer. And yes, that’s Zack G. sitting in the background.

Numbers Up, Prices Down

As e-readers and e-reading software proliferate like well-fed rats, we have the inevitable price drop. Amazon slashed the basic Kindle down to $189 to compete with the Nook, which promptly slashed its basic price down to $199 and is putting out a just the Wi-Fi Nook for $149. Those who paid substantially more in earlier years for a Kindle — well, you paid to have it early. Which is how it works for the most sought after  e-books too.

So it looks like the e-market is developing along as expected. But I would suspect that you aren’t going to be seeing $40 e-readers in the grocery store any time soon. I’d say that the lowest prices will hoover around $90, at least for the next few years. New toys are coming, which will effect the e-reading market, so there will be a leveling out, especially as the middle class is essentially gone in most of the world. But still, it’s maybe a good sign of expansion.

I’m amused at the grumbling on the Net that the e-readers will just be this little niche market with their millions and millions of customers. In the electronics world, this is true — it is just a niche — but for book publishing, it’s a huge number of buyers and quite welcome.

Hornet Buzzing

I’m buried up to my eyeballs in work and house. How about you?

There’s a first official Green Hornet movie trailer out — the new version starring Seth Rogen as Britt Reid, the Hornet, and Jay Chou as Kato. It looks fun enough and this is supposed to be a fairly comic version to take advantage of Rogen’s talents, but I’m uncertain how I feel about it. The trailer seems to indicate that essentially Kato does all the work, which may not work that well. That kind of spoof has been done, and there really wasn’t a killer line featured in the trailer. Still, unlike most of the trailers lately, it did not show 90% of the movie, so that’s something.

Of Spoons and Sporks

Jim Hines linked to a very interesting blog essay by Christine Miserandino about living with chronic pain, or rather communicating about what it is like to live with chronic pain. As someone who has relatives and friends who’ve had situations like this, I found the essay moving and true and worth checking out:

http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/personal-essays/the-spoon-theory-written-by-christine-miserandino/

In addition to linking to this very worthy essay, though, Hines also spins off a more satirical one concerning the frustrations we deal with every day:

http://www.jimchines.com/2010/06/spork-theory/